"Tudor England: A History"

Coming soon from Yale University Press: Tudor England: A History by Lucy Wooding.

About the book, from the publisher:

A compelling, authoritative account of the brilliant, conflicted, visionary world of Tudor England

When Henry VII landed in a secluded bay in a far corner of Wales, it seemed inconceivable that this outsider could ever be king of England. Yet he and his descendants became some of England’s most unforgettable rulers, and gave their name to an age. The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603.

In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In this comprehensive new history, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. We see a monarchy under strain, religion in crisis, a population contending with war, rebellion, plague, and poverty. Remarkable in its range and depth, Tudor England explores the many tensions of these turbulent years and presents a markedly different picture from the one we thought we knew.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Public Relations and Neoliberalism"

New from Oxford University Press: Public Relations and Neoliberalism: The Language Practices of Knowledge Formation by Kristin Demetrious.

About the book, from the publisher:

Focusing on two of the most fraught and intractable public debates of the present time: human-induced climate change and the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and the stateless, this book raises critical questions about the role and relationship of public relations in weakening democratic political systems. It shows a clear, but often indirect, link between PR and a neoliberal agenda that has been vastly underestimated and oversimplified as "spin." This comes at a great cost for society.

Public Relations and Neoliberalism provides a panoramic view of public relations from the post-war period, when a powerful communication template propelled by the PR industry served the neoliberal agenda to create political diversion, division, and hegemony at the same time. But today, public relations is not just a tool of industry or government. Rather, it has become the default mode and style of being and relating in the world, that seeps into and affects all areas of life: professional, corporate, domestic, political, activist, and technological. And the metastasis of neoliberal meaning into so many realms has important ramifications for society and individuals. Looking at the confluences and contradictions within the logic of public relations both as a practice and in terms of how it has been theorized and understood, this book provides an important contribution to critical work in the communicative field.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black France, White Europe"

New from Cornell University Press: Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era by Emily Marker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Black France, White Europe illuminates the deeply entangled history of European integration and African decolonization. Emily Marker maps the horizons of belonging in postwar France as leaders contemplated the inclusion of France's old African empire in the new Europe-in-the-making. European integration intensified longstanding structural contradictions of French colonial rule in Africa: Would Black Africans and Black African Muslims be French? If so, would they then also be European? What would that mean for republican France and united Europe more broadly?

Marker examines these questions through the lens of youth, amid a surprising array of youth and education initiatives to stimulate imperial renewal and European integration from the ground up. She explores how education reforms and programs promoting solidarity between French and African youth collided with transnational efforts to make young people in Western Europe feel more European. She connects a particular postwar vision for European unity―which coded Europe as both white and raceless, Christian and secular―to crucial decisions about what should be taught in African classrooms and how many scholarships to provide young Africans to study and train in France. That vision of Europe also informed French responses to African student activism for racial and religious equality, which ultimately turned many young francophone Africans away from France irrevocably. Black France, White Europe shows that the interconnected history of colonial and European youth initiatives is key to explaining why, despite efforts to strengthen ties with its African colonies in the 1940s and 1950s, France became more European during those years.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Casanova’s Lottery"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Casanova’s Lottery: The History of a Revolutionary Game of Chance by Stephen M. Stigler.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fascinating story of an important lottery that flourished in France from 1757 to 1836 and its role in transforming our understanding of the nature of risk.

In the 1750s, at the urging of famed adventurer Giacomo Casanova, the French state began to embrace risk in adopting a new Loterie. The prize amounts paid varied, depending on the number of tickets bought and the amount of the bet, as determined by each individual bettor. The state could lose money on any individual Loterie drawing while being statistically guaranteed to come out on top in the long run. In adopting this framework, the French state took on risk in a way no other has, before or after. At each drawing the state was at risk of losing a large amount; what is more, that risk was precisely calculable, generally well understood, and yet taken on by the state with little more than a mathematical theory to protect it.

Stephen M. Stigler follows the Loterie from its curious inception through its hiatus during the French Revolution, its renewal and expansion in 1797, and finally to its suppression in 1836, examining throughout the wider question of how members of the public came to trust in new financial technologies and believe in their value. Drawing from an extensive collection of rare ephemera, Stigler pieces together the Loterie’s remarkable inner workings, as well as its implications for the nature of risk and the role of lotteries in social life over the period 1700–1950.

Both a fun read and fodder for many fields, Casanova’s Lottery shines new light on the conscious introduction of risk into the management of a nation-state and the rationality of playing unfair games.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Arise!"

New from the University of California Press: Arise!: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution by Christina Heatherton.

About the book, from the publisher:

An international history of radical movements and their convergences during the Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like Black American artist Elizabeth Catlett, Indian anti-colonial activist M.N. Roy, Mexican revolutionary leader Ricardo Flores Magón, Okinawan migrant organizer Paul Shinsei Kōchi, and Soviet feminist Alexandra Kollontai, Arise! reveals how activists around the world found inspiration and solidarity in revolutionary Mexico.

From art collectives and farm worker strikes to prison "universities," Arise! reconstructs how this era's radical organizers found new ways to fight global capitalism. Drawing on prison records, surveillance data, memoirs, oral histories, visual art, and a rich trove of untapped sources, Christina Heatherton considers how disparate revolutionary traditions merged in unanticipated alliances. From her unique vantage point, she charts the remarkable impact of the Mexican Revolution as radicals in this critical era forged an anti-racist internationalism from below.

Follow Christina Heatherton on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Precision Medicine and Distributive Justice"

New from Oxford University Press: Precision Medicine and Distributive Justice: Wicked Problems for Democratic Deliberation by Leonard M. Fleck.

