"Unvaccinated Under God"

New from Princeton University Press: Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America by Kira Ganga Kieffer.

About the book, from the publisher:

How vaccine hesitancy can be understood as religious expression

Vaccine hesitancy in America didn’t begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination were about more than diseases or injections. They have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality. Kieffer argues that vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression—not as the product of scientific misinformation.

Through a series of historical case studies, which range from the “mother warriors” who claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism during the 1990s to opposition to masking and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kieffer frames vaccination controversies as contests over religious freedom and moral authority. These debates concerned bodily, spiritual, and sexual purity; the morality of state-mandated medical risk; the importance of children; and the authority of parents and doctors. Kieffer explains that diverse groups of Americans utilized religious ideals and practices to question or resist vaccination. With this new, illuminating perspective on vaccine hesitancy, Kieffer offers a novel and even-handed way to understand Americans’ changing and increasingly divided attitudes toward biomedical knowledge and technology. Her account offers readers an accessible set of tools for how to “think with religion” when it comes to contemporary contests over medical authority.

Visit Kira Ganga Kieffer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Real Men on Top"

New from Oxford University Press: Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality by Robin Dembroff.

About the book, from the publisher:

A revelatory new lens on patriarchy-as a force that governs how we see the world, live in our bodies, and imagine our futures

In Real Men on Top, Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child.

These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths―ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'.

But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, but these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human.

Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality.

Visit Robin Dembroff's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Politics by Formula"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Politics by Formula: How Congressional Policymaking Creates Disparities by Leah Rosenstiel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A clear-eyed study that reveals how politics shapes and often distorts important federal programs, driving inequalities across states.

From Medicaid to Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, a large percentage of the annual US federal budget (approximately $1 trillion) is distributed through grants-in-aid, a policy tool that allocates aid to state and local governments rather than to individual Americans. When members of Congress use grants-in-aid to fund healthcare, housing, and other forms of support, they are not solely determining how much assistance one person receives. Instead, they can allot certain localities larger grants, which carry big implications for the quality of public services available to citizens living in different states.

Many reasonably assume that these assistance programs distribute funding to states impartially because they use statistical formulas based on population levels, poverty, and other characteristics that, ostensibly, measure need. However, in Politics by Formula, Leah Rosenstiel shows how this seemingly technocratic aspect of federal policymaking is deeply affected by both the structure of political institutions and the motivations of elected officials. Key congressional committees—and especially their leaders—design formulas to benefit their constituencies. Superficially neutral formulas can shield these political decisions from scrutiny, but formulas also constrain congressmembers. Drawing on formal modeling and quantitative and qualitative evidence, Rosenstiel elucidates how these dynamics shape whose and what needs are met and where.

Visit Leah Rosenstiel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Proxy Africa"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: A Proxy Africa: Guyana, African Americans, and the Radical 1970s by Russell Rickford.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nestled between Brazil, Venezuela, and Suriname, Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign state in mainland South America, and one of its youngest. Originally a Dutch colony, Guyana remained under British rule from the late eighteenth century until gaining independence in 1966 and becoming a republic in 1970. Apart from the 1978 mass murder-suicide of cult leader Jim Jones’s followers in Jonestown, Guyana has been mostly peripheral to mainstream geopolitics. Yet for a generation of Black revolutionaries from around the world, Guyana was a vibrant site of pan-African activism. The country was particularly attractive to veterans of the US civil rights movement who sought alternative places to construct flourishing postcolonial, pan-African nation-states.

In this first, comprehensive history of Guyana’s core role in anticolonial, Black internationalist movements in the 1960s and 1970s, historian Russell Rickford traces the history of African Americans who traveled to the country to work with, learn from, and teach Guyanese politicians, activists, and other international figures in the long fight for Black freedom. With encouragement from Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, they eagerly accepted the invitation to move to Guyana to establish new cooperative settlements. Rickford compellingly narrates Guyana’s allure and promise for Black Americans, along with the limitations they faced when ideology clashed with lived realities—especially political ones—once there.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Explaining Famine in the British Empire"

New from Oxford University Press: Explaining Famine in the British Empire: Agricultural Science, Food Security, and the Rise of Statistics by John Lidwell-Durnin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Famine is humanity's oldest fear. Famine memorials and stories are literally carved into the stones that lie on the beds of Europe's rivers. Our science fiction and fantasy literature often begin by evoking a world of hunger and scarcity. Famine shapes our past, it threatens our future, and we struggle to explain how it is tolerated and permitted to unfold in the present. In eighteenth-century Britain, rising food prices provoked a politics of hunger, manifested in food riots, fears of revolution, and political arguments over how to feed a growing population. In the 1790s, fear of famine provoked the state to experiment with something new: funding a voluntary board of experts to compile agricultural data and promote the use of scientific methods in food production. The problem of scarcity and the threat of famine were to be plainly and clearly represented in statistical data, transparent to both the state and the public.

