"Revolutionary Warfare"

New from Cornell University Press: Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency by Terrence G. Peterson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Revolutionary Warfare investigates how efforts to counter a revolution could also be revolutionary. The Algerian War fractured the French Empire, destroyed the legitimacy of colonial rule, and helped launch the Third Worldist movement for the liberation of the Global South. By tracing how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of radical social transformation, Terrence G. Peterson reveals that the conflict also helped to transform the nature of modern warfare.

The French war effort was never defined solely by repression. As Peterson details, it also sought to fashion new forms of surveillance and social control that could capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Hygiene and medical aid efforts, youth sports and education programs, and psychological warfare campaigns all attempted to remake Algerian social structures and bind them more closely to the French state. In tracing the emergence of such programs, Peterson reframes the French war effort as a project of armed social reform that sought not to preserve colonial rule unchanged, but to revolutionize it in order to preserve it against the global challenges of decolonization.

Revolutionary Warfare demonstrates how French officers' efforts to transform warfare into an exercise in social engineering not only shaped how the Algerian War unfolded from its earliest months, but also helped to forge a paradigm of warfare that dominated strategic thinking during the Cold War and after: counterinsurgency.

Visit Terrence G. Peterson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Prime Ministerial Court"

New from Oxford University Press: The Prime Ministerial Court: Conservative Statecraft in the Twenty-First Century by R. A. W. Rhodes.

About the book, from the publisher:

Court politics is about who in British government did what to whom, when, how, why, and with what consequences.

In The Prime Ministerial Court Rod Rhodes provides a thorough depiction of the court politics of the Conservative governments of the twenty-first century, namely the courts of David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson. Exploring specific topics, including the courtiers, the prime minister's craft, reshuffles, resignations, and leadership challenges, and the political games and feuds in the court between ministers, advisers, and civil servants, Rhodes concludes that the British government has a new Establishment in which the skills of 'knavery' abound. He finds evidence of betrayal, revenge, lying, scandals, and bullying with such machinations oiled by gossip, humour, and alcohol.

Analysing the everyday practice of the 'dark arts' by the British political and administrative elite, each chapter includes a short case study of the court in action, covering the education wars, the 2018 election, and the Covid-19 crisis. Each case illustrates the personal, electoral, and governmental consequences of court politics.

Rhodes warns that there are more and more knaves, decency is in decline, and British government needs 'rules for rulers'. Above all, he cautions citizens - 'beware, here be dragons'.

Visit R. A. W. Rhodes's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Policing Patients"

New from Princeton University Press: Policing Patients: Treatment and Surveillance on the Frontlines of the Opioid Crisis by Elizabeth Chiarello.

About the book, from the publisher:

A book that takes you inside the culture of surveillance that pits healthcare providers against their patients

Doctors and pharmacists make critical decisions every day about whether to dispense opioids that alleviate pain but fuel addiction. Faced with a drug crisis that has already claimed more than a million lives, legislatures, courts, and policymakers have enlisted the help of technology in the hopes of curtailing prescriptions and preventing deaths. This book reveals how this “Trojan horse” technology embeds the logics of surveillance in the practice of medicine, forcing care providers to police their patients while undermining public trust and doing untold damage to those at risk.

Elizabeth Chiarello draws on hundreds of in-depth interviews with physicians, pharmacists, and enforcement agents across the United States to take readers to the frontlines of the opioid crisis, where medical providers must make difficult choices between treating and punishing the people in their care. States now employ prescription drug monitoring programs capable of tracking all controlled substances within a state and across state lines. Chiarello describes how the reliance on these databases blurs the line between medicine and criminal justice and pits pain sufferers against people with substance-use disorders in a zero-sum game.

Shedding critical light on this brave new world of healthcare, Policing Patients urges medical providers to reaffirm their roles as healers and proposes invaluable policy solutions centered on treatment, prevention, and harm reduction.

Visit Liz Chiarello's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Africa and Preferential Trade"

New from Stanford University Press: Africa and Preferential Trade: An Unpredictable Path for Development by Richard E. Mshomba.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nonreciprocal preferential trade arrangements are a defining feature of the relationship between developed and developing countries dating back to the colonial era. In the late 1950s, these arrangements started to take a multilateral form when members of the European Economic Community established special trade arrangements with their colonies. Since then, several trade arrangements have featured African countries among the preference-receiving countries. Yet it is not always clear how preferential these arrangements are and whether they in fact help African countries or instead lead them to perpetual dependence on specific markets and products. Richard E. Mshomba carefully examines the history of these programs and their salient features. He analyzes negotiations between the EU and African countries to form Economic Partnership Agreements. Nonreciprocal preferential trade arrangements are often unpredictable, since the duration and magnitude of preferences are at the discretion of the preference-giving countries. However, when used in conjunction with other development programs and with laws and regulations that encourage long-term investment and protect employees, they can increase economic opportunities and foster human development. This book recognizes the potential impact of nonreciprocal preferential trade arrangements and provides recommendations to increase their viability.

