Friday, December 31, 2010

"The Victimization of Women"

New from Oxford University Press: The Victimization of Women: Law, Policies, and Politics by Michelle L. Meloy and Susan L. Miller.

About the book, from the publisher:
In The Victimization of Women, Michelle L. Meloy and Susan L. Miller present a balanced and comprehensive summary of the most significant research on the victimizations, violence, and victim politics that disproportionately affect women. They examine the history of violence against women, the surrounding debates, the legal reforms, the related media and social-service responses, and the current science on intimate-partner violence, stalking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. They augment these victimization findings with original research on women convicted of domestic battery and men convicted of sexual abuse and other sex-related offenses. In these new data, the authors explore the unanticipated consequences associated with changes to the laws governing domestic violence and the newer forms of sex-offender legislation. Based on qualitative data involving in-depth, offender-based interviews, and analyzing the circumstances surrounding arrests, victimizations, and experiences with the criminal justice system, The Victimization of Women makes great strides forward in understanding and ultimately combating violence against women.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

"Innovation, Transformation, and War"

New from Stanford University Press: Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 by James A. Russell.

About the book, from the publisher:
Within a year of President George W. Bush announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq in May 2003, dozens of attacks by insurgents had claimed hundreds of civilian and military lives. Through 2004 and 2005, accounts from returning veterans presaged an unfolding strategic debacle—potentially made worse by U.S. tactics being focused on extending conventionally oriented military operations rather than on adapting to the insurgency.

By 2007, however, a sea change had taken place, and some U.S. units were integrating counterinsurgency tactics and full-spectrum operations to great effect. In the main, the government and the media cited three factors for having turned the tide on the battlefield: the promulgation of a new joint counterinsurgency doctrine, the "surge" in troop numbers, and the appointment of General David Petraeus as senior military commander.

James Russell, however, contends that local security had already improved greatly in Anbar and Ninewah between 2005 and 2007 thanks to the innovative actions of brigade and company commanders—evidenced most notably in the turning of tribal leaders against Al Qaeda. In Innovation, Transformation, and War, he goes behind the headlines to reveal—through extensive field research and face-to-face interviews with military and civilian personnel of all ranks—how a group of Army and Marine Corps units successfully innovated in an unprecedented way: from the bottom up as well as from the top down. In the process they transformed themselves from organizations structured and trained for conventional military operations into ones with a unique array of capabilities for a full spectrum of combat operations. As well as telling an inspiring story, this book will be an invaluable reference for anyone tasked with driving innovation in any kind of complex organization.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

"The Banana Tree at the Gate"

New from Yale University Press: The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo by Michael R. Dove.

About the book, from the publisher:
The “Hikayat Banjar,” a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as “the banana tree at the gate.” Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo’s native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove’s analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

"Trade and Poverty"

New from The MIT Press: Trade and Poverty: When the Third World Fell Behind by Jeffrey G. Williamson.

About the book, from the publisher:
Today’s wide economic gap between the postindustrial countries of the West and the poorer countries of the third world is not new. Fifty years ago, the world economic order--two hundred years in the making--was already characterized by a vast difference in per capita income between rich and poor countries and by the fact that poor countries exported commodities (agricultural or mineral products) while rich countries exported manufactured products. In Trade and Poverty, leading economic historian Jeffrey G. Williamson traces the great divergence between the third world and the West to this nexus of trade, commodity specialization, and poverty.

The world rapidly became global between the early nineteenth century and World War I, and the global trade boom occurred simultaneously with rising economic divergence between industrial and nonindustrial countries. Analyzing the role of specialization, de-industrialization, and commodity price volatility with econometrics and case studies of India, Ottoman Turkey, and Mexico, Williamson demonstrates why the close correlation between trade and poverty emerged. Globalization and the great divergence were causally related, and thus the rise of globalization over the past two centuries helps account for the income gap between rich and poor countries today.

Monday, December 27, 2010

"Knowing Full Well"

New from Princeton University Press: Knowing Full Well by Ernest Sosa.

About the book, from the publisher:
In this book, Ernest Sosa explains the nature of knowledge through an approach originated by him years ago, known as virtue epistemology. Here he provides the first comprehensive account of his views on epistemic normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found the normativity of the meta-apt performance, which manifests not necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective good judgment required for proper risk assessment. Sosa develops this bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and the Meno problem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to figure in the epistemic competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony from the performance-theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical internalist foundationalism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

"Coalitions of Convenience"

New from Oxford University Press: Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War by Sarah E. Kreps.