This book is about the famines and food shortages that struck India and Britain at the close of the eighteenth century, and it explores how these crises and episodes of scarcity gave rise to scientific efforts to explain and quantify 'famine.' Focusing on the time period between the Bengal famine of 1770 and the food shortages in Britain in 1800, it explores the development of the concepts of 'artificial scarcity' (and 'artificial famine'), and how statistical science and philosophy played a role in the naturalization of famine. During this time, Britain's first 'Board of Agriculture' was established, creating political opportunities for a rising class of agriculturalists interested in the promotion of their science as a means of confronting and solving the empire's food insecurity during a time of war and upheaval. Following the networks and collaboration between this Board of Agriculture and the East India Company, the book explores the careers and correspondence of agriculturalists, economists, Company officials, scientists, hack writers, and politicians. Explaining Famine in the British Empire shows how these debates over the anthropogenic and natural causes of scarcity and famine shaped the subsequent development of the field of food security and modern concerns over carrying capacity, environment, and population.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Financial Inclusion"

New from Stanford University Press: Financial Inclusion: How an Idea Became a Global Agenda by Tyler Girard.

About the book, from the publisher:

The number of people in the world with a bank account or money service provider increased by 2 billion over the past decade. This phenomenon reflects what Tyler Girard calls the global financial inclusion agenda. This agenda emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and quickly became a prominent feature of global economic governance. The core idea of financial inclusion is that all individuals and businesses should have access to and use formal financial services, including bank accounts, payment services, credit, and insurance. Today, the widespread ability to digitally store and transfer money has impacted every aspect of our lives. What explains the emergence and evolution of the global financial inclusion agenda? And what does the politics of the agenda tell us about the impacts of new technologies on global politics and how ideas become global agendas? Drawing on an original collection of primary documents and interviews with elites from Ghana, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland, this book traces the global financial inclusion agenda over time and interrogates its adaptation in specific contexts and issue areas. Through the concept of participatory ambiguity, Girard offers a novel explanation of the agenda that advances important debates in international relations and international political economy on the distribution of power and authority in global governance.

Visit Tyler Girard's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Agrarian Superpower"

New from Columbia University Press: Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States by Samantha Iyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States produced vast agricultural surpluses. During the 1950s, an era of decolonization and rising Cold War competition, the United States became the dominant exporter of food staples to industrializing nations in the Third World through its massive food aid program.

Through the lens of food and agriculture, this book offers new ways to understand the roots of the post–Second World War global order and the US position in it. Samantha Iyer traces how two former British territories and agricultural competitors of the United States, India and Egypt, became two of the largest importers of US food aid. She investigates the origins and consequences of the US-centric postwar food regime by examining changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of agricultural surpluses from the late nineteenth century to the early 1970s. Bringing together life in villages, towns, and cities with national, imperial, and international affairs, Iyer demonstrates that food aid was the expression of a changed political, economic, and ecological world that the United States did not create alone. Drawing on sources in Arabic, French, Urdu, and English, Agrarian Superpower is a groundbreaking comparative history of food, agriculture, and development.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Locating Racism in the World"

New from Oxford University Press: Locating Racism in the World by Ainsley LeSure.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Locating Racism in the World, Ainsley LeSure develops a worldly theory of antiblack racism rooted in the analytic promise of phenomenology, a philosophical examination of lived experience, to help explain why and how American democracy is confronting its greatest existential threat since the Civil War on the eve of its 250th anniversary. She argues that racism is best understood as a reality-violating common sense generated and perfected through racist practices that produce a white, antiblack world. This worldly theory of antiblack racism is developed over the course of four chapters that explore how five central texts in political theory and black studies - Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton's Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Hannah Arendt's infamous essay, “Reflections on Little Rock” (1957/1959), Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection and Hortense Spiller's “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book” - theorize the dilemma of antiblack racism. This worldly understanding avoids the key pitfall of post-Civil Rights theories of racism: the assumption that one needs to account for the emotional and mental states of individuals to validate beyond dispute that certain racial practices and their outcomes are instances of racism. And it also avoids Black studies' recent pessimism by clarifying that the aim of a democratic politics strong enough to combat racial common sense is to make the world appear, that is normatively bound citizens to substantiality of reality, by bolstering plurality and making equality an inspiring source of action in our everyday lives.

