Weekly Book List, February 22, 2010

AMERICAN STUDIES

The Dance of the Comedians: The People, the President, and the Performance of Political Standup Comedy in America by Peter M. Robinson (University of Massachusetts Press; 272 pages; $34.95). A study of political humor since the early Republic with a focus on the mid-to-late 20th century.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Changing Identifications and Alliances in Northeast Africa, Volume 1: Ethiopia and Kenya edited by Gunther Schlee and Elizabeth E. Watson (Berghahn Books; 260 pages; $95). Essays on such topics as changing alliances among the Boran, Garre, and Gabra of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, and how the oral traditions of the Burji shape their interethnic relations.

The Legacy of Hurricane Mitch: Lessons From Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Honduras edited by Marisa O. Ensor (University of Arizona Press; 240 pages; $50). Draws on longitudinal ethnographic and environmental assessment work in Honduras after the 1998 hurricane.

Seeing Culture Everywhere, From Genocide to Consumer Habits by Joana Breidenbach and Pal Nyiri (University of Washington Press; 416 pages; $24.95). Considers how ethnic identity is mobilized in politics, war, business, and other realms.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Excavating Nauvoo: The Mormons and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America by Benjamin C. Pykles (University of Nebraska Press; 389 pages; $50). Examines developments in historical archaeology in the 1960s through a study of conflicts that arose over the excavation and restoration of sites in an Illinois town founded along the Mississippi River by Mormons migrating West in the 1840s.

Landscapes and Social Transformations on the Northwest Coast: Colonial Encounters in the Fraser Valley by Jeff Oliver (University of Arizona Press; 264 pages; $55). Explores the social construction of landscape in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia from the pre-contact era to the violent upheavals of colonialism; combines archaeological, ethnographic, cartographic, and historical data.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Contemporary Chicano Art: Color and Culture for a New America by George Vargas (University of Texas Press; 277 pages; $55 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Documents the diversity of Chicano art since the 1960s and sets the movement in the wider context of American cultural history.

Domestic Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe edited by Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti (Ashgate Publishing Company; 267 pages; $99.95). Essays on the institutional interiors of hospitals, asylums, orphanages, convents, and public palaces in Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Flanders, and Portugal.

Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline, translated by Charles Ruas (Oxford University Press; 288 pages; $24.95). Draws on previously unpublished letters in a biography of the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi (1907-83), who worked under the name Herge.

Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics by Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti (Yale University Press; 256 pages; $55). Combines archival research on the architecture and liturgical history of a dozen Venetian churches with the results of choral experiments in the chosen buildings.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities by Paul Cartledge (Oxford University Press; 176 pages; $19.95). Uses the history of 11 mainland, island, and provincial cities to trace Greek history from archaic times to the construction of Constantinople in AD 324 on the site of Byzantion.

Cratinus and the Art of Comedy by Emmanuela Bakola (Oxford University Press; 400 pages; $110). Combines literary, philological, and theatrical perspectives in a study of the Athenian playwright and poet of the fifth century BC.

Euripides Our Contemporary by J. Michael Walton (University of California Press; 256 pages; $60 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A critical study of the playwright.

The Idea of Iambos by Andrea Rotstein (Oxford University Press; 400 pages; $135). Draws on cognitive science in a study of iambic poetry as composed and theorized in ancient Greece.

Lives Behind the Laws: The World of the “Codex Hermogenianus” by Serena Connolly (Indiana University Press; 296 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines everyday life in the northern provinces of the Roman empire through a late third-century collection of imperial responses to petitions to Rome.

COMMUNICATION

Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Used New Media Technology to Win the White House edited by John Allen Hendricks and Robert E. Denton Jr. (Lexington Books; 171 pages; $65 hardcover, $17.95 paperback). Essays on the campaign’s use of blogs, Twitter, video games, e-mail, YouTube, and social-networking sites.

Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space edited by Chris Berry, Soyoung Kim, and Lynn Spigel (University of Minnesota Press; 280 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Essays on how the Internet, satellite television, and other media reconfigure the boundaries between public and private space.

When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent by Anthony DiMaggio (Monthly Review Press, distributed by New York University Press; 288 pages; $70 hardcover, $18.95 paperback). Focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a critique of the mainstream media’s reporting on international events.

