Weekly Book List, January 20, 2017

ANTHROPOLOGY

Black Autonomy: Race, Gender, and Afro-Nicaraguan Activism by Jennifer Goett (University of Illinois Press; 222 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork on coastal Monkey Point in Nicaragua’s Rama-Kriol territory in a study of a land-rights movement among working-class Creoles.

Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power by Joanne Randa Nucho (Princeton University Press; 192 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on research with local governments, NGOs, and political parties in a study of how sectarianism in Lebanon is “recalibrated” daily in the provision of essential services.

The Force of Custom: Law and the Ordering of Everyday Life in Kyrgyzstan by Judith Beyer (University of Pittsburgh Press; 248 pages; $28.95). Draws on fieldwork in the villages of Aral and Engels in a study of how the Kyrgz invoke salt, or custom, to negotiate moral behavior and resolve disputes.

ARCHAEOLOGY

The Ancient State of Puyo in Northeast Asia: Archaeology and Historical Memory by Mark E. Byington (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 398 pages; $59.95). Combines archaeological data with historical sources in a study of a state that existed in central Manchuria from the third century BC to the late fifth century AD.

Captives: How Stolen People Changed the World by Catherine M. Cameron (University of Nebraska Press; 205 pages; $59.95). Focuses on indigenous groups in the Americas in a study of captives taken in war or raiding and their impact on small-scale societies.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Sacred Consumption: Food and Ritual in Aztec Art and Culture by Elizabeth Moran (University of Texas Press; 176 pages; $75 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Analyzes images in Aztec painted manuscripts and sculpture, as well as in 16th-century indigenous and Spanish texts.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Honor Among Thieves: Craftsmen, Merchants, and Associations in Roman and Late Roman Egypt by Philip F. Venticinque (University of Michigan Press; 288 pages; $75). Explores the creation of social capital by members of craftsmen’s associations.

COMMUNICATION

Framing Internet Safety: The Governance of Youth Online by Nathan W. Fisk (MIT Press; 240 pages; $35). Topics include panics over youth exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, and threats to reputation.

ECONOMICS

Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China by Julian Gewirtz (Harvard University Press; 340 pages; $39.95). Documents Chinese policymakers’ extensive engagement with foreign economists during the Deng Xiaoping era.

The World Trade System: Trends and Challenges edited by Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Pravin Krishna, and Arvind Panagariya (MIT Press; 416 pages; $80). Pays particular attention to bilateral and plurilateral preferential trade arrangements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

FILM STUDIES

Beyond Blaxploitation edited by Novotny Lawrence and Gerald R. Butters Jr. (Wayne State University Press; 288 pages; $34.99). Essays on canonical and lesser-known films in the genre, as well as on movies that influenced the movement or are associated with it, but that challenge its conventions.

The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia edited by Elizabeth A. Papazian and Caroline Eades (Wallflower Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 315 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Writings on essayistic cinema as a type distinct from documentary and narrative; includes discussion of works by such directors as Chris Marker, Dziga Vertov, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Claire Denis, and Terrence Malick.

Movie Comics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page by Blair Davis (Rutgers University Press; 256 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines both comic-to-film adaptations and vice versa since the early history of cinema, with a focus on the Classical Hollywood era.

GEOGRAPHY

The Other One Percent: Indians in America by Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh (Oxford University Press; 355 pages; $34.95). Focuses on processes of selection, assimilation, and entrepreneurship in a study of the rapidly rising population of people of Indian origin in the United States.

HISTORY

Before Brasilia: Frontier Life in Central Brazil by Mary C. Karasch (University of New Mexico Press; 430 pages; $65). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study of the captaincy of Goias, with an emphasis on the rise of a majority free population of color by 1835.

Cast in Deathless Bronze: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire by Donald Tunnicliff Rice (West Virginia University Press; 370 pages; $79.99 hardcover, $27.99 paperback). Examines the mythology surrounding Andrew Rowan, a U.S. Army lieutenant whose “mission to Cuba” rose to national fame based on a largely false best-selling biographical account.

Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey by Anne Mendelson (Columbia University Press; 330 pages; $35). Topics include the racial dynamics of Chinese food’s hybridization in the United States, beginning with food cooked by Cantonese migrants in the Gold Rush.

The Civil War Diary of Rev. James Sheeran, C.Ss.R.: Chaplain, Confederate, Redemptorist edited by Patrick J. Hayes (Catholic University of America Press; 584 pages; $29.95). Documents the activities from August 1, 1862 through April 24, 1865 of an Irish-born Redemptorist priest who served as chaplain to the 14th Louisiana Regiment.

Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906 by Ellie R. Schainker (Stanford University Press; 339 pages; $65). Draws on imperial government files, the mass press, novels, memoirs, and other sources in a study of Jewish conversions to Christianity during the period.

Conquering Sickness: Race, Health, and Colonization in the Texas Borderlands by Mark Allan Goldberg (University of Nebraska Press; 231 pages; $60). A study of health-ways in the Texas borderlands from 1780 to 1861; topics include Anglo views of Indian and Mexican remedies.

The Courtesan and the Gigolo: The Murders in the Rue Montaigne and the Dark Side of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Aaron Freundschuh (Stanford University Press; 272 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Explores French fears of the colonial “Other,” as reflected in the arrest, raucous trial, and public guillotining of an Egyptian for a triple murder committed in March 1887.

Crossing the Gate: Everyday Lives of Women in Song Fujian (960-1279) by Man Xu (State University of New York Press; 357 pages; $90). Uses a study of women of varied classes in the Chinese province to identify a level of female agency during the Song period usually attributed to later dynasties.

Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio by Nikki M. Taylor (Ohio University Press; 180 pages; $55 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Offers a black feminist theory perspective on a fugitive slave who, on the moment of capture, killed her young daughter rather than have the child grow up in slavery, and whose story inspired Toni Morrison’s Beloved and other works.

Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois by Kerry Pimblott (University Press of Kentucky; 324 pages; $45). Traces links between black churches and the United Front, a black-power organization that was of the protest following the 1967 death of a black youth in police custody.

The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History by Susan Scott Parrish (Princeton University Press; 352 pages; $35). Draws on newspapers, blues music, fiction, and other sources in a study of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, said to be the most destructive river flood in U.S. history.

Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation by Jennifer Hart (Indiana University Press; 250 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Examines the history and politics of automobility in Ghana, beginning with the introduction of motorized transport in the colonial era.

Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and Narratives of the Enlightenment edited by Ali M. Ansari (University of Chicago Press; 246 pages; $85). Topics include the translation and reception of European thought in Iran, the revolution’s visual legacy in photography and postcards, and the influence on the revolution of the political thought of Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1853-96).

Julius Chambers: A Life in the Legal Struggle for Civil Rights by Richard A. Rosen (University of North Carolina Press; 395 pages; $35). A biography of the North Carolina-born lawyer (1936-2013), who was central to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s campaigns after 1964, arguing and winning key desegregation decisions before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Letters Written from the Banks of the Ohio by Claude-Francois de Lezay-Marnesia, edited by Benjamin Hoffmann, translated by Alan J. Singerman (Penn State University Press; 222 pages; $89.95). Translation of a 1792 work that documents the failed efforts of a French aristocrat to create a refuge for his ilk on more than 20,000 acres he bought along the Ohio River.

Maximo Castillo and the Mexican Revolution by Jesus Vargas Valdes, translated by Ana-Isabel Aliaga-Buchenau (Louisiana State University Press; 224 pages; $35). First English translation of the memoirs of a general from Chihuahua who was a key figure in the revolution between 1910 and 1920.

