Suggested Titles: April, 2015

For Library Collection Development

(arranged alphabetically by subject) 1 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Table of Contents Accounting ...... 2 Art ...... 4 Biology ...... 13 Business Administration & Marketing ...... 23 Child Study ...... 28 Computer Information Systems/Mathematics ...... 40 Criminal Justice ...... 46 Economics ...... 51 Education ...... 57 English ...... 69 Health Administration ...... 82 History ...... 84 Hospitality & Tourism Management ...... 92 Human Services ...... 94 Journalism & New Media Studies ...... 99 Modern Languages...... 104 Music ...... 107 Natural Sciences: Chemistry/Physics ...... 111 Nursing ...... 119 Organizational Management ...... 122 Philosophy ...... 125 Political Science ...... 131 Psychology ...... 138 Recreation ...... 140 Religious Studies ...... 143 Sociology & Human Relations ...... 149 Speech & Communication ...... 155 Theatre ...... 157

2 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Accounting Faculty Member: Cunningham, Lawrence A. Berkshire beyond Buffett: the enduring value of values. Columbia Click here to enter text. Business School, 2014. 307p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231170048 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required In this important, insightful, and clearly written book, Cunningham (George Washington Univ.) explains how Warren Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a small company ☐ Recommended with problems into a $300 billion conglomerate with 50 diversified subsidiaries. In essence, Buffett created a corporate culture that values cost consciousness, integrity, fairness, generosity, ethical behavior, entrepreneurship, both autonomy and teamwork, and a sense of permanence. Rich with lessons for those wishing to profit from the Berkshire model, the book provides many examples and chapter-long cases of the diverse companies Berkshire acquired that achieved success. Buffett's policies encourage low debt, social responsibility, a decentralized organization structure, and very careful selection of companies with excellent managers who had fine reputations. Beyond that, delegating clear responsibilities and decision-making authority to these managers, as well as having performance appraisals and rewards based on performance and long-term success, is critical to Berkshire's success. The author emphasizes that these values ensure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity. A major contribution to the management literature, this book should be read by managers of all organizations, business professors and students, business owners, and investors. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general reader Faculty Member: Millennial spring: designing the future of organizations, ed. by Miriam Grace and George B. Click here to enter text. Graen. Information Age, 2014. 286p bibl ISBN 9781623967451 cloth, $49.99; ISBN 9781623967444 pbk, $24.99 ☐ Required The organizational lens of “design thinking” comes into its own with this collection of essays, which proposes this new mind-set as the answer to creating organizations that are friendly ☐ Recommended and hospitable to the under-30 workforce. Socialized to feel special from the moment they stepped foot on the planet, Millennials seem to be voting with their feet and leaving organizations unresponsive to their sensibilities. The authors provide an unsentimental look at the contexts baby boomer parents left for their progeny-turned-colleagues and suggest new structures and reward systems, as well as a challenge to be adaptive in responding to growing discontinuities in the workplace and in career development trajectories. A bonus is that the conversations also serve as an accessible and cohesive history of organizations as the arena for human development, meaning, and transcendence. Rather than succumbing to the ponderous form of most organizational literature reviews, the authors provide a historical perspective in narrative form by examining recent trends in careers with "growing tip" companies such as Apple, Boeing, Microsoft, and US and international design schools. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: McAdams, David. Game-changer: game theory and the art of transforming strategic Click here to enter text. situations. W. W. Norton, 2014. 303p index ISBN 9780393349894 pbk, $16.95 ☐ Required It is a conundrum: many people struggle to understand game theory while claiming to comprehend the meaning of prisoner’s dilemma. They do not appear to understand how the ☐ Recommended prisoner’s dilemma is the best known and most original game theory application. In their course work, most undergraduates get only a sprinkling of game theory; as a result, they do not grasp its power to improve decision making. McAdams (Duke Univ. Fuqua School of Business) provides readers with a rich understanding of game theory. Like other game theory books in the marketplace, this one begins with definitions of several key terms (e.g., commitment, dominant strategy, payoff matrix). However, this work differs by also describing five distinct applications that individuals might not at first recognize as being applicable to game theory. The author dedicates a chapter to each: regulation, collusion, retaliation, trust, and leverage. In addition, McAdams includes five chapters of mini case 3 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 studies that enliven the narrative with colorful characters and examples from the worlds of business, medicine, finance, military history, crime, and sports. The author provides a service by clarifying a complex economics topic for general readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Westerman, George. Leading digital: turning technology into business transformation, by Click here to enter text. George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, and Andrew McAfee. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. 292p index afp ISBN 9781625272478 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required This book creates a road map for companies that want to aspire to digital mastery through examples from leading companies, illustrative data-driven models, and periodic self- ☐ Recommended assessments. Based on a study of more than 400 global firms, including Asian Paints, Burberry, Caesars Entertainment, and Nike, the book positions itself as a manual for business owners and managers who are trying to create lasting digital initiatives—and it succeeds. The authors have created a well-written, well-researched, and clearly structured book. The primary model linking digital masters, fashionistas, conservatives, and beginners (laid out early in the book) could be regarded with the same esteem as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or Kurt Lewin’s model of change. All the data, interviews, and models presented map out a comprehensive blueprint for understanding and implementing digital solutions for a wide variety of disciplines. The book also scales well for organizations and projects of all sizes. The information is accessible to small business owners who need to improve their processes, large businesses looking for competitive advantage, academics who need to study transformational leadership, and anyone else who would like to implement successful digital initiatives at their organization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers

4 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Art Faculty Member: Adam, Georgina. Big bucks: the explosion of the art market in the 21st century. Lund Click here to enter text. Humphries, 2014. 208p bibl index afp ISBN 9781848221383 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required Big Bucks contextualizes the explosion of the art market in the 21st century by discussing the art world's key players (auction houses, dealers, artists, collectors, curators, and advisors) and ☐ Recommended the changes within the market as a result of art fairs, online sales, and emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere. Adam, a journalist, tells how contemporary art has become an overwhelming force in today’s art market generally (in stark contrast to the market even 30 years ago) and points to the globalization of this market as a factor contributing to skyrocketing pricing. Intertwined with this study of the market and its players, Adam notes, are artistic behaviors that impact the contemporary art market: celebrity status, commodification, and the industrialization of production. Underlying this narrative are the seismic shifts that have affected every area of the art market, including the rise of auction houses and the encroachment on dealers’ territories and polarization of the dealer world with the emergence of a handful of mega-galleries with multiple venues (e.g., Gagosian). A well-written narrative with anecdotes and data peppered throughout, Big Bucks is a must for contemporary museum libraries and academic libraries serving studio art curricula. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through graduate students; general readers. Faculty Member: Hannah Höch, [ed.] by Dawn Ades, Emily Butler, and Daniel F. Herrmann. Prestel, 2014. 255p Click here to enter text. bibl ISBN 9783791353432 cloth, $49.95 ☐ Required This catalogue for a 2014 exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery includes essays by art historians on Höch's life, art, statements by Höch, excerpts from her diary and her ☐ Recommended autobiography, and an interview with critic Edouard Roditi. Her close friends were Raoul Hausmann, George Grosz, and Kurt Schwitters. Often ignored by fellow Dadaists, Höch became known for her collages and photomontages. The best known is perhaps her 1919– 1920 Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, a work of criticism of the Weimar male-dominated culture and politics from a feminist perspective. From 1926–1936, surreal elements dominated and blurred meaning in her work, including images—based on ethnological museum sculptures—that are hard to interpret and here categorized as "post colonial." Not included in the 1937 Degenerate Art show, Höch moved outside Berlin and did not exhibit after 1938. After WW II, her work included surreal fantasy, recurring Dada elements, and abstractions influenced by Dutch modernism and concerns such as decorative fabrics. This is an important contribution to Höch literature; few English-language monographs on her are available. Although she was included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1968 show Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, she was rediscovered in the 1980s. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students; general readers Faculty Member: Archer, Michael. Art since 1960. 3rd ed. Thames & Hudson, 2014. 288p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780500204245 cloth, $21.95 ☐ Required The third edition (1st ed., CH, Nov'97, 35-1306) of this important overview of contemporary art is thoroughly revised and updated to include new artists and developments up to ☐ Recommended 2013. The dense text by Archer (Goldsmiths College, Univ. of London) unpacks the complex diversity of the art of the past 50 years, identifying and defining its proliferation of styles, forms, techniques, influences, and motivations. Archer’s clear and concise style, in conjunction with the text’s accompanying images, renders the vast range of contemporary art’s movements and styles intelligible. Like other titles in the "World of Art" series, this small volume is richly illustrated with 250 vivid, full-color images. New to the third edition is a didactic time line that maps artistic movements and styles, major artists, and important art historical events from 1960 to 2013. Ancillary materials also include a bibliography organized by decade and a list of illustrations. This succinct, up-to-date examination of contemporary 5 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 art is a necessary component of contemporary art history collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students Faculty Member: De Montebello, Philippe. Rendez-vous with art, by Philippe de Montebello and Martin Click here to enter text. Gayford. Thames & Hudson, 2014. 248p index ISBN 9780500239247 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Rendez-vous with Art features an ongoing discussion between Philippe de Montebello (former director, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the art critic Martin Gayford about the ☐ Recommended experience of viewing works of art, particularly, though not solely, within the museum environment, in locations throughout the world. Though the focus is certainly on individual objects, the authors also grapple with the particular considerations of viewing works in museum collections. Because of the presence of artworks within institutions, no matter how comprehensive the collections, the view and even the understanding of artworks remain fragmentary. In other words, as the authors emphasize, the art that viewers see in these institutions is representative of the greater whole of the civilization or culture from which it emanates. Through 23 chapters arranged around different locations and with color illustrations of iconic works of art throughout, this volume offers an intimate entry point into the process and pleasure of encountering art objects within museums and other collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Morrice and Lyman in the company of Matisse, by Lucie Dorais et al. Firefly Books, 2014. 254p Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9781770854932 cloth, $49.95 ☐ Required In the early 1900s, Canadian artists James Morrice and John Lyman experienced rejection by critics. Both left Canada for Paris, met Henri Matisse, and found freedom to develop their ☐ Recommended art. At the time, the artists in Canada’s Group of Seven were more accepted in Canada, painting scenes of Canada’s natural world—see The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson (CH, Mar'04, 41-3857). Morrice and Lyman, influenced by their international travel, produced a new kind of art. The unique light, people, and seascapes found in travels beyond Paris to North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—the “land of the setting sun”), Cuba, and Bermuda provided inspiration for international subjects and beautiful colors. This book accompanies a 2014 exhibit at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and brings together primary sources that, for the first time, document the connections Matisse, Morrice, and Lyman had with one another. The National Gallery of Art exhibition book, Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912-13 (CH, Jul'90, 27-6174), includes Morrice’s work because he was with Matisse in Morocco. This excellent book by Dorais et al. continues and develops this part of Canadian art history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Sculpture victorious: art in an age of invention, 1837-1901, ed. by Martina Droth, Jason Click here to enter text. Edwards, and Michael Hatt with Tim Barringer et al. Yale Center for British Art/Yale, 2014. 448p bibl index ISBN 9780300208030 cloth, $80.00 ☐ Required This catalogue for a groundbreaking exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art and Tate Britain is a substantial contribution to readers' understanding of art in Britain and a ☐ Recommended magnificent publication in its own right. This is the sort of book Yale does very well, and its production values are excellent. The illustrations, drawn from obscure and some familiar sources, are visually spectacular. The cover image, a 7-foot-high majolica elephant, sets the tone of the book, indicating that this is no dry survey. However, the full range of Victorian sculpture is represented, from portraits to mythological subjects, public statues to intimate cameos, and figures and animals in all manner of materials. A chapter devoted to display is particularly rich, incorporating photographs, prints, and popular magazines. There is even a coverlet with appliqué silhouettes of sculptures, suggesting the range of ways sculpture was experienced in Victorian Britain. The final chapter, "Craft and Art," includes examples of the "New Sculpture"—a magnificent climax to the book (and the exhibition) and a reminder of how vibrant British art was at the close of the 19th century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners 6 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Glittering world: Navajo jewelry of the Yazzie family, [ed.] by Lois Sherr Dubin; photography Click here to enter text. by Kiyoshi Togashi and Michael S. Waddell. Smithsonian Books, 2014. 272p bibl index ISBN 9781588344779 cloth, $50.00 ☐ Required Stunning and insightful are the words that immediately come to mind when trying to describe this substantial book edited by Dubin, a highly respected author, curator, lecturer, and ☐ Recommended architect. This exquisite volume accompanies a 2014–2016 National Museum of the American Indian exhibition that features the innovative work of the talented Yazzie family, designers and crafters of Navajo jewelry for six generations. Elsie Benally Yazzie learned silversmithing from her husband, Chee Yazzie (who was also a medicine man). After introducing her 12 children to the medium, Elsie encouraged them to collaborate with others to expand their skills. The imagery embellishing the award-winning contemporary jewelry by brothers Lee and Raymond was inspired by the symbols, symmetry, and colors found in sand paintings and other Navajo traditions. Engaging, scholarly text and over 300 striking photographs reveal how the history of the techniques, the southwestern landscape, and the Yazzie family's world view and family life influenced the designs of the silver and gold belt buckles, bracelets, bridles, bolos, brooches, conchas, necklaces, pendants, and rings that they cast, stamped, and inlaid with colorful shaped coral and stones. A helpful bibliography, endnotes, and index are included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. Faculty Member: Eaton, Linda. Printed textiles: British and American cottons and linens, 1700-1850, [ed.] by Click here to enter text. Onie Rollins; photography by Jim Schneck. Monacelli Press, 2014. 