Published this week

EDUCATION

- Boys and Foreign Language Learning: Real Boys Don't Do Languages

By Jo Carr, senior lecturer, School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education, Queensland University of Technology, and Anne Pauwels, professor of linguistics, University of Western Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, £52.00 and £19.99. ISBN 9781403939678 and 9780230580053

Carr and Pauwels examine the continuing poor relationship between boys and the study of foreign languages through discussions of gender socialisation, gendered curriculum practices and cultural narratives about boys and schooling.

FILM STUDIES

- Remaking Kurosawa: Translations and Permutations in Global Cinema

By Dolores Martinez, reader in anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780312293581

Through the lens of Akira Kurosawa's films, Martinez dissects the human tendency to make connections in her attempt to build a bridge out of diverse materials: the anthropology of Japan, film studies and postmodern theory.

Czech and Slovak Cinema: Themes and Traditions

By Peter Hames, honorary research associate in film and media studies, Staffordshire University. Edinburgh University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780748620814

Providing a study of Czech and Slovak cinema history, Hames examines links between theme, genre and visual style, and looks at the ways in which a range of traditions has extended across different historical periods and political regimes.

HISTORY

- American Diplomacy and Strategy toward Korea and Northeast Asia, 1882-1950 and after: Perception of Polarity and US Commitment to a Periphery

By Seung-young Kim, lecturer in international relations, University of Aberdeen. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9781403975454

Kim examines the dramatic unfolding of US occupation, withdrawal and intervention in the Korean peninsula in the recent past as well as considering the broader issue of US military occupations of other countries in the 21st century.

- Anti-Communist Minorities in the US: Political Activism of Ethnic Refugees

Edited by Ieva Zake, assistant professor of sociology, Rowan University, New Jersey. Palgrave Macmillan, £52.50. ISBN 9780230606814

Zake details American anti-communism and the Cold War from the point of view of ethnic refugee groups, offering insight into the lives of minority groups that have hitherto received little, if any, scholarly attention.

- Rethinking the Atlantic World: Europe and America in the Age of Democratic Revolutions

Edited by Manuela Albertone, professor of modern history, University of Turin, and Antonino De Francesco, professor of modern history, University of Milan. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9780230206786

This collection of essays provides a re-evaluation of the term "Atlantic" by placing the link between continental Europe and America at the heart of the republican debate, rather than assuming British political culture as having been representative of Europe as a whole.

- Empire and Scottish Society: The Impact of Foreign Missions at Home, c. 1790 to c. 1914

By Esther Breitenbach, Economic and Social Research Council research fellow in the department of history, classics and archaeology, University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780748636204

In her examination of how participation in the British Empire shaped constructions of Scottish national identity, Breitenbach makes an important contribution to our understanding of 19th- and early 20th-century Scottish society.

LITERATURE

- Carnal Inscriptions: Spanish American Narratives of Corporeal Difference and Disability

By Susan Antebi, assistant professor of Hispanic studies, University of California, Riverside. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230613898

Antebi explores manifestations of physical disability in Spanish American narrative fiction and performance, ranging from late 19th-century cronicas to 21st-century novels and to the testimonio and filmic depictions of Gabriela Brimmer.

- Constructing Chaucer: Author and Auto-fiction in the Critical Tradition

By Geoffrey W. Gust, associate professor of medieval studies, University of Arizona. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9781403976437

In examining the scholarly construction of Geoffrey Chaucer in different historical eras, this work challenges longstanding assumptions to enhance the theoretical dialogue on Chaucer's historical reception.

- Critical Identities in Contemporary Anglophone Diasporic Literature

By Francoise Kral, senior lecturer in English, Universite Paris 10. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230220416

Kral takes issue with the view of the migrant experience as an icon of postmodernity through in-depth analyses of writers including Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Monica Ali.

- Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Twentieth-Century British Fiction

By Judy Suh, assistant professor of English, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230613683

Suh makes a case that much of middlebrow British fiction, despite its reputation for non-political content, theorised the rise and fall of fascism from the 1930s to 1960s.

- Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature

By Kathleen E. Kennedy, assistant professor of English, Penn State Brandywine. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230606661

Kennedy explores the struggle for authors and other contemporary observers to describe and critique marriage through discussions of the developing notion of an impartial legal profession.

