Weekly Book List, September 29, 2017

ANTHROPOLOGY

Hearing Allah’s Call: Preaching and Performance in Indonesian Islam by Julian Millie (Cornell University Press; 276 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in the city of Bandung in a study of sermonizing in business and other realms outside of mosques that is characterized by humor, mimicry, and other elements in tension with tradition.

Marking Indigeneity: The Tongan Art of Sociospatial Relations by Tevita O. Ka’ili (University of Arizona Press; 180 pages; $50). Focuses on Tongans living in Maui, Hawaii, in a study of tauhi va, or arts used to mark time, mediate conflict, and create beautiful sociospatial relations.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Minoan Earthquakes: Breaking the Myth through Interdisciplinarity edited by Simon Jusseret and Manuel Sintubin (Leuven University Press, distributed by Cornell University Press; 440 pages; $89.50). Writings by archaeologists, geologists, seismologists, engineers, and others on the role of earthquakes in ancient Minoan society.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice by Barry C. Feld (New York University Press; 395 pages; $35). Focuses on the past 25 years in a critical analysis of the development of juvenile justice since the Progressive Era; contrasts “Get Tough” policies in the 1980s and 90s with recent Supreme Court decisions drawing on neuroscience and other research to acknowledge children are different.

ECONOMICS

Measuring Entrepreneurial Businesses: Current Knowledge and Challenges edited by John Haltiwanger and others (University of Chicago Press; 512 pages; $130). Essays on such topics as immigrant entrepreneurship, the fortunes of young companies during the recent recession, and high-growth young firms’ contributions to jobs and productivity.

EDUCATION

Are Charters Different? Public Education, Teachers, and the Charter School Debate by Zachary W. Oberfield (Harvard Education Press; 272 pages; $66 hardcover, $33 paperback). Draws on data from hundreds of thousands of teacher surveys in a study of differences in the teaching climate of charter and traditional public schools; also contrasts different sorts of charter institutions.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshland, 1839-1914 by Jim Clifford (University of British Columbia Press; 248 pages; US$75). Discusses political change prompted by the confluence of poverty, pollution, water shortages, and disease in the London suburban area.

FILM STUDIES

William Faulkner in Hollywood: Screenwriting for the Studios by Stefan Solomon (University of Georgia Press; 301 pages; $49.95). Explores the interplay of Faulkner’s writing as a Hollywood screenwriter and as a high modernist, Nobel Prize-winning author.

HISTORY

The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America by Lincoln A. Mullen (Harvard University Press; 340 pages; $39.95). Discusses the historical frequency of conversion in the United States and the notion that religion is a matter for individual decision.

The Evil That Surrounds Us: The WWII Memoir of Erna Becker-Kohen edited by Kevin P. Spicer and Martina Cucchiara (Indiana University Press; 168 pages; $70 hardcover, $25 paperback). Edition of the memoir of a Jewish woman who married a Catholic man in Germany in 1931, was initially exempt from the worst of anti-Jewish measures under the Nazis, converted, but was forced to flee with her son into hiding as persecution by the state and neighbors intensified.

The Expanding Blaze:How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848 by Jonathan Israel (Princeton University Press; 768 pages; $39.95). Traces the international influence of the Revolution and the impact of American Founders’ radical ideas on later uprisings in Europe and the Americas.

The FBI in Latin America: The Ecuador Files by Marc Becker (Duke University Press; 322 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Analyzes documents from the FBI’s surveillance of Ecuador under the Special Intelligence Service, a program charged with combating Nazi influence in Latin America; documents how in 1943 J. Edgar Hoover changed the focus from Nazism to Communism.

Ladies of the Ticker: Women and Wall Street from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression by George Robb (University of Illinois Press; 248 pages; $95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Traces three generations of women deeply involved in banking, investment, and speculation.

Snacks: A Canadian Food History by Janis Thiessen (University of Manitoba Press; 304 pages; US$31.95). Combines archival and oral-historical perspectives in a study of independent- snack-food companies in Canada, including Hawkins’s Cheezies, Ganong chocolates, and Old Dutch, Hardbite, and Covered Bridge potato chips.

Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean by Randy M. Browne (University of Pennsylvania Press; 320 pages; $45). Focuses on slavery in the 19th-century British colony of Berbice (in what is now Guyana); draws on legal records that have preserved the voices of the enslaved.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

The Chinese Typewriter: A History by Thomas S. Mullaney (MIT Press; 481 pages; $34.95). First of two books in a history of modern Chinese information technology.

LAW

Ballot Blocked: The Political Erosion of the Voting Rights Act by Jesse H. Rhodes (Stanford University Press; 264 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Focuses on Republicans who vote to expand the protections provided by the Voting Rights Act, while simultaneously working to limit federal enforcement.

