Weekly Book List, January 15, 2016

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Cultural Melancholy: Readings of Race, Impossible Mourning, and African American Ritual by Jermaine Singleton (University of Illinois Press; 153 pages; $50). Links critical race studies, psychoanalysis, and performance studies in a study of literary and other expressions of the unresolved grief produced by racial oppression.

AMERICAN STUDIES

Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry and the Transformation of Nashville by Jeremy Hill (University of Massachusetts Press; 224 pages; $90 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Describes how a flexible idea of “country” allowed the genre to move to and transform an urban setting, Nashville, as well as alter ideas of American character and landscape.

Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style and the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s and 1970s by Betty Luther Hillman (University of Nebraska Press; 252 pages; $40). Discusses performative self-presentation in the dress and grooming of hippies, feminists, Black Panthers, and others in the 1960s and 70s.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Alchemy in the Rain Forest: Politics, Ecology, and Resilience in a New Guinea Mining Area by Jerry K. Jacka (Duke University Press; 283 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). An ethnographic, historical, and ecological study of the impact of large-scale mining in highland Papua New Guinea; draws on fieldwork in Porgera, site of a major gold mine.

Demoting Vishnu: Ritual, Politics, and the Unraveling of Nepal’s Hindu Monarchy by Anne T. Mocko (Oxford University Press; 246 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Examines how a cooption of royal ritual figured in Nepal’s shift from Hindu kingdom to republic.

Divination’s Grasp: African Encounter’s With the Almost Said by Richard Werbner (Indiana University Press; 356 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Explores the moral imagination of the Tswapong of southern Africa through a study of the language of divination.

Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti by Mark Schuller (Rutgers University Press; 295 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on interviews with foreign aid workers and displaced Haitians in eight camps in a critique of the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake.

Last Project Standing: Civics and Sympathy in Post-Welfare Chicago by Catherine Fennell (University of Minnesota Press; 307 pages; $94.50 hardcover, $27 paperback). Combines ethnographic and archival perspectives in a study of the redevelopment of the Henry Horner housing complex, a half-vacant site on the city’s West Side demolished in 1995.

Wars of Terror by Gabriele Marranci (Bloomsbury Academic; 151 pages; $120 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Offers an anthropological perspective on the rhetoric and ideology of what is termed a war between “civilizers,” or people who claim to define what is human.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Crow Indian Rock Art: Indigenous Perspectives and Interpretations by Timothy P. McCleary (Left Coast Press; 183 pages; $79). Focuses on sites in Montana in a study of the cultural significance of rock art for the present-day Apsaalooke or Crow.

Site Formation Processes of Submerged Shipwrecks edited by Matthew E. Keith (University Press of Florida/Society for Historical Archaeology; 276 pages; $79.95). Research on the natural and human-produced factors that affect the condition of shipwreck sites investigated by archaeologists.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Becoming Past: History in Contemporary Art by Jane Blocker (University of Minnesota Press; 248 pages; $105 hardcover, $30 paperback). Topics include issues of temporality in relation to the question of whether there can exist contemporary art history; artists discussed include the collaborative group Goat Island, the writer Samuel Delany, and the sculptor Dario Robleto.

Building Modern Turkey: State, Space, and Ideology in the Early Republic by Zeynep Kezer (University of Pittsburgh Press; 330 pages; $29.95). A study of how the built environment reflected Turkey’s transition from an empire to a more homogenized nation-state.

Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile by Tom Nickson (Penn State University Press; 320 pages; $89.95). Focuses on the early 13th to late 14th centuries in a study of the art and architecture of the cathedral in what was then the most cosmopolitan city in what would become Spain.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations, and Commentary by Susan H. Prince (University of Michigan Press; 784 pages; $130). Edition, translation, and study of materials citing Antisthenes (c. 445-365 BC), a famous disciple of Socrates.

The Arena of Satire: Juvenal’s Search for Rome by David H.J. Larmour (University of Oklahoma Press; 368 pages; $34.95). Topics include how Juvenal’s satires reflect the second-century writer as flaneur through Rome, searching its built environment for virtues that have disappeared with the corruption of the age.

