Weekly Book List, March 18, 2016

ANTHROPOLOGY

Dwelling in Conflict: Negev Landscapes and the Boundaries of Belonging by Emily McKee (Stanford University Press; 239 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines land disputes among Jews, Bedouin, and the Israeli government in the desert region.

Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China by Elanah Uretsky (Stanford University Press; 262 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Discusses businessmen and government officials in Beijing and western Yunnan province and the risky behaviors that characterize their informal networks.

Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India by Nayanika Mathur (Cambridge University Press; 203 pages; $110). Offers an ethnographic perspective on the workings of law and bureaucracy in Gopeshwar, the headquarters of Chamoli District in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco by Lawrence Rosen (University of Chicago Press; 363 pages; $27.50). Draws on fieldwork in Sefrou in an account of 40 years in the lives of four Moroccans, set against the country’s modernization.

The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective edited by Jacqueline Knorr and Christoph Kohl (Berghahn Books; 326 pages; $110). Writings on trade, cultural exchange, and conflict in the West African region; topics include the mainland “African other” in the Cape Verde Islands, and demobilized child soldiers in Sierra Leone and their encounter with local and international NGOs.

War and Women Across Continents: Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences edited by Shirley Ardener (Berghahn Books; 204 pages; $90). Documents the experiences of women caught up in conflicts, including World War II, the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya, war in Burma and Rwanda, and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Human Adaptation in Ancient Mesoamerica: Empirical Approaches to Mesoamerican Archaeology edited by Nancy Gonlin and Kirk D. French (University Press of Colorado; 374 pages; $60). Topics include water temples and civil engineering at Teotihuacan, Mexico, and the production, exchange, and consumption of pottery vessels during the classic period at Tikal, Peten, Guatemala.

Political Strategies in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica edited by Sarah Kurnick and Joanne Baron (University Press of Colorado; 286 pages; $60). Essays on such topics as negotiating political authority and community in Terminal Formative coastal Oaxaca.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination by Stephanie Porras (Penn State University Press; 200 pages; $79.95). Examines the painter’s interest in history and casting of the 16th-century peasant as the embodiment of pagan antiquity.

Sturtevant: “Warhol Marilyn” by Patricia Lee (MIT Press; 104 pages; $16.95). A study of Warhol Marilyn (1965) one of a series of works remade by Elaine Sturtevant (1926-2014) using a stencil of Warhol’s silkscreen paintings of Marilyn Monroe.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Aristotle: De Anima translated by Christopher Shields (Oxford University Press; 415 pages; $99 hardcover, $32 paperback). Translation, with commentary, of the Greek philosopher’s work.

Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts by Marguerite Johnson (Bloomsbury Academic; 171 pages; $94 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Edition, translation, and study of writings by the Roman poet on skin treatments, make up, dress and other adornments, and related themes.

Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet by Philip Freeman (W.W. Norton & Company; 306 pages; $26.95). Translation and study of the Greek poet.

ECONOMICS

Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy by Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong (Harvard Business School Press; 221 pages; $28). Documents the central role of government in reshaping and reinvigorating the American economy since the era of Alexander Hamilton.

EDUCATION

The Arthurdale Community School: Education and Reform in Depression Era Appalachia by Sam F. Stack Jr. (University Press of Kentucky; 197 pages; $50). Discusses a school founded in Arthurdale, W.Va., that drew on the teachings of John Dewey and guidance of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Fabricating an Educational Miracle: Compulsory Schooling Meets Ethnic Rural Development in Southwest China by Jinting Wu (State University of New York Press; 268 pages; $85). Offers an ethnographic perspective on schooling in a Miao and a Dong community in Guizhou province’s Qiandongnan Prefecture.

FILM STUDIES

Extreme Cinema: The Transgressive Rhetoric of Today’s Art Film Culture by Mattias Frey (Rutgers University Press; 298 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Examines the production and marketing of such films as Shortbus, Shame, and Irreversible as products intended to achieve notoriety in a competitive market.

Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media edited by Neil Jackson and others (Bloomsbury Academic; 322 pages; $120 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Essays on the concept, but as yet unproven existence, of the snuff film, commonly defined as murder on camera for commercial gain; topics include hoaxes and fictional representations.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

Making Out in the Mainstream: GLAAD and the Politics of Respectability by Vincent Doyle (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 316 pages; US$34.95). Examines conflicting pressures that shaped the media campaigns of the organization founded as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; draws on archival research as well as interviews and participant-observation in GLAAD’s offices in New York and Los Angeles in 2000-01.

