"The State of Lebanon"

New from Stanford University Press: The State of Lebanon: Popular Politics and Institution Building in the Wake of Independence by Ziad Abu-Rish.

About the book, from the publisher:

Lebanon gained its formal political independence in 1943. During the dozen years that followed, women and men across class, sectarian, geographic, and ideological divides built, challenged, and reformed the institutional arrangements that would shape the country. With this book, Ziad Abu-Rish traces shifting patterns of alliances and conflict that shaped the material and representational production of the Lebanese nation-state. Exploring labor regimes, women's suffrage, the provision of electricity in Beirut, public education, and the armed forces―and the meetings, lectures, pamphlets, delegations, and protests they produced―Abu-Rish demonstrates how elite and popular groups mobilized normative ideas about independence and state power.

The State of Lebanon offers a new social and institutional history of post-colonial Lebanon. Abu-Rish challenges common narratives of an absent, weak, or failed state. Instead, state institutional arrangements emerge as objects and subjects of political mobilization by politicians, bureaucrats, party activists, students, and workers. Rather than read history backward from the present, he approaches the past on its own terms. In so doing, Abu-Rish offers significant insights into politics, social life, and the state in Lebanon―grounded in the early post-independence period yet critical to how we understand Lebanon today.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Designing Global Economic Equality"

New from Oxford University Press: Designing Global Economic Equality: The Making and Unmaking of Global Egalitarian Politics at the United Nations: An Intellectual History by Christian Olaf Christiansen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Designing Global Economic Equality is an intellectual history of global inequality: a story of the rise and fall of ideas for global egalitarian politics, or global equality by design. Tracing the writings of United Nations thinkers and their intellectual environments, it contributes to historiographies on inequality, the UN, development, international relations theory, business in society, and neoliberalism. Drawing on sources from development economics, political science, and international relations to UN reports, newspaper articles, management literature, and interviews with contemporary UN experts, it investigates how vocabularies of global inequality shifted over time.

The book finds that from the 1940s onward, global economic inequality remained a persistent theme. Global egalitarians not only championed equality norms but also concrete instruments-especially development, redistribution, and restructuring-while remaining critical of both global economic hierarchies and the belief that markets alone would ensure equality. The 1970s marked the high point of efforts to design a global equality regime, only to see these hopes dismantled in the early 1980s with the rise of neoliberal globalization.

By the late 1990s, the failure of these policies paved the way for “inclusive capitalism,” a depoliticized approach to inequality. Yet global egalitarian ideas endured, and the UN continued to produce inequality statistics, set global norms, and foster international dialogue. In the wake of the 2007-2008 crises, as inequality debates re-emerged with force, familiar themes and warnings resurfaced. Offering a history of widening gaps and efforts to close them, this book tells a story from which we may still learn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Modernity in Argentina, 1776–1852"

New from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Modernity in Argentina, 1776–1852 by Adriana Novoa.

About the book, from the publisher:

As rigorous scientific and philosophical discourse circulated during the Enlightenment, aided by the Republic of Letters, a revolutionary understanding of gender emerged that would impact nation building in Europe and the Americas. In From Virile to Sterile, Adriana Novoa analyzes the cosmopolitan citizens of this metaphysical republic―an international community of scholars and literary figures―and the first universal modern male identity it established. By the end of the eighteenth century, she reveals, men’s role in society had fundamentally changed. This “man of letters” possessed a masculinity that was learned and shared―different from the warrior model of the past. The modern man represented a new notion of patriotism linked to knowledge and institutions that promoted intellectual dynamism, change, and self-transformation. For a conservativism that despised radical liberalism and its science, this new masculinity was degenerate and villainous, a sign of extinction and sterility. The virile man was stable and unchanging, his authority rooted in continuity and stability. Novoa explores this complex gendering of science, modernity, and civilization in Argentina during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how a universal characterization of masculinity shaped the politics of the River Plate Viceroyalty and later the creation of the Argentine Republic.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution"

New from Princeton University Press: The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History by Mark Peterson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative new history of America’s constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined

The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain’s constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain’s had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. This book charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today.

Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.

Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rogue States"

New from Cornell University Press: Rogue States: The Making of America's Global War on Terror by Matthew A. Frakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Rogue States, Matthew A. Frakes reveals the connection between US national security strategy at the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror. Throughout a series of crises from 1981 to 1991, the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush recognized that emerging threats to global security―terrorism, regional aggression, weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics trafficking―converged into a single growing phenomenon that they eventually called "rogue states." In confronting Libya, Panama, and Iraq, Reagan and Bush created the strategies that drove US national security after 9/11.

Frakes argues that Reagan and Bush's improvised responses to crises of terrorism, aggression, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction―culminating in the Gulf War of 1991―established a lasting enforcement role for the United States against rogue states in the post–Cold War world. The effort to redefine US national security around this threat created a new framework to guide the country's approach to global security after the Cold War―one that ensured after 9/11 that the War on Terror became a war on rogue states.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Gems and the New Science"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution by Michael Bycroft.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first book-length history of gems in early modern science offers a thought-provoking new take on the Scientific Revolution.

In Gems and the New Science, Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the “new science” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semiprecious stones were at the center of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investigate luminescence, electricity, combustion, chemical composition, and more. They were collected by naturalists; measured by mathematicians; and rubbed, burned, and dissolved by experimental philosophers. This led to the demise of the traditional way of classifying gems—which grouped them by transparency, color, and locality—and the turn to density, refraction, chemistry, and crystallography as more reliable guides for sorting these substances.

The science of gems shows that material evaluation was as important as material production in the history of science. It also shows the value of seeing science as the product of the interaction between different material worlds. The book begins by bringing these insights to bear on five themes of the Scientific Revolution. Each of the subsequent chapters deals with a major episode in early modern science, from the expansion of natural history in the sixteenth century to the emergence of applied science early in the nineteenth century. This important work is not only the first book-length history of the science of gems but also a fresh interpretation of the Scientific Revolution and an argument for using a new form of materialism to understand the evolution of science.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Democratic Falsehoods"

New from Oxford University Press: Democratic Falsehoods: Legitimate Fictions in Public Speech by Maxime Lepoutre.