382p bibl index ISBN 9781580933933 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required By the end of the 1600s, calico printing workshops in Europe, including Great Britain, were producing fabrics for dress and interior use, entering a market dominated by Indian ☐ Recommended imports. Spurred by trade and advances in dye chemistry and technology in the second half of the 1700s and the early 1800s, textile printing emerged as a flourishing trade worldwide, including the British colonies of North America. In 1970, Florence Montgomery, using the renowned Winterthur Museum collection as her resource, presented her study of British and American cotton and linen fabrics from 1700 to 1850 in Printed Textiles. Praised for its scholarship, the volume became a legendary guide in dating and identifying textiles. Updated with the latest scientific and technical information and revised in light of research in the interim 45 years by Eaton (Winterthur), the volume has regained its relevance. A catalogue of 370 rephotographed fabrics for furniture, drapery, bed hangings, and dress includes annotated scholarly entries from the Winterthur Library and Archives. An extensive bibliography and an index complement this infinitely readable and authoritative book, which should interest both textile amateurs and professionals. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Ewing, William A. Landmark: The fields of landscape photography. Thames & Hudson, 2014. Click here to enter text. 256p ISBN 9780500544334 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required The pleasure and conceit of this beautifully designed and illustrated book reside in the unorthodox categories curator Ewing uses to reimagine and invigorate discourse swirling ☐ Recommended around contemporary landscape photography. The subject, a dominant genre in contemporary photographic practice, thrives under the themes of his diverse, innovative chapters (e.g., "Rupture," "Playground," "Scar," "Control," "Hallucination," "Reverie," and "Enigma") while honoring more traditional landscape themes in chapters like "Sublime" and "Pastoral." Ewing's enthusiasm for diverse photographic strategies and his uniquely global perspective of inclusion embrace over 100 international photographers (some known and some new), celebrating their ongoing fascination with the land. While addressing land use, abuse, and the exploitation of natural resources that contribute to the undeniable effects of climate change worldwide, this book creates an urgent call to arms without being dogmatic. Ewing's lucid, accessible, and thought-provoking essays introduce each chapter and are essential for contextualizing his unusual motifs for the reader. Particularly delightful 7 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 is the addition of short artist statements that provide a refreshingly personal glimpse into each artist's voice and creative vision. A valuable book for every photography library. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Display of art in the Roman palace, 1550-1750, ed. by Gail Feigenbaum with Francesco Click here to enter text. Freddolini. Getty Research Institute, 2014. 368p index ISBN 9781606062982 cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required This masterful study is the "culmination of an international collaborative research project" sponsored by the Getty Research Institute. Editor Feigenbaum and 25 contributors ☐ Recommended collectively offer a fascinating account of the display of art—a category taken broadly to include any visual element found within a palace interior in the 16th-century residences of Rome's elite. These categories range from tapestries to stucco work and from silver to paintings. This study draws on a wealth of primary source data artfully assembled to vividly reanimate now-lost Baroque palace interiors, and to explore the ways in which 16th-century Romans, and the city's foreign visitors, lived alongside art. Details that in other hands might seem arcane are here transformed into an accessible and relevant narrative that sparkles with insight. Five thematic sections contain 18 chapters on discrete topics represented by chapters including "Architecture for Display" and "Frescoes." Interspersed throughout are 18 illuminating, brief case studies (e.g., "State Beds," "Showing Drawings in Roman Collections"). As befits its subject, Display of Art is lavishly illustrated with high-quality black- and-white illustrations and 39 color plates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Fernie, Eric. Romanesque architecture: the first style of the European age. Yale, 2014. 297p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9780300203547 cloth, $80.00 ☐ Required As Fernie (architectural historian) acknowledges at the beginning of this wide-ranging survey, he has tackled a nearly impossible task because "there is no such thing as Romanesque ☐ Recommended architecture." Nevertheless, he manages to bring a sense of order to this unwieldy topic, organizing the volume first by chronological divisions and within that structure by geographical areas. Within these parameters, he focuses on major buildings, outlining stylistic and structural developments in various regions while making readers aware of the inherent difficulties and pitfalls that lie in wait for those who attempt rigid categorization of any sort. Bookending the survey are two sections: in the first, "Definitions," Fernie analyzes the meaning of the term Romanesque; in the second, "Themes," he addresses major aspects of Romanesque buildings, such as design and construction, function, and iconography. A final chapter on research methodology serves as a quick historiographic review of studies of Romanesque architecture, bringing interested readers up to date on current debates in scholarly discourse. Overall, Fernie offers a survey that can serve equally well as a book to read through or as a reference to consult on specific topics. Excellent photographs, plans, and maps combine to increase the usefulness of this volume in the "Pelican History of Art" series. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Figuring out figurative art: contemporary philosophers on contemporary paintings, ed. by Click here to enter text. Damien Freeman and Derek Matravers. Routledge, 2015. 210p bibl index ISBN 9781844658022 cloth, $155.00; ISBN 9781844658039 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required This collection of essays by leading philosophers stands out because of its focus on contemporary figurative (representational) art. Being freed from the strictures of an ☐ Recommended academic audience, Freeman (Pembroke College, UK) and Matravers (Open Univ., UK) are able to engage with the works across a broad landscape of personal reflection and the histories of both art and philosophy. In truth, this is an interdisciplinary look at contemporary figurative art; the introspective narratives allow for fascinating tangents into Marxism, theology, the psychosocial effects of war, and current philosophical discussions of emotions (e.g., disgust and apathy). Readers not only get the sense that they are seeing the philosophical exploration of the selected works of art but also that the works themselves are the philosophical products of the artists and their wrestling with concepts of self, society, 8 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 sexuality, and culture. The discussion of each work is beautifully and intimately framed and not always the focus of the essay. At times, the works serve as entrée to a larger cultural discussion. Perhaps this is the inherent nature of art—to point beyond the work itself to the placement of the individual in society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Freund, Amy. Portraiture and politics in Revolutionary France. Pennsylvania State, 2014. 294p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9780271061948 cloth, $84.95 ☐ Required In this smart, handsomely produced book, Freund (Texas Christian Univ.) adeptly explores the intersections of self-presentation, aesthetics, politics, and the market in revolutionary ☐ Recommended France. The events of 1789 not only toppled the Bourbon monarchy but also necessitated a related transformation—the refashioning of subjects into citizens, with portraiture shouldering a disproportionate share of the representation’s role under the new regime. Portraits were central because, in Freund’s words, they addressed "how to make new people for the new France." After an opening chapter that probes this basic demand in relation to aesthetic ideals of transparency and market conditions, the author provides a series of case studies structured thematically around five modes of revolutionary portraiture: depictions of members of the National Assembly (1789–1791), National Guard portraits (1789–1792), the constraints of the presence of women after the Terror (c. 1796), the use of nature in portraits from the late 1790s, and the role of family portraits between 1795 and 1801. The book’s importance, however, extends well beyond the 1790s. It is a model for thinking about politics and market forces together and ultimately contributes to what a modern sense of self entails. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Gladston, Paul. Contemporary Chinese art: a critical history. Reaktion Books, 2014. 318p bibl Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9781780232690 pbk, $39.00 ☐ Required Gladston (Univ. of Nottingham, UK) is to be commended for proving that the artistic voice in China has not only survived but thrived, despite decades of political control and swings in the ☐ Recommended country's economic pendulum. The author situates his narrative around the historical and artistic interactions between China and the West as well as the particular ways Chinese art has been influenced by modern movements. Following a chapter titled "Chinese Art in Context," three chapters cover the periods 1976–1989, 1990–2001, and 2002– 2013. Focusing on mainland China, this work brings to the public's attention attempts to silence artistic voices during the oppressions of the Cultural Revolution—oppressions that only inspired artists to challenge authority in the name of expression. A unique art of resistance was born in those condemned for maintaining contact with artistic movements abroad and those who referenced traditional Chinese forms—both viewed as counterrevolutionary. Changes in China's political climate and its positioning as a global partner have resulted in an artistic voice louder and freer to critique former and present power structures. Some 150 images and a glossary are included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Goldring, Elizabeth. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the world of Elizabethan art: Click here to enter text. painting and patronage at the court of Elizabeth I. Yale, 2014. 304p bibl index ISBN 9780300192247 cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required Goldring, Elizabeth. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the world of Elizabethan art: painting and patronage at the court of Elizabeth I. Yale, 2014. 304p bibl index ISBN ☐ Recommended 9780300192247 cloth, $75.00Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was a key figure at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. This aspiring politician and royal favorite was also a keen patron of the arts. His many purchases and commissions, obtained either in England or on the Continent (where choice items were procured by his nephew Sir Philip Sidney), were mostly portraits, in keeping with 16th-century fashion. Included were full-length paintings, intimate miniatures from Nicholas Hilliard, portrait busts, and profiles on coins. Golding (Univ. of Warwick, UK) makes a convincing claim for Leicester’s "international renown as a patron of painters," a 9 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 position that would not be eclipsed in England until the early Stuarts. Much of this book is devoted to portraits of Leicester himself, studied in conjunction with those of other notables of the age, including the queen. The display of paintings in a noble setting was essential to ambitious Elizabethan courtiers such as Leicester, as the interesting chapter on the building program at Kenilworth Castle demonstrates. The excellent illustrations are mostly in color. Included are appendixes on Leicester’s collections. Well-written and sharply focused, this book is a model of scholarship on the Elizabethan Renaissance. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Hallett, Mark. Reynolds: portraiture in action. Yale, 2014. 488p bibl ISBN 9780300196979 Click here to enter text. cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required Sir Joshua Reynolds, founding president of the Royal Academy, author of the influential Discourses, and the painter who immortalized the rich and famous, dominated the late-18th- ☐ Recommended century English art scene. Hallett (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London) offers a fresh, compelling examination of Reynolds’s work as a portraitist. He identifies "animation" as a defining characteristic in paintings such as the Burney portrait and the enchanting representation of David Garrick pulled by the two Muses. The intimate view of Miss Palmer absorbed with her book reveals Reynolds’s interest in the "aesthetics of sentiment," and his paintings utilizing allegory and history confirm his commitment to the vision of a noble English art. In the famous Marlborough family portrait, an adroit exercise in the management of complicated groupings, Hallett shows convincingly how an individual painting can typify a key aspect of the artist’s project. The domestic display of portraits is discussed with reference to the hanging of the portraits of the "Streatham Worthies," commissioned by Henry Thrales, and Reynolds's use of prints reproducing these paintings to enhance his reputation. This big, beautifully illustrated, well-written, fully documented book offers an important new reading of one of the giants of English art. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Henri Matisse: the cut-outs, ed. by Karl Buchberg et al. Museum of Modern Art, 2014. 298p Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9780870709159 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780870709487 pbk, $45.00

☐ Required Created during the last decade of Matisse’s life (1941-54), his cut-out papers represented both an outburst of creative energy and an adaptation to the artist’s restricted physical ☐ Recommended mobility that precluded the strenuous exertion of easel painting. With the help of assistants, the artist used gouache-painted sheets of paper in a wide range of colors, which he then cut in multiple shapes, and had pinned in varied compositions on the walls of his studio. The works’ life-affirming vitality and color reveal the artist’s continued drive to explore and experiment. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Modern in London collaborated on an exhibition of these cut-outs following the conservation of The Swimming Pool, created in 1952 and reinstalled after a 20-year absence from public view. The beautifully produced catalog of this exhibition includes essays that explore Matisse’s innovative process, brought to life by photographs of the artist with his assistants at work in his studio as well as a generous and representative selection of high-quality color reproductions of significant milestones from a decade of cut-out projects. Essential for art studio, history, and conservation collections. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels Faculty Member: Kleeblatt, Norman L. From the margins: Lee Krasner/Norman Lewis, 1945-1952, by Norman L. Click here to enter text. Kleeblatt and Stephen Brown with Lisa Saltzman and Mia I. Bagneris. Jewish Museum, New York/Jewish Theological Seminary, 2014. 95p index afp ISBN 9780300206494 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required Slim yet substantial, this informative and colorful exhibition catalogue expands contemporary scholarship of two New York painters who were at the center of abstract expressionist ☐ Recommended activity during the movement’s key years covered here, 1946-52. African American Norman Lewis and Jewish American Lee Krasner (married to Jackson Pollock) were on the scene, yet relegated to the sidelines and generally overlooked in the critical discourse of the period. They were paired in an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City 10 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 (September 12, 2014–February 1, 2015) where their shared sociohistorical circumstances and their subjective, aesthetic directions were explored. The accompanying catalogue furthers this exploration. A careful curatorial eye presents vivid juxtapositions of the two artists’ paintings on no fewer than 37 pages. These are rich and thoughtful, full-color, double-page spreads where parallels between the artists are seen to their best advantage. Two major themes emerge in the catalogue’s scholarly and accessible essays on each artist: issues of identity and the artists’ engagement with personally relevant, abstract visual language. This publication is a gift that establishes new conversations between the artists. It reminds readers and researchers that abstraction’s many languages can be mined to bring more midcentury artists into dialogue with one another. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections Faculty Member: Nesin, Kate. Cy Twombly's things. Yale, 2014. 246p index ISBN 9780300190113 cloth, $55.00 Click here to enter text. ☐ Required Cy Twombly, master painter of rudimentary scrawl and bloom, made sculpture from the start. His carefully balanced arrangements of found and formed objects began in 1946 and ☐ Recommended continued in extended intervals until two years before his death in 2011. Though his work was rarely exhibited over his 60-year career (Twombly retained much of it in his Italian studios), Cy Twombly's Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture (1997), edited by Nicola Del Roscio, made images of these human-scaled works more widely available. Nesin (Art Institute of Chicago) is an insightful, perceptive viewer and has emerged as an authoritative scholar on the artist’s sculptural oeuvre. In this detailed and evocative volume, she engages the artist as sculptor and expertly guides readers through the history, material construction, object nature, and poetic resonance of Twombly’s enigmatic assemblages. Made of common materials and exhibiting the touch of hand, these works conjure the ancient and liminal and engage in tensions of intimacy and ambiguity. Twombly’s sculpture brings a mysterious, welcome, and deep-rooted presence. It is a tonic, perhaps, in today’s artistic conversation— which includes the high-gloss polish of Koons. In that light, amid a range of feelings and possibilities, Twombly’s work invites viewers to consider deeply the distance that fetish has traveled. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Newell, Aimee E. A stitch in time: the needlework of aging women in antebellum America. Click here to enter text. Ohio University, 2014. 