Weekly Book List, February 19, 2016

ANTHROPOLOGY

Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil by Christen A. Smith (University of Illinois Press; 261 pages; $95 hardcover, $26 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Salvador, Bahia, in a study of activism against racial violence; focuses on a grassroots movement known as React or Die!/React or Be Killed! and a theater troupe called Culture Shock and its play Stop to Think.

Citizen, Student, Soldier: Latina/o Youth, JROTC, and the American Dream by Gina M. Perez (New York University Press; 272 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in a high school in a largely Puerto Rican area of Lorain, Ohio, in a study of the motivations of Latino youth joining junior ROTC.

Everyday Piety: Islam and Economy in Jordan by Sarah A. Tobin (Cornell University Press; 248 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Amman in a study of how middle-class Jordanians negotiate the interplay of their economic practices and religious lives.

Linking the Histories of Slavery: North America and Its Borderlands edited by Bonnie Martin and James F. Brooks (SAR Press; 416 pages; $39.95). Writings by scholars in anthropology, history, and other fields on parallels in slave cultures across the continent.

Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine by Catherine Besteman (Duke University Press; 336 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Traces the experiences of refugees, now settled in Maine, who include Somali Bantus the author initially studied in their home country.

The Mayans Among Us: Migrant Women and Meatpacking on the Great Plains by Ann L. Sittig and Martha Florinda Gonzalez (University of Nebraska Press; 216 pages; $24.95). Documents the lives of migrant women of Mayan heritage from Central America who work in meatpacking plants in rural Nebraska.

Tales of the Ex-Apes: How We Think About Human Evolution by Jonathan Marks (University of California Press; 220 pages; $29.95). Discusses kinship and mythology in the transition from biological to biocultural evolution

ARCHAEOLOGY

The Archaeology of Childhood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on an Archaeological Enigma edited by Guner Coskunsu (State University of New York Press; 320 pages; $100). Writings on how archaeologists, together with other disciplines, can work to reconstruct the lives of children in past societies in and beyond burial data; topics include children in the anthropomorphic imagery of the European and Near Eastern Neolithic.

Rethinking Moundville and Its Hinterland edited by Vincas P. Steponaitis and C. Margaret Scarry (University Press of Florida; 288 pages; $74.95). Research on a site near Tuscaloosa, Ala., that includes one of North America’s largest assemblies of pre-Columbian mounds.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Art Systems: Brazil and the 1970s by Elena Shtromberg (University of Texas Press; 238 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses Cildo Meireles, Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, Anna Bella Geiger, Sonia Andrade, Geraldo Mello, and others in a study of Brazilian conceptual art during a period of dictatorial rule.

Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art by Sebastian Zeidler (Cornell University Press; 320 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $35 paperback). An intellectual biography of the German art critic and writer (1885-1940); uses works by Braque, Picasso, and Klee to explore his approach.

Work Sights: The Visual Culture of Industry in Nineteenth-Century America by Vanessa Meikle Schulman (University of Massachusetts Press; 287 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of images of labor, technology, and industry between 1857 and 1887 in popular and fine art.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

“Letters on Ethics": To Lucilius by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, translated by Margaret Graver and A.A. Long (University of Chicago Press; 604 pages; $65). Translation, with commentary, of letters by the Roman statesman and philosopher to his friend Lucilius, which cover topics from the central tenets of Stoicism to everyday advice.

COMMUNICATION

The New Science of Communication: Reconsidering McLuhan’s Message for Our Modern Moment by Anthony M. Wachs (Duquesne University Press; 222 pages; $25). Discusses the Canadian theorist’s four laws of evaluating any medium and considers their grounding in classical ideas of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

DISABILITY STUDIES

Libre Acceso: Latin American Literature and Film Through Disability Studies edited by Susan Antebi and Beth E. Jorgensen (State University of New York Press; 278 pages; $90). Writings on representations of disability in literature and film from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru; works discussed include Roberto Bolano’s 2666, Carlos Reygadas’s Japon, and Jorge Luis Borges’s life-writings.

