Weekly Book List, December 8, 2017

AMERICAN STUDIES

The Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV by Christopher Grobe (New York University Press; 320 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). A study of confessionalism in American art and popular and performance culture, from comedy and poetry in the 1950s and 60s to reality television and social media today.

ANTHROPOLOGY

From Belonging to Belief: Modern Secularisms and the Construction of Religion in Kyrgyzstan by Julie McBrien (University of Pittsburgh Press; 240 pages; $28.95). Draws on fieldwork in the small town of Bazaar-Korgon in a study of Islam as experienced, debated, and newly explored in the post-Soviet Central Asian republic.

Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America edited by David Tavarez (University Press of Colorado; 329 pages; $38.95). Writings on how Christian messages were conveyed in indigenous languages, with case studies concerning texts in Nahuatl, Northern and Valley Zapotec, Quechua, Yucatec Maya, K’iche’ Maya, Q’eqchi’ Maya, and Tupi.

Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola by Jon Schubert (Cornell University Press; 270 pages; $95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Focuses on everyday life in the capital, Luanda, in a study of how Angolans construct and negotiate their relationships to power.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization by Brian Fagan (Yale University Press; 346 pages; $30). Discusses fishing as a rival to agriculture in the rise of civilizations---and expansionism.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Beauty’s Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi by Thomas Leslie (University of Illinois Press; 232 pages; $49.95). A study of the Italian engineer and architect (1891-1973), who was a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete.

Being Here Is Everything: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker by Marie Darrieussecq, translated by Penny Hueston (Semiotext(e), distributed by MIT Press; 157 pages; $17.95). Translation of a 2016 French biography of the German Expressionist painter (1876-1907).

The Devout Hand: Women, Virtue, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Italy by Patricia Rocco (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 296 pages; US$65). Discusses Bologna as a center for women’s artistic achievement over two generations, from Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) to Elisabetta Sirani (1638-65) and her students and colleagues.

Searching for Mary Schaffer: Women Wilderness Photography by Colleen Skidmore (University of Alberta Press; 376 pages; US$34.95). A study of the photographer, writer, and cartographer (1861-1939), who was known for her work in the Canadian Rockies.

BIOLOGY

Challenging the Modern Synthesis: Adaptation, Development, and Inheritance edited by Philippe Huneman and Denis M. Walsh (Oxford University Press; 353 pages; $74). Writings by evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology from Europe and North America on the “new biology” and its challenges to the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Brutus: The Noble Conspirator by Kathryn Tempest (Yale University Press; 336 pages; $28.50). A biography of Marcus Brutus (circa 85-42 BC) that explores the moral, personal, and political struggles of Caesar’s chief assassin.

Para-Narratives in the “Odyssey": Stories in the Frame by Maureen Alden (Oxford University Press; 424 pages; $110). A study of the secondary stories in the epic, including Odysseus’ tales of Lotus Eaters and Sirens and the Cyclopes; topics include how they subtly shape the reception of the central plot.

Rome and the Third Macedonian War by Paul J. Burton (Cambridge University Press; 252 pages; $99.99). Examines the origins, events, and aftermath of the war, which culminated in Rome’s victory at the Battle of Pydna in June 168 BC and the abolition of the kingdom of Macedon.

Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians by Catalina Balmaceda (University of North Carolina Press; 312 pages; $45). Focuses on Sallust, Livy, Velleius, and Tacitus in a study of how the idea of virtus shaped Roman historians’ views of their society’s past and present.

COMMUNICATION

Small-Screen Souths: Region, Identity, and the Cultural Politics of Television edited by Lisa Hinrichsen, Gina Caison, and Stephanie Rountree (Louisiana State University Press; 360 pages; $49.95). Essays on representations of the region since The Andy Griffith Show; other programs discussed include The Walking Dead, Duck Dynasty, Designing Women, Treme, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

We Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canadian Culture by Miranda J. Brady and John M.H. Kelly (University of British Columbia Press; 220 pages; US$75). Examines the strategic use of television and other media in the struggle for indigenous goals across a wide range of domains in Canada.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Blasian Invasion: Racial Mixing in the Celebrity Industrial Complex by Myra S. Washington (University Press of Mississippi; 192 pages; $65). Discusses Kimora Lee, Dwayne Johnson, Hines Ward, Tiger Woods, and other figures of mixed black and Asian descent.

Personal Style Blogs: Appearances That Fascinate by Rosie Findlay (Intellect Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 199 pages; $33). Traces the rise of personal-style blogs beginning with Susie Lau’s Style Bubble, Rumi Neely’s fashiontoast, and Tavi Gevinson’s Style Rookie; topics include the affective and reciprocal relationships bloggers develop with their readers.

