AMERICAN STUDIES
Diet and the Disease of Civilization by Adrienne Rose Bitar (Rutgers University Press; 244 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Argues that mythologies of the “Fall of Man” underlie the Paleo Diet and three other regimes popular in the United States.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Contraband Corridor: Making a Living at the Mexico-Guatemala Border by Rebecca Berke Galemba (Stanford University Press; 320 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Topics include small-scale smuggling of corn, coffee, and clothing in an ethnographic study of border inhabitants’ efforts to make a living, and the interplay of illegality, formal and informal economies, security, and trade.
Truth’s Fool: Derek Freeman and the War over Cultural Anthropology by Peter Hempenstall (University of Wisconsin Press; 280 pages; $34.95). A biography of the New Zealand anthropologist (1916-2001), who in 1983 ignited a controversy that spread beyond academe when he denounced the research behind Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
The Painter’s Touch: Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Princeton University Press; 336 pages; $65). Uses the notion of touch to explore aspects of materiality and experience in French 18th-century painting and what the works of three artists “say” in their brushstrokes, texture, and paint.
Photography and Sculpture: The Art Object in Reproduction edited by Sarah Hamill and Megan R. Luke (Getty Research Institute; 303 pages; $45). Essays on how photography has figured in tracing the history of sculpture; topics include picturing Conceptual art.
ECONOMICS
Measuring Tomorrow: Accounting for Well-Being, Resilience, and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century by Eloi Laurent (Princeton University Press; 256 pages; $35). Argues for moving away from such narrow metrics as gross domestic product and toward broader indicators that both provide data and promote progress.
FILM STUDIES
La India Maria: Mexploitation and the Films of Maria Elena Velasco by Seraina Rohrer (University of Texas Press; 254 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of the actress, director, and producer (1940-2015) that examines her creation of one of the most popular characters of Mexican stage, film, and television.
Ripping England! Postwar British Satire from Ealing to the Goons by Roger Rawlings (State University of New York Press; 275 pages; $90). Discusses a flowering of cinematic and radio satire in Britain between 1947 and 1953, with comparative discussion of Hollywood and other filmmaking.
Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film by John David Rhodes (University of Minnesota Press; 272 pages; $112 hardcover, $28 paperback). Uses a concept of the “spectator-tenant” to explore houses in cinema in relation to fantasies of property and ownership as well as viewer anxieties.
GEOGRAPHY
Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism by Natchee Blu Barnd (Oregon State University Press; 224 pages; $24.95). Combines cultural and critical geography, ethnic studies, and other fields in an interdisciplinary study of how indigenous individuals and communities create and sustain space.
HISTORY
Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor During the Long Nineteenth Century by Andrew Urban (New York University Press; 352 pages; $39). Focuses on Irish immigrant women, Chinese immigrant men, and American-born black women as domestic servants.
The Campaign State: Communist Mobilizations for the East German Countryside, 1945-1990 by Gregory R. Witkowski (Northern Illinois University Press; 279 pages; $55). Topics include how frequent mass-mobilization campaigns in rural East Germany exposed the gap between rhetoric and reality in the GDR.
Containing Addiction: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Origins of America’s Global Drug War by Matthew R. Pembleton (University of Massachusetts Press; 336 pages; $90 hardcover, $36.95 paperback). Sets the origins of the “War on Drugs” in the immediate postwar period, when the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, established in 1930, initiated a global strategy.
Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor, and the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement by Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish (Texas A&M University Press; 160 pages; $24.95). Discusses the actions of an African-American Ship’s Cook aboard the USS West Virginia as the battleship was attacked by the Japanese, and describes how accounts of his heroism helped influence changes in the Navy’s racial policies.
Republican Character: From Nixon to Reagan by Donald T. Critchlow (University of Pennsylvania Press; 220 pages; $34.95). Explores the role of temperament, character, and pragmatism in politics, distinct from ideology; focuses on Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan and their behind-the-scenes interactions.
The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709-1876: Central Asia in the Global Age by Scott C. Levi (University of Pittsburgh Press; 288 pages; $28.95). Traces the impact of Central Asians on Chinese and Russian empire through a history of a khanate established in the Ferghana Valley, a region spanning parts of modern Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon by Michael Patrick Cullinane (Louisiana State University Press; 304 pages; $45). Documents how successive generations have reshaped TR’s reputation and image in public memory, adapting his legacy to fit disparate agendas.
This Grand Experiment: When Women Entered the Federal Workforce in Civil War--Era Washington, D.C. by Jessica Ziparo (University of North Carolina Press; 352 pages; $39.95). Topics include the complicated relationship between the first female federal employees and the suffrage movement.
To Face Down Dixie: South Carolina’s War on the Supreme Court in the Age of Civil Rights by James O. Heath (Louisiana State University Press; 344 pages; $47.50). Focuses on how three senators---Olin Johnston, Strom Thurmond, and Ernest “Fritz” Hollings---used the confirmation process for new justices to fight the court’s agenda in the era of such landmark cases as Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona.
HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY
The Grid: Biography of an American Technology by Julie A. Cohn (MIT Press; 336 pages; $37). Traces the history of the infrastructure for electricity since its beginnings in the 1890s.
JOURNALISM
The News Untold: Community Journalism and the Failure to Confront Poverty in Appalachia by Michael Clay Carey (West Virginia University Press; 252 pages; $79.99 hardcover, $26.99 paperback). A study of how newspaper reporters and editors in three of the region’s small towns decide what aspects of poverty are news; describes, in turn, the responses of their readers.
LAW
Ethics and Accountability on the U.S. Supreme Court: An Analysis of Recusal Practices by Robert J. Hume (State University of New York Press; 189 pages; $85). Explores factors that shape what is here termed justices’ selective compliance with recusal guidelines set by Congress.