The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States by Alain Bresson, translated by Steven Rendall (Princeton University Press; 620 pages; $45). Expanded English edition of a two-volume French study.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion by Judah Schept (New York University Press; 320 pages; $89 hardcover, $27 paperback). Focuses on initiatives in Bloomington and Monroe County, Ind., in a study of how liberal discourse on rehabilitation and therapeutic justice can reinforce the carceral state.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Latin@s’ Presence in the Food Industry: Changing How We Think about Food edited by Meredith E. Abarca and Consuelo Carr Salas (University of Arkansas Press; 280 pages; $24.95). Multidisciplinary essays on such topics as eating disorders as nervous immigrant conditions in contemporary Latina fiction.

ECONOMICS

The Dynamics of Interfirm Relationships: Markets and Organization in Japan by Yongdo Kim (Edward Elgar Publishing; 200 pages; $99.95). Focuses on relations among the steel, machine-tool, integrated-circuit, and liquid-crystal-display-materials industries.

Global Production: Firms, Contracts, and Trade Structure by Pol Antras (Princeton University Press; 328 pages; $49.50). Examines the nature and impact of the frictions that arise as companies negotiate agreements around the offshoring of parts, components, and services to producers in different countries.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon (Princeton University Press; 762 pages; $39.95). Argues, among other things, that the level of innovations between the 1870s and 1970s cannot be repeated.

Understanding Ponzi Schemes: Can Better Financial Regulation Prevent Investors From Being Defrauded? by Mervyn K. Lewis (Edward Elgar Publishing; 200 pages; $120). Combines theoretical models with case studies of 11 examples of the fraudulent schemes in the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

EDUCATION

“Brown v. Board” and the Transformation of American Culture: Education and the South in the Age of Desegregation by Ben Keppel (Louisiana State University Press; 225 pages; $45). Discusses the psychologist Robert Coles, the comedian Bill Cosby, and the Sesame Street producer Joan Ganz Cooney as three figures who helped usher in new ideas of citizenship in the years following the ruling.

High-Stakes Schooling: What We Can Learn from Japan’s Experiences with Testing, Accountability, and Education Reform by Christopher Bjork (University of Chicago Press; 251 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws lessons for American education from a reform movement in Japan known as yutori kyoiku or “relaxed education”; based on fieldwork in schools in the northeastern city of Nishiyama.

South Asian in the Mid-South: Migrations of Literacies by Iswari P. Pandey (University of Pittsburgh Press; 232 pages; $26.95). Draws on more than 70 interviews in a study of the literacy practices of transnational South Asian immigrants.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States by Carl A. Zimring (New York University Press; 273 pages; $35). Traces the conflation of ideas of race and hygiene from the early Republic to the Memphis Public Workers Strike of 1968.

FILM STUDIES

Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas: Absent Fathers, Banned Books, and Red Balloons by Michelle E. Bloom (University of Hawai’i Press; 296 pages; $59). Discusses films by Chinese and Taiwanese directors who reference or adapt French cinema, engage France as a setting, or even cast French actors and use French dialogue; directors discussed include Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Cheng Yu-chieh, and Dai Sijie.

White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan by Tom Rice (Indiana University Press; 328 pages; $80 hardcover, $28 paperback). Examines the Klan’s relationship to cinema in the interwar period, including a film series produced by the white supremacist group.

HISTORY

The Ba’thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Totalitarianism by Aaron M. Faust (University of Texas Press; 296 pages; $55). Draws on party documents discovered during the U.S. invasion of 2003 in a study of how the party inculcated loyalty among ordinary citizens.

Building a Nation: Caribbean Federation in the Black Diaspora by Eric D. Duke (University Press of Florida; 359 pages; $84.95). Discusses efforts to pursue a federation among British colonies in the West Indies, a plan that originated among the colonial elite, but was later pursued by black activists in the region and in diaspora.

The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History by Dingxin Zhao (Oxford University Press; 447 pages; $85). A work of historical sociology that examines how and why China was unified and developed into a bureaucratic empire by the time of the Qin dynasty; also explores the resilience of that structure until nearly the end of the 19th century.

Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South Since 1910 by Julie M. Weise (University of North Carolina Press; 358 pages; $32.50). Combines archival, oral-historical, and other approaches in a study of Mexican migration to New Orleans, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina.

Engines of Truth: Producing Veracity in the Victorian Courtroom by Wendie Ellen Schneider (Yale University Press; 265 pages; $85). Discusses a period in the mid-19th century characterized by aggressive attempts to police and uncover perjury; includes discussion of British colonial courts in India.

