Weekly Book List, February 14, 2014

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Black Print With a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the “Omaha Star” Newspaper, 1938-1989 by Amy Helene Forss (University of Nebraska Press; 241 pages; $30). Examines the impact of the black press through a biography of the co-founder of the Nebraska newspaper.

Racial Blackness and the Discontinuity of Western Modernity by Lindon Barrett, edited by Justin A. Joyce, Dwight A. McBride, and John Carlos Rowe (University of Illinois Press; 236 pages; $95 hardcover, $30 paperback). Edition of a manuscript left unfinished at the time of the death of the Guyana-born scholar (1961-2008); explores links between slavery and post-Enlightenment modernity.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Apes and Human Evolution by Russell H. Tuttle (Harvard University Press; 1,056 pages; $59.95). Analyzes humans’ divergence from their closest relatives.

Beyond Alternative Food Networks: Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups by Cristina Grasseni (Bloomsbury Academic; 210 pages; $104 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Discusses groups in which members take orders and buy products for one another from a local producer, then meet to distribute; draws on ethnographic research in the Bergamo area of northern Italy.

Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala by Silvia Posocco (University of Alabama Press; 240 pages; $49.95). A study of guerrilla identity and social relations in the Fuerzas Armades Rebeldes in the aftermath of peace accords; draws on fieldwork in Peten.

Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia by Maduhai Buyandelger (University of Chicago Press; 314 pages; $90 hardcover, $32.50 paperback). A study of the nomadic Buryats and their revival of shamanism in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy by Andrew R. Casper (Penn State University Press; 221 pages; $79.95). Focuses on works produced during the Greek painter’s years (1567-76) in Venice and Rome.

Art and the Second World War by Monica Bohm-Duchen (Princeton University Press; 288 pages; $49.50). Discusses art created in response to the Spanish Civil War, and art from each of World War II’s major combatants, including Japan and China.

Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art by Meiling Cheng (Seagull Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 486 pages; $40). A study of Chinese performance and other avant-garde art.

The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating edited by Jean-Paul Martinon (Bloomsbury Academic; 255 pages; $112). Essays that challenge traditional art-historical views of curating.

Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America by Samantha Baskind (Penn State University Press; 239 pages; $39.95). A study of biblical imagery in the work of Jack Levine, George Segal, Audrey Flack, Larry Rivers, and R.B. Kitaj.

Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority by John Ott (Ashgate Publishing Company; 330 pages; $119.95). A study of art patronage by Central Pacific Railroad executives.

Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (MIT Press; 224 pages; $29.95). Develops an approach to design in which it is used as a tool to create ideas as well as things.

Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present edited by Stacy Boldrick, Leslie Brubaker, and Richard Clay (Ashgate Publishing Company; 236 pages; $99.95). Essays on the destruction of images from prehistory to the Taliban’s demolition of statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan.

Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance by Tom Nichols (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 255 pages; $79). Discusses the painter’s stylistic break with his master, Bellini, and with Venetian artistic traditions.

The Universal Art of Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678): Painter, Writer, and Courtier edited by Thijs Weststeijn (Amsterdam University Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 296 pages; $99). Essays on the Dutch artist, poet, novelist, and art theorist, described here as one of Rembrandt’s most learned students.

A Violent Embrace: Art and Aesthetics After Representation by renee c. hoogland (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England; 232 pages; $85 hardcover, $45 paperback). Explores the affective qualities of visual images, including the sculpture of Louise Bourgeois and Julia Reyes Taubman’s photography of the ruins of Detroit.

BIOLOGY

The Evolution of Phylogenetic Systematics edited by Andrew Hamilton (University of California Press; 308 pages; $65). Topics include approaches to the automated identification of biological species.

COMMUNICATION

Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred by Kim Knott, Elizabeth Poole, and Teemu Taira (Ashgate Publishing Company; 233 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Uses data from the 1980s and 2008-10 to examine the changing depiction of religion in British newspapers and television.

