Weekly Book List, September 22, 2017

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett’s Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox by Gerald Horne (University of Illinois Press; 258 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Examines the history of the Chicago-based international news agency and the life of its founder (1889-1967), a leading exponent of pan-Africanism; topics include how the success of the ANP set the stage for its demise, as mainstream media organizations hired more black journalists.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Care Across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families by Kristin E. Yarris (Stanford University Press; 190 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Managua in a study of grandmothers in Nicaragua who have assumed the care of their grandchildren after mothers have migrated north for work.

Uncertain Times: Anthropological Approaches to Labor in a Neoliberal World edited by E. Paul Durrenberger (University Press of Colorado; 361 pages; $98 hardcover, $35.95 paperback). Ethnographic and activist writings on labor and trade unions around the world, including such realms as the Swedish car industry, the Swiss construction industry, Mexican agriculture, Argentine steel, Mexican maquiladoras, Greek shipbuilding, and Israeli retail.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art by Phoebe Wolfskill (University of Illinois Press; 248 pages; $45). Uses key works of the Chicago-based artist to examine how racially problematic images influenced the art of the New Negro Renaissance.

Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium by Bissera V. Pentcheva (Penn State University Press; 288 pages; $64.95). Explores the sensory aspects of Byzantine religious culture through a study of how the acoustics and spaces of the famed church worked to further the sung liturgy.

Picturing India: People, Places, and the World of the East India Company by John McAleer (University of Washington Press; 217 pages; $39.95). Draws on holdings of the British Library in a study of images of the British engagement in India in the 18th and 19th centuries.

COMMUNICATION

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices by Jeffrey Shandler (Stanford University Press; 217 pages; $24.95). A study of the Holocaust testimonies held in the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archives; topics include how the video-taped life histories are shaped by other narratives, the role of Yiddish in the recordings, and visual aspects of the interviews.

ECONOMICS

The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and Potential of India’s One-Billion by Anirudh Krishna (Cambridge University Press; 314 pages; $29.99). Examines the disconnect between the country’s rapid growth and persistent, widespread poverty.

FILM STUDIES

Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film by Murray Smith (Oxford University Press; 288 pages; $45). Topics include how film studies can draw on an evolutionary perspective on the emotions, as well as neuroscience in relation to the dynamics of shock, suspense, and empathy.

Film, Fashion, and the 1960s edited by Eugenia Paulicelli, Drake Stutesman, and Louise Wallenberg (Indiana University Press; 231 pages; $80 hardcover, $35 paperback). Essays on the interplay of film and fashion with discussion of movies from Italy, France, England, Sweden, India, and the United States; topics include the Swedish designer Mago (Max Goldstein) and sexual difference in the 1960s films of Ingmar Bergman.

HISTORY

America in Italy: The United States in the Political Thought and Imagination of the Risorgimento, 1763--1865 by Axel Korner (Princeton University Press; 349 pages; $45). Examines how the American Revolution and subsequent political history figured in Italian culture and political debates from the late 1700s to Italy’s unification in the late 1800s.

The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena by Unn Falkeid (Harvard University Press; 269 pages; $49.95). Discusses the Roman Catholic curia’s move to southern France from 1309 to 1377 and responses by six writers---Dante, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Petrarch, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy by Katherine Ellinghaus (University of Nebraska Press; 199 pages; $40). Discusses the concept of the blood quantum and how blood became a marker for indigenous identity and legal status between 1887 and 1934; topics include its use by the government to disenfranchise those of mixed descent.

Colonized Through Art: American Indian Schools and Art Education, 1889-1915 by Marinella Lentis (University of Nebraska Press; 421 pages; $65). Focuses on art education in Indian boarding schools as a tool of assimilation; pays particular attention to the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico, and the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California.

The Dawn of Christianity: People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles by Robert Knapp (Harvard University Press; 320 pages; $29.95). Sets the emergence and resilience of Christianity in the context of everyday life in the ancient world as mediated through perceived interactions with the supernatural; covers 200 BC to the end of the first century AD.

The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War by Peter Guardino (Harvard University Press; 502 pages; $39.95). Compares U.S. and Mexican society at mid-century in a study of the 1846-48 war and its outcome that links the American victory primarily to economic factors.

From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs by Joshua Clark Davis (Columbia University Press; 314 pages; $35). Focuses on head shops, black nationalist bookstores, natural food stores, and feminist publishers, bookstores, and other businesses in the 1960s, 70s, and beyond.