GENDER STUDIES

Trans Studies: The Challenge to Hetero/Homo Normativities edited by Yolanda Martiinez-San Miguel and Sarah Tobias (Rutgers University Press; 255 pages; $28.95). Topics include transgender bodies and the mobile borders of biometrics.

HISTORY

American Indians and National Forests by Theodore Catton (University of Arizona Press; 373 pages; $39.95). Examines indigenous perspectives on forest resources and management.

Another Year Finds Me in Texas: The Civil War Diary of Lucy Pier Stevens edited by Vicki Adams Tongate (University of Texas Press; 343 pages; $29.95). Edition of the previously unpublished journal of a young Ohio woman who, on a visit to her aunt in Texas, ending up spending the war in the Confederacy.

A Camera in the Garden of Eden: The Self-Forging of a Banana Republic by Kevin Coleman (University of Texas Press; 316 pages; $80 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines how workers in El Progreso, Honduras, used photography to assert their rights in a town with a major divisional office of United Fruit.

Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia: Martyrdom and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity by Kyle Smith (University of California Press; 237 pages; $95). Examines conflicting hagiographic and historical texts on the lives of Christians in the Sasanian Empire.

Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe Since the Long 1960s edited by Kostis Kornetis, Eirini Kotsovili, and Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Bloomsbury Academic; 280 pages; $29.95). Essays on cultural change and consumer behavior in Spain, Portugal, and Greece with the shift from authoritarian to democratic rule.

Empire’s End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World edited by Akiko Tsuchiya and William G. Acree Jr. (Vanderbilt University Press; 240 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Essays on the decline and fall of Spain’s empire, from the Americas to the Philippines to realms in North Africa.

Fort Bascom: Soldiers, Comancheros, and Indians in the Canadian River Valley by James Bailey Blackshear (University of Oklahoma Press; 258 pages; $29.95). Traces the history of a long-gone U.S. Army outpost in what was the New Mexico Territory.

Gender Remade: Citizenship, Suffrage, and Public Power in the New Northwest, 1879--1912 by Sandra F. VanBurkleo (Cambridge University Press; 352 pages; $120). Discusses the extension of new civil rights and obligations to women in the Washington Territory in the 1870s and 80s in a move that was reversed for a time because of controversy as the territory moved toward statehood.

The Genius of Place: The Geographic Imagination in the Early Republic by Christopher C. Apap (University of New Hampshire Press/University Press of New England; 282 pages; $85 hardcover, $40 paperback). Draws on literary and other realms in a study of how Americans of the early 19th century expressed their fledging national identity through locality.

Gratian the Theologian by John C. Wei (Catholic University of America Press; 353 pages; $65). Examines the theology embodied in the jurist’s book of canon law, the Decretum.

Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia by David M. Luebke (University of Virginia Press; 328 pages; $45). Examines the coexistence of Catholics and a variety of Protestants in the 16th-century prince-bishopric of Munster.

Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City by Tyina L. Steptoe (University of California Press; 327 pages; $29.95). Uses music as a prism to explore the impact of migration on the Texas city, beginning after World War I.

The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past, 1200--2000 by Cynthia Talbot (Cambridge University Press; 325 pages; $99.99). Examines traditions regarding the life of a Hindu ruler who was overthrown in the conquest of northern India by Muslim armies from Afghanistan; also traces his portrayal in cultural memory.

Lives of Fort de Chartres: Commandants, Soldiers, and Civilians in French Illinois, 1720--1770 by David MacDonald (Southern Illinois University Press; 282 pages; $28.50). Topics include the fur trade, agriculture, religious tension, and relations between the French and indigenous peoples of the region.

Lobbying Hitler: Industrial Associations Between Democracy and Dictatorship by Matt Bera (Berghahn Books; 250 pages; $120). Examines responses to the Nazi regime’s efforts to control German industry; contrasts the success through submission of Karl Lange in the machine builders’ association and the resistance and ultimate suicide of Jakob Reichert in the association of iron and steel industrialists.

MacArthur’s Korean War Generals by Stephen R. Taaffe (University Press of Kansas; 278 pages; $34.95). Documents the unevenness in the leadership of the highest ranking field commanders of the Eighth Army, despite the experience of many in World War II.

North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes by Harvey Amani Whitfield (University of British Columbia Press; 188 pages; US$99). Examines the lives of slaves carried by Loyalists to British lands that later became Canada’s Maritime provinces.

A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History edited by Carlos Kevin Blanton (University of Texas Press; 210 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Essays on new directions in the field; topics include disrupting nationalism and geographic essentialism.

Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China by Sigrid Schmalzer (University of Chicago Press; 304 pages; $45). Draws on interviews in Guangxi province in a study that challenges prevailing assumptions about Maoist-era agricultural policy and its impact.

Reverberations of Nazi Violence in Germany and Beyond: Disturbing Pasts edited by Stephanie Bird and others (Bloomsbury Academic; 294 pages; $112). Essays on the legacy of Nazi violence for German-speaking societies as well as countries and peoples under occupation and terror; topics include the reconciliation activities of young West Germans in the 1960s and 70s, and Nazi collaborators and their families in postwar Dutch society.

Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865 by Nathan A. Jennings (University of North Texas Press; 402 pages; $32.95). A study of Texas militarism across a broad range of conflicts.

Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance by Donald Worster (Oxford University Press; 265 pages; $27.95). Examines how notions of abundance and limits have shaped North American history over the centuries.

Siam’s New Detectives: Visualizing Crime and Conspiracy in Modern Thailand by Samson Lim (University of Hawai’i Press; 213 pages; $65). Examines the visual culture of policing in Siam and later Thailand since the late 19th century.

Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile by Pasquale Porro, translated by Joseph G. Trabbic and Roger W. Nutt (Catholic University of America Press; 458 pages; $65). Offers a chronological perspective on the writings, philosophical development, and Greek, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim influences of the medieval theologian.

Why America Misunderstands the World: National Experience and Roots of Misperception by Paul R. Pillar (Columbia University Press; 211 pages; $29.95). Documents how the history, culture, and geography of the United States has shaped what are often Americans’ misperceptions of foreign threats.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility by Raz Chen-Morris (Penn State University Press; 247 pages; $79.95). Discusses Johannes Kepler’s treatise on optics as key to his radical new astronomy and to his speculations beyond the threshold of perception.

LAW

Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law by Jennifer Ann Drobac (University of Chicago Press; 361 pages; $50). Topics include the implications for sexual harassment and consent law of neurobiological and psychological research on adolescent development.

LINGUISTICS

Diversity in Sinitic Languages edited by Hilary M. Chappell (Oxford University Press; 315 pages; $115). Includes research on Pinghua and the Guangxi Autonomous Region; Shaowu Min in northwestern Fujian province; the Wu dialect of Fuyang; and the Hui’an Southern Min dialect in southern Fujian province.

LITERATURE

The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings From the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century edited by Yunte Huang (W.W. Norton & Company; 606 pages; $39.95). Includes translations from nearly 50 Chinese writers dating back to the start of the republican era in 1911.

Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology edited by Raphael Baroni and Francoise Revaz (Ohio State University Press; 280 pages; $85.95). Essays on such topics as alternate endings in narrative, privileged authorial disclosure, and intrigue, suspense, and sequentiality in comic strips.

Of War and War’s Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing by Gerald Dawe (Cork University Press, distributed by Stylus Publishing; 194 pages; $60). Traces the impact of both world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and the Easter Rising and Irish war of independence; authors discussed include Yeats, MacGreevy, Heaney Francis Ledwidge, Charles Donnelly Padraic Fiacc, Benedict Kiely, William Trevor, John Hewitt, and Christabel Bielenberg.

Reading for Health: Medical Narratives and the Nineteenth-Century Novel by Erika Wright (Ohio University Press; 229 pages; $79.95). Explores narratives of health in works by such writers as Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Martineau, and Gaskell.

Revolution and Its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949-1966 by Cai Xiang, edited and translated by Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong (Duke University Press; 480 pages; $104.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Scholarly translation of a 2010 Chinese study of narratives of China’s revolution in novels, short stories, dramas, and cinema.

Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by Andre M. Carrington (University of Minnesota Press; 282 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $25 paperback). Examines issues of race in 1950s fanzines, Star Trek and its spinoffs, Harry Potter, and comic books, including the black-owned Milestone Media and its flagship series, Icon.

Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama by Jan Alber (University of Nebraska Press; 330 pages; $55). Discusses beast fables, time-travel novels, and other examples of works that contain impossibilities of narrator, character, time, and space in British and American literary history.

The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace: Language, Identity, and Resistance by Clare Hayes-Brady (Bloomsbury Academic; 232 pages; $110). Discusses Wallace’s “anti-teleology” as a unifying factor in his writing and describes that stance as a political response to neoliberalism.

The Work of Difference: Modernism, Romanticism, and the Production of Literary Form by Audrey Wasser (Fordham University Press; 208 pages; $85 hardcover, $28 paperback). Uses analyses of works by Proust, Stein, and Beckett to explore issues of newness in literature and to develop a non-romantic theory of literary production.

