Published this week

ECONOMICS

- When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

By Teresa Ghilarducci, Schwartz chair in economic policy and director of SCEPA, New School for Social Research. Princeton University Press, £17.95. ISBN 9780691114316

Teresa Ghilarducci explains how to confront the looming pensions crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen.

- Building a Global Bank: The Transformation of Banco Santander

By Marco F. Guillen, director of the Lauder Institute, Dr. Felix Zandman professor in international management and professor of management and sociology, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Adrian Tschoegl, lecturer in management, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Princeton University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9780691131252

This book tackles the question of how a once-sleepy family-run provincial bank in a developing economy transformed itself into a financial services group with more than 66 million customers on three continents.

- Hedge Funds: An Analytic Perspective

By Andrew W. Lo, Harris & Harris Group professor at the Sloan School of Management and director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Princeton University Press, £26.95. ISBN 9780691132945

Arguing that hedge funds have very different risk and return characteristics than those of traditional investments, Lo constructs new tools for analysing their dynamics, including measures of illiquidity exposure and performance smoothing, linear and nonlinear risk models that capture alternative betas, econometric models of hedge-fund failure rates, and integrated investment processes for alternative investments.

ENGINEERING

- Optical Switching Networks

By Martin Maier, professor of electrical engineering, Universite du Quebec a Montreal. Cambridge University Press, £25.00. ISBN 9780521868006

Maier describes all the major switching paradigms developed for modern optical networks, discussing their operation, advantages, disadvantages and implementation.

HISTORY

- Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India, 1920-1940

By Sarah Hodges, associate professor of history, University of Warwick. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754638094

This book outlines the overlapping stories of the international birth-control movement in south India, one of the strongholds of Indian birth-control advocacy, as well as the south Indian indigenisation of international birth control.

- Bishops, Texts and the Use of Canon Law around 1100: Essays in Honour of Martin Brett

Edited by Bruce C. Brasington, professor in the department of history and geography, Texas A&M University, and Kathleen G. Cushing, reader in history, Keele University. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754660156

The essays in this volume address issues relating to the compilation and transmission of canon law collections, the role of bishops in their dissemination, and the interpretation and use of law in the 11th and 12th centuries.

- Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries

Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke professor of German art and culture, Harvard University, and Susan Marti, curator in the history department, Historisches Museum Bern. Columbia University Press, £23.50. ISBN 9780231139809

This book offers a broad introduction to the history and visual culture of female monasticism in the Middle Ages, from the earliest communities of late antiquity to the Reformation.

- Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess

By Susan Morgan, distinguished professor of English, Miami University. University of California Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780520252264

This biography shows that the real life of Anna Leonowens was far more interesting than the story of the Victorian governess who went to work for the King of Siam. To write this account, Susan Morgan travelled extensively, discovering information that has eluded researchers for years.

- Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China

By Stephen R. MacKinnon, professor of history, Arizona State University. University of California Press, £23.95. ISBN 9780520254459

Stephen MacKinnon tells the full story of Wuhan's defence against the Japanese in what would become a turning point in the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, and how the siege's aftermath led to new directions in the history of modern Chinese culture, society and politics.

- The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era

By Micheline R. Ishay, professor and director of the international human rights programme, University of Denver. University of California Press, £16.95. ISBN 9780520256415

Micheline Ishay recounts the dramatic struggle for human rights across the ages in a book that synthesises historical and intellectual developments from the Mesopotamian Codes of Hammurabi to today's era of globalisation.

- Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall

By Peter Turchin, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and adjunct professor of mathematics, University of Connecticut. Princeton University Press, £26.95. ISBN 9780691116693

Taking up the problem of territorial dynamics - why some polities at certain times expand and at other times contract - this book shows that using a scientific combination of mathematical modelling with statistical analyses can advance our understanding of dynamical processes in history.