About the book, from the publisher:
When the Clinton Administration sent the United States military into Haiti in 1994, it first sought United Nations authorization and assembled a large coalition of allies. With a defense budget 20 times the entire GDP of Haiti, why did the US seek multilateral support when its military could quickly and easily have overpowered the 7,600-soldier Haitian army? The US has enjoyed unrivaled military power after the Cold War and yet in eight out of ten post-Cold War military interventions, it has chosen to use force multilaterally rather than going alone. Why does the US seek allies when, as the case of Haiti so starkly illustrates, it does not appear to need their help? Why in other instances such as the 2003 Iraq War does it largely sidestep international institutions and allies and intervene unilaterally?

In Coalitions of Convenience, Sarah E. Kreps answers these questions through a study of US interventions after the post-Cold War. She shows that even powerful states have incentives to intervene multilaterally. Coalitions and international organization blessing confer legitimacy and provide ways to share what are often costly burdens of war. But those benefits come at some cost, since multilateralism is less expedient than unilateralism. With long time horizons--in which threats are distant--states will welcome the material assistance and legitimacy benefits of multilateralism. Short time horizons, however, will make immediate payoffs of unilateralism more attractive, even if it means foregoing the longer-term benefits of multilateralism.

Coalitions of Convenience ultimately shows that power may create more opportunities for states such as the US to act alone, but that the incentives are stacked against doing so. The implications of the argument go beyond questions of how the US uses force. They speak to questions about how the world works when power is concentrated in the hands of one state, how international institutions function, and what the rise of China and resurgence of Russia may mean for international cooperation and conflict.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

"Crime and Punishment in Istanbul"

New from the University of California Press: Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700-1800 by Fariba Zarinebaf.

About the book, from the publisher:
This vividly detailed revisionist history exposes the underworld of the largest metropolis of the early modern Mediterranean and through it the entire fabric of a complex, multicultural society. Fariba Zarinebaf maps the history of crime and punishment in Istanbul over more than one hundred years, considering transgressions such as riots, prostitution, theft, and murder and at the same time tracing how the state controlled and punished its unruly population. Taking us through the city's streets, workshops, and houses, she gives voice to ordinary people—the man accused of stealing, the woman accused of prostitution, and the vagabond expelled from the city. She finds that Istanbul in this period remains mischaracterized—in part by the sensational and exotic accounts of European travelers who portrayed it as the embodiment of Ottoman decline, rife with decadence, sin, and disease. Linking the history of crime and punishment to the dramatic political, economic, and social transformations that occurred in the eighteenth century, Zarinebaf finds in fact that Istanbul had much more in common with other emerging modern cities in Europe, and even in America.

Friday, December 24, 2010

"Advertising Empire"

New from Harvard University Press: Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany by David Ciarlo.

About the book, from the publisher:
At the end of the nineteenth century, Germany turned toward colonialism, establishing protectorates in Africa, and toward a mass consumer society, mapping the meaning of commodities through advertising. These developments, distinct in the world of political economy, were intertwined in the world of visual culture.

David Ciarlo offers an innovative visual history of each of these transformations. Tracing commercial imagery across different products and media, Ciarlo shows how and why the “African native” had emerged by 1900 to become a familiar figure in the German landscape, selling everything from soap to shirts to coffee. The racialization of black figures, first associated with the American minstrel shows that toured Germany, found ever greater purchase in German advertising up to and after 1905, when Germany waged war against the Herero in Southwest Africa. The new reach of advertising not only expanded the domestic audience for German colonialism, but transformed colonialism’s political and cultural meaning as well, by infusing it with a simplified racial cast.

The visual realm shaped the worldview of the colonial rulers, illuminated the importance of commodities, and in the process, drew a path to German modernity. The powerful vision of racial difference at the core of this modernity would have profound consequences for the future.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

"History and the Testimony of Language"

New from the University of California Press: History and the Testimony of Language by Christopher Ehret.

