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ARTS AND DESIGN

- Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Research

Edited by Steve Garner, senior lecturer in the department of design and innovation, The Open University. Intellect Books, £24.95. ISBN 9781841502007

This collection of essays by leading artists and drawing researchers reveals a provocative agenda for the field of sketching and drawing, analysing the latest work on creativity, education and thinking from a variety of perspectives.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

- Exploitation and Developing Countries: The Ethics of Clinical Research

Edited by Jennifer S. Hawkins, assistant professor of philosophy, University of Toronto, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, chairman of the department of bioethics, Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Princeton University Press, £38.95 and £14.95. ISBN 9780691126753 and 6760

This book is an attempt by philosophers and bioethicists to reflect on whether and when clinical research in developing countries counts as exploitative, and to consider what can be done to minimise the possibility of exploitation in such circumstances.

FILM STUDIES

- Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors

By Deane Williams, head of film and television studies, Monash University. Intellect Books, £29.95. ISBN 9781841502106

A selective history of Australian documentary film in the immediate postwar years, this book also charts the rise of a progressive film culture, as well as maintaining a perspective on international flows of film culture.

HISTORY

- The Forgotten Prime Minister, Volume II: Achievement, 1851-1869

By Angus Hawkins, director of international programmes in the department for continuing education, University of Oxford. Oxford University Press, £30.00. ISBN 9780199204410

This work is the second volume of the first full biographical study of Lord Derby - the first British statesman to become prime minister three times and the longest-serving leader in the history of British party politics.

- A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518

By John Waller, professor of the history of medicine and biology, Michigan State University. Icon Books, £12.99. ISBN 9781848310216

Drawing on fresh evidence, Waller gives an account of the events of 1518 to explain why Strasbourg's Dancing Plague took place. He evokes the sights, sounds, aromas, diseases and hardships, the fervent supernaturalism and the desperate hedonism of the late medieval world.

LITERATURE

- The Brontes in the World of the Arts

Edited by Sandra Hagan, professor of English, Vancouver Island University, and Juliette Wells, assistant professor of English, Manhattanville College. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754657521

This interdisciplinary collection presents new research on the Brontes' intense and varied relationship to the wider world of the arts with essays by scholars who represent the fields of literary studies, music, art, theatre studies and material culture.

- Seducing the Eighteenth-Century French Reader: Reading, Writing, and the Question of Pleasure

By Paul J. Young, assistant professor of French, Georgetown University. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754664178

Considering canonical and lesser-known works by authors who include Rousseau, Sade, Bastide, Laclos and Crebillon fils, Young suggests that narratives of seduction function as a master plot for 18th-century French literature.

MATHEMATICS

- Fearless Symmetry: Exposing the Hidden Patterns of Numbers

By Avner Ash, professor of mathematics, Boston College, and Robert Gross, associate professor of mathematics, Boston College. Princeton University Press, £11.50. ISBN 9780691138718

Addressing representation theory and reciprocity laws, this book focuses on how mathematicians solve equations and prove theorems. It discusses rules of maths and why they are just as important as those in any other games.

- Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data

By Joel Best, chair and professor, department of sociology and criminal justice, University of Delaware. University of California Press, £11.95. ISBN 9780520257467

Best offers this practical field guide to help everyone identify questionable statistics. Informative and concise, this book intends to help those who want to be more savvy and critical consumers of news and information.

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES

- Finding the Right Place on the Map: Central and Eastern European Media Change in a Global Perspective

Edited by Karol Jakubowicz, former lecturer, Institute of Journalism, University of Warsaw, and Miklos Sukosd, associate professor of political science and academic director at the Centre for Media and Communication Studies, Central European University. Intellect Books, £19.95. ISBN 9781841501932

This is a comparison of the media systems and the democratic performance of the media in post-Communist countries. It explores issues of commercial media, social exclusion and consumer capitalism in a comparative East-West perspective.

MUSIC

- Sergey Prokofiev and His World

Edited by Simon Morrison, associate professor of music, Princeton University. Princeton University Press, £38.95 and £15.95. ISBN 9780691138947 and 8954

Morrison uses previously unknown documents to probe beneath the surface of Sergey Prokofiev's career and contextualises his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

- Peace and Reconciliation: In Search of Shared Identity

Edited by Sebastian C.H. Kim, chair in theology and public life, Pauline Kollontai, deputy dean in the faculty of education and theology, and Greg Hoyland, senior lecturer in theology, all at York St John University. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754664611

This book discusses issues and theories of identity formation that can be implemented for peace and reconciliation from the perspectives of theology and religious studies, while interacting with politics, sociocultural studies and economics.

