Thursday, January 31, 2008

"Hooking Up"

New from New York University Press: Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus by Kathleen A. Bogle.

About the book, from the publisher:

It happens every weekend: In a haze of hormones and alcohol, groups of male and female college students meet at a frat party, a bar, or hanging out in a dorm room, and then hook up for an evening of sex first, questions later. As casually as the sexual encounter begins, so it often ends with no strings attached; after all, it was just a hook up. While a hook up might mean anything from kissing to oral sex to going all the way, the lack of commitment is paramount.

Hooking Up is an intimate look at how and why college students get together, what hooking up means to them, and why it has replaced dating on college campuses. In surprisingly frank interviews, students reveal the circumstances that have led to the rise of the booty call and the death of dinner-and-a-movie. Whether it is an expression of postfeminist independence or a form of youthful rebellion, hooking up has become the only game in town on many campuses.

In Hooking Up, Kathleen A. Bogle argues that college life itself promotes casual relationships among students on campus. The book sheds light on everything from the differences in what young men and women want from a hook up to why freshmen girls are more likely to hook up than their upper-class sisters and the effects this period has on the sexual and romantic relationships of both men and women after college. Importantly, she shows us that the standards for young men and women are not as different as they used to be, as women talk about friends with benefits and one and done hook ups.

Breaking through many misconceptions about casual sex on college campuses, Hooking Up is the first book to understand the new sexual culture on its own terms, with vivid real-life stories of young men and women as they navigate the newest sexual revolution.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

"The Myth of American Diplomacy"

New from Yale University Press: The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy by Walter Hixson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this major reconceptualization of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson engages with the entire sweep of that history, from its Puritan beginnings to the twenty-first century’s war on terror. He contends that a mythical national identity, which includes the notion of American moral superiority and the duty to protect all of humanity, has had remarkable continuity through the centuries, repeatedly propelling America into war against an endless series of external enemies. As this myth has supported violence, violence in turn has supported the myth.

The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

"God in the White House"

New from HarperOne: God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush by Randall Balmer.

About the book, from the publisher:
How did we go from John F. Kennedy declaring that religion should play no role in the elections to Bush saying, "I believe that God wants me to be president"?

Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century — from Kennedy's 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to the soft religiosity of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society; from Richard Nixon's manipulation of religion to fit his own needs to Gerald Ford's quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter's introduction of evangelicalism into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan's co-option of the same group; from Bill Clinton's covert way of turning religion into a non-issue to George W. Bush's overt Christian messages, Balmer reveals the role religion has played in the personal and political lives of these American presidents.

Americans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting, as in most of the modern presidential elections before Jimmy Carter. But today's voters have come to expect candidates to fully disclose their religious views and to deeply illustrate their personal relationship to the Almighty. God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans' expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in the last half of the twentieth century, as well as the "religionization" of our politics. He reflects on the implications of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current political situation.

Monday, January 28, 2008

"The Cure Within"

New from W.W. Norton: The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington.

About the book, from the publisher:
Lays bare the history behind mind-body healing.

People suffering from serious illnesses improve their survival chances by adopting a positive attitude and refusing to believe in the worst. Stress is the great killer of modern life. Ancient Eastern mind-body techniques can bring us balance and healing. We’ve all heard claims like these, and many find them plausible. When it comes to disease and healing, we believe we must look beyond doctors and drugs; we must look within ourselves. Faith, relationships, and attitude matter.

But why do we believe such things? From psychoanalysis to the placebo effect to meditation, this vibrant history describes our commitments to mind-body healing as rooted in a patchwork of stories that have allowed people to make new sense of their suffering, express discontent with existing care, and rationalize new treatments and lifestyles. These stories are sometimes supported by science, sometimes quarrel with science, but are all ultimately about much more than just science.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

"Vermeer's Hat"

New from Bloomsbury Press: Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the hands of an award-winning historian, Vermeer's dazzling paintings become windows that reveal how daily life and thought — from Delft to Beijing — were transformed in the seventeenth century, when the world first became global.

A painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. Vermeer's images captivate us with their beauty and mystery: What stories lie behind these stunningly rendered moments? As Timothy Brook shows us, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually offer a remarkable view of a rapidly expanding world.

The officer's dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Those beaver pelts, in turn, financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to China. There — with silver mined in Peru — Europeans would purchase, by the thousands, the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time. Moving outward from Vermeer's studio, Brook traces the web of trade that was spreading across the globe.

The wharves of Holland, wrote a French visitor, were "an inventory of the possible." Vermeer's Hat shows just how rich this inventory was, and how the urge to acquire the goods of distant lands was refashioning the world more powerfully than we have yet understood.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

"Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory"

New from Princeton University Press: Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory by Randall Collins.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the popular misconception fostered by blockbuster action movies and best-selling thrillers -- not to mention conventional explanations by social scientists -- violence is easy under certain conditions, like poverty, racial or ideological hatreds, or family pathologies. Randall Collins challenges this view in Violence, arguing that violent confrontation goes against human physiological hardwiring. It is the exception, not the rule -- regardless of the underlying conditions or motivations.

Collins gives a comprehensive explanation of violence and its dynamics, drawing upon video footage, cutting-edge forensics, and ethnography to examine violent situations up close as they actually happen -- and his conclusions will surprise you. Violence comes neither easily nor automatically. Antagonists are by nature tense and fearful, and their confrontational anxieties put up a powerful emotional barrier against violence. Collins guides readers into the very real and disturbing worlds of human discord -- from domestic abuse and schoolyard bullying to muggings, violent sports, and armed conflicts. He reveals how the fog of war pervades all violent encounters, limiting people mostly to bluster and bluff, and making violence, when it does occur, largely incompetent, often injuring someone other than its intended target. Collins shows how violence can be triggered only when pathways around this emotional barrier are presented. He explains why violence typically comes in the form of atrocities against the weak, ritualized exhibitions before audiences, or clandestine acts of terrorism and murder -- and why a small number of individuals are competent at violence.

Violence overturns standard views about the root causes of violence and offers solutions for confronting it in the future.

Friday, January 25, 2008

"Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940"

New from Cambridge University Press: Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940 by Maria Luddy.

About the book, from the publisher:
This is the first book to tackle the controversial history of prostitution in Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Maria Luddy uncovers the extent of prostitution in the country, how Irish women came to work as prostitutes, their living conditions and their treatment by society. She links discussions of prostitution to the Irish nationalist and suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analysing the ways in which Irish nationalism used the problems of prostitution and venereal disease to argue for the withdrawal of the British from Ireland. She also investigates the contentious history of Magdalen asylums and explores how the infamous red-light district of Dublin's 'Monto' was finally suppressed through the actions of the Legion of Mary in the 1920s. Revealing complex social and religious attitudes towards prostitution in Irish society, this book opens up a new world in Ireland's social and political history.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

"Fiction and the Weave of Life"

New from Oxford University Press: Fiction and the Weave of Life by John Gibson.

About the book, from the publisher:
Literary fiction is of crucial importance in human life. It is a source of understanding and insight into the nature of the human condition, yet ever since Plato, philosophers have struggled to provide a plausible explanation of how this can be the case. For surely the fictionality - the sheer invented character - of the literary text means that fiction presents not our world, but other worlds (what we might call 'fictional worlds')? In Fiction and the Weave of Life, John Gibson offers a novel and intriguing account of the relationship between literature and everyday life, and shows how literature can give us an understanding of our world without literally being about our world.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

"China Rising"

New from Columbia University Press: China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia by David C. Kang.

