Monday, February 29, 2016

"Shrinking the Earth"

New from Oxford University Press: Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance by Donald Worster.

About the book, from the publisher:
The discovery of the Americas around 1500 AD was an extraordinary watershed in human experience. It gave rise to the modern period of human ecology, a phenomenon global in scope that set in motion profound changes in almost every society on earth. This new period, which saw the depletion of the lands of the New World, proved tragic for some, triumphant for others, and powerfully affecting for all.

In this work, acclaimed environmental historian Donald Worster takes a global view in his examination of the ways in which complex issues of worldwide abundance and scarcity have shaped American society and behavior over three centuries. Looking at the limits nature imposes on human ambitions, he questions whether America today is in the midst of a shift from a culture of abundance to a culture of limits-and whether American consumption has become reliant on the global South. Worster engages with key political, economic, and environmental thinkers while presenting his own interpretation of the role of capitalism and government in issues of wealth, abundance, and scarcity. Acknowledging the earth's agency throughout human history, Shrinking the Earth offers a compelling explanation of how we have arrived where we are and a hopeful way forward on a planet that is no longer as large as it once was.
--Marshal Zeringue

"On British Islam"

New from Princeton University Press: On British Islam: Religion, Law, and Everyday Practice in Shariʿa Councils by John R. Bowen.

About the book, from the publisher:
On British Islam examines the history and everyday workings of Islamic institutions in Britain, with a focus on shariʿa councils. These councils concern themselves with religious matters, especially divorce. They have a higher profile in Britain than in other Western nations. Why? Taking a historical and ethnographic look at British Islam, John Bowen examines how Muslims have created distinctive religious institutions in Britain and how shariʿa councils interpret and apply Islamic law in a secular British context.

Bowen focuses on three specific shariʿa councils: the oldest and most developed, in London; a Midlands community led by a Sufi saint and barrister; and a Birmingham-based council in which women play a leading role. Bowen shows that each of these councils represents a prolonged, unique experiment in meeting Muslims' needs in a Western country. He also discusses how the councils have become a flash point in British public debates even as they adapt to the English legal environment.

On British Islam highlights British Muslims' efforts to create institutions that make sense in both Islamic and British terms. This balancing act is rarely acknowledged in Britain—or elsewhere—but it is urgent that we understand it if we are to build new ways of living together.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 28, 2016

"When Norms Collide"

New from Oxford University Press: When Norms Collide: Local Responses to Activism against Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriage by Karisa Cloward.

About the book, from the publisher:
Many transnational campaigns, and particularly the transnational campaign on violence against women, promote international norms that target the behavior of local nonstate actors. But these international norms are often at odds with local practices. What happens when the international and local norms collide? When does transnational activism lead individuals and communities to abandon local norms and embrace international ones?

In When Norms Collide, Karisa Cloward presents a path-breaking theoretical framework for understanding the processes by which individuals negotiate competing demands placed on them by international and local norms. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with local communities in Kenya, she applies the theory to the practices of female genital mutilation and early marriage. Cloward argues that, when faced with international normative messages, individuals can decide to change their attitudes, their behavior, and the public image they present to international and local audiences. Moreover, the impact of transnational activism on individuals substantially depends on the salience of the international and local norms to their respective proponents, as well as on community-level factors.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 27, 2016

"Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire"

New from the University of California Press: Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire by Daniel O'Neill.

About the book, from the publisher:
Edmund Burke, long considered modern conservatism’s founding father, is also widely believed to be an opponent of empire. However, Daniel O’Neill turns that latter belief on its head. This fresh and innovative book shows that Burke was a passionate supporter and staunch defender of the British Empire in the eighteenth century, whether in the New World, India, or Ireland. Moreover—and against a growing body of contemporary scholarship that rejects the very notion that Burke was an exemplar of conservatism—O’Neill demonstrates that Burke’s defense of empire was in fact ideologically consistent with his conservative opposition to the French Revolution. Burke’s logic of empire relied on two opposing but complementary theoretical strategies: Ornamentalism, which stressed cultural similarities between “civilized” societies, as he understood them, and Orientalism, which stressed the putative cultural differences distinguishing “savage” societies from their “civilized” counterparts. This incisive book also shows that Burke’s argument had lasting implications, as his development of these two justifications for empire prefigured later intellectual defenses of British imperialism.
--Marshal Zeringue

"Until There Is Justice"

New from Oxford University Press: Until There Is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman by Jennifer Scanlon.

