Weekly Book List, June 24, 2016

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress by Joseph R. Winters (Duke University Press; 304 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Draws on African-American literary and other realms to develop an idea of hope grounded in an engagement with loss and melancholy; figures discussed include W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Charles Burnett.

This Woman’s Work: The Writing and Activism of Bebe Moore Campbell by Osizwe Raena Jamila Harwell (University Press of Mississippi; 199 pages; $65). A critical biography of the novelist (1950-2006) that examines her activism in the black liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and her role as a mental-health advocate in her later years.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Being and Becoming: Embodiment and Experience Among the Orang Rimba of Sumatra by Ramsey Elkholy (Berghahn Books; 273 pages; $95). Applies a phenomenological approach in an ethnography of a hunter-gatherer people in Indonesia.

Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil by Elizabeth Farfan-Santos (University of Texas Press; 196 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in a community of Brazilians who are among those recognized as quilombos---descendants of runaway slaves---and are promised land rights as reparations.

Exiled Home: Salvadoran Transnational Youth in the Aftermath of Violence by Susan Bibler Coutin (Duke University Press; 288 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of Salvadoran youth who migrated as children with their families to the United States during the 1980-92 civil war, including some who have been deported back to a country they little know.

The Street Is My Pulpit: Hip Hop and Christianity in Kenya by Mwenda Ntarangwi (University of Illinois Press; 180 pages; $95 hardcover, $25 paperback). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a study of the born-again hip-hop gospel artist Julius Owino aka Juliani.

Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson’s World of Difference by Peter Harries-Jones (Fordham University Press; 296 pages; $125 hardcover, $35 paperback). An intellectual biography of the British-born American anthropologist (1904-80).

ARCHAEOLOGY

Geoarchaeology and Radiocarbon Chronology of Stone Age Northeast Asia by Vladimir V. Pitul’ko and Elena Yu. Pavlova, translated by Richard L. Bland (Texas A&M University Press; 222 pages; $60). Translation of a 2010 Russian work on the archaeology of the Aldan River Valley and other regions of Siberia above the Arctic Circle during what is termed the late Neopleistocene.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Deaths of Henri Regnault by Marc Gotlieb (University of Chicago Press; 298 pages; $60). Examines the life, work, and patriotic legend of a maverick French painter whose rising career was cut short at age 27 with his death in the Franco-Prussian war.

Mythologizing Norval Morrisseau: Art and the Colonial Narrative in the Canadian Media by Carmen L. Robertson (University of Manitoba Press, distributed by Michigan State University Press; 216 pages; US$31.95). Examines the Canadian media’s portrayal of the Ontario-born Anishinaabe artist (1931-2007) as a shamanic figure and Morrisseau’s own playing off and against such tropes.

The Shining Inheritance: Italian Painters at the Qing Court, 1699--1812 by Marco Musillo (Getty Research Institute; 184 pages; $60). Focuses on Giovanni Gherardini, Giuseppe Castiglione, and Giuseppe Panzi in a study of Italian artists at the Chinese court---with Castiglione (d. 1766) working for more than 50 years under three emperors.

Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siecle Vienna by Elana Shapira (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 336 pages; $85 hardcover, $40 paperback). Discusses the banker Eduard Todesco, the steel tycoon Karl Wittgenstein, and others in a study of Jewish patrons as an influence on Viennese modernism.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Acts of Compassion in Greek Tragic Drama by James Franklin Johnson (University of Oklahoma Press; 308 pages; $34.95). Explores what the Greeks termed eleos or oiktos in Homer’s epics as well as in tragedies by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.

The Republican Aventine and Rome’s Social Order by Lisa Marie Mignone (University of Michigan Press; 243 pages; $70). Argues that the notion that there was a concentration of the disadvantaged or “plebian ghetto” in Rome’s Aventine is a modern myth.

Rethinking Roman Alliance: A Study in Poetics and Society by Bill Gladhill (Cambridge University Press; 230 pages; $99.99). A study of the foedus, a ritual event that concluded alliances of all sorts in Roman society.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

The Pragmatic Turn: Toward Action-Oriented Views in Cognitive Science edited by Andreas K. Engel, Karl J. Friston, and Danica Kragic (MIT Press; 418 pages; $49). Writings by scholars in cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and philosophy of mind on such topics as extending sensorimotor contingencies to cognition.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Obstruction by Nick Salvato (Duke University Press; 280 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Considers how five “obstructions"---embarrassment, laziness, slowness, cynicism, and digressiveness---figure in creativity and insight.