Visit Ainsley LeSure's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Anxious Homes"

New from Cornell University Press: Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market by Mengqi Wang.

About the book, from the publisher:

Anxious Homes is a study of the power that shapes the forms of the homes Chinese citizens strive for and the possible paths they may take to realize their home ownership dreams. Mengqi Wang discusses how the Chinese real estate industry functions in the everyday, welding aspirational middle-class families, especially migrant families, to the property-owning class and the urban growth machine. Urban housing was a socialist benefit in China until the market reforms and privatization in the 1990s. Today, most Chinese citizens consider homeownership a necessity rather than an economic privilege. Wang analyzes the making of homeownership ideologies through "inflexible demand" (gangxu)―a concept that real estate brokers, developers, homebuyers, and the government in China use to craft homeownership as indispensable for fulfilling dreams of urban citizenship. The ethnography shows that gangxu helps to articulate diverse attempts to accumulate value through housing at China's urbanizing city periphery, while giving shape to a housing-based, postsocialist right to the city. Anxious Homes argues that homeownership does not necessarily engender independence but suggests further inclusion of citizens within the dominant regime of accumulation.

Mengqi Wang is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research interests include economic anthropology, urban anthropology, political economy, gender studies, and science and technology studies.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Raising the Floor"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Raising the Floor: Federalism and the Politics of US Minimum Wage Policy by Shanna Rose.

About the book, from the publisher:

A rich history of the development of American minimum wage policy with lessons for today.

Despite broad popular support for robust minimum wage policy, the federal minimum wage is now worth less—in real, inflation-adjusted terms—than at any time since 1949. While some state and local governments have stepped in to fill this void, others have declined to set any minimum wage standard at all. Traversing more than 100 years of history, Raising the Floor examines how interest groups have navigated the highly decentralized American political system to shape the development of federal, state, and local minimum wage laws.

In her analysis, Shanna Rose highlights the importance of American federalism. She argues that because federalism creates multiple arenas for policy change, interest groups have sought out the sites most conducive to their goals, shifting their lobbying efforts as new obstacles and opportunities emerge. Federalism has facilitated minimum wage policymaking by fostering policy experimentation, learning, and diffusion across states and by allowing state and local governments to overcome gridlock and status-quo biases at the national level. Yet, federalism has also been an instrument for containment, enabling those opposed to minimum wage increases to litigate and preempt local-level laws.

With rich historical chapters that illuminate different phases in the development of today’s patchwork of wage standards, Raising the Floor is a deep examination of the past, present, and future of American minimum wage law.

--Marshal Zeringue

"States of Solidarity"

New from Oxford University Press: States of Solidarity: How to Build a Society by Barbara Prainsack.

About the book, from the publisher:

States of Solidarity: How to Build a Society makes the urgent case that solidarity is not a relic of the past but a foundational pillar for building just, democratic, and sustainable futures. While contemporary societies have invested heavily in debates about justice and institutional reform, they often overlook the social glue that binds people together in everyday life: solidarity. Without it, democratic legitimacy weakens, trust frays, and the collective capacity to act on shared problems-such as climate change, economic inequality, or the governance of digital technologies-gets lost.

This timely and original monograph reclaims solidarity as a dynamic and generative social force. It explores how practices of mutual support, rooted in shared experiences and goals, can restore trust and cohesion in fragmented societies. Rather than reducing solidarity to charity or moral duty, it understands it as a deeply political practice that empowers people to shape their collective lives.

Bringing conceptual clarity and empirical insight to bear, States of Solidarity addresses three of the defining challenges of our time-environmental crisis, democratic erosion in economic governance, and digital transformations with the proliferation of artificial intelligence-through the lens of solidaristic institutions and relationships. It shows how hegemonic narratives and technocratic complexity often obstruct collective action, but also how grassroots movements and inclusive practices can reinvigorate democratic life.

The book ends with a powerful vision of the 'good state' in the 21st century-one that nurtures solidaristic ties, prioritises care and economic justice, and equips societies to thrive in conditions of uncertainty. States of Solidarity invites readers to engage in a bold reimagining of what our political and economic systems could become, and why we must act together to build them.