About the book, from the publisher:

Throughout the past three decades East Asia has seen more peace and stability than at any time since the Opium Wars of 1839-1841. During this period China has rapidly emerged as a major regional power, averaging over nine percent economic growth per year since the introduction of its market reforms in 1978. Foreign businesses have flocked to invest in China, and Chinese exports have begun to flood the world. China is modernizing its military, has joined numerous regional and international institutions, and plays an increasingly visible role in international politics. In response to this growth, other states in East Asia have moved to strengthen their military, economic, and diplomatic relations with China. But why have these countries accommodated rather than balanced China's rise?

David Kang believes certain preferences and beliefs are responsible for maintaining stability in East Asia. Kang's research shows how East Asian states have grown closer to China, with little evidence that the region is rupturing. Rising powers present opportunities as well as threats, and the economic benefits and military threat China poses for its regional neighbors are both potentially huge; however, East Asian states see substantially more advantage than danger in China's rise, making the region more stable, not less. Furthermore, although East Asian states do not unequivocally welcome China in all areas, they are willing to defer judgment regarding what China wants and what its role in East Asia will become. They believe that a strong China stabilizes East Asia, while a weak China tempts other states to try to control the region.

Many scholars downplay the role of ideas and suggest that a rising China will be a destabilizing force in the region, but Kang's provocative argument reveals the flaws in contemporary views of China and the international relations of East Asia and offers a new understanding of the importance of sound U.S. policy in the region.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

"The Mighty Wurlitzer"

New from Harvard University Press: The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1967 the magazine Ramparts ran an exposé revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world. In addition to embarrassing prominent individuals caught up, wittingly or unwittingly, in the secret superpower struggle for hearts and minds, the revelations of 1967 were one of the worst operational disasters in the history of American intelligence and presaged a series of public scandals from which the CIA's reputation has arguably never recovered.

CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his "mighty Wurlitzer," on which he could play any propaganda tune. In this illuminating book, Hugh Wilford provides the first comprehensive account of the clandestine relationship between the CIA and its front organizations. Using an unprecedented wealth of sources, he traces the rise and fall of America's Cold War front network from its origins in the 1940s to its Third World expansion during the 1950s and ultimate collapse in the 1960s.

Covering the intelligence officers who masterminded the CIA's fronts as well as the involved citizen groups -- émigrés, labor, intellectuals, artists, students, women, Catholics, African Americans, and journalists -- Wilford provides a surprising analysis of Cold War society that contains valuable lessons for our own age of global conflict.

Monday, January 21, 2008

"Disrupting Science"

New from Princeton University Press: Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 by Kelly Moore.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the decades following World War II, American scientists were celebrated for their contributions to social and technological progress. They were also widely criticized for their increasingly close ties to military and governmental power -- not only by outside activists but from among the ranks of scientists themselves. Disrupting Science tells the story of how scientists formed new protest organizations that democratized science and made its pursuit more transparent. The book explores how scientists weakened their own authority even as they invented new forms of political action.

Drawing extensively from archival sources and in-depth interviews, Kelly Moore examines the features of American science that made it an attractive target for protesters in the early cold war and Vietnam eras, including scientists' work in military research and activities perceived as environmentally harmful. She describes the intellectual traditions that protesters drew from -- liberalism, moral individualism, and the New Left -- and traces the rise and influence of scientist-led protest organizations such as Science for the People and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Moore shows how scientist protest activities disrupted basic assumptions about science and the ways scientific knowledge should be produced, and recast scientists' relationships to political and military institutions.

Disrupting Science reveals how the scientific community cumulatively worked to unbind its own scientific authority and change how science and scientists are perceived. In doing so, the book redefines our understanding of social movements and the power of insider-led protest.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

"Colonies, Cults and Evolution"

New from Cambridge University Press: Colonies, Cults and Evolution: Literature, Science and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Writing by David Amigoni.