The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry’s War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties by Aram Sinnreich (University of Massachusetts Press; 256 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Describes piracy as a myth promoted by today’s “cultural cartels” in the production of music, film, and software.

Television and the Meaning of “Live": An Enquiry Into the Human Situation by Paddy Scannell (Polity Press; 264 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Offers a phenomenological perspective on live broadcast in relation to lived experience.

Television in the Age of Radio: Modernity, Imagination, and the Making of a Medium by Philip W. Sewell (Rutgers University Press; 219 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Discusses TV as a subject of talk and speculation in the 1920s and 30s and shows how such discourse helped shape the medium.

Women’s Magazines in the Digital Age by Brooke Erin Duffy (University of Illinois Press; 189 pages; $85 hardcover, $25 paperback). Draws on interviews with editors and others in a study of women’s magazines’ shift from objects to brands.

CRIMINOLOGY

Wildlife Trafficking: A Deconstruction of the Crime, the Victims, and the Offenders by Tanya Wyatt (Palgrave Macmillan; 204 pages; $105). Offers what is termed a “green criminological” perspective on the illegal global trade in animals and plants.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality by Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman (Oxford University Press; 231 pages; $34.95). Documents the long-term impact of parental imprisonment on children.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex by Helen Hester (State University of New York Press; 234 pages; $80). Topics include the use of the porn trope in realms beyond the sexual, such as “misery porn” to refer to contemporary memoirs.

Cultures in Motion edited by Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman, and Helmut Reimitz (Princeton University Press; 371 pages; $35). Essays that offer new approaches to the study of the historical encounter of cultures; topics include the fusion of Irish and African dance forms in 19th-century New York.

Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces by Davina Cooper (Duke University Press; 283 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Explores experiments in utopian space, including a feminist bathhouse in Toronto, the Summerhill School in Suffolk, England, and Speakers’ Corner in London.

Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online edited by Anna Poletti and Julie Rak (University of Wisconsin Press; 286 pages; $34.95). Writings on online identity by scholars of autobiography; topics include coaxing personal disclosure on Facebook.

ECONOMICS

Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China by Stephen Roach (Yale University Press; 344 pages; $32.50). Identifies the perils of the current U.S.-China economic relationship.

EDUCATION

For the Civic Good: The Liberal Case for Teaching Religion in the Public Schools by Walter Feinberg and Richard A. Layton (University of Michigan Press; 176 pages; $70 hardcover, $30 paperback). Defends teaching the Bible and world religion as electives in public school; draws on two-years of field research.

The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life edited by James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (University of Chicago Press; 452 pages; $55). Research that documents differences in success between GED recipients and high-school graduates.

Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education by Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (Harvard Education Press; 189 pages; $65 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Topics include effective reforms in Boston, Chicago, and New York.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture by David A. Cleveland (University of California Press; 320 pages; $70 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Develops a model that combines elements of modern scientific agriculture with the approaches of small-scale traditional farming.

FILM STUDIES

Hollywood Exiles in Europe: The Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture by Rebecca Prime (Rutgers University Press; 258 pages; $80 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Traces the work of Jules Dassin, Michael Wilson, and other American directors, screenwriters, and actors who exiled themselves in the wake of the Hollywood blacklist.

Road-Show! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s by Matthew Kennedy (Oxford University Press; 307 pages; $35). Traces the decline of film musicals that were rolled out as roadshows, opening city by city with extensive marketing, souvenir books, intermissions, and other flourishes.

HISTORY

Afterimage of the Revolution: Cumann na nGaedheal and Irish Politics, 1922--1932 by Jack Knirck (University of Wisconsin Press; 304 pages; $29.95). Challenges previous historians’ depictions of the party in power during the first decade of the Irish Free State; asserts its commitment to the ideals of the Easter Rising.

Ambitious Rebels: Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780-1850 by Reuben Zahler (University of Arizona Press; 330 pages; $26.95). Topics include tensions between patriarchy and liberalism in Venezuela’s shift from colonialism to a modern republic.

Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245-1510 by Kim M. Phillips (University of Pennsylvania Press; 314 pages; $79.95). Explores preoccupations with foodways, gender roles, civility, and the body in writings by more than 20 Europeans who went or claimed to have gone to Mongolia, China, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt by Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman (Stanford University Press; 446 pages; $65). Draws on documents from the Cairo Geniza in a study of Jews’ distinctive trading practices and communal identity.

Deadly Censorship: Murder, Honor, and Freedom of the Press by James Lowell Underwood (University of South Carolina Press; 308 pages; $39.95). Discusses the trial of South Carolina’s Lt. Gov. James H. Tillman, who on January 15, 1903, shot and killed Narciso G. Gonzales, a newspaper editor whose mocking editorials Tillman claimed cost him the gubernatorial election of 1902.

Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia (Stanford University Press; 257 pages; $60). Focuses on Guatemala in a study of documents and the relationship between center and periphery in the Spanish empire.

Europe (c. 1400-1458) by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, translated by Robert Brown and annotated by Nancy Bisaha (Catholic University of America Press; 344 pages; $65). First English translation of a history written by the 15th-century prelate shortly before his election as Pope Pius II.

Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752 by William A. Pettigrew (University of North Carolina Press; 262 pages; $45). Focuses on political aspects of the regulation, deregulation, and re-regulation of the British transatlantic slave trade.

From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement by Andrea A. Burns (University of Massachusetts Press; 249 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Focuses on Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago; Detroit’s International Afro-American Museum in Detroit; Washington’s Anacostia Neighborhood Museum; and Philadelphia’s African American Museum of Philadelphia.

A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 3: The Storm Clouds Descend, 1955-1957 by Melvyn C. Goldstein (University of California Press; 547 pages; $75). Draws on previously unseen Chinese government documents and other untapped sources in the third book of a projected four-volume history.

Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I by Nick Lloyd (Basic Books; 350 pages; $29.99). Discusses the campaign that began in the summer of 1918 as Allied armies, including newly arrived American forces, pushed the Germans back to the Hindenburg Line.

Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic by Audrey Horning (University of North Carolina Press; 385 pages; $49.95). Focuses on the Ulster Plantation and the Jamestown settlement in a study of links between colonial experimentation in Ireland and America in the 16th century.

Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption by E. Wayne Carp (University of Michigan Press; 422 pages; $60). A biography of an activist (1908-2002) who led the struggle for open adoption records, a practice still eschewed by a vast majority of states.

Making the World Safe for Workers: Labor, the Left, and Wilsonian Internationalism by Elizabeth McKillen (University of Illinois Press; 299 pages; $55). Pays particular attention to the American Federation of Labor, whose founder, Samuel Gompers, served as an advisor to the Wilson administration at Versailles.

Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court by David M. Robinson (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 423 pages; $52.95). Explores representations in literature and art of the royal hunt, archery contests, polo matches, equestrian demonstrations, and the imperial zoo; focuses on the dynasty’s first two centuries (1368-1644).

Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict by Maud S. Mandel (Princeton University Press; 253 pages; $35). Focuses on how isolated episodes of conflict beginning in 1948 have created a reductionist binary of Muslim versus Jew; pays particular attention to Marseilles and to the impact of French decolonization in North Africa.

1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan (Harvard University Press; 258 pages; $29.95). Sets the breakup of Pakistan in wider historical and geopolitical context.

Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency by Edward J. Erickson (Palgrave Macmillan; 299 pages; $95). Sets Ottoman policies toward the Armenians in the wider context of the army’s counterinsurgency practices, beginning in 1878; topics include the motivation for the relocation, en masse, of Armenians in six eastern provinces.

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (W.W. Norton & Company; 402 pages; $27.95). Covers colonization from the earliest Spanish explorers to what is termed countercolonization since the late 19th century.