Epiphany in the Wilderness: Hunting, Nature, and Performance in the Nineteenth-Century American West by Karen R. Jones (University Press of Colorado; 363 pages; $55). Uses performance as a metaphor to explore hunting in the West, including its relationship to American individualism, its afterlife in literature, art, taxidermy, and other realms, and its transformation with the rise of conservation.

The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi by Nilanjana Sengupta (Cambridge University Press; 407 pages; $120). Draws on previously untranslated material in a study of Burmese history and politics from the perspectives of four prominent women: Khin Myo Chit, Ludu Daw Amar, Ma Thida, and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism by Markku Ruotsila (Oxford University Press; 403 pages; $35). Draws on newly available archival and FBI materials in a biography of the fundamentalist preacher, anticommunist, and radio broadcaster (1906-2002), who spearheaded the forces that became the Christian Right.

The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy (Basic Books; 432 pages; $29.99). Topics include how empires since ancient times have used Ukraine’s strategic position between East and West.

Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction by Elaine Frantz Parsons (University of North Carolina Press; 352 pages; $34.95). Topics include how Northern newspapers’ reports of the activities of the original Tennessee KKK influenced other Southerners to start their own branches.

The Legacy of St. George Tucker: College Professors in Virginia Confront Slavery and Rights of States, 1771--1897 by Chad Vanderford (University of Tennessee Press; 296 pages; $49.95). Examines ideas of slavery, secession, and natural right on the part of three generations of professors in the same family: the scholar and American Founding Father George Tucker, his Henry, and his grandson John Randolph.

Maritime Command Pacific: The Royal Canadian Navy’s West Coast Fleet in the Early Cold War by David Zimmerman (University of British Columbia Press; 192 pages; US$99). Disputes notions of a tranquil “yacht club” in a study of the Royal Canadian Navy’s postwar activities in the Pacific between 1945 and 1965.

The Medici: Citizens and Masters edited by Robert Black and John E. Law (Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, distributed by Harvard University Press; 432 pages; $40). Writings that compare the Medici to earlier Florentine regimes, as well as to the rulers of such princely states as Milan and Ferrara; topics include dynastic marriage and politics

Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century by Daniel Ramirez (University of North Carolina Press; 306 pages; $29.95). Examines the borderlands as a source of Pentecostal expansion, beginning in Los Angeles in 1906 with the Azusa Street Revival.

Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics, and the Twilight of the Russian Empire by Rebecca Mitchell (Yale University Press; 321 pages; $95). Offers an intellectual history of music’s cultural meaning for late imperial elites; topics include the careers of three major composers: Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner, and Rachmaninoff.

Of Love and Loathing: Marital Life, Strife, and Intimacy in the Colonial Andes, 1750-1825 by Nicholas A. Robins (University of Nebraska Press; 280 pages; $60). Documents resistance against policies that sought to police marriage and intimacy in late colonial Bourbon Charcas, a region comprising present-day Bolivia and parts of Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina.

Remembering America: How We Have Told Our Past by Lawrence R. Samuel (University of Nebraska Press; 208 pages; $29.95). Traces the contested role of history in American education and popular culture in six periods since the 1920s.

Reporting the First World War: Charles Repington, The Times and the Great War by A.J.A. Morris (Cambridge University Press; 408 pages; $99). A study of the British military correspondent that examines how his London Times column, “The War Day by Day” shaped the understanding of policymakers and public alike.

Right to Revolt: The Crusade for Racial Justice in Mississippi’s Central Piney Woods by Patricia Michelle Boyett (University Press of Mississippi; 320 pages; $65). Examines the racial violence that linked Forrest and Jones Counties, with particular attention to the period surrounding the January 1966 murder of civil-rights leader Vernon Dahmer.

Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca by Eileen Kane (Cornell University Press; 256 pages; $35). Focuses on the late imperial period in a study of how officials sought to control and benefit from the passage through the empire of Muslim pilgrims bound for Mecca.

Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability by Morgan Pitelka (University of Hawai’i Press; 256 pages; $49). Discusses palaces, hostages, tea utensils, and other material objects and objectified humans in relation to the career and cultural afterlife of Ieyasu (1543-1616), the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Taconite Dreams: The Struggle to Sustain Mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range, 1915-2000 by Jeffrey T. Manuel (University of Minnesota Press; 279 pages; $98 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines political and other efforts to prevent decline and deindustrialization in the region.

