Weekly Book List, July 21, 2017

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Frankie and Johnny: Race, Gender, and the Work of African American Folklore in 1930s America by Stacy I. Morgan (University of Texas Press; 261 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines five adaptations of the ballad of “Frankie and Johnny,” including the recording by Huddie Ledbetter in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, a painting by Thomas Hart Benton, a play by John Huston, an anti-lynching poem by Sterling Brown, and the breakthrough film for Mae West.

AMERICAN STUDIES

Archipelagic American Studies edited by Brian Russell Roberts and Michelle Ann Stephens (Duke University Press; 478 pages; $109.95 hardcover, $30.95 paperback). Essays that reflect efforts to “decontinentalize” the field of American studies; topics include competing rhetorical archipelagos in Hawaii.

Red and Yellow, Black and Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies edited by Joanne L. Rondilla, Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., and Paul Spickard (Rutgers University Press; 267 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays by scholars in history, sociology, and other fields on the dynamics of identity for mixed-race people who are not part white; topics include policing racial and ethnic authenticity among “Blaxicans” in the United States.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Abortion Pills, Test Tube Babies, and Sex Toys: Emerging Sexual and Reproductive Technologies in the Middle East and North Africa edited by L.L. Wynn and Angel M. Foster (Vanderbilt University Press; 252 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Offers ethnographic writings on sexual and reproductive technologies in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the West Bank, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America edited by Sonia E. Alvarez and others (Duke University Press; 386 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Essays that reflect the blurred boundaries between what is here termed civic and uncivic activism in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and other settings; topics include the trajectory of black social movements in Colombia.

Caravan of Martyrs: Sacrifice and Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan by David B. Edwards (University of California Press; 272 pages; $29.95). Combines historical and ethnographic perspectives in a study of cultural beliefs and rituals about sacrifice in Afghanistan and their links to jihadist suicide bombings.

Coming of Age on the Streets of Java: Coping with Marginality, Stigma and Illness by Thomas Stodulka (Transcript Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 285 pages; $45). Draws on fieldwork with children and youth in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

Indigenous Media and Political Imaginaries in Contemporary Bolivia by Gabriela Zamorano Villarreal (University of Nebraska Press; 336 pages; $60). Draws on observations of indigenous media producers in 2005-2007.

Living Language in Kazakhstan: The Dialogic Emergence of an Ancestral Worldview by Eva Marie Dubuisson (University of Pittsburgh Press; 176 pages; $26.95). Examines blessings, prayer, storytelling, conversation, and other speech in a study of the role played by the spirits of ancestors in Kazakh cultural, political, and spiritual discourse.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Hesiod and Classical Greek Poetry: Reception and Transformation in the Fifth Century BCE by Zoe Stamatopoulou (Cambridge University Press; 280 pages; $99.99). Focuses on the archaic poet’s reception in Pindaric and Bacchylidean poetry, as well as how his narratives were appropriated in satyr dramas and tragedy.

Victorian Horace: Classics and Class by Stephen Harrison (Bloomsbury Academic; 200 pages; $114). Examines the reception of Horace in Victorian culture; topics include how the study, translation, and literary imitation of the Roman poet figured in the prestige of classics with Horace, refashioned, as a model for the English gentleman.

COMMUNICATION

Self-Making Man: A Day of Action, Life, and Language by Jurgen Streeck (Cambridge University Press; 472 pages; $155). Uses a day in the life of an auto-repair-shop owner in Texas to examine speech, gesture, gaze, and other aspects of embodied communication.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Media of Serial Narrative edited by Frank Kelleter (Ohio State University Press; 301 pages; $94.95). Writings on serial narrative in realms from antebellum fiction to newspapers, comics, film, television, and digital media today; topics include Hollywood remakes as “second order” serialization.