About the book, from the publisher:

Falsehoods can gravely endanger democratic societies. When disinformation circulates widely, it can alter the outcome of elections, erode trust in democratic institutions, undermine support for critically important policies, or even incite violence. It is therefore natural to conclude that falsehoods should have no place whatsoever in democratic life.

Democratic Falsehoods argues that this conclusion is nevertheless too quick. Although many falsehoods pose a clear and serious democratic threat, other falsehoods are more benign, and others still can play an actively positive role within democratic public discourse. This book explores how falsehoods can contribute to performing key functions of democratic public discourse, such as countering hate speech, mobilising collective action, supporting just wars of self-defence, representing constituents, or even promoting public understanding of pressing scientific matters. Can falsehoods advance, rather than hinder, such goals? Under what conditions are they likely to do so? And when, if ever, is it permissible to deploy such falsehoods in a democratic society?

By investigating these questions, Democratic Falsehoods aims to show that falsehoods can sometimes play a legitimate role in democratic public life. It demonstrates, moreover, that some falsehoods are legitimate, not in spite of, but precisely because of our commitment to democracy. Finally, but crucially, it provides a comprehensive account of how these falsehoods differ from-and, indeed, can help to counteract-the dangerous falsehoods plaguing contemporary democracies.

Visit Maxime Lepoutre's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Answering to Us"

New from Princeton University Press: Answering to Us: Why Democracy Demands Accountability by Minh Ly.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new theory of democracy that emphasizes equal accountability and explains the crisis of democracy and authoritarianism as a misunderstanding of the popular will

Elected authoritarians lead governments that persecute minorities and attack the rule of law—and yet they claim to be democratic, because they hold elections said to represent the will of the people. In this urgent and revelatory book, Minh Ly challenges these authoritarian claims by proposing a new conception of democracy that is based not on a uniform popular will but on equal accountability: the idea that we must be equally empowered to hold our officials democratically accountable. Equal accountability requires the very rights and institutions—from freedom of the press and freedom to protest to independent courts and congressional oversight—that elected authoritarians threaten.

Drawing on political thinkers that include Herodotus, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, John Rawls, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Ly addresses issues that are both piercingly present and historically enduring. He challenges the widespread misconception that democracy is about carrying out the people’s will, as defined by the majority and executed by the president, arguing that this ignores the people’s diversity and enables the stigmatizing of minorities. Ly affirms that we must govern ourselves in a democracy—that we should be the ones ultimately in charge of our government. To be freely self-governing, we must be able to hold our government accountable not only in elections but also in office. Elected authoritarians, Ly contends, actively disempower us by taking away our rights and institutions to hold our government accountable. We must empower citizens with the resources and civic education to demand accountability and to exercise the vital democratic duties of oversight over our officials and solidarity with each other.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Beyond the Stadium"

New from Stanford University Press: Beyond the Stadium: How Sports Change the World by Andrew Bertoli.

About the book, from the publisher:

There are two popular and competing viewpoints on sports. Many consider them a mere distraction from important social and political problems. Others champion sports as a powerful force for good: teaching character, promoting peace, and encouraging racial and gender equality. Andrew Bertoli shows that these dominant perspectives underestimate the full extent to which sports impact modern life. Sports can worsen relations between nations, divide countries internally, and disadvantage individuals from underprivileged backgrounds. Sports can also, however, build social capital, make people feel more connected, and provide participants with physical and cognitive benefits. Much depends on how people approach sports, both at the individual and societal levels. This book highlights some of the profound and startling ways that sports and politics have interacted throughout recent history, including: how the Olympic torch relay was started by the Nazis and reflected Hitler's ambition to dominate Europe; the twentieth-century feminist movement to keep women out of the Olympics and the motivations of the female sports leaders who led it; how Michael Jordan's determination to stay out of politics during his career may have made him the most politically impactful athlete in history. Bertoli's insightful analysis challenges many conventional views while also helping readers understand how they can better utilize sports for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Visit Andrew Bertoli's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Limits of Revolution"

New from the University of Texas Press: The Limits of Revolution: Worker Citizens in a Bolivian Mining City by Elena McGrath.

About the book, from the publisher:

The role of Bolivian mining families in revolution and politics.

In 1952, Bolivia’s Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) swept into power, promising collective prosperity through class-based nationalism. The heroic symbol of the movement was the worker citizen—the formerly indigenous miner who would fuel economic development in a nationalized mining economy.

The Limits of Revolution explores this history from the worker barrios of the copper mining city of Corocoro. As the state walked back its promises of worker political power at the national level, mining men and women in Corocoro struggled—through protests, court battles, and barfights—to maintain the benefits of worker citizenship locally. After the MNR fell to a military dictatorship in 1964, however, families retreated to defending the nationalized mining company against an increasingly hostile state. In this battle to keep the revolution alive, the expansive potential of worker citizenship disappeared and old racial exclusions resurfaced. Largely forgotten today, Bolivia’s experience of revolution exposes the contradictions of postcolonial nationalism and sheds light on Latin America’s transition from Cold War–era class politics to twenty-first-century Pink Tide politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"1968: The Year the World Shook"

New from Oxford University Press: 1968: The Year the World Shook by Alexander Bloom.

About the book, from the publisher:

It has been called the year that changed everything, the postwar watershed in which the forces that shaped public and private life erupted, everywhere and all at once--New York, Paris, Prague, Mexico City. Beginning with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in January and continuing through the inauguration of Richard Nixon as president the following January, 1968 witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the irresistible rise of a rebellious spirit that questioned every form of authority. Each month brought a fresh wave of upheaval with shared undercurrents---deep frustrations, bold aspirations, and a growing conviction that change, whether peaceful and violent, was inevitable. Political unrest, civil rights struggles, anti-war protests, generational shifts: the causes were manifold and complex, yet their convergence was unmistakable.

