Published this Week

CULTURAL STUDIES

- Gay Suburban Narratives in American and British Culture: Homecoming Queens

By Martin Dines, lecturer in suburban and cultural studies, Kingston University. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230233249

Dines explores the relationship between the physical and metaphorical spaces of suburbia and the evolution of modern gay identities across a range of British and American film and fiction, looking at the work of, among others, Dennis Cooper, Quentin Crisp and Edmund White.

ECONOMICS

- Behavioural and Experimental Economics

Edited by Steven N. Durlauf, Kenneth J. Arrow professor of economics, University of Wisconsin, and Lawrence E. Blume, Goldwin Smith professor of economics, Cornell University. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00 and £19.99. ISBN 9780230238671 and 8688

Specially selected from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, each article in this compendium covers fundamental themes in the discipline and is written by a practitioner in the field.

- Economic Growth

Edited by Steven N. Durlauf, Kenneth J. Arrow professor of economics, University of Wisconsin, and Lawrence E. Blume, Goldwin Smith professor of economics, Cornell University. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00 and £19.99. ISBN 9780230238824 and 8831

Another selection from The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, this volume covers further themes within the discipline, each written by a practitioner in the field.

- Efficiency, Market Dynamics and Industry Growth

By Jati Sengupta, professor of economics, University of California, and Phillip Fanchon, professor emeritus of economics, Rhode Island University. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00. ISBN 9780230581913

The authors examine the new paradigm of change in technology-intensive industries, and provide theoretical and empirical analysis, using non-parametric models of efficiency.

EDUCATION

- Affirmative Action in China and the U.S.: A Dialogue on Inequality and Minority Education

Edited by Minglang Zhou, associate professor of East Asian studies, Dickinson College, and Ann Maxwell Hill, associate professor of anthropology, Dickinson College. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00 and £18.99. ISBN 9780230612358 and 3348

This volume examines Chinese affirmative action policies in the critical area of minority education, the most important conduit to employment and economic success in the PRC after the economic reforms begun in the late 1970s.

ENGINEERING

- Essentials of Control Techniques and Theory

By John Billingsley, professor of mechatronic engineering, University of Southern Queensland. CRC Press, £49.99. ISBN 9781420091236

Billingsley shows how to model a real system by deriving equations, turning them into computer code and interacting with the simulations in real time. He includes practical examples of everyday devices.

HISTORY

- After The Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Britain, 1945-68

By Matthew Grant, university teaching associate in modern British history, University of Sheffield. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9780230205420

Grant details the history of the preparations to fight a nuclear war taken in Britain between the end of the Second World War and 1968 and examines the range of policies that were adopted to meet the shifting priorities of the state.

- Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America

By Renee K. Harrison, assistant professor of African American religious practices and culture, Paine Theological Seminary. Palgrave Macmillan, £52.50. ISBN 9780230618466

Harrison draws on mid-17th- to 19th-century slave narratives to describe oppression in the lives of enslaved African women and investigates pre-colonial West and West Central African women's lives prior to European arrival.

- Reading Shenbao: Nationalism, Consumerism and Individuality in China 1919-37

By Weipin Tsai, lecturer in history, Royal Holloway, University of London. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9780230019829

Tsai investigates ideas of nationalism, consumerism and individuality, looking at the relationship between advertising, modern lifestyles and changing social attitudes in China as it underwent modernisation.

LANGUAGE

- Academic Writing: At the Interface of Corpus and Discourse

Edited by Maggie Charles, tutor in English for academic studies, Oxford University Language Centre. Continuum, £80.00. ISBN 9781847064363

This selection of recent work by experts in academic written discourse illustrates how corpus linguistics and discourse analysis can work as complementary approaches.

LITERATURE

- Seamus Heaney's Rhythmic Contract

By Jason David Hall, lecturer in English, University of Exeter. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230574885

Setting out a historically informed approach to poetic form, Hall places Heaney's developing versification in the context of mid-century Anglo-American theories of metre and rhythm.

- The Counter-Memorial Impulse in Twentieth-Century English Fiction

By Sarah Henstra, assistant professor of English, Ryerson University. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230577145

Readings of works by Ford Madox Ford, Doris Lessing and Jeanette Winterson demonstrate how narrative experimentation in this period responded to socio-historic conditions like post-imperial melancholy, nuclear fear and homophobia.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

- Hobbes and the Making of Modern Political Thought

By Gordon Hull, assistant professor of philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Continuum, £65.00. ISBN 9781441140029

Hull reads Hobbes as the first "modern" political philosopher and re-examines Hobbes' political writings in the context of the rest of his corpus and the work of his contemporaries.

POLITICS

- Comparative Regionalism

Edited by Fred H. Lawson, professor of government, Mills College. Ashgate, £165.00. ISBN 9780754628361

This collection of articles on regionalism advances theoretical concepts that aim to stimulate useful comparisons, along with surveys of instances of regionalism in the contemporary world.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

- Driver Behaviour and Accident Research Methodology: Unresolved Problems

By Anders af Wahlberg, associate professor of psychology, Uppsala University. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754670766

Summarising and analysing the available research, af Wahlberg finds that there are a number of commonly made assumptions about the validity of methods that have little backing, and that many basic problems have not been researched at all.

- How to be a Successful Teacher: Strategies for Personal and Professional Development

By Paul Castle, senior lecturer in sport and exercise psychology, University of Worcester, and Scott Buckler, senior lecturer in education, University of Worcester. Sage Publications, £18.99. ISBN 9781849200172

From engaging with change to cognitive restructuring, Castle and Buckler provide an interrelated framework of applied psychological techniques to facilitate individual teacher development.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- Social Vulnerability in Europe: The New Configuration of Social Risks

Edited by Costanzo Ranci, professor of economic sociology, Polytechnic of Milan. Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00. ISBN 9780230580916

The contributors to this volume explore the dimensions and characteristics of social vulnerability in Western Europe and provide a broad empirical foundation for recent theories on the emergence of new social risks in post-industrial societies.