“Our Aim Was Man": Andrew’s Sharpshooters in the American Civil War edited by Roberta Senechal de la Roche (University of Massachusetts Press; 320 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws from the letters, diaries, and memoirs of four snipers who served with the First Company Massachusetts Sharpshooters.

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR by Chris Miller (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $29.95). Examines political factors that doomed Soviet efforts to revitalize socialism in the economic-reform mode of China’s Deng Xiaoping; draws on previously untapped documents from Politburo and other archives.

To Stand Aside or Stand Alone: Southern Reform Rabbis and the Civil Rights Movement by P. Allen Krause, edited by Mark K. Bauman with Stephen Krause (University of Alabama Press; 424 pages; $49.95). First publication of interviews that were conducted in 1966 by a young rabbinical student with rabbis then serving in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

The Age of Electroacoustics: Transforming Science and Sound by Roland Wittje (MIT Press; 297 pages; $40). Documents the late-19th and 20th-century shift of acoustics from a science primarily associated with classical music to a field linked to electrical engineering and the realms of industry and the military.

LAW

Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury by Anna Kirkland (New York University Press; 288 pages; $40). Examines the operations and legal issues raised by a small special court in the federal system that handles claims of harm from vaccines.

LITERATURE

Alfred Bester by Jad Smith (University of Illinois Press; 208 pages; $95 hardcover, $30 paperback). Traces the career of the American science-fiction writer (1913-87), who is best-known for his novels The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination.

American Autobiography after 9/11 by Megan Brown (University of Wisconsin Press; 160 pages; $64.95). Describes how the anxieties of post-9/11 society are reflected in such best-selling memoirs as Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

Bachelor Japanists: Japanese Aesthetics and Western Masculinities by Christopher Reed (Columbia University Press; 422 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on queer theory in case studies of japonisme, or Western cultural fascination with Japan; focuses on Edmond and Jules de Goncourt and other japonistes in late 19th-century Paris; curators and collectors in turn-of-the-century Brahmin Boston, and the mid-20th-century artistic circle linked to the Seattle painter Mark Tobey.

John McGahern and Modernism by Richard Robinson (Bloomsbury Academic; 261 pages; $114). Explores such concepts as “low modernism” in a study of The Leavetaking, The Pornographer, and other works by the Irish writer (1934-2006).

Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures edited by Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall (University of Minnesota Press; 228 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $25 paperback). Essays on the history and growing appeal of steampunk as fan subculture and genre in literature, film, fashion, and other realms; topics include the performance of racial and national identities in steampunk.

Lost in the Shadow of the Word: Space, Time, and Freedom in Interwar Eastern Europe by Benjamin Paloff (Northwestern University Press; 376 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Focuses on Czech, Polish, and Russian writers in a study of how notions of the destabilization of space and time affected Central and Eastern European authors in a way quite different from their Western counterparts.

Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights by Paulo Lemos (Harvard University Press; 384 pages; $29.95). Discusses invention, plagiarism, and other aspects of the making and remaking of the tales as they appeared in European translation.

Memoirs of Well-Being: Rewriting Discourses of Illness and Disability by Tanja Reiffenrath (Transcript-Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 320 pages; $45). A study of disability and illness memoirs that focus on writers’ depiction of cure, recovery, and healing; focuses on works by Audre Lorde, Oliver Sacks, Simi Linton, Kenny Fries, and Siri Hustvedt.

Owen Rhoscomyl by John S. Ellis (University of Wales Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 194 pages; $35). A literary biographer of the Welsh nationalist, writer, soldier, and adventurer (1863-1919), who embraced an ethos of hypermasculinity and whose works included semi-autobiographical adventure novels set in the American West, Patagonia, and South Africa.

Theory of the Novel by Guido Mazzoni, translated by Zakiya Hanafi (Harvard University Press; 378 pages; $39.95). Translation of a 2011 Italian study of the novel’s rise and the significance of its pluralistic world view.