Alexander Bloom captures the explosive energy of a world in upheaval, illuminating how the events of 1968 were driven by youth movements, inspired by music and the subversive pull of countercultural ideals, all of which transcended borders. In Prague, young people tuned into Western radio, embracing the same sounds and messages reverberating through London and San Francisco. Styles of dress, personal expression, and radical ideals spread rapidly, fueled by an expanding media. The revolution was in fact being televised, making distant struggles immediate and personal, and turning local movements into global moments.

Together, these forces made 1968 a year unlike any before or any since. For many, it felt as if the ground beneath them had shifted. Political and social transformation seemed not just possible but imminent, across the nation and around the world. Not all the promises or expectations of that year bore fruit and the backlash it generated remains with us. Still, it marked an irrevocable turning point in world history. In 1968, the world didn't just change---it shook to its core.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Company Towns"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Company Towns: Industry Power and the Historical Foundations of Public Mistrust by Elizabeth Mitchell Elder.

About the book, from the publisher:

Reveals the deep, historical roots of public distrust in former mining areas in the US, shedding new light on the corrosive feedback loops that persist today.

In Company Towns, Elizabeth Mitchell Elder examines the long-lasting political legacies of mining-company dominance in the Midwest and Appalachia. While the economic consequences of deindustrialization are well-known, Elder shifts the focus to a more insidious problem: the political dysfunction that took root long before the mines shut down.

Drawing on historical and administrative data, Elder shows that the coal industry hindered the growth of local government capacity in the places where it was dominant. Mining companies also engaged in outright corruption to shape local governments, practices which local elites then carried forward. When mining companies withdrew, they left behind not just economic decline, but local governments ill-equipped to govern.

These patterns have had enduring consequences for public life. Elder shows how these historical experiences have fueled a broader cynicism toward government, in which citizens expect little from public institutions and doubt the usefulness of elections. Company Towns underscores the consequences of corporate dominance for state capacity, public opinion, and democratic accountability today.

Visit Elizabeth Mitchell Elder's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No Restraint"

New from NYU Press: No Restraint: Disabled Children and Institutionalized Violence in America's Schools by Charles Bell.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wake-up call on the use and abuse of restraints against disabled children in public schools

Over 100,000 students are restrained and secluded in locked rooms throughout US public schools; the overwhelming majority are students with disabilities. Despite pleas from parents, disability rights organizations, and at least seventeen state Attorneys General, Congress has refused to pass laws to protect these students from the horrors of harmful restraint and seclusion practices. In No Restraint, Charles Bell argues that seclusion and restraint are so harmful and traumatic that they provoke night terrors, a profound aversion to school, and self-harm in children. Students reported being subjected to aggressive restraint tactics that left bruises on their arms and legs, dragged into seclusion rooms that resemble solitary confinement cells in prisons, and locked inside.

Featuring extensive interviews, ranging across fifteen states, with parents of Black and white children with disabilities as well as university teacher education program directors, Bell explores how parents of children with disabilities perceive the impact of school seclusion and restraint on their families and investigates how the training school officials receive contributes to the misuse of these practices. Among parents, the trauma associated with their child’s restraint and seclusion in school led to physical and mental health challenges, as well as long-term job loss as they advocated for their children. Additionally, as parents challenged harmful restraint and seclusion practices in legal proceedings, school officials often retaliated by filing claims with child protective services, targeting spouses employed within the district, and involving law enforcement.

A deeply moving and timely work, No Restraint exposes how schools function as structurally violent anti-disability institutions. This book will encourage school officials and policymakers to rethink harmful disciplinary strategies and craft stronger policy guidelines that protect children from these practices.

Visit Charles Bell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Political Economy of Security"

New from Princeton University Press: The Political Economy of Security by Stephen G. Brooks.

About the book, from the publisher:

The complex and multifaceted relationship between economic factors and conflict

In this book, Stephen Brooks provides a systematic empirical and theoretical examination of how economic factors influence security affairs. Empirically, he analyzes how economic variables of all kinds affect interstate war, terrorism, and civil war; in total, sixteen pathways are examined. Brooks shows that the relationship between economic factors and conflict is complex and multifaceted; discrete economic factors—such as international trade, economic development, and globalized manufacturing, to name a few—are sometimes helpful for promoting peace and stability, but at other times are detrimental. Brooks also develops a stronger theoretical foundation for guiding future research on the economics-security interaction. Drawing on Adam Smith, he provides a more complete range of answers to the three key conceptual questions analysts must consider: how economic goals relate to security goals; what economic factors to focus on; and how economic actors influence security policies.

Combining an innovative theoretical understanding with empirical rigor, Brooks’s account will reshape our understanding of the political economy of security.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kin Matters"

New from Oxford University Press: Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences by Robert A. Wilson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kin and kinship matter to us. We are social creatures and our kin or relatives are typically high on the list of those most important to us. Kin are those we care for and who care for us. Our family ties provide a sense of where and with whom we belong. Kin matters also impose boundaries on who we relate to and how, including in sexual and other intimate matters. The study of kinship has been a cornerstone of anthropology throughout its history, but kin matters matter beyond the confines of any academic discipline.

Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences examines three related themes in the philosophy of anthropology concerning kin matters: the nature of relations, incest and its avoidance, and the study of kinship in cultural anthropology. It develops an integrative framework for thinking about kin matters recognizing that that there should be much more fluidity between the cognitive, biological, and social sciences--the fragile sciences--than one typically finds both in those sciences and in philosophical reflection on them. Along the way, Kin Matters offers a novel account of relations, challenges culture-first explanations of incest avoidance, and advocates for a redirection in the study of kinship.

Kin Matters begins by reflecting on our standing as relational beings. We are creatures who actively relate to one another and our worlds to build social and other relationships. Much of that activity is biologically and psychologically mediated and so there is a ready-made place for each of the cognitive, biological, and social sciences in understanding ourselves as relational beings. We are also relatives: we have parents and often enough we have siblings and children. Kinship is something that changes over the course of our lives, but it is there literally from start to end. No wonder anthropologists early on made kin and the study of kinship pillars of their discipline. Yet current views of kinship in anthropology express a wariness of appeals to biology and psychology, and cultural anthropology has long pursued a separatist research strategy in kin matters. Kin Matters opens the way for a more integrative alternative.