CRIMINOLOGY

Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge by Donna Selman and Paul Leighton (Rowman & Littlefield; 204 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of the growing privatization trend in U.S. prisons; sources include prison contracts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

ECOLOGY

Multiplicity in Unity: Plant Subindividual Variation and Interactions With Animals by Carlos M. Herrera (University of Chicago Press; 416 pages; $110 hardcover, $40 paperback). Topics include how animals’ consumption behavior may constrain or modify plant ontogenetic patterns.

ECONOMICS

Creating Ecological Value: An Evolutionary Approach to Business Strategies and the Natural Environment by Frank Boons (Edward Elgar Publishing; 224 pages; $105). Focuses on automobile and coffee production and consumption.

The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money by Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong (Basic Books; 165 pages; $22). Considers how a “cash poor” United States will affect the nation’s status.

Explaining Civil War: A Rational Choice Approach by Syed Mansoob Murshed (Edward Elgar Publishing; 256 pages; $125). Focuses on developing countries and includes discussion of post-war economic reconstruction.

Mothers’ Work and Children’s Lives: Low-Income Families After Welfare Reform by Rucker C. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, and Rachel E. Dunifon (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research; 172 pages; $40 hardcover, $18 paperback). Considers the relationship between children’s well-being and the stability and quality of jobs held by low-income mothers under the work provisions of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families); draws on data from the Women’s Employment Study.

Quantitative Techniques for Competition and Antitrust Analysis by Peter Davis and Eliana Garces (Princeton University Press; 580 pages; $90). Examines established and emerging techniques of empirical investigation.

Regulating Transnational Corporations in Domestic and International Regimes: An African Case Study by Evaristus Oshionebo (University of Toronto Press; 406 pages; US$65). Considers strategies for regulating transnational companies in the continent’s extractive industries.

The Return to Keynes edited by Bradley Bateman, Toshiaki Hirai, and Maria Cristina Marcuzzo (Harvard University Press; 312 pages; $49.95). Writings on how the U.S. and other governments have returned to Keynesian ideas of stabilizing the economy after decades in which anti-Keynesians held sway.

EDUCATION

Against the Odds: Insights From One District’s Small School Reform by Larry Cuban and others (Harvard Education Press; 169 pages; $49.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Describes how the Mapleton, Colo., school district transformed two traditional high schools into seven smaller schools, each with fewer than 400 students.

Challenges to Japanese Education: Economics, Reform, and Human Rights edited by June A. Gordon and others (Teachers College Press; 218 pages; $44.95). Writings by Japanese and American scholars on such topics as minority education in Japan, and threats to the egalitarian subsidy system for compulsory education.

Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University by Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben (Duke University Press; 368 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Essays by scholars of philosophy, religion, and politics on the role of ethical instruction in universities.

Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies edited by Patricia Gandara and Megan Hopkins (Teachers College Press; 242 pages; $70 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Writings on the impact of restrictions on bilingual instruction adopted in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts schools.

ENGINEERING

The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski (Alfred A. Knopf; 274 pages; $26.95). Asserts the importance of engineering to the solution of energy, environmental, and other problems.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES by Nancy Langston (Yale University Press; 233 pages; $30). Examines the dangers posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals; focuses on diethylstilbestrol, a substance initially prescribed for menopausal women and then to prevent miscarriage, and given as well to cattle for weight gain.

FILM STUDIES

Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century by Matthew Solomon (University of Illinois Press; 196 pages; $65 hardcover, $22 paperback). A study of how stage magicians used the new medium of cinema in their acts.

The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs by Jinhee Choi (University Press of New England; 264 pages; $75 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Considers how Korean filmmakers have achieved success at the local, regional, and international levels.

GENDER STUDIES

Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia edited by Kenneth M. Cuno and Manisha Desai (Syracuse University Press; 308 pages; $45). Essays on such topics as marital relations and the first phase of family-law reform in Egypt, the impact of colonial state policies on gender relations in India, and family, and struggles over personal status and family law in post-Baathist Iraq.

HISTORY

Accommodating Revolutions: Virginia’s Northern Neck in an Era of Transformation, 1760-1810 by Albert H. Tillson Jr. (University of Virginia Press; 416 pages; $45). A study of the planter elite of a six-county region between the Potomac and Rappahanock rivers.