About the book, from the publisher:
A demanding feminist, devout Christian, and savvy grassroots civil rights organizer, Anna Arnold Hedgeman played a key role in over half a century of social justice initiatives. Like many of her colleagues, including A. Philip Randolph, Betty Friedan, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hedgeman ought to be a household name, but until now has received only a fraction of the attention she deserves.

In Until There Is Justice, author Jennifer Scanlon presents the first-ever biography of Hedgeman. Through a commitment to faith-based activism, civil rights, and feminism, Hedgeman participated in and led some of the 20th century's most important developments, including advances in education, public health, politics, and workplace justice. Simultaneously a dignified woman and scrappy freedom fighter, Hedgeman's life upends conventional understandings of many aspects of the civil rights and feminist movements. She worked as a teacher, lobbyist, politician, social worker, and activist, often crafting and implementing policy behind the scenes. Although she repeatedly found herself a woman among men, a black American among whites, and a secular Christian among clergy, she maintained her conflicting identities and worked alongside others to forge a common humanity.

From helping black and Puerto Rican Americans achieve critical civil service employment in New York City during the Great Depression to orchestrating white religious Americans' participation in the 1963 March on Washington, Hedgeman's contributions transcend gender, racial, and religious boundaries. Engaging and profoundly inspiring, Scanlon's biography paints a compelling portrait of one of the most remarkable yet understudied civil rights leaders of our time. Until There Is Justice is a must-read for anyone with a passion for history, biography, and civil rights.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 26, 2016

"Trading with the Enemy"

New from Oxford University Press: Trading with the Enemy: The Making of US Export Control Policy toward the People's Republic of China by Hugo Meijer.

About the book,from the publisher:
In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in US-China relations, Trading with the Enemy examines how the United States has balanced its potentially conflicting national security and economic interests in its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). To do so, Hugo Meijer investigates a strategically sensitive yet under-explored facet of US-China relations: the making of American export control policy on military-related technology transfers to China since 1979. Trading with the Enemy is the first monograph on this dimension of the US-China relationship in the post-Cold War. Based on 199 interviews, declassified documents, and diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks, two major findings emerge from this book. First, the US is no longer able to apply a strategy of military/technology containment of China in the same way it did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This is because of the erosion of its capacity to restrict the transfer of military-related technology to the PRC. Secondly, a growing number of actors in Washington have reassessed the nexus between national security and economic interests at stake in the US-China relationship - by moving beyond the Cold War trade-off between the two - in order to maintain American military preeminence vis-à-vis its strategic rivals. By focusing on how states manage the heterogeneous and potentially competing security and economic interests at stake in a bilateral relationship, this book seeks to shed light on the evolving character of interstate rivalry in a globalized economy, where rivals in the military realm are also economically interdependent.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 25, 2016

"The Star and the Stripes"

New from Princeton University Press: The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews by Michael N. Barnett.

About the book, from the publisher:
How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? The Star and the Stripes is an original, provocative interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. Michael Barnett argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice.

The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism—including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, Barnett charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, Barnett contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews.

Rooted in the understanding of how history shapes a political community's sense of the world, The Star and the Stripes is a bold reading of the past, present, and possible future foreign policies of American Jews.
--Marshal Zeringue

"Out in the Periphery"

New from Oxford University Press: Out in the Periphery: Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution by Omar G. Encarnación.

About the book, from the publisher:
Known around the world as a bastion of Catholicism and machismo, Latin America has emerged in recent years as the undisputed gay rights leader of the Global South. Even more surprising is that several Latin American nations have surpassed many developed nations, including the United States, in legislating equality for the LGBT community. So how did this dramatic and unexpected expansion of gay rights come about? And why are Latin American nations diverging in their embrace of gay rights, a point highlighted by the paradoxical experiences of Argentina and Brazil? Argentina, a country with a dark history of repression of homosexuality, legalized same-sex marriage in 2010, a first for a Latin American nation; and since then it has enacted laws to ensure transgender equality, to abolish "ex-gay reparative therapy," and to provide reproductive assistance to same-sex couples. By contrast, Brazil, a country famous for celebrating sexual diversity, proved incapable of legalizing same-sex marriage via the legislature, leaving the job to the courts; and Brazilian anti-gay discrimination laws are among the weakest in Latin America.

In Out in the Periphery, Omar G. Encarnación breaks away from the conventional narrative of Latin America's embrace of gay rights as a by-product of the global spread of gay rights from the developed West. Instead, Encarnación aims to "decenter" gay rights politics. His intention is not to demonstrate how the "local" has trumped the "global" in Latin America but rather to suggest how domestic and international politics interacted to make Latin America one of the world's most receptive environments for gay rights. Economic and political modernization, constitutional and judicial reforms, and the rise of socially liberal governments have all contributed to this receptivity. But the most decisive factor was the skill of local activists in crafting highly effective gay rights campaigns. Inspired by external events and trends, but firmly grounded in local politics and realities, these campaigns succeeded in bringing radical change to the law with respect to homosexuality and, in some cases, as in Argentina, in transforming society and the culture at large.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

"The Slave's Cause"

New from Yale University Press: The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition by Manisha Sinha.