ECONOMICS

Global Carbon Pricing: The Path to Climate Cooperation edited by Peter Cramton and others (MIT Press; 252 pages; $35). Writings by economists on an approach to carbon pricing grounded in a reciprocal or “common commitment” between nations; draws on the theories of the Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012), who studied common-pool dilemmas.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Infrastructural Ecologies: Alternative Development Models for Emerging Economies by Hillary Brown and Byron Stigge (MIT Press; 305 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Describes alternative approaches for the provision of water, energy, transportation, and other needs, drawing on examples from across the developing world; includes discussion of exemplary preindustrial practices.

Nature’s Return: An Environmental History of Congaree National Park by Mark Kinzer (University of South Carolina Press; 308 pages; $39.99). Discusses a national park established in central South Carolina in 1976 that protects America’s largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest.

Taking Root: The Nature Writing of William and Adam Summer of Pomaria edited by James Everett Kibler Jr. (University of South Carolina Press; 336 pages; $39.99). Edition of nature writings by two brothers in 19th-century South Carolina---William Summer, founder of the Pomaria Nursery, and Adam Summer, a publisher of agricultural journals---who experimented with sustainable farming, land reclamation, soil regeneration, crop diversity, reforestation, and other environmentally minded practices.

FILM STUDIES

Adjusting the Lens: Community and Collaborative Video in Mexico edited by Freya Schiwy and Byrt Wammack Weber (University of Pittsburgh Press; 264 pages; $28.95). Writings on Yucatec Mayan audiovisual works, in Mexico and in diaspora.

Celluloid War Memorials: The British Instructional Films Company and the Memory of the Great War by Mark Connelly (University of Exeter Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 329 pages; $93). Discusses Zeebrugge, Ypres, and other battle-reconstruction films made by the company in the years following World War I; documents the works’ shaping of public memory of the war.

Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary by Pooja Rangan (Duke University Press; 254 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Discusses Born Into Brothels and other films in a study of how disenfranchised humanity is enlisted and commodified in documentaries.

Poland Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema by Ewa Mazierska (Berghahn Books; 338 pages; $130). Examines representations of class, economy, and everyday life in Polish cinema since 1918.

Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil by Rielle Navitski (Duke University Press; 325 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines the intersection of sensational silent-era cinema with the print culture of graphically illustrated police coverage, serial literature, and fan magazines; considers how films produced in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo between 1906 and 1922 represented criminal acts as signs of industrial modernity.

GAME STUDIES

Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games edited by Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm (Indiana University Press; 260 pages; $90 hardcover, $38 paperback). Topics include gender and “cosplay” at gamer fan conventions, gendered discourse on the distinction between hard-core and casual gaming, and dystopian blackness and the limits of racial empathy in the games The Walking Dead and The Last of Us.

HISTORY

Account of the Martyrs in the Provinces of La Florida by Luis Jeronimo de Ore, edited and translated by Raquel Chang-Rodriguez and Nancy Vogely (University of New Mexico Press; 182 pages; $45). Annotated translation of a circa 1619 work by a Peruvian Franciscan friar on the Spanish presence in La Florida, a region that at the time included the Florida panhandle and peninsula as well as north to Virginia and West into Kansas.

Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation by J.M. Opal (Oxford University Press; 337 pages; $29.95). Focuses on what Jackson and his peers understood as the rule of law, with an emphasis on his life on the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers and his actions from the 1760s to his election as president, in 1828.

Brazil, 1964-1985: The Military Regimes of Latin America in the Cold War by Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna (Yale University Press; 196 pages; $40). Examines the political, economic, and social impact and legacy of policies under Brazil’s succession of military governments, with comparative discussion of military regimes in Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

An English Governess in the Great War: The Secret Brussels Diary of Mary Thorp edited by Sophie De Schaepdrijver and Tammy M. Proctor (Oxford University Press; 280 pages; $29.95). Edition of a secret diary started in 1916 by Mary Thorp, an English governess employed by a very wealthy Belgian-Russian family, the Wittoucks, in German-occupied Brussels.

