Published this week

May 7, 2009

ART AND DESIGN

- Travel, Space, Architecture

Edited by Jilly Traganou, assistant professor of art and design, New School, and Miodrag Mitrasinovic, associate professor of communication design, New School. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 97807546487

The contributors set out a new theoretical territory in architectural and urban scholarship that frames the processes of spatial production through the notion of travel.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

- The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?

By Peter Ward, professor of biology and earth and space sciences, University of Washington. Princeton University Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780691130750

Ward argues that, in contrast to the Gaia hypothesis, life may be its own worst enemy.

- How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas

By David P. Barash, professor of psychology, University of Washington, and Judith Eve Lipton, psychiatrist, Swedish Medical Centre, Seattle. Columbia University Press, £17.95. ISBN 9780231146647

In exploring perennial questions about female biology, the authors invite readers to examine the evidence and draw their own conclusions.

ENGINEERING

- Automotive Sensors

Edited by John Turner, professor of mechanical engineering, University of Portsmouth. Momentum Press, £50.00. ISBN 9781606500095

This authoritative reference work offers a complete review of all sensors and their associated controls systems typically found in the modern automotive vehicle.

HISTORY

- The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797-1896)

Edited by Roderick Beaton, Koraes professor of modern Greek and Byzantine history, language and literature, King's College London, and David Ricks, senior lecturer in modern Greek studies, King's College London. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754664987

Scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the contribution of 19th-century European modes of thought to the "making" of Greece as a modern nation.

MATHEMATICS

- Mind and Nature: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Mathematics, and Physics

By Hermann Weyl, edited by Peter Pesic, tutor and musician-in-residence, St John's College. Princeton University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9780691135458

This collection features the most important general writings of Weyl, one of the 20th century's most important mathematicians and a seminal figure in the development of quantum physics and general relativity.

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES

- Friendlyvision: Fred Friendly and the Rise and Fall of Television Journalism

By Ralph Engelman, chair of the journalism department, Long Island University. Columbia University Press, £20.50. ISBN 9780231136907

Fred Friendly stood at the centre of US television's unique response to McCarthyism, the Vietnam War and Watergate. Through the story of broadcast journalism's infamous "wild man", Engelman provides a crucial perspective on the past and future character of American journalism.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- The Meaning and Purpose of Leisure: Habermas and Leisure at the End of Modernity

By Karl Spracklen, principal lecturer in the socio-cultural aspects of sport and leisure, Leeds Metropolitan University. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230205253

This book uses the work of Jurgen Habermas to interrogate leisure as a meaningful, theoretical concept. Spracklen argues that leisure is central to understanding wider debates about identity, postmodernity and globalisation.

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Art and design

The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness

Edited by Evelyn Staudinger Lane, associate professor of art history, Wheaton College, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, associate professor of art history, Emory University, and Ellen M. Shortell, professor of art history and chair of the department of critical studies, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754660101

This interdisciplinary collection brings together the work of 30 scholars from England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the US. Each author has contributed an original article that engages with ideas formulated in Caviness’ wide-ranging scholarship.

Landscape, Art and Identity in 1950s Britain

By Catherine Jolivette, assistant professor of art history, Missouri State University

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754663638

In 1950s Britain, landscape representation was a site of profound instability. Jolivette explores the shifting concept of landscape as it intersects with a variety of discourses including the role of women, the status of immigrant artists, developments in science and technology, and the promotion of British art and culture abroad.

Biography

The Honourable Roger North, 1651-1734: On Life, Morality, Law and Tradition

By Jamie C. Kassler, fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities

Ashgate, £60.00

ISBN 9780754658863

Among other things, this book reveals that North combined the morality of the skeptic, Montaigne, with the jurisprudence of the common lawyers, Coke, Selden and Hale. Kassler bases her interpretation of North on a wide range of his writings, even those in which one might least expect to find a philosophy.

Max Reinhardt: A Life in Publishing

By Judith Adamson, professor of English, Dawson College

Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00

ISBN 97802305454

Reinhardt owned The Bodley Head from 1957 to 1987, as well as many smaller publishers including The Nonesuch Press and Reinhardt Books. This account of his life illuminates the trajectory of British publishing in the second half of the 20th century.