About the book, from the publisher:
Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive new history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.
Manisha Sinha is a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities among several others. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

"Stalin's Music Prize"

New from Yale University Press: Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics by Marina Frolova-Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:
Marina Frolova-Walker’s fascinating history takes a new look at musical life in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The author focuses on the musicians and composers who received Stalin Prizes, awarded annually to artists whose work was thought to represent the best in Soviet culture. This revealing study sheds new light on the Communist leader’s personal tastes, the lives and careers of those honored, including multiple-recipients Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and the elusive artistic concept of “Socialist Realism,” offering the most comprehensive examination to date of the relationship between music and the Soviet state from 1940 through 1954.
Marina Frolova-Walker was born and educated in Moscow, where she studied at the Moscow Conservatoire. She is professor of music history at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Populism's Power"

New from Oxford University Press: Populism's Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America by Laura Grattan.

About the book, from the publisher:
Uprisings such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street signal a resurgence of populist politics in America, pitting the people against the establishment in a struggle over control of democracy. In the wake of its conservative capture during the Nixon and Reagan eras, and given its increasing ubiquity as a mainstream buzzword of politicians and pundits, democratic theorists and activists have been eager to abandon populism to right-wing demagogues and mega-media spin-doctors. Decades of liberal scholarship have reinforced this shift, turning the term "populism" into a pejorative in academic and public discourse. At best, they conclude that populism encourages an "empty" wish to express a unified popular will beyond the mediating institutions of government; at worst, it has been described as an antidemocratic temperament prone to fomenting backlash against elites and marginalized groups.

Populism's Power argues that such routine dismissals of populism reinforce liberalism as the end of democracy. Yet, as long as democracy remains true to its meaning, that is, "rule by the people," democratic theorists and activists must be able to give an account of the people as collective actors. Without such an account of the people's power, democracy's future seems fixed by the institutions of today's neoliberal, managerial states, and not by the always changing demographics of those who live within and across their borders. Laura Grattan looks at how populism cultivates the aspirations of ordinary people to exercise power over their everyday lives and their collective fate. In evaluating competing theories of populism she looks at a range of populist moments, from cultural phenomena such as the Chevrolet ad campaign for "Our Country, Our Truck," to the music of Leonard Cohen, and historical and contemporary populist movements, including nineteenth-century Populism, the Tea Party, broad-based community organizing, and Occupy Wall Street. While she ultimately expresses ambivalence about both populism and democracy, she reopens the idea that grassroots movements--like the insurgent farmers and laborers, New Deal agitators, and Civil Rights and New Left actors of US history--can play a key role in democratizing power and politics in America.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 22, 2016

"Selling Empire"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600-1830 by Jonathan Eacott.

About the book, from the publisher:
Linking four continents over three centuries, Selling Empire demonstrates the centrality of India--both as an idea and a place--to the making of a global British imperial system. In the seventeenth century, Britain was economically, politically, and militarily weaker than India, but Britons increasingly made use of India’s strengths to build their own empire in both America and Asia. Early English colonial promoters first envisioned America as a potential India, hoping that the nascent Atlantic colonies could produce Asian raw materials. When this vision failed to materialize, Britain’s circulation of Indian manufactured goods--from umbrellas to cottons--to Africa, Europe, and America then established an empire of goods and the supposed good of empire.

Eacott recasts the British empire's chronology and geography by situating the development of consumer culture, the American Revolution, and British industrialization in the commercial intersections linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. From the seventeenth into the nineteenth century and beyond, the evolving networks, ideas, and fashions that bound India, Britain, and America shaped persisting global structures of economic and cultural interdependence.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 21, 2016

"Martyrs Mirror: A Social History"

New from Johns Hopkins University Press: Martyrs Mirror: A Social History by David L. Weaver-Zercher.

About the book, from the publisher:
Approximately 2,500 Anabaptists were martyred in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe. Their surviving brethren compiled stories of those who suffered and died for the faith into martyr books. The most historically and culturally significant of these, The Bloody Theater—more commonly known as Martyrs Mirror—was assembled by the Dutch Mennonite minister Thieleman van Braght and published in 1660. Today, next to the Bible, it is the single most important text to Anabaptists—Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites. In some Anabaptist communities, it is passed to new generations as a wedding or graduation gift.

