Weekly Book List, May 6, 2016

Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub May 01, 2016

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle by Crystal R. Sanders (University of North Carolina Press; 250 pages; $27.95). Documents the collaboration of working-class black women and the federal government in creating, in 1965, the Child Development Group of Mississippi, a Head Start program that along with aiding children, provided work for the women as teachers and aides.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Fragile Elite: The Dilemmas of China's Top University Students by Susanne Bregnbaek (Stanford University Press; 172 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on fieldwork at Beijing and Tsinghua Universities in a study of the psychological pressures experienced by students, including from their biological parents and the "parent" represented by the state.

Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K'iche' Community by C. James MacKenzie (University Press of Colorado; 368 pages; $110 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). A study of tensions over religion and identity in the Guatemalan highland community of San Andres Xecul, whose residents profess varied Christian and indigenous beliefs.

Learning in Morocco: Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dream by Charis Boutieri (Indiana University Press; 304 pages; $85 hardcover, $32 paperback). Topics include the clash between government efforts to promote Arabic and a job market in which French is still key to advancement.

Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism by Daniel R. Maher (University Press of Florida; 294 pages; $79.95). Focuses on Fort Smith, Ark., in a study of distortions and embellishments of the past at heritage sites.

The Politics of Suffering: Syria's Palestinian Refugee Camps by Nell Gabiam (Indiana University Press; 232 pages; $85 hardcover, $30 paperback). Traces interactions between UNRWA, the United Nations' relief agency, and residents of three Palestinian camps in urban Syria.

The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan by Andrea Gevurtz Arai (Stanford University Press; 233 pages; $85 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). A study of how children and their development became a focus of societal unease in the recessionary Japan of recent decades.

The Unseen Things: Women, Secrecy, and HIV in Northern Nigeria by Kathryn A. Rhine (Indiana University Press; 218 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). A study of HIV-positive Nigerian women who mask their condition.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Sacrifice, Violence, and Ideology Among the Moche: The Rise of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru by Steve Bourget (University of Texas Press; 431 pages; $75). Considers why sacrifice was key to the ideology, religion, and society of the ancient Peruvian culture; draws on data from Huaca de la Luna, a site where some 75 men were killed, dismembered, with their remains arranged with offerings.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia by Max Hirsh (University of Minnesota Press; 201 pages; $87.50 hardcover, $25 paperback). A study of airport infrastructure in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.

Painting the "Hortus deliciarum": Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time by Danielle B. Joyner (Penn State University Press; 241 pages; $89.95). A study of a 12th-century illuminated manuscript compiled by Abbess Herrad of the Hohenbourg abbey in Alsace.

What Is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity by Jean Clottes, translated by Oliver Y. Martin and Robert D. Martin (University of Chicago Press; 207 pages; $18). Translation of a 2011 work by the French archaeologist on cave painting that links the creative impulse of our ancestors to shamanism and explores the power and appeal of Paleolithic art for those who view it today.

CLASSICAL STUDIES

Beyond Boundaries: Connecting Visual Cultures in the Provinces of Ancient Rome edited by Susan E. Alcock, Mariana Egri, and James F.D. Frakes (Getty Research Institute; 408 pages; $69.95). Writings on the art and archaeology of the Roman provinces; topics include the creation of a sculptural tradition in the Roman Central Balkans.

Euripides' Revolution under Cover: An Essay by Pietro Pucci (Cornell University Press; 240 pages; $59.95). Examines the strategies used by the playwright to subvert a traditionally anthropomorphic view of the gods.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

The Ancient Origins of Consciousness: How the Brain Created Experience by Todd E. Feinberg and Jon M. Mallatt (MIT Press; 366 pages; $35). Argues that consciousness in animals emerged 520 to 560 million years ago, much farther back than has been assumed and that all vertebrates have always been conscious.

COMMUNICATION

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet by Benjman Peters (MIT Press; 298 pages; $38). Analyzes the failure of successive efforts to create a large-scale computer network in the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1989, in contrast with the success of the U.S. ARPANET, which went online in 1969.

Playing War: Military Video Games After 9/11 by Matthew Thomas Payne (New York University Press; 272 pages; $89 hardcover, $28 paperback). Examines the popularity of Call of Duty and other game franchises of the military-shooter variety and how they both challenge and perpetuate ideas of U.S. prowess.

