AGRICULTURE
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture by Courtney Fullilove (University of Chicago Press; 280 pages; $40). A history of seeds as acquired, cultivated, distributed, and learned about in the United States; topics include indigenous and immigrant agricultural knowledge.
AMERICAN STUDIES
Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution by S. Margot Finn (Rutgers University Press; 256 pages; $95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Links class hierarchies to taste hierarchies in a study of organic and other food preferences of increasing numbers of Americans.
ANTHROPOLOGY
Life after Guns: Reciprocity and Respect among Young Men in Liberia by Abby Hardgrove (Rutgers University Press; 192 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of Liberian youth in the wake of protracted civil war; includes those who fought as child soldiers and those not recruited.
Negotiating Pharmaceutical Uncertainty: Women’s Agency in a South African HIV Prevention Trial by Eirik Saethre and Jonathan Stadler (Vanderbilt University Press; 256 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Johannesburg’s townships in a study of the wider social ramifications of a clinical trial designed to test a gel to prevent women from contracting HIV.
Somalis Abroad: Clan and Everyday Life in Finland by Stephanie R. Bjork (University of Illinois Press; 216 pages; $95 hardcover, $28 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Finland in a study of the role of clan identity among Somalis in diaspora.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources by Gary Urton (University of Texas Press; 293 pages; $27.95). Discusses information on the Inca empire recorded in the knots and colors of plied and spun cords.
Legacies of Space and Intangible Heritage: Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and the Politics of Cultural Continuity in the Americas edited by Fernando Armstrong-Fumero and Julio Hoil Gutierrez (University Press of Colorado; 248 pages; $90 hardcover, $37.95 paperback). Topics include the archaeology of place in Ebtun, Yucatan, before and after the Yucatan Caste War, and names, naming, and person reference in the Chatino language of the San Juan Quiahije in Oaxaca.
New Mexico and the Pimeria Alta: The Colonial Period in the American Southwest edited by John G. Douglass and William M. Graves (University Press of Colorado; 428 pages; $85). Combines archaeological, ethnohistorical, and other perspectives in a study of the colonization of what is now New Mexico and southern Arizona/northern Sonora; topics include Hopi oral traditions of 17th-century Franciscan missionary abuses.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History by Ella Maria Diaz (University of Texas Press; 366 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of a Chicano arts and activist collective that began in Sacramento, Calif., around 1969.
Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art by Heidi C. Gearhart (Penn State University Press; 193 pages; $94.95). A study of a 12th-century treatise on the arts of painting, glass, and metal work written by a monk in northern Germany known by the pseudonym Theophilus.
BIOLOGY
Stepping in the Same River Twice: Replication in Biological Research edited by Ayelet Shavit and Aaron M. Ellison (Yale University Press; 318 pages; $65). Combines theoretical essays with case studies in writings by biologists, philosophers, and historians of science on replication in biomedical and biological research.
CLASSICAL STUDIES
Conflict and Consensus in Early Greek Hexameter Poetry edited by Paola Bassino, Lilah Grace Canevaro, and Barbara Graziosi (Cambridge University Press; 238 pages; $99.99). Essays on such topics as fraternal conflict in Hesiod’s Works and Days, and the movement from conflict to consensus in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.
ECONOMICS
Dirty Secrets: How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy by Richard Murphy (Verso; 216 pages; $17.95). Argues that tax havens pose a growing threat to economies and democracy and suggests ways to regulate and perhaps one day eliminate them.
The Power of Economists Within the State by Johan Christensen (Stanford University Press; 232 pages; $65). Links the presence and influence of U.S.-trained neoclassical economists in governments to nations’ decisions whether or not to adopt market-oriented tax policies; compares New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, and Denmark.
The Rise to Market Leadership: New Leading Firms from Emerging Countries edited by Franco Malerba, Sunil Mani, and Pamela Adams (Edward Elgar Publishing; 240 pages; $130). Offers case studies of the automotive, pharmaceutical and information and communication technology industries of China, India and Brazil.
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Permanent Weekend: Nature, Leisure, and Rural Gentrification by John Michels (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 280 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$37.95 paperback). Traces the origins and impact of rural gentrification in the Almaguin Highlands of Ontario’s scenic Muskoka district.
