Weekly Book List, July 7, 2017

AGRICULTURE

Scattering the Seeds of Knowledge: The Words and Works of Indiana’s Pioneer County Extension Agents by Frederick Whitford (Purdue University Press; 789 pages; $49.95). Focuses on agents who between 1912 and 1929 worked to establish the first agricultural extension services in Indiana counties.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Blood Ties and the Native Son: Poetics of Patronage in Kyrgyzstan by Aksana Ismailbekova (Indiana University Press; 218 pages; $80 hardcover, $35 paperback). Traces the interplay of kinship ties and political patronage in the post-Soviet Central Asian republic through the rise and fall of a leading businessman in the rural north.

Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism, and Race in Latin America by Peter Wade (Duke University Press; 331 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Explores race mixture as a biopolitical process in Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

Mobile Secrets: Youth, Intimacy, and the Politics of Pretense in Mozambique by Julie Soleil Archambault (University of Chicago Press; 183 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in the Inhambane suburb of Liberdade in a study of how young Mozambicans use mobile phones to negotiate the demands of intimacy.

My Life, by Louis Kenoyer: Reminiscences of a Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood transcript by Melville Jacobs, translated by Jedd Schrock and Henry Zenk (Oregon State University Press; 320 pages; $35). Bilingual text of an autobiography by Louis Kenoyer (1868-1937), the last-known speaker of the Tualatin Northern Kalapuya language; the text, dictated in 1928 and 1936, sheds light on life on the Oregon reservation.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Frontiers of Colonialism edited by Christine D. Beaule (University Press of Florida; 372 pages; $95). Writings by archaeologists and other scholars on prehistoric and historic colonialism, with case studies from Mesoamerica, China, Egypt, Roman Britain, the Philippines, and elsewhere.

Land of Water, City of the Dead: Religion and Cahokia’s Emergence by Sarah E. Baires (University of Alabama Press; 195 pages; $54.95). A study of mortuary practices and religious culture in the largest city of Mississippian mound cultures, a site near present-day East St. Louis.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art by Laura Anne Kalba (Penn State University Press; 288 pages; $84.95). Traces the impact of new synthetic dyes and color technologies on such artists as Degas, Renoir, and Monet.

Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers by David William Foster (University of Pittsburgh Press; 186 pages; $29.95). Discusses Ricardo Valverde, Kathy Vargas, Harry Gamboa Jr., Louis Carlos Bernal, Laura Aguilar, Jose Galvez, Miguel Gandert, Art Meza, Delilah Montoya, and Ken Gonzales-Day.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

The Collapse of the Mycenaean Economy: Imports, Trade, and Institutions 1300-700 BCE by Sarah C. Murray (Cambridge University Press; 366 pages; $120). Combines textual and archaeological data in a study that challenges assumptions about trade during the Late Bronze Age.

The Peace of the Gods: Elite Religious Practices in the Middle Roman Republic by Craige B. Champion (Princeton University Press; 270 pages; $39.95). Challenges instrumentalist views of the religious behaviors of Roman elites, with a focus on the Middle Republic (circa 250-100 BC).

CULTURAL STUDIES

Comfort Food: Meanings and Memories edited by Michael Owen Jones and Lucy M. Long (University Press of Mississippi; 254 pages; $35). Essays on such topics as self-medicating with foods, Rhode Island “doughboys,” viili, a fermented milk product, as Finnish-American comfort food, and issues of tradition, authenticity, and health in relation to soul food.

Postcards from Rio: Favelas and the Contested Geographies of Citizenship by Katia da Costa Bezerra (Fordham University Press; 176 pages; $98 hardcover, $28 paperback). Discusses photography, video, and other forms in a study of favela-based representations of the Rio de Janeiro communities.

ECONOMICS

Approaching Equality: What Can Be Done About Wealth Inequality? by Roger A. McCain (Edward Elgar Publishing; 232 pages; $120). Proposes ways to reverse the concentration of wealth in market economies; draws on such contemporary theorists as Thomas Piketty and his associates, as well as the Nobel Prize winning West Indies economist Sir William Arthur Lewis (1915-91).

