Weekly Book List, November 10, 2017

AGRICULTURE

Eat Local, Taste Global: How Ethnocultural Food Reaches Our Tables by Glen C. Filson and Bamidele Adekunle (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 200 pages; US$34.99). Links food security and food sovereignty in a discussion of how demands for “ethnic vegetables” by Toronto’s South Asian, Chinese, and Afro-Caribbean communities strengthens integration and provides crossover benefits to other Canadians.

ANTHROPOLOGY

The Construction of Equality: Syriac Immigration and the Swedish City by Jennifer Mack (University of Minnesota Press; 336 pages; $120 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses the large community of Syrian Orthodox Christians in Sodertalje, a city on the outskirts of Stockholm; describes how their approach to home, church, and other building has challenged the conventions of Swedish planning.

Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya by George Paul Meiu (University of Chicago Press; 304 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses young Sambaru men from northern Kenya who travel to the country’s coastal resorts and and trade in eroticized images of the moran or warrior, forming sex-for-money relations with white female tourists; examines attitudes toward their earnings in their home communities.

Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling by Debarati Sen (State University of New York Press; 251 pages; $85). Discusses the Fair Trade movement as an object of both skepticism and interest for Nepali women working in organic tea production.

Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness by Anthony Chaney (University of North Carolina Press; 304 pages; $32.95). Combines an intellectual biography of the British anthropologist and cyberneticist (1904-1980) with a discussion of a postmodern ecological consciousness as a legacy of the “Long Sixties.”

ARCHAEOLOGY

The Archaeology and History of Pueblo San Marcos: Change and Stability edited by Ann F. Ramenofsky and Kari L. Schleher (University of New Mexico Press; 400 pages; $95). Reportes on excavations at one of the largest late prehistoric Pueblo sites along the Rio Grande.

Honoring Ancestors in Sacred Space: The Archaeology of an Eighteenth-Century African-Bahamian Cemetery by Grace Turner (University Press of Florida; 180 pages; $74.95). Draws on W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness” in a study of African funerary ways in evidence at the Northern Burial Ground of St. Matthew’s Parish, a cemetery in use from the early 18th century to the early 20th century.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art, 1995--2010 edited by Bill Kelley Jr. and Grant H. Kester (Duke University Press; 438 pages; $104.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Writings on socially engaged artistic practices in the region during the political period known as the “Pink Tide” (1995-2010); includes previously untranslated materials.

Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism by Linda M. Grasso (University of New Mexico Press; 368 pages; $65). A study of the artist’s relationship to the American feminist movement from the 1910s to the 1970s.

Gardens of Renaissance Europe and the Islamic Empires: Encounters and Confluences edited by Mohammad Gharipour (Penn State University Press; 250 pages; $94.95). Topics include Mughal landscape art as imperial expression and its parallels to the Renaissance European garden.

Rethinking Lessing’s Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the ‘Limits’ of Painting and Poetry edited by Avi Lifschitz and Michael Squire (Oxford University Press; 411 pages; $110). Essays on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 1766 treatise Laokoon, oder uber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie; includes writings previously untranslated into English.

BUSINESS

The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations by Tsedal Neeley (Princeton University Press; 188 pages; $26.95). Discusses the Japanese-founded high-tech giant Rakuten in the five years after its CEO ordered the companywide use of English; draws on 650 interviews at company locations in Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States.

COMMUNICATION

Disability Media Studies edited by Elizabeth Ellcessor and Bill Kirkpatrick (New York University Press; 433 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays on such topics as the representation of disability in the murder trial of runner Oscar Pistorius, the ethics of consuming race and disability on the AMC program Freakshow, and curing disabled veterans in Iron Man 3.

Google Me: One-Click Democracy by Barbara Cassin, translated by Michael Syrotinski (Fordham University Press; 176 pages; $80 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A critique by the French philologist and philosopher of Google’s claims of good intentions and the furthering of democracy.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Dopers in Uniform: The Hidden World of Police on Steroids by John Hoberman (University of Texas Press; 316 pages; $29.95). Focuses on police officers’ use of anabolic steroids as a factor in excessive violence by law enforcement.

ECONOMICS

Law and the Wealth of Nations: Finance, Prosperity, and Democracy by Tamara Lothian (Columbia University Press; 426 pages; $35). Examines alternative futures for finance with the goal of democratizing the economy and deepening democracy.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Crown Jewel Wilderness: Creating North Cascades National Park by Lauren Danner (Washington State University Press; 334 pages; $29.95). Topics include the grassroots activism that contributed to the creation of Washington’s third national park, in 1968.

Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World by Nancy Langston (Yale University Press; 292 pages; $35). An environmental and social history of the Great Lake that examines its resilience and recovery, but also its persistent environmental threats.

FILM STUDIES

Boats on the Marne: Jean Renoir’s Critique of Modernity by Prakash Younger (Indiana University Press; 352 pages; $90 hardcover, $38 paperback). Discusses Jean Renoir’s 1930s films as a philosophical response to the crises of his time.

Not According to Plan: Filmmaking Under Stalin by Maria Belodubrovskaya (Cornell University Press; 266 pages; $49.95). A revisionist study of Soviet filmmaking between 1930 and 1953 that documents the persistence of artisanal methods in the face of state calls for an industrial approach akin to the Hollywood system.

Queer Mexico: Cinema and Television since 2000 by Paul Julian Smith (Wayne State University Press; 176 pages; $35.99). Topics include films by Julian Hernandez, a rising number of documentaries on transgender themes, a web-distributed gay-youth drama, and gay porn production.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

A Queerly Joyful Noise: Choral Musicking for Social Justice by Julia “Jules” Balen (Rutgers University Press; 224 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Explores the personal and political impact of singing in LGBTQ choruses, with comparative discussion of song in the civil-rights and labor movements.

HISTORY

Amalasuintha: The Transformation of Queenship in the Post-Roman World by Massimiliano Vitiello (University of Pennsylvania Press; 293 pages; $69.95). A study of the Ostrogothic queen (494-595) that explores the impact of late Roman and Byzantine imperial models on female rule in the post-Roman era.

Be a Perfect Man: Christian Masculinity and the Carolingian Aristocracy by Andrew J. Romig (University of Pennsylvania Press; 253 pages; $65). Draws on conduct books, theological tracts, poetry, and other sources in an exploration of how Carolingian masculinity was defined in relation to caritas, or the male aristocrat’s performance of empathy, devotion, and asceticism.

Besieged Leningrad: Aesthetic Responses to Urban Disaster by Polina Barskova (Northern Illinois University Press; 200 pages; $49). Draws on literary and other realms in a study of how the city’s inhabitants adjusted to the 872-day World War II siege.

Borderland Narratives: Negotiation and Accommodation in North America’s Contested Spaces, 1500--1850 edited by Andrew K. Frank and A. Glenn Crothers (University Press of Florida; 217 pages; $74.95). Extends the concept of borderlands beyond its classic geographic definition in essays on early American history; topics include the politics of coalition building in the Ohio Valley between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics edited by Ban Wang (Duke University Press; 330 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Essays on the Confucian concept of tianxia (all under heaven) and its evolution as a worldview historically as well as its uses and interpretations in the People’s Republic.

The Democratic Coup d’Etat by Ozan Varol (Oxford University Press; 235 pages; $99 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Discusses instances since ancient times in which a military coup has has toppled dictators and established democracy.

Following the Ball: The Migration of African Soccer Players across the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1949--1975 by Todd Cleveland (Ohio University Press; 280 pages; $80 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Discusses the Mozambican superstar Eusebio and other football players as they relocated to Portugal from the Portuguese African colonies of their birth; examines their role as cultural intermediaries.

Intimate Partner Violence in New Orleans: Gender, Race, and Reform, 1840-1900 by Ashley Baggett (University Press of Mississippi; 228 pages; $65). Analyzes records from 421 cases brought by women charging emotional or physical abuse by their romantic partners, both in and outside wedlock.

Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier by Kathryn L. Reyerson (University of Pennsylvania Press; 254 pages; $65). Examines medieval widowhood as a potentially privileged status through a study of a widowed mother in southern France and her success in business, property, and providing for the support and education of her sons.

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers by Guenter Lewy (Oxford University Press; 195 pages; $29.95). Draws on soldiers’ letters and diaries, trial records of Nazi functionaries, and other sources to examine the mindset and motivation of the ordinary men and women who perpetrated the Holocaust.

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition edited by John F. Marszalek with David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo (Harvard University Press; 784 pages; $39.95). Extensively annotated edition of Grant’s memoirs, written as the former general and president battled cancer in the 1880s.

Russian Peasant Women Who Refused to Marry: Spasovite Old Believers in the 18th-19th Centuries by John Bushnell (Indiana University Press; 400 pages; $40). Discusses Russian peasant women---in some villages up to 70 percent---who refused marriage in an act of agency linked to the beliefs of an Old Believer sect.