America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force by Beth Bailey (Harvard University Press; 319 pages; $29.95). Combines archival and interview data in a study of the history of the all-volunteer force, and the moral, political, and other issues raised by the end of a draft army.

American Abyss: Savagery and Civilization in the Age of Industry by Daniel E. Bender (Cornell University Press; 344 pages; $39.95). Topics include eugenicist fears about American industrialization in the early 20th century.

Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage by Glyn Williams (University of California Press; 440 pages; $34.95). Draws on letters and journals in a study of the centuries-long quest to find an ocean route over the top of North America.

As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution by Richard Archer (Oxford University Press; 304 pages; $24.95). Traces the tensions and violence that arose with British forces’ armed occupation of Boston; focuses on the period from October 1, 1768 to 1770 and the events and aftermath of the Boston Massacre.

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad (Harvard University Press; 380 pages; $35). Focuses on the urban North in a history of links drawn since the late 19th century between blackness and criminality.

Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 edited by Christopher E. Goscha and Christian Ostermann (Stanford University Press; 456 pages; $60). Essays that draw on newly available archives in a study of the post-World War II order in Vietnam, Malaysia, then- Burma, and other countries.

Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution by Philipp Ziesche (University of Virginia Press; 256 pages; $39.50). Examines the activities, debates, and writings of such figures as Thomas Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, and James Monroe.

Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-Modern England by David Cressy (Oxford University Press; 350 pages; $50). Topics include how insulting the monarch went from an act committed at risk of execution to greater toleration.

The Devil and Mr. Casement: One Man’s Battle for Human Rights in South America’s Heart of Darkness by Jordan Goodman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 322 pages; $30). Discusses Roger Casement’s 1910 journey to Peru on behalf of the British government, and an investigation that exposed the enslavement, torture, and murder of Indian workers by the Peruvian rubber baron Julio Cesar Arana, whose company was based in London.

The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander in France From Louis XIV to Napoleon by Robert Darnton (University of Pennsylvania Press; 608 pages; $34.95). Traces the changing substance and targets of “literary libelers.”

Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism by Bryn Geffert (University of Notre Dame Press; 501 pages; $60). A study of the two churches’ rapprochement between the world wars.

First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862-1900 by Janette Thomas Greenwood (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $55 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A study of former slaves in Union-occupied northeastern North Carolina who were led north by white soldiers from Worcester.

Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France by Karen Fiss (University of Chicago Press; 285 pages; $99 hardcover, $37.50 paperback). Explores French-German cultural interactions in the 1930s that set the stage for collaboration; focuses on the pavilion designed by Hitler’s favorite architect, Albert Speer, for the 1937 Paris exposition.

Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945 by Michaela Hoenicke Moore (Cambridge University Press; 408 pages; $85). Topics include tensions between popular and expert views of the Third Reich.

Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France From the Liberation to AIDS by Julian Jackson (University of Chicago Press; 321 pages; $40). Draws on interview and archival sources in a study of Arcadie, a organization founded in 1954 that became a voice for gay people in France before the radicalism of the late 60s.

Lost to the Collective: Suicide and the Promise of Soviet Socialism, 1921-1929 by Kenneth M. Pinnow (Cornell University Press; 288 pages; $49.95). Examines Bolshevik and Red Army practices intended to identify suicidal individuals and establish their significance to the rest of Soviet society.

New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era by Jennifer Fronc (University of Chicago Press; 240 pages; $35). Discusses reform-minded organizations’ employment of journalists and others to do undercover investigations of immigrant, criminal, radical, and other milieus.

Nine Wartime Lives: Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self by James Hinton (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $45). Draws on diaries kept by nine ordinary people in World War II Britain who agreed to record their daily lives for a social research organization.

Old World, New World: America and Europe in the Age of Jefferson edited by Leonard J. Sadosky (University of Virginia Press; 304 pages; $59.50). Essays on American-European relations during the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary eras.

Pennsylvania’s Revolution edited by William Pencak (Penn State University Press; 396 pages; $85). Essays on the experience of the colony and later state in the Revolutionary era; topics include Loyalist uprisings in western Pennsylvania.