David L. Weaver-Zercher combines the fascinating history of Martyrs Mirror with a detailed analysis of Anabaptist life, religion, and martyrdom. He traces the publication, use, and dissemination of this key martyrology across nearly four centuries and explains why it holds sacred status in contemporary Amish and Mennonite households. Even today, the words and deeds of these martyred Christians are referenced in sermons, Sunday school lessons, and history books.

Weaver-Zercher argues that Martyrs Mirror was designed to teach believers how to live a proper Christian life. In van Braght’s view, accounts of the martyrs helped to remind readers of the things that mattered, thus inspiring them to greater faithfulness. Martyrs Mirror remains a tool of revival, offering new life to the communities and people who read it by revitalizing Anabaptist ideals and values. Meticulously researched and illustrated with sketches from early publications of Martyrs Mirror, Weaver-Zercher’s ambitious history weaves together the existing scholarship on this iconic text in an accessible and engaging way.
David L. Weaver-Zercher is a professor of American religious history at Messiah College. He is the author of The Amish in the American Imagination and the coeditor of The Amish and the Media.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 20, 2016

"Blood Brothers"

New from Basic Books: Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X by Randy Roberts, with Johnny Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:
The first book to bring to life the influential friendship between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali

In 1962, boxing writers and fans considered Cassius Clay an obnoxious self-promoter, and few believed that he would become the heavyweight champion of the world. But Malcolm X, the most famous minister in the Nation of Islam—a sect many white Americans deemed a hate cult—saw the potential in Clay, not just for boxing greatness, but as a means of spreading the Nation's message. The two became fast friends, keeping their interactions secret from the press for fear of jeopardizing Clay's career. Clay began living a double life—a patriotic "good Negro" in public, and a radical reformer behind the scenes. Soon, however, their friendship would sour, with disastrous and far-reaching consequences.

Based on previously untapped sources, from Malcolm's personal papers to FBI records, Blood Brothers is the first book to offer an in-depth portrait of this complex bond. Acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith reconstruct the worlds that shaped Malcolm and Clay, from the boxing arenas and mosques, to postwar New York and civil rights-era Miami. In an impressively detailed account, they reveal how Malcolm molded Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, helping him become an international symbol of black pride and black independence. Yet when Malcolm was barred from the Nation for criticizing the philandering of its leader, Elijah Muhammad, Ali turned his back on Malcolm—a choice that tragically contributed to the latter's assassination in February 1965.

Malcolm's death marked the end of a critical phase of the civil rights movement, but the legacy of his friendship with Ali has endured. We inhabit a new era where the roles of entertainer and activist, of sports and politics, are more entwined than ever before. Blood Brothers is the story of how Ali redefined what it means to be a black athlete in America—after Malcolm first enlightened him. An extraordinary narrative of love and deep affection, as well as deceit, betrayal, and violence, this story is a window into the public and private lives of two of our greatest national icons, and the tumultuous period in American history that they helped to shape.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 19, 2016

"Campus Sexual Assault"

New from the Johns Hopkins University Press: Campus Sexual Assault: College Women Respond by Lauren J. Germain.

About the book, from the publisher:
A 2014 report issued by the White House Council on Women and Girls included the alarming statistic that one in five female college students in the United States experience some form of campus sexual assault. Despite more than fifty years of anti-rape activism and over two decades of federal legislation regarding campus sexual violence, sexual assault on American college and university campuses remains prevalent, under-reported, and poorly understood. A principle reason for this lack of understanding is that the voices of women who have experienced campus sexual assault have been largely absent from academic discourse about the issue.

In Campus Sexual Assault, Lauren J. Germain focuses attention on the post–sexual assault experiences of twenty-six college women. She reframes conversations about sexual violence and student agency on American college campuses by drawing insight directly from the stories of how survivors responded individually to attacks, as well as how and why peers, family members, and school, medical, and civil authorities were (or were not) engaged in addressing the crimes.

Germain weaves together women’s narratives to show the women not as victims per se, but as individuals with the power to overcome these traumatic experiences. Aimed at students, parents, faculty members, university leaders, service providers, and lawmakers, Campus Sexual Assault seeks to put an end to the silence around sexual trauma by giving voice to those closest to it and providing tools for others to hear with—and to act on.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 18, 2016

"Vagrant Nation"

New from Oxford University Press: Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s by Risa Goluboff.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1950s America, it was remarkably easy for police to arrest almost anyone for almost any reason. The criminal justice system-and especially the age-old law of vagrancy-served not only to maintain safety and order but also to enforce conventional standards of morality and propriety. A person could be arrested for sporting a beard, making a speech, or working too little. Yet by the end of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were discredited and American society was fundamentally transformed. What happened?