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Growth of Women’s Entrepreneurship: A Comparative Analysis edited by Tatiana S. Manolova and others (Edward Elgar Publishing; 320 pages; $150). Writings on female entrepreneurship in such settings as the United States, Norway, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Chile.

EDUCATION

Youth in Postwar Guatemala: Education and Civic Identity in Transition by Michelle J. Bellino (Rutgers University Press; 256 pages; $95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of how adolescents at four schools in urban and rural Guatemala learn about their nation’s history of authoritarianism and develop civic identities.

FILM STUDIES

Gestures of Love: Romancing Performance in Classical Hollywood Cinema by Steven Rybin (State University of New York Press; 282 pages; $85). Topics include audiences’ enchantment with such classic movie couples as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and William Powell, and Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

Latin American Women Filmmakers: Social and Cultural Perspectives by Traci Roberts-Camps (University of New Mexico Press; 180 pages; $75). Focuses on the work of Suzana Amaral, Lucia Puenzo, and other female filmmakers from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico.

HISTORY

The Abongo Abroad: Military-Sponsored Travel in Ghana, the United States, and the World, 1959-1992 by John V. Clune (Vanderbilt University Press; 268 pages; $55). Describes how Ghanaian soldiers and their families were influenced by U.S.-based training as well as peacekeeping deployments in the Sinai and Lebanon.

Ancient States and Infrastructural Power: Europe, Asia, and America edited by Clifford Ando and Seth Richardson (University of Pennsylvania Press; 309 pages; $69.95). Comparative writings on state power by scholars of Greece and Rome, as well as early Mesopotamia, late antique Persia, ancient China, Visigothic Iberia, and the Inca Empire.

The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau’s River Years by Robert M. Thorson (Harvard University Press; 315 pages; $29.95). A study of Thoreau’s time as navigator and champion of the Concord River, and his involvement in a controversy over the Billerica Dam.

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America by Jean Elson (Temple University Press; 340 pages; $99.50 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Explores societal mores during the period through the protracted court battle between Nina and James Walker of Newport, R.I., from 1909 to 1916, after Mrs. Walker accused her husband of adultery and extreme cruelty.

Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire by Carol Dyhouse (Oxford University Press; 262 pages; $27.95). Draws on fiction, film, music, and other realms in a study of shifts in romance and fantasy that have reshaped what women find desirable in men.

Hell and Its Rivals: Death and Retribution among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Early Middle Ages by Alan E. Bernstein (Cornell University Press; 432 pages; $45). Topics include how slavery, monarchy, and other institutions shaped beliefs about punishment after death in and beyond the three faiths.

A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-1929 by Behnaz A. Mirzai (University of Texas Press; 356 pages; $95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Discusses the enslavement of Africans and others during the period in Iran, as well as efforts to ban the trade.

The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey by Perin E. Gurel (Columbia University Press; 273 pages; $60). Explores realms from politics to popular culture in a study of Turkish responses to the rise of American power in the 20th century.

Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War by Philip F. Gura (Harvard University Press; 315 pages; $29.95). Focuses on George Ripley, Horace Greeley, William B. Greene, Orson Squire Fowler, Mary Gove Nichols, Henry David Thoreau, and John Brown in a study of a reformist fervor in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837,

The Politics of Nonassimiliation: The American Jewish Left in the Twentieth Century by David R. Verbeeten (Northern Illinois University Press; 225 pages; $39). Documents how leftist and liberal politics served to mediate and preserve Jewish identity; focuses on Alexander Bittelman, a founder of the American Communist Party, the mid-century American Jewish Congress, and the activist New Jewish Agenda in the 1980s and early 90s.

Revolution Against Empire: Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence by Justin du Rivage (Yale University Press; 371 pages; $40). Discusses the American Revolution as the outcome of a decades-long debate over the economic and political future of the British Empire.

Speaking of Spain: The Evolution of Race and Nation in the Hispanic World by Antonio Feros (Harvard University Press; 367 pages; $45). Focuses on how Spain came together together as a nation from the end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 19th.

States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Laura Robson (University of California Press; 244 pages; $39.95). Examines efforts at “ethnic engineering,” including separation and relocation, as Britain, France, and the League of Nations claimed control over Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire; groups discussed include Assyrian Christians and Armenians.