About the book, from the publisher:
This book is about history and the practical power of language to reveal historical change. Christopher Ehret offers a methodological guide to applying language evidence in historical studies. He demonstrates how these methods allow us not only to recover the histories of time periods and places poorly served by written documentation, but also to enrich our understanding of well-documented regions and eras. A leading historian as well as historical linguist of Africa, Ehret provides in-depth examples from the language phyla of Africa, arguing that his comprehensive treatment can be applied by linguistically trained historians and historical linguists working with any language and in any area of the world.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

"After the Rubicon"

New from The University of Chicago Press: After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War by Douglas L. Kriner.

About the book, from the publisher:
When the United States goes to war, the nation’s attention focuses on the president. As commander in chief, a president reaches the zenith of power, while Congress is supposedly shunted to the sidelines once troops have been deployed abroad. Because of Congress’s repeated failure to exercise its legislative powers to rein in presidents, many have proclaimed its irrelevance in military matters.

After the Rubicon challenges this conventional wisdom by illuminating the diverse ways in which legislators influence the conduct of military affairs. Douglas L. Kriner reveals that even in politically sensitive wartime environments, individual members of Congress frequently propose legislation, hold investigative hearings, and engage in national policy debates in the public sphere. These actions influence the president’s strategic decisions as he weighs the political costs of pursuing his preferred military course.

Marshalling a wealth of quantitative and historical evidence, Kriner expertly demonstrates the full extent to which Congress materially shapes the initiation, scope, and duration of major military actions and sheds new light on the timely issue of interbranch relations.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

"Rethinking the Other in Antiquity"

New from Princeton University Press: Rethinking the Other in Antiquity by Erich S. Gruen.

About the book, from the publisher:
Prevalent among classicists today is the notion that Greeks, Romans, and Jews enhanced their own self-perception by contrasting themselves with the so-called Other--Egyptians, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Gauls, and other foreigners--frequently through hostile stereotypes, distortions, and caricature. In this provocative book, Erich Gruen demonstrates how the ancients found connections rather than contrasts, how they expressed admiration for the achievements and principles of other societies, and how they discerned--and even invented--kinship relations and shared roots with diverse peoples.

Gruen shows how the ancients incorporated the traditions of foreign nations, and imagined blood ties and associations with distant cultures through myth, legend, and fictive histories. He looks at a host of creative tales, including those describing the founding of Thebes by the Phoenician Cadmus, Rome's embrace of Trojan and Arcadian origins, and Abraham as ancestor to the Spartans. Gruen gives in-depth readings of major texts by Aeschylus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, and others, in addition to portions of the Hebrew Bible, revealing how they offer richly nuanced portraits of the alien that go well beyond stereotypes and caricature.

Providing extraordinary insight into the ancient world, this controversial book explores how ancient attitudes toward the Other often expressed mutuality and connection, and not simply contrast and alienation.

Monday, December 20, 2010

"An Elusive Unity"

New from Cornell University Press: An Elusive Unity: Urban Democracy and Machine Politics in Industrializing America by James J. Connolly.

About the book, from the publisher:
Although many observers have assumed that pluralism prevailed in American political life from the start, inherited ideals of civic virtue and moral unity proved stubbornly persistent and influential. The tension between these conceptions of public life was especially evident in the young nation's burgeoning cities. Exploiting a wide range of sources, including novels, cartoons, memoirs, and journalistic accounts, James J. Connolly traces efforts to reconcile democracy and diversity in the industrializing cities of the United States from the antebellum period through the Progressive Era.

The necessity of redesigning civic institutions and practices to suit city life triggered enduring disagreements centered on what came to be called machine politics. Featuring plebian leadership, a sharp masculinity, party discipline, and frank acknowledgment of social differences, this new political formula first arose in eastern cities during the mid-nineteenth century and became a subject of national discussion after the Civil War. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, business leaders, workers, and women proposed alternative understandings of how urban democracy might work. Some tried to create venues for deliberation that built common ground among citizens of all classes, faiths, ethnicities, and political persuasions. But accommodating such differences proved difficult, and a vision of politics as the businesslike management of a contentious modern society took precedence. As Connolly makes clear, machine politics offered at best a quasi-democratic way to organize urban public life. Where unity proved elusive, machine politics provided a viable, if imperfect, alternative.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism"

New from Bloomsbury USA: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang.

About the book, from the publisher:
A concise blast of iconoclastic, eye-opening economic truth-telling; essential reading to understand where free market thinking falls short.

