Published this week

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Functional and Evolutionary Ecology of Fleas

By Boris R. Krasnov, member of the department of desert ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Cambridge University Press, £85.00

ISBN 97805218874

This book deals with the functional and evolutionary ecology rather than the descriptive ecology of fleas, providing a review of flea bionomics and examining little-known research.

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Remaking Management: Between Global and Local

Edited by Chris Smith, professor of organisational studies, Brendan McSweeney, deputy head of school and professor of management, and Robert Fitzgerald, reader in business history, all at Royal Holloway, University of London

Cambridge University Press, £65.00

ISBN 9780521861519

International contributors from different subdisciplines in management examine theories of change or continuity of work practices in the context of claims about unstoppable globalisation or unmoveable national business systems.

CLASSICS

Writing Greek Law

By Michael Gagarin, James R. Dougherty centennial professor of classics, University of Texas at Austin

Cambridge University Press, £55.00

ISBN 9780521886611

A comparative study that aims to trace how Greek law developed and explains why it became so different from the legal systems with which most legal historians are familiar.

GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Chemical Oceanography and the Marine Carbon Cycle

By Steven R. Emerson, professor of chemical oceanography, University of Washington, and John I. Hedges, professor of oceanography at the University of Washington until his death in 2002

Cambridge University Press, £45.00

ISBN 9780521833134

This text offers a background in chemical oceanography and a description of how chemical elements in seawater and ocean sediments are used as tracers of physical, biological, chemical and geological processes in the ocean.

HISTORY

From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire: Army, State and Society in the Near East c 600-850

By Patricia Crone, professor in the School of Historical Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754659259

Crone brings together studies on the development of early Muslim society, above all the army with which it was originally synonymous, from shortly after the Prophet's death until the mid-Abbasid period.

LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

Syntactic Anchors: On Semantic Structuring

By Juan Uriagereka, professor of linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park

Cambridge University Press, £65.00

ISBN 9780521865326

Uriagereka's book addresses a major puzzle in linguistics: how words can be both decomposable, so as to be acquired by children, and atomic, so that they do not manifest themselves as modular to adults.

LAW

Evidence

Edited by Andrew Bell, director of studies in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, John Swenson-Wright, Fuji Bank university lecturer in modern Japanese studies, and Karin Tybjerg, affiliated research scholar in the department of the history and philosophy of science, all at the University of Cambridge

Cambridge University Press, £12.99

ISBN 9780521710190

Eight experts from a wide range of disciplines consider the nature and the use of evidence in the modern world.

LITERATURE

The Poetry of Praise

By J. A. Burrow, emeritus professor of English, University of Bristol

Cambridge University Press, £45.00

ISBN 9780521886932

This study spans more than 2,000 years, from Pindar to Christopher Logue, but its main concern is with English poetry of the Middle Ages, when praise poetry flourished.

Shakespeare and Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Conceptualizing Identity and Staging Boundaries

By Rebecca Steinberger, associate professor of English, College Misericordia

Ashgate, £45.00

ISBN 9780754637806

Exploring the influence of Shakespeare on drama in 20th-century Irish drama, Steinberger examines works by two modern Irish playwrights: Sean O'Casey and Brian Friel.

MATHEMATICS

Absolute Measurable Spaces

By Togo Nishiura, emeritus professor of mathematics, Wayne State University

Cambridge University Press, £60.00

ISBN 9780521875561

This book on absolute measurable space emphasises topological, geometrical and analytical properties, and includes a four-part appendix to aid readers with topics such as topological dimension theory, Hausdorff measure and Hausdorff dimension, and geometric measure theory.

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES

From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media

Edited by Karen Collins, Canada Research Chair in Technology and Communication, Canadian Centre for Arts and Technology

Ashgate, £55.00 and £16.99

ISBN 9780754662006 and 2112

Despite the importance of interactive audio to contemporary multimedia, this is claimed to be the first book that provides a framework for understanding the history, issues and theories surrounding it.

MUSIC

Musicological Identities: Essays in Honor of Susan McClary

Edited by Steven Baur, assistant professor of music, Dalhousie University, Raymond Knapp, professor of musicology, University of California, Los Angeles, and Jacqueline Warwick, assistant professor of music, Dalhousie University

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 97807546630

Seventeen scholars pay tribute to Susan McClary's work, with essays addressing the different approaches to music that have characterised her own writings.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

The Rise of Modern Philosophy

By Anthony Kenny, president, Royal Institute of Philosophy and distinguished senior fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Oxford University Press, £10.99

ISBN 97801987569

Kenny turns his attention to the thinkers who shaped the modern world, from Descartes, traditionally seen as the founder of modern philosophy; to the great British philosophers Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume; and the towering figure of Immanuel Kant.