In Vagrant Nation, Risa Goluboff answers that question by showing how constitutional challenges to vagrancy laws shaped the multiple movements that made "the 1960s." Vagrancy laws were so broad and flexible that they made it possible for the police to arrest anyone out of place: Beats and hippies; Communists and Vietnam War protestors; racial minorities and civil rights activists; gays, single women, and prostitutes. As hundreds of these "vagrants" and their lawyers challenged vagrancy laws in court, the laws became a flashpoint for debates about radically different visions of order and freedom.

Goluboff's compelling account of those challenges rewrites the history of the civil rights, peace, gay rights, welfare rights, sexual, and cultural revolutions. As Goluboff links the human stories of those arrested to the great controversies of the time, she makes coherent an era that often seems chaotic. She also powerfully demonstrates how ordinary people, with the help of lawyers and judges, can change the meaning of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court's 1972 decision declaring vagrancy laws unconstitutional continues to shape conflicts between police power and constitutional rights, including clashes over stop-and-frisk, homelessness, sexual freedom, and public protests. Since the downfall of vagrancy law, battles over what, if anything, should replace it, like battles over the legacy of the sixties transformations themselves, are far from over.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

"We Are an African People"

New from Oxford University Press: We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination by Russell J. Rickford.

About the book, from the publisher:
During the height of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, dozens of Pan African nationalist private schools, from preschools to post-secondary ventures, appeared in urban settings across the United States. The small, independent enterprises were often accused of teaching hate and were routinely harassed by authorities. Yet these institutions served as critical mechanisms for transmitting black consciousness. Founded by activist-intellectuals and other radicalized veterans of the civil rights movement, the schools strove not simply to bolster the academic skills and self-esteem of inner-city African-American youth but also to decolonize minds and foster a vigorous and regenerative sense of African identity.

In We Are An African People, historian Russell Rickford traces the intellectual lives of these autonomous black institutions, established dedicated to pursuing the self-determination that the integrationist civil rights movement had failed to provide. Influenced by Third World theorists and anticolonial campaigns, organizers of the schools saw formal education as a means of creating a vanguard of young activists devoted to the struggle for black political sovereignty throughout the world. Most of the institutions were short-lived, and they offered only modest numbers of children a genuine alternative to substandard, inner-city public schools. Yet their stories reveal much about Pan Africanism as a social and intellectual movement and as a key part of an indigenous black nationalism.

Rickford uses this largely forgotten movement to explore a particularly fertile period of political, cultural, and social revitalization that strove to revolutionize African American life and envision an alternate society. Reframing the post-civil rights era as a period of innovative organizing, he depicts the prelude to the modern Afrocentric movement and contributes to the ongoing conversation about urban educational reform, race, and identity.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

"Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso"

New from Oxford University Press: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross.

About the book, from the publisher:
Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class, black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest.

As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial-which spanned several months-were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the black community to public attention. At the same time, the mixed race of the victim and one of his assailants exacerbated anxieties over the purity of whiteness in the post-Reconstruction era.

In Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso, historian Kali Nicole Gross uses detectives' notes, trial and prison records, local newspapers, and other archival documents to reconstruct this ghastly whodunit crime in all its scandalous detail. In doing so, she gives the crime context by analyzing it against broader evidence of police treatment of black suspects and violence within the black community.

A fascinating work of historical recreation, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is sure to captivate anyone interested in true crime, adulterous love triangles gone wrong, and the racially volatile world of post-Reconstruction Philadelphia.
Visit Kali Nicole Gross's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 15, 2016

"Constructive Feminism"

New from Cornell University Press: Constructive Feminism: Women's Spaces and Women's Rights in the American City by Daphne Spain.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Constructive Feminism, Daphne Spain examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism's second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men. Placing the women's movement of the 1970s in the context of other social movements that have changed the use of urban space, Spain argues that reform feminists used the legal system to end the mandatory segregation of women and men in public institutions, while radical activists created small-scale places that gave women the confidence to claim their rights to the public sphere.

Women’s centers, bookstores, health clinics, and domestic violence shelters established feminist places for women’s liberation in Boston, Los Angeles, and many other cities. Unable to afford their own buildings, radicals adapted existing structures to serve as women’s centers that fostered autonomy, health clinics that promoted reproductive rights, bookstores that connected women to feminist thought, and domestic violence shelters that protected their bodily integrity. Legal equal opportunity reforms and daily practices of liberation enhanced women’s choices in education and occupations. Once the majority of wives and mothers had joined the labor force, by the mid-1980s, new buildings began to emerge that substituted for the unpaid domestic tasks once performed in the home. Fast food franchises, childcare facilities, adult day centers, and hospices were among the inadvertent spatial consequences of the second wave.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 14, 2016

"Wisdom's Workshop"

New from Princeton University Press: Wisdom's Workshop: The Rise of the Modern University by James Axtell.