265p bibl index afp ISBN 9780821420522 pbk, $34.95 ☐ Required Newell (Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Lexington, MA) offers a meticulously researched and thoughtful exposition of the needlework (e.g., quilts and samplers) of older ☐ Recommended women in the antebellum United States. It is a welcome addition to material culture and women’s studies. Newell crafts her narrative around the relationship between aging and fiber arts through scrupulously documented case studies that lend her effort compelling immediacy. Even as she rehearses established scholarship, Newell breaks new ground with her emphasis on needlework as an embodied practice deeply implicated in multiple contextual shifts ranging from physical aging to the introduction of new technologies and new forms of middle-class sociability. Newell locates A Stitch in Time in larger social history concerns that range from the gendered construction of property to the negotiation of domestic identity. The ways in which she accomplishes this are an important corrective to persistent conventions that tend to marginalize textiles and domestic work in larger historical considerations. Still, Newell’s story is tinged with a certain critical reluctance to extend its claims. This elegantly written, beautifully illustrated, and well-annotated volume includes an appendix on the women whose handwork informs the author's endeavor. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Taylor, Brandon. After constructivism. Yale, 2014. 288p index ISBN 9780300195774 cloth, Click here to enter text. $65.00 ☐ Required Artworks' manufactured and material aspects are traceable as artistic concerns to at least the mid-to-late 19th century. Courbet's paintings, for instance, emphasize artworks' reality as ☐ Recommended made objects. The Impressionists proffered the sketch, or impression, as a finished work that 11 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 revealed rather than concealed, as academic paintings did, the process of picture making. In 1890, Maurice Denis famously proclaimed that a picture be recognized as essentially a two- dimensional surface covered in pigment, arranged in a particular order, before being understood for what it represents. Taylor (emer., Southampton Univ., UK) traces this interest in the concept of faktura, the physical and logical organization of artworks, in relationship to Russian constructivist art and to later work inspired by constructivist forms, materials, and ideas. He indicates that the term's meaning shifts in response to the different interests and concerns of different contexts. In eight chapters, he treats the contexts in separate but related case studies that are chronologically and thematically organized. In the first chapter, he explains cubism as an important precedent of constructivism. This broad conceptualization of Russian constructivism distinguishes Taylor's book from other, more narrowly conceived histories of the movement, making it a valuable addition to both the literature of constructivism and to studies in modern, postmodern, and contemporary art. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Tripe, Linnaeus. Captain Linnaeus Tripe: photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860, by Click here to enter text. Linnaeus Tripe, Roger Taylor, and Crispin Branfoot; introd. by Sarah Greenough. DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2014. 217p index afp ISBN 9783791353814 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required Linnaeus Tripe’s mid-19th-century photographs of the monuments and landscapes of south India and Burma, made under the auspices of the British East India Company in which Tripe ☐ Recommended was a military officer, document multiple histories, most notably the British colonization of Southeast Asia and the rapidly changing technological advances of Tripe's chosen medium. The primary authors of this text, published to accompany an exhibition jointly organized by the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, track these overlapping narratives earnestly in their erudite essays but with little trace of the postcolonial critique regularly deployed in accounts of imagery akin to Tripe’s. As the first widely disseminated monographic study of Tripe’s work, however, this approach usefully positions readers parallel to the photographer. All parties encounter novel subjects through photography, a technology new to Tripe and made new to contemporary readers through detailed historical accounts of Tripe’s now outmoded techniques, materials, and equipment. The copious illustrations in the catalogue underscore this approach: they are large scale, sepia toned to match Tripe’s prints, and exquisitely reproduced. The commentaries accompanying the photographs are fascinating as well, fastidiously documenting Tripe’s travels and subjects. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and research faculty Faculty Member: Walker, Stuart. Designing sustainability: making radical changes in a material world. Click here to enter text. Routledge, 2014. 187p bibl index ISBN 9780415744119 cloth, $180.00; ISBN 9780415744126 pbk, $49.95 ☐ Required The essays in this collection persuasively argue that when designers reflect on their own humanity, explore inner values, and develop a spiritual dimension, sustainable design can ☐ Recommended fully emerge. Building on the seminal writings of industrial designer/educator Victor Papanek, Walker (Lancaster Univ., UK) criticizes the corrosive effects of contemporary materialistic culture and advocates for ethical values. He is a prolific author who published six of the book’s seven essays within the last two years, including "Contemplative Objects," "Design and Spirituality," and "The Narrow Door to Sustainability." A new essay titled "A New Game" ranges over Western and Eastern philosophies and world theologies to prepare readers to consider a chess set made with minimal intervention from "wind-fallen branches of a local tree" and flax cord. Understanding history is also important to ethical design, as Walker contrasts this subjectively studied, natural, and sustainable design against a 1920s Bauhaus chess set. The latter’s rational design was, in Walker’s eyes, an industrial and ultimately economically driven solution. This book offers both breadth and depth. It will motivate serious students and design professionals to slow down and consider personal moral codes. Substantial endnotes and an extensive, multidisciplinary bibliography aid 12 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 readers in such a quest. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Wilk, Sabrina. Drawing for landscape architects: construction and design manual. DOM Click here to enter text. Publishers, 2014. 355p bibl index ISBN 9783869223445 cloth, $89.95 ☐ Required Written by a landscape architect committed to the use of drawing as an integral part of professional practice, this book provides a visually engaging initiation to the medium. By ☐ Recommended introducing tools and basic design concepts such as plan, elevation, section, projection, and perspective, this illustrated text sets down the basic rules of the craft. It also includes a chapter on conventions of architectural presentation and a portfolio of drawings made by 15 practicing landscape architects. The variety of these examples and the text's rich and subtle illustrations underscore the author’s encouragement to develop a personal "graphic handwriting." This expressive facility remains an essential form of expression and communication in a universal language for a profession increasingly practiced at a global scale. The author acknowledges the role played by computer-aided design (CAD) and other computer applications but exhorts students training for the landscape profession to explore and gain command of the subtleties underlying thinking and speaking, pencil in hand. Elegantly designed and produced in Germany, this is both an engaging textbook and a necessary addition to academic and professional libraries for landscape architecture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. Faculty Member: Zimmerman, Claire. Photographic architecture in the twentieth century. Minnesota, 2014. Click here to enter text. 393p bibl index afp ISBN 9780816683345 cloth, $103.00; ISBN 9780816683352 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required This extraordinary study of the productive interrelationship of architecture and its market infrastructure is organized around what Zimmerman (Univ. of Michigan) characterizes as ☐ Recommended "volatile moments in a stepped historical narrative." She describes these moments as "Paul Zucker’s identification [1912–1913] of intermedial architecture as a component of the history of European architecture, Mies’s … discoveries of the immense propaganda power of photographic images and the immense creative power of architectural montage, the Smithsons' skillful deployment of image in building and building in image, and Stirling’s (and Banham’s) reinvention of the image as a potent pictorial object of thought and action." This shorthand, however, does not do justice to the author’s thorough command of an array of histories and theories, her incisive eye, her intrepid quest for understanding, and her enviable ability to write history critically and comfortably outside the bounds of architectural historical convention. This book offers an introduction; three parts, "Architecture after Photography," "Architects and Architectural Photographs," and "Imageability"; and a conclusion. It is an indispensable repository of scholarly understanding of modernism in architecture, its photography, and the intricacies of their mutual relationship. Summing Up: Essential. Lower- division undergraduates and above; general readers

13 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Biology Faculty Member: National Geographic complete birds of North America, ed. by Jonathan Alderfer with Jon L. Click here to enter text. Dunn and Paul Lehman et al. 2nd ed., rev. and updated. National Geographic, 2014. 743p bibl index ISBN 9781426213731 cloth, $40.00 ☐ Required Here is a worthy second edition of a fine, glorified field guide, richly illustrated, authoritatively authored, and attractive. The paintings and text are largely derived from the ☐ Recommended National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (6th ed., 2011), also authored by Alderfer, Dunn, and Lehman. However, there are 600 new illustrations (now totaling 4,000), 150 photographs, and 800 revised maps by Lehman, new essays, and in some cases, additional, enhanced maps expanding on information in the regular maps. This big, chunky tome is not for field use, but for consulting in one's study, living room, or car. Twenty-five distinguished contributors have authored chapters on various bird groups. Unlike in the first edition (CH, Jul'06, 43-6532), they have received here conspicuous attribution. There are so many good features not in the field guide that anyone owning the guide should want this fine title, too. Species accounts sections include identification, similar species, voice, status, distribution, geographical variation, and population plus multiple illustrations and maps, which extend into Mexico, Siberia, Greenland, and Iceland, where appropriate. The introductory material is brief, as are the bibliography and website list (which omits the National Audubon Society). The binding is supple; that of the first edition is too tight. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and public libraries. Faculty Member: Armstrong, Joseph E. How the Earth turned green: a brief 3.8-billion-year history of plants. Click here to enter text. Chicago, 2014. 563p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226069630 cloth, $125.00; ISBN 9780226069777 pbk, $45.00; ISBN 9780226069807 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Armstrong (Illinois State Univ.) has written an amazing and wonderful book. It is so well written that it reads more like an engaging novel—one that readers cannot put down—than ☐ Recommended like a science book. Yet the style is not reduced or simplified science; instead, the author explains all this factual material with prose that is precise, accurate, and concise. The topics range from cosmology to the flowering plants (angiosperms), but this vertical track is accomplished without deviating from the essential task of describing the evolutionary history of photosynthesizing organisms and their relations to planet Earth. Along the way, readers are treated to a synthesis of fundamental stages in the evolution of life itself. This includes an excellent discussion about the origin of life, an even better explanation of the origins of autotrophy in prokaryotes, and a very good description of the endosymbiotic theory. The text is followed by a 141-page appendix that describes all the major photosynthetic groups (including bacteria). This is an exceedingly useful resource for students, which, to this reviewer's knowledge, does not exist anywhere else in such a compact form. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. Faculty Member: Oceans and human health: implications for society and well-being, ed. by Robert E. Bowen et Click here to enter text. al. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 304p bibl index afp ISBN 9781119941316 cloth, $99.95; ISBN 9781118828441 ebook, $79.99 ☐ Required This unusual book investigates the complex interactions between human well-being and the ecological resiliency of marine systems as the climate changes and sea levels rise. The diverse ☐ Recommended perspectives of the 34 specialists are expressed in the first ten chapters, which consider such topics as demography, human health and diseases, social values, ecosystem functioning and services, globalization, and management strategies. Chapter 11, "Final Thoughts and Future Actions," provides a lucid understanding of the dire outcomes that likely will emerge if humans continue to degrade coastal and offshore ecosystems. The chapters are well written, accessible, and beautifully illustrated in color, and contain key references as well as boxes that isolate particular issues for insightful elaboration. In addition, the authors provide farsighted leadership, as they urge us to exercise our capacity to mitigate human-induced environmental insults to our coastlines, and by so doing help protect the health of existing as 14 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 well as future generations of people. This book truly needs a wide readership, particularly among management, political, and public policy personnel. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners Faculty Member: Bradshaw, Richard H. W. Ecosystem dynamics: from the past to the future, by Richard H. W. Click here to enter text. Bradshaw and Martin T. Sykes. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 321p bibl index ISBN 9781119970767 cloth, $149.95; ISBN 9781119970774 pbk, $99.95 ☐ Required Bradshaw (Univ. of Liverpool, UK) and Sykes (Lund Univ., Sweden) give a comprehensive overview of how terrestrial ecosystems change over time (decades to millennia) in response ☐ Recommended to climate, disturbance, and human influence. A key theme is the unprecedented pressure of human population growth and resource exploitation coupled with rapid environmental change. Together, these forces are dramatically affecting how ecosystems work, the services they provide to society, and their future sustainability. Because simulation models play an important role in scientific understanding of ecosystem dynamics, the book begins with a good overview of different types of modeling approaches and the strengths and limitations of each. (Note: this section is written so that it is accessible to non-modelers!) There is also a nice discussion on types of data, specifically addressing the question “how do we know what we know about ecosystems in the past?” Overall, the scope of the book is very broad, but topics are discussed in sufficient depth to interest specialists. Personal anecdotes enliven the writing and add a human touch; for graduate students, these will serve as important reminders that there is much to learn outside the laboratory. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Broom, Donald M. Sentience and animal welfare. CABI, 2014. 185p bibl indexes afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781780644035 cloth, $145.00; ISBN 9781780644042 pbk, $70.00 ☐ Required Broom (veterinary medicine, Univ. of Cambridge, UK) takes readers on a short, clear, authoritative journey through animal sentience and what it means in terms of how humans ☐ Recommended value and treat animals. He quickly outlines what sentience and ethics are, followed by a little history of people's views of animals. He discusses the four bases for animal sentience— cognition, affect, awareness (which he equates to consciousness), and motivation. He draws on wide, up-to-date coverage of research on these areas across the phyla, including cephalopods, fish, and crustaceans (23 pages of references after 141 pages of text). Having set a foundation, Broom then discusses how these apply to animal welfare, in many cases using domesticated animals as examples and evaluating how physiological and behavioral measures can be used to study areas such as pain and wellness, including evaluating what is important to an animal. There is an interesting assessment of sentience across the life-span and when human and nonhuman animals should be protected. Broom ends up by pointing out that public attitudes, as exemplified in the Canadian seal hunt and genetically modified animals, can change practice and feels that public education is the ultimate answer to good animal welfare. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Carty, Susan. Freshwater dinoflagellates of North America. Comstock Publishing Associates, Click here to enter text. 2014. 260p bibl index afp ISBN 9780801451768 cloth, $95.00 ☐ Required Despite an increasing interest in dinoflagellate biology over the past several decades, freshwater biologists in North America have lacked a comprehensive guidebook of the ☐ Recommended species of these interesting and important planktons. In 1934, G. H. Wailes compiled a list of all North American dinoflagellates, but this volume takes the topic far beyond that. Carty (Heidelberg Univ., Ohio) has collected all known dinoflagellate species from Central America and the Caribbean to Canada and Greenland. The introductory chapter is a short summary of dinoflagellate biology with illustrations of key characteristics; discussions of freshwater toxins, species reproduction, and methods for collection and observation; and a taxonomic summary of several species groupings that require greater discussion than in the book's descriptive portion. The bulk of the volume contains descriptions and illustrations of all the known species in the geographic area, most illustrated with line drawings and distribution maps. One new genus is described and another validated. There are light micrographs and 15 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 SEM (scanning electron microscope) photographs for some species. The literature compiled for geographic areas is up to date and in an easy-to-use format. This is a valuable resource for dinoflagellate specialists, freshwater and water quality biologists, and undergraduate and graduate institutions with an aquatic component in their programs. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Cronin, Thomas W. Visual ecology, by Thomas W. Cronin et al. Princeton, 2014. 405p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780691151847 cloth, $69.50 ☐ Required Cronin (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County) and colleagues provide a tour de force of light and vision, spanning the realms of physics, physiology, neurobiology, and even ecology. The ☐ Recommended volume's 13 chapters are devoted to topics such as the physics of light and optics; photo pigments and photoreceptors; the diversity of eyes among animals; spatial, color, and polarization vision; the effects of environmental media on the transmission of light; dim light vision; and motion detection and tracking. The final two chapters, "Visual Orientation and Navigation" and "Signals and Camouflage," represent the main ecological components of the volume. People take vision for granted, yet the experience of vision represents only a small part of the great diversity in visual detection in what is considered the “nonvisible” portion of the spectrum. Numerous examples are illustrated with color photographs and charts. Various filters are used to illustrate that organisms see the same object differently than human observers do. Capitalization of species names would have clarified some discussions and figure legends. For the most part, the complexities of physics and physiology are rendered with sufficient clarity for nontechnical readers who can enjoy the copious illustrations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals; informed general readers Faculty Member: Drucker, Donna J. The classification of sex: Alfred Kinsey and the organization of knowledge. Click here to enter text. Pittsburgh, 2014. 244p bibl index afp ISBN 9780822963035 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required Biographers and scholars from multiple disciplines have examined many elements of the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, and much is known of his personal history and central role in the ☐ Recommended history of the scientific study of human sexuality. This small volume makes a large contribution to the understanding of a less-examined aspect of Kinsey’s professional life, specifically the intellectual and professional contributions of his early work as a biologist, taxonomist, and educator to his history-making work in the classification of human sexual behavior. Drucker (guest professor, Technische Univ., Darmstadt, Germany) compellingly traces the emergence of the sexuality scientist from the biologist who collected/classified gall wasps to the teacher of future biology instructors who successfully incorporated difficult topics (e.g., evolution, human sexuality/reproduction) into high-school-level life sciences courses to the professor who taught the famous marriage course at Indiana University using his interpretation of the scientific method. For Kinsey, the tools and methods of a natural scientist, including objective, nonjudgmental methods, collection techniques, classification systems, and data analysis procedures, became integral to his philosophy of science and his emergence as a human sexuality scientist. Drucker’s depiction of Kinsey as the taxonomist, always the collector and classifier, provides another insight into his personal and professional complexity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic, general, and professional collections Faculty Member: Elphick, Jonathan. The world of birds, photographs [by] David Tipling. Firefly Books, 2014. Click here to enter text. 608p bibl index ISBN 9781770853041 cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required The "world of birds" is a pretty big topic. This book's treatment of the subject, as expected, was somewhat superficial, but this reviewer was also pleasantly surprised about the ☐ Recommended content. The volume is organized into ten chapters, the first nine presenting reasonably in- depth discussions of a broad spectrum of avian biology topics. Everything is here: prehistoric birds, flight, migration, behavior, anatomy and physiology, distribution and biogeography, and interactions between birds and humans. These accounts are very readable, and the fresh perspective is enjoyable. The final chapter, "The Bird Families," comprises over half of the 16 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 book. Elphick, an ornithologist, a writer, and an educator with 40-plus years of experience, presents a systematic survey of world orders and families, and this chapter could actually be titled "The Birds of the World." The taxonomic treatment, by the author’s own admission, is very conservative, which might annoy some ornithologists, but lay readers will probably not notice, and it does not detract from the overall appeal of the book. All chapters are profusely illustrated with beautiful photographs, which complement the text well, and the result is an excellent reference book that will occupy shelves in many libraries. For those needing just one general bird reference, this might be it. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Farmer, Edward E. Leaf defence. Oxford, 2014. 216p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199671441 Click here to enter text. cloth, $59.95 ☐ Required How plants defend themselves, as they cannot simply run away, is multifaceted. In Leaf Defence, Farmer (Univ. of Lausanne, Switzerland) builds a compelling co-evolutionary–based ☐ Recommended exploration of the many tools plants use for defense. The relatively brief book begins in a somewhat dry style but soon becomes more enthralling as Farmer rapidly moves from an explanation of herbivory, leaf patterns, and colors to stinging hairs and unpleasant ergastic contents. By the time the author gets to chemical compounds used for defense, introducing enough chemistry for those with a background to get a deeper understanding and not overwhelming those without, readers cannot help being amazed at the complexity of plants. The book covers the basics of insect physiology as needed. Later chapters address modern molecular signaling pathways controlling DNA expression centered on induction by the jasmonate compounds. Last, Farmer discusses larger-scale topics, including purposeful ant defense against herbivory and notions of space and time for plant growth as means to evade predation, and concludes with an excellent summary. Most topics are appropriately framed in an evolutionary context without being contrived. References to primary sources are provided at the end. An essential resource for graduate students and faculty and valuable for upper-division undergraduates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Botany collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fuller, Errol. The passenger pigeon. Princeton, 2015. 177p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691162959 Click here to enter text. cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This short biographical sketch of the passenger pigeon—commemorating the 100th anniversary of the bird’s extinction—is a fitting testimonial to the existence of what was once ☐ Recommended the most numerous bird in the world, and also a perpetual reminder of the thoughtlessness and greed of humankind. Like so many other species, the passenger pigeon was driven to extinction by our own careless and irresponsible stewardship of nature. Like the dodo, the great auk, and the Carolina parakeet—all extinct because of human activities—passenger pigeons now exist only as aging specimens in museum collections. Writing in a clear, conversational tone, artist/writer Fuller highlights important aspects of this bird’s natural history and its remarkable downhill spiral into oblivion. He provides fascinating accounts of the last wild birds; of “Martha,” the last of her species, who died in the Cincinnati Zoo; and historical testimony from people who observed the birds’ enormous flocks firsthand. Illustrated with numerous historical photographs and exquisite artwork (modern and period), this lasting tribute to one of the most magnificent birds to have ever lived will interest anyone who cares about conservation of the natural world. Fuller's previous works include Lost Animals (CH, Dec'14, 52-1987) and Dodo (CH, May'03, 40-5226). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Harold, Franklin M. In search of cell history: the evolution of life's building blocks. Chicago, Click here to enter text. 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226174143 cloth, $110.00; ISBN 9780226174280 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9780226174310 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required The origin of cells, one of the earliest steps on the road to the evolution of organisms, has fascinated specialists and laypeople alike for centuries. Cells were discovered in the 1830s, ☐ Recommended when plants and animals were shown to be made up of cells. Since then, cells have been 17 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 regarded as the basic units of life, with genes as the basic units of hereditary. This is a fine addition to the many books on how cells originated and evolved. It is well written, accessible, thorough, and illustrated with helpful figures, focusing on cellular organization and how that organization diversified as various life-forms evolved. Harold (emer., biochemistry, Colorado State) comprehensively discusses the important process of fusion between cells (symbiosis) in cell evolution as well as information on cellular structure and organization that can be gleaned from the fossil record. Discussion of the extracellular matrix molecules and matrices produced by almost all cells would have raised this book to a higher level and further illuminated cellular complexity. Exploration of interactions between cells, treated only in passing, would have revealed a further important level of complexity, as would an expanded discussion of cell division (both mitosis and meiosis) and the frequent alternation of that in generations based on cell types. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Held, Lewis I.. How the snake lost its legs: curious tales from the frontier of evo-devo. Click here to enter text. Cambridge, 2014. 285p bibl index ISBN 9781107030442 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9781107621398 pbk, $39.99 ☐ Required For many people, seeing a snake or even reading about snakes raises fears and an urgent need to escape the “scene.” But snakes are a most interesting group of vertebrates, ☐ Recommended especially because they, unlike almost all other vertebrates, lack feet. This book focuses on much more than snakes. Held (Texas Tech) uses snakes only to introduce how the particular features of many vertebrates and even some invertebrates developed. The author is interested in evolutionary/developmental biology (evo-devo) and how the complicated processes of evo-devo have worked to produce the thousands of species of animals existing today. Held examines how chordates appear to have “flipped upside down” in their development, a series of developmental factors in flies, how butterflies got their spots, how insects got their wings, how cheetahs decorate their skin, and how 50 other animals developed the features by which they are recognized. The book contains many drawings and photographs and over 2,500 references (121 pages). Although this book may be particularly useful to students of developmental and evolutionary biology, laypeople interested in how the different features of so many animals evolved will also benefit from reading it. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and general audiences Faculty Member: Hoyt, Erich. Creatures of the deep: in search of the sea's monsters and the world they live in. Click here to enter text. 2nd ed., updated and expanded. Firefly Books, 2014. 288p bibl index ISBN 9781770852815 cloth, $39.95 ☐ Required This updated work (1st ed., 2001) has the external appearance of a beautiful coffee-table book, but internally it offers much more. It resembles two previous works, The Deep, edited ☐ Recommended by Clair Nouvian (CH, Aug'07, 44-6848), and Into the Deep, by Karsten Schneider and Peter Batson (2008), both primarily picture books with good photography. However, Hoyt's work offers a knowledgeable narrative to accompany the excellent illustrations. The author is a well-known British biologist who has published numerous books on marine life, including Marine Protected Areas for Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (CH, Feb'12, 49-3258). This one is organized into four parts covering life in the vertical layers and a history of oceanic exploration, predators and prey, life on undersea ridges, and the diversity of marine life and conservation considerations. Though there are no references within the text, the book does include a "Sources and Resources" section at the end. In addition to its visual appeal, this work has considerable academic value. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and lower- and upper-division undergraduates Faculty Member: Mountains and plains: the ecology of Wyoming landscapes, by Dennis H. Knight et al. 2nd ed. Click here to enter text. Yale/Biodiversity Institute, University of Wyoming, 2014. 404p bibl index afp ISBN 9780300185928 pbk, $45.00 ☐ Required Knight (emer., Univ. of Wyoming) and colleagues realized that since the first edition of this book was published two decades ago (CH, Mar'95, 32-3877), several changes have taken ☐ Recommended place in the Wyoming region—fragmentation of wildlife habitats, introduction of invasive 18 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 species, forest fires, insect epidemics, and climatic changes. This revised edition was developed to provide a "new synthesis of the ecological research pertinent to natural resource management" in Wyoming and six adjacent states. In the six-part book, the authors begin by introducing the concepts of ecosystem services and environmental/climatic changes during the past several decades. The remaining parts focus on major ecosystems such as wetlands, grasslands, forests, and alpine tundra, and a final chapter focuses on current land management and conservation issues. Chapter notes, including relevant websites, and a comprehensive reference section appear at the end of the book; a companion website (http://mountainsandplains.net/) is also available. The well-written volume is illustrated with color and black-and-white photos, figures, and tables. It can serve as a valuable reference and textbook for college students, researchers, and professionals in conservation restoration, forestry, and land management. Although the area encompassed in this work is largely regional, the concepts presented have application to other areas with similar problems. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students, researchers/faculty, professionals/practitioners Faculty Member: Luckey, Mary. Membrane structural biology: with biochemical and biophysical foundations. Click here to enter text. 2nd ed. Cambridge, 2014. 411p bibl index ISBN 9781107030633 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required This is the second edition of a textbook with an almost unique niche; the only other modern textbook in this field is An Introduction to Biological Membranes, by William Stillwell (CH, ☐ Recommended May'14, 51-5012). But this edition, like its predecessor (CH, Dec'08, 46-2068), is more comprehensive and more sophisticated in its pedagogical approach and much more suited for an upper-division undergraduate or graduate class than Stillwell’s volume. The addition of more literature citations to every chapter is a welcome change from the first edition, and the incredible progress in structural understanding of membrane proteins at atomic resolution is well documented. The figures are colorful, professionally rendered, and clear; the addition of citations to the figure legends is appreciated as well. Membrane channel functions and electrical properties of membranes are well covered. However, Luckey (emer., San Francisco State) gives very little attention to membrane lipid functions, as receptors, co-receptors, or components of lipid rafts, which is a regrettable oversight. Used in conjunction with the Stillwell textbook, which covers lipid structure and function to a far greater degree, this membrane protein-centric text would be a great introduction to modern membrane molecular biology. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Marzluff, John M. Welcome to subirdia: sharing our neighborhoods with wrens, robins, Click here to enter text. woodpeckers, and other wildlife. Yale, 2014. 313p bibl index afp ISBN 9780300197075 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required Marzluff (Univ. of Washington) has hit a winner with this new release. This easily read but engrossing account offers something for everyone. The setting is familiar: suburban areas ☐ Recommended that fringe cities across the globe. Yet the story quickly begins to veer into unexpected, unexplored territory, and soon readers find themselves looking at their future on the planet. This future is tied, more than people may wish to acknowledge, to the bird species valiantly adapting to the huge changes that humans have made to the landscape. Writing with the sure hand of an inveterate observer—a crack scientist with the soul of a nice guy next door—Marzluff takes readers into his life in Seattle, working with teams of his graduate students and some admirable neighbors. Readers visit ten cities around the world and marvel at the simplicity of the author's ten rules for saving the situation. And readers are left with an optimistic list of deeply rewarding projects accessible to anyone. This is therapy for people who worry. Beautifully illustrated in black-and-white by Jack Delap, with accuracy and touches of humor. For scientists, bird lovers, philosophers—and everyone else. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Mudge, Ken. Farming the woods: an integrated permaculture approach to growing food and Click here to enter text. medicinals in temperate forests, by Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel. Chelsea Green, 2014. 