Visit Barbara Prainsack's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Born Again Queer"

New from Princeton University Press: Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity by William Stell.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking history of evangelicalism and homosexuality in the United States

Evangelicals claim that their opposition to homosexuality is an inherent feature of their faith, rooted in their unchanging beliefs about the Bible. Most scholars, journalists, and observers have accepted this account; in Born Again Queer, William Stell upends it. Arguing that the antigay majority in evangelicalism has been less dominant and more vulnerable than previously thought, Stell describes a network of authors, ministers, and professors—all veterans of major evangelical institutions—who worked in the 1970s and 1980s to persuade Christians that their churches should affirm the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian members. By the late 1970s, some even thought that these activists might shape the future of evangelicalism.

Of course, that speculation proved mistaken, and the antigay evangelical majority eventually overpowered the gay-affirming minority. Stell’s history of the rise and fall of evangelical gay activism shines a light on this largely forgotten chapter in American evangelicalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Stell documents the work of four prominent activists: the founder of a predominantly LGBTQ+ denomination called the Metropolitan Community Churches, the leader of a gay advocacy organization called Evangelicals Concerned, and the evangelical feminist coauthors of the influential book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? By recovering the successes of evangelical gay activists and the struggles of their opponents, Stell’s account transforms how we think about evangelicalism, how we talk about the culture wars, and how we approach both religion in queer movements and queer activism in religious movements.

Visit William Stell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Koreatown, NYC"

New from NYU Press: Koreatown, NYC: The Consumption of a Transnational Brand by Jinwon Kim.

About the book, from the publisher:

How Manhattan's Koreatown functions as a new ethnic enclave

In the past decade, Korean entertainment has gained global recognition, with Korean movies and TV shows winning Oscars and Emmys, and K-Pop groups becoming wildly popular. In Manhattan, Koreatown has become a popular destination for both locals and tourists, drawing them in with its bars, restaurants, and day spas. Jinwon Kim argues that Manhattan’s Koreatown has become a new type of ethnic enclave, what she dubs a “transclave.” This commercialized ethnic space exists solely for consumption, leisure, and entertainment, and has been shaped by South Korea's nation-branding strategy, new economic and cultural strategies, patterns in Korean migration, and shifts in tourism and urban policies in New York City.

Kim posits that for many consumers in Koreatown, especially those who are not of Korean descent, the space has become a commercialized place where transnational culture meets the diverse racial and ethnic mosaic of New York City. Kim emphasizes how the space functions to "brand Korea" as a space to "consume ethnicity," reflecting the landscape of South Korea’s consumer culture through the physical appearance of buildings and stores and the inclusion of franchise brands. Ultimately, Koreatown, NYC is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of authenticity, ethnicity, and identity in the heart of New York’s midtown.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Man Behind the Cane"

New from Oxford University Press: The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War by Paul Quigley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new perspective on the life of the US politician best known for the infamous assault that paved the bloody road to the Civil War.

In 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the US Capitol, defending his family's honor and the rights of slaveholders. In beating Sumner unconscious, Brooks fueled a nationwide clash over slavery that ended in civil war.

Southern historian Paul Quigley brings Brooks to life more vividly than ever before, revealing how his personal struggles shaped the fateful decision to attack Sumner. Raised in the slaveholding culture of honor and scarred by missed opportunities for glory in the Mexican-American War, Brooks came to believe in the redemptive power of violence. Blending intimate personal history with wide-ranging analysis of political debates, Quigley uses Brooks's life to examine the deeper currents propelling the United States to the brink of destruction. Brooks's story reveals the increasingly fraught relationship between words and violence: When did words such as "liar" or "coward" justify duels? Did abolitionists' verbal attacks on slaveholders warrant physical retaliation? How did the way Americans talked about violence affect the likelihood that it would occur? With the caning, Brooks sparked an ominous national debate over the righteousness of bloodshed in a polarized nation.

Examining enduring issues of masculinity, honor, and free speech, The Man Behind the Cane shows how words and violent behavior became perilously entangled in the fight over slavery and casts new light on the origins of the Civil War-and the ongoing dangers of political violence in our own time.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Security Through Cooperation"

New from Stanford University Press: Security Through Cooperation: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations after the Cold War by Rose Gottemoeller.