About the book, from the publisher:
The concept of culture, now such an important term within both the arts and the sciences, is a legacy of the nineteenth century. By closely analyzing writings by evolutionary scientists such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace and Herbert Spencer, alongside those of literary figures including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, Butler and Gosse, David Amigoni shows how the modern concept of ‘culture’ developed out of the interdisciplinary interactions between literature, philosophy, anthropology, colonialism, and, in particular, Darwin’s theories of evolution. He goes on to explore the relationship between literature and evolutionary science by arguing that culture was seen less as a singular idea or concept, and more as a field of debate and conflict. This timely and highly original book includes much new material on the history of evolutionary thought and its cultural impact, and will be of interest to scholars of intellectual and scientific history as well as of literature.

Friday, January 18, 2008

"The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE"

New from Oxford University Press: The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE by Ian Tattersall.

About the book, from the publisher:
To be human is to be curious. And one of the things we are most curious about is how we came to be who we are -- how we evolved over millions of years to become creatures capable of inquiring into our own evolution.

In this lively and readable introduction, renowned anthropologist Ian Tattersall thoroughly examines both the fossil and archeological records to trace human evolution from the earliest beginnings of our zoological family Hominidae, through the emergence of Homo sapiens , to the Agricultural Revolution. He begins with an accessible overview of evolutionary theory and then explores the major turning points in human evolution: the emergence of the genus Homo , the advantages of bipedalism -- the trait that most strongly distinguishes humans from other primates -- the birth of the big brain and symbolic thinking, Paleolithic and Neolithic tool-making, and finally the enormously consequential shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere. Focusing particularly on the pattern of events and innovations in human biological and cultural evolution, Tattersall offers illuminating commentary on a wide range of topics, from early intimations of symbolism in Africa to our earliest known artistic expressions -- the exquisite Cro-Magnon cave paintings and 30,000 year -- old flutes made from vulture bones-to ancient burial rites, the beginnings of language, the likely causes of Neanderthal extinction, the relationship between agriculture and Christianity, and the still unsolved mysteries of human consciousness.

Complemented by a wealth of illustrations and written with the grace and accessibility for which Tattersall is widely admired,The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE invites us to take a closer look at the strange and distant beings who, over the course of millions of years, would become us.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

"Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?"

New from Houghton Mifflin: Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan.

About the book, from the publisher:
An eminent historian offers a sweeping look at Europe's tumultuous twentieth century, showing how the rejection of violence after World War II transformed a continent

In the last decade we've seen an ever-widening rift between the United States and Europe, most visibly over Iraq. But as James J. Sheehan reminds us in his timely book, it wasn't always thus. How did America and Europe come to take such different paths?

In Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? Stanford historian Sheehan charts what is perhaps the most radical shift in Europe's history. For centuries, nations defined themselves by their willingness and ability to wage war. But after World War II, Europe began to redefine statehood, rejecting ballooning defense budgets in favor of material well-being, social stability, and economic growth. Sheehan reveals how and why this happened, and what it means for America as well as the rest of the world.

Succinct yet broad in scope, Sheehan's authoritative history provides much-needed context for understanding the fractured era in which we live.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

"The Fire Spreads"

New from Harvard University Press: The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South by Randall J. Stephens.

About the book, from the publisher:

Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country.

Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology. Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them.

The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders such as John Ashcroft.

With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active political conservatives.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

"Women as Weapons of War"

New from Columbia University Press: Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media by Kelly Oliver.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise.

From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In Women as Weapons of War, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to bare arms is a sign of freedom and progress.

Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence.

Monday, January 14, 2008

"Justice: Rights and Wrongs"

New from Princeton University Press: Justice: Rights and Wrongs by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

About the book, from the publisher:

Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account.

Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights.

Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

"Games in Economic Development"

New from Cambridge University Press: Games in Economic Development by Bruce Wydick.