Tautai: Sāmoa, World History, and the Life of Ta’isi O. F. Nelson by Patricia O’Brien (University of Hawai’i Press; 432 pages; $72). Traces the life of a businessman (1883-1944) who was a founder of the Mau movement for Samoan independence from colonial rule.

Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn by Adi Gordon (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 344 pages; $95 hardcover, $40 paperback). A biography of the Prague-born scholar and activist (1891-1971), who was a pioneer in the study of nationalism.

LAW

Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex-Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India by Sital Kalantry (University of Pennsylvania Press; 254 pages; $69.95). Offers a context-based perspective on the advisability and consequences of bans on sex-selective abortion.

LINGUISTICS

Remade in France: Anglicisms in the Lexicon and Morphology of French by Valerie Saugera (Oxford University Press; 205 pages; $74). Examines the appearance and behavior of English loanwords in French, with a focus on the period since 1990.

Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by Kathryn A. Remlinger (University of Wisconsin Press; 183 pages; $24.95). Draws on 16 years of fieldwork in a study of the dialect and customs of the northwestern UP.

LITERATURE

The Cruft of Fiction: Mega-Novels and the Science of Paying Attention by David Letzler (University of Nebraska Press; 303 pages; $60). Uses the computer term “cruft,” referring to junk code,” to explore how readers modulate their attention to seemingly random, derailing, and other elements in “mega-novels” by such authors as Gertrude Stein, David Foster Wallace, and Roberto Bolano.

Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature by Sonya Posmentier (Johns Hopkins University Press; 304 pages; $49.95). Discusses Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, and other authors in a study of a black diasporic tradition of environmental writing.

A Curious Peril: H.D.’s Late Modernist Prose by Lara Vetter (University Press of Florida; 265 pages; $79.95). Describes how trauma experienced by the American poet in London during World War II altered and politicized her writing.

Margaret Laurence Writes Africa and Canada by Laura K. Davis (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 177 pages; US$29.99). Explores tensions between self and nation in the Manitoba-born author’s work as she dealt with decolonization and nation building in 1950s Somalia and Ghana and 1960s and 70s English Canada.

Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: One First Matter All edited by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa (Duquesne University Press; 249 pages; $70). Essays on the nature and legacy of the English poet’s mature commitment to heretical monist materialism.

The Olson Codex: Projective Verse and the Problem of Mayan Glyphs by Dennis Tedlock (University of New Mexico Press; 100 pages; $39.95). Documents the influence of Mayan hieroglyphics on the work of the American poet Charles Olson (1910-70), who spent six months in the Yucatan in 1951 studying Mayan language and culture.

Roger Martin du Gard and Maumort: The Nobel Laureate and His Unfinished Creation by Benjamin Franklin Martin (Northern Illinois University Press; 233 pages; $39). A study of the Nobel Prize-winning French writer (1881-1958) that focuses on the long novel, Lieutenant Colonel Maumort, that he began in the 1940s and left unfinished at the time of his death.

PHILOSOPHY

Believable Evidence by Veli Mitova (Cambridge University Press; 260 pages; $99.99). Defends “truthy psychologism” in a study of the ontology of evidence.

Human and Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine edited by Stefanie Buchenau and Roberto Lo Presti (University of Pittsburgh Press; 354 pages; $55). Essays on debates on human and animal cognition from the 16th through the 18th centuries; topics include birdsong as a philosophical problem from Aristotle to Kant, and degrees and forms of sensibility in Albrecht von Haller’s physiology.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Islam, Gender, and Democracy in Comparative Perspective edited by Jocelyne Cesari and Jose Casanova (Oxford University Press; 309 pages; $95). Essays that challenge assumptions about the relationship among secularism, democracy, religion, and gender equality as they pertain to Muslims; includes writings on such Muslim-majority countries as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Tunisia, and Egypt, as well as such Muslim-minority countries as France and India.

Middle Powers and International Organisations: Australia and the OECD by Aynsley Kellow and Peter Carroll (Edward Elgar Publishing; 400 pages; $155). Focuses on Australia and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a study of how the world’s “middle powers” use international organizations to gain influence; topics include the protracted nature of Australia’s decision to apply for membership in the “rich man’s club.”

