"Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move"

New from Stanford University Press: Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move by Rebecca Hamlin.

About the book, from the publisher:

Today, the concept of "the refugee" as distinct from other migrants looms large. Immigration laws have developed to reinforce a dichotomy between those viewed as voluntary, often economically motivated, migrants who can be legitimately excluded by potential host states, and those viewed as forced, often politically motivated, refugees who should be let in. In Crossing, Rebecca Hamlin argues against advocacy positions that cling to this distinction. Everything we know about people who decide to move suggests that border crossing is far more complicated than any binary, or even a continuum, can encompass. Drawing on cases of various "border crises" across Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East, Hamlin outlines major inconsistencies and faulty assumptions on which the binary relies. The migrant/refugee binary is not just an innocuous shorthand—indeed, its power stems from the way in which it is painted as apolitical. In truth, the binary is a dangerous legal fiction, politically constructed with the ultimate goal of making harsh border control measures more ethically palatable to the public. This book is a challenge to all those invested in the rights and study of migrants to move toward more equitable advocacy for all border crossers.

Follow Rebecca Hamlin on Twitter.

The Page 99 Test: Let Me Be a Refugee.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The War Beat, Pacific"

New from Oxford University Press: The War Beat, Pacific: The American Media at War Against Japan by Steven Casey.

About the book, from the publisher:

The definitive history of American war reporting in the Pacific theater of World War II, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After almost two years slogging with infantrymen through North Africa, Italy, and France, Ernie Pyle immediately realized he was ill-prepared for covering the Pacific War. As Pyle and other war correspondents discovered, the climate, the logistics, and the sheer scope of the Pacific theater had no parallel in the war America was fighting in Europe.

From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The War Beat, Pacific provides the first comprehensive account of how a group of highly courageous correspondents covered America's war against Japan, what they witnessed, what they were allowed to publish, and how their reports shaped the home front's perception of some of the most pivotal battles in American military history. In a dramatic and fast-paced narrative based on a wealth of previously untapped primary sources, Casey takes us from MacArthur's doomed defense on the Philippines and the navy's overly strict censorship policy at the time of Midway, through the bloody battles on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Saipan, Leyte and Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, detailing the cooperation, as well as conflict, between the media and the military, as they grappled with the enduring problem of limiting a free press during a period of extreme crisis.

The War Beat, Pacific shows how foreign correspondents ran up against practical challenges and risked their lives to get stories in a theater that was far more challenging than the war against Nazi Germany, while the US government blocked news of the war against Japan and tried to focus the home front on Hitler and his atrocities.

Learn more about The War Beat, Pacific at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: When Soldiers Fall.

The Page 99 Test: The War Beat, Europe.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Souls under Siege"

New from Cornell University Press: Souls under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provence by Nicole Archambeau.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Souls under Siege, Nicole Archambeau explores how the inhabitants of southern France made sense of the ravages of successive waves of plague, the depredations of mercenary warfare, and the violence of royal succession during the fourteenth century. Many people, she finds, understood both plague and war as the symptoms of spiritual sicknesses caused by excessive sin, and they sought cures in confession.

Archambeau draws on a rich evidentiary base of sixty-eight narrative testimonials from the canonization inquest for Countess Delphine de Puimichel, which was held in the market town of Apt in 1363. Each witness in the proceedings had lived through the outbreaks of plague in 1348 and 1361, as well as the violence inflicted by mercenaries unemployed during truces in the Hundred Years' War. Consequently, their testimonies unexpectedly reveal the importance of faith and the role of affect in the healing of body and soul alike.

Faced with an unprecedented cascade of crises, the inhabitants of Provence relied on saints and healers, their worldview connecting earthly disease and disaster to the struggle for their eternal souls. Souls under Siege illustrates how medieval people approached sickness and uncertainty by using a variety of remedies, making clear that "healing" had multiple overlapping meanings in this historical moment.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sailor Talk"

New from Liverpool University Press: Sailor Talk: Labor, Utterance, and Meaning in the Works of Melville, Conrad, and London (Studies in Port and Maritime History LUP) by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book investigates the highly engaging topic of the literary and cultural significance of 'sailor talk.' The central argument is that sailor talk offers a way of rethinking the figure of the nineteenth-century sailor and sailor-writer, whose language articulated the rich, layered, and complex culture of sailors in port and at sea. From this argument many other compelling threads emerge, including questions relating to the seafarer's multifaceted identity, maritime labor, questions of performativity, the ship as 'theater,' the varied and multiple registers of 'sailor talk,' and the foundational role of maritime language in the lives and works of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London. The book also includes nods to James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Meticulous scholarly research underpins the close readings of literary texts and the scrupulously detailed biographical accounts of three major sailor-writers. The author's own lived experience as a seafarer adds a refreshingly materialist dimension to the subtle literary readings. The book represents a valuable addition to a growing scholarly and political interest in the sea and sea literature. By taking the sailor's viewpoint and listening to sailors' voices, the book also marks a clear intervention in this developing field.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bullets Not Ballots"

New from Cornell University Press: Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare by Jacqueline L. Hazelton.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and makes military victory possible. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites.

Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Undoing Optimization"

New from Yale University Press: Undoing Optimization: Civic Action in Smart Cities by Alison B. Powell.