Vilnius between Nations, 1795--2000 by Theodore R. Weeks (Northern Illinois University Press; 366 pages; $45). Explores the city’s shared heritage in Polish, Lithuanian, and Jewish culture.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State by Lisa McGirr (W.W. Norton & Company; 330 pages; $27.95). Discusses Prohibition’s role in the expansion of the federal government and the discriminatory growth of the carceral state.

Wil Lou Gray: The Making of a Southern Progressive from New South to New Deal by Mary Macdonald Ogden (University of South Carolina Press; 216 pages; $34.95). Traces the life of the South Carolina reformer, who served as state superintendent for adult schools from 1919 to 1946.

LAW

The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law by Brett Christophers (Harvard University Press; 348 pages; $45). Focuses on the United States and Britain since the late 19th century in a study of how law mediates and manages the relationship between monopoly and competition under capitalism.

Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory by Nuno Garoupa and Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago Press; 273 pages; $45). Uses data from legal systems in the Americas, Europe, and Asia in a study of how the reputation of the judiciary reflects how judges respond to different incentives of different audiences; draws on theories from the economics of information and a model of agency from law and economics.

Law’s Religion: Religious Difference and the Claims of Constitutionalism by Benjamin L. Berger (University of Toronto Press; 240 pages; US$60 hardcover, US$26.95 paperback). Focuses on Canadian jurisprudence in a study of the nature and limits of legal tolerance in matters of religion.

LITERATURE

Dancing on the Color Line: African American Tricksters in Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Gretchen Martin (University Press of Mississippi; 224 pages; $65). A study of how the figure of the black trickster shaped white-authored works, with a focus on John Pendleton Kennedy’s Swallow Barn, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Melville’s Benito Cereno, Joel Chandler Harris’s short stories, and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Pudd’nhead Wilson.

Form and Instability: Eastern Europe, Literature, Postimperial Difference by Anita Starosta (Northwestern University Press; 232 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Explores the instability of Eastern Europe, with a focus on Polish writers from Sienkiewicz and Conrad to Gombrowicz, Kapuscinski, and Tischner.

The Full Severity of Compassion: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai by Chana Kronfeld (Stanford University Press; 400 pages; $55). Focuses on the Israeli poet (1924-2000) as an iconoclastic, experimental, revolutionary of deeply egalitarian politics.

History and Poetics in the Early Writings of William Morris, 1855--1870 by Florence S. Boos (Ohio State University Press; 384 pages; $91.95). Draws on texts left unpublished during the English writer’s lifetime.

Illegal Literature: Toward a Disruptive Creativity by David S. Roh (University of Minnesota Press; 200 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Defends the creative and cultural value of marginalized works that violate the copyrights of popular fiction; contrasts legal climates in the United States and Japan for “fan fiction” and dojinshi, respectively.

Joyce’s Ghosts: Ireland, Modernism, and Memory by Luke Gibbons (University of Chicago Press; 286 pages; $45). A study of Joyce’s vernacular modernism that argues that late colonial Ireland was not just subject for the writer, but essential to his stylistic experiments.

Living on Paper: Letters From Iris Murdoch, 1934-1995 edited by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe (Princeton University Press; 666 pages; $39.95). Annotated edition of more than 760 letters by the British novelist and philosopher, of which fewer than 40 are previously published.

London Fog: The Biography by Christine L. Corton (Harvard University Press; 391 pages; $35). Combines perspectives from literature, art, history and other realms in a study of the capital’s famous “pea soupers” that emerged with 19th-century industrialization.

A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina by Reverend Mrs. Charlotte S. Riley, edited by Crystal J. Lucky (University of Wisconsin Press; 130 pages; $24.95). Annotated edition of the 1902 autobiography of a woman born into slavery in in 1839 who became a licensed minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

On Cold Mountain: A Buddhist Reading of the Hanshan Poems by Paul Rouzer (University of Washington Press; 288 pages; $40). Examines how Buddhism may have shaped the reception of the Tang Dynasty poet in premodern times.

Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism by Alex Woloch (Harvard University Press; 410 pages; $45). A revisionist study of the British writer that explores how what is termed the “restlessness” of his plain style is linked to his aesthetics and politics; pays particular attention to 80 “As I Please” columns written between 1943 and 47 for the Tribune, a socialist weekly.