ECONOMICS

ASEAN Economic Community: A Model for Asia-wide Regional Integration? edited by Mia Mikic and Bruno Jetin (Palgrave Macmillan; 350 pages; $125). Topics include the impact of monetary regime and exchange rates on integration in the Southeast Asian region.

FILM STUDIES

Global Genres, Local Films: The Transnational Dimension of Spanish Cinema edited by Elena Oliete-Aldea, Beatriz Oria, and Juan A. Tarancon (Bloomsbury Academic; 270 pages; $120). Essays that reflect the interrogation of “Spanishness” in Spain’s cinema since the silent era; topics include the rise of crime cinema in the Franco period, and recent Spanish films on immigration.

Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation by Lilian Munk Rosing (Bloomsbury Academic; 181 pages; $110). Applies Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to an analysis of films from Pixar Animation Studios, from Toy Story (1995) to Up (2009).

Soul of the Documentary: Framing, Expression, Ethics by Ilona Hongisto (Amsterdam University Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 178 pages; $37.50). Draws on the theories of Deleuze and Guattari in a “new materialist” analysis of the agency of documentary in framing the real.

GEOGRAPHY

The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a More Equal World Is Better for Us All by Simon Reid-Henry (University of Chicago Press; 214 pages; $25). A work in economic and political geography that examines the origins of uneven development and structural injustices.

HISTORY

America’s Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality by Clement Fatovic (University Press of Kansas; 337 pages; $39.95). Examines debates over economic inequality in the post-Revolutionary period, and describes the links some Founders drew between freedom and the need to tackle disparities.

Between Cultures: Europe and Its Others in Five Exemplary Lives by Jerrold Seigel (University of Pennsylvania Press; 288 pages; $49.95). Focuses on Richard Burton, T. E. Lawrence, Louis Massignon, Chinua Achebe, and Orhan Pamuk as five figures who explore a second cultural identity.

Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith (Basic Books; 362 pages; $28.99). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study of the rise and fall of the two men’s friendship, set against politics in the Nation of Islam that ultimately cost Malcolm X his life.

Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World edited by Quinn Slobodian (Berghahn Books; 325 pages; $120). Essays on East German internationalism and expressions of solidarity with the non-white world; topics include ambivalence in the GDR’s “Free Angela Davis!” campaign.

Education for Empire: American Schools, Race, and the Paths of Good Citizenship by Clif Stratton (University of California Press; 288 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of how America’s imperial ambitions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries shaped public education for children, both native born and immigrant.

Enigmas of Sacrifice: A Critique of Joseph M. Plunkett and the Dublin Insurrection of 1916 by W.J. Mc Cormack (Michigan State University Press; 372 pages; $29.95). A study of the religious poet and Irish nationalist who was executed at age 28 for his leadership role in the Easter Rising.

Francois Mauriac on Race, War, Politics, and Religion: The Great War Through the 1960s edited and translated by Nathan Bracher (Catholic University of America Press; 312 pages; $65). Translation of editorials written by the French Catholic intellectual, novelist, and 1952 Nobel Laureate.

German Propaganda and U.S. Neutrality in World War I by Chad R. Fulwider (University of Missouri Press; 274 pages; $60). Documents efforts by Germans and German-Americans to counter the increasingly pro-Allied position of the United States at the start of World War I.

Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution by Julia Gaffield (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $29.95). Documents a pattern of strategic contact between private governments and foreign businesses with the newly independent Haiti, despite a period of formal non-recognition.

Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127-1181 by Theodore Evergates (University of Pennsylvania Press; 307 pages; $75). Uses a stages-of-life approach in a study of the accomplished French prince and his transformative rule of Champagne.

