Weekly Book List, December 2, 2016

ANTHROPOLOGY

Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea by Paige West (Columbia University Press; 195 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses tourism, resource extraction, development, conservation, and other realms linked to the dispossession of Papua New Guineans.

Killing Your Neighbors: Friendship and Violence in Northern Kenya and Beyond by Jon Holtzman (University of California Press; 224 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Focuses on interactions between Samburu herders and neighboring groups in the region.

Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs by Alice Wilson (University of Pennsylvania Press; 296 pages; $59.95). Draws on fieldwork among Sahrawi refugees who fled the annexation of the Western Sahara and are living in exile in Polisario-governed camps in southwest Algeria.

ARCHAEOLOGY

The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos by Carolyn E. Boyd with contributions by Kim Cox (University of Texas Press; 224 pages; $65). A study of a massive mural in a shallow cave overlooking the Pecos River in South Texas; argues that the painting was intentionally composed as a pictorial narrative of the birth of the sun and the beginning of time.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Juan O’Gorman: A Confluence of Civilizations by Catherine Nixon Cooke (Trinity University Press; 130 pages; $29.95). Traces the life and work of the Mexican muralist and architect (1905-82), whose designs included the house and studio of his friends Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Master Builder of the Lower Rio Grande: Heinrich Portscheller by W. Eugene George, compiled and edited by Mary Carolyn Hollers George (Texas A&M University Press; 117 pages; $35). Examines the life and work of a German who immigrated to Mexico in 1866 and ultimately became a master builder and architect in South Texas.

Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography by Susan Best (Bloomsbury Academic; 218 pages; $94 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Explores the representation of shameful national histories in the work of Anne Ferran of Australia, Fiona Pardington of New Zealand, Rosangela Renno of Brazil, and Milagros de la Torre of Peru.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

A Place at the Altar: Priestesses in Republican Rome by Meghan J. DiLuzio (Princeton University Press; 304 pages; $45). Examines the key role of women in civic cult.

COMMUNICATION

The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern Media Since 9/11 by Matt Sienkiewicz (Rutgers University Press; 216 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Focuses on Afghan and Palestinian media in a study of U.S. efforts to influence radio and television in the Muslim world, and local producers’ responses.

CRIMINOLOGY

Hacked: A Radical Approach to Hacker Culture and Crime by Kevin F. Steinmetz (New York University Press; 288 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Topics include the key role played by hacking in the information economy.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Star Worlds: Freedom Versus Control in Online Gameworlds by William Sims Bainbridge (University of Michigan Press; 320 pages; $85 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of the multiplayer online games Star Wars Galaxies; Star Wars: The Old Republic; Star Trek Online; and the Star Trek community in the virtual environment of Second Life.

ECONOMICS

Innovation Systems for Development: Making Research and Innovation in Developing Countries Matter edited by Bo Goransson, Claes Brundenius, and Carlos Aguirre-Bastos (Edward Elgar Publishing; 328 pages; $135). Focuses on Bolivia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Vietnam.

The People’s Money: How China Is Building a Global Currency by Paola Subacchi (Columbia University Press; 237 pages; $35). Traces the history of China’s monetary system over the past century and argues that the country’s global ambitions today require a greater international role for the renminbi.

FILM STUDIES

Mexican Melodrama: Film and Nation From the Golden Age to the New Wave by Elena Lahr-Vivaz (University of Arizona Press; 224 pages; $55). A study of how Mexico’s new-wave directors use motifs from Golden Age cinema in their social critiques; juxtaposes, for example, Nosotros los pobres (1947) and Amores perros (2000).

HISTORY

An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Cosmopolitan Europe by Sirpa Salenius (University of Massachusetts Press; 232 pages; $90 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Draws on international archives in a study of an abolitionist (1826-94) from the free-black community of Salem, Mass., who lectured across Britain then settled in Italy where she became a physician.

Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910--1960 by Kenneth C. Barnes (University of Arkansas Press; 268 pages; $34.95). Discusses images of Catholics as the feared or despised other in the majority Protestant state.

Broken Wings: The Hungarian Air Force, 1918-45 by Stephen Renner (Indiana University Press; 327 pages; $35). Draws on previously untranslated documents in a study of how Hungary, banned from having a military air force after World War I, secretly rebuilt the service with planes from Germany and Italy.