Visit Rob Wilson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Robed Representatives"

New from Stanford University Press: Robed Representatives: How Black Judges Advocate in American Courts by Taneisha Means Davis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The number of Black state and federal judges has grown considerably in the post-Civil Rights Era. They are, in fact, the second most represented group of judges in the state and federal courts. Furthermore, historic appointments of Black men and women to the federal judiciary, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as generally increased calls for the diversification of the courts in recent years, have renewed questions about judicial representation. What does having more Black judges in courthouses and communities mean for the political representation of Black people and Black interests?

In Robed Representatives, Taneisha Means Davis offers new insights into the lives, identity politics, and actions of Black state court judges. The narratives centered in the book reveal an identity-to-politics link that exists among Black judges that lead them to represent their group interests. This link is corroborated with data that highlights numerous previously unidentified manifestations of racial representation in the legal system. Means Davis demonstrates that only through exploration of the lives, identities, and behaviors of historically underrepresented judges will it be possible to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the importance―and limitations―of racial diversity in the courts.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making Movement Modern"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Making Movement Modern: Science, Politics, and the Body in Motion by Whitney E. Laemmli.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores how researchers used systems for recording human movement to navigate the relationship between mind and body, freedom and control, and the individual and the state.

In the early twentieth century, human bodily movement garnered interest among researchers who were convinced that understanding and controlling it could help govern an increasingly frazzled, fragmented world. Making Movement Modern traces one movement visualization technique, Labanotation, from its origins in expressionist dance, Austro-Hungarian military discipline, and contemporary physiology to its employment in factories and offices a half-century later. Frustrated by societies that seemed plagued by regimentation and alienation, the users of Laban-inspired systems—from artists and scientists to factory owners, politicians, lawyers, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and computer scientists—hoped to provide opportunities for individual expression while simultaneously harnessing movement to serve the needs of larger communities, businesses, and states.

Making Movement Modern reveals how Labanotation’s creator, choreographer Rudolf Laban, and his acolytes offered this system to a surprising variety of individuals and groups. It was a technique that promised liberation through expressive movement; it was also a means of organizing fascist displays of pure “Aryan” culture. The book explores these political ambiguities as Laban-based systems entered postwar society in the United States and the United Kingdom, where they were used to document disappearing folk cultures, treat Holocaust survivors, and make even the dullest, most repetitive work feel spiritually meaningful. Central to these efforts were vast programs to collect and store new kinds of personal movement data, and this history also has much to tell us about mass data collection today. This is a book for anyone interested in the relationship between art, science, data, and the human body across the tumultuous twentieth century.

Visit Whitney E. Laemmli's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blood on the Wind"

New from Oxford University Press: Blood on the Wind: An Uncivil War in the Classic Maya Lowlands by James L. Fitzsimmons.

About the book, from the publisher:

The story most often commonly told about the Maya involves their spectacular collapse at the height of their civilization in the early ninth century CE. Crops died, disease and malnutrition spread, and scorched earth warfare became common. People lost faith in their governments and moved to the Caribbean coast, the mountains of Guatemala, or further afield. But there is another tale that is equally compelling. One hundred years earlier, a group of kings known as the Snakes created a League and were able to force, cajole, or convince their fellow rulers to work towards common causes. In so doing, they took the first small steps towards something that had never existed in the Maya area: an empire.

Blood on the Wind narrates this dramatic episode during the Classic Maya period (250-850 CE). From present-day central Mexico across central America, the League attempted to subdue their enemies and transition to an imperial force. In the heart of the lowlands, they created soaring temples, luxurious palaces, and public spaces that continue to captivate visitors to this region. Despite their achievements, a brutal, now forgotten war ensued, and the imperial experiment failed.

Bringing to light the colorful individuals involved and their ambitions and flaws, Mesoamerican expert James L. Fitzsimmons recovers the world of this embryonic empire. Family rivalry, greed, grievances, and blindly clinging to the past meant that future generations would live in an environment where each kingdom made its own political and economic choices--but without the benefit of a stronger union.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Prince's Minneapolis"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Prince's Minneapolis: A Biography of Sound and Place by Rashad Shabazz.

About the book, from the publisher:

When nineteen-year-old Prince took the stage to perform “I Wanna Be Your Lover” on American Bandstand, those who watched couldn’t reconcile how Prince’s funky disco-pop sounds had hailed from a place like Minneapolis. But the Minneapolis Sound, Prince’s signature pop-musical fusion of funk, R&B, rock, punk, and new wave, did not emerge from a vacuum. The place and space of Minneapolis shaped the musical ecosystem that made Prince famous. And in turn, a complex array of social forces shaped the city’s soundscape.

An expert on place, race, and culture, geographer Rashad Shabazz reveals the hidden history of the Minneapolis Sound, Prince, and Prince’s beloved city. More than a biography of Prince, this is a biography of the city and the world of sound from which Prince emerged. Shabazz traces the history of the Minneapolis Sound alongside the city’s history, from colonial contact through periods of Indigenous removal, white settlement, mass migration, industrialization, music education, suburbanization, and systemic racism. This complex history, combined with the exceptional talent cultivated in Minneapolis’s small Black communities, gave rise to a groundbreaking genre, the otherworldly legend that was Prince, and music that captivated the world.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Mother's Work"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse by Megan VanGorder.

About the book, from the publisher:

Mary Ann Bickerdyke led a remarkable life. A widowed mother from Illinois, she became an influential traveling nurse and Sanitary Commission agent during the American Civil War. She followed the Union army through four years and nineteen battles, established hundreds of hospitals, assisted surgeons with amputations, treated fevers, and fed the soldiers in her care. Known affectionately as “Mother” to thousands of soldiers, Bickerdyke bridged the private world of home caregiving and the public demands of wartime and institutional medicine.

Drawing on a rich archive of personal letters, military records, and newspapers, Megan VanGorder explores how Bickerdyke used her maternal identity to challenge norms, advocate for soldiers, and pioneer compassionate care practices before, during, and after the Civil War. A Mother’s Work uses key episodes from Bickerdyke’s life to reveal broader truths about motherhood, medicine, and women’s roles in the nineteenth century, and offers an intimate and historically grounded portrait of one woman’s evolving identity and the moniker that made her famous. In reassessing Bickerdyke’s work and legacy, this book also serves as a new perspective on how white working-class women contributed to the transitional period of the Civil War era and reshaped public health, social care, and national memory.