ECONOMICS

Inequality, Growth, and “Hot” Money by Pablo G. Bortz (Edward Elgar Publishing; 224 pages; $120). Applies a neo-Kaleckian approach in a study of capital flows, growing income inequality, and declining growth.

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan (MIT Press; 240 pages; $26.95). Focuses on the phenomenon represented by such companies as Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Etsy, TaskRabbit, France’s BlaBlaCar, China’s Didi Kuaidi, and India’s Ola.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Ecological Governance by Bruce Jennings (West Virginia University Press; 243 pages; $79.99 hardcover, $18.99 paperback). Offers a bioethical perspective on how political culture must transform in the face of climate change.

The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl by Sarah D. Wald (University of Washington Press; 312 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on novels, films, journalism, political tracts, and other texts in a study of the depiction of California farmers and farmworkers since the Dust Bowl era.

FILM STUDIES

China’s Encounter With Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and the Film Industry, 1994-2013 by Wendy Su (University Press of Kentucky; 240 pages; $60). Topics include how China has used global capital to modernize its film industry.

Ex-Centric Migrations: Europe and the Maghreb in Mediterranean Cinema, Literature, and Music by Hakim Abderrezak (Indiana University Press; 284 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on film, literature, and music in a study of clandestine crossings from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) to destinations other than France.

Lincoln Before “Lincoln": Early Cinematic Adaptations of the Life of America’s Greatest President by Brian J. Snee (University Press of Kentucky; 154 pages; $40). Examines representations of the president in six films and television mini-series that predate Spielberg’s Lincoln---The Birth of a Nation (1915), Abraham Lincoln (1930), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Sandburg’s Lincoln (1974--1976), and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln (1988).

Of Elephants and Toothaches: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue” edited by Eva Badowska and Francesca Parmeggiani (Fordham University Press; 243 pages; $95 hardcover, $32 paperback). Interdisciplinary writings on the director’s acclaimed 10-film cycle, originally made for Polish TV, on ethical dilemmas prompted by the 10 Commandments.

Slapstick Modernism: Chaplin to Kerouac to Iggy Pop by William Solomon (University of Illinois Press; 261 pages; $55). Links silent screen performers, experimental writers, and punk rock in a discussion of a “slapstick modernism” created in the convergence of experimentation and disruptive lunacy.

HISTORY

Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages by Nancy Mandeville Caciola (Cornell University Press; 360 pages; $39.95). Explores Christian and surviving pagan traditions about the dead and the afterlife in Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.

Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War by Jessica Elkind (University Press of Kentucky; 294 pages; $45). Examines programs of U.S. aid in South Vietnam,---governmental and non-governmental---from 1954 to the beginning of a full-scale ground war.

All for the Greed of Gold: Will Woodin’s Klondike Adventure edited by Catherine Holder Spude (Washington State University Press; 271 pages; $27.95). Edition of diaries and other writings that document Woodin’s experience traveling with his father from Seattle to the Yukon in 1898 with the idea of making a fortune selling supplies in the last great gold rush.

Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands by Timothy Paul Bowman (Texas A&M University Press; 412 pages; $43). Examines the marginalization of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans with the rise of large-scale agriculture in the region.

Brother Bill: President Clinton and the Politics of Race and Class by Daryl A. Carter (University of Arkansas Press; 300 pages; $54.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Examines how the dynamics of class shaped Clinton’s political relationship with African-Americans.

Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation, 1861-1865 by Michael Brem Bonner (Louisiana State University Press; 272 pages; $48). Describes the Confederacy as an “expedient corporatist state” and draws parallels with corporatist governments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gun Culture in Early Modern England by Louis G. Schwoerer (University of Virginia Press; 272 pages; $39.50). Topics include how domestic gun culture influenced England’s 1689 Bill of Rights, which has been cited in discussions of America’s Second Amendment.

Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887-1920 by Kazuhiro Oharazeki (University of Washington Press; 312 pages; $40). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study of the migration, social origins, and experiences of Japanese prostitutes in Pacific Coast cities.

The Last Days of Stalin by Joshua Rubenstein (Yale University Press; 271 pages; $35). Discusses the dictator’s final active months, beginning with the 19th Party Congress in October 1952, the vigil at his deathbed, the machinations of his inner circle, and the events that followed his demise.

Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War---for Better and For Worse by Candice Shy Hooper (Kent State University Press; 432 pages; $39.95). Contrasts Jessie Fremont and Nelly McClellan in the “for worse” camp with Ellen Sherman and Julia Grant, in the “for better.”

Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England by Will Tosh (Palgrave Macmillan; 211 pages; $95). Uses the circle surrounding the Elizabethan spy Anthony Bacon, elder brother to Francis, to examine male friendship and same-sex intimacy; draws on previously unpublished correspondence.