About the book, from the publisher:
Games in Economic Development examines the roots of poverty and prosperity through the lens of elementary game theory, illustrating how patterns of human interaction can lead to vicious cycles of poverty as well as virtuous cycles of prosperity. The book shows how both social norms and carefully designed institutions can help shape the "rules of the game," making better outcomes in a game possible for everyone involved. The book is entertaining to read, intended for a broad audience, and can be accessed with little background in development economics or game theory. Its chapters explore games in natural resource use; education; coping with risk; borrowing and lending; technology adoption; governance and corruption; civil conflict; international trade; and the importance of networks, religion, and identity, illustrating concepts with numerous anecdotes from recent world events. An appendix explaining basic ideas in game theory used in the book is provided for interested readers.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

"Defying Dixie"

New from W.W. Norton: Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore.

About the book, from the publisher:
A groundbreaking history of the Southern movement for social justice that gave birth to civil rights.

The civil rights movement that loomed over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down, from a ludicrous attempt to organize black workers with a stage production of Pushkin — in Russian — to the courageous fight of striking workers against police and corporate violence in Gastonia in 1929. In a dramatic narrative Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore deftly shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights. Little-known heroes abound in a book that will recast our understanding of the most important social movement in twentieth-century America.

Friday, January 11, 2008

"Alternative Medicine?"

New from Oxford University Press: Alternative Medicine?: A History by Roberta Bivins.

About the book, from the publisher:
Walk into your local health food shop or pick up the local paper, and youll see ads for meditation, acupuncture, herbal supplements, Tai Chi classes, homeopaths, faith healers, and Chinese herbalists. But what exactly is alternative medicine? Is the astonishing popularity of alternative and multicultural medicine really such a recent development?

Comparing the medical systems of China, India, and the west (both mainstream and alternative), this volume ranges across four centuries and many continents, mapping the transmission of medical expertise from one culture to another and laying bare the roots of today's distinctions between alternative, complementary, and orthodox medicine. Historian Roberta Bivens uses a wealth of illuminating and entertaining historical examples -- from horse-racing English earls to desperate missionaries in 17th-century Indonesia, and from hypnotism in the British Raj to homeopathy in the American Wild West -- to underscore the vital point that the cross-cultural transmission of medical knowledge and expertise, even alternative medical knowledge and expertise, is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, but has a long and fascinating pedigree. Through comparisons of different medical innovations and importations across different cultures, the book illuminates the twin processes of medical and historical change as seen through the eyes of the medical professionals and consumers of the day. It traces for example the responses in nineteenth-century India to two western alternative medicines (homeopathy and mesmerism) and one staple of mainstream western medicine (germ theory).

Given the success of modern biomedical science, why are alternative and traditional treatments now so fashionable? This fascinating volume sheds light on this trend as it offers a sweeping comparative account of alternative medicine over four hundred years.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

"To Conquer Hell"

New from Henry Holt and Co.: To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 by Edward G. Lengel.

About the book, from the publisher:
The authoritative, dramatic, and previously untold story of the bloodiest battle in American history: the epic fight for the Meuse-Argonne in World War I

On September 26, 1918, more than one million American soldiers prepared to assault the German-held Meuse-Argonne region of France. Their commander, General John J. Pershing, believed in the superiority of American “guts” over barbed wire, machine guns, massed artillery, and poison gas. In thirty-six hours, he said, the Doughboys would crack the German defenses and open the road to Berlin. Six weeks later, after savage fighting across swamps, forests, towns, and rugged hills, the battle finally ended with the signing of the armistice that concluded the First World War. The Meuse-Argonne had fallen, at the cost of more than 120,000 American casualties, including 26,000 dead. In the bloodiest battle the country had ever seen, an entire generation of young Americans had been transformed forever. To Conquer Hell is gripping in its accounts of combat, studded with portraits of remarkable soldiers like Pershing, Harry Truman, George Patton, and Alvin York, and authoritative in presenting the big picture. It is military history of the first rank and, incredibly, the first in-depth account of this fascinating and important battle.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

"A Slave No More"

New from Harcourt: A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight.