- Classical Islamic Theology: The Ash'arites: Texts and Studies on the Development and History of Kalam, Volume III

By Richard M. Frank, professor emeritus of theology, Catholic University of America. Ashgate, £67.50. ISBN 9780860789796

This is the third of three volumes reprinting Frank's collected papers on Islamic subjects. Following on from the previous two, it completes the set with a focus on classical Ash'arite teaching.

POLITICS

- Demographic Forecasting

By Gary King, David Florence professor of government and director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University. Princeton University Press, £44.95 and £19.95. ISBN 9780691130941 and 958

King provides an innovative framework for forecasting age-sex-country-cause-specific variables that makes it possible to incorporate more information than standard approaches.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- The Household: Informal Order around the Hearth

By Robert C. Ellickson, Walter E. Meyer professor of property and urban law, Yale University. Princeton University Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780691134420

Ellickson applies transaction cost economics, sociological theory and legal analysis to explore such issues as the sharing of household output, the control of domestic misconduct and the ownership of dwelling units.

- Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks, and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa

By Robert J. Thornton, professor of anthropology, Wits University. University of California Press, £35.00. ISBN 9780520255524

This work, with its anthropological approach, sheds new light on a central conundrum surrounding Aids in Africa: why HIV prevalence fell during the 1990s in Uganda, a country with one of Africa's highest fertility rates, while HIV prevalence rose in South Africa, the country with Africa's lowest fertility rate.

Art

The Patron's Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art By Jonathan K. Nelson, coordinator of art history, Syracuse University in Florence and Richard J. Zeckhauser, P. Ramsey professor of political economy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Princeton University Press, £23.95 ISBN 9780691125411 Building on three economic concepts - signalling, signposting, and stretching - this book develops a systematic methodology for assessing the meaning of art patronage and provides a framework for understanding how works of art functioned in Renaissance Italy.

History

Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages By Mark R. Cohen, professor of Near Eastern studies, Princeton University Princeton University Press, £14.95 ISBN 9780691139319 Rejecting polemically charged ideas as myths, Mark Cohen offers a systematic comparison of Jewish life in medieval Islam and Christendom and an explanation of why medieval Islamic-Jewish relations, though not utopic, were less confrontational and violent than those between Christians and Jews in the West.

Literature

Considering canonical and lesser-known works by authors that include Rousseau, Sade, Bastide, Laclos and Crébillon fils, Paul Young suggests that narratives of seduction function as a master plot for eighteenth-century French literature.

Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction By Steven M. Oberhelman, professor of classics and religious studies, Texas A&M University Ashgate, £50.00 ISBN 9780754660842 Steven M. Oberhelman offers an English translation with commentary of six of the seven extant Byzantine oneirocritica, or manuals on the interpretation of dreams, covering topics including Byzantine dream interpretation; the authors, their dates, and sources.

Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art, from Ibsen to Bergman By Arnold Weinstein, Edna and Richard Salomon distinguished professor of comparative literature, Brown University Princeton University Press, £19.95 ISBN 9780691125442 Arnold Weinstein guides readers through the most startling works created by the writers and artists of Scandinavia over the past two centuries, providing new perspectives on canonical giants such as Søren Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen and Ingmar Bergman.

Music

Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century By Charles Hiroshi Garrett, professor of musicology, University of Michigan University of California Press, £35.00 ISBN 9780520254862 Identifying music as a vital site of cultural debate, Charles Hiroshi Garrett examines an array of genres in order to capture the dynamic, contested nature of musical life in the United States.

Politics

Public Freedom

By Dana Villa, Packey J. Dee professor of political theory, University of Notre Dame Princeton University Press, £44.95 ISBN 9780691135939 Through intense close readings of theorists, Dana Villa argues that political freedom is essential to both the preservation of constitutional government and the very substance of American democracy itself.

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies By Bryan Caplan, associate professor of economics, George Mason University Princeton University Press, £10.95 ISBN 9780691138732 Bryan Caplan argues that American voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.to science.

Philosophy and theology

The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words Edited by Nancy K. Frankenberry, John Phillips professor of religion, Dartmouth College Princeton University Press, £17.95 ISBN 9780691134871 This anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists contains details about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds - or doesn¹t - in their lives in light of their commitment