? = Review forthcoming
ART AND DESIGN
- Style and Function in Roman Decoration: Living with Objects and Interiors
By Ellen Swift, head of classical and archaeological studies, University of Kent. Ashgate, £55.00. ISBN 9780754665632
Swift presents a new interpretation of Roman decorative art, focusing on the function of decoration in the social context. She examines the three principal areas of social display and consumption in the Roman world: social space, entertainment and dress.
ECONOMICS
- Piero Sraffa
By Alessandro Roncaglia, professor of economics, University of Rome La Sapienza. Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00. ISBN 9781403987464
In discussing the developments of Sraffian-Ricardian economics, Roncaglia looks at Sraffa's critique of the Marshallian theory of the firm and the industry, his edition of David Ricardo's Works and Correspondence, his book on production of commodities by means of commodities, and his influence on Antonio Gramsci and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
- ? Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror
Edited by Alan Ingram, lecturer in geography, University College London, and Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics, Royal Holloway, University of London. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754673491
The authors draw on recent advances in social theory to explore the diverse geographies of the War on Terror, offering case studies and theoretical reflections.
HISTORY
- The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939-77
Edited by Michael F. Hopkins, lecturer in history, University of Liverpool, Saul Kelly, reader in defence studies, King's College London, and John W. Young, professor of international history, University of Nottingham. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230522169
This is the first study of the role of British ambassadors in shaping Anglo-American relations during the first generation of the "special relationship". As well as showing how ambassadors wielded influence in Washington and helped formulate British foreign policy, it offers insights into the role of the embassy in modern diplomacy.
LITERATURE
- Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture
By Leah Knight, assistant professor of English, Brock University. Ashgate, £50.00. ISBN 9780754665861
Knight argues that early modern cultures and the cultivation of plants and books depended on each other in historically specific ways. Her narrative incorporates a reading of 16th-century herbals.
MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES
- Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts: Representations of Self and Other
Edited by Pal Kolstu, professor of literature, area studies and European languages, University of Oslo. Ashgate, £48.00. ISBN 9780754676294
This book combines theories on ethnic conflict, identity construction and discourse analysis with an inclusive survey of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It aims to be of interest to those concerned with ethnopolitical conflict and scholars across a range of social sciences.
POLITICS
- The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual
By Ruth Wodak, distinguished professor of discourse studies, Lancaster University. Palgrave Macmillan, £52.00. ISBN 9780230018815
This is an interdisciplinary study providing first-hand evidence of the everyday lives of politicians; what politicians actually do on "the backstage" in political organisations. Wodak aims to offer answers to the widely discussed phenomena of disenchantment with politics and depoliticisation.
Online extra listings
Art and design
The Technology of Salvation and the Art of Geertgen tot Sint Jans
By John R. Decker, assistant professor of art history, Georgia State University
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754664536
Decker investigates the complex interactions between devotional imagery and Church doctrine in the Low Countries during the 15th century and demonstrates how the pictorial arts intersected with popular religious practice.
Business and management
Flexible Organizations and the New Working Life: A European Perspective
Edited by Egil J. Skorstad, professor in organisational studies, Østfold University College, and Helge Ramsdal, professor of political science and organisation theory, Østfold University College
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754674207
Contributors to this volume confront questions about the nature of flexible organisations, discussing the concept of flexibility in relation to employment practices, organisational structure, cultural peculiarities and network arrangements in France, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Risky Work Environments: Reappraising Human Work within Fallible Systems
Edited by Christine Owen, assistant dean of the faculty of education, University of Tasmania, Pascal Béguin, director of research, French National Institute for Agricultural Research, and Ger Wackers, assistant professor of technology and society studies, University of Maastricht
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754676096
Using case studies, the contributors to this volume aim to provide new insights into the multiple and dynamic trajectories of both near misses and mistakes in complex work environments.
Economics
Shipping Derivatives and Risk Management
By Amir Alizadeh, reader in shipping economics, City University, and Nikos Nomikos, reader in shipping risk management, City University
Palgrave Macmillan, £75.00
ISBN 9780230215917
This examination of shipping derivatives and risk management covers the theoretical and practical aspects of financial risk in shipping, considering both theoretical examples and real-life applications.