Thing 1: There is no such thing as free market.
Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the Internet.
Thing 5: Assume the worst about people, and you get the worst.
Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.

If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists-the apostles of the freemarket-have spun since the Age of Reagan.

Chang, the author of the international bestseller Bad Samaritans, is one of the world's most respected economists, a voice of sanity-and wit-in the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz. 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism equips readers with an understanding of how global capitalism works-and doesn't. In his final chapter, "How to Rebuild the World," Chang offers a vision of how we can shape capitalism to humane ends, instead of becoming slaves of the market.
Ha-Joon Chang is Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge. Learn more about his research and publications at his Cambridge webpage.

The Page 99 Test: Bad Samaritans.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

"The Strategy Bridge"

New from Oxford University Press: The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice by Colin S. Gray.

About the book, from the publisher:
The Strategy Bridge presents the general theory of strategy and explains the utility of this general theory for the particular strategies that strategists need to develop in order to meet their historically unique challenges. The book argues that strategy's general theory provides essential education for practicing strategists at all times and in all circumstances. As general theory, The Strategy Bridge is as relevant to understanding strategic behavior in the Peloponnesian War as it is for the conflicts of the twenty-first century.

The book proceeds from exposition of general strategic theory, to address three basic issue areas that are not at all well explained, let alone understood with a view to advancing better practice, in the extant literature. Specifically, The Strategy Bridge tackles the problems that harass and imperil strategic performance; probes deeply into the hugely underexamined subject of just what it is that the strategist produces-strategic effect; and 'joins up the dots' from theory through practice to consequences by means of a close examination of command performance.

The author takes a holistic view of strategy, and is rigorously attentive to the significance of the contexts within which and for which strategies are developed and applied. The Strategy Bridge regards the strategist as a hero, charged with the feasible, but awesomely difficult, task of converting the threat and use of force (for military strategy) into desired political consequences. The strategist seeks some control over the rival or enemy via strategic effect, the instrumental produce of his instrumental labors. In order to maximize his prospects for success, the practicing strategist requires all the educational assistance that strategic theory can provide.

Friday, December 17, 2010

"Getting Ahead"

New from the NYU Press: Getting Ahead: Social Mobility, Public Housing, and Immigrant Networks by Silvia Dominguez.

About the book, from the publisher:
Getting Ahead tells the compelling stories of Latin-American immigrant women living in public housing in two Boston-area neighborhoods. Silvia Domínguez argues that these immigrant women parlay social ties that provide support and leverage to develop networks and achieve social positioning to get ahead. Through a rich ethnographic account and in-depth interviews, the strong voices of these women demonstrate how they successfully negotiate the world and achieve social mobility through their own individual agency, skillfully navigating both constraints and opportunities.

Domínguez makes it clear that many immigrant women are able to develop the social support needed for a rich social life, and leverage ties that open options for them to develop their social and human capital. However, she also shows that factors such as neighborhood and domestic violence and the unavailability of social services leave many women without the ability to strategize towards social mobility. Ultimately, Domínguez makes important local and international policy recommendations on issue ranging from public housing to world labor visas, demonstrating how policy can help to improve the lives of these and other low-income people.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

"Representing Justice"

New from Yale University Press: Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms by Judith Resnik and Dennis E. Curtis.

About the book, from the publisher:
By mapping the remarkable run of the icon of Justice, a woman with scales and sword, and by tracing the development of public spaces dedicated to justice—courthouses—the authors explore the evolution of adjudication into its modern form as well as the intimate relationship between the courts and democracy. The authors analyze how Renaissance “rites” of judgment turned into democratic “rights,” requiring governments to respect judicial independence, provide open and public hearings, and accord access and dignity to “every person.” With over 220 images, readers can see both the longevity of aspirations for justice and the transformation of courts, as well as understand that, while venerable, courts are also vulnerable institutions that should not be taken for granted.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

"The Hungry World"

New from Harvard University Press: The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia by Nick Cullather.

About the book, from the publisher:
Food was a critical front in the Cold War battle for Asia. “Where Communism goes, hunger follows” was the slogan of American nation builders who fanned out into the countryside to divert rivers, remodel villages, and introduce tractors, chemicals, and genes to multiply the crops consumed by millions. This “green revolution” has been credited with averting Malthusian famines, saving billions of lives, and jump-starting Asia’s economic revival. Bono and Bill Gates hail it as a model for revitalizing Africa’s economy. But this tale of science triumphant conceals a half century of political struggle from the Afghan highlands to the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, a campaign to transform rural societies by changing the way people eat and grow food.