About the book, from the publisher:

Metastatic cancer and costly precision medicines generate extremely complex problems of health care justice. Targeted cancer therapies yield only very marginal gains in life expectancy for most patients at very great cost, thereby threatening the just allocation of limited health care resources. Philosophers have high hopes for the utility of their theories of justice in addressing the challenges of resource allocation; however, none of these theories can address adequately the “wicked” ethical problems that have resulted from these targeted therapies.

What we need instead, bioethicist Leonard M. Fleck argues, is a political conception of health care justice, following Rawls, and a fair and inclusive process of rational democratic deliberation governed by public reason. His account makes the basic assumption that we have only limited health care resources to meet unlimited health care needs generated by emerging medical technologies. The primary ethical and political virtue of rational democratic deliberation is that it allows citizens to fashion autonomously shared understandings of how to fairly address the complex problems of health care justice generated by precision medicine. While ideally just outcomes are a moral and political impossibility, “wicked” problems can metastasize if rationing decisions are made invisibly--in ways effectively hidden from those affected by those decisions. As Fleck demonstrates, a fair and inclusive process of democratic deliberation could make these “wicked” problems visible, and subject, to public reason.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Life Is Hard"

New from Riverhead Books: Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya.

About the book, from the publisher:

A philosophical guide to facing life’s inevitable hardships.

There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.

In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya’s own experience, Life Is Hard is a book for this moment—a work of solace and compassion.

Warm, accessible, and good-humored, this book is about making the best of a bad lot. It offers guidance for coping with pain and making new friends, for grieving the lost and failing with grace, for confronting injustice and searching for meaning in life. Countering pop psychologists and online influencers who admonish us to “find our bliss” and “live our best lives,” Setiya acknowledges that the best is often out of reach. Instead, he asks how we can weather life’s adversities, finding hope and living well when life is hard.

Visit Kieran Setiya's website.

The Page 99 Test: Midlife: A Philosophical Guide.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Resurrecting the Jew"

New from Princeton University Press: Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland’s Jewish Revival by Geneviève Zubrzycki.

About the book, from the publisher:

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today

Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things Jewish. Klezmer music, Jewish-style restaurants, kosher vodka, and festivals of Jewish culture have become popular, while new museums, memorials, Jewish studies programs, and Holocaust research centers reflect soul-searching about Polish-Jewish relations before, during, and after the Holocaust. In Resurrecting the Jew, Geneviève Zubrzycki examines this revival and asks what it means to try to bring Jewish culture back to life in a country where 3 million Jews were murdered and where only about 10,000 Jews now live.

Drawing on a decade of participant-observation in Jewish and Jewish-related organizations in Poland, a Birthright trip to Israel with young Polish Jews, and more than a hundred interviews with Jewish and non-Jewish Poles engaged in the Jewish revival, Resurrecting the Jew presents an in-depth look at Jewish life in Poland today. The book shows how the revival has been spurred by progressive Poles who want to break the association between Polishness and Catholicism, promote the idea of a multicultural Poland, and resist the Far Right government. The book also raises urgent questions, relevant far beyond Poland, about the limits of performative solidarity and empathetic forms of cultural appropriation.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cooperating with the Colossus"

New from Oxford University Press: Cooperating with the Colossus: A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America by Rebecca Herman.

About the book, from the publisher:

During the Second World War, the United States built over two hundred defense installations on sovereign soil in Latin America in the name of cooperation in hemisphere defense. Predictably, it proved to be a fraught affair. Despite widespread acclaim for Pan-American unity with the Allied cause, defense construction incited local conflicts that belied the wartime rhetoric of fraternity and equality.

Cooperating with the Colossus reconstructs the history of US basing in World War II Latin America, from the elegant chambers of the American foreign ministries to the cantinas, courtrooms, plazas, and brothels surrounding US defense sites. Foregrounding the wartime experiences of Brazil, Cuba, and Panama, the book considers how Latin American leaders and diplomats used basing rights as bargaining chips to advance their nation-building agendas with US resources, while limiting overreach by the "Colossus of the North" as best they could. Yet conflicts on the ground over labor rights, discrimination, sex, and criminal jurisdiction routinely threatened the peace. Steeped in conflict, the story of wartime basing certainly departs from the celebratory triumphalism commonly associated with this period in US-Latin American relations, but this book does not wholly upend the conventional account of wartime cooperation. Rather, the history of basing distills a central tension that has infused regional affairs since a wave of independence movements first transformed the Americas into a society of nations: national sovereignty and international cooperation may seem like harmonious concepts in principle, but they are difficult to reconcile in practice.

Drawing on archival research in five countries, Cooperating with the Colossus is a revealing history told at the local, national, and international levels of how World War II transformed power and politics in the Americas in enduring ways.

Follow Rebecca Herman on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Murderous Midsummer"

New from Yale University Press: A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 by Mark Stoyle.

About the book, from the publisher:

The fascinating story of the so-called “Prayer Book Rebellion” of 1549 which saw the people of Devon and Cornwall rise up against the Crown

The Western Rising of 1549 was the most catastrophic event to occur in Devon and Cornwall between the Black Death and the Civil War. Beginning as an argument between two men and their vicar, the rebellion led to a siege of Exeter, savage battles with Crown forces, and the deaths of 4,000 local men and women. It represents the most determined attempt by ordinary English people to halt the religious reformation of the Tudor period.

Mark Stoyle tells the story of the so-called “Prayer Book Rebellion” in full. Correcting the accepted narrative in a number of places, Stoyle shows that the government in London saw the rebels as a real threat. He demonstrates the importance of regional identity and emphasizes that religion was at the heart of the uprising. This definitive account brings to life the stories of the thousands of men and women who acted to defend their faith almost five hundred years ago.

--Marshal Zeringue