"This Little World"

New from Yale University Press: This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England by Nandini Das.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bold new history of Tudor and Stuart England told not through its monarchs but through the people crossing its borders: merchants and migrants, sailors and spies, pilgrims and exiles

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forged a powerful image of England―Shakespeare’s “scepter’d isle,” proud and apart, defined by royal spectacle and myth. Beneath this familiar narrative of ruffs and gowns, kings and queens, however, lies a more complex and connected reality.

England at this time was far from insular. Travelling in and out of the country were Venetian glassmakers with English wives, African innkeepers, and Native American envoys. There were people like the Flemish artist Levina Teerlinc, probably the only painter to be employed by four English monarchs. There was William Adams, a Kentish navigator who became Japan’s first English samurai. And there was Elizabeth Key, daughter of an enslaved mother in the colony of Virginia, who battled in the courts for herself and her son.

Drawing on extensive archival research, attentive to the textures of daily life yet alive to the sweep of history, Nandini Das offers a startlingly new, globally resonant vision of England’s past and what it meant to be English. It is a story of a nation in the making―on the cusp of empire―told through the traces of those often written out of it. Yet in reframing England’s story within a wider world, it challenges us to rethink some of our most fundamental ideas: about nationhood, about identity, and, above all, about belonging.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gator!"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Gator!: The Making of America’s Iconic Reptile, from First Encounters to Florida Man by Mark V. Barrow Jr.

About the book, from the publisher:

What this intriguing―and unsettling―apex predator reveals about Americans’ attempts to control and connect with the natural world.

Both a flesh-and-blood critter and the stuff of legend, the alligator inspires as much awe as it does fear. While this apex predator survives mainly on fish, birds, snakes, turtles, and small mammals, it will consume almost anything, including pets, livestock, and―in rare cases―humans. Though dreaded as a man-eater, the alligator has also been cast as a lucrative commodity, a popular roadside attraction, a prized hunting trophy, and even an unlikely household pet.

Gator! tells the riveting story of this iconic predator. Historian Mark V. Barrow, Jr.―a native of Florida, a state famous for its alligators―traces the reptile’s ancient lineage from the age of the dinosaurs to its current status as a cherished mascot and regional icon. He explores its role as a surrogate species, offering vital clues about the health of ecosystems, as well as its profound cultural weight as a totem for Indigenous communities, a mythical sewer-dweller in New York lore, and a disturbing tool of racial oppression used to dehumanize African Americans. Once over-hunted, the alligator has long been celebrated as a triumph of the federal Endangered Species Act. Barrow delves into the nuances of this comeback, one that offers both a cautionary tale of market-driven exploitation and a conservation success story.

An entertaining history of one of North America’s most charismatic animals, Gator! explores how this reptile became a Florida emblem and a national enigma, transforming humans and alligators in the process.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Garbage Economy"

New from Oxford University Press: The Garbage Economy: Casteing Capitalism and the Persistence of Informal Recycling in Delhi by Dana Kornberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the race to become "world-class," the city of Delhi, India, turned to corporate partnerships and incineration technologies that promised to solve the city's garbage problem. However, these efforts exposed an uncomfortable reality: the city's drive toward modernization collided with an informal recycling economy that was more sustainable and deeply rooted. This persistence was not simply a policy failure; it was the outcome of relations between hundreds of thousands of oppressed-caste Dalit and Muslim workers and the dominant-caste, middle-class households they serve.

Based on over a decade of fieldwork, The Garbage Economy blends ethnographic precision with theoretical imagination. It traces the postcolonial remaking of Delhi's solid waste programs and follows transactions in garbage, recyclables, and money from neighborhood collection routes to recycling commodity chains. Dana Kornberg shows how laboring across the "untouchability line" not only perpetuates casteist exploitation but also maintains the city's only provision for recycling. Informal collectors transform stigmatized waste into recyclable commodities-identifying plastics, paper, and metal by feel and sound for recycling-simultaneously sustaining precarious livelihoods and reinforcing structural inequalities.

By introducing concepts such as stigma shifting, alchemization, practical legitimation, and symbolic debt in The Garbage Economy, Dana Kornberg reveals the pathways through which caste articulates with capital, regulating who is allowed to accumulate wealth and who is confined to survival at the margins. These processes-which Kornberg calls the "casteing" of capitalism-produce intersectional inequalities which continue to shape urban life.

Visit Dana Kornberg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dreams of Small Countries"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Dreams of Small Countries: How Californios, Land Conflicts, and Race Shaped the Golden State by Camille Suárez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Prior to US conquest, a group of elite, mixed-race Mexicans called Californios nurtured the dream of patria chica (“small homeland”) in what is now the state of California. Californios' settler dreams of wealth and privilege depended upon controlling Indigenous land and labor, but after Anglo settlers and the US Army arrived, Californios struggled to hold onto their own way of life.