Father of Liberty: Jonathan Mayhew and the Principles of the American Revolution by J. Patrick Mullins (University Press of Kansas; 243 pages; $37.50). Examines the writings of a Congregationalist pastor in Boston who is described as the most politically influentially clergyman in 18th-century America.

George Washington: A Life in Books by Kevin J. Hayes (Oxford University Press; 390 pages; $34.95). Documents the texts that figured in Washington’s youth and his lifelong devotion to self-improvement.

Histories for the Many: The Victorian Family Magazine and Popular Representations of the Past: The “Leisure Hour,” 1852-1870 by Doris Lechner (Transcript Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 340 pages; $45). Focuses on how history was used and portrayed in the Leisure Hour, an evangelical magazine published by the Religious Tract Society; includes comparative discussion of the London Journal, Good Words, and Cornhill.

A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico by Pablo Piccato (University of California Press; 374 pages; $85 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Examines journalism, fiction, and other realms in a study of Mexican perceptions of crime, justice, violence, and impunity in the middle decades of the 20th century.

Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico by Daniel Nemser (University of Texas Press; 221 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines race and the uses of spatial concentration as an element of Spanish colonial governance; focuses on centralized towns, disciplinary institutions, segregated neighborhoods, and botanical collections.

Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination by Toni Pressley-Sanon (University Press of Florida; 195 pages; $74.95). Draws on the Vodou concept of marasa or twinned entities to explore the roots of Haitian cultural and spiritual traditions in precolonial Dahomey and Kongo.

Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals: The Talmud After the Humanities by Mira Beth Wasserman (University of Pennsylvania Press; 314 pages; $65). Focuses on the Babylonian Talmud in a “close reading” of the ‘Avoda Zara, a historically controversial tractate that deals with laws concerning relations between Jews and non-Jews.

Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-Nazi Germany by Noah Benezra Strote (Yale University Press; 357 pages; $40). Disputes the notion that Germany’s postwar transformation and democratic reconstruction was led by the United States and other allied powers; uses a collective biography of 10 intellectuals, born between 1890 and 1910, to examine the role of indigenous ideas in Germany’s postwar shift.

The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution by Virginia DeJohn Anderson (Oxford University Press; 270 pages; $27.95). A dual biography of two Connecticut men hanged for treason, by opposing sides in the war.

Military Thought in Early China by Christopher C. Rand (State University of New York Press; 233 pages; $85). Examines Chinese military thought as it evolved from earliest times through the Western Han period (202-8 BC) in terms of a continual realignment of thought concerning the societal balance between wu or martial force and wen or civil governance.

New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization edited by Beverly C. Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick (University Press of Florida; 256 pages; $89.95). Writings the missionary, political, diplomatic, and social dimensions of the movement, led by the American Colonization Society, to resettle black Americans in Africa; topics include situating African colonization within the history of U.S. expansion.

Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race by William M. Knoblauch (University of Massachusetts Press; 135 pages; $90 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Discusses anti-nuclear activism during the Reagan era and its eventual effects on the administration, which at first tried to co-opt the rhetoric of the nuclear freeze, but eventually began to shift its position on the arms race; sources include recently declassified White House memoranda.

The Peculiar Revolution: Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment Under Military Rule edited by Carlos Aguirre and Paulo Drinot (University of Texas Press; 353 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays that focus on cultural politics and other social phenomena under the left-leaning, nationalist regime established by Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado in an October 3, 1968, coup.

Resolute Rebel: General Rowell S. Ripley, Charleston’s Gallant Defender by Chet Bennett (University of South Carolina Press; 421 pages; $49.99). A biography of the Ohio-born soldier, who served with his West Point classmate Ulysses S. Grant in the Mexican-American War, and later for the Confederacy, after marrying in Charleston, S.C. and converting from unionism to secessionism.

The Russian Revolution: A New History by Sean McMeekin (Basic Books; 445 pages; $30). Topics include the full scope of German financial backing for the Bolsheviks as Lenin pursued his “hostile takeover” of the Russian army and his plan of turning an imperialist war into a civil war.

Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition by Sandra E. Greene (Indiana University Press; 126 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Combines archival sources with oral traditions in biographical studies of three slave owners---Amegashie Afeku, Nyaho Tamakloe, and Noah Yawo---who lived in southeastern Ghana between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home by Abigail Williams (Yale University Press; 351 pages; $40). Focuses on reading aloud, in company, as it figured in the domestic and social life of “middling” and lesser gentry.

To Be Indio in Colonial Spanish America edited by Monica Diaz (University of New Mexico Press; 283 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Writings on the construction of indigenous identities in central Mexico and Peru as indio arose as a homogenizing term for myriad cultures.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America edited by Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman (University of Pittsburgh Press; 375 pages; $45). Essays that offer a comparative perspective on science exhibitions in both nations, from popular science shows to national and academic-research museums.

LABOR STUDIES

Labour, Unions, and Politics Under the North Star: The Nordic Countries, 1700-2000 edited by Mary Hilson, Silke Neunsinger, and Iben Vyff (Berghahn Books; 328 pages; $120). Writings on the labor history of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

LAW

Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers by Josh Chafetz (Yale University Press; 438 pages; $85). Emphasizes Congress’s constitutional powers vis a vis other branches of government other than its capacity to pass laws.

LINGUISTICS

Africa’s Endangered Languages: Documentary and Theoretical Approaches edited by Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence (Oxford University Press; 503 pages; $99). Includes four essays that are among the first published research on Nata, an endangered Bantu language from northern Tanzania; among other languages discussed are Seenku of Burkina Faso, Krachi of Ghana, and Caning of Sudan.

The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants edited by Haruo Kubozono (Oxford University Press; 408 pages; $115). Research on geminate or long consonants, a feature of languages as varied as Arabic, Bengali, Chuukese, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian, Saami, Swiss German, and Turkish.

The Semantics of Nouns edited by Zhengdao Ye (Oxford University Press; 315 pages; $100). Languages discussed include Chinese, English, Danish, German, Russian, Koromu, Solega, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara.

Signed Language Interpreting in the Workplace by Jules Dickinson (Gallaudet University Press; 262 pages; $75). Focuses on small talk, humor, and collaboration in a study of how the skills of a sign-language interpreter affect the interaction of deaf and hearing employees in team meetings; based on research in Britain.

LITERATURE

Alternative Kinships: Economy and Family in Russian Modernism by Jacob Emery (Northern Illinois University Press; 193 pages; $49). Explores a rethinking of family structure in Russian modernist literature; works discussed include Andrei Bely’s Petersburg and Yuri Olesha’s Envy.

Katherine Mansfield and the Bloomsbury Group edited by Todd Martin (Bloomsbury Academic; 248 pages; $114). Biographical and critical essays on the New Zealand-born writer’s role on the fringes of the famed circle; topics include her relations with other of the group’s fringe figures, including Aldous Huxley, Walter de la Mare, and W.L. George.

Le Bone Florence of Rome: A Critical Edition and Facing Translation of a Middle English Romance Analogous to Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” edited and translated by Jonathan Stavsky (University of Wales Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 304 pages; $60). Edition and first complete translation of a rhyming Middle English romance that features a heroine, Florence, facing and overcoming the sorts of perils that afflicted Chaucer’s Constance.

Shakespeare’s Fathers and Daughters by Oliver Ford Davies (Bloomsbury Academic; 243 pages; $88 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Combines the perspectives of scholar and performer in a study, chronologically, of depictions of father-daughter relationships in the plays; topics include what we know of Shakespeare’s own daughters.

Shakespeare’s Reading Audiences: Early Modern Books and Audience Interpretation by Cyndia Susan Clegg (Cambridge University Press; 226 pages; $99.99). Considers the responses of Court, legal, religious, academic, and other circles to Shakespeare’s work, whether printed or performed, in the early modern era.

Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion by Emeline Jouve (University of Iowa Press; 258 pages; $65). Focuses on how the American playwright addressed war, sexism, and other issues in plays from Trifles (1916) through Springs Eternal (1943) and the unfinished Wings.

Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux edited by Ann Moseley, JOhn J. Murphy, and Robert Thacker (University of Nebraska Press; 358 pages; $40). Focuses on 19th-century influences on Cather, who was born in 1873; the writer’s links with Howard Pyle and other contemporary artists; and her novel The Song of the Lark, which marked her emerging modernism.

The Writing of Spirit: Soul, System, and the Roots of Language Science by Sarah M. Pourciau (Fordham University Press; 373 pages; $90 hardcover, $25 paperback). Discusses Jacob Grimm, Franz Bopp, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and other figures in a study of an epistemic shift in the study of language.

Written in Blood: Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture, 1861--1881 by Lynn Ellen Patyk (University of Wisconsin Press; 349 pages; $69.95). Focuses on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov in a study of the vision of terrorism that existed in Russian literature before actual perpetrators, calling themselves terrorists, assassinated Czar Alexander II.

MUSIC

English Pastoral Music: From Arcadia to Utopia, 1900-1955 by Eric Saylor (University of Illinois Press; 245 pages; $45). Topics include representations of British landscapes in English pastoral music, as well as composers’ responses to World War I; figures discussed include Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Constant Lambert.

Is Birdsong Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird by Hollis Taylor (Indiana University Press; 347 pages; $80 hardcover, $39 paperback). Combines the perspectives of scholar, musician, and composer in a study of songs sung in duos, trios, and larger groups by the pied butcherbird; argues that the species’ inventiveness goes beyond biological necessity.

PHILOSOPHY

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry by Gary Ebbs (Cambridge University Press; 288 pages; $99.99). New and previously published writings on the methods of the three philosophers.

Machiavelli’s Politics by Catherine H. Zuckert (University of Chicago Press; 500 pages; $45). Topics include how the moral arguments put forth in The Prince set the stage for the vision of a republic contained in the Italian thinker’s Discourses on Livy; also examines the development of his politics in the later works La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories.

Pets and People: The Ethics of Our Relationships with Companion Animals edited by Christine Overall (Oxford University Press; 295 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Topics include the nature of our relationship with pets, whether animals themselves are ethical beings, and the moral issues involved in our power over pets’ lives, including issues of pedigree breeding.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Dancing With the Devil: The Political Economy of Privatization in China by Yi-min Lin (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $99 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses demographic, fiscal, and other factors that led the Communist Party to reverse its stance on private ownership.

Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America by Alisha C. Holland (Cambridge University Press; 392 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $34.99 paperback). Focuses on squatting and street vending in a study of politicians’ forbearance of certain activities as a means of attracting support from poor voters.

Mindmade Politics: The Cognitive Roots of International Climate Governance by Manjana Milkoreit (MIT Press; 338 pages; $45). Applies insights from cognitive science in a study of the mental processes that link decision making and observed political behavior; draws on interviews with participants in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey by Jeremy F. Walton (Oxford University Press; 245 pages; $99). Draws on research in Istanbul and Ankara in a study of the political and religious practices of Turkish Muslim NGOs.

Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public by Donald R. Kinder and Nathan P. Kalmoe (University of Chicago Press; 213 pages; $78 hardcover, $26 paperback). Defends the contemporary relevance of Philip Converse’s “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” a controversial 1964 essay that used survey data from the Eisenhower era to argue that most Americans were “innocent of ideology.”

Organizing Leviathan: Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Making of Good Government by Carl Dahlstrom and Victor Lapuente (Cambridge University Press; 270 pages; $84.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Links effectiveness and lower levels of corruption to bureaucrats selected on the basis of merit rather than political connections; draws on data from more than 100 countries, with special attention to the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians in Spain and Sweden.

Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections: Elite Cues and Cross-Ethnic Voting by Andrea Benjamin (Cambridge University Press; 189 pages; $99.99). Draws on experimental and survey data, as well as qualitative case studies, in an analysis of co-ethnic endorsements and black and Latino voting behavior in local elections; focuses on mayoral elections in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Houston.