The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine (Princeton University Press; 1,104 pages; $39.95). Examines Soviet history from the perspective of officials and their families who lived in the House of Government, a massive Moscow apartment building completed in 1931; topics include some 800 whose fate was eviction and execution.

Jean Bodin, “this Pre-eminent Man of France": An Intellectual Biography by Howell A. Lloyd (Oxford University Press; 311 pages; $100). Traces the life and work of the French jurist, historian, and political theorist (1530-96), who was known, among other things, for his work on the doctrine of sovereignty.

The Labor of the Mind: Intellect and Gender in Enlightenment Cultures by Anthony J. La Vopa (University of Pennsylvania Press; 360 pages; $79.95). Focuses on how educated men in early modern France and Britain viewed men’s and women’s cognitive capacities, and how women in their circles responded; figures discussed include Poulain de la Barre, Malebranche, Hume, Suzanne Curchod Necker, and Madeleine de Scudery.

The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power, and Guilt by Peter Clarke (Bloomsbury Press; 418 pages; $30). Focuses on Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, John Maynard Keynes, and Franklin D. Roosevelt in a study of Anglo-American liberalism and war as a dynamic mover of history, transforming economics and governance.

Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera (University of Texas Press; 340 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Documents the increasing corporatization of organized crime in Mexico through a study of an organization in the border state of Tamaulipas whose activities include trafficking in crude oil, natural gas, and gasoline; migrant and weapons smuggling; kidnapping for ransom; and video and music piracy.

Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases from the “Yuan dianzhang” by Bettine Birge (Harvard University Press; 324 pages; $55). A study of medieval Chinese family life under the Mongol conquest through discussion of marriage disputes discussed in chapter 18 of the Yuan dianzhang (Statutes and Precedents of the Yuan Dynasty), a previously untranslated legal text.

Pharaoh’s Land and Beyond: Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors edited by Pearce Paul Creasman and Richard H. Wilkinson (Oxford University Press; 347 pages; $39.95). Thematic essays on ancient Egypt’s relations with neighboring societies; topics include trade, religion, and technologies.

Populism and Imperialism: Politics, Culture, and Foreign Policy in the American West, 1890-1900 by Nathan Jessen (University Press of Kansas; 331 pages; $39.95). Discusses Populists, Bryan Democrats, and other western reformers in relation to U.S. foreign policy before, during, and after the Spanish-American War.

Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War by Betsy Perabo (Bloomsbury Academic; 219 pages; $114). Draws on writings by Bishop Nikolai, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Japan, in a study of the 1904-05 war as a Christian-Buddhist conflict.

Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo by Gary Bruce (Oxford University Press; 303 pages; $34.95). Traces the history of the zoo, since its founding in 1844, in the wider context of culture and politics in and beyond Berlin; topics include the ethnographic exhibition of Africans, Inuit, and other peoples, and Nazi efforts to “breed back” aurochs, a long extinct species of European cattle.

LINGUISTICS

Telling the Story of Translation: Writers Who Translate by Judith Woodsworth (Bloomsbury Academic; 230 pages; $128). Uses case studies of George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, and Paul Auster to explore the additional liberties taken by writers who are also translators.

LITERATURE

F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Scene by Ronald Berman (University of Alabama Press; 100 pages; $39.95). Topics include parallels between changes in Fitzgerald’s characters and societal changes between 1910 and 20.

Living in Mississippi: The Life and Times of Evans Harrington by Robert W. Hamblin (University Press of Mississippi; 160 pages; $40). A biography of a literature scholar (1925-1997) that explores his experiences as a white liberal and lifelong Mississippian.

Once a Peacock, Once an Actress: Twenty-Four Lives of the Bodhisattva from Haribhatta’s “Jatakamala” translated by Peter Khoroche (University of Chicago Press; 245 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Translation of some 80 percent of the classical Sanskrit work, written in Kashmir around AD 400.

Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, by His Brother Leslie Stephen edited by Christopher Tolley (Oxford University Press; 392 pages; $190). Scholarly edition of a biography of the English jurist (1829-94), published by his younger brother a year after James’s death.

Transformations of the Supernatural: Problems of Representation in the Work of Daniel Defoe by Petra Schoenenberger (Transcript-Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 204 pages; $40). Juxtaposes the English writer’s Robinson Crusoe, Roxana, and Journal of a Plague Year and his treatises on the supernatural The Political History of the Devil, A System of Magick, and An Essay on the History of Apparitions.

MUSIC

Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano by Stewart Pollens (Cambridge University Press; 400 pages; $120). Traces the life of the Paduan who is credited with the invention of the pianoforte around 1700 while employed by the Medici court in Florence; reconstructs his working life in the city between his arrival, in 1688, and his death, in 1732.