About the book, from the publisher:
Slave narratives, some of the most powerful records of our past, are extremely rare, with only fifty-five post–Civil War narratives surviving. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group with the publication of A Slave No More, a major new addition to the canon of American history. Handed down through family and friends, these narratives tell gripping stories of escape: Through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, the men reached the protection of the occupying Union troops. David W. Blight magnifies the drama and significance by prefacing the narratives with each man’s life history. Using a wealth of genealogical information, Blight has reconstructed their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their climb to black working-class stability in the north, where they reunited their families.

In the stories of Turnage and Washington, we find history at its most intimate, portals that offer a rich new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom. In A Slave No More, the untold stories of two ordinary men take their place at the heart of the American experience.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

"Asian Voices in a Post-Colonial Age"

New from Cambridge University Press: Asian Voices in a Post-Colonial Age: Vietnam, India and Beyond by Susan Bayly.

About the book, from the publisher:
This study of intellectuals and their cosmopolitan life trajectories is based on anthropological and historical research in Vietnam and India, two great Asian societies with contrasting experiences of empire, decolonisation and the rise and fall of the twentieth-century socialist world system. Building on the author's long-standing research experience in India and on remarkable family narratives collected during fieldwork in northern Vietnam, the book deals with epic events and complex social transformations from a perspective that emphasizes the personal and the familial. Its central theme is the extraordinary mobility of intelligentsia lives. The author explores the role of the intellectual in the economic, social and cultural transformation of the post-colonial world through in-depth ethnographic fieldwork methods. In identifying parallels and contrasts between Hanoi's 'socialist moderns' and the family and career experiences of their Indian counterparts, the book makes a distinctive contribution to the study of colonial, socialist and post-socialist Asia.

Monday, January 7, 2008

"A Guinea Pig's History of Biology"

Recently published by Harvard University Press: A Guinea Pig's History of Biology by Jim Endersby.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sunday, January 6, 2008

"Stoicism and Emotion"

Recently published by the University of Chicago Press: Stoicism and Emotion by Margaret Graver.

About the book, from the publisher:
On the surface, stoicism and emotion seem like contradictory terms. Yet the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome were deeply interested in the emotions, which they understood as complex judgments about what we regard as valuable in our surroundings. Stoicism and Emotion shows that they did not simply advocate an across-the-board suppression of feeling, as stoicism implies in today’s English, but instead conducted a searching examination of these powerful psychological responses, seeking to understand what attitude toward them expresses the deepest respect for human potential.

In this elegant and clearly written work, Margaret Graver gives a compelling new interpretation of the Stoic position. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, she argues that the chief demand of Stoic ethics is not that we should suppress or deny our feelings, but that we should perfect the rational mind at the core of every human being. Like all our judgments, the Stoics believed, our affective responses can be either true or false and right or wrong, and we must assume responsibility for them. Without glossing over the difficulties, Graver also shows how the Stoics dealt with those questions that seem to present problems for their theory: the physiological basis of affective responses, the phenomenon of being carried away by one’s emotions, the occurrence of involuntary feelings and the disordered behaviors of mental illness. Ultimately revealing the deeper motivations of Stoic philosophy, Stoicism and Emotion uncovers the sources of its broad appeal in the ancient world and illuminates its surprising relevance to our own.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

"Embattled Garrisons"

New from Princeton University Press: Embattled Garrisons: Comparative Base Politics and American Globalism by Kent E. Calder.

About the book, from the publisher:

The overseas basing of troops has been a central pillar of American military strategy since World War II -- and a controversial one. Are these bases truly essential to protecting the United States at home and securing its interests abroad -- for example in the Middle East-or do they needlessly provoke anti-Americanism and entangle us in the domestic woes of host countries? Embattled Garrisons takes up this question and examines the strategic, political, and social forces that will determine the future of American overseas basing in key regions around the world.