About the book, from the publisher:
When universities began in the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory IX described them as "wisdom's special workshop." He could not have foreseen how far these institutions would travel and develop. Tracing the eight-hundred-year evolution of the elite research university from its roots in medieval Europe to its remarkable incarnation today, Wisdom's Workshop places this durable institution in sweeping historical perspective. In particular, James Axtell focuses on the ways that the best American universities took on Continental influences, developing into the finest expressions of the modern university and enviable models for kindred institutions worldwide. Despite hand-wringing reports to the contrary, the venerable university continues to renew itself, becoming ever more indispensable to society in the United States and beyond.

Born in Europe, the university did not mature in America until the late nineteenth century. Once its heirs proliferated from coast to coast, their national role expanded greatly during World War II and the Cold War. Axtell links the legacies of European universities and Tudor-Stuart Oxbridge to nine colonial and hundreds of pre–Civil War colleges, and delves into how U.S. universities were shaped by Americans who studied in German universities and adapted their discoveries to domestic conditions and goals. The graduate school, the PhD, and the research imperative became and remain the hallmarks of the American university system and higher education institutions around the globe.

A rich exploration of the historical lineage of today's research universities, Wisdom's Workshop explains the reasons for their ascendancy in America and their continued international preeminence.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 13, 2016

"The Silk Roads: A New History of the World"

New from Knopf: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan.

About the book, from the publisher:
The epic history of the crossroads of the world—the meeting place of East and West and the birthplace of civilization

It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

Peter Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. He vividly re-creates the emergence of the first cities in Mesopotamia and the birth of empires in Persia, Rome and Constantinople, as well as the depredations by the Mongols, the transmission of the Black Death and the violent struggles over Western imperialism. Throughout the millennia, it was the appetite for foreign goods that brought East and West together, driving economies and the growth of nations.

From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts. Far more than a history of the Silk Roads, this book is truly a revelatory new history of the world, promising to destabilize notions of where we come from and where we are headed next.
Visit Peter Frankopan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 12, 2016

"Engineers of Jihad"

New from Princeton University Press: Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education by Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog.

About the book, from the publisher:
The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent.

Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism?

Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism.

Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 11, 2016

"The Gumilev Mystique"

New from Cornell University Press: The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia by Mark Bassin.

About the book,from the publisher:
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the legacy of the historian, ethnographer, and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992) has attracted extraordinary interest in Russia and beyond. The son of two of modern Russia's greatest poets, Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev spent thirteen years in Stalinist prison camps, and after his release in 1956 remained officially outcast and professionally shunned. Out of the tumult of perestroika, however, his writings began to attract attention and he himself became a well-known and popular figure.

Despite his highly controversial (and often contradictory) views about the meaning of Russian history, the nature of ethnicity, and the dynamics of interethnic relations, Gumilev now enjoys a degree of admiration and adulation matched by few if any other public intellectual figures in the former Soviet Union. He is freely compared to Albert Einstein and Karl Marx, and his works today sell millions of copies and have been adopted as official textbooks in Russian high schools. Universities and mountain peaks alike are named in his honor, and a statue of him adorns a prominent thoroughfare in a major city. Leading politicians, President Vladimir Putin very much included, are unstinting in their deep appreciation for his legacy, and one of the most important foreign-policy projects of the Russian government today is clearly inspired by his particular vision of how the Eurasian peoples formed a historical community.

In The Gumilev Mystique, Mark Bassin presents an analysis of this remarkable phenomenon. He investigates the complex structure of Gumilev's theories, revealing how they reflected and helped shape a variety of academic as well as political and social discourses in the USSR, and he traces how his authority has grown yet greater across the former Soviet Union. The themes he highlights while untangling Gumilev's complicated web of influence are critical to understanding the political, intellectual, and ethno-national dynamics of Russian society from the age of Stalin to the present day.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

"Accidental Activists"

New from Cornell University Press: Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea by Celeste L. Arrington.