359p 19 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 index ISBN 9781603585071 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required This excellent book by Mudge (Cornell Univ.) and Gabriel (educator, forest farmer, and ecologist, Finger Lakes region, New York) highlights the diverse income streams that forest ☐ Recommended landowners or individuals who want to design a forested environment on their land can cultivate. The book begins with clear definitions of forest farming, agroforestry practices, and a historical perspective on cultivating crops in the forest. A foundational understanding of forest ecology is presented, including forest food webs, succession and disturbance, nature mimicry, and adaptation as the climate changes. Later chapters focus on cultivating trees for fruits, nuts, or syrups; using nontimber forest products; growing mushrooms for food and medicine; gathering high-value medicinal plants; producing forest products in nurseries; harvesting wood products; and incorporating animals in the system as possible forest farm endeavors. The discussions of crops suggested in this detailed text are supported with diverse charts and interesting case studies to help readers find the path that best suits their interests. The conclusion provides guidelines for success in the design of forest farms. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Stem cells: scientific facts and fiction, ed. by Christine Mummery et al. 2nd ed. Click here to enter text. Elsevier/Academic Press, 2014. 433p index ISBN 9780124115514 pbk, $79.95 ☐ Required Probably no area of current cell biology research is as imbued with hope for treatment of human disease, and as bedeviled by ethical concerns, as stem cell research. Once, true ☐ Recommended pluripotent stem cells were thought to reside only in bone marrow and related tissues; recent findings confirm that most human tissues harbor a population of stem cells. This understanding plus technical advances that permit the reprogramming of differentiated adult cells to become pluripotent have fueled new possibilities for a wide variety of therapies—and permitted the growth of misunderstandings and even outright frauds concerning stem cells as well. This second edition, some 100 pages longer than its predecessor (CH, Nov'11, 49-1501), seeks to educate interested readers about the true therapeutic possibilities that stem cells present, to describe new and exciting research (organs-on-a-chip, anyone?) in clear and nontechnical prose, and to correct possible misunderstandings about this brave new world of biology. It is an impressive encyclopedia of modern biotechnology that presents complex material in short, easy-to-grasp chapters. Some of the technical details are oddly placed, and some of the illustrations are (literally) too sketchy. However, this is a solid, informative effort. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Norment, Christopher J. Relicts of a beautiful sea: survival, extinction, and conservation in a Click here to enter text. desert world. North Carolina, 2014. 271p bibl afp ISBN 9781469618661 cloth, $28.00 ☐ Required Beautiful sea—Death Valley: the juxtaposition of images brought to mind by these phrases seems absurd. A cool salty breeze does not fit with a picture of absolute drought. Told by ☐ Recommended one who is obviously in love with the beauty of this harsh and forbidding desert, this is a personal story—an intimate story—of scientific and personal exploration. The resulting chronicle is neither wholly science nor wholly travelogue: it is more than either. This is a story about six animal refugees and their refuges and how organisms can survive in one of the most forbidding and desolate places on Earth. To paraphrase Norment (College at Brockport, SUNY), this book creates a poetic-ecological argument for conservation on a global scale but does so by using a narrative of science and aesthetics woven into a beautiful tapestry about an austere homeland to some amazing animals. At first scan, this reviewer was left wanting photographs or at least something more than the few Spartan maps and sketches. However, he was quickly disabused of that need; the writing is compelling and reminded him of how, in his youth, he fell in love with the nature writings of Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, and Joseph Krutch. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Pickrell, John. Flying dinosaurs: how fearsome reptiles became birds. Columbia, 2014. 215p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780231171786 cloth, $29.95; ISBN 9780231538787 ebook, $28.99 20 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required The idea that modern birds are the lone surviving branch of dinosaurs is becoming widely known but is not nearly as widely understood. This work provides a well-structured overview ☐ Recommended of the various lines of evidence connecting the evolution of birds with that of theropod dinosaurs. The strength of the book is its combined scope and brevity. Science journalist PickreIl (editor, Australian Geographic) manages to introduce historical examples, personalities, a survey of feathered dinosaurs, and virtually all "bullet points" of anatomy, physiology, and feather evolution that have in recent years made dinosaur research so fascinating. The book's 11 chapters are each subdivided into short and entertaining essays (e.g., "Rise of the dino-chicken," "Unravelling the Archaeoraptor hoax," "Dinosaur species that never were"). This scope goes beyond merely recounting evidence that birds are dinosaurs while not venturing too tangentially from the point of the book. Any general reader or student interested in dinosaurs should find it a pleasure to read. It includes a color signature that shows well-chosen examples from the text as well as a compilation of the current list of feathered dinosaurs. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduate students Faculty Member: Playfair, Susan. America's founding fruit: the cranberry in a new environment. University Click here to enter text. Press of New England, 2014. 243p index afp ISBN 9781611686319 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9781611686326 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9781611686333 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Playfair (Vanishing Species, 2003) has written the first nonfiction book to trace the history and health benefits of cranberry cultivation in the US. The author researched primary ☐ Recommended historical sources, old cookbooks, and scientific and business journals to inform readers about how the cranberry, no longer just served for Thanksgiving, has become a “superfruit” in the fight against cancer. Playfair focuses on the present and future of American cranberry cultivation through interviews with cranberry growers from New England, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Oregon and plant geneticists to predict whether or not the cranberry will survive in a warming climate. Chapters are sequenced and titled after the steps of cranberry cultivation, and Playfair describes each step and brings the cranberry bog, its relationship with its environment, and the multiple workers and companies who depend on its bounty to life. If readers do not love the cranberry by the end of this book, Playfair provides 21 delicious cranberry recipes as one last effort to change their minds. Valuable for New England collections, large public libraries, culinary collections, and agricultural collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Rabinowitz, Alan. An indomitable beast: the remarkable journey of the jaguar. Island Press, Click here to enter text. 2014. 241p bibl index afp ISBN 9781597269964 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required Some conservation books are of local or otherwise limited interest, but that cannot be said for this one. Jaguars are of global interest because current conservation efforts employ ☐ Recommended representative methods for transnational management, e.g., the identification and protection of habitat corridors and the use of genetic data to determine links and breeding patterns among a widespread population. Rabinowitz merits attention because he knows as much about big cats as anyone in the world; through decades of groundbreaking research, he has secured protection for big cats in diverse countries and served as director of the world’s largest big cat conservation program within the Wildlife Conservation Society. More recently, he founded Panthera, which quickly amassed significant financial resources and unparalleled scientific expertise. This book is written for the lay reader, and the science is described clearly and concisely. The chapters on the historical and cultural aspects of jaguars are noteworthy. The maps would benefit from being larger but are informative. The example of modern conservation techniques in action in a transnational setting combined with the authority of an experienced and respected voice make this work an essential addition to all academic collections. Summing Up: Essential. All students, general readers, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners Faculty Member: Biology and conservation of North American tortoises, ed. by David C. Rostal, Earl D. McCoy, Click here to enter text. and Henry R. Mushinsky. Johns Hopkins, 2014. 190p bibl index ISBN 9781421413778 cloth, 21 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 $69.95; ISBN 9781421413785 ebook, $69.95

☐ Required Rostal (Georgia Southern Univ.) and McCoy and Mushinsky (both, Univ. of South Florida) draw on the talents and knowledge of 33 contributors, including themselves, to produce a ☐ Recommended wealth of information on the five extant gopher tortoise species of North America. Eighteen chapters follow the prefaced comments. Topics covered in-depth include morphology, systematics, evolutionary history, physiology, reproductive biology, growth, foods, distribution, habitats, home ranges, social behaviors, and abundance. Health issues, population genetics, interactions with humans, population threats, and conservation are also detailed. Drawings, monochrome photos, graphs, and tables complement the narrative units. A seven-page turtle health questionnaire accompanies the chapter on health issues. An extensive reference section (24 pages) and a useful 6-page index complete the book. The terminology is often technical, but the narrative—although focused on gopher turtles—will be useful to specialists on chelonians, herpetoculturists, and amateur naturalists interested in turtles. A valuable resource for public and academic libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Sunquist, Fiona. The wild cat book, by Fiona Sunquist and Mel Sunquist. Chicago, 2014. 268p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9780226780269 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Fiona Sunquist (science writer) and Mel Sunquist (emer., wildlife ecology and conservation, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville) have written a definitive reference on the 36 species of wild cats ☐ Recommended of the world, some of which will be unfamiliar to many readers. The accounts of each species, accompanied by outstanding photographs and large distribution maps, are arranged in eight groups, from the largest cats in the oldest lineage, Panthera, through bay cat, caracal, ocelot, lynx, puma, leopard, and the most recent, the domestic cat lineages. Each account includes physical characteristics, range, habitat, social and hunting behavior, and other fascinating information not easily accessed elsewhere. Side boxes provide interesting insights into feline natural history outside of what is presented in the species accounts. An extensive bibliography for each species provides sources of additional information for interested readers. The clearly written text and attractive layout of photographs make this book a valuable resource for both academic and public libraries. See also the Sunquists' earlier work, Wild Cats of the World (CH, Mar'03, 40-4020). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students and general readers Faculty Member: Swanson, Drew A. A golden weed: tobacco and environment in the Piedmont South. Yale, Click here to enter text. 2014. 342p ISBN 9780300191165 cloth, $45.00 ☐ Required A Golden Weed is a recent addition to the "Yale Agrarian Studies" series. Borrowing a term coined by Jack Temple Kirby, environmental historian Swanson (Wright State Univ.) describes ☐ Recommended this work “as agro-ecological history.” Focusing on the three-county Southside region of the Virginia Piedmont, the author traces the development of an economy that revolved around bright or yellow-leaf tobacco and the environmental toll that its cultivation and curing had on the landscape. Although Swanson establishes the historical context and provides an epilogue that discusses 20th-century efforts to sustain the tobacco-based economy while combating the worst of the environmental damage, he contends that this is essentially a 19th-century story. “Regional farmers were already experiencing severe soil erosion, the iron tentacles of fertilizer debt, slumping bright tobacco prices, and few obvious alternatives by 1900; SCS [Soil Conservation Service] officials merely identified and labeled an ongoing condition.” With this thoroughly documented and engagingly written narrative, Swanson has made a solid contribution to the historian’s craft. A Golden Weed belongs in every academic library and should be read by all students of agricultural, environmental, and southern history. Summing Up: Essential. All academic library collections Faculty Member: Van Wyhe, John. Charles Darwin in Cambridge: the most joyful years. World Scientific, 2014. Click here to enter text. 193p bibl index afp ISBN 9789814583978 pbk, $24.00 22 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required The premise of this thorough account of Charles Darwin’s student years at Cambridge University is that they were perhaps the most “important and formative” of his life. He was ☐ Recommended so fond of Cambridge that he even thought about pursuing a career as a professor there. Darwin was a pensioner, part of the largest category of students—those who paid all their expenses. He chose to attend Christ’s College because it had a "quiet and relaxed" atmosphere, "neither academically rigorous nor religiously strict." He thrived in this atmosphere. Van Wyhe, a science historian and noted Darwin scholar, devotes considerable attention to Darwin’s interest in natural history, particularly collecting beetles. He describes how Darwin’s attendance at John Stevens Henslow’s lectures in botany grew into a relationship that shaped his life. Chapters on Darwin’s early life, voyage on H.M.S. Beagle, publication of the Origin, and the first and second centenaries honoring him surround chapters on Darwin’s years as a Cambridge student. There are wonderful illustrations and photographs of buildings and rooms at Cambridge, notebook pages, and photographs of his beetle collections and other memorabilia. An enjoyable read for those interested in natural history and the history of science. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic, general, and professional audiences

23 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Business Administration & Marketing Faculty Member: Beckerman, Joel. The sonic boom: how sound transforms the way we think, feel, and buy. Click here to enter text. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 188p index ISBN 9780544191747 cloth, $27.00 ☐ Required In this insightful book, Beckerman, an award-winning composer and sound branding strategist, helps readers appreciate how marketers harness the power of sound to ☐ Recommended merchandise products. Using real examples from the business world, the author explains how Chili's restaurants use lessons from evolutionary psychology to sell their sizzling fajitas, creating sound logos at the right moment to forge bonds between buyers and their brand. Other examples include the jingles tinkling from the ice-cream truck that tip off listeners that something exciting is coming. The ambient music in Starbuck’s changes people's mood, argues the author. However, soundscapes also affect personal choices that enrich people's lives; one need only think of those favorite songs played at weddings. Beckerman discusses how sonic strategies involve creating “boom moments” to recall rich experiences and stories that connect with listeners' emotional cores, and he uses the example of the two, ominous, repeating bass notes from the Jaws movie theme to illustrate his point. Throughout his discussion, numerous familiar examples help readers appreciate how susceptible they are to the mysterious and manipulative power of sound. Although the book is aimed directly at marketing types, consumers can benefit by learning a powerful new vocabulary for how soundscapes affect daily decision making. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. Faculty Member: Chin, Jean Lau. Diversity and leadership, by Jean Lau Chin and Joseph E. Trimble. SAGE Click here to enter text. Publications, 2015. 320p bibl index afp ISBN 9781452257891 pbk, $55.00 ☐ Required In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgement among leadership scholars (and others) that the academic discipline of leadership studies is in dire need of new blood. In this ☐ Recommended excellent book, Chin (Adelphi Univ.) and Trimble (Western Washington Univ.) argue that in light of the emergence of increasingly global and diverse societies, leadership theory must now include multiculturalism and leadership diversity. The authors cover an impressive amount of social science research on both leadership theory and diversity theory, including recommendations for developing leadership diversity in various contexts and organizations. However, critics will identify three shortcomings: the book focuses more on the development of culturally competent, diverse leaders than followers, perpetuating the myth of follower passivity; there is no discussion (or acknowledgement) of evolutionary leadership theory, and therefore no "ultimate" biological explanations are offered for in- group/out-group bias or racial, ethnic, and gender identity; and there is no attempt to integrate leadership and diversity with political theory or deal with the use of aggression to advance political goals and subdue intolerant organizations. Despite these comparatively minor omissions, this well-written, thoroughly referenced scholarly work provides a much-needed initial foray into the convergence of state-of-the-art social scientific research on leadership and diversity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Cunningham, Lawrence A. Berkshire beyond Buffett: the enduring value of values. Columbia Click here to enter text. Business School, 2014. 