The Fighting Sullivans: How Hollywood and the Military Make Heroes by Bruce Kuklick (University Press of Kansas; 212 pages; $27.95). Examines how Hollywood worked in concert with the military in World War II in its myth making concerning five brothers, all assigned to the same ship, who died when the vessel was torpedoed by the Japanese.

Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848 and Its Aftermath by Alexis de Tocqueville, edited by Olivier Zunz, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (University of Virginia Press; 392 pages; $39.50). Translation of Toqueville’s original uncensored manuscript, which suffered expurgation in its posthumous release.

Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage by Sowande’ M. Mustakeem (University of Illinois Press; 262 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on ship logs and other documents in a study of how bondage was “manufactured” in the conditions of violence and deprivation of the captives’ passage.

Stepdaughters of History: Southern Women and the American Civil War by Catherine Clinton (Louisiana State University Press; 168 pages; $27.50). Focuses on how historians have worked to challenge how women’s roles in the war have been marginalized or stereotyped.

Trudeaumania by Paul Litt (University of British Columbia Press; 424 pages; US$39.95). Traces the forces that propelled the rapid rise of Canadian politician Pierre Trudeau, who became Liberal Party leader in April 1968 and prime minister a few months later, ultimately serving a total of 15 years.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Contesting Medical Confidentiality: Origins of the Debate in the United States, Britain, and Germany by Andreas-Holger Maehle (University of Chicago Press; 165 pages; $40). Traces professional and public debates over what was considered medically confidential in the three countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Microbes From Hell by Patrick Forterre, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan (University of Chicago Press; 273 pages; $50). Translation of a 2007 French study of the discovery of life forms that thrive in extreme temperatures, such as volcanic hot springs;

LINGUISTICS

How Gender Shapes the World by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Oxford University Press; 271 pages; $105). Draws on data from 700 languages, including many minority tongues, in a study of the interaction of what is termed linguistic, social, and natural gender.

LITERATURE

America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies by Antonio Barrenechea (University of New Mexico Press; 231 pages; $55). A study of three encyclopedic novels: Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra, Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.

Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority by Susanna Lee (Ohio State University Press; 232 pages; $84.95). Explores shifting views of moral authority and individual accountability through a study of hard-boiled crime fiction by Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jim Thompson, and other French and American authors.

Meir Aaron Goldschmidt and the Poetics of Jewish Fiction by David Gantt Gurley (Syracuse University Press; 232 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of the Danish writer and publisher (1819-87) that focuses on his relation to the Hebrew Bible and later rabbinical tradition and discusses him as the writer of the first truly Jewish bildungsroman.

Our Emily Dickinsons: American Women Poets and the Intimacies of Difference by Vivian R. Pollak (University of Pennsylvania Press; 400 pages; $55). Draws on poems, letters, diaries, and other sources in a study of female poets’ use of Dickinson to clarify their own battles; figures discussed include Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop.

Prophecies of Language: The Confusion of Tongues in German Romanticism by Kristina Mendicino (Fordham University Press; 304 pages; $115 hardcover, $32 paperback). Draws on writings by Hegel, Humboldt, Schlegel, and Holderlin in a study of German Romantic and Idealist links between translation and prophecy, the latter in the sense of speaking in the place of another.

Reading Alice Munro With Jacques Lacan by Jennifer Murray (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 208 pages; US$100). Uses Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to explore issues of shame and humiliation in the Canadian writer’s stories, as well as the texts’ core “libidinal energy.”

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction: Explorations in Readers’ Engagement with Characters by Marco Caracciolo (University of Nebraska Press; 268 pages; $60). Draws on cognitive and other theory in a study of readers’ encounters with mentally disturbed, animal, and otherwise “strange” narrators in American Psycho, The Curious Incident With the Dog in the Night, and eight other novels.

Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries and the Diaries She Read by Barbara Lounsberry (University Press of Florida; 268 pages; $79.95). A study of 13 diaries kept by Woolf from 1918 to 1929; considers how she used her journals to experiment with form and describes how she was influenced by other diarists.

War Diaries, 1939-1945 by Astrid Lindgren, translated by Sarah Death (Yale University Press; 235 pages; $30). Translation of diaries documenting life in wartime Stockholm by a then-aspiring author who would become internationally famous for her Pippi Longstocking series.

PHILOSOPHY

The Figure of Nature: On Greek Origins by John Sallis (Indiana University Press; 254 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Traces the evolution of the Greek concept of nature, from the mythological figure of Artemis through the discourse of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and Plato.

Record of Daily Knowledge and Collected Poems and Essays: Selections by Gu Yanwu, translated and edited by Ian Johnston (Columbia University Press; 323 pages; $65). Translation of writings by the 17th-century Chinese scholar, who pioneered the practice of Han or Evidential Learning.

The Relationship Between the Physical and the Moral in Man by Maine de Biran, edited and translated by Darian Meacham and Joseph Spadola (Bloomsbury Academic; 210 pages; $114 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Combines a translation of writings by the French philosopher (1766-1824) with essays on his thought.

Rene Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991 edited by Scott Cowdel and others, translated by Chris Fleming and Sheelah Trefle Hidden (Bloomsbury Academic; 217 pages; $100). Documents the intellectual impact of the friendship between the French polymath Girard, and his principal theological interlocutor, the Swiss priest and theologian Schwager.

PHYSICS

Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe by Roger Penrose (Princeton University Press; 501 pages; $29.95). Focuses on string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology in an analysis of how fashion, faith, and fantasy are misdirecting current work in physics.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age by Richard Schragger (Oxford University Press; 322 pages; $29.95). Analyzes and defends both the possibility and desirability of American cities’ governing more, such as in the enforcement of a minimum wage.

The Politics of EU-China Economic Relations: An Uneasy Partnership by John Farnell and Paul Irwin Crookes (Palgrave Macmillan; 244 pages; $129). Focuses on how each has emerged from the economic crisis.

State and Commonwealth: The Theory of the State in Early Modern England, 1549--1640 by Noah Dauber (Princeton University Press; 263 pages; $45). Draws on writings by Martin Bucer, John Case, Thomas Smith, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes.

Women as Wartime Rapists: Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping by Laura Sjoberg (New York University Press; 309 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Examines women’s wartime involvement in sexual violence against other women, including “genocidal rape” as a tactic in ethnic cleansing.

RELIGION

At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire by Heidi Wendt (Oxford University Press; 262 pages; $74). Examines people’s consultations with self-declared experts from astrologers and diviners to such rival Christian teachers as Marcion, Justin, Valentinus, and Ptolemy; argues that seeing the Apostle Paul in this frame sheds new light on his letters.

The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers (Oxford University Press; 370 pages; $34.95). Examines propaganda and counter-propaganda in a study of Chinese government efforts to control opinion in Tibet, including a “patriotic re-education” campaign centered on the coercion of Buddhist monks and nuns.

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood: Religion, Identity, and Politics by Khalil Al-Anani (Oxford University Press; 199 pages; $74). A study of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, including its inner workings, recruitment, and member socialization; links the movement’s longevity, despite regime repression, to a distinctive code of identity that binds the collective.

Morality After Calvin: Theodore Beza’s Christian Censor and Reformed Ethics by Kirk M. Summers (Oxford University Press; 412 pages; $99). Explores ideas of morality in Beza’s poetic work Cato Censurius Christianus (1591) and in other writings and correspondence of the French theologian and his colleagues.

Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud: Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity by Yishai Kiel (Cambridge University Press; 310 pages; $99.99). Sets rabbinical discussions of sexuality in the wider context of cultures in late antiquity, with a focus on Iran.

The Spiritual Journals of Warren Felt Evans: From Methodism to Mind Cure edited by Catherine L. Albanese (Indiana University Press; 320 pages; $45). First publication of two extant journals kept by a Vermonter (1817-89), who converted to Methodism at Dartmouth, became a minister, and later moved through varied teachings, including Swedenborgianism, until becoming a leading figure in the New Thought movement.

Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age by Mark Sedgwick (Oxford University Press; 350 pages; $35). Examines affinities of Sufism with Neoplatonism and traces the history of Western engagement in the Muslim mystical tradition since a text published in 1480.

SOCIOLOGY

Housekeeping by Design: Hotels and Labor by David Brody (University of Chicago Press; 199 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.50 paperback). Uses interview and other data to document how hotel design can affect, in the negative, the work of housekeepers; argues for bringing the latter’s knowledge and experience to bear in collaboration with architects.