Visit Megan VanGorder's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Computing in the Age of Decolonization"

New from Princeton University Press: Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India’s Lost Technological Revolution by Dwaipayan Banerjee.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Cold War geopolitics and domestic capitalism changed the trajectory of India’s computing industry

India today is widely recognized for producing world-class tech talent and Silicon Valley leaders, yet captures only a fraction of the global tech industry’s profits, primarily providing skilled but inexpensive labor for Western corporations. Computing in the Age of Decolonization uncovers the overlooked history behind this paradox, tracing India's ambitious but ultimately thwarted drive to build a self-reliant computing industry from the 1950s to the 1980s.

After independence in 1947, Indian scientists and policymakers at institutions such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research saw computing as central to national sovereignty, economic growth, and scientific advancement. Through projects such as the groundbreaking TIFRAC computer and the decisive expulsion of IBM, they aimed for technological independence. But almost immediately, these initiatives faced powerful political and economic headwinds. Indian computer scientists grappled with Cold War politics, international trade imbalances, US corporate monopolies, and strategic decisions by India's technocratic elite, who favored profitable technical services over costly investments in research and manufacturing.

In narrating this lost future, Computing in the Age of Decolonization shows that genuine technological independence requires more than technical expertise—it demands addressing enduring political and social structures rooted in colonial legacies. As global struggles over technology intensify, this book reveals how historical pathways continue to shape contemporary battles for technological and economic sovereignty.

Visit Dwaipayan Banerjee's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Standardizing Empire"

New from the University of Pennsylvania Press: Standardizing Empire: The US Military, Korea, and the Origins of Military-Industrial Capitalism by Patrick Chung.

About the book, from the publisher:

How the US military origins of global capitalism facilitated both South Korea’s “economic miracle” and the decline of US industrial might

Standardizing Empire traces the origins of today’s United States-led capitalist world economy. The nation’s foreign policy during the Cold War saw two unprecedented developments: the continuous global deployment of US soldiers and the creation of a permanent worldwide military base network. In the process, the US military came to control the flow of billions of dollars, large-scale construction projects at home and abroad, the purchase of countless goods and services, and the employment of millions of soldiers and workers. In other words, the Cold War US military became the world’s leading economic actor.

To illuminate the political and economic consequences of the US military’s globalization, Patrick Chung focuses on its activities in South Korea between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Chung shows how the Korean War and the subsequent militarization of South Korea became an important site for the spread of a new economic system, which he calls military-industrial capitalism. Sustained by providing the infrastructure and materials for the US military’s globalization, military-industrial capitalism influenced the development of governments, corporations, and workers throughout the US-led “free world.” As military-industrial capitalism expanded, more of the world depended on the physical and administrative standards used by the US military. Ironically, the creation of a globalized economy facilitated both South Korea’s “economic miracle” and the decline of US industrial might.

To clarify how these broader developments transformed everyday life in South Korea and around the world, Standardizing Empire explores three of South Korea’s leading multinational corporations today: shipping company Hanjin, steelmaker POSCO, and car manufacturer Hyundai. These case studies not only trace the companies’ early ties to the US military but also explain how they came to produce, sell, and employ workers worldwide, including in the United States.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Presidential Personalities and Constitutional Power Grabs in Latin America, 1945-2021"

New from Oxford University Press: Presidential Personalities and Constitutional Power Grabs in Latin America, 1945-2021 by Ignacio Arana Araya.

About the book, from the publisher:

The active erosion of democratic institutions and norms by national political leaders has become a growing global concern. Attempts to expand presidential power have been commonplace across regimes, countries, and historical periods, and the list of perpetrators includes some of the most influential leaders of the previous and current centuries, who have dramatically changed the course of their countries. Despite this pattern, it remains unclear what types of leaders are most likely to undermine democracy.

Presidential Personalities and Constitutional Power Grabs in Latin America, 1945-2021 integrates differential psychology research with comparative politics to show that individual differences among heads of government have a measurable impact on executive governance. Ignacio Arana Araya leverages a unique and comprehensive database to prove his theory, including interviews with 24 former presidents from ten countries, evaluations of leaders by hundreds of experts, and biographical and psychometric data on presidents. His analysis reveals that dominant and politically inexperienced presidents are more likely to attempt to relax their term limits, while risk-taking and assertive leaders are more inclined to expand their formal powers. By treating the individual differences of political leaders as independent variables, this book offers a paradigmatic shift in the studies of democracy, political elites, institutional change, and the nature of presidency itself.

Visit Ignacio Arana Araya's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Intoxicated Ways of Knowing"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Intoxicated Ways of Knowing: The Untold Story of Intoxicants and the Biological Subject in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Matthew Perkins-McVey.

About the book, from the publisher:

Argues that intoxication was fundamental to German physiological, psychological, and psychiatric research during the nineteenth century.

Intoxicating substances can be found lurking in every corner of modern life, and Matthew Perkins-McVey’s pathbreaking book offers the untold story of how they were implicated in shifting perceptions of embodiment found in the emerging sciences of the body and mind in late-nineteenth-century Germany. Their use in this experimental context gave rise to a dynamic conception of the subject within the scientific, psychological, philosophical, and sociological milieu of the era. The history of the modern biological subject, Perkins-McVey argues, turns on “intoxicated ways of knowing.”

Intoxicated Ways of Knowing identifies the state of intoxication as a tacit form of thinking and knowing with the body. Intoxicants force us to feel, intervening directly in our perceptional awareness, and, Perkins-McVey contends, they bring latent conceptual associations into the foreground of conscious thought, engendering new ways of knowing the world. The book unfurls how intoxicants affected nineteenth-century German science and how, ultimately, the connection between mental life and intoxication is taken up in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud, bringing the biological subject out of the lab and into the worlds of philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, and politics.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Police, Activists, and Knowledge"

New from Stanford University Press: The Police, Activists, and Knowledge: The Struggle Against Racialized Policing in France by Magda Boutros.