Richard E. Mshomba is Professor Emeritus of Economics at La Salle University. Born and raised in Arusha, Tanzania, he is the author of Africa in the Global Economy (2000), Africa and the World Trade Organization (2009), and Economic Integration in Africa (2017).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The End of Engagement"

New from Oxford University Press: The End of Engagement: America's China and Russia Experts and U.S. Strategy Since 1989 by David M. McCourt.

About the book, from the publisher:

After the Cold War, America's leaders hoped Russia and China could be integrated into the rules-based international order and might even become more like the West. By the late 2010s, their optimism was dead. In The End of Engagement, David M. McCourt traces the intense personal, professional, and policy struggles over China and Russia in U.S. foreign policy since 1989. Drawing on 170 original interviews with America's China and Russia experts--from former policymakers and diplomats to prominent think tankers and academics--McCourt chronicles the rise and recent fall of "engagement" with Beijing and Moscow. While there are numerous explanations for why America moved away from engagement with China and Russia in the last decade, McCourt shows that none consider how important foreign policy knowledge communities have been in impacting policy. Adopting a unique, sociological perspective, this book offers an intimate look into the world of America's national security experts as they have struggled to make sense of changes in China and Russia and the remaining question of what comes next.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Great Reversal"

New from Yale University Press: The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power by Kerry Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:

A vivid history of the relationship between Britain and China, from 1600 to the present

The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time?

From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full. Britain has always sought to dominate China economically and politically, while China’s ideas and exports—from tea and Chinoiserie to porcelain and silk—have continued to fascinate in the west. But by the later twentieth century, the balance of power began to shift in China’s favour, with global consequences. Brown shows how these interactions changed the world order—and argues that an understanding of Britain’s relationship with China is now more vital than ever.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Women and Their Warlords"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Women and Their Warlords: Domesticating Militarism in Modern China by Kate Merkel-Hess.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores the complex history and legacy of elite wives, concubines, and daughters of warlords in twentieth-century China.

In Women and Their Warlords, historian Kate Merkel-Hess examines the lives and personalities of the female relatives of the military rulers who governed regions of China from 1916 to 1949. Posing for candid photographs and sitting for interviews, these women did not merely advance male rulers’ agendas. They advocated for social and political changes, gave voice to feminist ideas, and shaped how the public perceived them. As the first publicly political partners in modern China, the wives and concubines of Republican-era warlords changed how people viewed elite women’s engagement in politics. Drawing on popular media sources, including magazine profiles and gossip column items, Merkel-Hess draws unexpected connections between militarism, domestic life, and state power in this insightful new account of gender and authority in twentieth-century China.

Writers Read: Kate Merkel-Hess (May 2009).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Politics of Love"

New from Cornell University Press: The Politics of Love: Gender and Nation in Nineteenth-Century Poland by Natalie Cornett.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Politics of Love describes the history of Polish intellectual and cultural life, which covertly flourished at home and abroad despite imperial repression between Poland's two great uprisings in 1830–1831 and 1863. Natalie Cornett focuses her study on a group of educated women known as the "Enthusiasts" (Entuzjastki), who were united by their commitment to live as independent women despite the intense nationalism that put the nation above all―including class and gender.

The Enthusiasts, led by Narcyza Żmichowska, emphasized sororal love and homosocial bonding in their program to contest both an oppressive imperial regime and constrictive gender roles. Their affective relationships with each other and their decision to remain unmarried, childless, or divorced violated accepted conventions and the patriotic emphasis on the Polish family. By drawing on a large corpus of their letters, diaries, police files, and published works, Cornett describes the Enthusiast movement from its emergence in the 1840s to the death of Narcyza Żmichowska, in 1876.

The Politics of Love describes how the Polish intelligentsia was so monomaniacally focused on the struggle for independence that discussion of other social questions was dismissed as "unpatriotic." Its dismissal of the Enthusiasts as socially deviant, despite the Enthusiasts' support for the national cause, reveals the limitations of nationalism as a binding agent and demonstrates how Polish women appropriated and contributed ideas about women's emancipation, nationalism, and religion in a globalizing era of increasing literacy and transnational exchange.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Laissez-Faire Experiment"

New from Princeton University Press: The Laissez-Faire Experiment: Why Britain Embraced and Then Abandoned Small Government, 1800–1914 by W. Walker Hanlon.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why Britain’s attempt at small government proved unable to cope with the challenges of the modern world

In the nineteenth century, as Britain attained a leading economic and political position in Europe, British policymakers embarked on a bold experiment with small and limited government. By the outbreak of the First World War, however, this laissez-faire philosophy of government had been abandoned and the country had taken its first steps toward becoming a modern welfare state. This book tells the story of Britain’s laissez-faire experiment, examining why it was done, how it functioned, and why it was ultimately rejected in favor of a more interventionist form of governance.