LITERATURE

- Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, 1684-1814: In the Voice of Our Biblical Mothers

By Elizabeth Kraft, professor of English, University of Georgia. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754662808

Elizabeth Kraft reads fiction by Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood, Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Smith, Frances Burney and Elizabeth Inchbald in light of ethical paradigms drawn from biblical texts about women and desire.

MATHEMATICS

- Harmonic Measure

By John B. Garnett, professor of mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles, and Donald E. Marshall, professor of mathematics, University of Washington. Cambridge University Press, £30.00. ISBN 9780521720601

During the past two decades, several remarkable new discoveries were made about harmonic measure in the complex plane. Garnett's book provides a careful survey of these results and an introduction to the branch of analysis that contains them.

MEDICINE

- A Dictionary of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: A Volume of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen Project

Edited by Hermann Tessenow, senior lecturer in the Institute for the History of Medicine, Munich University, and Paul U. Unschuld, professor and director of the Horst-Goertz Institute for the Theory, History, and Ethics of Chinese Life Sciences, Charite Universitaetsmedizin Berlin. University of California Press, £56.00. ISBN 9780520253582

This is a text of ancient Chinese medicine and natural philosophy. It reflects empirical knowledge and the doctrines of yin-yang and Five Agents in the perception of the human body and its organs, chi and the blood, pathogenic agents, concepts of disease and diagnosis, and a variety of therapies.

MUSIC

- Essays on the Performance of Baroque Music: Opera and Chamber Music in France and England

By Mary Cyr, professor of music, University of Guelph. Ashgate, £62.50. ISBN 9780754659266

In this collection of essays, Mary Cyr uses composers' own notations as well as marks added by 18th-century performers to explore some of the written and unwritten performance conventions that applied to French and English music of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

- Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: An Introduction

By Sally Sedgwick, professor of philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago. Cambridge University Press, £45.00 and £15.99. ISBN 9780521843454 and 604161

In this introductory text, Sally Sedgwick provides a guide to Kant's text that follows the course of his discussion as closely as possible. Her aim is to convey Kant's ideas and arguments without getting lost in scholarly controversies.

PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

- The Martian Surface: Composition, Mineralogy and Physical Properties

By Jim Bell, associate professor of astronomy, Cornell University. Cambridge University Press, £95.00. ISBN 9780521866989

This is a new overview of the compositional and mineralogic properties of Mars since the last major study was published in 1992. It aims to be a resource for all researchers and students in planetary science, astronomy, space exploration, planetary geology and planetary geochemistry.

- Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future

By Jeffrey Bennett, research associate at the Centre for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado at Boulder. Princeton University Press, £15.95. ISBN 9780691135496

This book describes the startling discoveries being made in astrobiology, an intriguing new field that blends astronomy, biology and geology to explore the possibility of life on other planets.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

- Memory in Autism: Theory and Evidence

Edited by Jill Boucher, research associate in psychology, University of Warwick, and Dermot Bowler, professor of psychology, City University London. Cambridge University Press, £55.00. ISBN 9780521862882

This book examines recent advances in the study of memory systems in order to understand the neuropsychology and neurobiology of memory in autism, and features cross-referencing to emphasise the links between chapters and topics.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- Mi'kmaq Landscapes: From Animism to Sacred Ecology

By Anne-Christine Hornborg, associate professor in the history and anthropology of religions, Linkoping University. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754663713

Focusing on efforts by the Mi'kmaq, a First Nations people of eastern Canada, to rebuild their traditions and environmental relations in interaction with modern society, Anne-Christine Hornborg illustrates how environmental groups, pan-Indianism and education play an important role in recent developments.

- Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home

By Pamela Stone, professor of sociology, Hunter College and the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. University of California Press, £9.95. ISBN 9780520256576

Based on a series of interviews with women who returned home after working in high-profile jobs, Pamela Stone explores the role that husbands, children and co-workers play in their decisions and where their aspirations and plans for the future lie.