Migration and the Making of Industrial São Paulo by Paulo Fontes, translated by Ned Sublette (Duke University Press; 280 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Translation and revision of a 2008 Brazilian study that focuses on the lives of the migrants who settled in the São Paulo suburb of São Miguel Paulista, which grew from 7,000 people in the 1940s to more than 140,000 after two decades.

Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea by Lynn Schler (Ohio University Press; 264 pages; $80 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Discusses Nigerian sailors in the transition from work on colonial British ships to employment under the Nigerian National Shipping Line.

The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and Their Aftermath by Eyal Ginio (Oxford University Press; 377 pages; $80). Traces the impact of conflict and defeat in the Balkan wars (1912-13) on different segments of Ottoman society; draws on previously untapped sources in Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, and French.

Panting for Glory: The Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War by Richard Bruce Winders (Texas A&M University Press; 192 pages; $45). Contrasts the experiences of the 1st and 2nd Mississippi Rifles, with the latter largely forgotten today and the former known for significant victories under then-Col. Jefferson Davis.

The Papers of George Catlett Marshall: “The Man of the Age,” October 1, 1949-October 16, 1959, Volume 7 edited by Mark A. Stoler and Daniel D. Holt (Johns Hopkins University Press; 1,200 pages; $90). Seventh and final volume in a scholarly edition of the papers of the American soldier-statesman, including his winning, in retirement, of the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize.

Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire by Duncan Bell (Princeton University Press; 441 pages; $39.50). New and previously published essays on liberalism and imperial ideology, with a focus on Britain.

Rescuing the Vulnerable: Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe edited by Beate Althammer, Lutz Raphael, and Tamara Stazic-Wendt (Berghahn Books; 427 pages; $140). Focuses on neglected children, the homeless, and the unemployed in comparative historical essays on the perception and experience of social vulnerability in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Russia.

The Voyage of the Slave Ship “Hare": A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina by Sean M. Kelley (University of North Carolina Press; 290 pages; $30). Reconstructs the voyage of a slave ship from Newport, Rhode Island, to Sierra Leone, and back to America in 1754-55, and the fate of the slaves on board from purchase in Africa to sale in South Carolina.

Zombie Army: The Canadian Army and Conscription in the Second World War by Daniel Byers (University of British Columbia Press; 344 pages; US$99). Topics include how Canadian conscripts, officially there for home service, became a source of recruitment by the active army overseas.

LAW

Adversity and Justice: A History of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by Kevin M. Ball (Wayne State University Press; 247 pages; $39.99). Traces the history of the court since the late 19th century; topics include the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, in 2013.

Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law by Bruce P. Frohnen and George W. Carey (Harvard University Press; 293 pages; $45). Criticizes, among other things, the increasing role in governance of executive orders, signing statements, and other directives described as having the force of law, but lacking attributes of “genuine law.”

Masculinity at Work: Employment Discrimination Through a Different Lens by Ann C. McGinley (New York University Press; 255 pages; $49). Documents how masculinities theory can sharpen the understanding of discrimination under the terms of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History by Markus Gunneflo (Cambridge University Press; 290 pages; $110). Focuses on targeted killing as practiced by the Israeli and U.S. governments and a “compulsion of legality” that hinges on distinguishing what is considered legal targeted killing and what is considered extra-legal political assassination.

LITERATURE

Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture by Anjali Nerlekar (Northwestern University Press; 320 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Develops an approach to the Indian poet (1932-2004) that bridges the boundaries between English and Marathi writing.

Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives edited by Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 320 pages; US$29.99). Essays on Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, Ho Che Anderson, Seth, and other Canadian cartoonists working in the genre of the graphic life narrative, including memoirs, biographies, and confessional texts.

Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo (Bloomsbury Academic; 242 pages; $104). Writings on how the deaths of the “high priests of theory” have affected the life of theory; topics include Paul de Man and other “ghosts” in Derrida’s Politics of Friendship.

An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope, edited by Tom Jones (Princeton University Press; 248 pages; $24). Scholarly edition, with extended introduction, of Pope’s philosophical poem, which was first published anonymously in 1733-34.

Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form by Claire Jarvis (Johns Hopkins University Press; 224 pages; $49.95). Uses works by Emily Bronte, Trollope, Hardy, and Lawrence to examine realist writers’ depictions of displaced erotic desire, dominant women and submissive men, and other elements that challenge the conventions of the marriage plot.

The Green Ghost: William Burroughs and the Ecological Mind by Chad Weidner (Southern Illinois University Press; 200 pages; $35). An ecocritical study of the Beat writer that examines Naked Lunch as well as such lesser-known later works as and Ghost of Chance.