New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help by Michael Mascarenhas (Indiana University Press; 164 pages; $40 hardcover, $25 paperback). Uses water-management projects in India and Rwanda to examine problematic aspects of corporate interests in humanitarian work.

The Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia by Ora John Reuter (Cambridge University Press; 336 pages; $99.99). Develops a theory of why dominant parties emerge in some non-democratic settings, but not others; focuses on the balance of political resources between leaders and elites.

Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests by Ttimothy M. LaPira and Herschel F. Thomas (University Press of Kansas; 258 pages; $39.95). Argues that the primary role of politicians and officials turned lobbyists is not buying influence or outcomes, but rather minimizing harm to their clients from the actions of government.

POPULAR CULTURE

Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe edited by Matt Yockey (University of Texas Press; 364 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays on how Marvel Comics became a major transmedia empire, expanding into film, television, and streaming media.

PSYCHOLOGY

Invisible Mind: Flexible Social Cognition and Dehumanization by Lasana T. Harris (MIT Press; 203 pages; $40). Combines neuroscientific data with psychological, evolutionary, and other theory in a study of how and why we withhold or engage social cognition, and therefore perceive or fail to perceive the humanity of others.

PUBLIC POLICY

Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty by Scott W. Allard (Russell Sage Foundation; 288 pages; $32.50). Draws on interviews and data from the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., in a study of increasing poverty in suburban areas.

RELIGION

Ezra and the Second Wilderness by Philip Y. Yoo (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $95). Focuses on the composition, content, and origins of what is termed the Ezra Memoir, comprising Ezra 7-10 and Nehemiah 8-10.

Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity edited by Karina Martin Hogan, Matthew Goff, and Emma Wasserman (Society of Biblical Literature; 401 pages; $64.95 hardcover, $49.95 paperback). Topics include “philosophical paideia” in Job, and the early Church Father Irenaeus on education.

Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America by Samuel C. Heilman (University of California Press; 336 pages; $29.95). Discusses leadership and succession in the Munkacs, Boyan and Kopyczynitz, Bobover, Satmar, and Chabad Lubavitch dynasties.

Zen and Material Culture edited by Pamela D. Winfield and Steven Heine (Oxford University Press; 316 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Discusses phenomena from buildings to beads and bowls in essays on the abundant material culture of the Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku sects of Zen Buddhism in Japan.

The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume Twelve translated by Nathan Wolski and Joel Hecker (Stanford University Press; 800 pages; $75). Twelfth and final volume in a translation, with commentary, of the Sefer ha-Zohar or Book of Radiance, an Aramaic Kabbalistic text written in 13th-century Spain.

RHETORIC

Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Southern Illinois University Press; 280 pages; $40). Topics include culinary tourism, domestic guides and the rhetoric of thrift, and profanity, purity, and the Bakhtinian grotesque in Skinny Bitch.

“Logos” Without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato edited by Robin Reames (University of South Carolina Press; 191 pages; $49.99). Discusses figures from Homer to Gorgias in essays on rhetorical theory before Plato coined the term rhetoric around 380 BC.

The Rhetoric of Mao Zedong: Transforming China and Its People by Xing Lu (University of South Carolina Press; 261 pages; $49.99). Applies Western and Chinese concepts in an analysis of the Communist leader’s speeches and writings over a period of 60 years.

THEATER

Charles Ludlam Lives! Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, Taylor Mac, and the Queer Legacy of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company by Sean Edgecomb (University of Michigan Press; 246 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of the American playwright, actor, and director Charles Ludlam (1943-1987) and the varied legacy of his “Ludlamesque Ridiculous” for other artists.

URBAN STUDIES

Global Cities: Urban Environments in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China by Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng (MIT Press; 447 pages; $35). Traces the three cities’ responses to environmental issues of air pollution, water, food, transportation, and public and private spaces.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women by Brittney C. Cooper (University of Illinois Press; 187 pages; $95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Covers the late 1800s through the 1970s in a study of such thinkers and activists as Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara.

Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories edited by Barbara Molony and Jennifer Nelson (Bloomsbury Academic; 335 pages; $114). Includes essays on feminism in United States, Canada, South Africa, India, France, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Poland and Chile; extends the boundaries of the “second wave” from the 1940s to the early 2000s.