A History of Ft. Worth in Black and White: 165 Years of African-American Life by Richard F. Selcer (University of North Texas Press, distributed by Texas A&M University Press; 598 pages; $29.95). Discusses the Texas city’s black and white communities and their perceptions of one another.

The Last Puritans: Mainline Protestants and the Power of the Past by Margaret Bendroth (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $27.95). A history of Congregationalism since early 17th-century New England that explores the denomination’s key role in the formation and ethos of mainline Protestantism.

Lock, Stock, and Icebergs: A History of Canada’s Arctic Maritime Sovereignty by Adam Lajeunesse (University of British Columbia Press; 416 pages; US$99). Draws on newly declassified materials in a history of the claim, in the words of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, that Canada owned the Northwest Passage and surrounding waters “lock, stock, and icebergs.”

Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine by Sherene Seikaly (Stanford University Press; 272 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines capital accumulation and other aspects of Palestinian economic agency under British Mandate rule.

Notes of a Plenipotentiary: Russian Diplomacy and War in the Balkans, 1914-1917 by G.N. Trubetskoi, edited by Borislav Chernev, translated by Elizabeth Saika-Voivod (Northern Illinois University Press; 248 pages; $39). Edition of the memoir of a Russian prince turned diplomat who became ambassador to Serbia at a key moment with the start of World War I.

Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey by Lerna Ekmekcioglu (Stanford University Press; 224 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines life for Armenians in Turkey after the 1915 genocide; pays particular attention to Hayganush Mark, an activist and writer and the tensions of being an Armenian feminist at a time when traditional roles were seen key to the preservation of cultural identity.

Reform or Repression: Organizing America’s Anti-Union Movement by Chad Pearson (University of Pennsylvania Press; 303 pages; $55). Examines the origins, character, growth, and limitations of the first-wave open-shop movement during the Progressive Era; focuses on Cleveland, Buffalo, Worcester, Mass., and varied settings in the South.

Success Depends on the Animals: Emigrants, Livestock, and Wild Animals on the Overland Trails, 1840--1869 by Diana L. Ahmad (University of Nevada Press; 144 pages; $31.95). Draws on journals, diaries, and other sources in a study of how Western migrants’ dependence on work and companion animals shaped new understandings of the human-non-human bond.

Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness by April Merleaux (University of North Carolina Press; 320 pages; $32.95). Explores interwoven issues of race, consumers’ taste for sugar, trade policies, and U.S. empire in the wake of the Spanish-American War.

The Tennessee Campaign of 1864 edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear (Southern Illinois University Press; 296 pages; $34.50). Essays on the battles of Allatoona, Spring HIll, and Franklin, as well as other elements of Gen. John Bell Hood’s ill-fated campaign against Union forces in the state; also includes a transcript of Maj. Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s “lost diary.”

Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement by Jeffrey D. Gonda (University of North Carolina Press; 312 pages; $34.95). Discusses six black families in Detroit, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., whose struggle to keep their homes resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling against racial covenants in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948).

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology by James Rodger Fleming (MIT Press; 312 pages; $31). Uses the lives and careers of Vilhelm Bjerknes, Carl-Gustaf Rossby, and Harry Wexler to examine the development of the field, beginning in the early 20th century.

LAW

Gender Nonconformity and the Law by Kimberly Yuracko (Yale University Press; 256 pages; $85). Traces cases intended to expand the Civil Rights act of 1964 to include discrimination based on expressions of gender identity.

Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War by Orde F. Kittrie (Oxford University Press; 481 pages; $29.95). Examines litigation as used by the United States, China, NGOs, and all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; case studies include U.S. financial “lawfare” against Iran.

Rutgers v. Waddington: Alexander Hamilton, the End of the War for Independence, and the Origins of Judicial Review by Peter Charles Hoffer (University Press of Kansas; 168 pages; $39.95 hardcover, $18.95 paperback). Discusses a case involving back rent for a brewery that was argued in 1784 on the defendants’ side by Alexander Hamilton.