The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan by Katsuya Hirano (University of Chicago Press; 295 pages; $25 paperback). Focuses on the Tokugawa shogunate’s efforts to regulate the popular culture of Edo (later Tokyo).

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer (Random House; 549 pages; $32). Documents the pope’s role in Mussolini’s dictatorship; describes a quid pro quo relationship that Pius XI (d. 1939) began to reject in his last years in a change of heart that was in turn suppressed by the Vatican inner circle.

Public Properties: Museums in Imperial Japan by Noriko Aso (Duke University Press; 301 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Topics include Japanese museums’ expansion, with imperialism, into Taiwan, Korea, Sakhalin, and Manchuria.

A Quiet Corner of the War: The Civil War Letters of Gilbert and Esther Claflin, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, 1862-1863 edited by Judy Cook (University of Wisconsin Press; 320 pages; $26.95). Edition of letters written by a draftee, age 40, who served with the 34th Wisconsin in western Kentucky, and his wife, who ran the family farm while he was gone.

Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico: Gender, Class, and Memory by Robert F. Alegre (University of Nebraska Press; 275 pages; $40). Discusses railroad strikes of the 1950s as the beginning of mass dissatisfaction with PRI rule; pays special attention to railroad workers’ wives.

The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 by Sam Mitrani (University of Illinois Press; 272 pages; $50). Examines such pivotal events for the department as the 1855 Lager Beer riot and the Haymarket riots of 1886.

Shrill Hurrahs: Women, Gender, and Racial Violence in South Carolina, 1865-1900 by Kate Cote Gillin (University of South Carolina Press; 184 pages; $34.95). Focuses on white women’s role in racial violence, and black women’s assertions of autonomy.

Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History by Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers University Press; 178 pages; $75 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on literary and other realms in a discussion of the varied uses and connotations of a word that in Yiddish simply means town.

Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland by Geraldo L. Cadava (Harvard University Press; 314 pages; $39.95). A history of ties between Sonora, Mexico and Tucson, Ariz.

Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple’s Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World by Aaron Spencer Fogleman (University of North Carolina Press; 321 pages; $39.95). Discusses the missionary activities and troubled marriage of Jean-Francois Reynier and Maria Barbara Knoll, a French Swiss Huguenot and his Lutheran wife, who crossed the Atlantic several times.

Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture by Josh Lambert (New York University Press; 280 pages; $35). Examines cultural and historical factors that have shaped Jews’ key role in struggles over censorship.

Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War by Paul Jankowski (Oxford University Press; 324 pages; $34.95). Offers both French and German perspectives on the 10-month battle, which began on February 21,1916, with a massive German barrage on French lines along the Meuse.

Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colonial Cartagena de Indias by Nicole von Germeten (University of New Mexico Press; 328 pages; $29.95). Draws on Inquisitorial and other legal records to explore such topics as women’s sexual agency in the (later Colombian) port city.

Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade by Randy J. Sparks (Harvard University Press; 309 pages; $29.95). Offers a biographical perspective on African merchant elites who were key to the trade from the Gold Coast port of Annamboe.

Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I by Emily Mayhew (Oxford University Press; 275 pages; $29.95). Draws on letters, diaries, and other sources in a study of casualties in the war and the adjustment of medical personnel to new challenges.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Breathing Race Into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer From Plantation to Genetics by Lundy Braun (University of Minnesota Press; 304 pages; $24.95). Discusses spurious “corrections for race” in the medical use of a machine to measure lung capacity.

Medicine in Iran: Profession, Practice and Politics, 1800-1925 by Hormoz Ebrahimnejad (Palgrave Macmillan; 254 pages; $95). Traces the assimilation of Western practices.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry: The Lab as Contact Zone by Yoshiyuki Kikuchi (Palgrave Macmillan; 279 pages; $95). Examines interactions between English and American chemists and their Japanese students, beginning in the Meiji period.

Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 by Marwa Elshakry (University of Chicago Press; 439 pages; $45). Examines Muslim and Christian Arab intellectuals’ views of Darwin, beginning with Ottoman-ruled greater Syria and the science journal Al Muqtataf.

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

The Perils of Normalcy: George L. Mosse and the Remaking of Cultural History by Karel Plessini (University of Wisconsin Press; 280 pages; $34.95). Draws on previously unpublished writings in an intellectual biography of the German-born American historian (1918-99); traces links between his scholarship and his life experiences.

LAW

The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard University Press; 684 pages; $49.95). Defends a classical liberal view of the U.S. Constitution that is grounded in the work such thinkers as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Madison, and Montesquieu.

Transparency in International Law edited by Andrea Bianchi and Anne Peters (Cambridge University Press; 640 pages; $140). Topics include transparency in international investment law, transparency as a cornerstone of disarmament and nonproliferation regimes, and how well governments share human-rights information with citizens.

LINGUISTICS

From Grammar to Meaning: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language edited by Ivano Caponigro and Carlo Cecchetto (Cambridge University Press; 374 pages; $99). Writings on such topics as bare plurals, free-choice items, and scalar implicatures.

LITERATURE

Between Empires: Marti, Rizal, and the Intercolonial Alliance by Koichi Hagimoto (Palgrave Macmillan; 187 pages; $85). Compares the anti-imperial literature of Cuba and the Philippines, with a focus on writings by Jose Marti and Jose Rizal.

Byron and the Forms of Thought by Anthony Howe (Liverpool University Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 195 pages; $99.95). Focuses on Cain and Don Juan in a study of Byron as preoccupied with the differences of thinking in poetry and in philosophy.

The Dream of the Great American Novel by Lawrence Buell (Harvard University Press; 500 pages; $39.95). Identifies four “scripts” for the “Great American Novel” since the idea emerged in the 19th century.

Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender, and Religion in Early Modern England by Jaime Goodrich (Northwestern University Press; 244 pages; $80 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). A study of devotional and other religious translation that juxtaposes such translators as Elizabeth I and Mary Sidney Herbert against such male counterparts as Thomas More and Philip Sidney.

Feminist Narrative Ethics: Tacit Persuasion in Modernist Form by Katherine Saunders Nash (Ohio State University Press; 178 pages; $59.95). Uses works by Virginia Woolf, Dorothy L. Sayers, E.M. Forster, and John Cowper Powys to examine four distinct ways novelists can use rhetorical techniques to promote feminist principles to their readers.

Freud and the Scene of Trauma by John Fletcher (Fordham University Press; 365 pages; $110 hardcover, $35 paperback). Explores affinities between psychoanalysis and literature in Freud’s mapping of trauma as a scene, a practice described as central to his work as a clinician and theorist.

In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages by Shirin A. Khanmohamadi (University of Pennsylvania Press; 202 pages; $47.50). Explores the distinctive voice of ethnographically minded writers of the Middle Ages, including William of Rubruck among the Mongols and Jean de Joinville on “Saracens” encountered during the Seventh Crusade.

The Life and Undeath of Autonomy in American Literature by Geoff Hamilton (University of Virginia Press; 168 pages; $55 hardcover, $24.50 paperback). Traces representations of autonomy in American literature to ancient Greek origins; draws parallels between such characters as Cooper’s Natty Bumppo and Odysseus and Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden and Callicles.

Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life by Dorothy Gallagher (Yale University Press; 171 pages; $25). A biography of the American writer.

Literary and Cultural Relations Between Brazil and Mexico: Deep Undercurrents by Paulo Moreira (Palgrave Macmillan; 271 pages; $90). Discusses such writers, artists, and filmmakers as Ronald de Carvalho, Alfonso Reyes, Beto Brant, and Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization by Sonali Perera (Columbia University Press; 248 pages; $50). Develops a genealogy of working-class writing as world literature; authors discussed include Tillie Olsen, Bessie Head, and Mulk Raj Anand.

