Weekly Book List, January 22, 2016

AMERICAN STUDIES

The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen: From Sokol’niki Park to Chicago’s South Side by Kate A. Baldwin (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England; 256 pages; $85 hardcover, $45 paperback). Draws on literary and other realms in a study that contrasts the symbolism of the kitchen in settings from the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Coming of Age in Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology edited by Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox (University of Nebraska Press; 624 pages; $65). Combines scholarly essays with materials from the period to document how the fair’s focus on indigenous people shaped the emerging discipline of American anthropology.

Ecological Migrants: The Relocation of China’s Ewenki Reindeer Herders by Yuanyuan Xie (Berghahn Books; 220 pages; $95). Discusses “planned modernization” in China and the government’s relocation of a reindeer-herding, hunting people who previously lived in the forests of the Khingan mountains of Inner Mongolia.

Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal by Deirdre de la Cruz (University of Chicago Press; 302 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Combines history and anthropology in a study of Marian devotion and reported apparitions of the Virgin in the Philippines since the mid-19th century; considers how the mass media has shaped perceptions of the phenomenon.

The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads by Aldo Civico (University of California Press; 236 pages; $65 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on interviews with death-squad leaders, drug kingpins, and others in a study of the paramilitaries’ role sustaining the Colombian state.

Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual Economy by Gregory Mitchell (University of Chicago Press; 274 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses male sex workers in their interactions with foreign clients, from cruising in Rio bathhouses to forming long-term, transnational relationships.

Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life after Genocide by Diane M. Nelson (Duke University Press; 307 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Discusses death tolls, migration rates, debt, and other aspects of the “social life of numbers” in the aftermath of decades of civil conflict in Guatemala.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site edited by Robin A. Beck and Christopher Rodning (University Press of Florida; 448 pages; $89.95). Research on a site in western North Carolina that was founded in 1566 by the conquistador Juan Pardo; examines the deterioration of relations between the fort and the indigenous community of Joara, whose people sacked and burned the Spanish compound after 18 months.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor by Owen Hopkins (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 342 pages; $40). Traces the rise, fall, and revival of the reputation of the architect (1662-1736), who is best known for nine London churches, six still standing.

BIOLOGY

Parrots of the Wild: A Natural History of the World’s Most Captivating Birds by Catherine A. Toft and Timothy F. Wright (University of California Press; 345 pages; $39.95). Examines the diversity and ecology of wild parrots, which number some 350 species, and considers their future in a rapidly changing environment.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Athenian Comedy in the Roman Empire edited by C.W. Marshall and Tom Hawkins (Bloomsbury Academic; 295 pages; $120 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Essays on the Roman reception of Aristophanes, Menander, and their counterparts; topics include Favorinus and the comic adultery plot.

The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome by John Scheid, translated by Clifford Ando (University of Pennsylvania Press; 174 pages; $55). Translation of a 2013 French study that identifies biases from Christian theology in previous accounts of Roman religion.

Terence and the Verb “To Be” in Latin by Guiseppe Pezzini (Oxford University Press; 355 pages; $135). Uses Terence’s plays to explore contraction and sigmatic ecthlipsis in relation to the Latin verb “esse.”

ECONOMICS

Resource Communities in a Globalizing Region: Development, Agency, and Contestation in Northern British Columbia edited by Paul Bowles and Gary N. Wilson (University of British Columbia Press; 240 pages; US$99). Writings on tensions between local stakeholders and global forces in the resource-rich region of northern BC.

Trade Strategy in East Asia: From Regionalization to Regionalism by Fithra Faisal Hastiadi (Palgrave Macmillan; 208 pages; $110). A study of how the trade strategies of China, Japan, and South Korea have affected ASEAN nations.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Plantations and Protected Areas: A Global History of Forest Management by Brett Bennett (MIT Press; 201 pages; $29). Criticizes the bifurcation of forest management into protective and productive models and argues for an older integrated approach.

Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $99 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Writings on ecological restoration on “complex landscapes,” such as heritage sites, former industrial sites, and transitioning military sites.