About the book, from the publisher:

Over the past fifteen years in France, police brutality, racial profiling, and police impunity have become salient issues of the public and political debate. In this book, Magda Boutros examines the social movements that brought these issues to the forefront of public conversations and analyzes how they influenced the terms of the debate about policing and inequality. In France, like in other countries, the police hold significant power to determine what is known – and what remains hidden – about their practices. Drawing on a comparative ethnography of three activist coalitions, Boutros shows the different ways activists produced evidence about policing and racial inequalities: collecting quantitative data, documenting lived experiences of police targets, or victims coming together to analyze patterns of oppression. Each approach to data production shaped activists' conceptions of police violence and racism, their ability to push beyond a "bad apples" narrative, and their visions for change. It also impacted their capacity to push the boundaries of what is knowable and sayable in the media, policy, and judicial fields.

Boutros argues that we must pay attention to the capacity of the police to control what we know, and to the methods movements use to produce knowledge about policing and inequality.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend"

New from LSU Press: Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend: Reconsidering Lincoln as Commander in Chief by Kenneth W. Noe.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kenneth W. Noe’s Abraham Lincoln and the Heroic Legend boldly questions the long-accepted notion that the sixteenth president was an almost-perfect commander in chief, more intelligent than his generals. The legend originated with Lincoln himself, who early in the war concluded that he possessed a keen strategic and tactical mind. Noe explores the genesis of this powerful idea and asks why so many have tenaciously defended it.

George McClellan, Lincoln’s top general, emerged in Lincoln’s mind and the American psyche as his chief adversary, and to this day, the Lincoln-McClellan relationship remains central to the enduring legend. Lincoln came to view himself as a wiser warrior than McClellan, and as the war proceeded, a few members of Lincoln’s inner circle began to echo the president’s thoughts on his military prowess. Convinced of his own tactical brilliance, Lincoln demanded that Ulysses Grant, McClellan’s replacement, turn to the “hard, tough fighting” of the Overland and Petersburg campaigns, when Grant’s first instinct was to copy McClellan and swing into the Confederate rear.

Noe suggests that the growth and solidification of the heroic legend began with Lincoln’s assassination; it debuted in print only months afterward and was so cloaked in religious piety that for decades it could not withstand the counternarratives offered by secular contemporaries. Although the legend was debated and neglected at times, it reemerged in interwar Great Britain and gained canonical status in the 1950s Cold War era and during the Civil War Centennial of the 1960s. Historians became torchbearers of the heroic legend and much else that we know about Lincoln, reorienting his biography forever. Based on lessons and language from the world wars, their arguments were so timely and powerful that they seized the field. Since then, biographers and historians have reevaluated many aspects of Lincoln’s life, but have rarely revisited his performance as commander in chief. Noe’s reappraisal is long overdue.

Visit Kenneth W. Noe's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Doing Identity Labor"

New from Oxford University Press: Doing Identity Labor: How Mixed-Race Politicians Disrupt Descriptive Representation by Danielle Casarez Lemi.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris stood to make history as the first Black and South Asian American woman president. Between 2008 and 2024, Americans saw multiracial candidates-Barack Obama and Harris-on four presidential tickets. They rose to power alongside the rising numbers of Americans who identify as multiracial. And yet, despite the presence of major multiracial political figures and a growing multiracial population, voters are still curious about their identities. People often ask multiracial politicians questions that amount to: “What are you?”

In Doing Identity Labor: How Mixed-Race Politicians Disrupt Descriptive Representation, Danielle Casarez Lemi provides one of the first book-length treatments of how multiracial politicians, across office, geography, and background, navigate identity in public life. Lemi develops an interdisciplinary theory of identity labor that explains how multiracial politicians perform their racial identities, especially according to their appearance. The book assembles a rare combination of text analysis, discourse analysis, survey analysis, experimental analysis, nationwide interviews, and case studies of multiracial politicians, including a study of Vice President Kamala Harris. Lemi's groundbreaking multidimensional analysis shows that using racial identity for political gain is neither clear-cut nor ambiguous.

Learn more about Danielle Casarez Lemi.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Island in the Net"

New from Princeton University Press: Island in the Net: Digital Culture in Post-Castro Cuba by Steffen Köhn.

About the book, from the publisher:

An exploration of Cuba’s emerging digital culture and Cubans’ creation of grassroots networks, digital black markets, and online spaces for public debate

Until just a few years ago, Cuba was one of the least-connected countries in the world. But as digital technology has become increasingly available, Cubans have found inventive ways to work around such remaining barriers as slow speeds, high costs, and inadequate infrastructure. In Island in the Net, Steffen Köhn examines Cuba’s nascent digital culture and how it has reconfigured the relationship between the state and its citizens. Köhn shows that through innovations including “sneakernets” (the physical transfer of information by flash drives and other devices), digital black markets, and online spaces for political debates, Cubans have successfully challenged the government’s monopoly on media and public discourse.

Drawing on multisited ethnographic research, Köhn documents Cuba’s digital awakening, from the introduction of accessible Wi-Fi in 2015 to the social media–fueled protests in July 2021. Cubans’ community-driven digital innovations, he suggests, could be models for potential alternatives to the current Big Tech–dominated internet.

Each chapter in Island in the Net is accompanied by a multimodal anthropology work: a video game, interactive installations, video art, an ethnographic documentary, and an expanded cinema installation. These unique media, created with Cuban artist Nestor Siré and other local collaborators, and accessible to readers via a QR code, bring the book’s argument vividly to life.

Visit Steffen Köhn's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Waging Sovereignty"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: Waging Sovereignty: Native Americans and the Transformation of Work in the Twentieth Century by Colleen O’Neill.

About the book, from the publisher:

Wage work was supposed to “kill the Indian and save the man,” or so thought Richard Pratt and other late nineteenth-century policymakers. Nevertheless, even as American Indians entered the workforce, they remained connected to their lands and cultures. In this powerful history of resilience and transformation, Colleen O'Neill uncovers the creative strategies Native workers employed to subvert assimilation and fight for justice in the workplace, their collective strength expanding the very meaning of sovereignty.