In Search of Annie Drew: Jamaica Kincaid’s Mother and Muse by Daryl Cumber Dance (University of Virginia Press; 288 pages; $29.50). Argues that all of Kincaid’s work, regardless of theme, is linked to the writer’s efforts to free herself from her mother.

In the Neighborhood: Women’s Publication in Early America by Caroline Wigginton (University of Massachusetts Press; 232 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Offers case studies of what are termed women’s “relational publications” involving circulated texts, objects, and performances.

James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake by Donald Phillip Verene (Northwestern University Press; 152 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Documents how Joyce drew on the philosophers Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, and Giambattista Vico for the 1939 novel.

Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory by Hassan Melehy (Bloomsbury Academic; 255 pages; $120). A study of the American writer’s relationship to French---his first language---and to his Quebecois heritage.

The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Lindsey Michael Banco (University of Iowa Press; 268 pages; $22.50). Traces representations of the American theoretical physicist in biographies, histories, fiction, comics, photographs, film, television, documentaries, theater, and museums.

The Message of the City: Dawn Powell’s New York Novels, 1925--1962 by Patricia E. Palermo (Ohio University Press; 376 pages; $59.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). A critical biography of the author that examines novels set in the city she embraced after a harsh upbringing in Mount Gilead, Ohio.

Nabokov’s Canon: From “Onegin” to “Ada” by Marijeta Bozovic (Northwestern University Press; 248 pages; $120 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Discusses Nabokov’s translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and his 1969 novel Ada, or Ardor as reflections of a desire to reimagine the Western canon.

Nowhere in the Middle Ages by Karma Lochrie (University of Pennsylvania Press; 280 pages; $65). Documents the presence and diversity of utopian thought in the medieval era, before the early modern publication of More’s Utopia; examples include Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio to Langland’s Piers Plowman.

Places in the Making: A Cultural Geography of American Poetry by Jim Cocola (University of Iowa Press; 288 pages; $55). Explores links between identity and emplacement in the work of such poets as Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Olson, Joy Harjo, and Myung Mi Kim.

Postsecular Benjamin: Agency and Tradition by Brian Britt (Northwestern University Press; 224 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of Walter Benjamin’s engagement with religious traditions.

Risk Criticism: Precautionary Reading in an Age of Environmental Uncertainty by Molly Wallace (University of Michigan Press; 272 pages; $75 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Draws on novels, films, the Internet, and other realms in a study of literary and other responses to an age of looming environmental catastrophe.

Shakespeare’s Big Men: Tragedy and the Problem of Resentment by Richard van Oort (University of Toronto Press; 256 pages; US$65). Applies the theories of Eric Gans and generative anthropology to a study of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus and the social function of tragedy.

Style and the Single Girl: How Modern Women Re-Dressed the Novel, 1922--1977 by Hope Howell Hodgkins (Ohio State University Press; 312 pages; $84.95). Links fashion, gender relations, and literature in a study of works by Dorothy Sayers, Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Pym, and Muriel Spark.

Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique by Ellen E. Berry (Bloomsbury Academic; 176 pages; $104). Focuses on the writings of Valerie Solanas, Kathy Acker, Theresa Cha, Chantel Chawaf, Jeanette Winterson, and Lynda Barry.

MUSIC

Jazzing: New York City’s Unseen Scene by Thomas H. Greenland (University of Illinois Press; 245 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a study of New York’s jazz scene that focuses on key but non-performing participants, including agents, proprietors, critics, photographers, fans, and others.

Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music by John W. Troutman (University of North Carolina Press; 272 pages; $35). Discusses the history of the kika kila or Hawaiian steel guitar and traces its its influence on American and global music.

PHILOSOPHY

Arendt’s Judgment: Freedom, Responsibility, Citizenship by Jonathan Peter Schwartz (University of Pennsylvania Press; 272 pages; $55). Draws on unpublished materials in a study of Arendt’s views of the centrality of political judgment, a topic that was to be the subject of a planned but unwritten third volume of her Life of the Mind.

Chinese Thought as Global Theory: Diversifying Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences and Humanities edited by Leigh Jenco (State University of New York Press; 250 pages; $80). Essays on the wider application of Chinese thought, past and present, in social and political theory.

The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume II edited by Edwin Curley (Princeton University Press; 792 pages; $55). Completes a scholarly translation of the Dutch philosopher’s writings, including here the Theological-Political Treatise and correspondence by Spinoza responding to critics of the work.