FILM STUDIES

Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System by Emily Carman (University of Texas Press; 220 pages; $75 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Discusses Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyk and others who challenged the coercive contract terms of Hollywood studios.

Maghrebs in Motion: North African Cinema in Nine Movements by Suzanne Gauch (Oxford University Press; 234 pages; $99 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of works by nine filmmakers from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia since the late 1980s.

The Politics and Poetics of Black Film: “Nothing But a Man” edited by David C. Wall and Michael T. Martin (Indiana University Press; 306 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). Combines scholarly essays with other materials linked to the 1964 film, which featured an all-black cast but was written and directed by two white men.

GENDER STUDIES

Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism by Madhavi Menon (University of Minnesota Press; 145 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $25 paperback). Argues for a view of difference grounded in the similarity of our inability to contain desire.

GEOGRAPHY

Violence in Capitalism: Devaluing Life in an Age of Responsibility by James A. Tyner (University of Nebraska Press; 280 pages; $55). A work in cultural geography that explores spatial and other aspects of violence beyond what is conventionally considered criminal, as in a health system that allows people to die who cannot afford procedures.

HISTORY

Certain Sainthood: Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church by Donald S. Prudlo (Cornell University Press; 232 pages; $49.95). Examines notions of papal infallibility as they arose in the 12th and 13th centuries as groups deemed heretical challenged popes on the canonization of particular saints and on the concept of sainthood itself.

Empire of Pictures: Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy by Sonke Kunkel (Berghahn Books; 260 pages; $95). A study of how imagery figured in U.S. public diplomacy and power in the 1960s, including that of state visits and space flight.

Epidemics, Empire, and Environments: Cholera in Madras and Quebec City, 1818-1910 by Michael Zeheter (University of Pittsburgh Press; 336 pages; $45). Documents the political and economic factors that shaped contrasting efforts to control the disease in two British colonial settings.

Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland by Jessica Millward (University of Georgia Press; 130 pages; $49.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses the reconstructed life of Charity Folks, who negotiated her freedom at age 40, to explore wider issues of manumission and agency for enslaved women.

From Slave Girls to Salvation: Gender, Race, and Victoria’s Chinese Rescue Home, 1886-1923 by Shelly Ikebuchi (University of British Columbia Press; 264 pages; US$99). Traces the history of an institution founded in Victoria, British Columbia, as a refuge for Chinese prostitutes and slave girls, and turned into a residence and school by the Methodist Women’s Missionary Society.

Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement by Lori A. Flores (Yale University Press; 288 pages; $45). Examines the activism and interactions of U.S.-born Mexican-Americans, bracero guestworkers, and undocumented immigrants in the Salinas Valley before the major strikes of the Farmworkers’ movement.

Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia by Ann McGrath (University of Nebraska Press; 538 pages; $45). A comparative study of love, sex, and marriage between indigenous people and colonizers in two settler colonial societies.

Independent Mexico: The Pronunciamiento in the Age of Santa Anna, 1821--1858 by Will Fowler (University of Nebraska Press; 400 pages; $40). Examines a movement of garrisons, town councils, and others aggressively petitioning the government in the era of the newly independent Mexico.

Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics by Michael J. Lansing (University of Chicago Press; 353 pages; $45). Traces the rise and fall of an organization founded by western farmers in 1915 that before its demise in the 1920s had more than 250,000 dues-paying members, had spread to 13 states and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and controlled the state government in North Dakota.

The Invisible Irish: Finding Protestants in the Nineteenth-Century Migrations to America by Rankin Sherling (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 368 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$34.95 paperback). Uses the migration of Irish Presbyterian ministers as a “tracer” of a larger, lesser-known Irish Protestant migration during the 19th century.

Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South by William E. O’Brien (University of Massachusetts Press; 191 pages; $39.95). Discusses the creation and legacy of segregated state parks under Jim Crow laws, including separate parks and those with dual facilities.

The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America by Ahmed White (University of California Press; 368 pages; $70 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses a strike that began in May 1937 by some 70,000 workers at four companies known collectively as “Little Steel”; describes how the action, which saw at least 16 workers killed and hundreds injured, revealed the limits of New Deal liberalism.

Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives edited by Malgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak (Berghahn Books; 373 pages; $120). Essays on such topics as memories of collectivization in Bulgaria, memories of the Holocaust in postcommunist Europe, and property restitution in Poland and the Czech Republic after 1989.

Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance by Anthony F. D’Elia (Harvard University Press; 355 pages; $39.95). A study of an Italian nobleman and acclaimed patron of the arts who was “reverse canonized” into hell by Pope Pius II for his embrace of classical culture.

Political Belief in France 1927-1945: Gender, Empire, and Fascism in the Croix De Feu and Parti Social Francais by Caroline Campbell (Louisiana State University Press; 312 pages; $48). Focuses on women as proponents of the ethnoreligious nationalism of France’s right-wing Croix de Feu and its successor organization.

Republic of Spin: An Inside Story of the American Presidency by David Greenberg (W.W. Norton & Company; 540 pages; $35). Traces the history of the White House “spin machine” since the era of Woodrow Wilson, who held the first presidential press conference.

Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire by Erik Linstrum (Harvard University Press; 309 pages; $39.95). A study of how psychology figured in early 20th-century British imperialism, including intelligence testing of workers and soldiers and plans for counterinsurgency.

The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint: A Tale of Sex, Religion, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France by Mita Choudhury (Penn State University Press; 232 pages; $64.95). Explores shifting views of authority and religion in 18th-century France through the prism of a 1731 trial in which a young woman, Catherine Cardiere, accused her Jesuit confessor of seduction, bewitchment, heresy, and abortion.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider by Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson, and Adrienne W. Kolb (University of Chicago Press; 448 pages; $40). Traces the failure of the physics project, which began in the 1980s and was terminated by Congress in 1993.

LAW

Exporting Freedom: Religious Liberty and American Power by Anna Su (Harvard University Press; 286 pages; $39.95). Uses six episodes to examine America’s role in exporting ideals of religious freedom, beginning with U.S. occupiers’ drafting of the Philippines’ Constitution after the Spanish-American War.

The Mandate of Dignity: Ronald Dworkin, Revolutionary Constitutionalism, and the Claims of Justice by Drucilla Cornell and Nick Friedman (Fordham University Press; 160 pages; $85 hardcover, $28 paperback). A study of the American philosopher and legal scholar (1931-2013) that explores his views on dignity and develops a jurisprudence responsive to the experience of colonial and other injustice in the Global South.

Ordinary Meaning: A Theory of the Most Fundamental Principle of Legal Interpretation by Brian G. Slocum (University of Chicago Press; 355 pages; $70). Explores problems with the legal doctrine of “ordinary meaning” for words in legal interpretation, including failure to address a word’s context.

The Politics of Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court: Legacies and Legitimacy by Louise Chappell (Oxford University Press; 276 pages; $99 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on feminist institutionalist theory to evaluate the implementation of the 1998 Rome Statue on gender justice at the ICC.

Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics by Stephen E. Gottlieb (New York University Press; 380 pages; $55). A critique of the current U.S. Supreme Court that argues for judicial interpretation with an idea toward protecting democracy.

LITERATURE

Beckett After Wittgenstein by Andre Furlani (Northwestern University Press; 264 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Draws on previously unpublished archival material in a study that links the shift in Beckett’s work in the late 1950s to the writer’s deep engagement with the thought of the Austrian philosopher.

Beyond Decadence: Exposing the Narrative Irony in Jan Opolsk√Ω's Prose by Peter Butler (Karolinum Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 252 pages; $30). A study of the Czech writer (1875-1942) that challenges his reputation as a “belated decadent” and argues he was one of the most skilled ironists in literature.

Chaos Imagined: Literature, Art, Science by Martin Meisel (Columbia University Press; 585 pages; $45). Draws on literary and other realms in a study of representations of chaos, including a shift in the 18th and 19th centuries toward seeing its liberatory potential.

Literary Spinoffs: Rewriting the Classics---Re-Imagining the Community by Birgit Spengler (Campus Verlag, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 500 pages; $75). A study of rewritings of 19th-century American classics, including Ahab’s Wife from Moby-Dick, March, from Little Women, and My Jim and Finn from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Lydia Ginzburg’s Prose: Reality in Search of Literature by Emily Van Buskirk (Princeton University Press; 355 pages; $39.95). Draws on previously unknown manuscripts in a study of the Russian writer and critic (1902-90) and her turn to works that blur the boundaries among autobiography, history, and fiction.

Philip Sparrow Tells All: Lost Essays by Samuel Steward, Writer, Professor, Tattoo Artist edited by Jeremy Mulderig (University of Chicago Press; 244 pages; $20). Edition, with commentary, of writings by an English professor and author of gay erotica who also wrote quirky columns, with a gay subtext, under the pen name Philip Sparrow, for the Illinois Dental Journal.

The Poetics of Poesis: The Making of Nineteenth-Century English Fiction by Felicia Bonaparte (University of Virginia Press; 336 pages; $49.50). Discusses writers who drew on the thought of Schlegel and other German Romantics to remake the novel.

Reading Rio de Janeiro: Literature and Society in the Nineteenth Century by Zephyr Frank (Stanford University Press; 227 pages; $60). Sets the theme of social integration in novels by Jose de Alencar, Machado de Assis, and Aluisio Azevedo in wider historical context.

Shipwreck Modernity: Ecologies of Globalization, 1550--1719 by Steve Mentz (University of Minnesota Press; 264 pages; $105 hardcover, $30 paperback). Examines accounts of shipwreck in canonical literary works, sermons, amateur poetry, and English sailors’ diaries of the period.

Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel by Elisha Cohn (Oxford University Press; 260 pages; $65). Focuses on works by Eliot, Meredith, Hardy, and Charlotte Bronte in a study that challenges notions of the instrumentalism of the Victorian novel of self-cultivation and explores the importance of states of reverie, trance, and sleep.

Waging War on War: Peacefighting in American Literature by Giorgio Mariani (University of Illinois Press; 268 pages; $55). Works discussed include Joel Barlow’s The Columbiad (1807), Melville’s Moby-Dick, Faulkner’s A Fable, the short stories of Ellen La Motte, a nurse on the Belgian Front of World War I, and Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story.”

Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee’s Korea by Youngju Ryu (University of Hawai’i Press; 248 pages; $58). Examines literature as a site of resistance against Park’s dictatorship, with a focus on Kim Chi-ha’s “bandits”; Yi Mun-gu’s “neighbor”; Cho Se-hui’s dwarf; and Hwang Sok-yong’s labor fiction.

MUSIC

Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul: Nation and Community in the Era of Reform by Merih Erol (Indiana University Press; 304 pages; $35). Focuses on the years 1856 to 1922 in a study of how music helped define the identities of Ottoman Greeks as a religious and ethnic minority in the Empire.

The Yoruba God of Drumming: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Wood That Talks edited by Amanda Villepastour (University Press of Mississippi; 288 pages; $65). Writings by scholars, musicians, and priests on the deity associated with sacred drumming in Yoruba and Yoruba-offshoot religions in West Africa and the Americas.

PHILOSOPHY

The Hidden God: Luther, Philosophy, and Political Theology by Marius Timmann Mjaaland (Indiana University Press; 248 pages; $70). A phenomenological study of Martin Luther that explores a theme of destruction in his early works and, through discussion of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, links destruction to deconstruction.

Hume’s True Skepticism by Donald C. Ainslie (Oxford University Press; 286 pages; $70). Focuses on part 4 of the Treatise, described as the Scottish philosopher’s deepest engagement with skeptical arguments; argues that ultimately, we must live with a kind of blindness, accepting our rational and sensory capacities without being able to either vindicate or undermine them.

Pragmatic Fashions: Pluralism, Democracy, Relativism, and the Absurd by John J. Stuhr (Indiana University Press; 272 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). Develops, among other things, a view of pragmatism’s role in personal change.

Returning to Zhu XI: Emerging Patterns Within the Supreme Polarity edited by David Jones and Jinli He (State University of New York Press; 288 pages; $85). Essays on the 12th-century Chinese thinker as a major philosopher in his own right, rather than simply the “great synthesizer” of Confucian thought.

State Phobia and Civil Society: The Political Legacy of Michel Foucault by Mitchell Dean and Kaspar Villadsen (Stanford University Press; 224 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Pays particular attention to lecture series from 1975-76, 77-78, and 78-79.

William James, Pragmatism, and American Culture by Deborah Whitehead (Indiana University Press; 194 pages; $90 hardcover, $28 paperback). Sets James’s pragmatism in the wider historical context of America’s self-narrative.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Blazing the Neoliberal Trail: Urban Political Development in the United States and the United Kingdom by Timothy P.R. Weaver (University of Pennsylvania Press; 349 pages; $69.95). Uses case studies of Philadelphia and London Docklands in a study of the bipartisan origins and impact of the neoliberal turn in urban policymaking and politics.

Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy by Adam Sheingate (Oxford University Press; 282 pages; $29.95). Traces the history and impact of the business of political consultants, with a focus on the early 20th century to the profession’s rising profile in the 1970s.

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America by Eduardo Moncada (Stanford University Press; 248 pages; $65). Considers how business, and its relation to government, figures in the contrasting responses to violence in the Colombian cities of Medellin, Cali, and Bogota.

Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act by Daniel Beland, Philip Rocco, and Alex Waddan (University Press of Kansas; 215 pages; $29.95). Discusses the intergovernmental implementation of the ACA and the successes and failures of its state-level opponents in contesting elements of the new law.

Participatory Democracy in Brazil: Socioeconomic and Political Origins by J. Ricardo Tranjan (University of Notre Dame Press; 288 pages; $35). Examines short-lived and only partially successful precursors in the 1970s and 80s to the post-1988 success of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre.

Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections by Richard L. Hasen (Yale University Press; 241 pages; $32.50). Argues in favor of campaign-finance limits as a means of promoting and preserving political equality.

Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action by Helen Margetts and others (Princeton University Press; 279 pages; $29.95). Uses experimental and other data to examine the dynamics of the online mobilization of collective action, from the local to the global.

Whether to Kill: The Cognitive Maps of Violent and Nonviolent Individuals by Stephanie Dornschneider (University of Pennsylvania Press; 315 pages; $79.95). Uses a method known as “cognitive mapping” to examine the belief systems of those who choose violent or non-violent activism; draws on interviews with violent and non-violent Muslims and non-Muslims in Egypt and Germany.

PUBLIC POLICY

After ’08: Social Policy and the Global Financial Crisis edited by Stephen McBride, Rianne Mahon, and Gerard W. Boychuk (University of British Columbia Press; 352 pages; US$72). Writings on how governments across the world responded to the financial crisis in the realm of social policy; includes comparisons of Canada, Britain, and Australia, and Ireland, Portugal, and Greece, among other nations.

RELIGION

Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry by Dennis Trout (Oxford University Press; 229 pages; $155). Translation and study of writings by the fourth-century pope; reflects debates over attribution and new additions and deletions from his corpus.

Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico by Frank Graziano (Oxford University Press; 336 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Alternates narrative and interpretive modes in a study of petitionary devotions at shrines of such images as the Cristo Negro de Otatitlan and the Senor de Chalma.

RHETORIC

Drone Warfare and Lawfare in a Post-Heroic Age by Marouf Hasian (University of Alabama Press; 288 pages; $49.95). Examines the rhetoric of both supporters and critics of militarized drones.

SOCIAL WORK

Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: Beyond Victims and Villains by Alexandra Lutnick (Columbia University Press; 181 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on case histories in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York in a study that argues for a more nuanced, complex view of male and female minors who trade sex for money, shelter, food, and other needs.

SOCIOLOGY

Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment by Liam Downey (New York University Press; 329 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Focuses on globalization, agriculture, mining, and American energy and military policy in a study of how elite organizations and inequality figure in environmental crises.

THEATER

French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater by Laura Weigert (Cambridge University Press; 305 pages; $99). Draws on visual and other sources in a study of performance as it occurred in settings from churches and courts to the street.