Drawing on federal archives, Native memoirs, oral histories, and field research, O'Neill traces a sweeping story that stretches from the era of boarding schools to the contemporary world of high-stakes gaming. For more than a century, federal policymakers tried to reshape Native lives through labor. In some cases, children were sent to pick crops and scrub settlers' homes. In others, families were relocated to distant cities for permanent year-round jobs that were designed to replace traditional seasonal labor and lifestyle patterns. But Native workers persevered. They rebuilt their communities, fought to reclaim control of the reservation workplace, and developed distinctive institutions to defend their cultural, political, and economic sovereignty. As Waging Sovereignty illuminates, wage work was a focal point of assimilationist efforts and, in turn, labor became a key factor in Native workers’ anti-colonial struggle.

Visit Colleen O’Neill's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Afterlife of Utopia"

New from Cornell University Press: The Afterlife of Utopia: Urban Renewal in Germany's Model Socialist City by Samantha Maurer Fox.

About the book, from the publisher:

In The Afterlife of Utopia, Samantha Maurer Fox traces the transformation of Eisenhüttenstadt, East Germany's first planned socialist city, from a Cold War showcase to a paragon of sustainable shrinkage. Founded in 1950 as Stalinstadt, the city was designed to embody socialist ideals. After German reunification, Eisenhüttenstadt lost over half its population, shifting from a model city at the center of the Eastern Bloc to a shrinking city on the nation's periphery.

Fox portrays Eisenhüttenstadt's story as reinvention rather than decline. Today, its restored center is Europe's largest protected historical site, reshaped by extensive demolition and renewal projects. Fox shows how these initiatives revived the city's original collectivist ideals, creatively reclaiming socialist heritage through an urban strategy unmatched in late industrial Europe. The Afterlife of Utopia explores what happens when grand ideological experiments outlive the regimes that built them, challenging assumptions about resilience, progress, and urban futurity.

Visit Samantha Fox's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Praiseworthiness"

New from Oxford University Press: Praiseworthiness: The Lighter Side of Moral Responsibility by Zoë Johnson King.

About the book, from the publisher:

Philosophers have had a lot to say about moral blameworthiness, but much less about moral praiseworthiness. In this book Zoë Johnson King bucks the trend: she offers a conceptual framework with which to theorise about praiseworthiness in its own right, and a comprehensive theory of the types of thing for which we can be praiseworthy and the substantive conditions under which we are praiseworthy for things of each type. Johnson King argues that what we're fundamentally praiseworthy for― what makes us good people, to the extent that we are― are what we care about and what we try to do. She then argues that we can be praiseworthy for what we successfully do and bring about to the extent that our actions are deliberate and are coming from a good place.

In developing this account, Johnson King draws on resources from moral metaphysics, moral epistemology, moral metasemantics, and philosophy of action, as well as from the philosophical literature on moral responsibility. She then uses her account to shed light on some practical issues concerning improving your own praiseworthiness by working on yourself, the prevalence of moral luck, and the impact of oppression and injustice on praiseworthiness. The final chapter turns from praiseworthiness to the ethics of praise: Johnson King takes the backlash against praise of essential workers during the pandemic as a case study that illustrates an array of pitfalls around which we must delicately skirt when attempting to praise the praiseworthy.

Visit Zoë Johnson King's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Advocacy, Inc."

New from Stanford University Press: Advocacy, Inc.: INGOs and the Business of "Modern Slavery" by Stephanie A. Limoncelli.

About the book, from the publisher:

The contemporary movement to fight "modern slavery" has increasingly turned its attention to issues of forced labor, child labor and labor trafficking in a wide variety of industries and supply chains. At the same time, businesses have become more involved with the movement and their leadership has been touted as a better alternative to the assumed inferiority of civil society responses. How has business influence been playing out in the "anti-slavery" movement and what are the implications for international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) fighting these forms of labor exploitation? Based on interviews, online texts, documents, and media content from a variety of INGOs and other organizations in Europe and the United States fighting these problems, Advocacy, Inc. provides a cautionary case study. "Anti-slavery" advocacy has become a new market in which INGOs are pressed to become increasingly like for-profit businesses and the strategies they pursue do not adequately address the driving forces that have created conditions for continued labor exploitation in the global economy. Moreover, some businesses benefit from this scenario, having to do very little to claim 'hero' status in advocacy efforts, while practices that perpetuate labor exploitation continue unabated.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Heart of Science"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry by Jacob Stegenga.

About the book, from the publisher:

A novel epistemology of science contends that good science need not attain its aims, but it must justify its claims.

In Heart of Science, philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant epistemologies of science to argue that in judging scientific activity, we should focus on its justification, not the achievement of truth or knowledge. Yet, Stegenga argues, the aim of science goes far beyond justification and is, instead, a special kind of truth—common knowledge, a broadly shared and mutually justified scientific finding.

Drawing on both historical examples and recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic, Stegenga outlines his approach before delving into its implications for scientific evaluation, testimony, values, progress, and credit, as well as the nature of science during times of crisis. Truth, he shows, may not be easily identified in the short term. However, an evaluation of scientific justification, grounded in shared standards, is possible. This framework helps us appraise—and appreciate—historical theories that ultimately weren’t accurate and offers fresh insights about appropriate science communication and public trust in scientific research. Justification and scientific rigor are not just means to an end, Stegenga writes, but the very heart of good science.

Ambitious, authoritative, and accessible, Heart of Science offers a new vision for the philosophy of science.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mediating God"

New from Oxford University Press: Mediating God: Muhammad al-Ghazali and the Politics of Divine Presence in Twentieth-Century Egypt by Arthur Shiwa Zárate.

About the book, from the publisher:

This intellectual biography of the Egyptian Muslim theologian, scholar, and activist, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–1996), provides the most comprehensive study to date of one of the most influential Sunni Muslim writers of the twentieth century. Al-Ghazali shaped the views of multiple generations of Muslim activists and was a one-time leading intellectual of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Mediating God charts his rise as a leading theologian in the Brotherhood during the 1940s, his subsequent clash and expulsion from the group in 1953, and his extensive post-Brotherhood career during the Nasser years.