ECONOMICS

Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs: How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach by Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts (University of Pennsylvania Press; 248 pages; $59.95). Focuses on business interests in and near the port of Guayaquil in a study of how Ecuador became the leading world exporter of bananas without the domination of foreign multinationals.

Integrating Social and Employment Policies in Europe: Active Inclusion and Challenges for Local Welfare Governance edited by Martin Heidenreich and Deborah Rice (Edward Elgar Publishing; 328 pages; $135). Draws on research on 18 localities in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden.

EDUCATION

Education and the Commercial Mindset by Samuel E. Abrams (Harvard University Press; 417 pages; $39.95). Topics include the history of Edison Schools as a once-leading for-profit educational management organization, and charter management organizations that followed.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilization in Central Appalachia by Shannon Elizabeth Bell (MIT Press; 344 pages; $65 hardcover, $32 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in southern West Virginia in a study of why few in the region have joined a movement to combat industry-produced hazards to health.

Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France by Caroline Ford (Harvard University Press; 281 pages; $49.95). Discusses the 19th and early 20th centuries as a neglected period in the emergence of environmentalism in France; topics include concerns over deforestation, and the impact of major floods in Paris in 1856 and 1910.

Taking Chances: The Coast after Hurricane Sandy edited by Karen M. O'Neill and Daniel J. Van Abs (Rutgers University Press; 292 pages; $90 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Writings by biologists, urban planners, climatologists, and others on whether the 2012 hurricane has changed perceptions and policies on coastal hazards; focuses on New Jersey.

GAY AND LESBIAN STUDIES

Lesbian Decadence: Representations in Art and Literature of Fin-de-Siecle France by Nicole G. Albert, translated by Nancy Erber and William Peniston (Harrington Park Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 403 pages; $85). Draws on literary, artistic, and other realms in a study of a simultaneous demonization and poeticization of lesbianism during the period.

GEOGRAPHY

Hitler's Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich edited by Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca (University of Chicago Press; 378 pages; $55). Writings on Lebensraum, Entfernung, and other geographic concepts used by Hitler to justify his expansionism, exploitation, and genocide.

HISTORY

Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America by Kristen Layne Anderson (Louisiana State University Press; 272 pages; $48). Focuses on St. Louis in a study that documents a wide and ambivalent range of German immigrant views on slavery and racial hierarchies.

Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy edited by Nicholas Buccola (University Press of Kansas; 256 pages; $35 hardcover, $17.95 paperback). Essays on Lincoln's response to "ultimate questions" in politics, including issues of law, liberty, sovereignty, and equality.

Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan by Hsiao-ting Lin (Harvard University Press; 338 pages; $39.95). Draws on recently declassified archives to argue that the creation of Taiwan was not the result of deliberate planning, but rather emerged from ad hoc half measures and compromises.

Africans in the Old South: Mapping Exceptional Lives across the Atlantic World by Randy J. Sparks (Harvard University Press; 204 pages; $26.95). Discusses six West Africans who lived in the South between 1760 and 1860 and whose experiences, including manumission, passing, and legal struggles, challenge dominant narratives.

Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution by Caroline Cox (University of North Carolina Press; 208 pages; $29.95). Draws on diaries, letters, and memoirs in a study of the experiences of boys under 16---including some as young as nine---who served in the Revolutionary army.

Comrade Huppert: A Poet in Stalin's World by George Huppert (Indiana University Press; 157 pages; $24). A biography of the Austrian Communist and writer (1902-82).

Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America From the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond by Chris Bray (W.W. Norton & Company; 398 pages; $28.95). A history of the military trials that considers their relationship to wider debates in American society.

D-Day Remembered: The Normandy Landings in American Collective Memory by Michael R. Dolski (University of Tennessee Press; 336 pages; $45). Traces representations of the June 6, 1944, invasion in film, literature, museum exhibits, journalism, and other realms over the past seven decades.

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York by John M. Dixon (Cornell University Press; 264 pages; $35). A study of a Scottish-born colonial politician and "gentleman-scholar" (1688-1776), who was a pioneer in colonial botany, wrote a history of the Iroquois, and pursued other intellectual interests from his home in rural New York.