“Spirits that I’ve cited..?” Vladimir Clementis (1902--1952)The Political Biography of a Czechoslovak Communist by Josette Baer (Ibidem, distributed by Columbia University Press; 380 pages; $35). Traces the life of the Slovak lawyer, journalist, and politician who was executed in 1952, after his conviction in a show trial of former top party members.

Taking Books to the World: American Publishers and the Cultural Cold War by Amanda Laugesen (University of Massachusetts Press; 208 pages; $90 hardcover, $28.95 paperback). Focuses on Franklin Publications, a company that with funding from the U.S. Information Agency, translated, printed, and distributed American books around the world from the 1950s to the 1970s, with offices in Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The Three Graces of Val-Kill: Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook in the Place They Made Their Own by Emily Herring Wilson (University of North Carolina Press; 222 pages; $26). Discusses Roosevelt’s close friendship with life partners Dickerman and Cook and describes the female-centered community they created in a cottage at Val-Kill Creek in Hyde Park, N.Y.

True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century by Emily Skidmore (New York University Press; 252 pages; $27). Traces the lives of 18 trans men in the United States, with particular attention to those who chose to live in small towns or rural areas; focuses on newspaper narratives from the 1870s to the 1930s produced around the time of “discovery” of the individual’s “true sex” in his community.

Visions of Sainthood in Medieval Rome: The Lives of Margherita Colonna by Giovanni Colonna and Stefania translated by Larry F. Field, edited by Lezlie S. Knox and Sean L. Field (University of Notre Dame Press; 232 pages; $100 hardcover, $29 paperback). First English translation of two lives of the well-born Italian mystic (1255-80, beatified 1847), one written by one of her brothers, the other by a close follower.

Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam by Gregory A. Daddis (Oxford University Press; 300 pages; $29.95). Disputes the “better war” myth that the new command of Gen. Creighton Abrams achieved a military victory in Vietnam by mid-1970, only to have the war lost, politically, on the home front.

Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars by Katherine J. Parkin (University of Pennsylvania Press; 252 pages; $34.95). Examines women’s involvement in buying, driving, and caring for cars beginning with Mary Landon in 1899, identified as the first woman ever to drive.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith (Stanford University Press; 232 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines changing concepts of jiao qi or foot qi in Chinese medicine since the fourth century AD.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s Princeton Lectures by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn (Princeton University Press; 415 pages; $35). Combines an edition of Einstein’s 1921 lectures with commentary and related historical materials.

LABOR STUDIES

Rights, Not Interests: Resolving Value Clashes under the National Labor Relations Act by James A. Gross (ILR Press/Cornell University Press; 248 pages; $45). Defends a view of the 1935 act as at heart a workers’ rights statute, rather than effort to balance labor-management interests.

LAW

Claire L’Heureux-Dube: A Life by Constance Backhouse (University of British Columbia Press; 740 pages; US$49.95). A biography of a controversial jurist (b. 1927), known as “the great dissenter,” who was the second woman appointed to Canada’s Supreme Court and the first woman from Quebec.

Justice Robert H. Jackson’s Unpublished Opinion in Brown v. Board: Conflict, Compromise, and Constitutional Interpretation by David M. O’Brien (University Press of Kansas; 211 pages; $34.95). Examines debate in the landmark 1954 case through an analysis of six drafts of the concurring but unpublished opinion rendered by Justice Jackson.

Racial Reconciliation and the Healing of a Nation: Beyond Law and Rights edited by Charles J. Ogletree Jr. and Austin Sarat (New York University Press; 195 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Topics include emotion and the limits of racial reconciliation in policing.

LINGUISTICS

Commands: A Cross-Linguistic Typology edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon (Oxford University Press; 328 pages; $80). Examines directive speech, including commands, pleas, and entreaties, from a typological perspective; languages discussed include Quechua, Japanese, Lao, Aguaruna, Ashaninka Satipo, Dyirbal, Zenzontepec Chatino, Nungon, Tayatuk, Karawari, Korowai, Wolaitta, and Northern Paiute.

Repairing the Broken Surface of Talk: Managing Problems in Speaking, Hearing, and Understanding in Conversation by Gail Jefferson, edited by Paul Drew and Jorg R. Bergmann (Oxford University Press; 438 pages; $99 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Edition of writings by an American scholar (d. 2008) who was one of the founders of the field of Conversation Analysis; includes previously unpublished material.

