Published this week

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ART AND DESIGN

- Before Bruegel: Sebald Beham and the Origins of Peasant Festival Imagery

By Alison G. Stewart, professor of art history, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754633082

Stewart explores peasant festival imagery within historical and cultural contexts, including the introduction of the Lutheran Reformation into the town's institutions and the accompanying re-evaluation of the town's popular festivals.

- Research in Art and Design Education: Issues and Exemplars

Edited by Richard Hickman, reader in arts education, University of Cambridge. Intellect Books, £24.95. ISBN 9781841501994

This book's contributors make a strong case for art and design research as a horizon of specificities; as a wide and ever-expanding ground of autonomous plurality; and as a discipline that is neither restricted to the empire of fact and measure, nor to generalist platitudes.

COMPUTER SCIENCE

- Modelling Command and Control: Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork

By Neville A. Stanton, professor of design research, Brunel University, Chris Baber, reader in interactive systems, University of Birmingham, and Don Harris, reader in ergonomics, Cranfield University. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 97807546708

This book takes a broad view of command and control research as well as human supervisory control paradigms.

FILM STUDIES

- Beyond Auteurism: New Directions in Authorial Film Practices in France, Italy and Spain since the 1980s

By Rosanna Maule, associate professor of film studies, Concordia University. Intellect Books, £29.95. ISBN 9781841502045

This is a comprehensive study of nine film-makers from France, Italy and Spain who since the 1980s have blurred the boundaries between art-house and mainstream, and national and transnational film production.

GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

- Planning in Crisis? Theoretical Orientations for Architecture and Planning

By Walter Schoenwandt, director, Institute for the Foundations of Planning, University of Stuttgart. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 97807546760

This volume gives a comprehensive overview of all main planning theories and models before putting forward an innovative model and a set of tools based on the theories of Mario Bunge.

- Network Strategies in Europe: Developing the Future for Transport and ICT

Edited by Maria Giaoutzi, professor of geography, National Technical University of Athens, and Peter Nijkamp, professor in regional economics, Free University. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754673309

This book addresses the strategic dimensions of networks, especially in transport and information communication technology in Europe. It also looks at the implications of European integration policies for network operations and developments and considers network synergy effects.

HISTORY

- Hidden Children of the Holocaust

By Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, University of Brussels. Oxford University Press, £14.99. ISBN 9780195181289

This work looks at how Jewish children found sanctuary in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages. It is based on interviews with those who were hidden as children, as well as the women who rescued them and the nuns who gave them shelter.

- Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment

Edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, professor of the history and philosophy of sciences, Universite Paris X Nanterre, and Christine Blondel, researcher, National Centre for Scientific Research, France. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754663706

The essays in this volume consider the interplay of science and spectacle in 18th-century Europe, describing the variety of public demonstrations of science in sites ranging from academies and laboratories to shops and streets.

- Writing Contemporary History

By Robert Gildea, professor of modern history, University of Oxford, Anne Simonin, senior researcher, National Centre for Scientific Research, France, and Stefan Berger, professor of modern German and comparative European history, University of Manchester. Hodder Education, £16.99. ISBN 9780340950005

Some of the world's most eminent historians discuss the core issues confronting students of contemporary history today, combining theoretical reflection with the practice of producing historical texts.

- ? A History of Murder

By Pieter Spierenburg, professor of historical criminology, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Polity, £55.00 and £17.99. ISBN 9780745643779 and 3786

This book offers an overview of seven centuries of murder in Europe. It tells the story of the changing face of violence from medieval vendettas to modern-day serial killings.

- What Is Cultural History?

By Peter Burke, professor emeritus of cultural history, University of Cambridge. Polity, £50.00 and £13.99. ISBN 9780745644097 and 4103

This updated second edition presents afresh Burke's guide to the past, present and future of cultural history worldwide.

LAW

- Criminal Liability for Non-Aggressive Death

Edited by C.M.V. Clarkson, professor of law, and Sally Cunningham, lecturer in law, both at the University of Leicester. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754673347

Taking as a starting point the view that manslaughter is an extremely broad offence, this collection examines criminal liability for non-aggressive death and puts forward possible alternatives to the current "catch-all" offence of manslaughter.

LITERATURE

- Death and the Author

By David Ellis, emeritus professor of English literature, University of Kent. Oxford University Press, £20.00. ISBN 9780199546657

This book is an account of D.H. Lawrence's final struggle against tuberculosis, and of the bizarre events that immediately followed his death. It offers a series of reflections about Lawrence's illness and juxtaposes the drama of events with discussion and anecdotes of literary life.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

- Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction

By Thomas Dixon, lecturer in history, Queen Mary, University of London. Oxford University Press, £7.99. ISBN 9780199295517

This account avoids polemic to explore the key philosophical arguments on both sides of this debate as well as the history of conflict between science and religion.

- Was Jesus God?

By Richard Swinburne, emeritus Nolloth professor of the philosophy of the Christian religion, University of Oxford. Oxford University Press, £9.99. ISBN 9780199203116

Richard Swinburne probes the key doctrines about Jesus - his incarnation, his teachings, his death and resurrection - and argues that each has a strong and defensible logical underpinning.

- Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar

Edited by Oleg V. Bychkov, associate professor of theology, and James Fodor, associate professor of theological ethics, both at St Bonaventure University. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754658344

This collection of essays explores the present-day field of theological aesthetics, from von Balthasar's contribution and parallel developments to correctives and alternatives to his approach.