About the book, from the publisher:

Russian officials and experts often voice the view that the United States was hell-bent on undermining, even destroying Russia during the turbulent period of the Soviet breakup thirty years ago. The primary US goal, in this telling, was to expand NATO to Russia's borders to isolate and threaten the Russian state. Rose Gottemoeller, drawing from the historical record and her own professional experience, refutes this notion. Gottemoeller argues that, to the contrary, successive American presidents were convinced that deep cooperation with Russia is essential to international security and stability. This conviction was born during the George H. W. Bush administration and took definitive shape during the administration of Bill Clinton, when he and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin agreed to develop technological cooperation that would be useful to both countries. George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin carried the conviction further, and the two countries made enormous strides on cooperation in outer space, counterterrorism, and nuclear energy over the next twenty years. While today is starkly different from the 1990s, Gottemoeller takes the lessons learned and considers what it would take—when Russia exits its horrific adventure in Ukraine and atones for the damage it has done—to resume cooperation for the sake of global security.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law"

New from Oxford University Press: Drugs, Race, and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law: When Enemies Become Victims by Insa Lee Koch.

About the book, from the publisher:

As the Black Lives Matter movement highlights the legacies of transatlantic slavery and racial empire, the British state has launched a new moral crusade: the fight against 'modern slavery'. Enshrined in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, this agenda no longer treats modern slavery solely as a transnational crime but also as a domestic threat occurring within Britain's borders. Today, the most frequently identified 'slaves' are boys and young men from the country's deindustrialised working-class and multi-racial neighbourhoods. Once criminalised under the 'war on gangs', they are now reframed as victims of 'criminal exploitation' and 'trafficking' in regional drug distribution networks known as 'county lines'.

Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law examines what happens when communities once viewed as enemies of the system are redefined as legal victims. Grounded in the lived experiences of young drug dealers and their families—voices rarely heard in law—Insa Lee Koch reveals how state protection often functions as a form of control. Across policing, government offices, and courtrooms, efforts to protect the vulnerable ignore the structural dispossession and state racism that these communities face. Koch powerfully shows how family members who advocate for their children not only face bureaucratic hurdles but also find themselves silenced—even criminalized—for trying to make alternative stories heard.

Drugs, Race and the Politics of Modern Slavery Law argues that the modern slavery agenda is far from an unqualified good. As the law expands its definition of victimhood, it simultaneously strengthens the state's punitive powers, deepens racial injustice amidst a deepening socio-economic crisis, and revives colonial logics of redemption. These logics recast Black and racialised working-class communities as both 'slaves' and their 'masters'—reviving a powerful enemy within, and with devastating consequences for those targeted and their families. Urgent and innovative, this book is a must-read for academics, lawyers, practitioners, and activists seeking to understand how imperial legacies remain central to policies that claim to further progressive and social justice agendas.

Visit Insa Lee Koch's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fear of the False"

New from Cornell University Press: Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia by Mitra Sharafi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fear of the False uncovers colonial South Asia's critical role in the development of forensic science. Around 1900, the government of British India created a web of institutions for the scientific detection of crime. Driven by anxieties about "native mendacity," newly minted forensic analysts focused on uncovering faked evidence planted by South Asians. These experts, joining toxicologists known as "chemical examiners," were supposed to extract objective, scientific truth in the service of British justice. But in trying to counteract the presumed tendency of colonized peoples to lie, the system enabled widespread misconduct by state experts, increasing the risk of wrongful convictions of South Asian defendants.

Through scrupulously documented legal cases, Mitra Sharafi reveals that colonial dynamics put special pressure on the relationship between truth and justice. Examining falsity on both sides of the law through the use of testing to (mis)identify poisons, blood, and spermatozoa, as well as debates over adversarialism and inquisitorialism in the colonial courtroom, Fear of the False explores advances in forensic science and shortcuts in criminal procedure against the backdrop of colonial mistrust.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era by Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.

About the book, from the publisher:

Free people of color were both architects of equal rights and active participants in the Civil War, on and off the battlefield. Their unique status as already free persons before emancipation shaped their experiences of military service, political activism, and community life in ways distinct from those newly freed from slavery and affected how they navigated the pursuit of equal rights.

In this groundbreaking work, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. brings the stories of free people of color to the forefront, revealing that freedom was not simply the absence of enslavement but a powerful foundation of identity, rights, and belonging. Their determined struggles and strategies before, during, and after the war helped redefine what it meant to be a citizen in a nation grappling with democracy and equality. Through military service, vital civilian roles, and political advocacy, free people of color stood at the heart of the nation’s most transformative conflict. Centering their voices and histories, Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom shows how their sacrifices and strategies helped forge America’s path toward justice, reshaping our understanding of freedom and their enduring legacy in the national story.