Europe's Utopias of Peace: 1815, 1919, 1951 by Bo Strath (Bloomsbury Academic; 537 pages; $128 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Examines efforts to create a lasting peace on the continent, with a focus on the Congress of Vienna, the Versailles Treaty, and the Schumann Plan.

Feeding Manila in Peace and War, 1850--1945 by Daniel F. Doeppers (University of Wisconsin Press; 472 pages; $79.95). Discusses rice, produce, and other commodities in a study of the rural provisioning of the Philippines capital, including a breakdown in supplies that led to starvation during World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: The War Years, 1939-1945 by Roger Daniels (University of Illinois Press; 636 pages; $34.95). Completes a biography of the president, with a focus on his command in world affairs.

From Day to Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps by Odd Nansen, edited by Timothy J. Boyce (Vanderbilt University Press; 616 pages; $39.95). Includes previously untranslated selections from the Norwegian architect's wartime diary, which was originally translated into English in 1949.

The Habsburg Empire: A New History by Pieter M. Judson (Harvard University Press; 567 pages; $35). A study of the empire (1770-1918) that emphasizes the shared institutions, administrative practices, and cultural programs that bridged its diverse societies.

The Invasion of Canada by the Americans, 1775-1776: As Told Through Jean-Baptiste Badeaux's Three Rivers Journal and New York Captain William Goforth's Letters edited by Mark R. Anderson, translated by Teresa L. Meadows (State University of New York Press; 224 pages; $80). Offers contrasting first-hand accounts of the Quebec campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food by Roger Horowitz (Columbia University Press; 303 pages; $35). Topics include the extension of kosher certification to Coca Cola, Jell-O, and other products, and debates over techniques of kosher slaughter.

Last Outpost on the Zulu Frontiers: Fort Napier and the British Imperial Garrison by Graham Dominy (University of Illinois Press; 279 pages; $45). Examines the key imperial role played by an isolated garrison in the British southeast African Colony of Natal.

Matthew Flinders, Maritime Explorer of Australia by Kenneth Morgan (Bloomsbury Academic; 313 pages; $120). Discusses the British commander, navigator, and hydrographer (1774-1814), who was the first naval commander to circumnavigate Australia and establish it as a continent.

Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life by Tamara Plakins Thornton (University of North Carolina Press; 400 pages; $32.50). A biography of the mathematician, navigator, and actuary (1773-1838).

North Africa under Byzantium and Early Islam edited by Susan T. Stevens and Jonathan P. Conant (Dumbarton Oaks, distributed by Harvard University Press; 322 pages; $70). Writings by historians, archaeologists, and other scholars on life in the contested lands of western North Africa, with a focus on the pre-Islamic sixth century.

Opposing the Second Corps at Antietam: The Fight for the Confederate Left and Center on America's Bloodiest Day by Marion V. Armstrong Jr. (University of Alabama Press; 216 pages; $39.95). Completes a study of the Civil War battle that was the deadliest day of combat in American history.

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andres Resendez (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 431 pages; $30). Examines varied forms of bondage and forced labor of indigenous populations in the Americas and argues that it was slavery more than epidemics that caused the populations' decimation in North America.

The Papers of James Madison: 1 March 1823-24 February 1826 edited by David B. Mattern and others (University of Virginia Press; 800 pages; $95). Includes Madison's replies to requests for advice from his presidential successor, James Monroe, and exchanges with Thomas Jefferson on what became the University of Virginia.

The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City by Lucas N.N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries (University of Washington Press; 283 pages; $34.95). Discusses a branch of the Panthers formed in Portland's Albina district in the 1960s and disbanded in the 1980s; sets their creation, activism, and legacy in the wider context of race and politics in the Oregon city.

Religious Crisis and Civic Transformation: How Conflicts over Gender and Sexuality Changed the West German Catholic Church by Kimba Allie Tichenor (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England; 304 pages; $40). Topics include the church's response to West German women leaving in large numbers because of its stand on contraception and other issues.

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai: Maritime East Asia in Global History, 1550--1700 edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang (University of Hawai'i Press; 396 pages; $69). Essays on such topics as diplomacy between Momoyama Japan and the Spanish Philippines in the 1590s.

