Weekly Book List, September 8, 2017

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago edited by Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers (University of Illinois Press; 263 pages; $95 hardcover, $30 paperback). Figures discussed include Jesse Binga, S.B. Fuller, John H. Johnson, Tom Burrell, and Oprah Winfrey.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Marriage Without Borders: Transnational Spouses in Neoliberal Senegal by Dinah Hannaford (University of Pennsylvania Press; 167 pages; $55). A study of marriages between Senegalese men living in Europe and Senegalese women at home in West Africa; draws on fieldwork in both settings.

Transmitting the Spirit: Religious Conversion, Media, and Urban Violence in Brazil by Martijn Oosterbaan (Penn State University Press; 264 pages; $84.95). Draws on fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro in a study that links the strength of Pentecostalism in Brazil to its ability to connect politics, entertainment, and religion.

Walruses and the Walrus Hunt in West and Northwest Greenland: An Interview Survey about the Catch and the Climate by Erik W. Born and others (Museum Tusculanum Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 256 pages; $45). Reports on a “local ecological knowledge” survey that involved interviews with 76 experienced walrus hunters from 22 towns and settlements spanning more than a thousand miles of coastline, from Maniitsoq to Siorapaluk.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Framing of Sacred Space: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church by Jelena Bogdanovic (Oxford University Press; 411 pages; $60). Explores the theological and other meanings of ciboria or canopies as crucial elements in the design of Byzantine churches.

Korean Art from the 19th Century to the Present by Charlotte Horlyck (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 264 pages; $60). Explores the interplay of art and politics in the nation; topics include abstract paintings of the 1950s to 1970s, and socialist realist art in North Korea.

Moscow Vanguard Art, 1922-1992 by Margarita Tupitsyn (Yale University Press; 288 pages; $55). A study of artistic experimentation in three phases from the post-Revolutionary era to the post-World War II vanguard.

BIOLOGY

Mate Choice: The Evolution of Sexual Decision Making from Microbes to Humans by Gil G. Rosenthal (Princeton University Press; 632 pages; $55). Examines the interplay of genetic, environmental, and social factors in mating decisions.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

The Hellenistic, Roman, and Medieval Glass from Cosa by David Frederick Grose, edited by R.T. Scott (University of Michigan Press; 304 pages; $80). Research on glass excavated from a site in Etruria (modern Tuscany) dating from the mid-second century BC to the early fifth century AD; examines changes in manufacturing, taste, and style.

ECONOMICS

International Currency Exposure edited by Yin-Wong Cheung and Frank Westermann (MIT Press; 328 pages; $37). Topics include the Swiss decision to discontinue the franc’s one-sided peg with the euro, and strategic choice in the currency denominations of Russian companies.

EDUCATION

Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction and Quantification in Education by Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman (University of Minnesota Press; 238 pages; $112 hardcover, $28 paperback). Considers how dualist notions of nature and culture have influenced ideas of inheritance, social reproduction, and assessment of human learning and development.

The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better by Daniel Koretz (University of Chicago Press; 288 pages; $25). Argues that the test-based accountability movement in American public education has failed.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy by Kohei Saito (Monthly Review Press, distributed by New York University Press; 368 pages; $95 hardcover, $29 paperback). Disputes notions of Marx as a “Promethean” and argues that the German philosopher saw the environmental crisis created by capitalism.

FILM STUDIES

Comic Book Film Style: Cinema at 24 Panels per Second by Dru Jeffries (University of Texas Press; 259 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Focuses on how the comic book as a graphic and textual medium has influenced film aesthetics.

Shakespearean Star: Laurence Olivier and National Cinema by Jennifer Barnes (Cambridge University Press; 226 pages; $99.99). Focuses on the actor-director’s unmade film Macbeth, as well as his adaptations of Henry V, Hamlet and Richard lll.

HISTORY

Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside by Tore C. Olsson (Princeton University Press; 277 pages; $35). Describes an exchange of models, methods, and plans between agrarian reformers in Mexico and the United States in the 1930s and 40s.

Andrew Jackson Donelson: Jacksonian and Unionist by R. Douglas Spence (Vanderbilt University Press; 448 pages; $39.95). A biography of President Andrew Jackson’s nephew and namesake (1799-1871), whose career included a posting as minister to Prussia during the revolutions of 1848, editorship of the Washington Union, and Fillmore’s vice-presidential candidate on the Know Nothing ticket for the election of 1856.

Baltimore: A Political History by Matthew A. Crenson (Johns Hopkins University Press; 640 pages; $44.95). Focuses on politics and race in a history of the city since its founding in 1729.

Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World by Maha Nassar (Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Focuses on how Palestinian intellectuals within Israel’s 1948 boundaries used poetry and prose to forge links with decolonization movements across the Arab world

The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound? by Azar Gat (Oxford University Press; 303 pages; $34.95). Combines a study of the history and historiography of war and its causes since earliest times with an analysis of reasons for the decline of war in the developed world in the past two centuries; topics include the two world wars’ interruption of this “Modernization Peace,” and threats that continue.

Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf by Lane Demas (University of North Carolina Press; 352 pages; $30). Examines African-American involvement in the sport beginning in 1899, with George F. Grant’s invention of the golf tee; topics include efforts to desegregate courses, and the history of the United Golfers Association, a black golf tour in operation from 1925 to 1975.

The General in Winter: The Marlborough-Godolphin Friendship and the Reign of Anne by Frances Harris (Oxford University Press; 387 pages; $45.50). Discusses the partnership between Queen Anne’s Captain-General, John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, and her Lord Treasurer, Sidney, first Earl of Godolphin.

Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement by Wendy L. Rouse (New York University Press; 253 pages; $35). Traces the emergence during the Progressive Era of a women’s defense movement, as women began studying boxing and jiu-jitsu.

The Historians of Angevin England by Michael Staunton (Oxford University Press; 402 pages; $100). Focuses on the work of such figures as Roger of Howden, Ralph of Diceto, William of Newburgh, Gerald of Wales, and Gervase of Canterbury.

Shades of Green: Irish Regiments, American Soldiers, and Local Communities in the Civil War Era by Ryan W. Keating (Fordham University Press; 320 pages; $140 hardcover, $40 paperback). Describes the importance of community to ethnic soldiers in a study of the organization of Irish immigrant regiments in Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin; draws on a quantitative analysis of records for around 5,500 men.

Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941-1945 by Mark Edele (Oxford University Press; 205 pages; $80). Describes the complex motivations of frontline defections among Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans; also explores debates in historiography on the issue.

Stanton: Lincoln’s War Secretary by Walter Stahr (Simon & Schuster; 743 pages; $35). A biography of the lawyer turned powerful war secretary Edwin Stanton (1814-69), who after Lincoln’s assassination would go on to figure in the events that led to the attempted impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

JOURNALISM

Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965 by Sid Bedingfield (University of Illinois Press; 292 pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Documents white journalists’ role in resisting desegregation.

LABOR STUDIES

Building Power from Below: Chilean Workers Take On Walmart by Carolina Bank Munoz (ILR Press/Cornell University Press; 192 pages; $95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Analyzes the success of unions at a supermarket chain near Santiago acquired by Walmart in 2008.

LAW

How Failed Attempts to Amend the Constitution Mobilize Political Change by Roger C. Hartley (Vanderbilt University Press; 288 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Considers why members of Congress continue to propose constitutional amendments at the rate of almost 200 a year, despite the fact that only 27 have been approved since ratification.

Kafka’s Indictment of Modern Law by Douglas E. Litowitz (University Press of Kansas; 196 pages; $29.95). Draws on published and unpublished works in a study of the writer’s nihilistic view of law.

LITERATURE

Bernard Shaw and William Archer edited by Thomas Postlewait (University of Toronto Press; 552 pages; US$95). Edition of letters exchanged between the Irish dramatist and the Scottish critic, whose four decades of friendship included spirited debate in both the public sphere and their private correspondence.

Coastal Works: Culture of the Atlantic Edge edited by Nicholas Allen, Nick Groom, and Jos Smith (Oxford University Press; 292 pages; $80). Essays on literary, artistic, and other depictions of the coasts of Ireland and Britain; topics include the poet Norman Nicholson and the Cumbrian coast, Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands, and the underwater paintings, painted underwater, of Zarh Pritchard.

Graciliano Ramos and the Making of Modern Brazil: Memory, Politics and Identities edited by Sara Brandellero and Lucia Villares (University of Wales Press, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 245 pages; $140). Writings on the Brazilian modernist author (1892-1953), including his novels Vidas secas, Angustia, and Sao Bernardo, and his prison memoirs.

Neoliberalism and Contemporary Literary Culture edited by Mitchum Huehls and Rachel Greenwald Smith (Johns Hopkins University Press; 344 pages; $34.95). Essays on neoliberalism’s impact on literature; topics include how the campus novel sustains the neoliberal university.

The Refracted Muse: Literature and Optics in Early Modern Spain by Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomas, translated by Vincent Barletta (University of Chicago Press; 308 pages; $135 hardcover, $45 paperback). Discusses Galileo’s telescope and other optics in a study of Spanish Golden Age literature in dialogue with the Scientific Revolution; authors discussed include Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca, and Quevedo.

