J = Review forthcoming
ART AND DESIGN
- Holy Motherhood
By Elizabeth L'Estrange, post-doctoral researcher in history of art, University of Liege
Manchester University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780719075438
Images of holy motherhood and childbearing are brought to the centre of an art-historical enquiry, showing how images worked to script and maintain gender and social roles within patriarchal society and offering viewers ways of managing those roles.
ANTHROPOLOGY
- Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration and Consecration of National Pasts
Edited by Philip L. Kohl, professor of anthropology and Kathryn W. Davis professor of Slavic studies, Wellesley College; Mara Kozelsky, assistant professor of history, University of South Alabama; and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
University of Chicago Press, £34.00 and £13.50. ISBN 9780226450582 and 0599
This work draws on study of such relatively new or reconfigured nation-states as Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, India and Thailand to show how states invoke a remote past to extol the glories of specific peoples or prove claims to ancestral homelands.
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
- The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language
By Gregory Radick, senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of science, University of Leeds
University of Chicago Press, £23.50. ISBN 9780226702247
Drawing on newly discovered archival sources and interviews with key scientists, Radick charts the scientific controversies over the evolution of language from Darwin's day to our own.
CLASSICS
- The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire
By Ando Clifford, professor of classics, University of Chicago
University of California Press, £26.95. ISBN 9780520250833
Clifford argues that the Romans acquired knowledge of the gods through observation of the world, and their rituals were maintained or modified in light of what they learnt.
- Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers
Edited by Tessa Rajak, professor of classics, University of Reading, and Sarah Pearce, senior lecturer in history, University of Southampton
University of California Press, £29.95. ISBN 9780520250840
This volume gathers 16 essays on monarchy and power in the Hellenistic period and charts a new approach to Hellenistic history by focusing attention on biblical and Jewish evidence and reading that evidence in new ways.
EARTH SCIENCES
- Bonebeds: Genesis, Analysis, and Paleobiological Significance
Edited by Raymond R. Rogers, professor and chair of the geology department, Macalester College; David A. Eberth, research director in sedimentary geology, Royal Tyrrell Museum and Anthony R. Fiorillo, curator of palaeontology, Dallas Museum of Natural History
University of Chicago Press, £15.50. ISBN 9780226723716
This book brings together 13 researchers to provide readers with workable definitions, theoretical frameworks and a compendium of modern techniques in bonebed data collection and analysis.
ECONOMICS
- Global Financial Regulation: The Essential Guide
By Howard Davies, director, London School of Economics, and David Green, adviser, Financial Reporting Council
Polity, £50.00 and £15.99. ISBN 9780745643496 and 3502
Davies and Green identify weaknesses in the international system, which is faced with new types of institutions such as hedge funds and private equity funds, and the growth in importance of developing countries that until now have been excluded from key decision-making.
- Beyond Price: Value in Culture, Economics and the Arts
Edited by Michael Hutter, professor of economics, Witten/Herdecke University, and David Throsby, professor of economics, Macquarie University
Cambridge University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780521862233
Different disciplinary viewpoints are combined to identify the processes of valuation that are used in the valuation of the arts and culture, and exploring differences and identifying common ground between the various viewpoints.
GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
- Living in a Dynamic Tropical Forest Landscape
Edited by Nigel Stork, head, School of Resource Management, University of Melbourne, and Steve Turton, associate professor in physical geography, James Cook University
Blackwell, £39.99. ISBN 9781405156431
Stork and Turton employ a wealth of scientific findings and ecological knowledge to survey what has been learnt about the "wet tropics" rainforests of North Queensland, Australia.
HISTORY
-Our Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War
Edited by Sandra Koa Wing, development officer in Mass Observation, University of Sussex, until her death in May 2007
Profile Books, £8.99
ISBN 9781846680885
Using previously unpublished diaries, this book tells the story of the war – the military conflict as well as life on the home front – through different voices.
- The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe
By Paul Reitter, associate professor in the department of Germanic languages and literatures, Ohio State University
University of Chicago Press, £18.00. ISBN 9780226709703
Reitter's study of Kraus's writings situates them in the context of fin-de-siecle German-Jewish intellectual society, arguing that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Kraus's attacks constituted a critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation.
- Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII
By Sharon Kettering, emerita professor of history, Montgomery College in Maryland
Manchester University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780719077869
Kettering seeks to defend the reputation of Charles d'Albert, the controversial favourite of Louis XIII, arguing that the traditional historical interpretation is significantly influenced by a devastating character assassination made Richelieu.
- Ireland, India and Empire
By Kate O'Malley, research associate with the centre for contemporary Irish history, Trinity College Dublin
Manchester University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780719077517
O'Malley offers a new perspective on the history of the end of Empire, with the Irish and Indian independence movements as its focus, and details how each country's nationalist agitators engaged with each other and exchanged ideas.
- Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment
By James M. Smith, associate professor in the department of English and Irish studies programme, Boston College
Manchester University Press, £18.99. ISBN 9780719078880
This study interrogates available archival resources, including government reports, legislative debates and court cases to assert that the state was always an active agent in the operation and function of the notorious Magdalen workhouses in which women and girls were in effect imprisoned.
- Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Change in a Post 9/11 World
By Robert Samuels, lecturer in the writing programmes, University of California, Los Angeles
Palgrave, £42.50. ISBN 97802306024
Samuels analyses diverse contemporary reactions to the depiction of the Holocaust and other cultural traumas in museums, movies, television shows, classroom discussions and bestselling books.
- Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital
Edited by Matthew Brown, lecturer in the department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American studies, Bristol University
Blackwell, £19.99. ISBN 9781405179324
This interdisciplinary interrogation of the concept of a British "informal empire" in Latin America builds on recent advances in the historiography of imperialism and studies of the 19th-century modern world.
LAW
- Plunder: When the Rule of Law Is Illegal
Edited by Ugo Mattei, Alfred and Hanna Fromm chair in international and comparative law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and Laura Nader, professor of anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
Blackwell, £50.00 and £19.99. ISBN 9781405178952 and 8945
This book examines the dark side of the rule of law and explores how it has been used as a political weapon by Western countries in order to legitimise plunder - the practice of violent extraction of wealth by stronger political actors victimising weaker ones.
- The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law
By Steven M. Teles, visiting lecturer in law, Yale University
Princeton University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9780691122083
Drawing from internal documents, as well as interviews with key conservative figures, Teles examines the only partially successful conservative challenge to liberal domination of the law and American legal institutions.
LITERATURE
- Archipelagic English: Literature, History and Politics 1603-1707
By John Kerrigan, professor of English, University of Cambridge Oxford University Press, £25.00 ISBN 9780198183846
Kerrigan aims to transform views of 17th-century literature by showcasing writers from Wales, Scotland and Ireland whose work has since been neglected.
- French Laughter: Literary Humour from Diderot to Tournier
By Walter Redfern, emeritus professor of French studies, University of Reading Oxford University Press, £25.00 ISBN 9780199237579
This work, the culmination of a lifetime's fascination with humour, presents new perspectives on philosophers, poets, novelists and playwrights and a new way of thinking about a range of French writers.
- Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment and Servanthood
By John Renard, professor in Islamic studies, St Louis University
University of California Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780520251984
Renard illuminates some of the most delightful tales in world religious literature, producing one of the first global overviews of Islamic hagiography and detailing the characters beyond the Koran and Hadith.
MATHEMATICS
- A Radical Approach to Lebesgue's Theory of Integration
By David M. Bressoud, DeWitt Wallace professor of mathematics, Macalester College
Cambridge University Press, £60 and £24.99 ISBN 9780521884747 and 711838
This introduction to measure theory and Lebesgue integration is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, and is rooted in and motivated by the historical questions that led to its development.
- Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and Control: A Lyapunov-Based Approach
By Wassim M. Haddad, professor of aerospace engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
Princeton University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780691133294
Haddad presents and develops an extensive treatment of stability analysis and control design of nonlinear dynamical systems with an emphasis on Lyapunov-based methods, which lie at the heart of mathematical sciences and engineering.