Tales From the Long Twelfth Century: The Rise and Fall of the Angevin Empire by Richard Huscroft (Yale University Press; 305 pages; $50). Traces the rise and fall of the short-lived dynasty through the lives of eight men and two women---of the nobility and otherwise---who were significant to its history.

Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorial Organization and Its Conflict with the Zionist Organization by Gur Alroey (Wayne State University Press; 359 pages; $54.99). A study of Territorialism, an alternative movement to Zionism, and its efforts to obtain land for a Jewish state outside of Palestine.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Essays on Some Maladies of Angola (1799) by Jose Pinto de Azeredo, edited by Timothy D. Walker and others, translated by Stewart Lloyd-Jones (Tagus Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 144 pages; $24.95). Translation of a Portuguese physician's 1799 text on indigenous diseases and medical remedies.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at Fifty: Reflections on a Science Classic edited by Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston (University of Chicago Press; 202 pages; $75 hardcover, $25 paperback). Topics include Thomas Kuhn's "Aristotle experience" and the impact of Cold War culture on his 1962 masterwork.

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism by Michele Battini, translated by Noor Mazhar and Isabella Vergnano (Columbia University Press; 321 pages; $65). Translation of a 2010 Italian study on the emergence of a new form of anti-Semitism during the Enlightenment that expressed itself in an "anti-Jewish anticapitalism."

LABOR STUDIES

Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour by Janis Thiessen (McGill-Queen's University Press; 298 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$32.95 paperback). Draws on more than 100 interviews in a study of Mennonite responses to farmworkers' and other unions.

LINGUISTICS

Ojibwe Discourse Markers by Brendan Fairbanks (University of Nebraska Press; 222 pages; $70). A study of the Algonquian language that examines the role of mii, gosha, and other discourse markers.

LITERATURE

Emily Dickinson's Poems: As She Preserved Them edited by Cristanne Miller (Harvard University Press; 845 pages; $39.95). Annotated edition of Dickinson's verse that distinguishes some 1,100 poems she copied onto folded sheets with works she kept in rougher form.

Empiricist Devotions: Science, Religion, and Poetry in Early Eighteenth-Century England by Courtney Weiss Smith (University of Virginia Press; 288 pages; $45). Uses writings by Boyle, Newton, Locke, Addison, Defoe, Gay, and Pope to explore a "meditative empiricism" that linked science, religion, and literature.

Fashion and Fiction: Self-Transformation in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Lauren S. Cardon (University of Virginia Press; 232 pages; $29.50). Explores links among fashion, self-transformation, and upward mobility in works by such writers as Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Nella Larsen.

The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction in an Age of Distraction by Adam S. Miller (Bloomsbury Academic; 114 pages; $86 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Offers a religious perspective on Wallace's discussions of boredom, distraction, addiction, and other themes in The Pale King and Infinite Jest.

Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature by Nicole Nolan Sidhu (University of Pennsylvania Press; 300 pages; $69.95). Discusses works by Chaucer, Langland, Lydgate, and other writers in a study of the role played by obscene comedy in England's literary and visual culture in the century and a half following the Black Death.

Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford University Press; 195 pages; $74). Explores geography as defining principle in varied genres of Greek, Latin, Syriac, and other literature of AD 200 to 900; describes how authors viewed the oikoumene, or, for them, known inhabited world as a metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge.

Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic by Anne W. Gulick (Ohio State University Press; 258 pages; $99.95). Explores the challenging of colonial and imperial authority in texts from Haiti's declaration of independence to Ngugi wa Thiongo's A Grain of Wheat.

The Official World by Mark Seltzer (Duke University Press; 281 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses suspense novels, films, and performance art to explore the contemporary predilection for self-reporting.

Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After by Peter Middleton (University of Chicago Press; 318 pages; $45). Focuses on physics in a study of the influence of science on the work of such poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout; also discusses physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrodinger who looked to poetry for insight into the quantum world.

Science Fiction in Argentina: Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse by Joanna Page (University of Michigan Press; 246 pages; $80 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Examines literature, cinema, theater, and comics in a study of the genre in Argentina since 1875.