A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture edited by David LaRocca (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England; 368 pages; $85 hardcover, $45 paperback). Essays on the reciprocal influence of Emerson and non-American writers, including from the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism by Paula M.L. Moya (Stanford University Press; 264 pages; $80 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Focuses on Junot Diaz, Toni Morrison, and Helena Maria Viramontes in a study of how literary works can alter readers’ social perceptions.

MATHEMATICS

Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices by Jose Ferreiros (Princeton University Press; 337 pages; $45). Develops an agent-based philosophy of mathematics and traces math’s evolution from Euclidean geometry to real numbers and set-theoretic structures.

PHILOSOPHY

Beastly Morality: Animals as Ethical Agents edited by Jonathan K. Crane (Columbia University Press; 278 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Writings by philosophers, ethologists, religion scholars, and others; topics include animal empathy as a moral building block, and a Thomistic perspective on ethics in the close-knit societies of chimpanzees.

Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge by Robert Hanna (Oxford University Press; 477 pages; $99). New and previously published writings that develop a Kantian view of rational cognition and knowledge.

Feminist Interpretations of William James edited by Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan (Penn State University Press; 312 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $44.95 paperback). Topics include how James’s philosophy can be used to support feminism despite the thinker’s own gender ideals.

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle by Charles Batteux, translated by James O. Young (Oxford University Press; 151 pages; $70). First complete English translation of the French philosopher’s 1746 treatise, which influenced the aesthetic thought of Diderot, Herder, Hume, Kant, and other luminaries.

Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism by Katherin A. Rogers (Oxford University Press; 248 pages; $74). Develops a theory of free will and self creation grounded in the thought of the prelate, philosopher, theologian, and saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109).

Vico’s “New Science": A Philosophical Commentary by Donald Phillip Verene (Cornell University Press; 304 pages; $59.95). A study of Vico’s 1725 masterwork that explores the sources of his thought in Greek philosophy and Roman jurisprudence.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Avoiding Governors: Federalism, Democracy, and Poverty Alleviation in Brazil and Argentina by Tracy Beck Fenwick (University of Notre Dame Press; 296 pages; $29). Uses a comparative study of Brazil and Argentina to show how federalism affects governments’ ability to implement “conditional cash transfers” for the poor.

The French War on Al Qa’ida in Africa by Christopher S. Chivvis (Cambridge University Press; 242 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Draws on interviews with key figures in a study of France’s intervention in its former colony of Mali in January 2013 to stop an Al-Qaeda advance on the capital, Bamako.

Left and Right: The Small World of Political Ideas by Christopher Cochrane (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 256 pages; US$100 hardcover, US$34.95 paperback). Uses data from 21 Western countries since 1945 to examine the structure and persistence of the left/right divide in politics.

Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics by Lucan Way (Johns Hopkins University Press; 274 pages; $44.95). Focuses on the successor states to the former Soviet Union in a study of pluralism as a product of weak authoritarianism.

The Politics of Corruption in Dictatorships by Vineeta Yadav and Bumba Mukherjee (Cambridge University Press; 352 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $34.99 paperback). Combines cross-country data with in-depth case studies from Jordan, Malaysia, and Uganda to examine why corruption has declined in some authoritarian regimes, but not others.

The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance by Ole Jacob Sending (University of Michigan Press; 174 pages; $70). Uses the realms of peacebuilding and population governance to examine the role and power of experts in policymaking.

Realpolitik: A History by John Bew (Oxford University Press; 395 pages; $27.95). Traces the history of the German-coined term since its beginnings in the revolutions of 1848 and explores its impact on foreign-policy debates since the 19th century.

Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right by Lihi Ben Shitrit (Princeton University Press; 282 pages; $70 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Examines the “frames of exception” created by women whose activism might otherwise be viewed as violating their communities’ gender norms.

State Failure in the Modern World by Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr (Stanford University Press; 176 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Focuses on the period since World War II in a study of the circumstances of state failure, its recurrence in a given society, and its impact on other nations.

Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies by Claire L. Adida, David D. Laitin, and Marie-Anne Valfort (Harvard University Press; 264 pages; $45). Focuses on France in a study asserting that Muslims and majority Christian-heritage societies bear joint responsibility for Islamophobia; draws on interview, survey, experimental, and other data.

POPULAR CULTURE

Bigger Than “Ben-Hur": The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences edited by Barbara Ryan and Milette Shamir (Syracuse University Press; 304 pages; $65 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Essays on Lew Wallace’s 1880 bestseller and its stage and screen adaptations.

Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-Telling in a Skeptical Age by Nina Mickwitz (Palgrave Macmillan; 200 pages; $95). Discusses 21st-century comics as akin to documentary representations in film and other realms.

RELIGION

Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology edited by Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller, and Elias Ortega-Aponte (Fordham University Press; 446 pages; $125 hardcover, $35 paperback). Writings on a potential alliance between religious and non-religious realms with the threat of economic and environmental crises.

Daoism, Meditation, and the Wonders of Serenity: From the Latter Han Dynasty (25-220) to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) by Stephen Eskildsen (State University of New York Press; 387 pages; $85). Uses texts from the period to explore passive meditation methods that eschewed visualization, invocations, and similar manipulations.

Exploring Philemon: Freedom, Brotherhood, and Partnership in the New Society by Roy R. Jeal (Society of Biblical Literature; 230 pages; $45.95 hardcover, $30.95 paperback). Offers a socio-rhetorical study of the New Testament letter.

John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters edited by Roderick Strange (Oxford University Press; 595 pages; $49.50). Edition of letters from 1808 to 1890 that document the long life of the Anglican priest and scholar who famously converted to Catholicism and died a cardinal of the church.

Making Men: The Male Coming-of-Age Theme in the Hebrew Bible by Stephen M. Wilson (Oxford University Press; 250 pages; $74). Case studies include Moses, Samuel, and pre-monarchic maturation; Solomon and David and royal maturation; and Samson and the failure to mature.

Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions by Christian Lange (Cambridge University Press; 380 pages; $84.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Draws on Arabic and Persian texts in a study of Sunni and Shi’a ideas of the afterlife in theological, philosophical, mystical, topographical, and other terms.

Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self by Anne W. Stewart (Cambridge University Press; 260 pages; $99.99). A study of the moral psychology of the biblical book that argues that its authors had a more complex ethical vision than is suggested by such binaries as the righteous and the wicked.

Political Memory in and After the Persian Empire edited by Jason M. Silverman and Caroline Waerzeggers (Society of Biblical Literature; 501 pages; $79.95 hardcover, $55.95 paperback). Essays on how societies’ interactions with Persian kingship altered their own political memories and monarchic practices.

Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power by Donovan O. Schaefer (Duke University Press; 286 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on affect theory, evolutionary biology, and poststructuralist thought in a discussion of affect and the “animality” of religion; case studies include Islamophobia, children’s transformations as portrayed in the documentary Jesus Camp.

The Silent Qur’an and the Speaking Qur’an: Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor by Mohammed Ali Amir-Moezzi (Columbia University Press; 273 pages; $65). Combines historical and philological perspectives in a study of the emergence of the Qur’an and the Hadith against the background of violent succession struggles that followed Mohammed’s death; focuses on writings by five Shia scholars of the eighth to 10th centuries.

Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah by Jonathan Garb (University of Chicago Press; 297 pages; $45). Explores the interplay of the Jewish mystical tradition and ideas of psychology since the 16th century.

SOCIOLOGY

Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America by Roberto G. Gonzales (University of California Press; 320 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Reports on a 12-year study of undocumented young adults in Los Angeles; describes how with legal constraints, college-educated youth often end up the same work situations as high-school “early exiters.”

On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South by Vanesa Ribas (University of California Press; 270 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). An ethnographic study of workers at a slaughterhouse with a largely Latino and African-American workforce; topics include disposability and the challenges for cross-racial solidarity.

South African Jews in Israel: Assimilation in Multigenerational Perspective by Rebecca Raijman (University of Nebraska Press; 272 pages; $60). Combines qualitative and quantitative perspectives in a comparative study of assimilation among Jews of South African heritage across three generational cohorts.

Syria from Reform to Revolt, Volume 2: Culture, Society, and Religion edited by Christa Salamandra and Leif Stenberg (Syracuse University Press; 248 pages; $59.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays on Syrian society under Bashar al-Assad; topics include television drama, political criticism in Syrian fiction, Islamic foundations, and Christian charities.

URBAN STUDIES

Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World-Class Society by Sebastian Ureta (MIT Press; 202 pages; $37). Examines the shifting roles of policymakers and citizens in Transantiago, a transportation project in Chile’s capital that was proposed in 2000, implemented in 2007, and later normalized as a “permanent failing system.”