When I Came to Die: Process and Prophecy in Thoreau’s Vision of Dying by Audrey Raden (University of Massachusetts Press; 184 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Explores Thoreau’s views on death and how they shaped his writing; topics include influences from both Eastern and Western traditions and his relationship with nature.

MUSIC

Memory, Space, and Sound edited by Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson, and John Richardson (Intellect Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 231 pages; $70). Writings on such topics as the communities formed around online sites dedicated to popular music of the past.

Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective edited by Huib Schippers and Catherine Grant (Oxford University Press; 370 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays in applied ethnomusicology on sustainability issues related to nine musical traditions from around the world, including Balinese gamelan, Southern Ewe dance-drumming, Vietnamese ca tru, and Korean samulnori percussion.

NEUROSCIENCE

Visual Cortex and Deep Networks: Learning Invariant Representations by Tomaso A. Poggio and Fabio Anselmi (MIT Press; 118 pages; $32). Develops a mathematical framework for describing learning in the “ventral visual stream,” which is thought to underlie object recognition in primates.

PHILOSOPHY

Leo Strauss on Science: Thoughts on the Relation between Natural Science and Political Philosophy by Svetozar Y. Minkov (State University of New York Press; 240 pages; $85). Draws on previously unpublished archives in a study of the German-born American thinker’s view of science.

Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism by Elias Sacks (Indiana University Press; 316 pages; $60). A study of the 18th-century German Jewish thinker that examines how his view of Jewish practice is shaped by a concern for the perils of historical change.

Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation: Rhetoric, Interpretation, and Hexadic Semiosis by Tony Jappy (Bloomsbury Academic; 212 pages; $128). A study of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and stages in his break from his original conception of a “Philosophy of Representation.”

Shooting to Kill: The Ethics of Police and Military Use of Lethal Force by Seumas Miller (Oxford University Press; 294 pages; $99 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Develops a teleological, institutional theory of when lethal force can be justified by law enforcement and the military.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Anti-Drug Policies in Colombia: Successes, Failures, and Wrong Turns edited by Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Meijia, translated by Jimmy Weiskopf (Vanderbilt University Press; 312 pages; $65). Evaluates policy outcomes in essays on such topics as money laundering, links between trafficking and paramilitaries, and the effects of the drug issue on Colombia’s foreign relations. .

Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes by Aurelian Craiutu (University of Pennsylvania Press; 295 pages; $49.95). Explores the value, qualities, and challenges of moderation in political life; draws on such thinkers as Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, and Michael Oakeshott.

John C. Calhoun’s Theory of Republicanism by John G. Grove (University Press of Kansas; 213 pages; $37.50). Topics include how the South Carolina statesman’s infamous defense of slavery contradicted, in some ways, his wider political theory.

The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprising and the Rebirth of the Shi’a-Sunni Divide by Geneive Abdo (Oxford University Press; 250 pages; $29.95). Disputes Western tendencies to downplay the importance of doctrinal differences in Shi’a-Sunni tensions.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Governing Under Stress: The Implementation of Obama’s Economic Stimulus Program edited by Timothy J. Conlan, Paul L. Posner, and Priscilla M. Regan (Georgetown University Press; 256 pages; $64.95 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Draws on interviews and nationwide fieldwork in writings on the implementation of a range of programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

RELIGION

The History of Courts and Procedure in Medieval Canon Law edited by Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Catholic University of America Press; 506 pages; $75). Essays on judicial practice and procedure in the medieval church from 1100 to 1500, with particular attention to courts in England, France, Spain, and East-Central Europe.

The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World by Jordan D. Rosenblum (Cambridge University Press; 208 pages; $99.99). Examines the rhetorical strategies of Jews as they defended their dietary laws in the face of Greek, Roman, and early Christian critique.

A Storied Sage: Canon and Creation in the Making of a Japanese Buddha by Micah L. Auerback (University of Chicago Press; 320 pages; $40). Traces changing concepts of the Buddha in Japanese high and popular culture from the eighth to the early 20th century.