About the book, from the publisher:
Government wrongdoing or negligence harms people worldwide, but not all victims are equally effective at obtaining redress. In Accidental Activists, Celeste L. Arrington examines the interactive dynamics of the politics of redress to understand why not. Relatively powerless groups like redress claimants depend on support from political elites, active groups in society, the media, experts, lawyers, and the interested public to capture democratic policymakers' attention and sway their decisions. Focusing on when and how such third-party support matters, Arrington finds that elite allies may raise awareness about the victims’ cause or sponsor special legislation, but their activities also tend to deter the mobilization of fellow claimants and public sympathy. By contrast, claimants who gain elite allies only after the difficult and potentially risky process of mobilizing societal support tend to achieve more redress, which can include official inquiries, apologies, compensation, and structural reforms.

Arrington draws on her extensive fieldwork to illustrate these dynamics through comparisons of the parallel Japanese and South Korean movements of victims of harsh leprosy control policies, blood products tainted by hepatitis C, and North Korean abductions. Her book thereby highlights how citizens in Northeast Asia—a region grappling with how to address Japan’s past wrongs—are leveraging similar processes to hold their own governments accountable for more recent harms. Accidental Activists also reveals the growing power of litigation to promote policy change and greater accountability from decision makers.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

"The Soul of Armies"

New from Cornell University Press: The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the US and UK by Austin Long.

About the book,from the publisher:
For both the United States and United Kingdom counterinsurgency was a serious component of security policy during the Cold War and, along with counterterrorism, has been the greatest security challenge after September 11, 2001. In The Soul of Armies Austin Long compares and contrasts counterinsurgency operations during the Cold War and in recent years by three organizations: the US Army, the US Marine Corps, and the British Army.

Long argues that the formative experiences of these three organizations as they professionalized in the nineteenth century has produced distinctive organizational cultures that shape operations. Combining archival research on counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam and Kenya with the author's personal experience as a civilian advisor to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Soul of Armies demonstrates that the US Army has persistently conducted counterinsurgency operations in a very different way from either the US Marine Corps or the British Army. These differences in conduct have serious consequences, affecting the likelihood of success, the potential for civilian casualties and collateral damage, and the ability to effectively support host nation governments. Long concludes counterinsurgency operations are at best only a partial explanation for success or failure.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 8, 2016

"Seeking Good Debate"

New from the University of California Press: Seeking Good Debate: Religion, Science, and Conflict in American Public Life by Michael S. Evans.

About the book, from the publisher:
Why do religion and science often appear in conflict in America’s public sphere? In Seeking Good Debate, Michael S. Evans examines the results from the first-ever study to combine large-scale empirical analysis of some of our foremost religion and science debates with in-depth research into what Americans actually want in the public sphere. The surprising finding is that apparent conflicts involving religion and science reflect a more fundamental conflict between media elites and ordinary Americans over what is good debate. For elite representatives, good debate advances an agenda, but, as Evans shows, for many Americans it is defined by engagement and deliberation. This hidden conflict over what constitutes debate’s proper role diminishes the possibility for science and religion to be discussed meaningfully in public life. Challenging our understanding of science, religion, and conflict, Seeking Good Debate raises profound questions about the future of the public sphere and American democracy.
Michael S.Evans is a Neukom Fellow at the Neukom Institute for Computational Science, Dartmouth College. He received a PhD in sociology from the Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, February 7, 2016

"Occupational Hazards"

New from Stanford University Press: Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China by Elanah Uretsky.

About the book, from the publisher:
Doing business in China can be hazardous to your health. Occupational Hazards follows a group of Chinese businessmen and government officials as they conduct business in Beijing and western Yunnan Province, exposing webs of informal networks that help businessmen access political favors. These networks are built over liquor, cigarettes, food, and sex, turning risky behaviors into occupational hazards.

Elanah Uretsky's ethnography follows these powerful men and their vulnerabilities to China's burgeoning epidemics of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS. Examining the relationship between elite masculine networking practices and vulnerability to HIV infection, Occupational Hazards includes the stories of countless government officials and businessmen who regularly visit commercial sex workers but resist HIV testing for fear of threatening their economic and political status. Their fate is further complicated by a political system that cannot publicly acknowledge such risk and by authoritative international paradigms that limit the reach of public health interventions. Ultimately, Uretsky offers insights into how complex socio-cultural and politico-economic negotiations affect the development and administration of China's HIV epidemic.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, February 6, 2016

"Christians under Covers"

New from the University of California Press: Christians under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet by Kelsy Burke

About the book, from the publisher:
Christians under Covers shifts how scholars and popular media talk about religious conservatives and sex. Moving away from debates over homosexuality, premarital sex, and other perceived sexual sins, Kelsy Burke examines Christian sexuality websites to show how some evangelical Christians use digital media to promote the idea that God wants married, heterosexual couples to have satisfying sex lives. These evangelicals maintain their religious beliefs while incorporating feminist and queer language into their talk of sexuality—encouraging sexual knowledge, emphasizing women’s pleasure, and justifying marginal sexual practices within Christian marriages. This illuminating ethnography complicates the boundaries between normal and subversive, empowered and oppressed, and sacred and profane.
Kelsy Burke is Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Norbert College.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, February 5, 2016

"Crowds and Party"

New from Verso Books: Crowds and Party by Jodi Dean.

