Weekly Book List, February 10, 2017

ANTHROPOLOGY

African Futures: Essays on Crisis, Emergence, and Possibility edited by Brian Goldstone and Juan Obarrio (University of Chicago Press; 267 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Ethnographic and theoretical essays on the continent’s future, both in terms of crisis and opportunity; settings discussed include Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, and the border of Congo and Angola.

Germans on the Kenyan Coast: Land, Charity, and Romance by Nina Berman (Indiana University Press; 268 pages; $80 hardcover, $35 paperback). Focuses on the impact of German-speaking tourists and residents on the local population of the Diani area of Kenya’s coast.

Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt by Larisa Jasarevic (Indiana University Press; 282 pages; $80 hardcover, $35 paperback). Explores the interplay of financial well being and health in post-socialist Bosnia, including Bosnians’ search for folk treatments for their stresses.

Race and the Brazilian Body: Blackness, Whiteness, and Everyday Language in Rio de Janeiro by Jennifer Roth-Gordon (University of California Press; 248 pages; $85 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork among shantytown youth and Rio’s middle class in a study of how racial ideas pervade everyday life; topics include how cariocas “read” bodies for racial signs.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed: Toward a Global Bioarchaeology of Contact and Colonialism edited by Melissa S. Murphy and Haagen D. Klaus (University Press of Florida; 459 pages; $120). Research on changes in diet, mortuary practices, and disease in both Old and New World settings for both colonizer and colonized.

Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology: Investigations into Pre-Columbian Iroquoian Space and Place edited by Eric E. Jones and John L. Creese (University Press of Colorado; 238 pages; $60). Research on Northern Iroquoian societies by scholars and on sites on both sides of what is now the U.S.-Canada border; topics include long-term trends in Iroquoian village scale, density, and layout.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Book on the Floor: Andre Malraux and the Imaginary Museum by Walter Grasskamp (Getty Research Institute; 231 pages; $45). Explores the photo-illustrated art book in a study that juxtaposes Malraux’s idea of the musee imaginaire in its various published forms and Andre Vigneau’s Encyclopedie photographique de l’art.

The Learned Draftsman: Edme Bouchardon by Edouard Kopp (Getty Research Institute; 336 pages; $64.95). Focuses on the French sculptor’s work as a draftsman, from his student days in Rome beginning in 1723 to his death, in 1762.

1971: A Year in the Life of Color by Darby English (University of Chicago Press; 285 pages; $40). Explores the interplay of modernist art and cultural politics in two 1971 exhibitions; Contemporary Black Artists in America, at the Whitney, and The DeLuxe Show, an exhibition of abstract art at a converted movie theater in a predominantly black area of Houston.

Walter de Maria: Meaningless Work by Jane McFadden (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 235 pages; $40). A critical study of the American sculptor (1935-2013) that focuses on his lesser known work in music, drawing, photography, and film.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Memory Unbound: Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies edited by Lucy Bond, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen (Berghahn Books; 293 pages; $110). Essays by literary and other scholars on transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary memory; topics include Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing and the mass murder of suspected Communists in 1965-66 Indonesia.

ECONOMICS

Europe’s Growth Challenge by Anders Aslund and Simeon Djankov (Oxford University Press; 207 pages; $34.95). Argues, among other things, for pension reforms, easing regulatory burdens, and reducing the fiscal role of the state.

Speculation: A History of the Fine Line between Gambling and Investing by Stuart Banner (Oxford University Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Considers how the blurred boundaries that separate gambling, speculation, and investment have figured in American booms and crises since the 1790s.

FILM STUDIES

Reconstructing Strangelove: Inside Stanley Kubrick’s “Nightmare Comedy” by Mick Broderick (Wallflower Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 216 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on previously unpublished sources in a production “archaeology” of the 1964 film, including debates over the extent of Kubrick’s collaboration with other writers.

GENDER STUDIES

Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture by Mehammed Amadeus Mack (Fordham University Press; 329 pages; $100 hardcover, $27 paperback). Explores sexualized representations of Franco-Arab youth, male and female, in French literature, film, journalism, television, erotica, psychoanalytic thought, ethnography, and gay and lesbian activist discourse.

We Still Demand! Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles edited by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L. Pauline Rankin (University of British Columbia Press; 324 pages; US$99). Writings on gay-rights, sex-worker, and related activism in Canada since the 1970s.

HISTORY

Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan by Shahid Amin (University of Chicago Press; 321 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Combines history and anthropology in a study of the religious veneration of a martyred Turkic Muslim warrior who died in battle in AD 1034 and whose followers include both Muslims and Hindus.

Crimes Unspoken: The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War by Miriam Gebhardt, translated by Nick Somers (Polity Press; 252 pages; $25). Extends beyond the well-known actions of Soviet soldiers to discuss rape by American and other Western Allied soldiers; documents incidents throughout Germany.

Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life by Robert E. Lerner (Princeton University Press; 400 pages; $39.95). Draws on previously untapped sources in a biography of the controversial German-born American historian (1895-1963).

From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship by Paul Hollander (Cambridge University Press; 325 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). A study of Western intellectuals’ perception and admiration of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, and other figures.

Get Out of My Room: A History of Teen Bedrooms in America by Jason Reid (University of Chicago Press; 299 pages; $45). Traces the history of the autonomous teen bedroom and its culture since its beginnings in affluent households of the mid-19th century.

The Jacksonian Conservatism of Rufus P. Ranney: The Politics and Jurisprudence of a Northern Democrat from the Age of Jackson to the Gilded Age by David M. Gold (Ohio University Press; 256 pages; $64.95). A study of an Ohio lawyer, Democratic candidate for governor, and state supreme court jurist whose opinions shed broader light on Jacksonian jurisprudence and politics.

John Witherspoon’s American Revolution by Gideon Mailer (University of North Carolina Press; 425 pages; $45). Examines the thought and influence of the Scottish-born Presbyterian minister and educator who was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Learning from Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment From Special Zone to Model City edited by Mary Ann O’Donnell, Winnie Wong, and Jonathan Bach (University of Chicago Press; 283 pages; $100 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays on the political, economic, and social transformation of Shenzhen since the 1970s, from a town of some 30,000 people to a city of more than 10,000,000.

Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present edited by Cornelia Wilhelm (Berghahn Books; 349 pages; $120). Topics include guest workers, refugees, forced wartime migrations, and post-unification Germany.

Redefining Science: Scientists, the National Security State, and Nuclear Weapons in Cold War America by Paul Rubinson (University of Massachusetts Press; 306 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses Linus Pauling, Herbert York, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Carl Sagan, and other scientists who sought to influenced debates on nuclear weapons.

Sailing Into History: Great Lakes Bulk Carriers of the Twentieth Century and the Crews Who Sailed Them by Frank Boles (Michigan State University Press; 221 pages; $39.95). A history of bulk commercial shipping on the Great Lakes.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science by Cyrus C.M. Mody (MIT Press; 284 pages; $45). Documents how changes in American science since the 1960s reflect the needs of the semi-conductor industry and the “long arm” of “Moore’s Law” on the exponential doubling of silicon-chip strength every year.

LAW

Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment by Mark V. Tushnet, Alan K. Chen, and Joseph Blocher (New York University Press; 260 pages; $28). Examines justifications for the First Amendment protection of instrumental music, nonrepresentational art, and nonsense.

Newsworthy: The Supreme Court Battle Over Privacy and Press Freedom by Samantha Barbas (Stanford University Press; 338 pages; $26). Focuses on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Time, Inc. v. Hill (1967).

Wisconsin Sentencing in the Tough-on-Crime Era: How Judges Retained Power and Why Mass Incarceration Happened Anyway by Michael O’Hear (University of Wisconsin Press; 266 pages; $44.95). Combines archival, interview, and survey data in a study of why the state’s prison population has ballooned despite the discretionary powers of judges.

Writing the Legal Record: Law Reporters in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky by Kurt X. Metzmeier (University Press of Kentucky; 211 pages; $50). Explores the making of Kentucky’s legal record through the activities of 13 men who were among the young lawyers, future and former judges, would-be politicians, and journalists who took notes of court opinions, annotated them, and prepared them for publication.

LINGUISTICS

Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution: Computational Linguistics and History by Anthony McEnery and Helen Baker (Bloomsbury Academic; 257 pages; $128). Examines discourse on the sex trade during the period through an analysis of one billion words from the 17th century contained in the Early English Online Corpus.

LITERATURE

Amiable With Big Teeth: A Newly Discovered Novel by Claude McKay, edited by Jean-Christophe Cloutier and Brent Hayes (Penguin Group; 302 pages; $28). Edition of a newly discovered novel by the Jamaican-born writer in which he depicts the Harlem intelligentsia’s efforts to support the liberation of Italian-occupied Ethiopia.

The Book of the Dead by Orikuchi Shinobu, translated by Jeffrey Angles, commentary by Ando Reiji (University of Minnesota Press; 338 pages; $91 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). First complete translation of Shisha no sho, a historical novel by an author who was also an ethnologist and linguist; the book, originally published in 1943, depicts a romance between a woman and a ghost in eighth-century Japan.

David Foster Wallace’s Balancing Books: Fictions of Value by Jeffrey Severs (Columbia University Press; 311 pages; $35). Explores Wallace’s body of fiction in terms of value, including the word’s moral and economic meanings.

Figures of Catastrophe: The Condition of Culture Novel by Francis Mulhern (Verso; 165 pages; $26.95). Identifies and explores a genre of English writing since Hardy in the 1890s that is here termed the “condition of culture novel.”

