Weekly Book List, June 23 2017

ANTHROPOLOGY

Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth by Leslie H. Tepper, Janice George, and Willard Joseph (University of Nebraska Press; 189 pages; $40). A study of the design, weaving, and social and ritual meaning of blankets worn as ceremonial robes among the Salish of the Pacific Northwest coast.

ARCHAEOLOGY

These “Thin Partitions": Bridging the Growing Divide Between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology edited by Joshua D. Englehardt and Ivy A. Rieger (University Press of Colorado; 300 pages; $75). Writings on theoretical, methodological, and other divisions between the two subdisciplines, and how they can better collaborate.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun by Jennifer L. Shaw (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 326 pages; $45). A study of the life, art, and writings of the French photographer and author, who moved in Surrealist and other avant-garde circles in interwar Paris, and resisted the Nazi occupiers of wartime Jersey, where she lived with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore.

The Hope of Another Spring: Takuichi Fujii, Artist and Wartime Witness by Barbara Johns (University of Washington Press; 334 pages; $39.95). A study of the Japanese-born artist, who immigrated to the United States in 1906 and was interned, with his family, during World War II; includes a translation of the illustrated diary he kept to document the camps.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Early Greek Portraiture: Monuments and Histories by Catherine M. Keesling (Cambridge University Press; 344 pages; $99.99). Focuses on civic honorific portrait sculptures that emerged at the end of the fifth century BC.

COMMUNICATION

An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America by William Lafi Youmans (Oxford University Press; 239 pages; $29.95). Focuses on Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C., Al-Jazeera America in New York, and AJ+ in San Francisco in a study of how location figured in the Qatar-owned network’s efforts to penetrate the American media market.

CRIMINOLOGY

The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism by Mark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij (Columbia University Press; 322 pages; $35). Examines personal and political factors that shape jihadist, white-supremacist, and other lone-wolf terrorism, here restricted to actions involving a single actor; topics include the broadcasting of intentions, and the presence of triggering events.

ECONOMICS

Unveiling the North Korean Economy: Collapse and Transition by Byung-Yeon Kim (Cambridge University Press; 340 pages; $110 hardcover, $35.99 paperback). Reconstructs and compiles data at the macro and micro levels, including information from North Korean refugees in South Korea; topics include how North Korea might make the transition to a market economy.

GENDER STUDIES

National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec by Jeffery Vacante (University of British Columbia Press; 288 pages; US$89.95). Considers how ideas of manhood figured in French Canadian culture and nationalism as Quebec shifted from an agrarian to an industrialized society.

GEOGRAPHY

Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State by Shiri Pasternak (University of Minnesota Press; 363 pages; $120 hardcover, $30 paperback). A study of the Barriere Lake Algonquins’ battle with the Canadian and the Quebec provincial governments to attain full rule over their lands and resources, under the terms of an agreement signed nearly three decades ago.

HISTORY

Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture by Megan J. Elias (University of Pennsylvania Press; 304 pages; $34.95). Explores nostalgic, Francophile, countercultural, and other trends in American foodways in a study of cookbooks in the United States since the early 19th century.

Maintaining Segregation: Children and Racial Instruction in the South, 1920-1955 by LeeAnn G. Reynolds (Louisiana State University Press; 272 pages; $45). Discusses home, school, and church in a study of how black and white children were socialized to the culture of segregation.

Passchendaele: The Lost Victory of World War I by Nick Lloyd (Basic Books; 410 pages; $32). Discusses British missteps in a still-controversial battle in Belgium in the summer and fall of 1917 that saw more than 500,000 men killed or injured.

Photography and American Coloniality: Eliot Elisofon in Africa, 1942--1972 by Raoul J. Granqvist (Michigan State University Press; 313 pages; $39.95). A study of the New York-born photojournalist (1911-73) that focuses on his work in Africa, conducted over a 30-year period.

The Salem Clique: Oregon’s Founding Brothers by Barbara S, Mahoney (Oregon State University Press; 224 pages; $22.95). Discusses a group of young men, led by Asahel Bush, editor of the Oregon Statesman, who in the 1850s were accused of corruption, dictatorship, and the intent of imposing slavery on the then-territory.

Southside: Eufaula’s Cotton Mill Village and its People, 1890-1945 by David Ernest Alsobrook (Mercer University Press; 221 pages; $29). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a study of life for textile-mill workers and their families in the small Alabama town.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

About Method: Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically by Jutta Schickore (University of Chicago Press; 316 pages; $50). Uses the history of snake-venom research over three centuries to examine how methods and experimental criteria in science shift over time.

JOURNALISM

Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era by Matt Carlson (Columbia University Press; 248 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Develops a relational theory of journalistic authority, grounded in the interactions of journalists, audiences, and other actors.

LAW

Ideology in the Supreme Court by Lawrence Baum (Princeton University Press; 261 pages; $35). Documents how shared understandings among political elites shape the process through which justices’ ideologies translate into positions on cases; focuses on shifts, between 1910 and 2013, in the positions of liberal and conservative justices concerning freedom of expression, criminal justice, and the government’s taking of property.

LITERATURE

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition: Volume 3, 1944--1945 edited by Jonathan R. Eller (Kent State University Press; 544 pages; $75). Scholarly edition of stories, with commentary, from a year that marked a pivotal moment in Bradbury’s career; documents the pressures the L.A.-based writer experienced from New York publishers.

The Great Tower of Elfland: The Mythopoeic Worldview of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald by Zachary A. Rhone (Kent State University Press; 200 pages; $45). Emphasizes areas of unity within the four writers’ worldviews.