The Portuguese Revolution: State and Class in the Transistion to Democracy by Ronald H. Chilcote (Rowman & Littlefield; 315 pages; $79). Traces the origins, events, and revolutionary aftermath of the coup on April 25, 1974, that overthrew the decades-old Portuguese dictatorship.

Recovering Solidarity: Lessons From Poland’s Unfinished Revolution by Gerald J. Beyer (University of Notre Dame Press; 324 pages; $40). Combines historical and Catholic ethical perspectives in a study of neoliberalism and poverty in Poland and the eclipse of the Solidarity movement.

Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path by Laura Engelstein (Cornell University Press; 256 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Considers how the Slavophilic aversion to secular individualism shaped and continues to shape Russian political life.

Stories of the Soviet Experience: Memoirs, Diaries, Dreams by Irina Paperno (Cornell University Press; 256 pages; $55 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A study of personal writings that document the impact of Soviet rule on private life; focuses on two texts: Notes About Anna Akhmatova, a diary kept about the poet by her friend Lidiia Chukovskaia, and autobiographical notebooks by a former peasant named Evgeniia Kiseleva who hoped to write a screenplay from her life.

Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition by Dylan Rodriguez (University of Minnesota Press; 258 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Discusses the Filipino-American as defined by what has been an under-theorized relationship to white supremacist violence.

Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940-1960 by Andrew J. Falk (University of Massachusetts Press; 264 pages; $34.95). Describes the “informal diplomacy” of writers and performers who challenged the establishment view of foreign relations during the cold-war period.

Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865 by S. Scott Rohrer (University of North Carolina Press; 312 pages; $39.95). Examines the migration patterns of Puritans, Moravians, Mormons, Inspirationists, and four other groups.

Windows Into the Past: Life Histories and the Historian of South Asia by Judith M. Brown (University of Notre Dame Press; 120 pages; $20). Considers how the lives of individuals, families, and institutions can be used in the study of history.

Working the Diaspora: The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World, 1650-1850 by Frederick C. Knight (New York University Press; 228 pages; $48). Topics include how the agricultural knowledge carried by Africans across the Atlantic shaped the cultivation of cotton, indigo, tobacco, and staple foods.

LAW

The Battle Over Bilingual Ballots: Language Minorities and Political Access Under the Voting Rights Act by James Thomas Tucker (Ashgate Publishing Company; 413 pages; $99.95). Traces the evolution of language-assistance provisions in and beyond the 1965 act.

Catastrophe: Law, Politics, and the Humanitarian Impulse edited by Austin Sarat and Javier Lezaun (University of Massachusetts Press; 240 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Essays on such topics as Hurricane Katrina, Darfur, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Church, State, and Original Intent by Donald L. Drakeman (Cambridge University Press; 382 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Argues that the Constitution’s framers intended the establishment clause only as a prohibition of a single national church rather than as a mandate for church-state separation.

Human Rights, Southern Voices: Francis Deng, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Yash Ghai, and Upendra Baxi edited by William Twining (Cambridge University Press; 238 pages; $110 hardcover, $37.99 paperback). Writings by jurists from Sudan, Kenya, and India.

The Law and Governance of Water Resources: The Challenge of Sustainability by Douglas Fisher (Edward Elgar Publishing; 400 pages; $165). Traces the history of water-resource law over the centuries and asserts the need for doctrinal innovation.

A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance by Stephen Clarkson and Stepan Wood (University of British Columbia Press; 360 pages; US$85). Topics include the emergence of a global supraconstitution.

Redesigning the World Trade Organization for the Twenty-First Century edited by Debra P. Steger (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 475 pages; $44.95). Writings on the need for reforms of the WTO, including greater transparency and changes in decision- and rule-making procedures and internal management structures.

Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: The Role of International Law and the State Department Legal Adviser by Michael P. Scharf and Paul R. Williams (Cambridge University Press; 336 pages; $85 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Draws on discussions with 10 of the living former State Department legal advisors and includes a detailed case study of the treatment of detainees in the “war on terror.”

LINGUISTICS

The Language of the Inuit: Syntax, Semantics, and Society in the Arctic by Louis-Jacques Dorais (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 396 pages; US$45). Topics include the impact of bilingualism, literacy, and formal education on Inuit language.

