Published this week

• ARTS AND DESIGN

Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection
By Brynjulf Stige, professor in music therapy, University of Bergen; Gary Ansdell, director of education, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy UK; Cochavit Elefant, associate professor in music therapy, University of Bergen; and Mercedes Pavlicevic, associate professor in music therapy, University of Pretoria. Ashgate, £20.00. ISBN 9781409410102

Examining the emerging community music therapy movement, this book presents case studies of projects from around the world. It explores the use of music in providing a sense of well-being, belonging and participation.

Maruja Mallo and the Spanish Avant-Garde
By Shirley Mangini, professor emeritus of Spanish, California State University. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754669326

Mangini provides the first English volume on the Spanish artist Maruja Mallo. Drawing on interviews with Mallo's family, she examines the life and art of a woman who, despite being sidelined by history and her male counterparts, was a vital figure in the blossoming Spanish cultural vanguard.

• HISTORY

British Music and Modernism, 1895-1960
Edited by Matthew Riley, senior lecturer in music, University of Birmingham. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754665854

Riley brings together contributions from scholars working in analysis, hermeneutics, reception history, critical theory and the history of ideas, to find previously undiscovered links between British music and modernism.

Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500
Edited by Caroline Goodson, lecturer in history and archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London; Anne E. Lester, assistant professor of history, University of Colorado; and Carol Symes, associate professor of history and medieval studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Ashgate, £65.00. ISBN 9780754667230

This volume seeks to demonstrate significant patterns of socialisation in medieval urban settings and comprises 12 essays that model important new ways of re-imagining the urban world. It looks in particular at the role of sanctity, the evolution of charitable landscapes and the coalescence of formal institutions and informal networks of human interaction.

• LITERATURE

Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837-1925
By Cathrine O. Frank, assistant professor of English, University of New England. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9781409400141

Focusing on the rhetoric of the last will and testament, Frank examines novels alongside wills, legal manuals, case law and accounts of wills in periodicals. She demonstrates how these related discourses competed to structure a social order based on individuals' relationships to a community and its commodified culture.

The Poetics of Old English
By Tiffany Beechy, assistant professor of English, University of North Florida. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754669173

Beechy seeks to provide a reassessment of Anglo-Saxon verse and prose in this volume. She combines literary analysis and theoretical linguistics and identifies an inherent poetic nature present in all Old English texts, including King Alfred's translation of the Consolations of Boethius.

Holinshed's Nation
By Igor Djordjevic, associate professor of English, York University, Canada. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9781409400356

By exploring the historiography of Holinshed's Chronicles from a literary perspective, Djordjevic seeks to revaluate our understanding of Renaissance chronicle history and the impact of Holinshed on Tudor, Jacobean and Caroline political discourse.

Mercenaries in British and American Literature, 1790-1830
By Erik Simpson, associate professor of English, Grinnell College. Edinburgh University Press, £65.00. ISBN 9780748636440

Simpson traces the implications of mercenaries' presence in literature by looking at the writing of authors including Jane Austen and Charlotte Smith. He argues that they are a neglected but historically significant factor in American and European contexts.

• PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Beyond Evangelicalism
By Steven Knowles, lecturer in theology, University of Chester. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754666080

This consideration of the work of evangelical theologian Stanley J. Grenz sees the author seek to reposition evangelical theology in line with postmodern concerns by advocating a non-foundationalist methodology.

Deleuze and Contemporary Art
Edited by Stephen Zepke, independent researcher; and Simon O'Sullivan, lecturer, department of visual cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Edinburgh University Press, £24.99. ISBN 9780748638383

This collection of essays from contributors in the field explores Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's extensive writings on art, art history and aesthetics in the realm of contemporary art.

Immanence - Deleuze and Philosophy
By Miguel de Beistegui, professor of philosophy, University of Warwick. Edinburgh University Press, £65.00. ISBN 9780748638307

De Beistegui identifies the original impetus and driving force behind Deleuze's philosophy as immanence, while also revealing that this is realised within each of the classical domains of philosophy.

Reading and Responsibility: Deconstruction's Traces
By Derek Attridge, professor of English, University of York. Edinburgh University Press, £65.00. ISBN 9780748640089

Tracing a close engagement with Derrida's writing over the past two decades, Attridge argues that the challenge of the French philosopher's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met.

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy
By Kurt Brandhorst, adjunct assistant professor, Valparaiso University. Edinburgh University Press, £15.99. ISBN 9780748634804

This guide to Rene Descartes' work Meditations seeks to help students to engage with the text at each stage and suggests methods through the more difficult passages. Intended as an introduction to the popular philosophical text, it encourages new readers to learn to philosophise for themselves.

• PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

The Oxford Guide to Low Intensity CBT Interventions
Edited by James Bennett-Levy, associate professor in the School of Public Health, University of Sydney; David Richards, professor of mental health services research, University of Exeter; Paul Farrand, senior teaching fellow in psychology, University of Exeter; et al. Oxford University Press, £29.95. ISBN 9780199590117

This guide provides the first comprehensive look at low-intensity CBT interventions, a new form of cost-effective psychological therapies. Bringing together the work of researchers and clinicians from around the world, it discusses new ways that these techniques can be delivered to a considerable number of people.

• SOCIAL SCIENCES

The Autism Matrix
By Gil Eyal, professor of sociology, Columbia University; Brendan Hart, doctoral candidate in the department of sociomedical sciences, Columbia University; Emine Oncular, doctoral candidate in the department of sociology, Columbia University; Neta Oren, visiting scholar at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University; and Natasha Rossi, doctoral candidate in the department of sociology, Columbia University. Wiley, £55.00 and £17.99. ISBN 9780745643991 and 4004

The authors present a novel analysis of autism combining a historical narrative with an international comparison. They argue that the recent rise in autism should be understood as an "aftershock" of the real earthquake: the deinstitutionalisation of mental retardation in the mid-1970s.