Scales: Melographed by Cesar Vallejo edited and translated by Joseph Mulligan (Wesleyan University Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 168 pages; $50 hardcover, $19.95 paperback). Bilingual edition and first complete English translation of an avant-garde work published in 1923 by the Peruvian writer that combined prose poems with short stories.

PHILOSOPHY

Beyond Beauty by Federico Vercellone, translated by Sarah De Sanctis (State University of New York Press; 153 pages; $80). Translation of a 2008 Italian study of the decline of beauty as a Platonic ideal, beginning with German Romanticism.

Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters edited by Luna Dolezal and Danielle Petherbridge (State University of New York Press; 411 pages; $95). Essays on such topics as racializing perception and the phenomenology of invisibility.

Descartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception by Walter Ott (Oxford University Press; 240 pages; $70). Discusses 17th-century French thinkers and a major shift in the theory of sensory perception, including a move away from color, sound, and other qualities as members of a mind-independent world; focuses on Descartes and Malebranche, as well as such lesser-known figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Regis.

Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity by Gregor Moder (Northwestern University Press; 200 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Emphasizes ways to read both philosophers together rather than in opposition.

Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy by Kojin Karatani, translated by Joseph A. Murphy (Duke University Press; 184 pages; $84.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback). Translation of a Japanese study that places the origins of philosophy in Greek colonies in Ionia (now present-day Turkey) rather than Athens.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Borrowing Credibility: Global Banks and Monetary Regimes by Jana Grittersova (University of Michigan Press; 320 pages; $80). Documents how the establishment of reputable multinational banks in emerging market nations enhances those nations’ monetary credibility.

Guardians of the Arab State: When Militaries Intervene in Politics, from Iraq to Mauritania by Florence Gaub (Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $45). Describes the militaries of Arab countries along an interventionist continuum from failed forces that cannot act, to forces that choose not to act or are held in check by civilians, through forces that can and do intervene.

NATO’s Return to Europe: Engaging Ukraine, Russia, and Beyond edited by Rebecca R. Moore and Damon Coletta (Georgetown University Press; 272 pages; $104.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Topics include sustaining the liberal security order beyond the Ukraine crisis.

No Shortcut to Change: An Unlikely Path to a More Gender Equitable World by Kara Ellerby (New York University Press; 263 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Criticizes the inadequacies of the “add-women” approach to policies intended to promote gender equality; focuses on areas of political representation, violence against women, and women’s economic rights.

Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia by Regine A. Spector (Cornell University Press; 266 pages; $49.95). Draws on fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan in a study of the political economy of bazaars in post-Soviet Central Asia.

PSYCHOLOGY

Five Constraints on Predicting Behavior by Jerome Kagan (MIT Press; 246 pages; $30). Examines five constraints on the ability to predict behavioral outcomes based on brain data, including experimental settings, subjects’ expectations, and the misapplication of psychological concepts to describe brain evidence.

RELIGION

The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition by Reginald Lynch (Catholic University of America Press; 260 pages; $65). Examines Aquinas’s view of the sacraments as instrumental causes of grace.

Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893 by Michael J. Altman (Oxford University Press; 175 pages; $34.95). Examines categories used by Americans from Puritans to Theosophists to understand religion in India.

Illumination of the Hidden Meaning (sbas don kun gsal): Mandala, Mantra, and the Cult of the Yoginis, Chapters 1-24 by Tsong Khapa Losang Drakpa, translated by David B. Gray (Columbia University Press; 449 pages; $56). First book in an annotated translation and study of a commentary written by the Tibetan Buddhist monk Tsong Khapa (1357-1419) on the Indian Buddhist text Cakrasamvara Tantra.

Keeping It Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys by John O’Brien (Princeton University Press; 216 pages; $29.95). Draws on fieldwork in and around an urban mosque in a study of how Muslim American youth juggle the demands of their faith and typical teenage concerns.

Leontius of Byzantium: Complete Works edited by Brian E. Daley (Oxford University Press; 616 pages; $205). Facing Greek edition and English translation, with commentaries, of six works associated with the sixth-century monk.

Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church by Tricia Colleen Bruce (Oxford University Press; 254 pages; $99 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on interview and survey data in a study of the phenomenon of “personal parishes,” or parishes established on the basis of shared identities and preferences, including for the Latin Mass, particular immigrant groups, and tourists.

SOCIOLOGY

Service in a Time of Suspicion: Experiences of Muslims Serving in the U.S. Military Post-9/11 by Michelle Sandhoff (University of Iowa Press; 162 pages; $25). Draws on interviews with 15 Muslim American service members and veterans.