About the book, from the publisher:
How do mass protests become an organized activist collective?

Crowds and Party channels the energies of the riotous crowds who took to the streets in the past five years into an argument for the political party. Rejecting the emphasis on individuals and multitudes, Jodi Dean argues that we need to rethink the collective subject of politics. When crowds appear in spaces unauthorized by capital and the state—such as in the Occupy movement in New York, London and across the world—they create a gap of possibility. But too many on the Left remain stuck in this beautiful moment of promise—they argue for more of the same, further fragmenting issues and identities, rehearsing the last thirty years of left-wing defeat. In Crowds and Party, Dean argues that previous discussions of the party have missed its affective dimensions, the way it operates as a knot of unconscious processes and binds people together. Dean shows how we can see the party as an organization that can reinvigorate political practice.
Visit Jodi Dean's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, February 4, 2016

"The Separation Solution?"

New from the University of California Press: The Separation Solution?: Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality by Juliet A. Williams.

About the book, from the publisher:
Since the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of interest in single-sex education across the United States, and many public schools have created all-boys and all-girls classes for students in grades K through 12. The Separation Solution? provides an in-depth analysis of controversies sparked by recent efforts to separate boys and girls at school. Reviewing evidence from research studies, court cases, and hundreds of news media reports on local single-sex initiatives, Juliet Williams offers fresh insight into popular conceptions of the nature and significance of gender differences in education and beyond.
Juliet A. Williams is Professor of Gender Studies and Associate Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA. She is also the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Power and contributing coeditor of Public Affairs: Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

"Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium"

New from Oxford University Press: Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual by Claudia Rapp.

About the book, from the publisher:
Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control.

Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

"Waste Away"

New from the University of California Press: Waste Away: Working and Living with a North American Landfill by Joshua O. Reno.

About the book, from the publisher:
Though we are the most wasteful people in the history of the world, very few of us know what becomes of our waste. In Waste Away, Joshua O. Reno reveals how North Americans have been shaped by their preferred means of disposal: sanitary landfill. Based on the author’s fieldwork as a common laborer at a large, transnational landfill on the outskirts of Detroit, the book argues that waste management helps our possessions and dwellings to last by removing the transient materials they shed and sending them elsewhere. Ethnography conducted with waste workers shows how they conceal and contain other people’s wastes, all while negotiating the filth of their occupation, holding on to middle-class aspirations, and occasionally scavenging worthwhile stuff from the trash. Waste Away also traces the circumstances that led one community to host two landfills and made Michigan a leading importer of foreign waste. Focusing on local activists opposed to the transnational waste trade with Canada, the book’s ethnography analyzes their attempts to politicize the removal of waste out of sight that many take for granted. Documenting these different ways of relating to the management of North American rubbish, Waste Away demonstrates how the landfills we create remake us in turn, often behind our backs and beneath our notice.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, February 1, 2016

"Dwelling in Conflict"

New from Stanford University Press: Dwelling in Conflict: Negev Landscapes and the Boundaries of Belonging by Emily McKee.

About the book, from the publisher:
Land disputes in Israel are most commonly described as stand-offs between distinct groups of Arabs and Jews. In Israel's southern region, the Negev, Jewish and Bedouin Arab citizens and governmental bodies contest access to land for farming, homes, and industry and struggle over the status of unrecognized Bedouin villages. "Natural," immutable divisions, both in space and between people, are too frequently assumed within these struggles.

Dwelling in Conflict offers the first study of land conflict and environment based on extensive fieldwork within both Arab and Jewish settings. It explores planned towns for Jews and for Bedouin Arabs, unrecognized villages, and single-family farmsteads, as well as Knesset hearings, media coverage, and activist projects. Emily McKee sensitively portrays the impact that dividing lines—both physical and social—have on residents. She investigates the political charge of people's everyday interactions with their environments and the ways in which basic understandings of people and "their" landscapes drive political developments. While recognizing deep divisions, McKee also takes seriously the social projects that residents engage in to soften and challenge socio-environmental boundaries. Ultimately, Dwelling in Conflict highlights opportunities for boundary crossings, revealing both contemporary segregation and the possible mutability of these dividing lines in the future.
--Marshal Zeringue