ART AND DESIGN
- Two Eyes of the Earth: Competition and Exchange in the Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran
By Matthew P. Canepa, assistant professor of art history, College of Charleston. University of California Press, £41.95. ISBN 97805202576
Canepa explores the artistic, ritual and ideological interactions between Rome and the Iranian world under the Sasanian dynasty and analyses how these two hostile systems of sacred universal sovereignty not only coexisted but fostered cross-cultural exchange and communication.
- Experience and Conflict: The Production of Urban Space
By Panu Lehtovuori, research professor of urban studies, Estonian Academy of Arts. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 97807546760
Based on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin, Lehtovuori offers a constructive critique of the concepts underlying planning and architecture.
ECONOMICS
- Is Economic Growth Sustainable?
Edited by Geoffrey Heal, Paul Garrett professor of public policy and corporate responsibility, Columbia Business School. Palgrave Macmillan, £67.50. ISBN 9780230232471
This volume looks at whether current growth patterns are sustainable, and what changes are needed to make them more so, presenting research from a range of scholars.
GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
- Great Ocean Conveyor: Discovering the Trigger for Abrupt Climate Change
By Wally Broecker, Newberry professor of Earth and environmental sciences, Columbia University. Princeton University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9780691143545
Broecker shows how Earth scientists study ancient ice cores and marine sediments to probe Earth's distant past, and how they blend scientific detective work with the latest technological advances to try to predict the future.
- Urban Climate Change Crossroads
Edited by Richard Plunz, professor of architecture, Columbia University; and Maria Paola Sutto, programme co-ordinator, Urban Design Lab, Columbia University. Ashgate, £60.00 and £25.00. ISBN 9780754679998 and 9781409400783
Based on a major international forum held in Rome in 2008, this volume brings together climate change experts from an array of fields to engage holistically with the discourse as it shifts from mitigation to adaptation.
HISTORY
- Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times
Edited by David S. Landes, Coolidge professor of history, Harvard University; Joel Mokyr, Robert Strotz professor of arts and sciences, Northwestern University; and William J. Baumol, Harold Price professor of entrepreneurship, Stern School of Business, New York University. Princeton University Press, £34.95. ISBN 9780691143705
Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter in this volume examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location.
- The History of Freedom: From Moses to Mandela
By Michael Moynihan, fellow, Woodrow Wilson School of Government, Princeton University. Palgrave Macmillan, £17.99. ISBN 9780230607743
Moynihan defines "freedom", then reaches back to the flight of Jews from slavery in Egypt and traces an arc to the present, illustrating that freedom is a privilege that must be earned. He looks at specific threats to freedom in our contemporary landscape through a historical lens.
LAW
- Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law
By Peter Atkins, professor of geography, Durham University. Ashgate, £65.00. ISBN 9780754679219
Atkins presents a history of two centuries of struggle to bring milk under control, to manipulate its naturally variable composition and, as a result, to redraw the boundaries between nature and society.
- Cultural Difference on Trial: The Nature and Limits of Judicial Understanding
By Anthony J. Connolly, senior lecturer in law, Australian National University. Ashgate, £60.00. ISBN 9780754679523
Connolly puts forward a philosophical exploration of the capacity of the modern liberal democratic legal system to understand the thought and practice of those culturally different minorities who come before it as claimants, defendants or witnesses.
LITERATURE
- Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic
By Julia A. Stern, Charles Deering McCormick professor of teaching excellence, Northwestern University. University of Chicago Press, £31.00. ISBN 9780226773285
Stern argues that Mary Chesnut's revised diary offers the most trenchant literary account of race and slavery until the work of Faulkner and that, along with his Yoknapatawpha novels, it constitutes one of the two great Civil War epics of the American canon.
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
- Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
By Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce professor of democracy, human rights, and journalism, Bard College. Princeton University Press, £13.95. ISBN 9780691134895
Comparing the US and Europe, Buruma asks why so many Americans, and so few Europeans, see religion as a help to democracy. Turning to China and Japan, he disputes the notion that only monotheistic religions pose problems for secular politics.
- Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions
Edited by Jason Dittmer, lecturer in human geography, University College London; and Tristan Sturm, lecturer in geography, University of California, Los Angeles. Ashgate, £60.00 and £25.00. ISBN 9780754676010 and 0837
This surveys evangelical ideas and practices to appraise the movement and its geopolitical visions, and their impact on America and the world.
POLITICS
- The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Migration
Edited by Montserrat Guibernau, professor of politics, Queen Mary, University of London; and John Rex, professor emeritus, University of Warwick. Polity, £65.00. ISBN 9780745647012
Drawing on a range of examples, the selections examine theories of nationalism and issues of ethnic integration and conflict in the US, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Quebec and Catalonia among other countries and regions.
- European Union Policy towards the Arab-Israeli Peace Process: The Quicksands of Politics
By Costanza Musu, assistant professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. Palgrave Macmillan, £57.50. ISBN 9780230553125
Musu looks at the achievements, limits and failures of the European Union's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict by analysing European policy towards the conflict over the past 40 years.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
- Divided by Borders: Mexican Immigrants and Their Children
By Joanna Dreby, assistant professor of sociology, Kent State University. University of California Press, £37.95 and £14.95. ISBN 9780520266605 and 0900
Probing the experiences of migrant parents, children in Mexico and their caregivers, Dreby offers an account of the lives of families divided by borders and the ways they struggle and ultimately persevere in a global economy.