307p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231170048 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required In this important, insightful, and clearly written book, Cunningham (George Washington Univ.) explains how Warren Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a small company ☐ Recommended with problems into a $300 billion conglomerate with 50 diversified subsidiaries. In essence, Buffett created a corporate culture that values cost consciousness, integrity, fairness, generosity, ethical behavior, entrepreneurship, both autonomy and teamwork, and a sense of permanence. Rich with lessons for those wishing to profit from the Berkshire model, the book provides many examples and chapter-long cases of the diverse companies Berkshire acquired that achieved success. Buffett's policies encourage low debt, social 24 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 responsibility, a decentralized organization structure, and very careful selection of companies with excellent managers who had fine reputations. Beyond that, delegating clear responsibilities and decision-making authority to these managers, as well as having performance appraisals and rewards based on performance and long-term success, is critical to Berkshire's success. The author emphasizes that these values ensure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity. A major contribution to the management literature, this book should be read by managers of all organizations, business professors and students, business owners, and investors. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Goodwin, Joanne L. Changing the game: women at work in Las Vegas, 1940-1990. Nevada, Click here to enter text. 2014. 216p index afp ISBN 9780874179606 pbk, $27.95 ☐ Required Due to gender inequality or simple omission, the role of working women in the nation’s history has often been overlooked. Goodwin (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas) helps set the ☐ Recommended record straight in this oral history of innovative women who worked in the gaming industry in Las Vegas from 1940 to 1990. The women of Las Vegas have too often been portrayed by the public, the media, films, and popular histories in sexist or stereotypical roles—as women of the night—rather than as entrepreneurial and upwardly mobile individuals. The nine women Goodwin interviewed run the gamut from women who began their working lives at blackjack tables to those who rose from that level of work to become executives in the gaming industry. The book also discusses segregation during the era and describes how, nevertheless, African American women, too, found a place on the stage and in a short-lived club, the Moulin Rouge, in West Las Vegas. Goodwin has written a fascinating and accessible book, which might be read with Susan Chandler and Jill B. Jones's Casino Women: Courage in Unexpected Places (2011). Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Millennial spring: designing the future of organizations, ed. by Miriam Grace and George B. Click here to enter text. Graen. Information Age, 2014. 286p bibl ISBN 9781623967451 cloth, $49.99; ISBN 9781623967444 pbk, $24.99 ☐ Required The organizational lens of “design thinking” comes into its own with this collection of essays, which proposes this new mind-set as the answer to creating organizations that are friendly ☐ Recommended and hospitable to the under-30 workforce. Socialized to feel special from the moment they stepped foot on the planet, Millennials seem to be voting with their feet and leaving organizations unresponsive to their sensibilities. The authors provide an unsentimental look at the contexts baby boomer parents left for their progeny-turned-colleagues and suggest new structures and reward systems, as well as a challenge to be adaptive in responding to growing discontinuities in the workplace and in career development trajectories. A bonus is that the conversations also serve as an accessible and cohesive history of organizations as the arena for human development, meaning, and transcendence. Rather than succumbing to the ponderous form of most organizational literature reviews, the authors provide a historical perspective in narrative form by examining recent trends in careers with "growing tip" companies such as Apple, Boeing, Microsoft, and US and international design schools. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Hess, Edward D. Learn or die: using science to build a leading-edge learning organization. Click here to enter text. Columbia Business School, 2014. 267p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231170246 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required With its apt and dramatic title, this book addresses the challenges of learning as technology, globalization, and other factors drive the velocity of change at an ever-accelerating rate. Hess ☐ Recommended (Univ. of Virginia Darden School of Business) does the great service of examining the processes of both organizational and individual learning, including how those processes overlap and interact. By focusing on structures and culture in the organizational milieu—while comparing and contrasting this milieu with individual cognitive and emotional behavior, largely in lay terms—the author conducts a dialogue with readers that is refreshingly unobscured by jargon and cant. Hess presents strategies to encourage the 25 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 creation of high-performance learning organizations and sprinkles his discussion with practical case studies throughout. Through the author's methodology, the text presents both theory and practice in a no-nonsense, practical discussion about how to create an actionable blueprint for becoming a leading-edge learning organization. Innovation without learning causes organizations to become stale—and perhaps even die—in this age of ongoing and accelerating change. How refreshing it is to have a serious discussion of these important issues. Bravo! Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Kellerman, Barbara. Hard times: leadership in America. Stanford, 2014. 387p index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780804792356 cloth, $27.95; ISBN 9780804793018 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required In this book, leadership scholar Kellerman (Kennedy School, Harvard) argues that leadership in any American organization—whether in education, business, government, or the nonprofit ☐ Recommended world—is more challenging than ever because society has become more complex. The author argues that before leaders can even begin to be effective, they need to know and develop contextual expertise; that is, leaders need to understand the broad picture of the issues affecting society. Kellerman has selected 24 issues to discuss—economics, religion, law, technology, media, money, and culture, among others. For each topic, she provides historical background and, more important, an analysis of recent trends and how they impact leaders and their followers. For example, she examines how the ubiquity of law and the US's litigious culture complicate the situation and possibly restrain leaders if they do not understand the myriad laws that affect citizens at every level. In contrast, the culture of the Internet is essentially leaderless because followers are free to communicate and connect with one another without someone's being in charge. Thorough understanding of contemporary issues, argues the author, is what prepares an individual to be a leader in today's complicated world. This book, like Kellerman's others, is engaging, challenging, and well researched. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: The Definitive book of branding, ed. by Kartikeya Kompella. SAGE Publications, 2014. 408p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9788132117735 pbk, $59.95 ☐ Required Kompella, founder of Purposeful Brands, provides an excellent overview on emerging trends in branding by compiling a collection of essays from experts in the field. Introductory ☐ Recommended chapters speak to the fundamental role of marketing and branding to include how brands have become primary social identifiers in a postmodern society. Subsequent chapters provide information on community marketing and authenticity of branding. Final chapters speak to the notion of dual-creation of brand meaning. The book looks at both the marketing and the organizational aspects of branding, all of which provide a holistic approach to the subject. While each chapter explores a different topic, all authors provide succinct information and approach their materials with a clear knowledge of their subject. This is not a textbook but instead a monograph and reference providing information that encourages readers to take action; consequently, readers will be able to directly implement many of the suggestions provided by the contributors. Managers and brand executives in particular will find the book useful, but faculty looking for a book with a wide range of modern marketing and branding topics from an overview and practitioner’s standpoint would also greatly benefit. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: McAdams, David. Game-changer: game theory and the art of transforming strategic Click here to enter text. situations. W. W. Norton, 2014. 303p index ISBN 9780393349894 pbk, $16.95 ☐ Required It is a conundrum: many people struggle to understand game theory while claiming to comprehend the meaning of prisoner’s dilemma. They do not appear to understand how the ☐ Recommended prisoner’s dilemma is the best known and most original game theory application. In their course work, most undergraduates get only a sprinkling of game theory; as a result, they do not grasp its power to improve decision making. McAdams (Duke Univ. Fuqua School of Business) provides readers with a rich understanding of game theory. Like other game theory books in the marketplace, this one begins with definitions of several key terms (e.g., 26 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 commitment, dominant strategy, payoff matrix). However, this work differs by also describing five distinct applications that individuals might not at first recognize as being applicable to game theory. The author dedicates a chapter to each: regulation, collusion, retaliation, trust, and leverage. In addition, McAdams includes five chapters of mini case studies that enliven the narrative with colorful characters and examples from the worlds of business, medicine, finance, military history, crime, and sports. The author provides a service by clarifying a complex economics topic for general readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Paulsen, Roland. Empty labor: idleness and workplace resistance. Cambridge, 2014. 217p bibl Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9781107066410 cloth, $95.00 ☐ Required Refreshingly bold in perspective and nuanced in exposition, this book by Paulsen (Lund Univ., Sweden) carves out a new place among the sociological greats. Summarizing the various ☐ Recommended schools of thought (e.g., Weber and Marx), the author brings in a relevant, modern energy by tapping into examples of workplace idleness and forms of organizational misbehavior cataloged in popular culture. Paulsen also makes a powerful case for the ubiquity of slacker behaviors and meaning making, chipping away at the armor of the intensification and globalization meta-narratives that have driven workplace research. More than stealing paper clips or stationery from the office, misbehavior is dynamic in its covert and overt manifestations, be they unwittingly or consciously political. The author has performed scholarly liposuction on the body of work that is organizational sociology, stripping away the bloated arguments about and for the value of work. What remains is a compact, comprehensive reflection on work, workers, and taboo subjects. The conversations cover the spectrum from empirical to existential in a judicious yet irreverent voice that will be especially appreciated by upper-division undergraduates and faculty. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Pollak, Lindsey. Becoming the boss: new rules for the next generation of leaders. Harper Click here to enter text. Business, 2014. 301p bibl ISBN 9780062323316 pbk, $16.99 ☐ Required The Millennials—those born from 1982 to 2000 and also known as Generation Y—are coming, and they will change the workplace. This is the argument Pollak, a corporate ☐ Recommended consultant and recognized expert on Millennial generation career and workplace issues, raises. Drawing on original research, her own experience, and interviews with Gen Y managers and entrepreneurs around the world, Pollak has written a book about Millennials for Millennials. For older readers, the book's first three chapters provide valuable insights into how Millennials operate differently in the workplace; the remaining five chapters provide Gen Y readers advice and tips on improving leadership skills and honing a management style. For example, there is a helpful quiz for discerning a person’s time management style. These later chapters are also valuable to older readers trying to understand how best to manage younger workers. The writing is crisp, but the style at times appears to be a series of blog posts strung together. The book is reminiscent of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (CH, Dec'13, 51-2183), although Pollack focuses on youth in general, not just on women as Sandberg does. Summing Up: Highly recommended, All readership levels Faculty Member: Westerman, George. Leading digital: turning technology into business transformation, by Click here to enter text. George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, and Andrew McAfee. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. 292p index afp ISBN 9781625272478 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required This book creates a road map for companies that want to aspire to digital mastery through examples from leading companies, illustrative data-driven models, and periodic self- ☐ Recommended assessments. Based on a study of more than 400 global firms, including Asian Paints, Burberry, Caesars Entertainment, and Nike, the book positions itself as a manual for business owners and managers who are trying to create lasting digital initiatives—and it succeeds. The authors have created a well-written, well-researched, and clearly structured book. The primary model linking digital masters, fashionistas, conservatives, and beginners (laid out early in the book) could be regarded with the same esteem as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or 27 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Kurt Lewin’s model of change. All the data, interviews, and models presented map out a comprehensive blueprint for understanding and implementing digital solutions for a wide variety of disciplines. The book also scales well for organizations and projects of all sizes. The information is accessible to small business owners who need to improve their processes, large businesses looking for competitive advantage, academics who need to study transformational leadership, and anyone else who would like to implement successful digital initiatives at their organization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Winston, Andrew S. The big pivot: radically practical strategies for a hotter, scarcer, and more Click here to enter text. open world. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. 344p index afp ISBN 9781422167816 cloth, $28.00 ☐ Required Winston, a recognized green business strategist and founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, challenges managers to view climate change as a critical opportunity to radically shift ☐ Recommended how they build resilient businesses. To survive in an environmentally changed world with weather disasters and resource scarcities, managers must shift to low/no-carbon, climate- resilient practices and green business strategies as well as disclose how their firms promote change and innovation. Winston offers insightful examples to demonstrate how radical business transformation can come from decisive, long-term leadership rather than short-term crisis management. He outlines ten practical strategies for change that bring significant returns on business stability and profitability. These strategies fall into three clusters: reenvisioning core operating principles, reassessing corporate culture values and incentives, and developing collaborative relationships with government agencies, competitors, and customers. After having made these radical adjustments, managers can then build resilient and regenerative businesses. Winston’s passion and sincerity clearly move his engaging discussion beyond mere consultant hype. In this book, he provides a realistic way to address these mega issues along with tested strategies on how to manage these challenges effectively and profitably. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

28 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Child Study Faculty Member: Ayers, Rick. Teaching the taboo: courage and imagination in the classroom, by Rick Ayers and Click here to enter text. William Ayers. 2nd ed. Teachers College Press, 2014. 144p bibl ISBN 9780807755280 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9780807772867 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required In the spirit of Dewey, Freire, Foucault, and Gramsci, R. Ayers (Berkeley High School) and W. Ayres (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) contend that schools in the US not only limit but also ☐ Recommended discourage, stifle, and suppress curiosity, creativity, imagination, and healthy skepticism among students and teachers. Throughout the book, the authors present examples of stagnation, oppression, humiliation, and top-down policies in teaching and learning that are antithetical to empowerment, enlightenment, and respectful treatment of students (e.g., the Arkansas mandate requiring that each report card include the child's Body Mass Index). The ideas in the nine chapters are provocative in the positive sense; for example, a sixth-grade teacher suggests there are two sides of the current school debate—people who teach and those who talk about teaching. The authors repeatedly mention that schools with narrow, quantifiable outcomes (test scores) invite heartlessness, mindlessness, ignorance, suffocation, and entrapment. Such statements provide excellent opportunities for upper- division education students and all practicing stakeholders, such as school board members, legislators, parents, teachers, administrators, and nonprofit organizations, to discuss the nature of schooling in the US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Baker, David P. The schooled society: the educational transformation of global culture. Click here to enter text. Stanford, 2014. 342p bibl index afp ISBN 9780804787369 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780804790475 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780804790482 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required More often than not, books that focus on the history of public schooling emphasize the role of school as a catalyst to entry into the "real world." This view assumes that schooling ☐ Recommended prepares individuals for life after school through the vetting of students based upon various criteria and the resulting credentialing that are part of formal schooling. Using the lens of neo-institutionalism, Baker (Pennsylvania State Univ.) extends this view by providing data to suggest that the reach of schooling is far more than preparation for life and career. Rather, ways of developing and delivering curriculum, ideas about intelligence, and the increasing reach of schooling though compulsory attendance and credentialing affect society. To explicate this reciprocal interaction between schools and society, Baker structured the book into two sections with an introduction. The introduction provides context for the central claim of the book. The first section examines the prevailing forces that led to the increased scope of formal education. The second section considers the consequences of this increased scope. Suggested companion books, both by David Labaree, are Someone Has to Fail (CH, Jul'11, 48-6429) and How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning (CH, Feb'98, 35-3448). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: The Musical experience: rethinking music teaching and learning, ed. by Janet R. Barrett and Click here to enter text. Peter R. Webster. Oxford, 2014. 343p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199363032 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780199363049 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required The demands for change that permeate education as a field have caused many in musical education to reexamine long-used theories and practices that may no longer accomplish their ☐ Recommended goals. Contributors to this book explore the calls for change and offer a variety of alternative practices for teachers serving in classrooms. The book is organized in six sections that examine how philosophy, listening, cultural dimensions, creativity, evolving roles, and teacher education affect the “musical experience.” These well-written, informative contributions focus on ways that music teachers can better engage students in the primary forms of musical engagement—composing, improvising, listening, and performing. The contributors suggest that concentrating on these four forms, rather than emphasizing performing at the 29 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 expense of the other three, would transform music education into an occasion that more closely approximates the ways students listen to and engage with music. The editors have compiled a volume that offers both theoretical justifications for shaping students’ musical experience and practical methods for implementing this change by including a variety of authors, including leaders in the field as well as relative newcomers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Beach, Richard. Understanding and creating digital texts: an activity-based approach, by Click here to enter text. Richard Beach et al. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442228733 pbk, $45.00; ISBN 9781442228740 ebook, $44.99 ☐ Required This book promotes authentic reading and writing opportunities through use of digital tools— e.g., blogs, wikis, websites, annotations, Twitter, mapping, and forum discussions—that can ☐ Recommended be easily adapted for any secondary and college classroom activity. The text provides excellent links among the theoretical reasons underpinning technology’s use in the classroom, research-based supports of technology’s coursework relevance, and the practical implications for adopting technology—mainly online applications and programs—into individual lessons and throughout units. New educators or those leery of entering the digital education maelstrom will find helpful suggestions and models to aid them through the transition. Educators who consider themselves digital natives will find refreshing new perspectives and perhaps even new digital tools to enrich their teaching. However, some readers may have difficulty wading through the dense narrative and the numerous hyperlinks embedded in the explication. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty, professionals, and practitioners Faculty Member: Brock, Cynthia H.. Engaging students in disciplinary literacy, K-6: reading, writing, and Click here to enter text. teaching tools for the classroom, by Cynthia H. Brock et al. Teachers College Press, 2014. 144p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755273 pbk, $27.95 ☐ Required The authors present the why, what, and how of "disciplinary literacy." Disciplinary literacy involves applying writing and reading skills to science, mathematics, and social studies. The ☐ Recommended authors describe how three teachers experimented with disciplinary literacy instruction— including the strengths of the teachers' work, the challenges they faced, the instructional practices they found useful, and the instructional practices they plan to modify in the future. Their teaching practices include applying real-life situations to lessons, such as a study of a school budget, and they stress the need for real-world writing within the disciplines. Part 3 describes ways that teachers can design discipline literacy instruction for their own classrooms while ensuring they have addressed the common core state standards. Teachers are advised to reflect on their own teaching and refine their practices in order to be more effective. The authors argue that it is necessary for practitioners to be aware of cultural and linguistic differences among students and scaffold instruction to help students use available resources. This book contains practical steps and suggestions for implementation. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Cohen, Jeffrey W. Confronting school bullying: kids, culture, and the making of a social Click here to enter text. problem, by Jeffrey W. Cohen and Robert A. Brooks. L. Rienner, 2014. 253p bibl index afp ISBN 9781626371521 cloth, $58.50 ☐ Required Driven by their inquisitive nature to examine the complexities of bullying behaviors, Cohen (Univ. of Washington) and Brooks (Worcester State Univ.) encapsulate their three-year long ☐ Recommended research project in this timely publication. Through the application of the social constructivist perspective, the authors present their findings in eight distinct chapters that guide the audience on a journey to understanding school bullying. Beginning with "Bullying and the Shifting Construction of a Social Problem" to the concluding "Finding Comfort in Complexity," each chapter presents a unique viewpoint that challenges the traditional mind-set on such a socially significant issue. This book should be a permanent part of the libraries of scholars, practitioners, and parents who are seeking an extensive review of bullying and techniques to effectively address factors associated with school bullying. Summing Up: Highly 30 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Conn, Carmel. Autism and the social world of childhood: a sociocultural perspective on theory Click here to enter text. and practice. Routledge, 2014. 186p bibl index ISBN 9780415838337 cloth, $155.00; ISBN 9780415838344 pbk, $51.95 ☐ Required This book provides excellent discussions of the complexities of the sociological underpinnings of autism and how children with this condition develop and grow compared to more ☐ Recommended "typically developing children." Conn in several instances posits that some authorities in the field contend that autism is not necessarily a "disability" but rather a separate "culture" unto itself, much like the generally accepted cultures of the deaf or the blind. The challenge for many adults and educators is in developing an understanding and a willingness to accept those cultural differences in the population of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Of particular interest is the chapter dedicated to researching autism in natural contexts. Emphasizing that there is no one best way to discover how children with autism learn and socialize with others, Conn offers a number of proven techniques to investigate how these children can be understood and provided with meaningful educational and social experiences in and out of school. The final chapter on reflective teaching principles provides several excellent frameworks for effective management of learning experience for this population. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Cozolino, Louis. Attachment-based teaching: creating a tribal classroom. W. W. Norton, 2014. Click here to enter text. 276p bibl index ISBN 9780393709049 pbk, $27.50; ISBN 9780393709643 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Cozolino (psychology, Pepperdine Univ.) calls on teachers to look beyond their students' test scores and, by paying attention to students’ psychological and social needs, mold their ☐ Recommended students into teams, what he calls "tribes" committed to helping all team members learn. He calls on teachers to foster citizenship, where the needs of the group outweigh the wants of the individual, producing a classroom valuing "mutual respect, cooperation, and caring." Cozolino explains that the goal is to develop "a group of individuals tied together by time, familiarity, affection, and common purpose." Focusing on neuropsychology and the social needs of human beings, the author divides the book into four parts: "The Social Brain," Turning Brains Off to Learning," "Turning Brains On to Learning," and "Tapping into Primitive Social Instincts." He also offers a series of exercises that teachers can use to build a classroom of committed learners. Cozzolino finds that "by relying on science," educators "have repeatedly underestimated the inherent wisdom in culture and human experience, which has been shaped over millions of years." Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Craver, Kathleen. Developing quantitative literacy skills in history and the social sciences: a Click here to enter text. Web-based common core standards approach. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 191p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475810509 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475810516 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781475810523 ebook, $28.99 ☐ Required Craver (head librarian, National Cathedral School) uses a Web–based approach to transform the national common core standards requirement for quantitative literacy in the humanities ☐ Recommended into a powerful instrument for teachers. She provides history and social science educators with resource sites for lesson plans, educational activities, and opportunities to use the search software that accompanies these sites. Many teachers and their students avoid using numbers as evidence in history and the social sciences due to their own math anxiety. Craver addresses the fear of numbers in the first two chapters of this book, and provides basic instructions for how to use, interpret, display, and visualize quantitative sources. The remaining chapters contain a variety of quantitative websites that include relevant topics for high school students such as piracy or natural disasters, plus site-related critical thinking questions. Educators may want to recommend this book to their secondary students as a potential term paper resource book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership 31 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 levels Faculty Member: Dikel, William. The Teacher's guide to student mental health. W. W. Norton, 2014. 310p index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780393708646 cloth, $32.00 ☐ Required The Teacher’s Guide to Student Mental Health is a practitioner-friendly resource that serves as a comprehensive road map for understanding school mental health and the ☐ Recommended implementation of evidence-based practices across classroom settings. A leading expert in his field, Dikel (child and adolescent psychiatrist) embeds years of clinical and field experiences into three distinct sections ("Why School Mental Health?" "The Scope of Mental Health Disorders Affecting Children and Adolescents," and "A School’s Mental Health Framework") and strategically guides readers through the complexities of such timely topics. The wealth of knowledge captured in each section exemplifies the significance of school-based mental health service and support. This guide should be a permanent reference in the public and personal libraries of practitioners and parents who seek an extensive review of evidence–based techniques to effectively address factors associated with school mental health. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Egan, Kieran. Whole school projects: engaging imaginations through interdiscplinary inquiry, Click here to enter text. by Kieran Egan with Bob Dunton and Gillian Judson. Teachers College Press, 2014. 184p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755846 cloth, $78.00; ISBN 9780807755839 pbk, $36.95 ☐ Required With an eye toward developing 21st-century learning skills, this book proposes Whole School Projects (WSP) as a means of getting learners to collaborate, communicate, and think ☐ Recommended critically and creatively. A WSP—an in-depth, supplemental curriculum centered around a specific topic and spanning a three-year time period—provides a means for students to build emotional and imaginative engagement around a large-scale, interdisciplinary undertaking and engage in experiential activities that otherwise might not be available to them. Suggestions for WSP include natural world topics such as studying a local river or gorge, cultural themes focused on castles or historical battlefields, and local neighborhood topics including community mapping or school gardens. The authors provide specific examples of schools that have implemented this pedagogy, so they are able to relate the benefits and challenges that accompany WSP implementation. The beauty of this educational approach is that it turns educators away from traditional subject-divided, age- separated curriculum, encouraging teachers to get students of different ages working together on a common issue that combines disciplines. With this approach, students see how different subjects in school overlap and are given an opportunity to mentor. This inspiring and practical strategy is worth a try. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Sociocultural issues in physical education: case studies for teachers, ed. by Sara Barnard Flory, Click here to enter text. Amy Tischler, and Stephen Sanders. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 163p bibl afp ISBN 9781475808285 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475808292 pbk, $26.95; ISBN 9781475808308 ebook, $25.99 ☐ Required This well-written, well-edited book appears very appropriately at a time when there is so much national attention on schools' roles in promoting healthful lifestyle choices. The editors ☐ Recommended have gathered an outstanding collection of case studies, discussions, and leading questions that get at both the value of physical education and the problems associated with the way physical education is often taught. The book deals in a down-to-earth way with issues of competitiveness, peer pressure, community expectations, gender traps, the rigidity of curricula, and the lack of options for students to develop long-lasting, positive attitudes about fitness. The editors wisely organize the book so that each chapter focuses on a specific topic and is written by a recognized expert on the issue. The case studies could be used in upper- level undergraduate or graduate teacher preparation classes, by practitioners, or by anyone—including parents and community members—concerned about physical education programs on a local school or school district level. The book would also make an excellent resource for any teacher preparation program focused on developmentally and 32 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 socioculturally sensitive education—and not just for the area of physical education. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fossey, Richard. Student dress codes and the First Amendment: legal challenges an policy Click here to enter text. issues, by Richard Fossey and Todd A. DeMitchell. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 114p index afp ISBN 9781475802030 cloth, $50.00; ISBN 9781475802047 pbk, $25.95; ISBN 9781475802054 ebook, $24.99 ☐ Required Fossey (Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette) and DeMitchell (Univ. of New Hampshire) effectively and conclusively enlighten professors, school administrators, educational scholars, ☐ Recommended researchers, and graduate students of school administration on the challenges, complexity, and controversy regarding student expression and their choice of clothing. The authors have created a resource guide book that carefully examines the problems that confront school administrators who are responsible for honoring the constitutional rights of students regarding dress while simultaneously ensuring a safe, orderly, positive, and constructive learning environment for all students. The legal authority for managing these challenges is discussed in extensive detail, as well as the implications for dress code policy and implementation. The balance among students’ First Amendment rights, school administrator responsibilities, and all students’ rights to learn are carefully discussed. This is a must read for anyone desiring detailed knowledge of matters pertaining to student dress, school law, First Amendment rights, and the rights of all students to learn in an orderly environment. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fullan, Michael. Big-city school reforms: lessons from New York, Toronto, and London, by Click here to enter text. Michael Fullan and Alan Boyle. Teachers College Press/Ontario Principals' Council, 2014. 