DISABILITY STUDIES

Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability by Shelley L. Tremain (University of Michigan Press; 258 pages; $75 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Identifies misrepresentations of the French thinker in feminist philosophy and disability studies; also links mistaken understandings of disability in philosophy to the underrepresentation of disabled scholars in the discipline.

ECONOMICS

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake (Princeton University Press; 288 pages; $29.95). Examines an economy centered more and more on intangible assets and describes how investment in such intangibles can be linked to problems from inequality to stagnant productivity.

Why Latin American Nations Fail: Development Strategies in the Twenty-First Century edited by Esteban Perez Caldentey and Matias Vernengo (University of California Press; 224 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Writings that counter aspects of the “new institutionalist” approach in development.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Conceptual Innovation in Environmental Policy edited by James Meadowcroft and Daniel J. Fiorino (MIT Press; 367 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Writings on the current trajectory of such environmental concepts as sustainable development, biodiversity, green economy, and sustainable consumption.

FILM STUDIES

Agnes Varda Between Film, Photography, and Art by Rebecca J. DeRoo (University of California Press; 238 pages; $85 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of the Belgian-born French director’s work since the 1950s, with a focus on how she engages traditions of photography, cinema, art history in her feature films and documentaries.

The Best Laid Plans: Interrogating the Heist Film edited by Jeannette Sloniowski and Jim Leach (Wayne State University Press; 268 pages; $36.99). Explores aesthetic, ideological, and other aspects of the heist film in essays on the genre’s appeal and significance in different national cinemas; topics include Spike Lee’s Inside Man in relation to Man on a Wire, a documentary that trades in heist-film conventions.

A Dream of Resistance: The Cinema of Kobayashi Masaki by Stephen Prince (Rutgers University Press; 323 pages; $39.95). Draws on previously untranslated material in a study of the Japanese filmmaker (1916-96), who is known for his critique of war and militarism.

The Long Take: Art Cinema and the Wondrous by Lutz Koepnick (University of Minnesota Press; 288 pages; $108 hardcover, $27 paperback). Discusses extended shots as a means of exploring different kinds of attention and perception; topics include the films of Bela Tarr, Tsai Ming-liang, Abbas Kiarostami, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Michael Haneke, and the installation art of Sophie Calle and Tacita Dean.

FOLKLORE

Global Tarantella: Reinventing Southern Italian Folk Music and Dances by Incoronata Inserra (University of Illinois Press; 210 pages; $95 hardcover, $25 paperback). Topics include the folk dance’s spread to realms as far afield as New Age ritual.

Sacred Art: Catholic Saints and Candomble Gods in Modern Brazil by Henry Glassie and Pravina Shukla (Indiana University Press; 540 pages; $48). Focuses on vernacular religious art from the states of Bahia and Pernambuco.

Storytelling in Siberia: The Olonkho Epic in a Changing World by Robin P. Harris (University of Illinois Press; 256 pages; $60). Documents how Siberia’s Sakha people have used a UNESCO program to revive a narrative and song tradition that had declined to near extinction in the Soviet era.

GEOGRAPHY

A House of Prayer for All People: Contesting Citizenship in a Queer Church by David K. Seitz (University of Minnesota Press; 296 pages; $108 hardcover, $27 paperback). A work in cultural geography that explores the affective politics of citizenship as revealed in the activism and debates of Toronto’s largely LGBT Metropolitan Community Church.

HISTORY

Ambassadors of the Working Class: Argentina’s International Labor Activists and Cold War Democracy in the Americas by Ernesto Seman (Duke University Press; 314 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Discusses a program initiated by President Juan Peron in 1946 to recruit more than 500 labor activists to the Argentine diplomatic service, becoming worker attaches at every embassy.

American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863 by Peter O’Connor (Louisiana State University Press; 280 pages; $47.95). Draws on travel writing, fiction, journalism, and other sources in a study of the ideas of American sectionalism preexistent in British consciousness before the Civil War.

Between Washington and Du Bois: The Racial Politics of James Edward Shepard by Reginald K. Ellis (University Press of Florida; 146 pages; $74.95). A study of the North Carolina educator (1875-1947), founder of the first state-supported black liberal-arts college in the South.

Blacks in the Adirondacks: A History by Sally E. Svenson (Syracuse University Press; 376 pages; $65 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Focuses on the years 1850 to 1950 in a study of the varied experiences of African-Americans in the mountainous New York region.

Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World by Padraic Kenney (Oxford University Press; 344 pages; $29.95). Examines political imprisonment under colonial, Communist, and democratic regimes since the mid-19th century, with a focus on Ireland, Britain, Poland, and South Africa.

A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War by TIm Grady (Yale University Press; 291 pages; $30). Examines Jews as active participants in the war, on both the battlefield and the homefront, and considers the dangers of their and other Germans’ legacy of “war enthusiasm” and support for German annexation and imperialism.

Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion edited by Julie MacArthur (Ohio University Press; 432 pages; $90 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). First publication of the entire transcript of the 1956 trial of the Mau Mau leader, who was hanged for his role in the anti-colonial rebellion; also contains essays by Mau Mau scholars.

Eleanor Baldwin and the Woman’s Point of View: New Thought Radicalism in Portland’s Progressive Era by Lawrence M. Lipin (Oregon State University Press; 272 pages; $27.95). An intellectual biography of a radical journalist in Portland, Ore., who promoted progressive reform in her column, “The Woman’s Point of View,” but later was linked to anti-immigrant and pro-KKK sentiments.

Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870--1967 by Joan Marie Johnson (University of North Carolina Press; 303 pages; $39.95). A study of elite women’s financial and other involvement in causes such as suffrage, equality for working-class women, the founding of women’s colleges, coeducation, and the backing of research on the pill.

Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration by Ji-Yeon O. Jo (University of Hawai’i Press; 256 pages; $65). Examines the experiences of later generation diasporic Koreans who “return” to the homeland from China, former Soviet republics, and the United States.

The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet by Edna Edith Sayers (ForeEdge/University Press of New England; 328 pages; $29.95). A revisionist biography of the American educator and champion of deaf schooling (1787-1851) that examines his role in anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-abolitionist and other reactionary movements.

Marfa: The Transformation of a West Texas Town by Kathleen Shafer (University of Texas Press; 204 pages; $24.95). A study of how the Texas community became a center for the arts and tourism, beginning with the arrival of the artist and critic Donald Judd in the 1970s.

Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana by Bianca Murillo (Ohio University Press; 248 pages; $80 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Focuses on shop-floor sales clerks, market women, and everyday shoppers in a study of consumerism in the West African country.

The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire by Lyn Ellen Bennett and Scott Abbott (Texas A&M University Press; 288 pages; $40). Examines the cultural and technological history of barbed wire, including its metaphorical uses as a fence that controls through pain.

The Powell Expedition: New Discoveries about John Wesley Powell’s 1869 River Journey by Don Lago (University of Nevada Press; 372 pages; $39.95). A study of the 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon that emphasizes previously ignored perspectives of crew members.

Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt by Alexander Etkind (University of Pittsburgh Press; 290 pages; $24.95). Explores the dissenting global vision of the diplomat and writer (1891-1967), here described as a truly cosmopolitan American.

The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon (Liveright; 272 pages; $27.95). Discusses the revived KKK of the 1920s as an organization stronger in the North than South, open rather than clandestine, and a significant political force.

United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook by Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald (University of Massachusetts Press; 368 pages; $90 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Sets the writing and publication of Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1796) in the wider context of the post-revolutionary effort to develop a national identity.

“What! Still Alive?!": Jewish Survivors in Poland and Israel Remember Homecoming by Monika Rice (Syracuse University Press; 288 pages; $60 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on survivors’ accounts of their postwar returns to their homes in Poland.

LAW

Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic by Jon D. Michaels (Harvard University Press; 312 pages; $35). Discusses privatization’s threat to American constitutionalism and argues that government cannot and ought not to be run like a business.

LINGUISTICS

Quantitative Historical Linguistics: A Corpus Framework by Gard B. Jenset and Barbara McGillivray (Oxford University Press; 229 pages; $85). Develops a new approach to assessing models and hypotheses in historical linguistics.

LITERATURE

The Afterlives of Specimens: Science, Mourning, and Whitman’s Civil War by Lindsay Tuggle (University of Iowa Press; 276 pages; $65). Discusses the poet in relation to key medical men of his time and changing views of the human cadaver.

Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies edited by Robert Patrick Newcomb and Richard A. Gordon (Ohio State University Press; 261 pages; $89.95). Writings that juxtapose Spanish-language and Portuguese-language literary and cultural studies from both sides of the Atlantic; topics include Jorge Luis Borges and Clarice Lispector and the development of the Latin American “new narrative,” and cinema in Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal.

C. Day-Lewis: The Golden Bridle: Selected Prose edited by Albert Gelpi and Bernard O’Donoghue (Oxford University Press; 358 pages; $34.95). Edition of critical and other writings by the Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72).

China’s Stefan Zweig: The Dynamics of Cross-Cultural Reception by Arnhilt Johanna Hoefle (University of Hawai’i Press; 264 pages; $68). A study of the Austrian novelist (1881-1942) that examines his shifting and ultimately enthusiastic reception in China, where after Communist rule he was embraced for his depictions of the hypocrisy of bourgeois society.

The Collected Works of Jupiter Hammon: Poems and Essays edited by Cedrick May (University of Tennessee Press; 100 pages; $34.95). Edition of writings by one of the founders of African-American literature, who was born into slavery on a New York plantation in 1711.

Forgotten: Narratives of Age-Related Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Canada by Marlene Goldman (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 472 pages; US$120 hardcover, US$34.95 paperback). Examines views of Alzheimer’s and dementia in fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, including work by such authors as Alice Munro, Michael Ignatieff, Jane Rule, and Caroline Adderson.

Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction edited by Ymitri Mathison (University Press of Mississippi; 224 pages; $65). Essays on texts reflecting Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, and Hawaiian heritage, and on such themes therein as internalized racism, transnational adoptions and “birth searches,” and interracial friendships.

Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Dale M. Smith (University of New Mexico Press; 252 pages; $75). Edition of lectures delivered by Duncan on his fellow poet on varied occasions between 1961 and 1983.

Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov edited by Gennady Barabtarlo (Princeton University Press; 232 pages; $24.95). Edition, with commentary, and first publication of a diary in which Nabokov recorded 64 dreams and related daytime episodes on index cards in a compilation that influenced Ada and other novels.

J.G. Ballard by D. Harlan Wilson (University of Illinois Press; 197 pages; $95 hardcover, $22 paperback). Focuses on Ballard (1930-2009) as a science-fiction writer who took the genre in startling new directions while remaining within its realm.

Milton and the Making of “Paradise Lost” by William Poole (Harvard University Press; 368 pages; $29.95). Combines biographical and critical perspectives in a study of the making of Milton’s 1667 epic; pays particular attention to the poet as reader and scholar, and explores such practical challenges as his loss of sight in 1652.

The Poetry of Charles Cotton edited by Paul Hartle (Oxford University Press; the two volumes as a set have 1,614 pages and cost $280). First complete edition of the poetry of the 17th-century English writer and translator, who is best known as a translator of Montaigne and as a fly fisherman who wrote the second part of The Compleat Angler.

The Pragmatist Turn: Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Formation of American Literature by Giles Gunn (University of Virginia Press; 200 pages; $29.50). Writers discussed include Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, William James, Henry James, Kenneth Burke, and Toni Morrison

MUSIC

The Eighteenth-Century Fortepiano Grand and Its Patrons: From Scarlatti to Beethoven by Eva Badura-Skoda (Indiana University Press; 492 pages; $70). Discusses new keyboard techniques and performance practices inspired by the fortepiano grand, an instrument invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori.

Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America by Katherine K. Preston (Oxford University Press; 618 pages; $55). Examines individuals and touring companies linked to the popularity of translated Continental opera for American audiences of all social backgrounds; figures discussed include the performers and artistic directors Caroline Richings, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Clara Louise Kellogg, and “the people’s prima donna” Emma Abbott.

PHILOSOPHY

Changing the Subject: Philosophy From Socrates to Adorno by Raymond Geuss (Harvard University Press; 334 pages; $29.95). Essays on 12 philosophers described as breaking dramatically with prevailing wisdom---Socrates, Plato, Lucretius, Augustine, Montaigne, Hobbes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Lukacs, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno.

Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio (Columbia University Press; 221 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Discusses the ancient Daoist text in terms of its satire, subversion, and approach to radical flexibility in identity as a means of surviving adverse times.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso by Victor Nuovo (Oxford University Press; 263 pages; $70). Focuses on the English philosopher’s efforts to combine and reconcile Christianity with the atomistic “new philosophy” of the 17th century.

Leo Strauss on Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” edited by Richard L. Velkley (University of Chicago Press; 277 pages; $45). Annotated edition of the German-born American philosopher’s lectures on Nietzsche’s work delivered in 1959 at the University of Chicago.

Me, You, Us: Essays by George Sher (Oxford University Press; 202 pages; $74). New and previously published writings on moral and political philosophy, and moral psychology; new topics include what is “moral standing.”

The Philosophy of Ontological Lateness: Merleau-Ponty and the Tasks of Thinking by Keith Whitmoyer (Bloomsbury Academic; 215 pages; $114). Discusses the French philosopher’s 1945 work The Phenomenology of Perception, in dialogue with The Visible and the Invisible, his lectures at the College de France, beginning in 1953, and his reading of Proust.