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
- Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History
By Ross Hamilton, assistant professor of English, Barnard College
University of Chicago Press, £18.00. ISBN 9780226314846
This tells a history of Western thought from the perspective of Aristotle's categories of accident and substance. Touching on an array of images and texts, Hamilton provides a new way to map the mutations of personal identity and subjectivity.
- A Guide to Writing Academic Essays in Religious Studies
By Scott Brown, former lecturer in the department of religion, University of Toronto
Continuum, £45.00 and £9.99. ISBN 9780826498878 and 9780826498885
This guide on how to write academic essays pertaining to religion seeks to ease the transition for students in this subject. It covers topics such as developing a thesis, rewriting and proofreading, and theoretical and methodological assumptions.
- Kantian Ethics
By Allen Wood, professor of philosophy, Stanford University
Cambridge University Press, £40.00 and £15.99. ISBN 9780521854948 and 671149
Wood investigates Kant's conception of ethical theory, using it to develop a viable approach to the rights and moral duties of human beings addressing topics such as sexual morality, freedom of the will and the state's role in securing economic justice.
- Religion in American Politics: A Short History
By Frank Lambert, professor in history, Purdue University
Princeton University Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780691128337
Lambert tells the story of the uneasy relations between religion and politics from the founding, when moves to make Christianity the national religion were blocked, to the 21st century and the emergence of the religious Left.
POLITICS
- The State of Loyalism in Northern Ireland
By Graham Spencer, senior lecturer in media studies, University of Portsmouth
Palgrave, £50.00. ISBN 9781403989758
Drawing from interview material with key players in British and Irish governments, as well as intermediaries, clergy and paramilitary leaders, this is a contemporary political history of Northern Ireland through the perspectives of direct dialogue.
- Authority in the Global Political Economy
Edited by Volker Rittberger, professor of political science and international relations, University of Tubingen, and Martin Nettesheim, professor in law, University of Tubingen
Palgrave, £55.00. ISBN 9780230573895
This analyses changing patterns of authority in the global political economy, looking at state and non-state actors, and themes such as the provision of global public goods and the potential of new institutions for global governance.
- Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror
By Ian Shapiro, Stirling professor of political science, Yale University
Princeton University Press, £8.95. ISBN 9780691137070
Shapiro explains how the Bush doctrine departs from the best traditions of US national-security policy and accepted international norms, and renders Americans and democratic values less safe.
PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY
- (J)The Finger Book
By John Manning, professor of psychology, University of Central Lancaster
Faber and Faber, £12.99. ISBN 9780571215393
Manning uses the fact that men tend to have a greater "finger ratio" (length of the ring finger relative to the index finger) to examine a group of questions about human behaviour, from sexuality to musical ability and predisposition to disease.
- (J)Proust and the Squid
By Maryann Wolf, director of the centre for reading and language research, Tufts University
Icon Books, £12.99. ISBN 9781840468670
This is the story of the secret history of reading and its relationship with the brain, detailing how people can learn about the brain from dyslexia, the importance of preserving the reading brain and the intrinsic value of the printed word.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
- Empowerment, Participation and Social Work
By Robert Adams, professor of social work, University of Teesside
Palgrave, £17.99. ISBN 9780230019997
Adams's book is now in its fourth edition and offers coverage spanning conceptual debates about empowerment and practice issues. It has been updated to reflect the latest advances in the field.
- Key Concepts in Cultural Studies
By Maja Mikula, senior lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Technology, Sydney
Palgrave, £13.99. ISBN 9780230006461
This book provides a selection of definitions of key cultural studies terms, offers critical references for further reading and places cultural studies in disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.
- Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China
By Susan Greenhalgh, professor of anthropology, University of California, Irvine
University of California Press, £12.95. ISBN 9780520253391
Greenhalgh draws on 20 years of research into China's population politics to explain how the leaders of a nation of 1 billion decided to limit all couples to one child.
THEATRE STUDIES
- London in Early Modern English Drama
By Darryll Grantley, lecturer in drama and theatre studies, University of Kent
Palgrave, £45.00. ISBN 9780230554290
Grantley argues that the presence of London as a setting and as a frame of reference affected the emerging commercial theatre of the time, helping to shape its conventions of representation.
See www.timeshighereducation.co.uk for more listings.