LITERATURE

East-West Exchange and Late Modernism: Williams, Moore, Pound by Zhaoming Qian (University of Virginia Press; 208 pages; $70). Focuses on Chinese influences on the three poets’ last books: Williams’s Pictures from Brueghel (1962), Moore’s Tell Me, Tell Me (1966), and Pound’s Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII (1969).

The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time edited by Charles Altieri and Nicholas D. Nace (Northwestern University Press; 393 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Essays on 21st-century poems described as challenging to follow, discuss, and enjoy; includes each poem in full.

Here I Stand: The Life and Legacy of John Beecher by Angela J. Smith (University of Alabama Press; 248 pages; $49.95). Discusses a poet and scholar (1904-70) who, born in New York but raised in Alabama, used his descent from the famed 19th-century abolitionist Beechers to further his labor and civil-rights activism.

Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen by Sheila Johnson Kindred (McGill-Queen’s University Press; 312 pages; US$34.95). Discusses Bermuda-born Fanny Palmer, who in 1807 married Jane Austen’s youngest brother, Capt. Charles Austen, experiencing life with him and their daughters at sea and onshore until her death in 1814; topics include Fanny as a source for her sister-in-law’s depiction of Navy-linked women in Persuasion.

Kate O’Brien and Spanish Literary Culture by Jane Davison (Syracuse University Press; 208 pages; $55 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Sets O’Brien (1897-1974) in a tradition of dissident Irish women writers and describes how she was influenced by three Spanish figures: Jacinto Benavente, Miguel de Cervantes, and St. Teresa of Avila.

Literatures of Liberation: Non-European Universalisms and Democratic Progress by Mukti Lakhi Mangharam (Ohio State University Press; 246 pages; $134.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on literary and other realms in postcolonial India and South Africa.

New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East edited by Tony Tremblay (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 215 pages; US$39.99). Essays that use English- and French-language literature to explore the cultural and social history of the Canadian Maritime province beginning in the 1780s; topics include emergent Acadian nationalism.

Sissy! The Effeminate Paradox in Postwar US Literature and Culture by Harry Thomas Jr. (University of Alabama Press; 264 pages; $49.95). Draws on literary and other realms to identify an American artistic tradition that celebrates and affirms effeminate men and boys; topics include fiction by Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and James Baldwin.

MUSIC

Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao by Constance A. Cook (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 337 pages; $49.95). Discusses the evolution of musical performance in ancient China first within the context of ancestor worship, and later outside; draws, comparatively, on newly discovered bamboo texts from 1046-771 BC and on bronze inscriptions from 770-481 BC.

Challenging the Modern: Conservative Revolution in German Music, 1918-1933 by Nicholas Attfield (British Academy/Oxford University Press; 222 pages; $105). Discusses musical and wider conservatism during the Weimar era; topics include the composer Hans Pfitzner, the critic Alfred Heuss, the composer August Halm, and a revival of the 19th-century composer Anton Bruckner.

The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus Jr. by Nichole Rustin-Paschal (Wesleyan University Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 230 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Explores the jazz composer and musician’s ideas about music, racial identity, and masculinity.

PHILOSOPHY

The Experience of Truth by Gaetano Chiurazzi, translated by Robert T. Valgenti (State University of New York Press; 120 pages; $80). Translation of a 2011 Italian work on what it means to say something is true; draws on Aristotle and Heidegger, with discussion of Nietzsche, Gadamer, Putnam, and Rorty.

Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity: The Ethics of Theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas by Howard Pickett (University of Virginia Press; 304 pages; $49.50). Draws on the three philosophers’ writings in a defense of “virtuous hypocrisy.”

The Value of Rationality by Ralph Wedgwood (Oxford University Press; 267 pages; $40). First book in a projected trilogy, which will continue with volumes on rationality and belief and rationality and choice; defends rationality as a normative concept.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions: The Mirage of Military Modernity by Thomas-Durell Young (Bloomsbury Academic; 296 pages; $114). Examines the challenges of reforming the defense establishments of former Warsaw Pact nations, former Soviet republics, and former Yugoslav republics.

China, The United States, and the Future of Latin America: U.S.-China Relations, Volume III edited by David B.H. Denoon (New York University Press; 419 pages; $99 hardcover, $38 paperback). Topics include competing U.S. and Chinese interests in Argentina and Brazil.