LITERATURE
Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity by Joanne Chassot (Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England; 247 pages; $95 hardcover, $45 paperback). Draws on trauma, memory, and postcolonial studies, as well as queer theory, in a study of the politics of haunting in works by Fred D’Aguiar, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Michelle Cliff, and Toni Morrison.
Imitation Nation: Red, White, and Blackface in Early and Antebellum US Literature by Jason Richards (University of Virginia Press; 256 pages; $45). Analyzes works by such writers as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, and Martin Delany.
A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders (University of Minnesota Press; 264 pages; $100 hardcover, $25 paperback). A study of nonfiction for children that examines such texts’ willingness or resistance to questioning by young readers.
One Foot in the Finite: Melville’s Realism Reclaimed by K.L. Evans (Northwestern University Press; 224 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Links Melville with Wittgenstein and other 20th-century philosophers in a study that defends Moby-Dick as a realist novel.
An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Dale M. Smith (University of New Mexico Press; 328 pages; $75). Edition of 130 letters exchanged between the two poets from after their first meeting, in 1947, to just before Olson’s death, in 1970.
Oz behind the Iron Curtain: Aleksandr Volkov and His Magic Land Series by Erika Haber (University Press of Mississippi; 240 pages; $65). Discusses a 1939 revised Russian version of Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that credited Volkov as author, not translator, and led to a series that became a staple of Soviet popular culture.
Thieving Three-Fingered Jack: Transatlantic Tales of a Jamaican Outlaw, 1780-2015 by Frances R. Botkin (Rutgers University Press; 224 pages; $95 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Discusses plays and songs written about Jack Mansong, an escaped slave turned bandit who came to be revered as a freedom fighter in Jamaica for his attacks on colonial planters.
Translating the World: Toward a New History of German Literature Around 1800 by Birgit Tautz (Penn State University Press; 280 pages; $89.95). Contrasts the cities of Hamburg and Weimar in a study of how literary culture is shaped at the local level and through local interaction with global networks.
Whitman & Dickinson: A Colloquy edited by Eric Athenot and Cristanne Miller (University of Iowa Press; 276 pages; $65). Essays by European and North American scholars on links between the two poets’ ideas and work.
MUSIC
Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the American Variety Stage by Gillian M. Rodger (University of Illinois Press; 280 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Links shifts in performance to audience expectations in a study of male impersonation in variety shows from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries.
PHILOSOPHY
Thinking between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty by Judith Wambacq (Ohio University Press; 296 pages; $95). Sets the two French philosophers in dialogue to reveal their common concern with the transcendental conditions of thought.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
China’s Crisis of Success by William H. Overholt (Cambridge University Press; 275 pages; $25.99). Argues that China has reached a threshold in its rise that requires a retooling of economic and political strategy.
The Limits of Trust: The Millennium Development Goals, Maternal Health, and Health Policy in Mexico by Lisa Nicole Mills (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 256 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$34.95 paperback). Focuses on the states of Guerrero, Chiapas, and Oaxaca in a study of why Mexico failed to meet maternal health goals set by the UN in 2000.
Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States by Loch K. Johnson (Oxford University Press; 624 pages; $34.95). Examines the history and impact of efforts to maintain accountability over the intelligence services since the Church Committee’s Senate investigations in 1975.
Urban Rage: The Revolt of the Excluded by Mustafa Dikec (Yale University Press; 264 pages; $26). A study of urban riots in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Greece, and Turkey.
PSYCHOLOGY
Happier? The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America by David Horowitz (Oxford University Press; 312 pages; $29.95). Traces the history of positive psychology, setting its emergence in wider cultural and political context.
RELIGION
Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War edited by Perry T. Hamalis and Valerie A. Karras (University of Notre Dame Press; 402 pages; $55). Essays on such topics as Origen and the Cappadocians on war and military service, “justified providential war” in the work of the Russian writer Vladimir Solov’ev, and war, technology, and the canon law principle of economia.
Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women’s Sexuality by Monique Moultrie (Duke University Press; 200 pages; $84.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback). A study of black churchwomen and faith-based sexuality ministries, with particular attention to the televangelist Juanita Bynum.
Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace by Irfan Ahmad (University of North Carolina Press; 300 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Focuses on South Asia in a textual and ethnographic study of thriving traditions of critique in Islam; draws on fieldwork in Delhi and Aligarh, India.
RHETORIC
Retroactivism in the Lesbian Archives: Composing Pasts and Futures by Jean Bessette (Southern Illinois University Press; 202 pages; $40). Focuses on the historiographical perspectives of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the June L. Mazer Archives, and such filmmakers as Barbara Hammer and Cheryl Dunye.
Scalia v. Scalia: Opportunistic Textualism in Constitutional Interpretation by Catherine L. Langford (University of Alabama Press; 176 pages; $44.95). Uses Antonin Scalia’s opinions, speeches, and extrajudicial writings to discuss the late justice as an “opportunistic textualist” who shifted away from that form of interpretation when it failed to support his ideological goals.
SOCIOLOGY
From Strangers to Neighbors: Post-Disaster Resettlement and Community Building in Honduras by Ryan Alaniz (University of Texas Press; 236 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Contrasts the economic well-being, crime rates, and other conditions in two communities created for survivors of Hurricane Mitch (1998) by two different NGOs.
URBAN STUDIES
Growing a Sustainable City? The Question of Urban Agriculture by Christina D. Rosan and Hamil Pearsall (University of Toronto Press; 208 pages; US$80 hardcover, US$24.95 paperback). Examines class, racial, and other tensions over urban agriculture in Philadelphia as the practice has become formalized in policy making.
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