The ambition to lead Asia into an age of plenty grew alongside development theories that targeted hunger as a root cause of war. Scientific agriculture was an instrument for molding peasants into citizens with modern attitudes, loyalties, and reproductive habits. But food policies were as contested then as they are today. While Kennedy and Johnson envisioned Kansas-style agribusiness guarded by strategic hamlets, Indira Gandhi, Marcos, and Suharto inscribed their own visions of progress onto the land.

Out of this campaign, the costliest and most sustained effort for development ever undertaken, emerged the struggles for resources and identity that define the region today. As Obama revives the lost arts of Keynesianism and counter-insurgency, the history of these colossal projects reveals bitter and important lessons for today’s missions to feed a hungry world.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

"Biography of an Empire"

New from the University of California Press: Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution by Christine M. Philliou.

About the book, from the publisher:
This vividly detailed revisionist history opens a new vista on the great Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, a key period often seen as the eve of Tanzimat westernizing reforms and the beginning of three distinct histories—ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, imperial modernization from Istanbul, and European colonialism in the Middle East. Christine Philliou brilliantly shines a new light on imperial crisis and change in the 1820s and 1830s by unearthing the life of one man. Stephanos Vogorides (1780–1859) was part of a network of Christian elites known phanariots, institutionally excluded from power yet intimately bound up with Ottoman governance. By tracing the contours of the wide-ranging networks—crossing ethnic, religious, and institutional boundaries—in which the phanariots moved, Philliou provides a unique view of Ottoman power and, ultimately, of the Ottoman legacies in the Middle East and Balkans today. What emerges is a wide-angled analysis of governance as a lived experience at a moment in which there was no clear blueprint for power.

Monday, December 13, 2010

"From Bible Belt to Sunbelt"

New from W. W. Norton: From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk.

About the book, from the publisher:
A sweeping, five-decade history of the evangelical movement in southern California that explains an epochal realignment of American politics.

From Bible Belt to Sun Belt
tells the dramatic and largely unknown story of “plain-folk” religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who fled the Depression and came to California for military jobs during World War II. Investigating this fiercely pious community at a grassroots level, Darren Dochuk uses the stories of religious leaders, including Billy Graham, as well as many colorful, lesser-known figures to explain how evangelicals organized a powerful political machine. This machine made its mark with Barry Goldwater, inspired Richard Nixon’s “Southern Solution,” and achieved its greatest triumph with the victories of Ronald Reagan. Based on entirely new research, the manuscript has already won the prestigious Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. The judges wrote, “Dochuk offers a rich and multidimensional perspective on the origins of one of the most far-ranging developments of the second half of the twentieth century: the rise of the New Right and modern conservatism.”

Sunday, December 12, 2010

"Unwarranted Influence"

New from Yale University Press: Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex by James Ledbetter.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Dwight D. Eisenhower’s last speech as president, on January 17, 1961, he warned America about the “military-industrial complex,” a mutual dependency between the nation’s industrial base and its military structure that had developed during World War II. After the conflict ended, the nation did not abandon its wartime economy but rather the opposite. Military spending has steadily increased, giving rise to one of the key ideas that continues to shape our country’s political landscape.

In this book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower’s farewell address, journalist James Ledbetter shows how the government, military contractors, and the nation’s overall economy have become inseparable. Some of the effects are beneficial, such as cell phones, GPS systems, the Internet, and the Hubble Space Telescope, all of which emerged from technologies first developed for the military. But the military-industrial complex has also provoked agonizing questions. Does our massive military establishment—bigger than those of the next ten largest combined—really make us safer? How much of our perception of security threats is driven by the profit-making motives of military contractors? To what extent is our foreign policy influenced by contractors’ financial interests?

Ledbetter uncovers the surprising origins and the even more surprising afterlife of the military-industrial complex, an idea that arose as early as the 1930s, and shows how it gained traction during World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam era and continues even today.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

"Heart of Buddha, Heart of China"

New from Oxford University Press: Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk by James Carter.