Camille Suárez shows that rather than challenge the new regime, elite Californios allied with both the US Army and Anglo settlers, whom they viewed as racial counterparts, to ensure that their dream survived. Despite their differences, Californio and Anglo settlers initially worked together to subjugate Indigenous peoples and exclude non-white residents. However, Californios failed to see that their own lands and power stood in the way of the white settler state. Over time, the legal regime Californios helped shape undermined their own political power, whiteness, and claims to the land. By centering Californios as key political actors from the beginning of the US-Mexico War through the Civil War and Reconstruction, Dreams of Small Countries reexamines the origins of California statehood and explains how California became a white settler state.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A World We Share"

New from Yale University Press: A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World by Roger Berkowitz.

About the book, from the publisher:

A bold rethinking of politics through Hannah Arendt’s life and thought, arguing that friendship―not truth―is the fragile but necessary foundation of democratic life

A World We Share sounds the warning that politics cannot be saved by truth alone. Against a tradition that elevates truth above all else, Roger Berkowitz draws on the life and thought of Hannah Arendt to argue that a politics governed by an objective ideal of truth becomes cruel, coercive, and ultimately anti-political. Friendship―grounded in dialogue, respect, and plurality―offers a more human political bond.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was known to possess a “genius for friendship.” A Jew in Nazi Germany, an exile in Paris and New York, and an uncompromising critic of postwar orthodoxies, she survived and flourished through friendships that were intellectually intense, complicated, and morally demanding. Her tribe of outsiders included thinkers as disparate as Karl Jaspers, Hans Jonas, Mary McCarthy, Gershom Scholem, Heinrich Blücher, and Martin Heidegger.

This book explores how these friendships shaped Arendt’s political thinking. Berkowitz weaves Arendt’s life, thought, and friendships into a powerful meditation on our present moment. In an age of mass loneliness, ideological certainty, and civic breakdown, A World We Share connects democracy not to consensus or moral purity but to our capacity to maintain relationships with others we do not agree with―and cannot fully understand. Berkowitz argues that our political crisis is actually founded in a crisis of friendship. Only by nurturing private and also public friendships can we reimagine a truly democratic politics.

Visit Roger Berkowitz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Marketing Radicalism"

New from Princeton University Press: Marketing Radicalism: The Cultural Production of Far-Right Populism in Contemporary Hungary by Virág Molnár.

About the book, from the publisher:

The commodification and marketing of nationalism in a populist-governed country

Most accounts of populist politics revolve around political parties, electoral politics, eroding democratic institutions, media, and political propaganda. In Marketing Radicalism, Virág Molnár examines instead populism as a cultural process—one that reshapes cultural identities and meanings of cultural citizenship. Looking at such domains as fashion, publishing, and tourism, Molnár shows how identity politics, culture wars, culture industries, consumer markets, and popular culture contribute to the rise of far-right populism. The marketing of nationalism creates powerful narratives that reimagine the nation as a populist fantasyland, and these narratives are used by far-right governments in their efforts to topple liberal norms.

Hungary under Viktor Orbán has provided an ideological blueprint for far-right populist politicians—and a cautionary tale for liberal democracies. Using Hungary’s commodification of nationalism as a case study, Molnár explores the ways that cultural producers relied on consumer markets to promote traditionalism through folk-revivalist fashion; weaponized the public shredding of a children’s book to disenfranchise LGBTQ+ communities; used tourism to neighboring Transylvania to envision a “Greater Hungary” that spilled over national borders; and packaged a mythic Orientalism in the form of horseback archery. Molnár’s account offers important lessons on the mainstreaming of right-wing popular culture, the importance of markets in circulating and amplifying far-right identity narratives, and the political mobilization of cultural traditions for geopolitical reorientation.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Saint of the Republic"

New from Oxford University Press: Saint of the Republic: The American Myth of Martin Luther by Samuel L. Young.

About the book, from the publisher:

Saint of the Republic explores the reception of Martin Luther in American history and culture from the colonial period to the present. As the first Protestant, Luther is among the most significant religious figures in the history of the world. After the American Revolution, Luther came to embody the ideals of the United States, especially individual rights, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience.