FILM STUDIES
Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History by Lucy Fischer (Columbia University Press; 265 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses costume, set design, and other influences of Art Nouveau in cinema, with particular attention to American film in the 1920s.
The Off-Screen: An Investigation of the Cinematic Frame by Eyal Peretz (Stanford University Press; 256 pages; $65). Focuses on Griffith’s Intolerance, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, Lang’s M, Hawke’s Monkey Business and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Passionate Revolutions: The Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime by Talitha Espiritu (Ohio University Press; 284 pages; $65 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Focuses on journalism and cinema in a study of how emotions generated by sentimental and melodramatic narratives built support for the Marcos dictatorship, but also for the popular opposition that was his downfall.
GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES
A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bebout edited by Marilyn R. Schuster (University of British Columbia Press; 648 pages; US$50). Examines LGBT issues and debates in Canada in the 1980s and 90s through the first 15 years of correspondence between the novelist Rule, living in a remote island setting in British Columbia, and the journalist Bebout, living in Toronto’s “gay village.”
HISTORY
Apollo in the Age of Aquarius by Neil M. Maher (Harvard University Press; 360 pages; $29.95). Discusses the Apollo space program in relation to the cultural and political movements of its era, including environmentalism and feminism.
China’s Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926-1956 by Jeremy A. Murray (State University of New York Press; 237 pages; $85). Discusses Communist revolutionaries in isolation from mainland leadership who persisted through an alliance with the island’s indigenous Li people.
The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity by Johanna Hanink (Harvard University Press; 337 pages; $29.95). Discusses the Western idea of a symbolic debt to classical Greece, and the consequences of that notion for modern Greek history.
Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue by Paul Cheney (University of Chicago Press; 264 pages; $40). Examines the fragility of slave-based plantation capitalism through a microhistory of a site owned in absentia by a family of Breton nobles, the Ferron de la Ferronnayses, in a major sugar-cultivating region of what later became Haiti; draws on letters exchanged between the family and their plantation managers.
General Alonso de Leon’s Expeditions into Texas, 1686-1690 by Lola Orellano Norris (Texas A&M University Press; 256 pages; $45). Identifies errors in previous historians’ accounts of the Spanish general’s five military expeditions from New Spain to Texas in search of French intruders; draws on 16 separate manuscript copies of his expedition diaries.
A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict by Gershon Shafir (University of California Press; 283 pages; $26.95). Focuses on three questions involving the nature of the occupation, and its paradoxes; the reasons it has lasted for so long; and its impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Harvest of Hazards: Family Farming, Accidents, and Expertise in the Corn Belt, 1940-1975 by Derek S. Oden (University of Iowa Press; 251 pages; $65). Discusses the rising dangers as mid-century farmers adopted new technologies, and considers factors that hindered efforts to improve safety.
Jefferson’s Body: A Corporeal Biography by Maurizio Valsania (University of Virginia Press; 280 pages; $35). Develops an idea of Thomas Jefferson’s appearance, bearing, and other bodily aspects through discussion of the fashion, manners, gestures, adornment, and material culture of his era; also considers the bodies he defined himself against, both free and enslaved.
The Life and Times of General Andrew Pickens: Revolutionary War Hero, American Founder by Rod Andrew Jr. (University of North Carolina Press; 424 pages; $35). A biography of the South Carolina militia commander (1739-1817) that examines his diplomacy with Indian peoples and his internal struggles over slavery.
The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy by Steven P. Remy (Harvard University Press; 342 pages; $29.95). Draws on newly declassified documents in a study of the war-crimes trial of 74 Waffen SS men for the mass execution of 84 American prisoners near the Belgian town of Malmedy on December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge; disputes accounts that the German soldiers were tortured into confessions.
The Most Noble of People: Religious, Ethnic, and Gender Identity in Muslim Spain by Jessica A. Coope (University of Michigan Press; 224 pages; $60). Draws on legal, religious, literary, and other texts in a study of identity in Spain under the Umayyads, an Arab dynasty that ruled from 756 to 1031.
On Strawberry Hill: The Transcendent Love of Gifford Pinchot and Laura Houghteling by Paula Ivaska Robbins (University of Alabama Press; 136 pages; $19.95). Explores the interplay of romantic devotion and spiritualism in late 19th-century America through a study of the brief romance between the fledgling forester and later famed conservationist and a young woman he would continue to address in his diaries after her death from “consumption.”