Economic Systems Analysis and Policies: Explaining Global Differences, Transitions and Developments
By Solomon I. Cohen, professor of economics, Erasmus University
Palgrave Macmillan, £90.00
ISBN 9780230223820
In bringing together economic systems and development economics, Cohen presents theoretical foundations and empirical evidence to examine competition, technology, governance, public goods, income transfers, transition, performance, convergence and displacement in a range of countries worldwide.
History
Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France
Edited by Alison Forrestal, lecturer in early modern history, National University of Ireland, Galway, and Eric Nelson, assistant professor of history, Missouri State University
Palgrave Macmillan, £52.00
ISBN 9780230521391
This book explores the political and religious world of early Bourbon France, focusing on the search for stable accord that characterised its political and religious life and examining how the Bourbon realm was shaped through the century by developments such as assertions of royal authority, rules of political negotiation and the evolution of Dévot piety.
The Society of Princes: The Lorraine-Guise and the Conservation of Power and Wealth in Seventeenth-Century France
By Jonathan Spangler, senior lecturer in history, University of Gloucestershire
Ashgate, £65.00
ISBN 9780754658603
Spangler examines the Lorraine-Guise at the court of Louis XIV and their renewed power, wealth and influence after the turbulent Wars of Religion. This work aims to add to debates on the nature of crown-noble relations in the era of absolutism.
Literature
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution
Edited by Colin Jones, professor of history, Queen Mary, University of London, Josephine McDonagh, professor of 19th-century literature, King’s College London, and Jon Mee, professor of Romanticism studies, University of Warwick
Palgrave Macmillan, £45.00
ISBN 9780230537781
Employing a variety of disciplinary approaches, this collection of essays examines the origins of Dickens’ vision of the French Revolution, the literary power of the text itself and its enduring place in British culture through stage and screen adaptations.
Figures of Memory: Poetry, Space, and the Past
By Charles I. Armstrong, professor of British literature, University of Bergen
Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00
ISBN 9780230223530
Through incisive readings of ten poets from William Wordsworth to Alice Oswald, Armstrong demonstrates how poets have engaged with the possibilities and pitfalls of memory. He links poets’ uses of personal, aesthetic and collective memory, as well as history.
Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes’s Bewildering Corpus
By Daniela Caselli, senior lecturer in 20th-century literature, University of Manchester
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754652007
In examining questions about Barnes, biography and feminist criticism, identity and authority, and modernist canon formation, Caselli tackles a central issue in Barnes’ work: intertextuality. Caselli shows that the repetition of texts, by other authors and by Barnes herself, forces us to rethink the relationship between authority and gender in modernism.
Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific: Travel, Empire, and the Author’s Profession
By Roslyn Jolly, senior lecturer in English, University of New South Wales
Ashgate, £50.00
ISBN 9780754661955
In this study of a crucial period in Stevenson’s life, Jolly focuses on the self-transformation wrought in his Pacific travel writing and political texts and analyses the resistance of Victorian readers to the Pacific subject matter of Stevenson’s later works and to his experiments with new styles and genres.
Women’s Wealth and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England: “Little Legacies” and the Materials of Motherhood
By Elizabeth Mazzola, professor of English, City College of the City University of New York
Ashgate, £50.00
ISBN 9780754666639
This book focuses on both literary and material networks and examines the nature of women’s wealth in early modern England and the ways that women’s writing sought to manage and transmit this wealth.
Music studies
The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music
Edited by Björn Heile, lecturer and head of the department of music, University of Sussex
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754662600
This collection of essays offers a historical reappraisal of the nature of musical modernism and its potential for the present and future, concentrating particularly on music from the 1970s to the 1990s.
The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture
By Stan Hawkins, professor of popular music, University of Oslo
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754658580
In this study, male pop artists are mapped against a cultural and historical background through a genealogy of British personalities, such as Oscar Wilde, W.?H. Auden and Noël Coward. The focus is on a critical analysis of issues and approaches to musical performance through masculinity.
Philosophy and theology
Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice
By Ruth Webb, honorary research fellow in history, Birkbeck, University of London
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754661252
Webb situates the practice of ekphrasis in its cultural context, emphasising the importance of the visual imagination in ancient responses to rhetoric, poetry and historiography. She work also links the theoretical writings on ekphrasis with ancient theories of imagination and emotion and language.