Visit Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.'s website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Race for Universal Monarchy"

New from Columbia University Press: The Race for Universal Monarchy: Apocalypticism and the Ottoman–Habsburg Rivalry in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean by Ebru Turan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The early sixteenth century saw the rise of two Mediterranean empires―the Christian Habsburgs, based in Spain and Austria, and the Muslim Ottomans, centered in the Balkans and Anatolia―with strikingly similar ambitions. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) and Sultan Süleyman (1495–1566) each pursued grand universalist visions, seeking to unite Islam and Christendom under a universal monarchy that would resolve wars and conflicts, dissolve religious divisions, and usher in an age of peace, unity, and justice.

Drawing on a wide range of Ottoman and European sources, Ebru Turan explores the emergence of these empires and the early phase of their rivalry within the broader Mediterranean world. She argues that the late medieval crusading movement, which aimed to conquer Islamic lands and convert Muslims to Christianity, was infused with apocalyptic and messianic expectations in both the Latin West and the Ottoman Empire. While Charles V was hailed as a prophesied figure destined to conquer the Islamic East and restore the ancient Roman Empire, Süleyman contested these claims by positioning himself as the rightful heir to the Roman Caesars. Like his rival, he embraced a messianic identity, aspiring to conquer Christendom and unite the world under Islamic rule.

Innovative in its approach and provocative in its conclusions, The Race for Universal Monarchy transcends traditional East and West dichotomies, highlighting both empires’ efforts to build a global community of peace and harmony.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Worse than War"

New from Princeton University Press: Worse than War: The Global Costs of Violence by Anke Hoeffler and James D. Fearon.

About the book, from the publisher:

An empirically powerful account of why interpersonal violence across the globe exacts a far greater cumulative cost on society than war and terrorism combined

Civil wars, interstate wars, and terrorism receive a great deal of media and policy attention, for good reasons. By contrast, the major forms of interpersonal violence—homicide, intimate partner violence, and severe physical punishment of children—generally have a much lower profile.

In Worse than War, Anke Hoeffler and James Fearon assemble and analyze the data on the global prevalence and costs of collective and interpersonal violence. They show that interpersonal violence is vastly more widespread and imposes far greater societal costs than collective violence. Wars tend to be concentrated in a small number of countries, and often relatively small areas within them. By contrast, almost all countries have rates of homicide and nonfatal assault, particularly of women and children, that far exceed the global average rates of death and injury in wars and terrorism.

Hoeffler and Fearon argue that high rates of interpersonal violence are not simply fixed by culture or other structural factors. Evidence from a host of program evaluations, natural experiments, and longer-term social movements make it clear that rates of homicide, intimate partner violence, and severe physical punishment of children can be reduced if they are effectively targeted. Interventions that promote peace in civil war–torn countries are also possible, but the opportunities are few and increasingly far between. Drawing on ideas and methods from many fields—economics, political science, public health, psychology, sociology, and others—the authors show that money and policy efforts directed toward reducing interpersonal violence thus merit higher priority both within countries and by international donors.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Gods Are Wise"

New from Oxford University Press: The Gods Are Wise: Yorùbá Sacred Orature and Environmental Sustainability by Olúwábùnmi Tọ́pẹ́ Bernard.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book does not suggest the "ultimate solution" to global environmental problems or even imply that there is only one way of protecting the environment. Instead, Olúwábùnmi Tope Bernard presents a previously untapped exploration of the resources within the Yorùbá Òrìsà worship, sacred orature, ritual practices, and performances that promote environmental sustainability.

Antifragility is a significant theme in this book. It refers to a system's capability to not only be resilient or able to withstand volatility, but also benefit from that which stresses it. Before a system becomes antifragile, it must have undergone attacks which would make it resilient. Bernard explores Yorùbá literature, worldview, philosophy, religion, and measures taken to preserve the environment and keep it antifragile. In doing so, The Gods Are Wise expresses an aspiration that these measures and practices may be adopted by other religions and societies looking to pursue environmental preservation.

Olúwábùnmi Tọ́pẹ́ Bernard holds a Ph.D. in Yorùbá Language and Literature from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, where she has taught Yorùbá literature and culture for over 10 years. She has won many prestigious fellowships. Currently, she is part of a team working on an ERC-funded project at Ghent University, Belgium on Yorùbá Print Culture.

--Marshal Zeringue