Struggling Upward: Worldly Success and the Japanese Novel by Timothy J. Van Compernolle (Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press; 246 pages; $39.95). Links the Meiji-era Japanese novel to risshin shusse, an emerging discourse on social mobility; topics include imagining rural Japan in novels of ambition.

Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c.1350-1600 by Ryan McDermott (University of Notre Dame Press; 424 pages; $45). Draws on literary, theological, and other texts in a study of medieval and early modern views of the moral sense of scripture.

Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora by Nima Naghibi (University of Minnesota Press; 211 pages; $98 hardcover, $28 paperback). A study of memoirs, prison testimonials, documentary films, and other "life narratives" by Iranian women in diaspora.

MUSIC

Goze: Women, Musical Performance, and Visual Disability in Traditional Japan by Gerald Groemer (Oxford University Press; 304 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Discusses a Japanese tradition from the 17th to the 20th centuries of thegoze---visually disabled women who traveled the countryside as professional singers.

The Pathetick Musician: Moving an Audience in the Age of Eloquence by Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess (Oxford University Press; 323 pages; $39.95). Focuses on Bach in a study of the performance of Baroque music.

Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics by Marina Frolova-Walker (Yale University Press; 369 pages; $65). Draws on the transcripts of judging panels and other sources in a study of the annual prize and its recipients, who included such figures as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Mayakovsky.

Tracing Tangueros: Argentine Tango Instrumental Music by Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland (Oxford University Press; 370 pages; $99 hardcover, $35 paperback). Traces innovations in the music since the 1920s.

PHILOSOPHY

Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy by William S. Allen (Fordham University Press; 316 pages; $65). Considers how the French and the German thinkers' views of negativity are mutually illuminating.

Meaning and Mortality in Kierkegaard and Heidegger: Origins of the Existential Philosophy of Death by Adam Buben (Northwestern University Press; 208 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95 paperback). Argues that the two philosophers offer a compromise between Platonic and Epicurean views of death.

Merleau-Ponty and the Art of Perception edited by Duane H. Davis and William S. Hamrick (State University of New York Press; 320 pages; $95). Topics include modernism, postmodernism, and the French philosopher's theory of signs.

The Mutual Cultivation of Self and Things: A Contemporary Chinese Philosophy of the Meaning of Being by Yang Guorong, translated by Chad Austin Meyers (Indiana University Press; 326 pages; $100 hardcover, $45 paperback). First English translation of the Chinese philosopher's work.

Traversals of Affect: On Jean-Francois Lyotard edited by Julie Gaillard, Claire Nouvet, and Mark Stoholski (Bloomsbury Academic; 293 pages; $112). Essays on the French philosopher (1924-98) and his work on affect before and after the turning point of The Differend (1983).

The Will to Reason: Theodicy and Freedom in Descartes by C.P. Ragland (Oxford University Press; 255 pages; $74). Topics include the French philosopher's effort to reconcile his concept of freedom with divine providence.

Without the Least Tremor: The Sacrifice of Socrates in Plato's "Phaedo" by M. Ross Romero (State University of New York Press; 192 pages; $75). Discusses Socrates' death as an act of self-sacrifice rather than an execution or suicide.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges edited by Robert S. Ross and Jo Inge Bekkevold (Georgetown University Press; 336 pages; $64.95 hardcover, $32.95 paperback). Writings by American, Asian, and European scholars on policy trends under China's current president.

The Decision to Attack: Military and Intelligence Cyber Decision-Making by Aaron Franklin Brantly (University of Georgia Press; 226 pages; $49.95). Develops a rational-choice model of how states decide to use cyber weapons against other states.

Politics Against Domination by Ian Shapiro (Harvard University Press; 273 pages; $35). A work in applied political theory that asserts the centrality of resistance to domination, here understood as the illicit use of power that threatens people's basic interests.

Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe by Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage (Princeton University Press/Russell Sage Foundation; 320 pages; $29.95). Draws on data from 20 countries over the past two centuries in a study of factors that shape whether and to what extent the rich incur taxes.

Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel by Dov Waxman (Princeton University Press; 316 pages; $29.95). Draws on interview and other data in a study of the origins and impact of growing divisions over Israel among American Jews, particularly for a younger generation.