Kent Calder traces the history of overseas bases from their beginnings in World War II through the cold war to the present day, comparing the different challenges the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union have confronted. Providing the broad historical and comparative context needed to understand what is at stake in overseas basing, Calder gives detailed case studies of American bases in Japan, Italy, Turkey, the Philippines, Spain, South Korea, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He highlights the vulnerability of American bases to political shifts in their host nations -- in emerging democracies especially -- but finds that an American presence can generally be tolerated when identified with political liberation rather than imperial succession.

Embattled Garrisons shows how the origins of basing relationships crucially shape long-term prospects for success, and it offers a means to assess America's prospects for a sustained global presence in the future.

Friday, January 4, 2008

"Architect of Global Jihad"

New from Columbia University Press: Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri by Brynjar Lia.

About the book, from the publisher:

Despite his alleged capture in Pakistan in late 2005, Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, a Syrian originally known as Mustafa Sethmarian Nasar, remains a potent political and ideological figure. One of the foremost theoreticians of the global jihadist movement, al-Suri trained a generation of young jihadis at al-Qaeda's Afghan camps and helped to establish the organization's vast European networks. Having gained extensive military experience fighting in the Syrian Islamist insurgency of the early 1980s, he helped to shape al-Qaeda's global strategy in a series of writings, including his influential Global Islamic Call. In that 1,600 page book, al-Suri outlined a broad strategy for al-Qaeda's younger generation to follow and described practical ways to implement the theories and tactics of jihadi guerrilla warfare.

Architect of Global Jihad is a biography of this powerful, charismatic, and prophetic individual. Examining not only the life of Al-Suri but also the world that gave rise to him, Brynjar Lia reveals al-Suri's skill for maximizing the political impact of jihadi violence. Lia provides the first and only English translation of two key chapters from al-Suri's Global Islamic Call and exposes his methods for building successful, autonomous cells for "individualized terrorism." Al-Suri's words have inspired thousands of today's militants, making Lia's carefully researched, detailed portrait required reading for students and specialists of Islamist movements and the study of contemporary forms of terrorism.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

"This Republic of Suffering"

New from Knopf: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust.

About the book, from the publisher:
An illuminating study of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War.

During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million. This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. The eminent historian Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation and its understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. She describes how survivors mourned and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God, pondered who should die and under what circumstances, and reconceived its understanding of life after death.

Faust details the logistical challenges involved when thousands were left dead, many with their identities unknown, on the fields of places like Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. She chronicles the efforts to identify, reclaim, preserve, and bury battlefield dead, the resulting rise of undertaking as a profession, the first widespread use of embalming, the gradual emergence of military graves registration procedures, the development of a federal system of national cemeteries for Union dead, and the creation of private cemeteries in the South that contributed to the cult of the Lost Cause. She shows, too, how the war victimized civilians through violence that extended beyond battlefields — from disease, displacement, hardships, shortages, emotional wounds, and conflicts connected to the disintegration of slavery.

Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, and nurses, of northerners and southerners, slaveholders and freedpeople, of the most exalted and the most humble are brought together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War’s most fundamental and widely shared reality.

Were he alive today, This Republic of Suffering would compel Walt Whitman to abandon his certainty that the “real war will never get in the books.”

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

"Democracy, America, and the Age of Globalization"

New from Cambridge University Press: Democracy, America, and the Age of Globalization by Jay R. Mandle.

About the book, from the publisher:
This book addresses the concerns of readers who accept the benefits of globalization and technological change, but seek to reverse the tendency toward income inequality that each produces. Government policies can mitigate that outcome. But policies to offset inequality are not insisted upon by the electorate because the public believes our system of private donations to political campaigns results in the government principally serving the interests of the wealthy. Adopting a system of public funding of electoral campaigns is necessary if egalitarian economic policies are to be adopted.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

"Hunger: A Modern History"

New from Harvard University Press: Hunger: A Modern History by James Vernon.

About the book, from the publisher: