Weekly Book List, October 27, 2017

AMERICAN STUDIES

Sex and Sexuality in Modern Southern Culture edited by Trent Brown (Louisiana State University Press; 336 pages; $45). Topics include the politics of interracial sex during the civil-rights movement, purity culture among contemporary evangelicals, gay cruising on north Florida’s “Redneck Riviera,” and gender and sexuality in the fiction of Larry Brown and Fannie Flagg.

ANTHROPOLOGY

For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism by Sarah M. Pike (University of California Press; 293 pages; $85 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Offers an ethnographic perspective on activists in the radical environmental and animal-rights movements; focuses on how experiences of their childhood, youth, and young adulthood shaped their values and commitment.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Contemporary Archaeology and the City: Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action edited by Laura McAtackney and Krysta Ryzewski (Oxford University Press; 278 pages; $105). Archaeological research on post-industrial and other transformations in contemporary cities; case studies include Chicago, Detroit, Berlin, Istanbul, East Belfast, and post-apartheid Cape Town.

Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor edited by Harvey Weiss (Oxford University Press; 331 pages; $74). Offers case studies of severe drought coincident with prehistoric and historic societal collapse from hunter-gatherers in western Asia in the 12th millennium BC to the fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor in the 15th century AD.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art by Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney (W.W. Norton & Company; 420 pages; $29.95). Traces the life of the 16th-century Italian artist, architect, and scholar, who is best known for his collective biography Lives of the Artists.

Eileen Agar: Dreaming Oneself Awake by Michel Remy (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 240 pages; $45). A study of the Argentine-born British artist (1899-1991) that explores her move from Cubism and abstraction to Surrealism.

Spaces in Translation: Japanese Gardens and the West by Christian Tagsold (University of Pennsylvania Press; 243 pages; $59.95). Draws on observations of 80 gardens in 10 countries in a history of Japanese gardens in the West as products of cultural translation set against issues of aesthetics, authenticity, and geopolitics since the 19th century.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by David Ferry (University of Chicago Press; 416 pages; $35). Translation, using iambic pentameter, of the Latin epic.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Life in the Age of Drone Warfare edited by Lisa Parks and Caren Kaplan (Duke University Press; 440 pages; $104.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Topics include U.S. and Israeli policies on “targeted killing,” the cognitive dissonance and psychological stresses experienced by drone operators, and drone art and “accelerationist aesthetics.”

State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa: Enchantings edited by Tejumola Olaniyan (Indiana University Press; 323 pages; $90 hardcover, $40 paperback). Essays on the state’s role in cultural production on the continent, including in literature, philosophy, religion, music, theater, film, television, sports, architecture, and other realms.

DANCE

Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine by Andrea Harris (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $99). Focuses on the role of the impresario and ballet advocate Lincoln Kirstein and the dancer and critic Edwin Denby in a revisionist study of the rise of American neoclassical ballet; includes analyses of Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Western Symphony.

ECONOMICS

Energy Tax and Regulatory Policy in Europe: Reform Priorities edited by Ian Parry, Karen Pittel, and Herman Vollebergh (MIT Press; 359 pages; $37). Essays on such topics as reforming the European Union’s Emissions Trading System and Energy Tax Directive.

Unfinished Business: The Unexplored Causes of the Financial Crisis and the Lessons Yet to be Learned by Tamim Bayoumi (Yale University Press; 286 pages; $35). Argues that a massive expansion of European banking between 1985 and 2002, particularly in northern Europe, played a pivotal and underappreciated role in the 2007-08 crisis.

FILM STUDIES

Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906-1924, Volume 5: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear by Isak Thorsen (John Libbey, distributed by Indiana University Press; 261 pages; $29). A study of the Danish film studio that examines its failure to maintain its status as a key player in the world market.

Screening the Stage: Case Studies of Film Adaptations of Stage Plays and Musicals in the Classical Hollywood Era, 1914-1956 by Steve Neale (Indiana University Press; 250 pages; $35). Films discussed include The Squaw Man, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Merry Widow, 7th Heaven, The Cocoanuts, Waterloo Bridge, Stage Door, I Remember Mama, The Pirate, Dial M for Murder and Attack.

Socialist Senses: Film, Feeling, and the Soviet Subject, 1917--1940 by Emma Widdis (Indiana University Press; 408 pages; $80 hardcover, $38 paperback). Examines how notions of the “new Soviet subject” were reflected in the treatment of the senses (external and internal) in Soviet cinema, from the post-revolutionary avant-garde through socialist realism.

FOLKLORE

Animal Tales From the Caribbean by George List, edited by John Holmes McDowell and Juan Sebastian Rojas E. (Indiana University Press; 239 pages; $115 hardcover, $50 paperback). Edition of a previously unpublished manuscript of folk tales collected by the American ethnomusicologist George List (1911-2008) during decades-long fieldwork among Afro-Colombians on the country’s Caribbean coast.

HISTORY

The Battle for North Africa: El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II by Glyn Harper (Indiana University Press; 264 pages; $35). Discusses three battles between the British Eighth Army and Rommel’s Afrika Corps at the Egyptian site, with particular attention to the second battle, which proved a turning point for the British in the war.

Civil War Logistics: A Study of Military Transportation by Earl J. Hess (Louisiana State University Press; 368 pages; $45.95). Draws on sources from official reports to quartermasters’ personal writings in a study of the systems used to move men, supplies, and equipment on both sides; documents how and why the Union Army improved over the course of the war, while the Confederates declined.

The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad (Basic Books; 710 pages; $40). Discusses the Cold War as a global phenomenon set in the wider context of history from the 1890s to 1990.

The Greatest Trials I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill edited by Ryan W. Keating (University of Georgia Press; 248 pages; $79.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Edition of letters exchanged between a colonel in a Connecticut regiment and his wife in New Haven, who served as a go-between for men in the regiment and their wives.

Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past by Ethan Kleinberg (Stanford University Press; 248 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on the work of Jacques Derrida to argue for a “hauntological” approach to the practice and writing of history.

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens (University of Georgia Press; 184 pages; $48.95). Examines physicians’ views of enslaved black women and Irish immigrant women who were the subject of experimental surgery in obstetrics and gynecology.

On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864 by Gordon C. Rhea (Louisiana State University Press; 472 pages; $45). Fifth and final book in a history of the Overland Campaign, a series of battles fought in southeastern Virginia; disputes the notion that Grant’s primary goal was to take Richmond, and describes, among other things, how Lee fought his better-provisioned opponent with what are described as risky, innovative field tactics.

Political Violence in Ancient India by Upinder Singh (Harvard University Press; 598 pages; $45). Explores tensions between violence and nonviolence in Indian thought through an analysis of representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious writings, and other texts from 600 BC to AD 600.

The President and American Capitalism since 1945 edited by Mark H. Rose and Roger Biles (University Press of Florida; 349 pages; $84.95). Essays by historians on how the actions of presidents since Truman have affected the economy and capitalism; topics include presidential decisions on labor, gender discrimination, affirmative action, poverty, student loans, and retirement, as well as their impact in such realms as credit cards and post-industrial development.

The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust by Ion Popa (Indiana University Press; 256 pages; $50). Topics include “whitewashing myths” that covered up the church’s role in support of the wartime Romanian government’s anti-Semitic policies, and the extent to which the church acknowledges its complicity today.

Slavery and Freedom in Texas: Stories from the Courtroom, 1821--1871 by Jason A. Gillmer (University of Georgia Press; 245 pages; $84.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Examines boundaries of race, gender, class, and generation in a study of five court cases from the period; cases include the inheritance claims of the children of a wealthy white landowner who had lived for 30 years as husband of one of his slaves.

The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender, and Ghosts in American Seances, 1848-1890 by Kathryn Troy (State University of New York Press; 200 pages; $85). Examines how American Indians figured as spirit guides in 19th-century Spiritualism.

The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote by Brooke Kroeger (State University of New York Press; 390 pages; $80 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Discusses the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, a group that went from 150 founding members in New York City in 1909 to thousands in 35 states.

The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria by Nancy M. Wingfield (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $80). Examines the everyday lives of both clandestine prostitutes and those registered with authorities in settings from the Habsburg capital, Vienna, to such smaller settings as spa towns and garrisons; emphasizes the agency that some of the women achieved.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Patrons of Paleontology: How Government Support Shaped a Science by Jane P. Davidson (Indiana University Press; 328 pages; $40). Describes how the search for coal deposits and other strategic resources, coupled with genuine scientific curiosity, fueled government support for the work of such paleontologists and geologists as Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, Richard Owen, Thomas Hawkins, Edward Drinker Cope, O. C. Marsh, and Charles W. Gilmore.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

Refrigerator: The Story of Cool in the Kitchen by Helen Peavitt (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 222 pages; $27). Traces the history of the domestic fridge as it eclipsed the ice box.

LAW

End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice by Brandon L. Garrett (Harvard University Press; 331 pages; $29.95). Describes how death-row exonerations and other factors are leading to a decline in capital punishment; argues that exposure of abuses, coupled with the penalty’s potential demise, can be marshaled to reform the criminal -justice system.

Justice and Empathy: Toward a Constitutional Ideal by Robert A. Burt, edited by Frank Iacobucci (Yale University Press; 220 pages; $65). Defends a role for the Supreme Court as a constitutional protector of the vulnerable, and develops a judicial approach that draws on psychoanalysis, Socratic pedagogy, and other elements to further fruitful interaction between opposing parties.

Justice Leah Ward Sears: Seizing Serendipity by Rebecca Shriver Davis (University of Georgia Press; 184 pages; $34.95). A biography of the Georgia jurist, who in 1992 became the first woman and youngest justice to serve on the state supreme court, and in 2005 the first black woman to serve as chief justice of any state supreme court in the United States.

LINGUISTICS

Micro-change and Macro-change in Diachronic Syntax edited by Eric Mathieu and Robert Truswell (Oxford University Press; 319 pages; $115). Essays on such topics as the pragmatics of demonstratives in Germanic, the origins of the Romance analytic passive, and modeling transient states in language change.

Remix Multilingualism: Hip Hop, Ethnography and Performing Marginalized Voices by Quentin Williams (Bloomsbury Academic; 236 pages; $128). An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of multilingualism in the context of hip-hop culture in night clubs and other settings in suburban Cape Town, South Africa; draws on fieldwork in Kuils River, a predominantly “Coloured” township in the Cape Flats.

LITERATURE

Beowulf translated by Stephen Mitchell (Yale University Press; 226 pages; $26). Translation of the Old English epic.

Between Generations: Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature by Victoria Ford Smith (University Press of Mississippi; 331 pages; $65). Examines both real and fictive children’s collaborations with adult authors as as active listeners, coauthors, critics, illustrators, and even small-scale publishers.

Black Aesthetics and the Interior Life by Christopher Freeburg (University of Virginia Press; 172 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.50 paperback). Explores the individual’s enduring capacity to self-define--- withholding or expressing---in a study of black personhood in the face of dehumanization; draws on texts from Ida B. Wells’s anti-lynching pamphlets to writings by Richard Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nina Simone, and Toni Morrison.

The Fate of Transcendentalism: Secularity, Materiality, and Human Flourishing by Bruce A. Ronda (University of Georgia Press; 256 pages; $64.95). Topics include the influence of Transcendentalism on such contemporary writers and artists as Charles Ives, Joseph Cornell, Truman Nelson, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver.

Hell on Earth by Avigdor Hameiri, translated by Peter C. Appelbaum (Wayne State University Press; 460 pages; $64.99 hardcover, $39.99 paperback). First English translation of a Hebrew novel written in 1932 by a Hungarian-born Israeli writer about his experiences as a prisoner of war held in Russia during the second half of World War I.

Hope Isn’t Stupid: Utopian Affects in Contemporary American Literature by Sean Austin Grattan (University of Iowa Press; 218 pages; $65). Links utopian studies and affect studies in an analysis of utopianism in contemporary American literature beyond the genre of science fiction; authors discussed include William Burroughs, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, and Colson Whitehead.

Jottings Under Lamplight by Lu Xun, edited by Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk A. Denton (Harvard University Press; 329 pages; $35). Translation of autobiographical and other essays by an acclaimed Chinese writer (1881-1936) best known for his short fiction;

Joyce and the Law edited by Jonathan Goldman (University Press of Florida; 294 pages; $84.95). Essays on Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Giacomo Joyce, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake in relation to the legal culture of Joyce’s time and beyond, as well as the author’s own fascination with law.

Literary Celebrity and Public Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Bonnie Carr O’Neill (University of Georgia Press; 272 pages; $64.95). Draws on writings by P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Fanny Fern.

Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850-1920 edited by Frank Q. Christianson and Leslee Thorne-Murphy (Indiana University Press; 255 pages; $85 hardcover, $35 paperback). Covers texts from manifestos and fund-raising tracts to novels and letters in essays on the rhetorical strategies of philanthropic work; topics include philanthropy and liberal individualism in Edith Wharton’s The Fruit of the Tree.

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners: Digesting the New Social History edited by Chris Fitter (Oxford University Press; 264 pages; $80). Combines writings by Shakespearean scholars, drawing on the “new social history” of the bard’s England, along with essays by social historians turning their attention to Shakespeare; topics include protesting against the poor law in Lear, and the speaking silence of citizens in Richard III.

MUSIC

Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality by J. Griffith Rollefson (University of Chicago Press; 295 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Draws on postcolonial theory in a study of hip-hop and a “global double consciousness” among Turkish Berliners, South Asian Londoners, and Senegalese Parisians.

Singing Across Divides: Music and Intimate Politics in Nepal by Anna Marie Stirr (Oxford University Press; 288 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Katmandu and other settings in a study of dohori, a form of conversational sung poetry that is often improvised in flirtatious dialogue between a man and a woman.

Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms by Andrew Davis (Indiana University Press; 203 pages; $80 hardcover, $35 paperback). Describes ways in which Romantic sonatas are heirs to classical sonata traditions, and ways in which the Romantic form’s disruptions mark their distinction.

PHILOSOPHY

Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought by Eric S. Nelson (Bloomsbury Academic; 344 pages; $114). Traces the reception of the Eastern traditions in German philosophy through a study of such thinkers as Buber, Rudolf Eucken, Hans Driesch, Heidegger, Husserl, Georg Misch, and Max Scheler.

Coleridge and Contemplation edited by Peter Cheyne (Oxford University Press; 332 pages; $90). Essays by scholars in philosophy and intellectual history on the thought of the English philosopher-poet; topics include contemplation in Coleridge’s poetry, Coleridge and chemical philosophy, and Coleridge’s two-level theory of metaphysical knowledge and the order of the mental powers in the Logic.

Expectation: Philosophy, Literature by Jean-Luc Nancy, translated by Robert Bononno (Fordham University Press; 276 pages; $125 hardcover, $35 paperback). Translation of Demande, a 2015 book that brings together essays on literature written across three decades by the French philosopher; includes, for the most part, writings previously unavailable in English.

Feminist Phenomenology Futures edited by Helen A. Fielding and Dorothea E. Olkowski (Indiana University Press; 364 pages; $45). Includes essays engaging such thinkers as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, and Arendt, and on such topics as the contributions of feminist speech-act theory to feminist phenomenology.

Kant and the Philosophy of Mind: Perception, Reason, and the Self edited by Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson (Oxford University Press; $60). Essays on such topics as Kant on judging and the will, and whether Kantian intuitions are object-dependent.

On Faith and Science by Edward J. Larson and Michael Ruse (Yale University Press; 298 pages; $30). Combines historical, philosophical, and global perspectives in a discussion of how scientists, theologians, and philosophers have approached a variety of topics, from cosmology to sex and gender.

Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present by Stefanos Geroulanos (Stanford University Press; 496 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Discusses a period in French thought when the idea of transparency was met with suspicion and associations with totalitarian government.

What Is Philosophy? by Giorgio Agamben, translated by Lorenzo Chiesa (Stanford University Press; 136 pages; $55 hardcover, $18.95 paperback). Translation of a 2016 work by the Italian philosopher on the component elements---at the word, phrase, or lower level---of philosophic discourse.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Statelessness in the Caribbean: The Paradox of Belonging in a Postnational World by Kristy A. Belton (University of Pennsylvania Press; 271 pages; $75). Focuses on the Dominican- and Bahamian-born offspring of Haitian migrants in a study of people in the Caribbean denied citizenship in the countries of their birth.

PUBLIC POLICY

The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs by John F. Cogan (Stanford University Press; 500 pages; $45). A history of entitlement programs that focuses on their expansion and financial risk.

RELIGION

Invisible Hosts: Performing the Nineteenth-Century Spirit Medium’s Autobiography by Elizabeth Schleber Lowry (State University of New York Press; 157 pages; $80). A rhetorical analysis of autobiographies by female spirit mediums of the Victorian era.

The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press; 577 pages; $35). Offers what is termed a literal rather than literary translation of the texts in an effort to recover the urgent and radical voices of the authors.

Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by David L. Weddle (New York University Press; 247 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). A comparative study of sacrificial practices in the three religions, as well as dissenting voices on the topic in the faiths.

Stalk Divination: A Newly Discovered Alternative to the “I Ching” edited and translated by Constance A. Cook and Zhao Lu (Oxford University Press; 195 pages; $74). Translation and study of a newly discovered bamboo-strip divination text from ancient China known as the Shifa; considers the book, and its methodology, as a counterclassic to the I Ching.

SOCIOLOGY

Getting to Church: Exploring Narratives of Gender and Joining by Sally Gallagher (Oxford University Press; 228 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Offers a sociological perspective contrasting how men and women approach, join, and sometimes disaffiliate with a given congregation; draws on research at a mainline Protestant (Presbyterian) church, a conservative Baptist church, and an Eastern Orthodox church, all in the Pacific Northwest.

The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China by Bin Yu (Stanford University Press; 237 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Examines how China’s authoritarian political culture both enabled and constrained the massive outpouring of help in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed some 87,000 and left 5 million homeless; topics include volunteers’ reticence in talking about sensitive issues, such as the collapse of thousands of schools.

SPORTS STUDIES

Making March Madness: The Early Years of the NCAA, NIT, and College Basketball Championships, 1922-1951 by Chad Carlson (University of Arkansas Press; 425 pages; $44.95). Focuses on the NCAA Tournament’s rise to importance since its modest beginnings in Kansas City in 1939, as a new contest in the wake of two already established college basketball tournaments.

URBAN STUDIES

Making Cities Global: The Transnational Turn in Urban History edited by A.K. Sandoval-Strausz and Nancy H. Kwak (University of Pennsylvania Press; 340 pages; $49.95). Topics include slum clearance as a transnational phenomenon in globalizing greater Manila, the global exchange of urban planning ideas, and the introduction and rough reception of the term “suburb” in India.