Harbors Rich in Ships: The Selected Revolutionary Writings of Miroslav Krleža, Radical Luminary of Modern World Literature by Miroslav Krleza, translated by Zeljko Cipris (Monthly Review Press, distributed by New York University Press; 230 pages; $95 hardcover, $29 paperback). First English translations of writings by the Zagreb-born Yugoslav author (1893-1981), including stories, plays, and an autobiographical sketch.

The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser (Johns Hopkins University Press; 304 pages; $29.95). Examines figures who contributed early on to Austen’s fame, including an eccentric illustrator, Ferdinand Pickering, an actress-director, Rosina Filippi, and the author of the first Austen dissertation, George Pellew.

Ragged Revolutionaries: The Lumpenproletariat and African American Marxism in Depression-Era Literature by Nathaniel Mills (University of Massachusetts Press; 216 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on published and unpublished writings in a study of how Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Margaret Walker used hobos, drifters, criminals, folk-outlaws, and marginalized people to create new ideas of revolutionary knowledge and agency.

Sodomscapes: Hospitality in the Flesh by Lowell Gallagher (Fordham University Press; 300 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Examines the biblical story of Lot’s wife in relation to art, exegesis, literature, and Dead Sea tourism.

The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life by Karin Roffman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 316 pages; $30). A biographical study of Ashbery that focuses on the first 28 years of his life, to the publication of the prize-winning collection Some Trees in 1955; draws on unpublished correspondence, juvenilia, childhood diaries, and interviews with the poet.

Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital by Franz Hessel, translated by Amanda DeMarco (MIT Press; 284 pages; $24.95). First English translation of a 1929 book by Hessel on exploring Weimar Berlin; also includes an essay by Walter Benjamin that was written as a review of the original edition.

Witnessing beyond the Human: Addressing the Alterity of the Other in Post-coup Chile and Argentina by Kate Jenckes (State University of New York Press; 221 pages; $85). Draws on the theories of Jacques Derrida in a study of writings by Juan Gelman, Sergio Chejfec, and Roberto Bolano, and art by Eugenio Dittborn.

The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization by Jasper Bernes (Stanford University Press; 231 pages; $65). Examines American experimental poetry and conceptual art of the postwar period in relation to the vast changes in work with the advent of postindustrial capitalism.

MUSIC

Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy by Erinn E. Knyt (Indiana University Press; 372 pages; $85 hardcover, $38 paperback). A study of the Italian composer, conductor, and educator (1866-1924) that focuses on his pedagogy and influence on Jean Sibelius, Edgard Varese, Otto Luening, and Philip Jarnach.

Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era by Christopher Doll (University of Michigan Press; 330 pages; $90 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Focuses on chords to develop a listener-based, philosophical-psychological theory of harmonic effects for Anglophone popular music since the 1950s.

PHILOSOPHY

Kierkegaard’s Muse: The Mystery of Regine Olsen by Joakim Garff (Princeton University Press; 313 pages; $32.95). A biography of the one-time fiancee and lifetime literary inspiration of the Danish philosopher; draws on more than 100 previously unknown letters written by Regine to her sister Cornelia.

The Next Social Contract: Animals, the Anthropocene, and Biopolitics by Wayne Gabardi (Temple University Press; 242 pages; $89.50 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Argues for a more-than-human social contract, with a focus on the fate of endangered wild animals, industrialized farm animals, imperiled oceanic species, and animals moving into human-occupied habitats.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Conflict Dynamics: Civil Wars, Armed Actors, and Their Tactics by Alethia H. Cook and Marie Olson Lounsbery (University of Georgia Press; 240 pages; $59.95). Develops a theory of intrastate conflict that examines the relative capacities of parties involved and the resulting tactical decisions; includes case studies of Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Peru.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean (Viking; 334 pages; $28). Documents the political impact of James McGill Buchanan, and collaborators, beginning with the later-Nobel Prize winning economist’s opposition to Brown v. Board of Education.

Transnational Actors in War and Peace: Militants, Activists, and Corporations in World Politics edited by David Malet and Miriam J. Anderson (Georgetown University Press; 256 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Writings on war, peacemaking, and the involvement of foreign fighters, terrorists, private military security corporations, religious groups, NGOs, peace groups, and ethnic communities in diaspora.

RELIGION

China’s Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future by James Miller (Columbia University Press; 200 pages; $60). Uses a “decolonial” reading of Daoism to develop a vision of sustainability grounded in the Chinese tradition’s ideas, values, and notions of the co-thriving of humanity and nature.

The Indissolubility of Marriage and the Council of Trent by E. Christian Brugger (Catholic University of America Press; 312 pages; $69.95). Examines Catholic teachings on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage as discussed by the 16th-century ecumenical council; pays particular attention to ambiguities in Canon 7 that have led to centuries of debate.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology by M. Cooper Harriss (New York University Press; 288 pages; $30). Combines religious-studies, race-theory, and other perspectives in a study of religious aspects of the writer’s concept of race; topics include his close relationship with the theologian Nathan A. Scott, Jr.

RHETORIC

The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era by Bryan J. McCann (University of Alabama Press; 186 pages; $49.95). Explores the interplay of “gangsta rap” of the 1980s and 90s with the discourse of the period’s “war on crime.”

SOCIOLOGY

C. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution: An Exercise in the Art of Sociological Imagination by A. Javier Trevino (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $80 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Transcription and translation of interviews conducted by the American sociologist during his 1960 visit to the island; also examines Mills in relation to Castro, Sartre, and Juan Arcocha that summer.

Latina Teachers: Creating Careers and Guarding Culture by Glenda M. Flores (New York University Press; 265 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). A study of teachers in two majority-minority schools in the Compton and Rosemead areas of Los Angeles.