The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship by John von Heyking (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 280 pages; US$110 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Explores the two philosophers’ views on friendship and its significance for political life; texts discussed include Plato in Lysis and the Laws.

Power: Oppression, Subservience, and Resistance by Raymond Angelo Belliotti (State University of New York Press; 257 pages; $85). Draws on ancient to contemporary thinkers in a philosophical discussion of different aspects of power.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Civil Society, Conflict Resolution, and Democracy in Nigeria by Darren Kew (Syracuse University Press; 456 pages; $75 hardcover, $49.95 paperback). A study of the first, second, and third generation of civil-society groups in Nigeria and how the level of democratization in the groups’ own internal politics influences their effectiveness.

Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East edited by Mehran Kamrava (Oxford University Press; 317 pages; $35). Essays on Yemen, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Igniting the Internet: Youth and Activism in Postauthoritarian South Korea by Jiyeon Kang (University of Hawai’i Press; 284 pages; $68). Examines the online mobilization of South Korean youth, beginning in 2002 with protests concerning an automobile accident involving two U.S. servicemen.

In the Hegemon’s Shadow: Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers by Evan Braden Montgomery (Cornell University Press; 224 pages; $45). Draws on realist theory to develop a model of why global powers have accommodated some regional powers but opposed others.

The Modern Legislative Veto: Macropolitical Conflict and the Legacy of Chadha by Michael J. Berry (University of Michigan Press; 352 pages; $80). Examines Congress’s use of the legislative veto over the past 80 years, with a focus on modifications since the Supreme Court ruling in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983).

Peacemaking from Above, Peace from Below: Ending Conflict between Regional Rivals by Norrin M. Ripsman (Cornell University Press; 256 pages; $45). Offers case studies of peace treaties and their aftermath, with a focus on France and Germany in 1954, Egypt and Israel in 1979, and Israel and Jordan in 1994.

Preventive Force: Drones, Targeted Killing, and the Transformation of Contemporary Warfare edited by Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer M. Ramos (New York University Press; 372 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Focuses on drone strikes in essays by scholars and practitioners on preventive force as a security strategy; topics include the low-quality information environment of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self-Interest Have Imperiled the American Dream by John Ehrenreich (ILR Press/Cornell University Press; 256 pages; $29.95). Discusses growing economic inequality and other manifestations of what is termed a third wave of capitalism that has emerged in recent decades.

When States Come Out: Europe’s Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility by Phillip M. Ayoub (Cambridge University Press; 295 pages; $89.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Develops a theory of variations in the rights and recognition accorded LGBT people in different European nations.

Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era by Danny Hayes and Jennifer L. Lawless (Cambridge University Press; 196 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $24.99 paperback). Uses data from the 2010 and 2014 Congressional elections to dispute the notion that women today face widespread bias, sexism, and discrimination running for office.

RELIGION

Black Lives and Sacred Humanity: Toward an African American Religious Naturalism by Carol Wayne White (Fordham University Press; 164 pages; $90 hardcover, $25 paperback). Draws on the writings of Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, and James Baldwin.

Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable by Richard H. Jones (State University of New York Press; 416 pages; $95). Draws primarily from Buddhism and Hinduism in a study of the metaphysical, ethical, and other philosophical issues raised by mysticism.

RHETORIC

Rethinking Ethos: A Feminist Ecological Approach to Rhetoric edited by Kathleen J. Ryan, Nancy Myers, and Rebecca Jones (Southern Illinois University Press; 304 pages; $35). Essays that argue for a feminist, ecological, and fluid redefinition of the concept of ethos.

SOCIOLOGY

Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life by Dennis Waskul with Michele Waskul (Temple University Press; 164 pages; $59.50 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Draws on interviews with 71 Midwesterners in a “reflexive ethnography” on how people experience ghosts and hauntings.

Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health by Dawn R. Norris (Rutgers University Press; 192 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on in-depth interviews with unemployed, middle-class professional men and women.

SPORTS STUDIES

Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports by Lindsay Parks Pieper (University of Illinois Press; 250 pages; $95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A critical history of sex testing in sports since the 1930s, with special attention to changes in the International Olympic Committee’s approach since 1968.

THEATER

Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage: Language, Identity, Nation by Jane M. Koustas (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 224 pages; US$100 hardcover, US$32.95 paperback). Describes how the Quebec-born actor and director (b. 1957) revolutionized the theater scene in Toronto, beginning in the 1980s.

URBAN STUDIES

Working towards the Monarchy: The Politics of Space in Downtown Bangkok by Serhat Unaldi (University of Hawai’i Press; 280 pages; $62). Links the charismatic political authority of King Bhumibol and the built environment of the Thai capital.