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture by Seth Jacobowitz (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 299 pages; $39.95). Draws on the methodology of the German media theorist Friedrich Kittler in a study of the transformation of Japan’s literary, visual, and linguistic landscape during the Meiji era (1868-1912) of modernization.

Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959 by Mingwei Song (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 379 pages; $49.95). Explores modern Chinese discourse on youth and its represention in novels of the period; authors discussed include Yi Shengtao, Mao Dun, and Ba Jin.

MUSIC

Harry T. Burleigh: From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance by Jean E. Snyder (University of Illinois Press; 415 pages; $34.95). A biography of Burleigh (1866-1949), described as the first African-American composer to create a significant body of art songs.

Spirit Song: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries by Marc Gidal (Oxford University Press; 220 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Focuses on spirit-medium rituals in a study of how music both links and distinguishes the Afro-Brazilian religions of Umbanda, Quimbanda, and Batuque.

PHILOSOPHY

About Oneself: “De Se” Thought and Communication edited by Manuel Garcia-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (Oxford University Press; 348 pages; $85). Writings on the nature of first-person thought.

Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine edited by Andrei A. Buckareff and Yujin Nagasawa (Oxford University Press; 299 pages; $74). Writings by analytical philosophers of religion on pantheist, panentheist, naturalist, and other alternative ideas of God.

Heidegger’s Pauline and Lutheran Roots by Duane Armitage (Palgrave Macmillan; 224 pages; $100). Examines the German philosopher’s debt to the Apostle Paul and Luther, and by extension, the influence of those figures on Continental philosophy as a whole.

Idealism beyond Borders: The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954--1988 by Eleanor Davey (Cambridge University Press; 346 pages; $99.99). Examines the French political and intellectual foundations of an approach to humanitarianism pioneered by the French organization Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past by Kourken Michaelian (MIT Press; 291 pages; $43). Combines perspectives from philosophy and psychology to develop a naturalistic understanding of episodic memory.

The Original Position edited by Timothy Hinton (Cambridge University Press; 292 pages; $110 hardcover, $27.99 paperback). Writings on the central idea, and thought experiment, in John Rawls’s political philosophy, involving what principles of justice would be chosen by people to govern their society if they were deprived of any information about their status in that society.

Puzzling Identities by Vincent Descombes, translated by Stephen Adam Schwartz (Harvard University Press; 211 pages; $39.95). Translation of a 2013 French work that offers a philosophical perspective on multiple meanings of identity.

Weighing Reasons edited by Errol Lord and Barry Maguire (Oxford University Press; 301 pages; $74). Essays on the weight or strength of reasons in varied realms of philosophy; topics include the distinction between justifying and requiring.

Wisdom and Philosophy: Contemporary and Comparative Approaches edited by Hans-Georg Moeller and Andrew K. Whitehead (Bloomsbury Academic; 225 pages; $112). Essays that offer both Western and Eastern perspectives on philosophy and the pursuit of wisdom; topics include Heidegger and Zhuangzi on belonging in the world.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Information for Autocrats: Representation in Chinese Local Congresses by Melanie Manion (Cambridge University Press; 201 pages; $89.99 hardcover, $29.99 paperback). Combines qualitative and quantitative perspectives in a study of township and county congresses in Anhui, Hunan, and Zhejiang provinces; describes how ordinary Chinese attempt to influence the composition and work of the congresses through voter nomination of members.

Japan: The Precarious Future edited by Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison (New York University Press; 352 pages; $89 hardcover, $35 paperback). Writings by political scientists, economists, and other scholars on such concerns as Japan’s economy, falling birthrate, territorial disputes, rivalry with China, and post-Fukushima nuclear policy.

Parliament and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept edited by Pasi Ihalainen, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen (Berghahn Books; 327 pages; $110). Interdisciplinary historical and theoretical essays on parliamentarism in terms of four realms: deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty; settings discussed include Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, and the Nordic and Low Countries.

The Phantom of a Polarized America: Myths and Truths of an Ideological Divide by Manabu Saeki (State University of New York Press; 192 pages; $95). Argues that the notion of a growing polarization in American politics is largely the rightward shift of the Republican Party.

The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking edited by Steven E. Lobell and Norrin M. Ripsman (University of Michigan Press; 276 pages; $95). Writings on the effectiveness of trade agreements, sanctions, and other economic statecraft for the promotion of peace.