About the book, from the publisher:
The Buddhist monk Tanxu surmounted extraordinary obstacles--poverty, wars, famine, and foreign occupation--to become one of the most prominent monks in China, founding numerous temples and schools, and attracting crowds of students and disciples wherever he went. Now, in Heart of Buddha, Heart of China, James Carter draws on untapped archival materials to provide a book that is part travelogue, part history, and part biography of this remarkable man.

This revealing biography shows a Chinese man, neither an intellectual nor a peasant, trying to reconcile his desire for a bold and activist Chinese nationalism with his own belief in China's cultural and social traditions, especially Buddhism. As it follows Tanxu's extraordinary life, the book also illuminates the pivotal events in China's modern history, showing how one individual experienced the fall of China's last empire, its descent into occupation and civil war, and its eventual birth as modern nation. Indeed, Tanxu lived in a time of almost constant warfare--from the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, to the Boxer Uprising, the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese occupation, and World War II. He and his followers were robbed by river pirates, and waylaid by bandits on the road. Caught in the struggle between nationalist and communist forces, Tanxu finally sought refuge in the British colony of Hong Kong. At the time of his death, at the age of 89, he was revered as "Master Tanxu," one of Hong Kong's leading religious figures.

Capturing all this in a magnificent portrait, Carter gives first-person immediacy to one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history.
Read an excerpt from Heart of Buddha, Heart of China at The China Beat.

Friday, December 10, 2010

"Perversion for Profit"

New from Columbia University Press: Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right by Whitney Strub.

About the book, from the publisher:
While America is not alone in its ambivalence toward sex and its depictions, the preferences of the nation swing sharply between toleration and censure. This pattern has grown even more pronounced since the 1960s, with the emergence of the New Right and its attack on the "floodtide of filth" that was supposedly sweeping the nation. Antipornography campaigns became the New Right's political capital in the 1960s, laying the groundwork for the "family values" agenda that shifted the country to the right.

Perversion for Profit
traces the anatomy of this trend and the crucial function of pornography in constructing the New Right agenda, which has emphasized social issues over racial and economic inequality. Conducting his own extensive research, Whitney Strub vividly recreates the debates over obscenity that consumed members of the ACLU in the 1950s and revisits the deployment of obscenity charges against purveyors of gay erotica during the cold war, revealing the differing standards applied to heterosexual and homosexual pornography. He follows the rise of the influential Citizens for Decent Literature during the 1960s and the pivotal events that followed: the sexual revolution, feminist activism, the rise of the gay rights movement, the "porno chic" moment of the early 1970s, and resurgent Christian conservatism, which now shapes public policy far beyond the issue of sexual decency.

Strub also examines the ways in which the left failed to mount a serious or sustained counterattack to the New Right's use of pornography as a political tool. As he demonstrates, this failure put the Democratic Party at the mercy of Republican rhetoric. In placing debates about pornography at the forefront of American postwar history, Strub revolutionizes our understanding of sex and American politics.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

"The Blame Game"

New from Princeton University Press: The Blame Game: Spin, Bureaucracy, and Self-Preservation in Government by Christopher Hood.

About the book, from the publisher:
The blame game, with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organizational life, and blame avoidance pervades government and public organizations at every level. Political and bureaucratic blame games and blame avoidance are more often condemned than analyzed. In The Blame Game, Christopher Hood takes a different approach by showing how blame avoidance shapes the workings of government and public services. Arguing that the blaming phenomenon is not all bad, Hood demonstrates that it can actually help to pin down responsibility, and he examines different kinds of blame avoidance, both positive and negative.

Hood traces how the main forms of blame avoidance manifest themselves in presentational and "spin" activity, the architecture of organizations, and the shaping of standard operating routines. He analyzes the scope and limits of blame avoidance, and he considers how it plays out in old and new areas, such as those offered by the digital age of websites and e-mail. Hood assesses the effects of this behavior, from high-level problems of democratic accountability trails going cold to the frustrations of dealing with organizations whose procedures seem to ensure that no one is responsible for anything.

Delving into the inner workings of complex institutions, The Blame Game proves how a better understanding of blame avoidance can improve the quality of modern governance, management, and organizational design.
Visit Christopher Hood's website.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

"From Chicaza to Chickasaw"

New from the University of Carolina Press: From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715 by Robbie Ethridge.