- The Sense of Creation: Experience and the God Beyond

By Patrick Masterson, professor emeritus of philosophy, University College Dublin. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754664260

The book explores various "ciphers" of the asymmetrical relationship between the world and God in our pre-philosophical lived experience, arguing that the world is really related to God in a relationship of total dependence but God is in no way really related to or modified by this created world.

- Vagueness, Logic and Ontology

By Dominic Hyde, senior lecturer in philosophy, University of Queensland. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754615323

Hyde explores responses to the philosophical problems generated by vagueness and its associated paradox, arguing that the theoretical space in which vagueness is sometimes ontologically grounded and modelled by a truth-functional logic affords a coherent response to the problems posed by vagueness.

- Word and Meaning in Ancient Alexandria: Theories of Language from Philo to Plotinus

By David Robertson, assistant professor of philosophy, Felician College. Ashgate, £45.00. ISBN 9780754606963

In focusing on why language is intelligible and how communication is possible, Robertson traces some related attempts to reconcile immaterial, intelligible reality and the intelligibility of language.

- Immanuel Kant

Edited by Arthur Ripstein, professor of law and philosophy, University of Toronto. Ashgate, £145.00. ISBN 97807546883

The articles and essays in this volume explore various dimensions of the complex and powerful picture of the relation between morality and politics that Kant develops in his political writings.

PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

- Relativity: A Very Short Introduction

By Russell Stannard, professor emeritus of physics, The Open University. Oxford University Press, £7.99. ISBN 9780199236220

In this introduction to Einstein's theory of relativity, Stannard uses very little mathematics to make the theory of relativity accessible and understandable to those who have not studied physics.

- Poverty among Older People and Pensions Policy in the EU

Edited by Asghar Zaidi, director of research, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research. Ashgate, £.50. ISBN 9780754673620

This book offers a picture of the present state of later-life poverty across all the 25 member states of the European Union. It analyses the poverty risks faced by older people and looks at the possible impact of the recent pensions reforms on the retirement incomes of future generations of older people.

- Public Law and Politics: The Scope and Limits of Constitutionalism

Edited by Emilios Christodoulidis, professor of legal theory, University of Glasgow, and Stephen Tierney, reader in law, University of Edinburgh. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754673637

In a critical engagement with the function of public law and constitutionalism in its political dimensions, this volume brings together the reflections of three leading constitutionalists, who address the multiple ways in which public law is implicated in the logic of rule.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity

By Virginia Smith, honorary researcher, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Oxford University Press, £9.99. ISBN 9780199532087

Smith covers the global history of human body-care from prehistoric grooming rituals to New Age medicine, from ascetics to cosmetics, showing how the striving for purity brought both social benefit and great tragedy.

- Racist Victimization: International Reflections and Perspectives

Edited by John Winterdyk, professor of justice studies, Mount Royal College, and Georgios Antonopoulos, senior lecturer in criminology, University of Teesside. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754673200

This book investigates the phenomenon of racist victimisation in a number of countries, uncovering and analysing its historical roots, its relation to the legal system in a particular national context, its extent and the response to it.

- Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot

Edited by Tim Ingold, chair in social anthropology, and Jo Lee Vergunst, academic fellow in social science, both at the University of Aberdeen. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754673743

This book combines discussions of embodiment, place and materiality to address the significant and largely ignored "technique of the body".

Art and design

African American Visual Arts By Celeste-Marie Bernier, lecturer in American literature, University of Nottingham Edinburgh University Press, £16.99 ISBN 9780748623563

This book examines the quilts, ceramics, paintings, sculpture, installations, assemblages, daguerreotypes, photography and performance art produced by African-American artists over a 200-year period.

Geography and environmental studies

Agri-Food Commodity Chains and Globalising Networks Edited by Christina Stringer, senior lecturer in management and international business, and Richard Le Heron, professor of geography, both at the University of Auckland, New Zealand Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754673361

In this volume, an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, economists, business and management academics and geographers examines a range of case studies illustrating various agri-food commodity chains and networks around the world.

History

The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda against the Empire, Magdeburg 1546–1551 By Nathan Rein, assistant professor of philosophy and religion, Ursinus College Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754656869

This study analyses printed material published in Magdeburg in the period 1546-51 to explore the interweaving of theological commitments and political norms with a variety of cultural practices to present a vision of Protestant identity.

Law

The Law of Intervening Causation By Douglas Hodgson, associate professor of law, University of Western Australia Ashgate, £60.00 ISBN 9780754673668

Using a comparative examination of case law from England, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, this volume provides a study of the law of intervening causation to present an analysis of this particular judicial limitation of liability device.

Philosophy and theology

The Art of Life By Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor of sociology, University of Leeds Polity, £50.00 and £15.99 ISBN 9780745643250 and 3267

This book is a study of the ways in which our society – the modern, individualised society of consumers – influences (but does not determine) the way we construct and narrate our life trajectories.

Social sciences

On the Way to Statehood: Secession and Globalization Edited by Aleksandar Pavkovic, associate professor of politics, and Peter Radan, associate professor of law, both at Macquarie University Ashgate, £55.00 ISBN 9780754673798

This collection explores the changes that the current international order has brought to the theory and practice of recognition of secessionist claims and to the conditions for secessionist mobilisation.