The Syntax of Ellipsis: Evidence From Dutch Dialects by Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (Oxford University Press; 334 pages; $125). A study of elliptical constructions in southern Dutch dialects.

LITERATURE

2000 Years of Mayan Literature by Dennis Tedlock (University of California Press; 465 pages; $49.95). A study of Mayan writing from the earliest hieroglyphics to the adoption of a Roman alphabet; documents the work of female writers and disputes the notion that Mayan rulers claimed the status of gods.

The Affective Life of the Average Man: The Victorian Novel and the Stock-Market Graph by Audrey Jaffe (Ohio State University Press; 138 pages; $59.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws parallels between how the novel and the stock market define character as primarily vicarious; works analyzed include Middlemarch, The Prime Minister, David Copperfield, and Little Dorritt.

The Bohemians: A Novel by Anne Gedeon Lafitte, translated by Vivian Folkenflik (University of Pennsylvania Press; 272 pages; $34.95). First English translation of a novel by a libertine marquis who was in the same prison as the marquis de Sade.

Boys at Home: Discipline, Masculinity, and “the Boy Problem” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Ken Parille (University of Tennessee Press; 208 pages; $40). Examines depictions of boyhood in fiction, conduct books, and other texts by male and female writers from 1830 to 1885; topics include debates over corporal punishment.

British State Romanticism: Authorship, Agency, and Bureaucratic Nationalism by Anne Frey (Stanford University Press; 216 pages; $55). Focuses on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Scott, and De Quincey in a study of how late Romantic authorship shifted in response to an expanding bureaucratic state.

The Cultural Production of Matthew Arnold by Antony H. Harrison (Ohio University Press; 160 pages; $49.95 hardcover, $26 paperback). Discusses the English critic’s career in terms of the processes of self- and institutional definition in the Victorian era.

Detective Fiction in a Postcolonial and Transnational World edited by Nels Pearson and Marc Singer (Ashgate Publishing Company; 214 pages; $99.95). Essays on Vikram Chandra, Suki Kim, Michael Ondaatje, and other authors who have adopted the genre of detective fiction to expose problems in postcolonial and transitional societies.

Food and Femininity in Twentieth-Century British Women’s Fiction by Andrea Adolph (Ashgate Publishing Company; 183 pages; $99.95). A feminist analysis of the trope and politics of food in works by Barbara Pym, Angela Carter, Helen Dunmore, Helen Fielding, and Rachel Cusk.

In the Forest of Faded Wisdom: 104 Poems by Gendun Chopel: A Bilingual Edition edited and translated by Donald S. Lopez Jr. (University of Chicago Press; 191 pages; $26). Scholarly bilingual edition of the poems of the Tibetan poet and monk, who died in prison in 1951 after being arrested on fabricated charges of treason by the government of the young Dalai Lama.

Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth Century Britain edited by Kristin Bluemel (Edinburgh University Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 254 pages; $95). Essays on Elizabeth Bowen, William Empson, Storm Jameson, George Orwell, and other writers as “intermodernists” distinct in background, politics, and literary approach from both modernists and postmodernists.

J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind by Steven L. Davis (University of Texas Press; 264 pages; $24.95). A biography of the Texas writer (1888-1964) and “free range thinker” who called for the complete integration of the University of Texas in the 1940s and was a leading dissenter in the McCarthy era.

Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550-1650 by Rebecca Laroche (Ashgate Publishing Company; 195 pages; $99.95). Focuses on Margaret Hoby, Grace Mildmay, Elizabeth Isham, and Isabella Whitney in a study of female writers’ engagement with print herbals.

On Demand: Writing for the Market in Early Modern England by David J. Baker (Stanford University Press; 224 pages; $55). Considers how writers of the 16th and early 17th centuries addressed the contradictions of consumer and wider economic behavior; topics include Shakespeare’s satirizing of credit problems.

Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI by Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (Oxford University Press; 280 pages; $99). Draws on previously untapped legal and business records in a study of the work and rivalries of the King’s Printing House in the 17th century.

Racine: From Ancient Myth to Tragic Modernity by Mitchell Greenberg (University of Minnesota Press; 287 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). A psychoanalytic study of the 17th-century French author that explores how he used Oedipus and other myth in his work.