Patriots and Indians: Shaping Identity in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina by Jeff W. Dennis (University of South Carolina Press; 240 pages; $29.99). A study of diplomatic, trade, and other relations between South Carolina elites and Indian peoples.
Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination by Willem L. Oltmans, edited by Michael A. Rinella, translated by David Stephenson (University Press of Kansas; 356 pages; $34.95). Annotated and first English translation of the account of a Dutch journalist of his investigation into the assassination, carried out in the 13 years after he met Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother in 1964.
Sabers Through the Reich: World War II Corps Cavalry From Normandy to the Elbe by William Stuart Nance (University Press of Kentucky; 366 pages; $50). Offers an operational history of the U.S. corps cavalry across the war’s European theater.
So High a Blood: The Story of Margaret Douglas, the Tudor that Time Forgot by Morgan Ring (Bloomsbury Press; 341 pages; $35). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study of the half-English, half-Scottish niece of Henry VIII, who in an effort to see Catholic rule over a united Britain, arranged the marriage of her son Henry Stuart with the widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, in a move that cost Margaret her freedom and her son, his life.
LAW
The Biggest Damned Hat: Tales from Alaska’s Territorial Lawyers and Judges by Pamela Cravez (University of Alaska Press; 216 pages; $24.95). Examines law in territorial Alaska through oral histories gathered from more than 50 lawyers who came there before 1959.
Gender and Justice in Family Law Disputes: Women, Mediation, and Religious Arbitration edited by Samia Bano (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 304 pages; $95 hardcover, $45 paperback). Writings on women using mediation and religious arbitration to resolve family and matrimonial disputes; focuses on Britain, with additional writings on India, Finland, Italy, and North America.
LINGUISTICS
The Truth About Language: What It Is and Where It Came From by Michael C. Corballis (University of Chicago Press; 260 pages; $30). Develops a theory of language’s incremental evolutionary origins.
LITERATURE
Being Ugly: Southern Women Writers and Social Rebellion by Monica Carol Miller (Louisiana State University Press; 176 pages; $39.95). A study of how female writers in the South have used the figure of the ugly woman---a term extended to transgressive behavior---to challenge patriarchal constraints.
Blasphemous Modernism: the 20th-Century Word Made Flesh by Steve Pinkerton (Oxford University Press; 184 pages; $65). Explores blasphemic elements in modernist literature and their simultaneous profaning and affirming of religion; authors discussed include James Joyce, Mina Loy, Richard Bruce Nugent, Alain Locke, and Djuna Barnes.
Occupy Pynchon: Politics After “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Sean Carswell (University of Georgia Press; 214 pages; $59.95). Examines Pynchon’s politics in post-Gravity writings, beginning with Vineland (1990); topics include his affinities with political theories of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
Underworlds of Memory: W. G. Sebald’s Epic Journeys Through the Past by Alan Itkin (Northwestern University Press; 272 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Discusses the German author’s work in terms of journeys to the underworld and other tropes from classical epic.
The War of the Wheels: H. G. Wells and the Bicycle by Jeremy Withers (Syracuse University Press; 237 pages; $29.95). Examines the bicycle as a recurrent object in the English writer’s fiction, nonfiction, and letters, as well as in his life.
MUSIC
The Rite of Spring at 100 edited by Severine Neff and others (Indiana University Press; 520 pages; $50). Essays by music and dance scholars on Stravinsky’s avant-garde ballet and the scandal its music and choreography produced in Parisian audiences in its 1913 debut.
PHILOSOPHY
Believing in Order to See: On the Rationality of Revelation and the Irrationality of Some Believers by Jean-Luc Marion, translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner (Fordham University Press; 170 pages; $90 hardcover, $25 paperback). Translation of the 2010 work by the French philosopher and theologian.
Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity edited by Peter Singer (Oxford University Press; 300 pages; $45). Essays on the thought of Derek Parfit (1942-2017); topics include the British philosopher’s “mistaken meta-ethics.”