Identifying the reformer with these civic virtues meant that many who would find the particulars of Luther's theology distasteful-including American Jews, freethinkers, and atheists-could nonetheless praise him as a proto-American, his bold stand for freedom against the perceived tyranny of the Roman Church anticipating America's divine role in the expansion of liberty. Advocates for temperance, abolitionism, woman's rights, white supremacy, nativism, racial justice, gay rights, as well as partisans for every political party could all look to Luther as an inspiration. Critics of Luther challenged this interpretation of the reformer by drawing attention to un-American elements of his life, including his anti-Semitism, misogyny, political quietism, and violence toward opponents. Nevertheless, the American Luther myth has endured through the present.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beer Ghosts"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Beer Ghosts: In Search of Lost Hops and the Women Who Grew Them by Jennifer A. Jordan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The little-known story of the young women who played a vital role in the rise of America’s great breweries.

Water, malt, yeast, and hops: these are essential ingredients of beer. Hops, specifically, play an outsized role in determining its flavor and aroma. In Beer Ghosts, Jennifer Jordan takes us back to a brief but pivotal moment in the nineteenth century when Wisconsin produced much of the hops grown in the United States. Yet those long-ago hops are not the only ghosts in Jordan’s story. Haunting the pages of this book are the young women whose work at harvest time was key to the rise of the American beer industry.

Until the early twentieth century, the work of picking hops was a time-consuming process that could only be done by hand, one cone at a time. In nineteenth-century Wisconsin, that work was performed almost exclusively by women and girls, who traveled to hop farms in droves as summer came to a close and the harvest began. At the height of the hop boom in the 1860s, farmers and their families laid out beds and prepared food for tens of thousands of seasonal laborers, and hosted parties and dances well into the night. Despite the scale of Wisconsin’s hop boom (and subsequent crash), the industry left behind little trace aside from local records and archives. And it is that barely discernible trace that lures Jordan to dig deeper.

Jordan’s vivid prose takes us back to this era by drawing on a rich trove of archival sources, from the thousands of hop farmers in the agricultural census to the extraordinary diary of a single hop picker, a young woman named Ella. The history of beer is incomplete without the history of Ella and the others who labored in the hop fields and in the houses that hosted them. In this book, Jordan gives life and voice to these beer ghosts who call to us from the past, showing the rich connections between a nation’s beer and the lives that made it possible.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Social Media Tribes"

New from the University of Texas Press: Social Media Tribes: Jordan's Bedouin and the Margins of the State by Geoffrey F. Hughes.

About the book, from the publisher:

An examination of the uses of social media in Jordan through the experiences of Bedouin tribespeople.

It has become something of a cliché to say that social media is making us tribal. But what do self-styled tribespeople themselves think about social media, and how might they help us better understand the role of the internet in our current political moment? Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among Bedouin in Jordan, Social Media Tribes underscores the varied but broadly intelligible ways in which distinctive groups domesticate social media to suit their needs.

Organized around key concepts in Bedouin life (including tribalism, envy, and mercy), Social Media Tribes moves between Facebook-mediated tribal truces, upstart online media platforms, palatial urban villas where self-appointed sheikhs dispense justice, and street clashes organized over WhatsApp in rural communities ignored by state development projects. A meticulous researcher and insightful participant-observer, Geoffrey Hughes reframes social media as part of a global renegotiation of the state-society divide that both preceded the emergence of social media platforms and, in turn, feeds off of them. In this telling, the internet represents a new frontier that, like older frontiers, heralds both novel freedoms and novel forms of social control.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cops and Robbers"

New from NYU Press: Cops and Robbers: What Popular Culture Teaches Kids About Crime and Punishment by Liam Kennedy.

About the book, from the publisher:

How children’s books, tv shows, cartoons, and films often reproduce stereotypes about “good guys” and “bad guys” in terms of crime, policing, and the role of the criminal justice system in societyLiam Kennedy

In Cops and Robbers, Liam Kennedy examines children's popular culture to provide an understanding of how ideas about crime and the criminal justice system are produced and challenged. Based on an analysis of over 220 books, 12 films, and hundreds of television episodes/short videos geared toward children, Cops and Robbers considers the ideological impacts of children’s crime media messaging about what counts as a crime, the causes of crime, the roles and responsibilities of cops and other crime-fighters, as well as the nature and boundaries of justice.

Kennedy demonstrates how kids’ pop culture works to sustain the status quo and inhibits our ability to imagine alternatives to policing and prisons. He argues that children's crime media teaches them that it is correct to criminalize behaviors designated as threats to the capitalist social order, that the perpetrators of these acts are bad or even evil, unworthy of our sympathy, and usually incapable of change. Further, police and crime-fighters are shown to solve a wide array of community problems, produce peace and happiness, and require endless resources to preserve the social order and quell dissent. Finally, he finds that forced labor and incarceration are routinely framed as inevitable consequences – rather than policy decisions – for bad people who have made supposedly bad choices. Ultimately, Cops and Robbers will encourage social scientists, educators, and parents/guardians to think more critically about how children's crime media shapes ideas about crime, cops, and justice.

--Marshal Zeringue