Plato’s Laughter: Socrates As Satyr and Comical Hero by Sonja Madeleine Tanner (State University of New York Press; 264 pages; $85). Describes Socrates as introducing self-reflective laughter that encourages philosophical inquiry; focuses on the dialogues Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement by Alexander Thurston (Princeton University Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Examines the origins, behavior, and beliefs of the West African jihadist group, from its beginnings in Nigeria to its spread to Chad, Niger, and Cameroon.

Contesting the Repressive State: Why Ordinary Egyptians Protested During the Arab Spring by Kira D. Jumet (Oxford University Press; 271 pages; $99 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on 170 interviews conducted during the 2011 uprising in a study of structural factors that influenced the emotional responses of ordinary Egyptians and led to their decision to join protests.

The New Economic Populism: How States Respond to Economic Inequality by William W. Franko and Christopher Witko (Oxford University Press; 230 pages; $34.95). Discusses Washington State’s highly redistributive Initiative 1098 and other examples of state governments directly addressing issues of economic inequality.

On Parliamentary War: Partisan Conflict and Procedural Change in the U.S. Senate by James I. Wallner (University of Michigan Press; 264 pages; $75). Draws on game theory to develop a bargaining model of procedural change in the Senate; topics include why majorities have historically tolerated the filibuster, even when it has led to a defeat of their agenda.

Regulating the Polluters: Markets and Strategies for Protecting the Global Environment by Alexander Ovodenko (Oxford University Press; 256 pages; $74). Analyzes the source of variations in global environmental governance regimes; finds, among other things, that governments are more inclined to impose strict regulations on oligopolistic industries than on competitive ones.

Thailand: Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China by Benjamin Zawacki (Zed Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 370 pages; $95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). A study of Thailand in the post-World War II period that explores its recent shift in foreign policy toward China and away from the United States.

The Virtues of Exit: On Resistance and Quitting Politics by Jennet Kirkpatrick (University of North Carolina Press; 200 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Focuses on Plato’s Crito, Thoreau in Walden, fugitive slave narratives, and individuals and governments in exile in a study of exit as a political act.

RELIGION

Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature by Mira Balberg (University of California Press; 287 pages; $95). A study of how sacrifice as a religious concept and biblical trope was interpreted and reworked by rabbis in Roman Palestine during the first three centuries AD.

The Greatest Mirror: Heavenly Counterparts in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha by Andrei A. Orlov (State University of New York Press; 300 pages; $95). Focuses on alter-egos of alter egos of Enoch, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and Aseneth in a study of heavenly doubles as depicted in Second Temple era books excluded from the canon.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels by Christopher A. Frilingos (University of Pennsylvania Press; 183 pages; $39.95). A study of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-gospel of James, two non-canonical second century texts that provided early Christians with accounts of Jesus’ life between ages 5 and 12, including acts of temper, and also with stories of his mother, Mary.

The Jewish Bible: A Material History by David Stern (University of Washington Press; 303 pages; $50). Focuses on the Jewish Bible as a material artifact and object, beginning with the Sefer Torah or Torah scrolls of ancient times.

Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians by David Wheeler-Reed (Yale University Press; 192 pages; $45). Draws on Michel Foucault in a study of how today’s conservative Christian notions of marriage and family values owe more to first-century Romans than to the early Christians.

Shimmering Mirrors: Reality and Appearance in Contemplative Metaphysics East and West by Patrick Laude (State University of New York Press; 225 pages; $90). Examines the concepts of reality and appearance in metaphysical writings from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.

RHETORIC

Columns to Characters: The Presidency and the Press Enter the Digital Age edited by Stephanie A. Martin (Texas A&M University Press; 294 pages; $42). Writings by scholars and journalists on how social media and new technologies have shaped presidential communication with the public.

SOCIOLOGY

Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead by Jessica M. Fishman (New York University Press; 336 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Examines the editorial and political forces that shape whether and how dead bodies are shown in the news media.

Foucault’s Orient: The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan by Marnia Lazreg (Berghahn Books; 282 pages; $130). Discusses Foucault’s two years in Tunisia and repeated visits to Iran and Japan in a study of the role played by non-Western cultures in the French thinker’s thought.

THEATER

Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism by Patricia A. Ybarra (Northwestern University Press; 224 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Analyzes the work of such playwrights as Maria Irene Fornes, Cherrie Moraga, Michael John Garces, Caridad Svich, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Victor Cazares, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, Tanya Saracho, and Octavio Solis.