Race and Culture in New Orleans Stories: Kate Chopin, Grace King, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and George Washington Cable by James Nagel (University of Alabama Press; 224 pages; $44.95). A study of Chopin’s Bayou Folk; Cable’s Old Creole Days; King’s Balcony Stories; and Dunbar-Nelson’s The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories.

Rethinking Shakespeare’s Skepticism: The Aesthetics of Doubt in the Sonnets and Plays by Suzanne M. Tartamella (Duquesne University Press; 293 pages; $58). Explores the relationship between praise and skepticism in analyses of the sonnets and of such plays as Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew.

Sexy Blake edited by Helen P. Bruder and Tristanne Connolly (Palgrave Macmillan; 260 pages; $90). Topics include female same-sex desire and chastity in the English poet’s Jerusalem, erotic spirituality in The Last Judgement, and the love triangle and adulterous birth in the Four Zoas.

Speculum Inclusorum/A Mirror for Recluses: A Late-Medieval Guide for Anchorites and Its Middle English Translation by E.A. Jones (Liverpool University Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 224 pages; $99.95). Edition of the facing Latin and Middle English texts.

Text to Tradition: The Naisadhiyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia by Deven M. Patel (Columbia University Press; 277 pages; $50). Traces the reception, canonization, and influence of a 12th-century Sanskrit poem depicting the adventures of the king of Nisadha.

Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America by Katy L. Chiles (Oxford University Press; 315 pages; $65). Uses the writings of Phillis Wheatley, Samuel Occom, Benjamin Franklin, and other authors to examine late 18th-century ideas of transformation from one race to another.

Wounds and Words: Childhood and Family Trauma in Romantic and Postmodern Fiction by Christa Schonfelder (Transcript Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 345 pages; $60). Analyzes works by Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Jane Smiley, Anne Michaels, and Trezza Azzopardi.

MUSIC

Beyond the Score: Music as Performance by Nicholas Cook (Oxford University Press; 458 pages; $49.95). Focuses on Western “art” traditions in a study disputing notions of music as text.

Gypsy Music in European Culture: From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries by Anna G. Piotrowska, translated by Guy R. Torr (Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England; 272 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Translation of a Polish study of Gypsy music’s cultural impact; topics include compositions by Bizet, Strauss, and Paderewski.

Sharecropper’s Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, and the African American Song Tradition by Michael K. Honey (Palgrave Macmillan; 210 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Draws on oral-historical and other sources in a study of the Arkansas-born farmer, union organizer, and singer (1904-92) whose songs include “There Is Mean Things Happening in This Land.”

Sounding Authentic: The Rural Miniature and Musical Modernism by Joshua S. Walden (Oxford University Press; 308 pages; $45). Discusses a genre of 20th-century art music comprising short pieces for violin and piano that most often drew inspiration from Spanish, Jewish, and East and East-Central European folk melodies.

Tristan’s Shadow: Sexuality and the Total Work of Art After Wagner by Adrian Daub (University of Chicago Press; 228 pages; $45). Discusses Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk and his theories of sexuality in terms of the shadow they cast on d’Albert, Zemlinsky, and other composers who followed him.

PHILOSOPHY

Deconstructing Dignity: A Critique of the Right-to-Die Debate by Scott Cutler Shershow (University of Chicago Press; 205 pages; $37.50). Applies Derridean deconstructionist theory to identify contradictions on both sides of the debate from ancient times to the present.

Geophilosophy: On Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s “What Is Philosophy?” by Rodolphe Gasche (Northwestern University Press; 156 pages; $80 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). A study of the French philosophers’ 1991 book that argues that geocentrism is key to their thinking.

Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times by Elaine P. Miller (Columbia University Press; 264 pages; $40). Topics include the French theorist’s readings of Hegel, Freud, Benjamin, Kant, and Arendt.

Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne Jr. (Catholic University of America Press; 288 pages; $59.95). Compares the three medieval thinkers on such themes as the causes of human action and action’s natural and supernatural worth.

Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment by Corine Pelluchon, translated by Robert Howse (State University of New York Press; 309 pages; $90). A study of the German-born American philosopher’s critique of the Enlightenment.

Nature’s Suit: Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy of the Physical Sciences by Lee Hardy (Ohio University Press; 272 pages; $80 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Draws on unpublished manuscripts in a study of the Austrian thinker’s philosophy of science, including his ontology of the physical thing and view of mathematical objectivity.

Russell’s Philosophy of Logical Analysis: 1897-1905 by Jolen Galaugher (Palgrave Macmillan; 218 pages; $105). Considers how the British philosopher’s “logicization” of mathematics is linked to his decompositional view of analysis and his idea of the proposition.

The Science of Modern Virtue: On Descartes, Darwin, and Locke edited by Peter Augustine Lawler and Marc D. Guerra (Northern Illinois University Press; 320 pages; $33). Essays on the three thinkers’ influence on our notions of human nature and virtue.

The Society of Equals by Pierre Rosanvallon, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University Press; 376 pages; $35). Translation of a 2011 French study of the retreat from the ideal of equality espoused in the American and French revolutions.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Culture, Conflict, and Counterinsurgency edited by Thomas H. Johnson and Barry Scott Zellen (Stanford University Press; 284 pages; $45). Essays by political scientists, anthropologists, and others on cultural factors influencing conflict in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

Emergency Presidential Power: From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror by Chris Edelson (University of Wisconsin Press; 359 pages; $26.95). Evaluates the arguments American presidents have used to justify the expansion of their powers in times of crisis.

The Future of Just War: New Critical Essays edited by Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert (University of Georgia Press; 200 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Topics include violence by nonstate actors, the use of private military companies, and justice after war.

Gender, Violence, and Human Security: Critical Feminist Perspectives edited by Aili Mari Tripp, Myra Marx Ferree, and Christina Ewig (New York University Press; 328 pages; $79 hardcover, $25 paperback). Essays on such topics as NGOs and human security in the aftermath of war.

Iranian Foreign Policy During Ahmadinejad: Ideology and Actions by Maaike Warnaar (Palgrave Macmillan; 292 pages; $100). Applies discourse analysis in a study of Iranian foreign policy during the two presidential terms (2005-2013) of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security by Thomas M. Nichols (University of Pennsylvania Press; 217 pages; $39.95). Criticizes the role of nuclear weapons in American defense strategy and offers alternatives.

The People’s News: Media, Politics, and the Demands of Capitalism by Joseph E. Uscinski (New York University Press; 204 pages; $75 hardcover, $23 paperback). Argues that market incentives have trumped journalistic and democratic values and led news purveyors to tailor their coverage to audience demands.

Perils of Centralization: Lessons From Church, State, and Corporation by Ken Kollman (Cambridge University Press; 205 pages; $80 hardcover, $27.99 paperback). Compares centralization in the U. S. government, the Roman Catholic Church, General Motors, and the European Union.

Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change edited by Gerald Berk, Dennis C. Galvan, and Victoria Hattam (University of Pennsylvania Press; 374 pages; $69.95). Writings by political scientists who apply poststructuralist and other theory to the study of institutions; topics include Islamic economics in Algeria, Russian labor relations, and civil-rights reform in the United States.

Principled Engagement: Negotiating Human Rights in Repressive States edited by Morten B. Pedersen and David Kinley (Ashgate Publishing Company; 252 pages; $119.95). Writings on “principled engagement” as an often overlooked approach to promoting human rights in repressive countries when sanctions and other strategies don’t work; considers its applications for China, Burma, Liberia, and Zimbabwe.

Transnational Organized Crime: Analyses of a Global Challenge to Democracy edited by Regine Schonenberg (Transcript-Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 308 pages; $35). Multidisciplinary essays by scholars and others from 12 countries; setting discussed include Afghanistan, India, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, and the Balkans.