A Political Theory for the Jewish People by Chaim Gans (Oxford University Press; 305 pages; $49.95). Develops an theory of egalitarian Zionism as an alternative to both mainstream and post-Zionist approaches.

Populist Authoritarianism: Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability by Wenfang Tang (Oxford University Press; 220 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses survey and other data to examine Chinese political culture as a form of populist authoritarianism with continuities from the Maoist period.

Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs by Lorrie Frasure-Yokley (Cambridge University Press; 204 pages; $99.99). Focuses on areas near Washington DC in a study of racial and ethnic minorities’ move to the suburbs and local governments’ responses to their needs and to the demographic change.

The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power by Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell (Princeton University Press; 227 pages; $29.95). Argues for a new “grand strategy” for the United States in an era in which Russia, China, and other authoritarian states are putting new pressure on American allies.

Very British Rebels? The Culture and Politics of Ulster Loyalism by James W. McAuley (Bloomsbury Academic; 202 pages; $110). A work in political sociology that explores the complexities of Ulster loyalism as a social identity and form of political expression beyond paramilitarism.

The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden by Joel K. Goldstein (University Press of Kansas; 440 pages; $34.95). Traces the expansion of the VP’s role since 1976.

RELIGION

Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On ‘Astronomia': An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 3 edited and translated by F. Jamil Ragep and Taro Mimura (Oxford University Press; 368 pages; $85). Edition of a section of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, an encyclopedia of 52 epistles in science and philosophy compiled by the adepts of a 10th-century Muslim esoteric fraternity centered in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

The Light of the World: Astronomy in al-Andalus by Joseph Ibn Nahmias, translated by Robert G. Morrison (University of California Press; 448 pages; $95). Edition, translation, and commentary on a work of theoretical astronomy written in Judeo-Arabic by the Iberian Jewish thinker around 1400.

When Paul Met Jesus: How an Idea Got Lost in History by Stanley E. Porter (Cambridge University Press; 212 pages; $99.99). Describes how the idea that Paul heard Jesus’ teachings firsthand was raised by scholars a century ago, but was challenged in the work of such figures as Ferdinand Christian Baur and Rudolf Bultmann; argues that Acts 9:1-9, 1 Corinthians 9:1, and 2 Corinthians 5:16 offer evidence of such an encounter.

SOCIOLOGY

Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life edited by Monica J. Casper and Eric Wertheimer (New York University Press; 293 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Writings in the study of trauma by scholars and activists in sociology, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies; topics include female suicide bombers in Chechnya, and crisis intervention and rape survivor advocacy as witnessing trauma.

The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race by Anthony Christian Ocampo (Stanford University Press; 272 pages; $75 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Focuses on the second-generation in a study of how Filipino Americans’ racial identities shift depending on the communities they grow up in.

Order on the Edge of Chaos: Social Psychology and the Problem of Social Order edited by Edward J. Lawler, Shane R. Thye, and Jeongkoo Yoon (Cambridge University Press; 342 pages; $99.99 hardcover, $34.99 paperback). Writings by scholars in sociological social psychology framed by Hobbes’s question of how social order is possible.

The Playdate: Parents, Children and the New Expectations of Play by Tamara R. Mose (New York University Press; 169 pages; $89 hardcover, $26 paperback). Draws on interviews in the New York City area in a study of how playdates reinforce class and cultural capital.

THEATER

Evolution, Cognition, and Performance by Bruce McConachie (Cambridge University Press; 225 pages; $99.99). Develops a biocultural understanding of performance with illustrations drawn from theater, sports, stand up comedy, and other realms.

Performance and the Medical Body edited by Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard (Bloomsbury Academic; 249 pages; $112). Topics include representations of illness in three autobiographical performances: Brian Lobel’s BALL, Bob Flanagan’s Visiting Hours, and Peggy Shaw’s RUFF.

Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience edited by Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia, and Victor Jacono (Bloomsbury Academic; 260 pages; $112). Topics include the actor’s embodied language, audiences’ experience of proximity and co-presence in live dance, and the therapeutic use of theater for autism and Parkinson’s disease.

URBAN STUDIES

The Politics of Staying Put: Condo Conversion and Tenant Right-to-Buy in Washington, DC by Carolyn Gallaher (Temple University Press; 288 pages; $84.50 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Uses the fate of seven bulidings to evaluate the District’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act.

WOMEN’S STUDIES

Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women edited by Chia Youyee Vang, Faith Nibbs, and Ma Vang (University of Minnesota Press; 348 pages; $105 hardcover, $30 paperback). Writings that challenge the notion of Hmong women as victims.