Biological sciences

Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future

By Edmond A. Mathez, adjunct senior research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

Columbia University Press, £26.50

ISBN 9780231146425

This exquisitely illustrated text introduces the basic science underlying the natural progress of climate change and the effect of human activity on the earth’s health. It is geared towards students and general readers.

Economics

Transition and Development in China: Towards Shared Growth

By Yun Chen, associate professor of international relations, Fudan University

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754648345

Chen examines the dismantling of the centrally planned system and the mechanism of institutional change in China’s transition from a planned economy to a market economy and considers how this has succeeded in producing more than a decade of growth.

Film studies

The Bigamist

By Amelie Hastie, associate professor of film and digital media, University of California, Santa Cruz

Palgrave Macmillan, £9.99

ISBN 9781844572663

Amelie Hastie explores The Bigamist in the context of independent Hollywood and relates it to the director Ida Lupino’s personal and professional history.

History

Chatham Dockyard, 1815-1865: The Industrial Transformation

Edited by Philip MacDougall, freelance research historian

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754665977

Concentrating on the naval yard at Chatham, MacDougall’s book examines how the day-to-day running of a major centre of industrial production changed between 1815 and 1865.

Markets, Trade and Economic Development in England and Europe, 1050-1550

By Richard Britnell, emeritus professor of history, University of Durham

Ashgate, £70.00

ISBN 9780754659839

The essays here discuss the complex issues involved in medieval England’s dependence on trade, over both short distances and long. In addition, the evidence of transformative commercial growth in the medieval period gives rise to numerous questions concerning its relationship to more modern times.

The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates

By Peter T. Leeson, BB&T professor for the study of capitalism, department of economics, George Mason University

Princeton University Press, £14.95

ISBN 9780691137476

Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a “pirate code”? Were pirates really ferocious madmen? Leeson uses economics to examine these and other infamous aspects of piracy and establish their relevance to the contemporary world.

The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change

By Daniel H. Nexon, assistant professor of government and foreign service, Georgetown University

Princeton University Press, £44.95 and £17.95

ISBN 9780691137926 and 7933

Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the 16th and 17h centuries, Nexon argues that early modern “composite” political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states. He also introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe’s balance of power.

Law

Spatializing Law: An Anthropological Geography of Law in Society

Edited by Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, joint heads of the project group on legal pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Anne Griffiths, professor of law and anthropology, University of Edinburgh

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754672913

The interrelations between social spaces and boundaries and physical space are explored in this volume, which also examines how spaces are constructed on the terrestrial and marine surface in a variety of socio-political, legal and ecological settings.

Law

Jury Psychology: Social Aspects of Trial Processes: Psychology in the Courtroom, Volume One

Edited by Joel D. Lieberman, chair and associate professor of criminal justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Daniel A. Krauss, associate professor in psychology, Claremont McKenna College

Ashgate, £40.00

ISBN 9780754626411

This investigates the influence of trial procedures on juror decision-making and concludes with recommendations for improving trials involving jurors in courts around the world.

International Law, Volumes One and Two

Edited by Malcolm Evans, dean of the faculty of social sciences and law, and Patrick Capps, senior lecturer in law, University of Bristol

Ashgate, £260.00

ISBN 97807546364

These companion volumes bring together writings that aim to illustrate and exemplify ideas that have informed the historical development of the discipline of international law.

Legal Accents, Legal Borrowing: The International Problem-Solving Court Movement

By James L. Nolan Jr, professor of sociology, Williams College.

Princeton University Press, £19.95

ISBN 9780691129525

This look at the international problem-solving court movement also offer the first comparative analysis of the development of these courts in the US and the other countries where the movement is most advanced.

Literature

The Art of Political Fiction in Hamilton, Edgeworth, and Owenson

By Susan Egenolf, associate professor in British and Irish literature and culture and women’s studies, Texas A&M University

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754662037

Egenolf examines the artistry and political engagement of Elizabeth Hamilton, Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson, whose self-conscious use of glosses facilitated their critiques of politics and society and simultaneously revealed the process of fictional structuring.