The Democratic Faith: Essays on Democratic Citizenship by Paul M. Sniderman (Yale University Press; 185 pages; $30). Defends the abilities of ordinary citizens to reason about politics.

First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformation by Christopher Baylor (University of Pennsylvania Press; 321 pages; $69.95). Develops a theory of how previously marginal groups come to set party agendas; focuses on the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1940s and 50s, and the Republican Party’s embrace of cultural conservatism in the 1980s.

Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space: Locating Legitimacy by Laura J. Shepherd (Oxford University Press; 242 pages; $74). Examines the gender politics of peacebuilding discourse at the United Nations and ways in which a stated commitment to bottom-up governance in peacebuilding efforts is undermined.

Rethinking Political Islam edited by Shadi Hamid and William McCants (Oxford University Press; 377 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Combines essays on such topics as Islamism and U.S. foreign policy with writings that provide country studies of the varied trajectories of political Islam in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia.

The Virtual Weapon and International Order by Lucas Kello (Yale University Press; 319 pages; $35). Considers how concepts of international-relations theory can be applied in the discussion of security challenges in the cyber domain.

Youth Encounter Programs in Israel: Pedagogy, Identity, and Social Change by Karen Ross (Syracuse University Press; 264 pages; $60 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A comparative study of Peace Child Israel and Sadaka Reut, two organizations created to further encounters between Israeli and Palestinian youth.

POPULAR CULTURE

Neon Visions: The Comics of Howard Chaykin by Brannon Costello (Louisiana State University Press; 384 pages; $80 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). A study of the controversial American comic-book writer and artist (b. 1950) that examines his marginalization in scholarship on the medium.

The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero by Kevin Patrick (University of Iowa Press; 258 pages; $25). A study of the Phantom that discusses the character’s debut in American comics in 1936 and the paradox of his relative obscurity at home in comparison to his international popularity, particularly in Australia, Sweden, and India.

RELIGION

God, Nimrod, and the World: Exploring Christian Perspectives on Sport Hunting edited by Bracy V. Hill II and John B. White (Mercer University Press; 431 pages; $40). Combines essays on biblical and other Jewish and Christian perspectives on hunting for sport, with writings on hunting in the lives of contemporary Christians.

A Samoan Reading of Discipleship in Matthew by Vaitusi Nofoaiga (Society of Biblical Literature; 138 pages; $30). Draws on the Samoan word tautua or “servant” to develop a concept of tautuaileva or “service in-between spaces” to discuss Jesus’ ministry in the Galilee as presented in Matthew 4:12-25 and 7:24-8:22.

Shared Identities; Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam by Aaron W. Hughes (Oxford University Press; 217 pages; $99). A revisionist study of the relationship between Judaism and Islam in the first several centuries of the latter faith; topics include Saadya Gaon (882-942) and the articulation of Islamically inflected rabbinic Judaism.

Toward a Latino/a Biblical Interpretation by Francisco Lozada Jr. (Society of Biblical Literature; 139 pages; $36.95). Includes illustrative applications to the Gospel of John, Galatians 1:11-14, and Matthew 6:9-13 (the Lord’s Prayer).

SOCIOLOGY

Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling by Sujatha Fernandes (Oxford University Press; 212 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Offers a critical perspective on the boom in “instrumental storytelling,” with a focus on how it figures in social movements; case studies include the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, the undocumented student Dreamer movement, and the Mision Cultura project in Venezuela.

Labour, Mobility, and Temporary Migration: A Comparative Study of Polish Migration to Wales by Julie Knight, John Lever, and Andrew Thompson (University of Wales Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 260 pages; $40). Examines the long-term implications of what had been assumed was a short-term migration of Poles to south Wales after Poland joined the European Union; focuses on the cities of Cardiff, Llanelli, and Merthyr Tydfil.

THEATER

Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama by Keir Elam (Bloomsbury Academic; 379 pages; $108). Examines the iconographic, literary, and performance aspects of pictures, most often portraits, brought on stage in Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and other plays.

URBAN STUDIES

Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation” by J. Mark Souther (Temple University Press; 288 pages; $92.50 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Focuses on Cleveland leaders’ rhetoric in the postwar period, including efforts to avert and then reverse, or at least manage, perceptions of the city’s decline.

Roads to Prosperity: Economic Development Lessons from Midsize Canadian Cities by Gary Sands and Laura A. Reese (Wayne State University Press; 376 pages; $64.99). Draws lessons from strategies employed between 1991 and 2011 in 42 Canadian cities with populations between 50,000 and 400,000, most of which are in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.