LITERATURE

“Do You Have a Band?": Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City by Daniel Kane (Columbia University Press; 276 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Discusses Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Patti Smith, Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, and other figures in a study of the interplay of poetry with proto-punk and punk music.

Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy: Mikhail Katkov and the Great Russian Novel by Susanne Fusso (Northern Illinois University Press; 328 pages; $45). Topics include how Katkov’s aggressive Russian nationalism shaped his actions as editor and publisher of the Russian Herald, a journal that was the site of first publication for Fathers and Sons, Crime and Punishment, and Anna Karenina.

Fascism and Modernist Literature in Norway by Dean Krouk (University of Washington Press; 176 pages; $25). Analyzes fascism’s appeal to the novelist Knut Hamsun and the poets Asmund Sveen and Rolf Jacobsen, all of whom collaborated during the Nazi occupation of Norway; also discusses the anti-fascist writer and critic Sigurd Hoel.

Irvin S. Cobb: The Rise and Fall of an American Humorist by William E. Ellis (University Press of Kentucky; 274 pages; $45). A biography of a once well-known Kentucky-born journalist, humorist, and stage- and screenwriter (1876-1944); links his later obscurity to discomfort over work that reflected the racial sentiments of his upbringing.

Lanford Wilson: Early Stories, Sketches, and Poems edited by David Crespy (University of Missouri Press; 288 pages; $45). Edition of previously unpublished stories and poems from 1955 to 1967, many of which deal with the small-town Missouri of Wilson’s upbringing and shed light on the Pulitizer Prize-winning playwright’s later plays.

Posthuman Blackness and the Black Female Imagination by Kristen Lillvis (University of Georgia Press; 144 pages; $44.95). Draws on posthuman theory in a study of black subjectivity in the work of such writers, filmmakers, and musicians as Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Gayle Jones, Julie Dash, and Janelle Monae.

Wine of Reunion: Arabic Poems of Rumi translated by Nesreen Akhtarkhavari and Anthony A. Lee (Michigan State University Press; 120 pages; $19.95). Bilingual edition of verse written in Arabic by the 13th-century Persian poet and mystic.

MUSIC

Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years by Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. (University of North Carolina Press; 245 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Draws on previously untapped sources in a study challenging prevailing assumptions about the origins of hip-hop; focuses on the years 1975 to 1979.

PHILOSOPHY

Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State by Clare Chambers (Oxford University Press; 226 pages; $35). Argues for an end to state-recognized marriage and for an egalitarian state in which secular and religious marriages are permitted, but have no legal status.

The Golden Age of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research, 1954--1973 edited by Lester Embree and Michael D. Barber (Ohio University Press; 412 pages; $110). Writings on the introduction of phenomenology to the United States by former students of Edmund Husserl who later taught at New York’s New School.

More Than Life: Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art by Stephane Symons (Northwestern University Press; 240 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Explores affinities and differences between the two German thinkers, with a focus on Simmel’s writings on Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin and his one-time student Benjamin’s concept of inconspicuousness and work on Charlie Chaplin.

Thomas Reid on Mathematics and Natural Philosophy edited by Paul Wood (Penn State University Press/Edinburgh University Press; 488 pages; $199.95). Edition of “Essay on Quantity” along with previously unpublished writings on mathematics and the physical sciences by the 18th-century Scottish philosopher.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

The Art of Revolt: Snowden, Assange, Manning by Geoffroy de Lagasnerie (Stanford University Press; 136 pages; $60 hardcover, $18.95 paperback). Discusses Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning as reinventing the art of political revolt.

A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison by Jack N. Rakove (University of Oklahoma Press; 226 pages; $29.95). Topics include how the founder’s approach to political problems and deliberation drew on what today would be called game theory.

POPULAR CULTURE

Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics by Frederick Luis Aldama (University of Arizona Press; 208 pages; $22.95). Discusses Latino and Latina characters in mainstream comic “storyworlds” since the 1940s.

Not Your Average Zombie: Rehumanizing the Undead from Voodoo to Zombie Walks by Chera Kee (University of Texas Press; 224 pages; $85 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Discusses film, television, video games, and other media in a study of more humanistic and sympathetic portrayals of zombies; considers such images’ relationship to our fears of losing agency.

RELIGION

“Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept by Ata Anzali (University of South Carolina Press; 264 pages; $49.99). Discusses the marginalization of Sufism in Safavid Iran and the eventual emergence of ‘irfan as an alternative model of spirituality.

Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique edited by Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart (Society of Biblical Literature; 431 pages; $56.95). Topics include the ritual dynamics of defilement and purification in Leviticus 12, and dress and the association of Jesus as high priest in John’s Revelation.

THEATER

Performing Unification: History and Nation in German Theater After 1989 by Matt Cornish (University of Michigan Press; 264 pages; $75). Explores the interplay of historiography and dramaturgy in a study of how German theater has represented and misrepresented the past since reunification.