The Romantic Legacy of Paradise Lost

By Jonathon Shears, lecturer in 19th-century literature, University of Aberystwyth

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754662532

Shears offers a new critical insight into the relationship between Milton and the Romantic poets, arguing that the Romantic inclination towards fragmentation and a polysemous aesthetic leads to disrupted readings of Paradise Lost that obscure the theme of the poem.

Literature and the Scottish Reformation

Edited by Crawford Gribben, senior lecturer in early modern print culture, Trinity College Dublin, and David George Mullan, professor of history, Cape Breton University

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754667155

The essays here reinforce recent work that challenges the received scholarly consensus that the writing of this period had no literary value by taking these interests seriously. They argue for the importance of this religiously orientated writing through the adoption of a series of interdisciplinary approaches.

Medicine

Bioethics

Edited by Justin Oakley, associate professor in bioethics, Monash University

Ashgate, £150.00

ISBN 9780754625971

The articles here address ethics in clinical practice, issues at the outset of life, reproductive ethics, end-of-life issues, professional integrity and the goals of medicine, ethics and the pharmaceutical industry, research ethics and bioethics and public policy.

Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health: Current Debates

By Johanna Gibson, Herchel Smith professor of intellectual property law, Queen Mary, University of London

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754672180

Gibson examines critical issues and debates in current public health practice and policy, including access to knowledge and medicinal products, human rights and development, innovations in life technologies and the possibility for ethical frameworks for intellectual property law and its application in public health.

Politics

Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia

By David Vine, assistant professor of anthropology, American University, Washington

Princeton University Press, £17.95

ISBN 9780691138695

Vine reveals the history of the military base on the island of Diego Garcia, one of the most strategically important and secretive American military installations outside the US.

Psychology

Mental Health Still Matters

By Jill Reynolds, senior lecturer, faculty of health and social care, The Open University, Rosemary Muston, course manager, faculty of health and social care, The Open University, Tom Heller, senior lecturer in health studies, faculty of health and social care, The Open University, Jonathan Leach, lecturer in health and social care, faculty of health and social care, The Open University, and Mick McCormick, lecturer in social work, faculty of health and social care, The Open University

Palgrave Macmillan, £65.00 and £23.99

ISBN 9780230577305 and 299

Following on from the popular Mental Health Matters, this book provides new user perspectives across a range of mental health issues.

Social sciences

Gender and HIV/AIDS: Critical Perspectives from the Developing World

Edited by Jelke Boesten, lecturer in social development, University of Leeds, and Nana K. Poku, John Ferguson professor of African studies in the department of peace, University of Bradford

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754672692

This scholarly, interdisciplinary volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the themes and issues of gender, Aids and global public health and informs students, policymakers and practitioners of the complexity of the gendered nature of Aids.

Permutations of Order:

Religion and Law as Contested Sovereignties

Edited by Thomas G. Kirsch, lecturer in anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Bertram Turner, senior fellow in social anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Ashgate, £55.00

ISBN 9780754672593

Bringing together case studies from around the world, this volume makes a contribution to current discussions about the relationship between religion and law.

Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization

By Anita Chan, sociologist, Australian National University, Richard Madsen, professor of sociology, University of California, San Diego, and Jonathan Unger, head of the contemporary China centre, Australian National University

University of California Press, £13.50

ISBN 9780520259317

The first two editions of Chen Village presented an enthralling account of a Chinese village in the throes of Maoist revolution, followed by dramatic changes in village life and local politics. Now, more than a decade and a half later, the authors have returned to Chen Village and in three new chapters they explore some astonishing developments.

Training

Handbook of Library Training Practice and Development: Volume Three

Edited by Alan Brine, head of technical services, Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University

Ashgate, £65.00

ISBN 9780754670445

This handbook addresses new aspects of service provision in the UK and abroad and provides a review of developments that are becoming increasingly important to librarians through the influence of the electronic age and the widening of areas of professional involvement.

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