About the book, from the publisher:

A unique examination of the civic use, regulation, and politics of communication and data technologies

City life has been reconfigured by our use—and our expectations—of communication, data, and sensing technologies. In this book Alison Powell examines the civic use, regulation, and politics of these technologies, looking at how governments, planners, citizens, and activists expect them to enhance life in the city. She argues that the de facto forms of citizenship that emerge in relation to these technologies represent sites of contention over how governance and civic power should operate. These sites become more significant as an increasingly urbanized and polarized world faces new struggles over local participation and engagement. The author moves past the usual discussion of top-down versus bottom-up civic action and instead explains how citizenship shifts in response to technological change and particularly in response to issues related to pervasive sensing, big data, and surveillance in “smart cities.”

Follow Alison Powell on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"God's Marshall Plan"

New from Oxford University Press: God's Marshall Plan: American Protestants and the Struggle for the Soul of Europe by James D. Strasburg.

About the book, from the publisher:

God's Marshall Plan tells the story of the American Protestants who sought to transform Germany into a new Christian and democratic nation in the heart of twentieth-century Europe. James D. Strasburg follows the American pastors, revivalists, diplomats, and spies who crossed the Atlantic in an era of world war, responded to the rise of totalitarian dictators, and began to identify Europe as a continent in need of saving. He examines their far-reaching campaigns to make Germany into the European cornerstone of a new American-led global spiritual order.

God's Marshall Plan illuminates the dramatic ramifications of these efforts by showing how the mission to remake Germany in America's image actually remade American Protestantism itself. American Protestants realized they had come to dramatically different conclusions about how to rebuild the West out of the ruins of war. European Protestants, meanwhile, began to sharply protest America's spiritual advance. Forsaking their wartime nationalism, a growing number of ecumenical Protestants championed a new ethic of global fellowship, reconciliation, and justice. However, a fresh wave of evangelical Protestants emerged and ensured that the religious struggle would continue into the Cold War. Strasburg argues that the spiritual struggle for Europe ultimately forged two competing visions of global engagement — Christian nationalism and Christian globalism — that transformed the United States, diplomacy, and politics in the Cold War and beyond.

Visit James D. Strasburg's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Compromise of Return"

New from Wayne State University Press: The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust by Elizabeth Anthony.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust explores the motivations and expectations that inspired Viennese Jews to reestablish lives in their hometown after the devastation and trauma of the Holocaust. Elizabeth Anthony investigates their personal, political, and professional endeavors, revealing the contours of their experiences of returning to a post-Nazi society, with full awareness that most of their fellow Austrians had embraced the Nazi takeover and their country’s unification with Germany—clinging to a collective national identity myth as "first victim" of the Nazis. Anthony weaves together archival documentation with oral histories, interviews, memoirs, and personal correspondence to craft a multilayered, multivoiced narrative of return focused on the immediate postwar years.

The book consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 begins with setting the historical scene and political context to elucidate the backdrop for the role and position of Jews in Austrian and Viennese society. Chapter 2 begins just before the Soviet conquest of Vienna in April 1945 and with the story of the last Jews murdered in Vienna. Chapter 3 deals with the second group of returning Jews—concentration camp survivors—and outlines their varied processes and journeys, as they also followed their impulse to go to their familial home. Chapter 4 presents how their parties shaped their motivations and expectations of home while they lived abroad after fleeing from the Nazis. Chapter 5 illuminates the return and rerooting of Austrian Jewish professionals, including their struggles and successes. Chapter 6 expounds common challenges encountered by all groups of returnees while relaunching their lives in Vienna, with a focus on developing postwar identity concepts—both Viennese Jewish identity and Austrian national identity.

The Compromise of Return is the first such social history to depict how survivors—individually and collectively—navigated postwar Vienna’s political and social setting. This book will be of special interest to scholars, students, and readers of Holocaust and European studies.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Mahjong"

New from Oxford University Press: Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture by Annelise Heinz.

About the book, from the publisher:

How has a game brought together Americans and defined separate ethnic communities? This book tells the first history of mahjong and its meaning in American culture.

Click-click-click. The sound of mahjong tiles connects American expatriates in Shanghai, Jazz Age white Americans, urban Chinese Americans in the 1930s, incarcerated Japanese Americans in wartime, Jewish American suburban mothers, and Air Force officers' wives in the postwar era.

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. This mass-produced game crossed the Pacific, creating waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Annelise Heinz narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women's culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American game. Heinz also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game to gain access to respectable leisure. The result was the forging of friendships that lasted decades and the creation of organizations that raised funds for the war effort and philanthropy. No other game has signified both belonging and standing apart in American culture.

Drawing on photographs, advertising, popular media, and dozens of oral histories, Heinz's rich and colorful account offers the first history of the wildly popular game of mahjong.

Visit Annelise Heinz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Creation Stories"

New from Yale University Press: Creation Stories: Landscapes and the Human Imagination by Anthony Aveni.

About the book, from the publisher:

An accessible exploration of how diverse cultures have explained humanity’s origins through narratives about the natural environment

Drawing from a vast array of creation myths—Babylonian, Greek, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Chinese, Hindu, Navajo, Polynesian, African, Norse, Inuit, and more—this concise illustrated book uncovers both the similarities and differences in our attempts to explain the universe.

Anthony Aveni, an award-winning author and professor of astronomy and anthropology, examines the ways various cultures around the world have attempted to explain our origins, and what roles the natural environment plays in shaping these narratives. The book also celebrates the audacity of the human imagination.

Whether the first humans emerged from a cave, as in the Inca myths, or from bamboo stems, as the Bantu people of Africa believed, or whether the universe is simply the result of Vishnu’s cyclical inhales and exhales, each of these fascinating stories reflects a deeper understanding of the culture it arose from as well as its place in the larger human narrative.

Visit Anthony Aveni's website.

--Marshal Zeringue