Radical Indecision: Barthes, Blanchot, Derrida, and the Future of Criticism by Leslie Hill (University of Notre Dame Press; 438 pages; $45). Discusses the three French theorists in relation to the notion of the undecidable in literary criticism; authors analyzed include Sade, Mallarme, Proust, Artaud, Genet, Celan, and Duras.

Revising the Clinic: Vision and Representation in Victorian Medical Narrative and the Novel by Meegan Kennedy (Ohio State University Press; 261 pages; $39.95). Documents a reciprocal influence between the novel and the medical case history; authors discussed include Dickens, Eliot, and Gaskell.

Thinking Allegory Otherwise edited by Brenda Machosky (Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $50). Essays on allegory beyond literature and art to such realms as architecture, philosophy, theater, science, and law.

MATHEMATICS

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, edited by William F. Lindgren and Thomas F. Banchoff (Cambridge University Press; 294 pages; $50 hardcover, $14.99 paperback). Annotated edition of the 1884 mathematical satire, which is narrated by an inhabitant of a two-dimensional universe who is introduced to the experience of three-dimensional space.

MEDICINE

The Convergence of Science and Governance: Research, Health Policy, and American States by Daniel M. Fox (University of California Press; 192 pages; $29.95). Examines the collaboration of researchers and public officials in the evaluation of health-care services.

MUSIC

Jonathan Harvey: “Song Offerings” and “White as Jasmine” by Michael Downes (Ashgate Publishing Company; 149 pages; $69.95; includes a compact disk). A study of the British composer (b. 1939) that focuses on a 1985 and a 1999 work linked to texts by Hindu writers.

Music and Cyberliberties by Patrick Burkart (Wesleyan University Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 180 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of individual and group activism against major music labels’ efforts to restrict informal sharing and distribution.

Water Music: Making Music in the Spas of Europe and North America by Ian Bradley (Oxford University Press; 240 pages; $29.95). Discusses composition and performance in spa towns, including, for example, Johannes Brahms’s 17 summers at Baden-Baden.

PHILOSOPHY

An Image of the Soul in Speech: Plato and the Problem of Socrates by David M. McNeill (Penn State University Press; 345 pages; $65). A defense and study of Socrates’ moral psychology.

Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion by Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Yale University Press; 201 pages; $28). Focuses on the “new naturalism,” an effort to explain religion on the basis of evolutionary theory and cognitive science, and the “new natural theology,” an effort to reconcile scientific and religious perspectives.

Politics and the Imagination by Raymond Geuss (Princeton University Press; 198 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). New and previously published writings on such topics as a metaphysics of right.

States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals by Jacqueline Stevens (Columbia University Press; 364 pages; $35). A critique of prevailing institutions of property, inheritance, marriage, and birthright citizenship.

Surviving Death by Mark Johnston (Princeton University Press; 416 pages; $35). Develops a naturalistic account of an afterlife centered on the importance of goodness.

What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 264 pages; $26). Combines perspectives from philosophy and experimental biology in a critique of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa by J. Michael Williams (Indiana University Press; 300 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of how chiefs have negotiated the new political order in a democratic South Africa.

The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel by Dima Adamsky (Stanford University Press; 248 pages; $65 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Draws on previously inaccessible sources in a study of the divergent paths of military innovation in the three countries.

Demanding Democracy: American Radicals in Search of a New Politics by Marc Stears (Princeton University Press; 256 pages; $29.95). Draws lessons for today’s politics from radical movements of the 20th century, including trade unionists, civil-rights campaigners, and the New Left.

Developing Interests: Organizational Change and the Politics of Advocacy by McGee Young (University Press of Kansas; 211 pages; $34.95 hardcover, $19.95 paperback). A study of four key interest groups in the policy areas of the environment and small business: the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, the National Small Business Administration, and the National Federation of Independent Business.

The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity by Wang Hui (Verso; 238 pages; $26.95). Argues for an alternative to both neoliberalism and authoritarianism in China.

Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age by Jeffrey E. Cohen (Cambridge University Press; 256 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.99 paperback). Develops a theory of U.S. presidential news management; draws on data from what is termed the first large-scale content analysis of local newspaper coverage of the president.