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice by David Scott (Duke University Press; 219 pages; $84.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback). Discusses the revolution in Grenada (1979-83) as a trauma in Caribbean and wider postcolonial history.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic by Jonathan Rottenberg (Basic Books; 256 pages; $26.99). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a mood-centered model of depression.

Schizophrenia: Evolution and Synthesis edited by Steven M. Silverstein, Bita Moghaddam, and Til Wykes (MIT Press; 390 pages; $50). Topics include approaching schizophrenia as a heterogeneous group of conditions.

RELIGION

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims by Scott Siraj Al-Haqq Kugle (New York University Press; 264 pages; $79 hardcover, $25 paperback). Draws on interviews with activists in the United States, Canada, Britain, South Africa, and the Netherlands who seek to reconcile their sexuality and beliefs.

Performing Religion in Public edited by Claire Maria Chambers, Simon W. du Toit, and Joshua Edelman (Palgrave Macmillan; 290 pages; $90). Essays on American street preaching, a South African passion play, Sufi whirling in Turkey, and other examples of public religious performance.

Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism by Isaac Weiner (New York University Press; 249 pages; $79 hardcover, $25 paperback). Explores tensions over noise in the realm of religion, including disputes over church bells, the Muslim call to prayer, and street-corner and sound-car preachers.

Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church by D. Oliver Herbel (Oxford University Press; 244 pages; $27.95). Focuses on Alexis Toth, Raphael Morgan, Moses Berry, and Peter Gillquist in a study of theological motivations for intra-Christian conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Varieties of Religious Establishment edited by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Lori G. Beaman (Ashgate Publishing Company; 232 pages; $99.95). Countries discussed include Canada, Taiwan, South Africa, Tunisia, and the United States.

SOCIOLOGY

Cafe Society edited by Aksel Tjora and Graham Scambler (Palgrave Macmillan; 208 pages; $90). Essays on cafes and coffee shops as “third places” for social interaction, distinct from the home and workplace.

Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Paradigm Publishers; 240 pages; $156). Defends the value of non-Western-centric critical theory.

The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction Into Ethnic Factions by Vilna Bashi Treitler (Stanford University Press; 225 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines the histories of the Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, African-Americans, and American Indians in relation to racial hierarchies in the United States.

Flawed System, Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences by Ofer Sharone (University of Chicago Press; 228 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.50 paperback). Compares the experiences of unemployed white-collar workers in Tel Aviv and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jewish on Their Own Terms: How Intermarried Couples Are Changing American Judaism by Jennifer A. Thompson (Rutgers University Press; 200 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Draws on ethnographic research among couples in Atlanta and Des Moines.

Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology by Cassandra S. Crawford (New York University Press; 306 pages; $79 hardcover, $24 paperback). Examines the relationship between innovation in prosthetics and amputees’ experience of phantom pain.

Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders by Leisy J. Abrego (Stanford University Press; 250 pages; $70 hardcover, $21.95 paperback). Documents the experiences of the separated, transnational families of Salvadoran immigrants.

THEATER

The Theatre of Naomi Wallace: Embodied Dialogues edited by Scott T. Cummings and Erica Stevens Abbitt (Palgrave Macmillan; 320 pages; $95). Essays on a British-based American playwright, whose works include Slaughter City and Things of Dry Hours.

URBAN STUDIES

Metropolitan Resilience in a time of Economic Turmoil edited by Michael A. Pagano (University of Illinois Press; 189 pages; $80 hardcover, $20 paperback). Essays by academics, officials, and others on cities in the wake of the Great Recession; topics include building a local social safety net.

Revitalizing American Cities edited by Susan M. Wachter and Kimberly A. Zeuli (University of Pennsylvania Press; 322 pages; $69.95). Essays on the revitalization of America’s older, small and mid-size cities, many of which were once industrial hubs.