A World of Struggle: How Power, Law, and Expertise Shape Global Political Economy by David Kennedy (Princeton University Press; 298 pages; $29.95). Examines "rule by expertise" in global political and economic life, including legal expertise in warfare that, it is argued, has divorced politics from ethics and responsibility.

POPULAR CULTURE

Openness of Comics: Generating Meaning Within Flexible Structures by Maaheen Ahmed (University Press of Mississippi; 223 pages; $60). Draws on Umberto Eco's idea of the open work of art in a study of British, American, Franco-Belgian, German, and Finnish comics of varied genres.

RELIGION

Coming of Age in Jewish America: Bar and Bat Mitzvah Reinterpreted by Patricia Keer Munro (Rutgers University Press; 230 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Explores the conflicts and negotiations that can characterize the planning and performance of the rituals; draws on interviews with more than 200 people in Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay area.

Dismembering the Whole: Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21 by Cynthia Edenburg (Society of Biblical Literature; 424 pages; $71.95 hardcover, $51.95 paperback). Examines, as political polemic, a tale of violence in Judges involving a Levite who hands over his concubine, in his stead, to a mob of Benjamites in Gibeah and after she is raped and dies, cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends a piece to each of the tribes of Israel.

The Mormon Jesus: A Biography by John G. Turner (Harvard University Press; 352 pages; $29.95). Traces changes in how Mormons have understood and experienced Christ since the church's beginnings; topics include views of the church's relationship to broader Christianity.

Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations by Phillip N. Haberkern (Oxford University Press; 334 pages; $74). Discusses both supporters and opponents of Hus in a study of the contested memory of the Bohemian religious reformer, who was burned as a heretic in 1415.

Signs and Wonders: Theology After Modernity by Ellen T. Armour (Columbia University Press; 323 pages; $105 hardcover, $35 paperback). Draws on Foucault in a work in philosophical theology that explores the public reception and photographic representation of four events, including the consecration of the openly gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson in 2003.

Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of Confucius by James A. Flath (University of Hawai'i Press; 320 pages; $55). Examines the history and material culture of Kong Temple, a monument to Confucius in Qufu, Shandong province.

The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture by Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez (University of North Carolina Press; 256 pages; $27.50). Uses women's magazines and other sources to document Mary's appeal as a symbol of womanhood for American Protestants as well as Catholics.

SOCIOLOGY

Distributing Status: The Evolution of State Honours in Western Europe by Samuel Clark (McGill-Queen's University Press; 520 pages; US$49.95). Discusses awards, decorations, and medals as instruments of power.

Living with Alzheimer's: Managing Memory Loss, Identity, and Illness by Renee L. Beard (New York University Press; 323 pages; $89 hardcover, $30 paperback). Argues that the medicalized view of Alzheimer's patients distorts their actual experience of life with memory loss; draws on observations of nearly 100 seniors undergoing cognitive evaluation.

SPORTS STUDIES

Iron Dads: Managing Family, Work, and Endurance Sport Identities by Diana Tracy Cohen (Rutgers University Press; 208 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Draws on in-depth interviews with 47 male competitors to examine the pressures that training for "iron-distance triathlons" place on families.

THEATER

Edo Kabuki in Transition: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost by Satoko Shimazaki (Columbia University Press; 372 pages; $60). Uses changes in the ghost play Yotsuya kaidan since its initial staging in 1825 to examine the fluid nature of kabuki theater into the modern era.

Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 by Julia H. Fawcett (University of Michigan Press; 304 pages; $65). Uses the concept of "over-expression" to explore the ways in which actors and other celebrities of the era both concealed and disclosed; figures discussed include David Garrick, Mary Robinson aka Perdita, Colly Cibber, and Cibber's cross-dressing daughter Charlotte Charke.

WOMEN'S STUDIES

Awkward Politics: Technologies of Popfeminist Activism by Carrie Smith-Prei and Maria Stehle (McGill-Queen's University Press; 280 pages; US$110 hardcover, US$27.95 paperback). Uses a concept of awkwardness to explore tensions in feminists' use of digital technologies in activism.

Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism inside the United Nations by Sylvanna M. Falcon (University of Washington Press; 244 pages; $90 hardcover, $30 paperback). Focuses on a world conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 in a study of anti-racist organizing by feminists from Mexico and Peru, and feminists (of color) from Canada and the United States.

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