About the book, from the publisher:
In this sweeping regional history, anthropologist Robbie Ethridge traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in 1540 by Hernando De Soto to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of an expanding European empire and in a new social landscape that included a large population of Europeans and Africans. Despite the fact that thousands of Indians died or were enslaved and virtually all Native polities were radically altered in these years, the collapse of this complex Mississippian world did not extinguish the Native peoples of the South but rather transformed them.

Using a new interpretive framework that Ethridge calls the "Mississippian shatter zone" to explicate these tumultuous times, From Chicaza to Chickasaw examines the European invasion and the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world and the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native societies in a colonial world. Within this larger regional context, she closely follows the story of one group--the Chickasaws--throughout this period. With skillfully synthesized archaeological and documentary evidence, Ethridge illuminates the Native South in its earliest colonial context and sheds new light on the profound upheaval and cultural transformation experienced by the region's first peoples.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

"Ourselves Unborn"

New from Oxford University Press: Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America by Sara Dubow.

About the book, from the publisher:
During the past several decades, the fetus has been diversely represented in political debates, medical textbooks and journals, personal memoirs and autobiographies, museum exhibits and mass media, and civil and criminal law. Ourselves Unborn argues that the meanings people attribute to the fetus are not based simply on biological fact or theological truth, but are in fact strongly influenced by competing definitions of personhood and identity, beliefs about knowledge and authority, and assumptions about gender roles and sexuality. In addition, these meanings can be shaped by dramatic historical change: over the course of the twentieth century, medical and technological changes made fetal development more comprehensible, while political and social changes made the fetus a subject of public controversy. Moreover, since the late nineteenth century, questions about how fetal life develops and should be valued have frequently intersected with debates about the authority of science and religion, and the relationship between the individual and society. In examining the contested history of fetal meanings, Sara Dubow brings a fresh perspective to these vital debates.

Monday, December 6, 2010

"Ottoman Brothers"

New from Stanford University Press: Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine by Michelle U. Campos.

About the book, from the publisher:
In its last decade, the Ottoman Empire underwent a period of dynamic reform, and the 1908 revolution transformed the empire's 20 million subjects into citizens overnight. Questions quickly emerged about what it meant to be Ottoman, what bound the empire together, what role religion and ethnicity would play in politics, and what liberty, reform, and enfranchisement would look like.

Ottoman Brothers explores the development of Ottoman collective identity, tracing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews became imperial citizens together. In Palestine, even against the backdrop of the emergence of the Zionist movement and Arab nationalism, Jews and Arabs cooperated in local development and local institutions as they embraced imperial citizenship. As Michelle Campos reveals, the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine was not immanent, but rather it erupted in tension with the promises and shortcomings of "civic Ottomanism."
Read an excerpt from Ottoman Brothers.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

"Globalized Arts"

New from Columbia University Press: Globalized Arts: The Entertainment Economy and Cultural Identity by J. P. Singh.

About the book, from the publisher:
Our interactive world can take a creative product, such as a Hollywood film, Bollywood song, or Latin American telenovela, and transform it into a source of cultural anxiety. What does this artwork say about the artist or the world she works in? How will these artworks evolve in the global market? Film, music, television, and the performing arts enter the same networks of exchange as other industries, and the anxiety they produce informs a fascinating area of study for art, culture, and global politics.

Focusing on the confrontation between global politics and symbolic creative expression, J. P. Singh shows how, by integrating themselves into international markets, entertainment industries give rise to far-reaching cultural anxieties and politics. With examples from Hollywood, Bollywood, French grand opera, Latin American television, West African music, postcolonial literature, and even the Thai sex trade, Singh cites not only the attempt to address cultural discomfort but also the effort to deny entertainment acts as cultural. He connects creative expression to clashes between national identities, and he details the effect of cultural policies, such as institutional patronage and economic incentives, on the making and incorporation of art into the global market. Ultimately, Singh shows how these issues affect the debates on cultural trade being waged by the World Trade Organization, UNESCO, and the developing world.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

"Durkheim and the Birth of Economic Sociology"

New from Princeton University Press: Durkheim and the Birth of Economic Sociology by Philippe Steiner, translated by Keith Tribe.

About the book, from the publisher:
Émile Durkheim's work has traditionally been viewed as a part of sociology removed from economics. Rectifying this perception, Durkheim and the Birth of Economic Sociology is the first book to provide an in-depth look at the contributions made to economic sociology by Durkheim and his followers. Philippe Steiner demonstrates the relevance of economic factors to sociology and shows how the Durkheimians inform today's economic systems.