Locke’s Image of the World by Michael Jacovides (Oxford University Press; 231 pages; $70). Examines how the scientific doctrines of his era shaped Locke’s philosophy, with particular attention to his descriptions of primary and secondary qualities; focuses on Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Representation and Scepticism From Aquinas to Descartes by Han Thomas Adriaenssen (Cambridge University Press; 302 pages; $99.99). Other philosophers discussed include Henry of Ghent, Auriol, Olivi, Ockham, Malebranche, and Arnauld.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal, and the Philippines by David T. Buckley (Columbia University Press; 264 pages; $60). Develops a concept of “benevolent secularism” to examine institutions that aid the balancing of rights in countries with clear religious majorities.
Islam, Society, and Politics in Central Asia edited by Pauline Jones (University of Pittsburgh Press; 366 pages; $32.95 ). Multidisciplinary writings on the post-Soviet Islamic revival in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; themes include everyday religious practices, the evolution of state policies, and the impact of contact with the wider Muslim world.
Israel under Siege: The Politics of Insecurity and the Rise of the Israeli Neo-Revisionist Right by Raffaella A. Del Sarto (Georgetown University Press; 278 pages; $64.95 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Examines the origins and consequences of a shift to the right in Israeli politics since 2000.
Politics and the Right to Work: India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act by Rob Jenkins and James Manor (Oxford University Press; 323 pages; $39.95). Examines the politics surrounding the origins, passage, and implementation of the 2005 act, which supposedly promised 100 days paid labor on public works projects to every rural household; draws on fieldwork in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Power and Principle: The Politics of International Criminal Courts by Christopher Rudolph (Cornell University Press; 240 pages; $45). A study of how power politics and humanitarian law have shaped the development of international tribunals from Nuremberg to the Hague-based ICC.
PUBLIC POLICY
Health Care as a Right of Citizenship: The Continuing Evolution of Reform by Gunnar Almgren (Columbia University Press; 342 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Examines the accomplishments and limitations of the Affordable Care Act and argues that the 2010 act is an evolutionary step on the way to affirming health-care as a right of citizenship in the United States; draws on the theories of T.H. Marshall and John Rawls.
RELIGION
Babatha’s Orchard: The Yadin Papyri and an Ancient Jewish Family Tale Retold by Philip F. Esler (Oxford University Press; 282 pages; $45). Examines, chronologically, the first four documents from a cache of family legal documents, dating from AD 94 to 132, that was hidden by a Jewish woman named Babatha in a cave near the Dead Sea just before she was killed or enslaved by the Romans in the aftermath of the Shim’on ben Kosiba revolt (AD 135).
Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam by Shahab Ahmed (Harvard University Press; 336 pages; $49.95). Describes how Muslims of the early period around 632 to 800 believed that the prophet had experienced an incident in which he mistakenly took words suggested by Satan as divine revelation; uses Muslims’ later denial of that incident as a case study of the creation of religious orthodoxy.
Born From Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa by Emmanuel Katongole (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing; 294 pages; $30). A study of Christian nonviolent activists in the Great Lakes region of East Africa, hope in the midst of suffering, and the practice of arguing and wrestling with God.
To Offer Compassion: A History of the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion by Doris Andrea Dirks and Patricia A. Relf (University of Wisconsin Press; 256 pages; $26.95). Discusses a service set up by mainline Protestant and Jewish clergy in 1967 to counsel women with unwanted pregnancies and refer them to physicians willing to perform the then-illegal procedure.
The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition by James Matthew Wilson (Catholic University of America Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Topics include Theodor Adorno and Jacques Maritain in relation to beauty as a revelation of truth and being.
SOCIOLOGY
Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical Sociology by Daniel Chernilo (Cambridge University Press; 304 pages; $99.99). Draws on the theories of Hannah Arendt, Talcott Parsons, Hans Jonas, Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Margaret Archer, and Luc Boltanski.
The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism, and Global Protest by Paolo Gerbaudo (Oxford University Press; 318 pages; $21.95). Draws on 140 interviews with activists in nine case studies of “movements of the squares,” including the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Spain’s Indignados, and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests.
URBAN STUDIES
The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting by Alexander Vasudevan (Verso; 304 pages; $26.95). Focuses on Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Vancouver.
Why Detroit Matters: Decline, Renewal and Hope in a Divided City edited by Brian Doucet (Policy Press at the University of Bristol, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 394 pages; $115 hardcover, $44.50 paperback). Scholarly and other writings on lessons from Detroit’s decline, and insights from its renewal as a pioneer in post-industrial urbanism.