Luke the Priest: The Authority of the Author of the Third Gospel

By Rick Strelan, senior lecturer in studies in religion, University of Queensland

Ashgate, £50.00

ISBN 9780754662594

Strelan's book focuses on the authority and status of the author of Luke-Acts, questioning whether he had the authority to write a Gospel and to interpret the Jewish scriptures and traditions of Israel.

PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

Statistical Mechanics of Non-equilibrium Liquids

By Denis Evans, professor of chemical physics, Australian National University, and Gary Morriss, associate professor of physics, University of New South Wales

Cambridge University Press, £70.00

ISBN 9780521857918

This graduate-level book charts the development and theoretical analysis of molecular dynamics as applied to equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems and links the atomic, nano and macro worlds.

POLITICS

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History

By Christian J. Emden, associate professor of German and Slavic studies

Cambridge University Press, £50.00

ISBN 9780521880565

Emden explores Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought.

Biological sciences

Survival Analysis for Epidemiologic and Medical Research

By Steve Selvin, professor of biostatistics, University of California, Berkeley

Cambridge University Press, £50.00 and £22.99

ISBN 9780521895194 and 719377

Selvin’s practical guide to survival data and its analysis shows why the analytic methods work and how to analyse and interpret epidemiologic and medical survival data with the help of computer systems.

Law

Posthumous Interests: Legal and Ethical Perspectives

By Daniel Sperling, lecturer in law, Netanya Academic College and University of Haifa and adjunct faculty, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv University

Cambridge University Press, £65.00

ISBN 9780521877848

Sperling discusses the legal status of posthumous interests and their possible defeat by actions performed following the death of a person, providing analysis of an area that evokes intuitive responses, subjectivity and sentimentalism occasionally reflected in case law.

Literature

Keats, Hermeticism, and the Secret Societies

By Jennifer N. Wunder, assistant professor of English, Georgia Gwinnett College

Ashgate, £50.00

ISBN 9780754661863

Wunder recovers the common knowledge about secret societies such as the Rosicrucians and Freemasons during the Romantic period and offers readers a first look at the role they played in the writings of Romantic authors in general and Keats in particular.

Music

The canzone villanesca alla napolitana: Social, Cultural and Historical Contexts

By Donna G. Cardamone, professor of music, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754659532

The articles in this volume trace the Neapolitan origins of the canzone villanesca alla napolitana, a “rustic” song form, and its subsequent development as it spread quickly throughout Italy in a succession of editions published in Venice and Rome.

Philosophy and theology

Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology

By Helge S. Kragh, professor of the history of science, University of Aarhus

Ashgate, £60.00

ISBN 9780754664147

Kragh’s is the first book to consider the cultural and religious responses to the second law of thermodynamics and the theory proposed by certain Christian scholars during the period 1860 to 1920 that the entropic creation argument is proof of a divine creation of the world.

Politics

The Future Governance of Citizenship

By Dora Kostakopoulou, Jean Monnet professor of European law and European intergration, University of Manchester

Cambridge University Press, £60.00 and £23.99

ISBN 9780521877992 and 701785

Kostakopoulou develops a new institutional framework for a national citizenship that can be grafted on to the existing state system, defends it against objections and proposes institutional reform based on an innovative approach to citizenship.

The Powers to Lead

By Joseph Nye, University distinguished service professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Oxford University Press, £11.99

ISBN 9780195335620

Nye coined the term “soft power” in the 1980s to describe a type of leadership based on attraction and persuasion as opposed to the “hard power” of coercion, with the ability to use each in appropriate contexts making up the core theme of this book.

Post-Christian Feminisms:

A Critical Approach

Edited by Lisa Isherwood, professor of feminist liberation theologies and director of theology, University of Winchester, and Kathleen McPhillips, senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and the Languages, University of Western Sydney

Ashgate, £50.00

ISBN 9780754653806

This book explores the impact and contribution of post-theories in the field of Christian feminist theology. Scholars contribute conclusive essays on developments in post-theory, feminism and theology.