LITERATURE

The Alchemist in Literature: From Dante to the Present by Theodore Ziolkowski (Oxford University Press; 237 pages; $95). Traces changing literary portrayals of the alchemist since medieval times.

Anonymous Connections: The Body and Narratives of the Social in Victorian Britain by Tina Young Choi (University of Michigan Press; 192 pages; $65). Considers how Victorian journalists, novelists, medical writers, and social reformers viewed aspects of space and contact in the social landscape in realms from changing demographics to epidemics.

Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic by Stefan M. Wheelock (University of Virginia Press; 232 pages; $69.50 hardcover, $29.50 paperback). Explores the appeal to religious sensibilities in writings by Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and Maria Stewart.

Beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Poetic Faith From Coleridge to Tolkien by Michael Tomko (Bloomsbury Academic; 171 pages; $86). Discusses Coleridge’s concept of the “willing suspension of disbelief” and sets the poet in aesthetic dialogue with other writers, critics, and thinkers.

Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction by Maria Rice Bellamy (University of Virginia Press; 208 pages; $59.50 hardcover, $24.50 paperback). Focuses on Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata, Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman, and Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker.

Disknowledge; Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England by Katherine Eggert (University of Pennsylvania Press; 351 pages; $55). Explores writers’ use of alchemical imagery and rhetoric to discuss issues of Transubstantiation, the Kabbalah, and human reproduction in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Divine Face in Four Writers: Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, and C.S. Lewis by Maurice Hunt (Bloomsbury Academic; 175 pages; $100). Topics include Christ-like and compassionate faces in Shakespeare’s plays, and syncretistic faces in Hesse’s Demian.

Gendered Geographies in Puerto Rican Culture: Spaces, Sexualities, Solidarities by Radost Rangelova (University of North Carolina Press; 224 pages; $65). Explores the symbolic spaces of home, factory, beauty salon, and brothel in the work of such authors and filmmakers as Rosario Ferre, Carmen Lugo Filippi, Magali Garcia Ramis, Mayra Santos-Febres, Sonia Fritz, and Ana Maria Garcia.

“How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?” Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs by Tahneer Oksman (Columbia University Press; 274 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). A study of autobiographical comics by Aline Kominsky Crumb, Vanessa Davis, Miss Lasko-Gross, Lauren Weinstein, Sarah Glidden, Miriam Libicki, and Liana Finck.

The Life and Times of Abu Tammam by Abu Bakr al-Suli, edited and translated by Beatrice Gruendler (New York University Press; 336 pages; $40). First English translation of a work by a 10th-century scholar and courtier in defense of the “modern” poetry of the eighth-century Abu Tammam.

Literary Trials: “Exceptio Artis” and Theories of Literature in Court edited by Ralf Gruttemeier (Bloomsbury Academic; 228 pages; $110). Essays on the varying views of literature conveyed in trials on claims of obscenity, blasphemy, defamation, libel, and the like in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Britain, Belgium, and other settings; includes discussion of such lesser-known cases as proceedings against Oskar Panizza for the satirical play Das Liebeskonzil.

The Lives of Frederick Douglass by Robert S. Levine (Harvard University Press; 373 pages; $29.95). A literary biography of the abolitionist that explores his self-revisions and self-inventions over time in the varied editions of his three book-length autobiographies and other life writings.

The Submerged Plot and the Mother’s Pleasure from Jane Austen to Arundhati Roy edited by Kelly A. Marsh (Ohio State University Press; 296 pages; $84.95). Explores overt and covert plots in Persuasion, Jane Eyre, Bleak House, The Woman in White, The House of Mirth, The Last September, The Color Purple, A Thousand Acres, Bastard Out of Carolina, Talking to the Dead, and The God of Small Things.

Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and Art by Henry W. Pickford (Northwestern University Press; 240 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Uses the Austrian philosopher’s thought to develop and modify the Russian writer’s philosophy of art and to counter aspects of skepticism associated with Jacques Derrida.