Blending insights from modern economic theory with a wealth of historical evidence, W. Walker Hanlon traces the slow expansion of government intervention across a broad spectrum of government functions in order to understand why and how Britain gave up on laissez-faire. It was not abandoned because Britain’s leaders lost faith in small government as some have suggested, nor did it collapse under the growing influence of working-class political power. Instead, Britain’s move away from small government was a pragmatic and piecemeal response—by policymakers who often deeply believed in laissez-faire—to the economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution.

Visit Walker Hanlon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Power of Black Excellence"

New from Oxford University Press: The Power of Black Excellence: HBCUs and the Fight for American Democracy by Deondra Rose.

About the book, from the publisher:

A powerful and revealing history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which have been essential for empowering Black citizens and for the ongoing fight for democracy in the US.

From their founding, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) educated as many as 90 percent of Black college students in the United States. Although many are aware of the significance of HBCUs in expanding Black Americans' educational opportunities, much less attention has been paid to the vital role that they have played in enhancing American democracy.

In The Power of Black Excellence, Deondra Rose provides an authoritative history of HBCUs and the unique role they have played in shaping American democracy since 1837. Drawing on over six years of deep research, Rose brings into view the historic impact that government support for HBCUs has had on the American political landscape, arguing that they have been essential for not only empowering Black citizens but also reshaping the distribution of political power in the United States. Rose challenges the conventional wisdom that, prior to the late twentieth century, the federal government took a laissez-faire approach to education. Instead, governmental action contributed to the expansion of HBCUs in an era plagued by racist policies and laws. Today, HBCUs remain extremely important, as evidenced by the outsized number of black political leaders--including Kamala Harris--who attended them. Rose stresses that policymakers promote democracy itself when they support HBCUs and their unique approach to postsecondary education, which includes a commitment to helping students develop politically empowering skills, promoting political leadership, and fostering a commitment to service.

A fresh look into the relationship between education and democracy, The Power of Black Excellence is essential reading for anyone interested not just in HBCUs, but the broader trajectory of Black citizenship in American history.

Visit Deondra Rose's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Labors of Love"

New from Stanford University Press: Labors of Love: Gender, Capitalism, and Democracy in Modern Arab Thought by Susanna Ferguson.

About the book, from the publisher:

How to raise a child became a central concern of intellectual debate from Cairo to Beirut over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Intimately linked with discussions around capitalism and democracy, considerations about women, gender, and childrearing emerged as essential to modern social theory. Arab writers, particularly women, made sex, the body, and women's ethical labor central to fending off European imperial advances, instituting representative politics, and managing social order. Labors of Love traces the political power of motherhood and childrearing in Arabic thought. Susanna Ferguson reveals how debates around raising children became foundational to feminist, Islamist, and nationalist politics alike—opening up conversations about civilization, society, freedom, temporality, labor, and democracy. While these debates led to expansions in girls' education and women writers' authority, they also attached the fate of nations to women's unwaged labor in the home. Ferguson thus reveals why women and the family have been stumbling blocks for representative regimes around the world. She shows how Arab women's writing speaks to global questions—the devaluation of social reproduction under capitalism, the stubborn maleness of the liberal subject, and why the naturalization of embodied, binary gender difference has proven so difficult to overcome.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Health Freaks"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness by Travis A. Weisse.

About the book, from the publisher:

Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation's collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease, Weisse argues that millions of Americans sought "fad" diets—such as the notorious Atkins program which ushered in the low-carbohydrate craze—to wrest control of their health from pessimistic doctors and lifelong pharmaceutical regimens.

Drawing on novel archival sources and a wide variety of popular media, Weisse shows the lengths to which twentieth-century American dieters went to heal themselves outside the borders of orthodox medicine and the subsequent political and scientific backlash they received. Through colorful profiles of the leaders of four major diet movements, Health Freaks demonstrates that these diet gurus weren't shady snake oil salesmen preying on the vulnerable; rather, they were vocal champions for millions of frustrated Americans seeking longer, healthier lives.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Reading Practice"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print by Melissa Reynolds.

About the book, from the publisher:

Through portraits of readers and their responses to texts, Reading Practice reconstructs the contours of the knowledge economy that shaped medicine and science in early modern England.