- Staying Italian: Urban Change and Ethnic Life in Postwar Toronto and Philadelphia
By Jordan Stanger-Ross, assistant professor of history, University of Victoria. University of Chicago Press, £24.00. ISBN 9780226770741
As Philadelphia struggled with deindustrialisation, Stanger-Ross shows, Italian ethnicity in South Philadelphia remained closely linked with preserving turf and marking boundaries. Toronto's thriving Little Italy, on the other hand, drew Italians together from across the wider region.
Extra online listings:
History
Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality: Britain, the United States and Nuclear Weapons, 1958-64
By Richard Moore, visiting research fellow, Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, University of Southampton
Palgrave Macmillan, £65.00
ISBN 9780230230675
Moore presents a study of the political, military and technical aspects of Britain’s nuclear weapons programme under the Macmillan government, contrasting Britain’s perceived political decline with its growth in technological mastery and military nuclear capability.
Revolution in Science: How Galileo and Darwin Changed Our World
By Mark L. Brake, director, Science Communication Research Unit, University of Glamorgan
Palgrave Macmillan, £26.00
ISBN 9780230202689
Brake aims to capture the adventure and excitement of these two scientists in an examination of the ways in which faith and science clash, and how the battle for “truth” is a perennial one.
Taiwanese Pilgrimage to China: Ritual, Complicity, Community
By D.?J.?W. Hatfield, associate in research, Fairbank Center for Chinese Study, Harvard University
Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00
ISBN 9780230616035
Through an examination of the pilgrimages to China that were common in Taiwan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hatfield advances anthropological understandings of conflict resolution.
Media and communication studies
Battles to Bridges: US Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11
By R.?S. Zaharna, associate professor, School of Communication, American University
Palgrave Macmillan, £57.50
ISBN 9780230202160
Zaharna explores the interplay of power politics, culture, identity and communication and explains how the underlying communication and political dynamics have redefined what “strategic communication” means in today’s international arena.
Reinventing Public Service Communication: European Broadcasters and Beyond
Edited by Petros Iosifidis, reader in media and communications, City University London
Palgrave Macmillan, £60.00
ISBN 9780230229679
These essays address the transition of the traditional public service broadcasters into public service media, as they widen their remit to produce and distribute public service content across more delivery platforms to meet the requirements of the digital age.
Philosophy and theology
Badiou: A Philosophy of the New
By Ed Pluth, assistant professor of philosophy, California State University
Polity, £55.00 and £15.99
ISBN 97807456472 and 89
Pluth considers exactly how Badiou’s theoretical “anti-humanism” is linked to what is, for all intents and purposes, a practical humanism. Central to this is an account of Badiou’s theory of the subject, and his attempt to develop an “ethic of truths”.
Politics
Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe: From Rule of Law to Quality of Justice
By Daniela Piana, assistant professor of political science, University of Bologna
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754677581
Piana presents an account of the judicial reforms adopted by new member states, and of the guidelines of quality of justice promoted by institutions in all member states.
The Governance of Policing and Security: Ironies, Myths and Paradoxes
By Bob Hoogenboom, professor of policing and security studies, Vrije Universiteit
Palgrave Macmillan, £55.00
ISBN 9780230542655
Hoogenboom traces the process of “unbounding” policing, exploring the way that boundaries between public policing, regulators, inspectorates, intelligence services and private security are blurring, and the impact this will have on governance.
Social sciences
Aboriginal Family and the State: The Conditions of History
By Sally Babidge, lecturer in anthropology, University of Queensland
Ashgate, £60.00
ISBN 9780754679356
Babidge examines everyday expressions of “family”, and events such as meetings and funerals, demonstrating that kinship is formed and reformed through a social practice of competing demands on identity.
Health
By Mildred Blaxter, honorary professor of medical sociology, University of Bristol
Polity, £45.00 and £15.99
ISBN 9780745648453 and 8460
This second edition offers an introduction to the debates surrounding the concept of health today and is aimed at students of medicine and other health professions as well as those studying sociology, health sciences and health promotion.
A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity
By Japonica Brown-Saracino, assistant professor in sociology and faculty fellow, Centre for Urban Research and Learning, Loyola University
University of Chicago Press, £62.00 and £20.50
ISBN 9780226076621 and 6638
Drawing on ethnographic research in four distinct communities, Brown-Saracino paints a portrait of how residents new and old, from wealthy gay homeowners to Portuguese fishermen, think about gentrification.
Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire
By Lynne A. Haney, professor of sociology, New York University
University of California Press, £41.95 and £16.95
ISBN 9780520261907 and 1914
Haney looks at incarcerated mothers, housed together with their children, who are serving terms in alternative, community-based prisons – a type of facility that is becoming increasingly widespread.
Suffering and Sentiment: Exploring the Vicissitudes of Experience and Pain in Yap
By C. Jason Throop, assistant professor of anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
University of California Press, £41.95 and £16.95
ISBN 9780520260573 and 0580
Throop explores the local Yapese systems of knowledge, morality, and practice that pertain to experiencing and expressing pain. In so doing, he investigates the ways in which sensory experiences such as pain can be given meaningful coherence in the context of an individual’s culturally constituted existence.