Translating “Clergie": Status, Education, and Salvation in Thirteenth-Century Vernacular Texts by Claire M. Waters (University of Pennsylvania Press; 360 pages; $69.95). A study of French verse and English prose that respond to the Fourth Lateran Council’s mandate that people be responsible for their own salvation.

MUSIC

Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique edited by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan (Duke University Press; 417 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Interdisciplinary essays on the interplay of music and imperialism; topics include economic and affective links between jazz and cigarettes in interwar Shanghai, and desi rappers’ hip-hop critiques of U.S. empire.

Schoenberg and Hollywood Modernism by Kenneth H. Marcus (Cambridge University Press; 401 pages; $120). Documents the Austrian-born composer’s impact on Southern California modernism, including through his compositions and his work teaching at UCLA and USC.

PHILOSOPHY

De Gustibus: Arguing About Taste and Why We Do It by Peter Kivy (Oxford University Press; 173 pages; $50). Offers a philosophical meditation on why the “art-interested” dispute over matters of aesthetic taste in ways that echo, for example, disputes over moral issues.

Deconstruction, Its Force, Its Violence: Together With “Have We Done With the Empire of Judgment?” by Rodolphe Gasche (State University of New York Press; 128 pages; $70). Discusses concepts of force and violence in works by Jacques Derrida.

A History of the Concept of God: A Process Approach by Daniel A. Dombrowski (State University of New York Press; 280 pages; $80). Draws on such thinkers as Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne.

The Much-at-Once: Music, Science, Ecstasy, the Body by Bruce W. Wilshire (Fordham University Press; 296 pages; $95 hardcover, $32 paperback). Topics include the work of such composers, writers, and thinkers as Beethoven, Mahler, Emerson, and William James.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

The Al-Qaeda Franchise: The Expansion of Al-Qaeda and Its Consequences by Barak Mendelsohn (Oxford University Press; 274 pages; $99 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Argues that the organization’s weakening position, post-9/11, was a central motivation for its leaders’ expanding through franchises.

Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States by Edward B. Foley (Oxford University Press; 479 pages; $34.95). Focuses on vote-counting controversies since the era of the Founding.

China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China by John W. Garver (Oxford University Press; 868 pages; $49.95). Focuses on relations with the Soviet Union (later Russia), Iran, India, Japan, and the United States.

Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat by Seung Hyok Lee (University of Toronto Press; 208 pages; US$50). Explores the impact of public opinion on Japanese foreign policy; argues that Japan’s 2006 sanctions against North Korea had less to do with the latter’s missile tests, than shock at the revelations of that nation’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s.

The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies by Peter O’Brien (Temple University Press; 298 pages; $94.50 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Describes the controversy over the estimated 20 million Muslims in Europe in terms of a clash of liberalism, nationalism, and postmodernism.

Reproductive States: Global Perspectives on the Invention and Implementation of Population Policy edited by Rickie Solinger and Mie Nakachi (Oxford University Press; 389 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Writings on population policies and reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the former Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States.

Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants: Race, Gender, and Immigration Politics in the Age of Security by Anna Sampaio (Temple University Press; 230 pages; $75.50 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines how Latino immigrants have been affected by the expansion of the security state in the “war on terror.”

Windows of Opportunity: How Women Seize Peace Negotiations for Political Change by Miriam J. Anderson (Oxford University Press; 217 pages; $65). Examines how women figure in peace negotiations, and in the language of peace agreements; draws on a quantitative study of 195 agreements from 1975 to 2011, and in-depth case studies of Burundi, Northern Ireland, and Macedonia.

PUBLIC POLICY

Public Pensions and City Solvency edited by Susan M. Wachter (University of Pennsylvania Press; 105 pages; $24.95). Writings on economic, legal, and other aspects of the growing pension liabilities of American cities; considers sustainable solutions to the problem.