PHILOSOPHY

Adventures in Phenomenology: Gaston Bachelard edited by Eileen Rizo-Patron, Edward S. Casey, and Jason M. Wirth (State University of New York Press; 321 pages; $90). New and previously published writings on the French philosopher (1884-1962).

Cosmopolitanism and Place edited by Jessica Wahman, Jose M. Medina, and John J. Stuhr (Indiana University Press; 319 pages; $90 hardcover, $40 paperback). Topics include cosmopolitanism as a state of mind that acknowledges rather than transcends differences.

From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle by Mariska Leunissen (Oxford University Press; 216 pages; $74). A study of the Greek philosopher’s view of natural character as developed in his biological treatises; documents how those ideas inform his view of moral character in his ethical writings.

Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud by Kojin Karatani, translated by Jonathan E. Abel, Darwin H. Tsen, and Hiroki Yoshikuni (Oxford University Press; 162 pages; $65). Translation of essays by the Japanese philosopher on the nation as aesthetic object; figures discussed include Kant, Freud, Okakura Kakuzo, and Ernest Fenollosa.

On ne nait pas femme: on le devient: The Life of a Sentence edited by Bonnie Mann and Martina Ferrari (Oxford University Press; 362 pages; $74). Topics include the debates that erupted in 2010 when the famous sentence in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was newly translated into English as “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman"---losing the “a.”

Ontology Without Borders by Jody Azzouni (Oxford University Press; 279 pages; $74). Discusses a neutral interpretation of quantifiers and quantifier domains.

Rights Forfeiture and Punishment by Christopher Heath Wellman (Oxford University Press; 228 pages; $65). Defends the permissibility of punishment not in terms of goals such as deterrence or retribution, but as a rights question---in this case rights forfeited by the wrongdoer because of his or her violation of another’s rights.

Self-Understanding and Lifeworld: Basic Traits of a Phenomenological Hermeneutics by Hans-Helmuth Gander, translated by Ryan Drake and Joshua Rayman (Indiana University Press; 415 pages; $65). Translation of a 2001 German work on the hermeneutic experience of reading, with particular attention to the early Heidegger, along with Husserl and Gadamer.

Understanding Scientific Understanding by Henk W. de Regt (Oxford University Press; 301 pages; $74). Explores the nature of scientific understanding from both a philosophical and a historical perspective; topics include mechanical modeling in 19th-century physics.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

The Future of Diplomacy by Philip Seib (Polity Press; 154 pages; $19.95). Topics include the impact of social media in the diplomatic realm, and the growing role of public diplomacy as a key element of statecraft.

Poland and Slovakia: Bilateral Relations in a Multilateral Context (2004--2016): Essays on Politics and Economics edited by Joanna Dydach and others (Transcript-Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 267 pages; $45). Focuses on the period since 2004, when both countries joined the European Union.

RELIGION

Contemporary Shamanisms in Norway: Religion, Entrepreneurship, and Politics by Trude Fonneland (Oxford University Press; 234 pages; $99). Focuses on Sami shamanism as a movement in Norwegian New Age spirituality, drawing on the traditions of the indigenous Sami people; topics include the marketing of the Isogaisa festival, and spiritual tourism.

Paul Hanly Furfey: Priest, Scientist, Social Reformer by Nicholas K. Rademacher (Fordham University Press; 352 pages; $125 hardcover, $35 paperback). A biography of the Catholic sociologist and activist (1896-1992), whose advocacy included the communities surrounding his institution, the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C.

Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach / Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuches edited by Gerhard Karner, Frank Ueberschaer, and Burkard M. Zapff (Society of Biblical Literature; 333 pages; $50.95). Essays in German and English on the transmission of the wisdom book by the Jewish scribe Ben Sira (second century BC).

SOCIOLOGY

Black Men on the Blacktop: Basketball and the Politics of Race by A. Rafik Mohamed (Lynne Rienner Publishers; 188 pages; $26). Draws primarily on research on pickup basketball players in Southern California in a study of how the politics of race is mediated through sports.

Staying in Life: Paving the Way to Dementia-Friendly Communities by Verena Rothe, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Reimer Gronemeyer (Transcript-Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press; 289 pages; $45). Focuses on Germany in a study of efforts to create communities attentive to the needs and happiness of people with dementia.

Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine edited by Nadine Ehlers and Leslie R. Hinkson (University of Minnesota Press; 256 pages; $108 hardcover, $27 paperback). Topics include the financial, physical, and other burdens created by racial disparities in the access to and quality of care.