To tell this story, it excavates a massive collection of writings by Brotherhood members and their affiliates, many of which have never before been utilized in secondary scholarship. Through an analysis of this collection, Mediating God provides the first in-depth view at the richly cosmopolitan and eclectic intellectual milieu of the Brotherhood and its affiliates from the 1930s through the 1960s. It focuses particular attention on the underexamined, though voluminous, writings al-Ghazali and his colleagues dedicated to charting God as real and meaningful presence in all arenas of human life, from the mundane realms of daily life to political struggles and scientific enterprises. Ultimately, by highlighting the centrality of God as an inscrutable and incalculable-yet intimately known and felt-presence in al-Ghazali and his colleagues' project of spiritual and social uplift, Mediating God provides a way of understanding modern Islamic politics beyond the scholarly framework of Islamism and attendant claims about the functionalization, objectification, and systemization of Islam in modernity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence"

New from the University of Pennsylvania Press: Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence by Mary T. Freeman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Argues that letter writing enabled a disparate and politically marginal assortment of abolitionists to take shape as a mass movement

Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence examines how opponents of slavery harnessed the power of letter writing to further their political aims, arguing that this practice enabled a disparate and politically marginal assortment of people to take shape as a coherent and powerful movement.

Mary T. Freeman fuses a political and social study of abolitionists with a focus on letter writing and epistolary culture. Through the analysis of correspondence, Freeman portrays abolitionism as a mass movement, made up of participants from a wide range of backgrounds, and she emphasizes the diversity of the movement’s geography, membership, and political activities. The book highlights everyday Americans’ involvement in abolition, shifting focus away from the affluent and publicly prominent white leadership. It pays particular attention to those who used letters to intervene in politics when other avenues were closed to them, especially women and Black Americans.

Freeman expands scholarly understandings of abolitionism by showing how letters enabled activists to transmit information and ideas across long distances in a relatively secure format and how they connected people who otherwise would remain strangers. Correspondence also provided a means of political expression to people on the political fringes and disfranchised persons. Even antislavery leaders and those whose social positions were seemingly secure often used the semi-private medium of correspondence strategically. Letter writers could hone their ideas beyond the purview of public audiences, or, when private letters became public, cultural norms granted their contents a stamp of authenticity and directness. Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence concerns not just what people wrote about but also how they wrote about it: how they manipulated, exploited, and subverted cultural conventions to make political statements and claims.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Filthiest Village in Europe"

New from Cornell University Press: The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany by Andrew Demshuk.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Filthiest Village in Europe traces how a community shrouded by "industrial fog," at the brink of gaping coal pits, became a symbol that galvanized grassroots ecology―campaigns by diverse local actors that exposed environmental and economic crises East Germany's political system could not resolve. Notoriously known by the late 1980s as "the filthiest village in Europe," Mölbis suffocated downwind from the massively polluting carbochemical Espenhain plant. Applying a myriad of private collections, interviews, and untapped archival sources, Andrew Demshuk reveals how pastors, parents, officials, inspectors, workers, and spies negotiated ossified party structures whose inability to reform was showcased by ever-worsening environmental conditions.

After peaceful protests a few kilometers north in Leipzig triggered a revolution, pre-1989 grassroots players launched innovative reconstruction programs with financial and organizational expertise from West Germans. Together, they transformed Europe's filthiest village into a healthy place to live and imbued it with new symbolism, turning it into a sign of hope. The political will and social engagement that saved Mölbis and rejuvenated the surrounding wasteland can inform how to revitalize other postindustrial "filthy places" in our world today.

The Page 99 Test: The Lost German East.

The Page 99 Test: Demolition on Karl Marx Square.

The Page 99 Test: Bowling for Communism.

The Page 99 Test: Three Cities After Hitler.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kingdom of Football"

New from Oxford University Press: Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kingdom of Football explores how and why Saudi Arabia burst onto the landscape of world football in 2023, and examines what the speed and scale of Saudi engagement--as investor, owner, sponsor, host and competitor--might mean for the Kingdom and for football.

Writing as both a football fan and a Gulf specialist, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen offers historical and comparative contexts for Saudi Arabia's startling emergence as a world football hub in the 2020s, exploring both previous Saudi investment in the game, in the 1970s, and national attempts elsewhere to kickstart the sport, as in the United States, Japan and China.

Going beyond popular media labels such as 'sportswashing', this fascinating book examines what drives Saudi policymaking, connecting the move into football with domestic economic and social developments, as well as external and foreign policy considerations. It also examines how Riyadh's foray into world football both builds upon and yet differs from the approaches taken by other Gulf States, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Finally, Coates Ulrichsen assesses the sustainability and durability of the Kingdom's engagement with the sport in the decade-long countdown to the 2034 FIFA World Cup, which Saudi Arabia is set to host.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Themistocles"

New from Yale University Press: Themistocles: The Rise and Fall of Athens’s Naval Mastermind by Michael Scott.

About the book, from the publisher:

A portrait of the Athenian politician and general Themistocles, tracing his political development, his victory at the Battle of Salamis, and his exile in Persia

Themistocles (524–459 BC) came of age just as a newly democratic and empowered Athens was emerging. He would become an instrumental political and military figure, fighting in the Battle of Marathon; persuading Athenians to expand their fleet; and engineering the Athenians’ defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. However, as Michael Scott demonstrates in this biography, Themistocles failed as much as he succeeded.

Scott offers a fully human picture of Themistocles, a man who could be both decisive and heroic as well as uncertain and unprepared. He was loved and hated in Athens, his plans and ideas ignored as often as they were respected. Eventually he was exiled as a traitor, ultimately settling in Persia as an adviser to Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, his foe at Salamis. And yet, in the aftermath of his death, he emerged as one of Greece’s historical heroes.

In this portrait of a man Thucydides deemed one of the most illustrious Greeks of his time, Scott reveals one man’s struggle to navigate the turbulent world of Athenian politics, and the crucial role of historians and biographers in shaping, and distorting, the image of Themistocles that has come down to us through the centuries.

Visit Michael Scott's website.

--Marshal Zeringue