RELIGION

The Baha’is of America: The Growth of a Religious Movement by Mike McMullen (New York University Press; 288 pages; $89 hardcover, $27 paperback). Discusses the Iranian-born faith’s 120-year history in the United States and its high level of racial diversity.

Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities edited by Becky R. Lee and Terry Tak-ling Woo (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 371 pages; US$85 hardcover, US$36.99 paperback). Essays on Christianity and Judaism in Newfoundland, Ontario, and Alberta; Hinduism in Ontario; and what are termed the “new religions” of the Mormons, Bahai, and Theosophists.

Engaged Emancipation: Mind, Morals, and Make-Believe in the Moksopaya (Yogavasistha) edited by Christopher Key Chapple and Arindam Chakrabarti (State University of New York Press; 309 pages; $85). Essays on an 11th-century Sanskrit text that comprises 64 interwoven tales that reflect the philosophy and counsel of Kashmir Saivism.

God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire from the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert by Terry Lindvall (New York University Press; 384 pages; $35). Traces shifts of tone and strategy over the centuries in discussion of mockery and satire from such figures as Chaucer, Martin Luther, Swift, Pope, Twain, and Kierkegaard.

Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South by Anderson Blanton (University of North Carolina Press; 240 pages; $27.95). Combines ethnographic and archival perspectives in a study of the material culture of charismatic Christian worship in southern Appalachia.

Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions by Elizabeth Perez (New York University Press; 320 pages; $89 hardcover, $29 paperback). Draws on fieldwork among black practitioners of Lucumi or Santeria in Chicago in a study of the preparation of food for gods and ancestors.

Sacred Matters: Material Religion in South Asian Traditions edited by Tracy Pintchman and Corinne G. Dempsey (State University of New York Press; 232 pages; $80). Writings on images, Shaligram stones, camphor, and other material objects in South Asian religious traditions, including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity.

RHETORIC

Assembling Arguments: Multimodal Rhetoric and Scientific Discourse by Jonathan Buehl (University of South Carolina Press; 281 pages; $59.95). Uses five case studies to explore changing strategies of scientific argumentation in varied historical and technological contexts, beginning with X-ray crystallography before World War I.

Praising Girls: The Rhetoric of Young Women, 1895-1930 by Henrietta Rix Wood (Southern Illinois University Press; 208 pages; $40). Focuses on Kansas City, Mo., in a study of newspaper editorials and other “public writing” by high-school girls.

SOCIOLOGY

The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families by Elizabeth Hordge-Friedman (University of Texas Press; 328 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork with 10 working-class households in Salvador, Bahia, in a study of how black families both resist and reproduce racial hierarchies in Brazilian society.

Men at Risk: Masculinity, Heterosexuality and HIV Prevention by Shari L. Dworkin (New York University Press; 240 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Argues for greater attention to the vulnerabilities of heterosexual men for HIV, including the status given sex with multiple partners.

SNAP Matters: How Food Stamps Affect Health and Well-Being edited by Judith Bartfeld and others (Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Writings that evaluate the Food Stamp Program, initiated in 1963, that was renamed SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, in 2008; topics include its effects on poverty, and whether it has links to obesity.

To Fix or to Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine edited by Joseph E. Davis and Ana Marta Gonzalez (New York University Press; 335 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Writings by sociologists, philosophers, and other scholars in criticism of what is termed “reductionist medicine” and the failure to incorporate social and environmental factors in the understanding of health.

URBAN STUDIES

Becoming Jane Jacobs by Peter L. Laurence (University of Pennsylvania Press; 365 pages; $34.95). An intellectual biography of Jacobs (1916-2006) that explores her self-education, development, and influences over the decades, including through the work of architects, planners, and she criticized.

Building the Urban Environment: Visions of the Organic City in the United States, Europe, and Latin America by Harold L. Platt (Temple University Press; 302 pages; $89.50 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Includes case studies of Rotterdam, Chicago, São Paulo, and four other cities.