Steiner argues that there are two stages in Durkheim's approach to the economy--a sociological critique of political economy and a sociology of economic knowledge. In his early works, Durkheim critiques economists and their categories, and tries to analyze the division of labor from a social rather than economic perspective. From the mid-1890s onward, Durkheim's preoccupations shifted to questions of religion and the sociology of knowledge. Durkheim's disciples, such as Maurice Halbwachs and François Simiand, synthesized and elaborated on Durkheim's first-stage arguments, while his ideas on religion and the economy were taken up by Marcel Mauss. Steiner indicates that the ways in which the Durkheimians rooted the sociology of economic knowledge in the educational system allows for an invaluable perspective on the role of economics in modern society, similar to the perspective offered by Max Weber's work.

Recognizing the power of the Durkheimian approach, Durkheim and the Birth of Economic Sociology assesses the effect of this important thinker and his successors on one of the most active fields in contemporary sociology.

Friday, December 3, 2010

"Sailor Diplomat"

New from Harvard University Press: Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War by Peter Mauch.

About the book, from the publisher:
As Japan’s pre–Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo (1877–1964) played a significant role in a tense and turbulent period in Japanese-U.S. relations. Scholars tend to view his actions and missteps as ambassador as representing the failure of diplomacy to avert the outbreak of hostilities between the two paramount Pacific powers.

This extensively researched biography casts new light on the life and career of this important figure. Connecting his experiences as a naval officer to his service as foreign minister and ambassador, and later as “father” of Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Forces and proponent of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, this study reassesses Nomura’s contributions as a hard-nosed realist whose grasp of the underlying realities of Japanese-U.S. relations went largely unappreciated by the Japanese political and military establishment.

In highlighting the complexities and conundrums of Nomura’s position, as well as the role of the Imperial Navy in the formulation of Japan’s foreign policy, Peter Mauch draws upon rarely accessed materials from naval and diplomatic archives in Japan as well as various collections of personal papers, including Nomura’s, which Mauch discovered in 2005 and which are now housed in the National Diet Library.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

"The Retreat: Hitler's First Defeat"

New from Thomas Dunne Books: The Retreat: Hitler's First Defeat by Michael Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:
The gripping history of the ferocious turning point of World War Two, when Hitler’s armies were halted on the Eastern Front

At the moment of crisis in late 1941 on the Eastern Front, with the forces of Hitler massing on the outskirts of Moscow, the miraculous occurred: Moscow was saved. Yet this feat of endurance was a prelude to a long and arduous retreat in which Soviet troops, inspired by deep beliefs in the sacred Motherland, pushed back German forces steeled by the vision of the Ubermensch—the iron-willed fighter. Supported by tanks and ski battalions, Soviet troops engaged in this desperate struggle in the harshest Russian weather.

Michael Jones draws upon a wealth of new eyewitness testimonies from both sides of the conflict to vividly chronicle this pivotal chapter in the Second World War as he takes us from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on the morning of June 22 through the counteroffensive that carried into the spring of 1942. From the German soldier finding his comrades frozen into blocks of ice to the Russian lieutenant crying with rage at the senseless destruction of his unit, the author shows us the faces of war when the Wehrmacht was repelled and the titanic and cruel struggle of two world powers forged the fate of Europe.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

"Creating a Confederate Kentucky"

New from the University of Carolina Press: Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State by Anne E. Marshall.

About the book, from the publisher:
Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky "waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union." In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that more Kentuckians fought for the North than for the South. Following the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties, embracing the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with formerly Confederate states. Although, on the surface, white Confederate memory appeared to dominate the historical landscape of postwar Kentucky, Marshall's closer look reveals an active political and cultural dialogue that included white Unionists, Confederate Kentuckians, and the state's African Americans, who, from the last days of the war, drew on Union victory and their part in winning it to lay claim to the fruits of freedom and citizenship.

Rather than focusing exclusively on postwar political and economic factors, Creating a Confederate Kentucky looks over the longer term at Kentuckians' activities--public memorial ceremonies, dedications of monuments, and veterans organizations' events--by which they commemorated the Civil War and fixed the state's remembrance of it for sixty years following the conflict.