What Is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State edited by Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills, and David Miller (Pluto Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 286 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Topics include Islamophobia as racial ideology, and aspects of the phenomenon as influenced by “social movements from above,” from neoconservatism and elements of Zionism to the pro-war Left, New Atheists, New Secularists, and some strains of feminism.

POPULAR CULTURE

The Hernandez Brothers: Love, Rockets, and Alternative Comics by Enrique Garcia (University of Pittsburgh Press; 192 pages; $26.95). Explores identity, sexuality, and other themes in the work of the Mexican-American brother graphic-novel creators Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States by Claire D. Clark (Columbia University Press; 318 pages; $35). Combines archival data with interviews with drug-rehabilitation professionals in a study of the shift toward the modern therapeutic community as an approach to addiction treatment, beginning with Synanon.

RELIGION

Billy Graham: American Pilgrim edited by Andrew Finstuen, Anne Blue Wills, and Grant Wacker (Oxford University Press; 326 pages; $34.95). Writings on the American evangelical leader (b. 1918), organized around themes of religion, politics, and culture; topics include Graham’s mission to colleges and universities.

Confessions by Augustine, translated by Sarah Ruden (Modern Library; 528 pages; $28). Translation of the North African theologian and saint’s famed personal narrative.

Household and Family Religion in Persian-Period Judah: An Archaeological Approach by Jose E. Balcells Gallarreta (Society of Biblical Literature; 193 pages; $48.95 hardcover, $33.95 paperback). Draws on excavations in Tell en-Nasbeh, a site northwest of Jerusalem, in a study of religious and ritual behavior at the household level during the Persian period (539-332 BC).

Religion, Tradition, and Restorative Justice in Sierra Leone by Lyn S. Graybill (University of Notre Dame Press; 324 pages; $45). Examines the role of religion and local traditions in post-conflict, restorative-justice initiatives from the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to village-level Fambul Tok ceremonies.

Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World edited by David Hempton and Hugh McLeod (Oxford University Press; 407 pages; $110). Comparative essays on religiosity in the United States and in Western and Northern Europe.

SOCIOLOGY

Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence Against Women by Walter S. DeKeseredy, Molly Dragiewicz, and Martin D. Schwartz (University of California Press; 227 pages; $85 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). A study of violence against women linked to their leaving a marital or cohabiting relationship.

Rebellious Parents: Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia edited by Katalin Fabian and Elzbieta Korolczuk (Indiana University Press; 364 pages; $85 hardcover, $40 paperback). Topics include a home-birth movement in Hungarian, vaccination debates in the Czech Republic, and fathers’ rights activists in Poland.

SPORTS STUDIES

Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports by Rayvon Fouche (Johns Hopkins University Press; 262 pages; $29.95). Topics include gender and drug testing, the advantages imparted by cutting-edge equipment and athletic wear, and how technoscientific advances alter our traditional ideas of athletic ability.

THEATER

The Disney Musical on Stage and Screen: Critical Approaches from ‘Snow White’ to ‘Frozen’ edited by George Rodosthenous (Bloomsbury Academic; 257 pages; $108 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Combines essays on film and screen works from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Enchanted (2007) with writings on gender and race in the company’s musicals; topics include feminism and Frozen, and “queer Orientalism” and Aladdin.

Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures -- Aesthetics -- Cultural Policy edited by Manfred Brauneck and others (Transcript Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 602 pages; $45). Focuses on such themes as children and youth theater, experimental music theater, and theater and migration.

Stanislavsky in the World: The System and Its Transformations Across Continents edited by Jonathan Pitches and Stefan Aquilina (Bloomsbury Academic; 461 pages; $102 hardcover, $33.95 paperback). Writings by scholars and practitioners on the use of the Russian actor and director’s “system” in France, Italy, China, Greece, Malta, Lithuania, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tunisia, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.