Global Wallace: David Foster Wallace and World Literature by Lucas Thompson (Bloomsbury Academic; 271 pages; $110). Documents the American writer’s debts and links to such writers as Jamaica Kincaid, Julio Cortazar, Jean Rhys, Octavio Paz, Leo Tolstoy, Zbigniew Herbert, and Albert Camus.

Mathilde Blind: Late-Victorian Culture and the Woman of Letters by James Diedrick (University of Virginia Press; 336 pages; $49.50). A critical biography of the German-born British poet, freethinker, and radical feminist (1841-96).

Moments of Silence: Authenticity in the Cultural Expressions of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 edited by Arta Khakpour, Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, and Shouleh Vatanabadi (New York University Press; 290 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Writings on depictions of the war in novels, films, memoirs, and poster art; topics include the exilic literature of Iranian and Iraqi Jews.

Orientalizing the Jew: Religion, Culture, and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century France by Julie Kalman (Indiana University Press; 172 pages; $80 hardcover, $25 paperback). Draws on travel writings and illustration, novels, plays, and personal and diplomatic correspondence in a study of French travelers’ depictions of Jews in North Africa and the Middle East and the use of those images to Orientalize Jews in France.

The Phenomenology of Love and Reading by Cassandra Falke (Bloomsbury Academic; 177 pages; $110). Draws on the French Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion to explore how receptivity in reading can figure in wider life.

Roberto Bolano as World Literature edited by Nicholas Birns and Juan E. De Castro (Bloomsbury Academic; 229 pages; $110). Essays on the Chilean writer (1953-2003) and his literary worlds, global readers, and relation to world history; topics include his conception of fascism, history, and evil.

Violence Without God: The Rhetorical Despair of Twentieth-Century Writers by Joyce Wexler (Bloomsbury Academic; 204 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). New and previously published writings on the responses of authors from Conrad to Sebald on the violence of the 20th century.

War Stories: The War Memoir in History and Literature edited by Philip Dwyer (Berghahn Books; 324 pages; $130). Essays on views of war in the retrospective war memoir since the Napoleonic era.

Wittgenstein and Modernism edited by Michael Lemahieu and Karen Zumhagen-Yekple (University of Chicago Press; 301 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays on links between the Austrian philosopher and modernism as a literary and wider cultural and artistic movement; figures discussed include Adolf Loos, Robert Musil, James Joyce, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Kafka.

MUSIC

Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson (University of California Press; 268 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Traces the history of Western art music in the post-Cold War era, including experimental, crossover, and other work.

Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain by Eva Moreda Rodriguez (Oxford University Press; 177 pages; $55). Topics include rivalries, ideological differences, and other factors that influenced music criticism beyond the issues of censorship and propaganda.

Sound Knowledge: Music and Science in London, 1789-1851 edited by James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart (University of Chicago Press; 257 pages; $55). Essays on how music and auditory culture figured in the accrual of knowledge in London from the publication of Charles Burney’s global history of music to the Great Exhibition of 1851; pays particular attention to Charles Wheatstone’s acoustical demonstrations at the Royal Institution.

Tigers of a Different Stripe: Performing Gender in Dominican Music by Sydney Hutchinson (University of Chicago Press; 279 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). A study of merengue tipico, a genre in which women are more often instrumentalists or even bandleaders than dancers and vocalists; draws on fieldwork in new York and in the Dominican city of Santiago de los Cabelleros

PHILOSOPHY

In the Wake of Trauma: Psychology and Philosophy for the Suffering Other edited by Eric Severson, Brian Becker, and David M. Goodman (Duquesne University Press; 281 pages; $35). Writings by scholars in philosophy, psychology and other fields on such topics as trauma, Heidegger, and Befindlichkeit or mood.

The Life of Reason: Reason in Science: Critical Edition: The Works of George Santayana, Volume VII, Book Five by George Santayana (MIT Press; 426 pages; $68). Completes a scholarly edition of a five-book treatise on reason by the Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952).

Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham translated by Joshua P. Hochschild and Meredith K. Ziebart (Fordham University Press; 283 pages; $75). Translation of a 1999 French work on ancient and medieval ideas of human thought as a “mental language,” structured with its own syntax and semantics.

Nietzsche’s Earth: Great Events, Great Politics by Gary Shapiro (University of Chicago Press; 238 pages; $45). Documents the German philosopher’s anticipation of pressing issues of our era, including globalization, environmental threats, and migration; topics include how his vision of earth develops an aesthetic of the Anthropocene.

Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the (Dis)Unity of Science by Stephanie Ruphy (University of Pittsburgh Press; 186 pages; $40). A work in the philosophy of science.