Language, Reality and Mind: A Defense of Everyday Thought
By Charles Crittenden, professor emeritus of philosophy, California State University
Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00
ISBN 9780230576940
The relation between commonsense belief and scientific theory is hotly debated. Crittenden gives an extended defence of ordinary belief and outlines its contents on the nature of reality, the soundness of ordinary language and the existence of the mind and its relation to the body.
Pragmatic Reasons: A Defense of Morality and Epistemology
By Jeremy Randel Koons, visiting associate professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00
ISBN 9780230576964
Koons shows how a sophisticated version of pragmatism, resting on
a novel conception of rationality, can justify a range of important practices, including our practices
of moral and epistemic evaluation, as well as our practice of making judgments about free will and moral responsibility.
l Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: The History of Anselm’s Argument and its Significance Today
By Ian Logan, senior research fellow in philosophy, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754661238
Logan goes back to the Latin text of the Proslogion with an original parallel English translation, before tracing the twists and turns of this controversial text to find out whether a definitive argument can be ascertained from the book.
Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age
Edited by Christopher Deacy, lecturer in applied theology, University of Kent, and Elisabeth Arweck, senior research fellow, Institute of Education, University of Warwick
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 97807546654
This collection offers inter-disciplinary perspectives drawing from theology, religious studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, sociology and anthropology.
Politics
Contested States in World Politics
By Deon Geldenhuys, professor of politics, University of Johannesburg
Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00
ISBN 9780230575523
Geldenhuys investigates a phenomenon in world politics, entities lacking international recognition of their status as independent states. It includes case studies on the Eurasian Quartet, Kosovo, Somaliland, Palestine, Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara and Taiwan.
The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum
By Vicki Squire, RCUK research fellow in politics and international studies, The Open University
Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00
ISBN 9780230216594
This critique of the securitisation and criminalisation of asylum-seeking challenges the claim that asylum-seekers “threaten” receiving states and analyses recent policy developments in relation to their wider historical, political and European contexts, arguing that the UK response in effect renders asylum-seekers as scapegoats.
Globalization, Political Violence and Translation
Edited by Esperanza Bielsa, lecturer in sociology, University of Leicester, and Christopher W. Hughes, professor of international and Japanese politics, University of Warwick
Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00
ISBN 9780230218819
Written by scholars in a range of disciplines, this book provides insights into the globalisation of violence and the role of translation in this context. It includes empirical analyses of media representations and translators’ accounts.
NGOs in Contemporary Britain: Non-state Actors in Society and Politics since 1945
Edited by Nick Crowson, senior lecturer in modern history, University of Birmingham, Matthew Hilton, professor of social history, University of Birmingham, and James McKay, project officer, Database of Archives of UK Non-Governmental Organisations since 1945, University of Birmingham
Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00
ISBN 9780230221093
Examining the history of social movements and non-state socio-political action, this volume shows how non-governmental organisations, which have proliferated in Britain since 1945, have raised new political agendas, revived associational life and arguably repoliticised generations disillusioned with the politics of the ballot box.
Social sciences
Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society
Edited by Phillip Vannini, associate professor in communication and culture, Royal Roads University, and J. Patrick Williams, assistant professor of sociology, Nanyang Technological University
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754675167
This book has been compiled by experts from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and provides a survey of empirical studies focused on its experience, negotiation and social relevance at the levels of self, culture and specific social settings.
Aboriginal Environmental Knowledge: Rational Reverence
By Catherine Laudine, tutor in social science, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ashgate, £55.00
ISBN 9780754664307
Laudine has based this book on a broad and well-grounded assessment of lesser known details of Aboriginal knowledge. It offers a great deal of detail and a new assessment of rituals and practices.
Theatre studies
Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida
By Bryan Reynolds, professor of drama, University of California, Irvine
Palgrave Macmillan, £45.00
ISBN 9780230008298
Reynolds proposes a combined theory of consciousness, subjectivity and agency stemming from analyses of junctures in Western philosophical and critical discourses that have significantly influenced the development of present-day understandings of perception, identity, desire, mimesis, aesthetics, education and human rights.
Writing Dancing Together
Edited by Valerie A. Briginshaw, emeritus professor of dance, University of Chichester, and Ramsay Burt, professor of dance history, De Montfort University
Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00
ISBN 9780230535640
With a political agenda foregrounding collaborative practice to promote ethical relations, these individually and joint written essays and interviews discuss dances, often in conjunction with visual art, theatre, film and music, drawing on continental philosophy to explore notions of space, time, identity, sensation, memory and ethics.