The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the Knowledge Age by Jenny Andersson (Stanford University Press; 208 pages; $39.95). A study of Britain’s New Labour movement and Sweden’s Social Democratic Party.

Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression: The Black Panther Party by Christian Davenport (Cambridge University Press; 264 pages; $80 hardcover, $25.99 paperback). Considers how location and political orientation of newspapers shaped coverage of the clash between the party and government agencies in the San Francisco Bay area from 1967 to 1973.

More Than Kings and Less Than Men: Tocqueville on the Promise and Perils of Democratic Individualism by L. Joseph Hebert Jr. (Lexington Books; 211 pages; $65). Discusses the French thinker’s fears of an extreme individualism that would set the stage for despotism.

Muslims of Europe: The “Other” Europeans by H.A. Hellyer (Edinburgh University Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 246 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Includes a case study of Muslims in Britain.

One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era by Gi-Wook Shin (Stanford University Press; 296 pages; $65 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Draws on material from U.S. and Korean newspapers in a study of U.S.-South Korean relations from 1992 to 2003.

Reorganizing Popular Politics: Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America by Ruth Berins Collier and Samuel Handlin (Penn State University Press; 394368 pages; $65 hardcover, $30 paperback). Traces a shift toward community-based associations as a voice for lower-class concerns; draws on surveys in the capitals of Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela.

Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents by Ian Buruma (Princeton University Press; 132 pages; $19.95). Focuses on the United States, Europe, and China and Japan in a study of tensions between religion and politics.

War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War by Matthew A. Baum and Tim J. Groeling (Princeton University Press; 312 pages; $70 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Considers how the media’s casting of foreign-policy rhetoric and events shapes the support given by Americans for military engagement abroad.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal, and Spain by Edoardo Ongaro (Edward Elgar Publishing; 336 pages; $140). A comparative study of systems that depart from the Anglo-Saxon model.

PUBLIC POLICY

From Immigrants to Americans: The Rise and Fall of Fitting In by Jacob L. Vigdor (Rowman & Littlefield; 217 pages; $34.95). Examines the economic mobility and linguistic and other assimilation of past and present-day immigrants.

Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship, and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment by Leah F. Vosko (Oxford University Press; 320 pages; $90). Focuses on women and migrants in a study of the growing trend toward part-time and temporary employment.

RELIGION

Anatheism: Returning to God After God by Richard Kearney (Columbia University Press; 247 pages; $29.50). Discusses what is termed a form of “creative not knowing” to rediscover divinity in everyday life.

Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on Popular Culture and Religious Expression edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Benjamin Valentin (Duke University Press; 432 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Essays and essay responses by African-American and Latino scholars; topics include telenovelas as theological theater, and the theological poetics of Lauryn Hill and Tupac Shakur.

Grace Jantzen: Redeeming the Present edited by Elaine L. Graham (Ashgate Publishing Company; 269 pages; $114.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Essays on the British feminist theologian (1948-2006).

Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own TIme by Sarah Ruden (Pantheon; 214 pages; $25). Considers how Paul’s words might have have affected the people of his era; juxtaposes his writings with those of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers.

Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China by Lian Xi (Yale University Press; 333 pages; $45). Traces the growth of Protestant Christianity in 20th-century China from a missionary movement to an indigenous popular religion.

Sex and Religion in the Bible by Calum Carmichael (Yale University Press; 210 pages; $50). Explores ancient ideas about sexuality, marriage, fertility, and love as reflected in such biblical stories as Jacob and Leah, Abraham and Sarah, and the Wedding at Cana.

SOCIOLOGY

The Forgotten Kin: Aunts and Uncles by Robert M. Milardo (Cambridge University Press; 264 pages; $85). Draws on interview and other data in a study of the role of aunts and uncles in family networks.

Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration by Janet W. Salaff, Siu-Iun Wong, and Arent Greve (University of Illinois Press; 296 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). Uses the histories of nine families to examine the forces that prompted citizens of Hong Kong to emigrate, and often return, after the former British colony was restored to China in 1997.

Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire by Lynne A. Haney (University of California Press; 287 pages; $60 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of incarcerated mothers who are housed with their children in two alternative, community-based prisons in northern California.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis edited by Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar (State University of New York Press; 232 pages; $75 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Essays on such topics as the politics and possibilities of transnational feminist film.