The Stoic Origins of Erasmus’ Philosophy of Christ by Ross Dealy (University of Toronto Press; 424 pages; US$90). A study of the Renaissance Dutch Humanist’s application of Stoicism to Christianity; texts discussed include his De taedio Iesu and his edition of Cicero’s De officiis.

Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment by Michel Chaouli (Harvard University Press; 312 pages; $45). Topics include the force of aesthetic experience.

Topophobia: A Phenomenology of Anxiety by Dylan Trigg (Bloomsbury Academic; 211 pages; $114 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a phenomenological exploration of place-based phobias and anxieties.

Understanding Wittgenstein, Understanding Modernism edited by Anat Matar (Bloomsbury Academic; 270 pages; $120). Topics include the Austrian thinker’s modernist political philosophy, and parallels between his philosophical investigations and the literary language of Henry James.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Ascending India and Its State Capacity: Extraction, Violence, and Legitimacy by Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson (Yale University Press; 338 pages; $40). Draws on the state-capacity theories of K.J. Holsti in a study of problems in India’s institutional and economic realms that weaken the country’s global ascent.

Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan by Hein G. Kiessling (Hurst, distributed by Oxford University Press; 307 pages; $70). A study of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence that examines the agency’s significance as both a domestic and international actor, including alleged links with Al-Qaeda.

Legal Path Dependence and the Long Arm of the Religious State: Sodomy Provisions and Gay Rights Across Nations and Over Time by Victor Asal and Udi Sommer (State University of New York Press; 173 pages; $85). Develops a cross-national gay-rights index in an analysis of why some countries prosecute and others protect sexual minorities.

Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus (Oxford University Press; 387 pages; $29.95). Focuses on interventions in Georgia and Ukraine in a study of the geopolitics of Russia’s “near abroad.”

Push Back: Sri Lanka’s Dance With Global Governance by Judith Large (Zed Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 279 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses the Sri Lankan government’s resistance to international efforts to promote reconciliation after the ruling Sinhalese proclaimed the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic by Louisa Lombard (Zed Books; 287 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Offers an ethnographic perspective on the persistence and political usefulness, for some parties, of violence in the CAR.

RELIGION

Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah by Yuval Harari, translated by Batya Stein (Wayne State University Press; 569 pages; $64.99). Translation of a 2010 Hebrew study of Jewish magic in the Near East during late antiquity and the early Islamic period; also explores such wider theoretical issues as distinctions between magic and religion.

Kingship and Memory in Ancient Judah by Ian D. Wilson (Oxford University Press; 308 pages; $99). Uses the prophetic books and other texts to explore the multiple ways postmonarchic Judeans of the early Second Temple period remembered and imagined their monarchic past.

Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity by Ismar Schorsch (University of Pennsylvania Press; 329 pages; $65). Traces the life of a pioneer in the historical study of Judaism.

Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet by Holly Gayley (Columbia University Press; 396 pages; $70). A study of the courtship and correspondence of Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche, who worked to reinvigorate Buddhism in eastern Tibet in the post-Mao era; juxtaposes their letters with hagiographic writings about the couple.

New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration by Judith Weisenfeld (New York University Press; 344 pages; $35). Focuses on the experiences of ordinary members of the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, and various congregations of Ethiopian Hebrews.

The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity by Guy G. Stroumsa (Harvard University Press; 184 pages; $39.95). Discusses the transition from scroll to codex and how transformations in the status and function of books and reading figured in the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

Shameful Bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement by Michelle Mary Lelwica (Bloomsbury Academic; 271 pages; $86 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on self-help books, advertising, and other popular culture in a study of the interplay of religion and ideals of the body.

SOCIAL WORK

Behind from the Start: How America’s War on the Poor is Harming Our Most Vulnerable Children by Lenette Azzi-Lessing (Oxford University Press; 232 pages; $29.95). Combines neuroscientific, public-policy, media-studies, and other research in a study of the origins and impact of persistently high rates of children living in poverty.

SOCIOLOGY

Botox Nation: Changing the Face of America by Dana Berkowitz (New York University Press; 231 pages; $89 hardcover, $27 paperback). Draws on interviews, advertising, personal experience, and other sources in a study of Botox and the fear of aging; pays particular attention to the treatment’s marketing to younger women.

Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres by Jamie Woodcock (Pluto Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 200 pages; $99 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on an undercover participant-observer study in an account of conditions for call-center workers in Britain.

THEATER

The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows: The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld’s Rivals by Jonas Westover (Oxford University Press; 281 pages; $39.95). A study of the impresario brothers Jacob and Lee Shubert and their Passing Shows, a series of revues, with a new edition every year, beginning in 1912; examines their relationship with their chief rival in spectacle, Florenz Ziegfeld.

URBAN STUDIES

Governing Cities Through Regions: Canadian and European Perspectives edited by Roger Keil and others (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 407 pages; US$39.99). Includes case studies from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and England.