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HISTORY

Leprosy in China: A History. By Angela Ki Che Leung, research fellow at the Academia Sinica of Taipei and professor of history, National Taiwan University. Columbia University Press, £29.50. ISBN 9780231123006

This study begins with the classical annals of the imperial era and tracks the relationship between leprosy and China's social and political spheres, its religious traditions and its evolving medical discourse.

The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh, Part 3 Translated by D. S. Richards, emeritus fellow, University of Oxford Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754640776

The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), entitled al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh, is one of many sources for the history of the medieval world. A focus of this volume is the internal rivalries of Saladin's Ayyubid successors, their changing relations with the Crusader states, the Damietta Crusade and the first incursions of the Mongols.

LAW

Justice as Prevention: Vetting Public Employees in Transitional Societies. By Alexander Mayer-Rieckh, manager of the Security System Reform Programme at the International Centre for Transitional Justice, and Pablo de Greiff, director of research, ICTJ. Columbia University Press, £20.50. ISBN 9780979077210

This book examines the transitional reform known as "vetting" - the process by which abusive or corrupt employees are excluded from public office. It includes case studies of Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, the former German Democratic Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland and South Africa.

LITERATURE

The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes. Translated by Landeg White, lecturer in English and American studies, Universidade Aberta, Lisbon. Princeton University Press, £11.95. ISBN 9780691136622

This book gives English readers a comprehensive collection of Camoes' sonnets, songs, elegies, hymns, odes, eclogues and other poems - more than 280 lyrics altogether, all rendered in verse.

Court Politics, Culture and Literature in Scotland and England, 1500-1540. By Jon Robinson, lecturer, Northumbria University. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754660798

The focus of this study is court literature in early 16th-century England and Scotland. Robinson examines courtly poetry and drama in the context of a complex system of entertainment, education, self-fashioning, dissimulation, propaganda and patronage.

The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester. By Nancy Rosenfeld, lecturer, University of Haifa. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754664680

Tracing the literary development of the satanic form into a humanised form, Rosenfeld looks anew at well-known texts by four 17th-century English writers - John Milton, John Bunyan, George Etherege and John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester).

Yeats and Joyce: Cyclical History and the Reprobate Tradition. By Alistair Cormack, University of East Anglia. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754660286

Alistair Cormack shows that Joyce and Yeats independently challenged a linearity and materialism that they identified with empire and celebrated Ireland as destabilising the accepted forms of thought and the accepted means of narrating the nation.

Contemporary Fiction and the Ethics of Modern Culture By Jeffrey Karnicky, visiting assistant professor of English, Drake University Palgrave Macmillan, £40.00 ISBN 9781403977601

This book argues for the ethical relevancy of contemporary fiction at the beginning of the 21st century. The author looks at how novels by writers such as David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers and Irvine Welsh seek to transform how readers live in the world.

Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism By Robert E. Stillman, professor of English, University of Tennessee Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754663690

Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy was the first Renaissance text to argue for the pre-eminence of poetry as an autonomous form of knowledge. Stillman locates the origins of his poetics inside a neglected historical community: the intellectual elite associated with Philip Melanchthon (leader of the German Reformation after Luther), the so-called Philippists, whose teachings enabled Sidney to dignify fiction-making as a compelling form of public discourse.

A World of Difference: An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents Edited by Lynda Prescott, senior lecturer in literature, the Open University Palgrave Macmillan, £9.99 ISBN 9780230202085

An international selection of 15 short stories by modern writers including Peter Carey, Zadie Smith and Bernard Malamud on the theme of "difference". The stories address cultural encounters, often arising from experiences of migration or uprooting.

MUSIC STUDIES

Nicholas Maw: Odyssey. By Kenneth Gloag, senior lecturer in music, Cardiff University. Ashgate, £35.00. ISBN 9780754638551

Gloag offers a detailed discussion of Nicholas Maw's musical identity and reputation as a contemporary composer in relation to Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism. He takes into consideration his breakthrough work Scenes and Arias (1962) and the subsequent progression to Odyssey.

Pop Idols and Pirates: Mechanisms of Consumption and the Global Circulation of Popular Music. By Charles Fairchild, lecturer, University of Sydney. Ashgate, £45.00. ISBN 9780754663836

Fairchild's analysis of the Idol phenomenon and the emerging promotional cultures of the music industry that it exhibits shows how multiple sites of consumption, and attempts to mediate and control the circulation of popular music, are being used to combat the foundational challenges facing the music industry.

Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance By Leslie Ritchie, Queen's University, Ontario Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754663331

Combining new musicology trends, formal musical analysis and literary feminist recovery work, Ritchie examines poetic, didactic, fictional and musical texts written by women in late 18th-century Britain.

PHILOSOPHY

Moral Agents and their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics. By Sophia Vasalou, research fellow in philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Princeton University Press, £23.95. ISBN 9780691131450

This study of Mu'tazilite ethics attempts to grapple with the philosophical questions raised by the school of thought.

Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization. Edited by Kristin Aune, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Derby, Sonya Sharma, research fellow at the University of British Columbia, and Giselle Vincett, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh Ashgate, £50.00 ISBN 9780754658702

This book addresses the debate on religious belonging and departure, the role of women in and out of religion and spirituality.

POLITICS

High-Tech Lynching and Low-Profile Rapes. By Joy James, professor of political theory, Brown University. Palgrave Macmillan, £18.99. ISBN 9780312239718

Joy James examines contemporary political practices and cultural representations surrounding sexual violence and African-American women with the aim of bringing greater visibility to national responses to harassment, rape, incest and domestic battery when the issue of race is made central.

Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. By Rogers Brubaker, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Margit Feischmidt, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pécs, Jon Fox, lecturer in sociology at the University of Bristol, and Liana Grancea, PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles Princeton University Press, £14.95 ISBN 9780691136226

Developing the argument of Brubaker's Ethnicity without Groups, this book demonstrates that it is ultimately in and through everyday experience - as much as in political contestation or cultural articulation - that ethnicity and nationhood are produced and reproduced.

SCIENCES

Archaeological Oceanography. By Robert D. Ballard, professor of oceanography and director of the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography, University of Rhode Island. Princeton University Press, £26.95. ISBN 9780691129402

This book describes the latest advances that allow researchers to probe the secrets of the deep ocean, and the vital contributions that these advances offer to archaeology and to other fields such as maritime history and anthropology.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Endnotes: An Intimate Look at the End of Life. By Ruth E. Ray, lecturer in writing, composition theory and women's studies, Wayne State University. Columbia University Press, £44.00 and £14.50. ISBN 9780231144605 and 9780231144612

This work - which is part memoir and part biography - explores how people construct meaning through their interactions with others. Ray delves into the complexities of sexuality and intimacy in old age, communication across disabilities and age groups, the disabling nature of nursing homes and the trials of death and dying.

Globalizing the Streets: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Youth, Social Control, and Empowerment. Edited by Michael Flynn, associate director of the Centre on Terrorism, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and associate professor of psychology at York College, City University of New York, and David C. Brotherton, professor and chair of sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. Columbia University Press, £47.00 and £19.00. ISBN 9780231128223 and 9780231128230

The contributors to this volume examine the struggle for identity and interdependence among lower and working-class youth, their clashes with law-enforcement and criminal codes, their fight for social, political and cultural capital, and their efforts to achieve recognition and empowerment.

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture. Edited by Joe Karaganis, programme director, Social Science Research Council, New York. Columbia University Press, £12.00. ISBN 97809790772

This volume attempts to advance our understanding of the power of databases, network representations, filtering techniques and digital-rights management. It examines how these new capacities transform shared cultural understanding.

The New German Jewry and the European Context: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora Edited by Y. Michal Bodemann, professor of sociology, University of Toronto Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00 ISBN 9780230521070

This volume explores the contemporary return of a positive diasporic Jewish tradition in a variety of countries and contexts, investigating how Jews have revitalised Jewish culture and Jewish politics outside Israel.

Women's Contributions to Visual Culture, 1918-1939 Edited by Karen E. Brown, postdoctorial fellow, University College Dublin Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754664000

Applying a feminist and international approach to the interwar years, this collection of essays explores women's art in a variety of mediums including design, print, illustration, costume design, film, sculpture and painting.

THEATRE STUDIES

The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera. Edited by Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz; professor of philosophy and aesthetics, Columbia University, and professor of humanities and director of the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan respectively. Columbia University Press, £14.50. ISBN 9780231137553

This volume examines the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy and culture of the 19th century.