- Symbolic Cities in Caribbean Literature

By Christopher Winks, assistant professor of comparative literature, City University of New York. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230612181

Utilising cross-cultural strands, this comparative study analyses Caribbean literary representations of magic and invisible cities, reworking the notion of the city as both instituted social space and imaginary community.

- The Contemporary British Historical Novel: Representation, Nation, Empire

By Mariadele Boccardi, senior lecturer in English literature, University of the West of England. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230200074

Boccardi offers readings of a group of works and draws on a range of interpretative strategies to examine the ways in which the contemporary historical novel engages with questions of nation and identity to illuminate Britain's post-imperial condition.

MEDICINE

- A Short History of the Drug Receptor Concept

By Cay-Rudiger Prull, senior lecturer in the history of medicine, University of Freiberg, Andreas-Holger Maehle, professor in the history of medicine and medical ethics, Durham University, and Robert Francis Halliwell, professor of neuropharmacology, University of the Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, £52.00. ISBN 9780230554153

The authors of this work consider the concept of drug receptors from its 19th-century origins in the work of John Newport Langley and Paul Ehrlich to its development during the 20th century and its current impact on drug discovery in the 21st century.

POLITICS

- Elections and Democracy after Communism?

By Erik Herron, assistant professor in political science, University of Kansas. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230600959

This book uses elections as a vehicle to explain the unanticipated outcomes of post-Soviet politics. Herron assesses how the behaviour of voters, candidates and government officials is influenced not just by the Soviet legacy but also by rational calculations of self-interest. He also addresses elections in post-Soviet space.

- Health Policy in Britain

By Christopher Ham, professor of health policy and management, University of Birmingham. Palgrave Macmillan, £65.00 and £22.99. ISBN 9780230507562 and 7579

Updated throughout, this sixth edition takes the story of health policy to the end of the Tony Blair era and into the early period of the succeeding Gordon Brown premiership, offering an introduction to the history of the National Health Service, its funding and priorities, and to the process of policymaking.

- The External Dimension of EU Justice and Home Affairs: Governance, Neighbours, Security

Edited by Thierry Balzacq, associate professor of political science, University of Namur. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00. ISBN 9780230219779

This book provides an analysis of the European Neighbourhood Policy by focusing on the impact of norms of justice and home affairs on the European Union's external relations.

- The Politics of Housing Booms and Busts

Edited by Herman M. Schwartz, professor of politics, University of Virginia, and Leonard Seabrooke, professor in international political economy, University of Warwick. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00 and £18.99. ISBN 9780230230804 and 0811

The contributors analyse varieties of residential capitalism through a range of international case studies, as well as investigating the links between housing finance and the current international financial crisis.

- The Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey

By Ali Carkoglu, professor of political science, Sabanci University, and Ersin Kalaycioglu, professor of political science, Isik University. Palgrave Macmillan, £47.50. ISBN 9780230602625

Exploring the impact of international system change on Turkey over the course of recent events, Carkoglu and Kalaycioglu cover the emerging tension and stress in Turkey's political culture, economy and democratic institutions.

- Organizational Cooperation in Crises

By Lina M. Svedin, assistant professor in political science, University of Utah. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754677253

Svedin takes an interdisciplinary approach to present a systematic examination of organisational co-operation in crises. She brings together three distinct research traditions on co-operation and draws on them to examine how their variables fare empirically when applied to a wide set of cases and decision situations.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- Community, Citizenship and the 'War on Terror': Security and Insecurity

Edited by Patricia Noxolo, lecturer in human geography, Loughborough University, and Jef Huysmans, senior lecturer in politics and international studies, The Open University. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230201217

This interdisciplinary collection focuses on how the line between security and insecurity is negotiated through changing concepts of "community" and "citizenship".

- Drug Use and Social Change: The Distortion of History

By Michael Shiner, senior lecturer in social policy and criminology, London School of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 97802302224

Locating the rise of illicit drug use within the historical development of late industrial society and challenging the prevailing view, Shiner also highlights key areas of continuity and the continuing value of classic criminological theory.