Reading Practice tells the story of how ordinary people grew comfortable learning from commonplace manuscripts and printed books, such as almanacs, medical recipe collections, and herbals. From the turn of the fifteenth century to the close of the sixteenth century, these were the books English people read when they wanted to attend to their health or understand their place in the universe. Before then, these works had largely been the purview of those who could read Latin. Around 1400, however, medical and scientific texts became available in Middle English while manuscripts became less expensive. These vernacular manuscripts invited their readers into a very old and learned conversation: Hippocrates and Galen weren’t distant authorities whose word was law, they were trusted guides, whose advice could be excerpted, rearranged, recombined, and even altered to suit a manuscript compiler’s needs. This conversation continued even after the printing press arrived in England in 1476. Printers mined manuscripts for medical and scientific texts that they would publish throughout the sixteenth century, though the pressures of a commercial printing market encouraged printers to package these old texts in new ways. Without the weight of authority conditioning their reactions and responses to very old knowledge, and with so many editions of practical books to choose from, English readers grew into confident critics and purveyors of natural knowledge in their own right.

Melissa Reynolds reconstructs shifting attitudes toward medicine and science over two centuries of seismic change within English culture, attending especially to the effects of the Reformation on attitudes toward nature and the human body. Her study shows how readers learned to be discerning and selective consumers of knowledge gradually, through everyday interactions with utilitarian books.

Visit Melissa Reynolds's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hacking Hybrid Media"

New from Oxford University Press: Hacking Hybrid Media: Power and Practice in an Age of Manipulation by Stephen R. Barnard.

About the book, from the publisher:

The contemporary public sphere is rife with problematic information, but on what terms are manipulators able to garner attention in the hybrid media system? In Hacking Hybrid Media, Stephen R. Barnard examines how networked media capital is changing the fields of politics and journalism. With a focus on the messaging strategies employed by Donald Trump and his most vocal online supporters, Barnard provides a theoretically oriented and empirically grounded analysis of the ways today's media afford deceptive political communication. Analyzing data from prominent political events, Barnard shows how members of Trump's "digital army" use Facebook groups, Reddit forums, Twitter hashtags, YouTube channels, mass media, and more to shape the flow of disinformation in American media.

From the structures of social media platforms to the practices of political actors, Barnard offers a critical appraisal of media power and the capital required to wield it. He reflects not only on the tools and techniques of manipulative media campaigns, but also on the implications they hold for the future of journalism, politics, and democracy in the US and beyond. In striking a balance between social theory and empirical research, Hacking Hybrid Media shows how the emergent structures and practices of the contemporary media system shape how information flows, how meaning is made, and ultimately, how networked social influence works.

Visit Stephen R. Barnard's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Reconfiguring Refugees"

New from NYU Press: Reconfiguring Refugees: The US Retreat from Responsibility-Sharing by Alise Coen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Shows how domestic identity narratives and political polarization shape the sociopolitical response to refugees

The United States once played a major role in global refugee resettlement, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all refugees resettled worldwide. However, in recent years, it has dramatically cut refugee admissions and implemented discriminatory policies on refugee protection. These policies have been justified amid intensifying xenophobic rhetoric against specific groups.

In this book, Alise Coen explains why the monumental shift around refugee resettlement occurred, particularly in response to the high-profile conflict in Syria. She shows how refugees―and broader global migration debates―became contentious political issues in the US, revealing the many ways in which refugees have been increasingly weaponized as partisan symbols by Democrats and Republicans. The book calls attention to the power of rhetoric and identity narratives, and shows how the language used to talk about refugees fuels divisive policies.

From the years leading up to the Trump administration’s policies targeting Muslim refugees to debates during the Biden administration around who deserves access to asylum, Coen examines how ideas about race, gender, and nativism shape US approaches toward migration. As arguments for “closing the border” continue to gain traction and politicians continue to use global displacement issues to further their agendas, Reconfiguring Refugees explores the ideas, meanings, and policies that undermine and influence US responsibility-sharing.

Visit Alise Coen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause"

New from Princeton University Press: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans.

About the book, from the publisher:

Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Soviet authorities arrested dissidents, subjected them to bogus trials and vicious press campaigns, sentenced them to psychiatric hospitals and labor camps, sent them into exile—and transformed them into martyred heroes. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. Taking its title from a toast made at dissident gatherings, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.

Benjamin Nathans’s vivid narrative tells the dramatic story of the men and women who became dissidents—from Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn to many others who are virtually unknown today. Drawing on diaries, memoirs, personal letters, interviews, and KGB interrogation records, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause reveals how dissidents decided to use Soviet law to contain the power of the Soviet state. This strategy, as one of them put it, was “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.”

An extraordinary account of the Soviet dissident movement, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause shows how dissidents spearheaded the struggle to break free of the USSR’s totalitarian past, a struggle that continues in Putin’s Russia—and that illuminates other struggles between hopelessness and perseverance today.

--Marshal Zeringue