178p index afp ISBN 9780807755198 cloth, $66.00; ISBN 9780807755181 pbk, $27.95 ☐ Required In an era when school-reform efforts seem never ending, many of these attempts are thwarted by a lack of understanding of the process that undergirds change. Fullan provides a ☐ Recommended masterly overview of the school-reform efforts of three of the largest urban school districts: New York, Toronto, and London. Using case studies that explain each city’s experience with school reform, the book is organized into five chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the challenges of urban education, emphasizing demographic challenges, attitudes regarding equity issues, and strategies used for improvement. This is followed by three chapters, each devoted to the experiences in each city with reform efforts. A final chapter analyzes the experiences, emphasizing those strategies that were effective. Emphasis is given to the background against which each district’s leaders chose certain paths and how the context of each city affected those choices. Eloquently written, compelling, topical, and full of fascinating details about each city’s reform efforts, the work is a marvelous complement to Daniel L. Duke’s The Challenges of School District Leadership (2010) or Fullan’s own Leading in a Culture of Change (2007) and is appropriate for any audience. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels Faculty Member: Gilbert, Jen. Sexuality in school: the limits of education. Minnesota, 2014. 120p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780816686377 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780816686391 pbk, $20.00 ☐ Required Gilbert (York Univ., Canada) reportedly struggled with this intriguing, provocative, and forward-thinking book for many years before pulling it together from her doctoral ☐ Recommended dissertation. Her deep examination of queer studies is based on her personal experiences, which are fraught with day-to-day decisions based on how, as a lesbian, she might be perceived by her students, peers, and others. She argues most powerfully about the need to move beyond teaching tolerance, away from subsuming sexual identity under the broad umbrella of anti-bullying programs, and taking sexuality education out of its isolated corner as part of the health education program or the counselor’s office. Sexuality, she argues, is a “human right,” deserving of a broad-based airing of all of its complexities. Anyone seeking recommendations for how to implement such an approach in the curriculum will not find it here; however, the book can well serve those who are in a position to bring about changes that can lead to affirmation and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer 33 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 youth. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Goldstein, Dana. The teacher wars: a history of America's most embattled profession. Click here to enter text. Doubleday, 2014. 349p bibl index ISBN 9780385536950 cloth, $26.95 ☐ Required Goldstein, a Spencer Foundation fellow in educational journalism, has composed a sweeping history of the politics and controversies surrounding American public school teaching. The ☐ Recommended author claims that, for nearly 200 years, public schools tried to solve various social problems, yet teachers endured constant criticism. Dividing the time period among 12 chapters, Goldstein covers the difficulties characteristic of each era. The first four chapters detail the common school movement, the feminization of teaching, and the plight of African American teachers after the Civil War. In subsequent chapters, the author traces the contemporary concerns of the growth of teacher unions, the War on Poverty, the rise of community control and Black Power, and teacher accountability. The final chapter and the epilogue explain the need for teacher empowerment. Accordingly, Goldstein concludes that sustainable reforms could come from teachers themselves, provided the public foregoes fears of bad teachers and allows educators to build on their expertise. Interested readers might also consult Daniel H. Perlstein's Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (2004) or William J. Reese and John L. Rury's Rethinking the History of American Education (2008). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Hansen, Dee. The music and literacy connection, by Dee Hansen, Elaine Bernstorf, and Gayle Click here to enter text. M. Stuber. 2nd ed. National Association for Music Education (NAfME)/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 290p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475805987 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9781475805994 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9781475806007 ebook, $39.99 ☐ Required Pressure to improve student literacy skills has grown in this era of common core state standards (CCSS) and the Race to the Top initiative. Many administrators and specials ☐ Recommended teachers have sought to tie subjects such as music to literacy as a means of obtaining greater student achievement in this area. The Music and Literacy Connection provides a framework that will permit music education specialists, administrators, reading specialists, and general education teachers to teach musical activities in a way that allows students to transfer certain skills to reading. The book, which also contains an introduction and appendices, is organized into four parts that treat children as interactive learners, explore the connection between literacy and music instruction, discuss ways to teach literacy through multiple processes, and examine the lifelong benefits of musical training. The book includes detailed explanations of some of the fundamentals of music and literacy instruction and a variety of charts, tables, figures, and other visuals that make the work accessible to all. Especially useful are a variety of subsections directed at practitioners, including recommendations for using instructional strategies with cooperative groups, children of different ages, and connections with the CCSS. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Kahlenberg, Richard D. A smarter charter: finding what works for charter schools and public Click here to enter text. education, by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter. Teachers College Press, 2014. 229p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755808 cloth, $72.00; ISBN 9780807755792 pbk, $30.95 ☐ Required Kahlenberg and Potter (both, The Century Foundation) present their perspectives on the evolution of charter schools in the US from the original idea espoused by Albert Shanker, one- ☐ Recommended time leader of both the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, to the present. The authors discuss how the original charters were supposed to have a fully integrated student body in terms of race and include students with diverse cultural, social, and economic backgrounds. The exact opposite happened: the majority of present-day charters have student bodies that are racially and economically segregated and tend to have fewer credentialed teachers; in addition, teacher union members are for the most part nonexistent. This said, the authors provide some excellent examples of current charter schools in which teachers and administrators think outside the box and display creativity in curriculum development and instructional delivery, and in which students are 34 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 both motivated and excited about learning. Given the current trend toward educational reform, school vouchers, and privatization of the American educational system, this book is an excellent source of inspiration and a must read for anyone contemplating charter schools as an alternative to the typical public school. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Indian subjects: hemispheric perspectives on the history of indigenous education, ed. by Click here to enter text. Brenda J. Child and Brian Klopotek. School for Advanced Research (SAR), 2014. 330p bibl index afp ISBN 9781938645167 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required These contributions examine lesser-known aspects of indigenous education in North and South America and contrast these aspects to the current emphasis on historical trauma borne ☐ Recommended by some indigenous people today that is attributed to their forebears' damaging boarding school experiences. Coeditor Child notes the “wide-ranging continuum of Indian experiences,” where some indigenous students enjoyed attending boarding school and others hated it; most indigenous children only attended day schools. However, even when students enjoyed their school experiences, their families only had, at most, limited say about the type of instruction their children received, whether in a boarding or day school. Even when there were attempts to adapt education to the unique needs of indigenous peoples, too often it was a matter of an “indigenous program that was created for indigenous people but not by them.” As one contributor notes, “The editors of this volume asked us to imagine alternatives where indigenous peoples create their own educational goals.” Editors Child and Klopotek and their contributors are to be commended for this collection of nuanced glimpses of the diverse educational experiences of America’s indigenous peoples. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Lewis-McCoy, R. L'Heureux. Inequality in the promised land: race, resources, and suburban Click here to enter text. schooling. Stanford, 2014. 212p index afp ISBN 9780804790703 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9780804792134 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9780804792455 ebook, $24.95 ☐ Required America’s suburbs are no longer the bastions of homogeneity they were during the era of “white flight” from the cities. Increasingly, racially and economically diverse suburban school ☐ Recommended districts have to face what were once thought of as strictly urban challenges regarding perceptions, power, and access to resources. In this well-researched and well-written book, Lewis-McCoy (sociology and black Studies, City College of New York) does a good job of combining an academic framework with interviews with dozens of parents, students, and educators in one such suburban school district. The findings and analysis complement the work of others who have shown that misapprehensions, distrust, and naiveté serve as roadblocks to creating genuine, interrelated communities, and equitable social systems. If there is a downside to the book, it is that it feels incomplete. While it ends on a note of hope, it does not sufficiently examine models for turning things around. Nevertheless, the questions and supporting evidence that Lewis-McCoy develops would make excellent starting points for further research into evidence-based solutions. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Magee Lowery, Alyssa. The heart and mind in teaching: pedagogical styles through the ages, Click here to enter text. by Alyssa Magee Lowery and William Hayes. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 153p index afp ISBN 9781475805437 cloth, $55.00; ISBN 978147580544-4 pbk, $28.00; ISBN 978147580545-1 ebook, $27.99 ☐ Required Lowery and Hayes claim their aim is to identify various individuals and movements that influenced the evolution of teaching. They divide the book into 16 chapters. The first eight ☐ Recommended chapters move from the Sophists in Ancient Greece to the last half of the 20th century in 83 pages. The second section covers the present in five chapters that discuss the effects of the federal legislation No Child Left Behind and the impact of educational choice on teaching. The last section has chapters on the influence of technology and the impact of educational research as well as a chapter devoted to concluding thoughts. Pointing out that their book asks whether teaching is an art or a science, the authors describe how 35 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 achievement tests constrain teaching. Nonetheless, they contend that good teachers can rise above those limits if educational resources are equal in schools. Other descriptions of teachers’ work include The American Public School Teacher (CH, Jan'12, 49-2805), edited by Darrel Drury and Justin Baer, and America’s Teachers: An Introduction to Education, by Joseph W. Newman (5th ed., 2006). Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower- division undergraduate students Faculty Member: Making space for active learning: the art and practice of teaching, ed. by Anne C. Martin and Click here to enter text. Ellen Schwartz. Teachers College Press, 2014. 196p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755396 pbk, $33.95 ☐ Required Classrooms are in many ways created spaces—space for community, space for learning, space for exploration. Martin and Schwartz (both former public school teachers) have assembled ☐ Recommended essays concentrating on the classrooms teachers strive to create. The book examines the collaborative inquiry process developed at the Prospect School and Center in Vermont. The 17 essays are divided into five parts: these explore children’s needs for meaningful space, ways of considering teachers’ practices, assessing and documenting learning, understanding children’s perspectives, and sustaining the struggle for reform. All the essays are well written, and together they provide a marvelous overview of progressive thought regarding the best ways to enhance and ensure children’s learning in a safe environment that values their imaginations and creativity. The book provides many first-person examples of a reflective and collaborative group of teachers joining forces to tackle common problems. Containing many examples of effective practice and reflections on what is effective instruction, the book will be an outstanding tool for both the classroom veteran and the prospective educator. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, professionals, general readers Faculty Member: Martinez, Monica. Deeper learning: how eight innovative public schools are transforming Click here to enter text. education in the twenty-first century, by Monica Martinez and Dennis McGrath. New Press, 2014. 209p index ISBN 9781595589590 cloth, $26.95 ☐ Required Call them high-impact educational practices or attempts at "deeper learning"; nearly everyone who has taught understands that more-active forms of learning often yield good ☐ Recommended outcomes. These ideas are well known in the education establishment and have been supported by numerous empirical studies. The roots of these ideas can be found in the Oswego Plan (based upon the methods of Johann Pestalozzi) as well as the writings of the American education reformer John Dewey, who promoted experiential education and various hands-on learning activities. Deeper Learning, by Martinez (President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics) and McGrath (sociology, Community College of Philadelphia), provides additional examples of how these forms of learning and teaching are desirable, particularly in American K–12 schools. The authors provide rich descriptions of deeper learning in eight public schools, and educators could conceivably pick up a tip or two to apply in their own schools. However, little attention is paid to the many, often powerful dynamics preventing the application of these practices in the nation's schools. In the 2014 context, a description of those factors as well as examples of how educators overcame them seems so much more important than yet another endorsement of their use. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and professionals Faculty Member: Mason, Kevin O. Preparing for the classroom: what teachers really think about teacher Click here to enter text. education. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 209p bibl afp ISBN 9781475800418 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475800425 pbk, $33.95 ☐ Required Mason (science education, Univ. of Wisconsin, Stout) offers a unique approach to learning about those who provide instruction in today’s classrooms in America. He examines current ☐ Recommended practices in pre-service teacher education through the lens of practicing teachers. The author surveyed and interviewed teachers about their views on pre-service education. The use of two research methodologies allows for the triangulation of data. The survey methodology allows for a greater sample size so that the results, in this case the views of teachers, can be 36 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 better generalized. The interviews provide a qualitative lens to explore the views of a smaller sample of in-service teachers in more depth. The sample was randomly selected from a list of middle and high school teachers in the state of Wisconsin. One thousand teachers were sent the survey and 191 responded (a response rate of 19.1 percent), which resulted in a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 7.1 percent for the survey results. The author reveals the core beliefs, values, and interests of the teachers interviewed, such as realistic preparation, field experience, classroom management, content preparation, group psychology professionalism, respect, and concern for unprepared student teachers. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Matthews, Michael R. Science teaching: the contribution of history and philosophy of science. Click here to enter text. 20th anniversary rev. and expanded ed. Routledge, 2015. 454p indexes ISBN 9780415519335 cloth, $160.00; ISBN 9780415519342 pbk, $68.95 ☐ Required Matthews (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) states that research in the history and philosophy of science and science teaching contributes to the resolution of theoretical ☐ Recommended questions science teachers face on the nature of science, science curricula, and pedagogy. Noting the long-standing challenge in teaching science—namely, knowing the history and philosophy of the subjects—Matthews reviews the European Enlightenment traditions in science education, historical and current developments in science curricula, and the history and philosophy of science utilized in the classroom. The author illustrates these foundational studies by discussing the study and teaching of an assortment of science topics, including air pressure, pendulum motion, and photosynthesis. Concluding that constructivism has been the major theoretical influence in contemporary science and mathematics education and that science teaching is affected by world views such as realism, atomism, the spirit world, and traditional non-Western metaphysics, Matthews argues that for science teachers to be well-prepared educators, they need subject matter competence, foundational training, and knowledge of the history and philosophy of science. Fully updated and expanded, this 20th anniversary edition includes four new chapters. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Meyers, Susan V. Del otro lado: literacy and migration across the U.S.- Mexico border. Click here to enter text. Southern Illinois, 2014. 195p bibl index afp ISBN 9780809333424 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9780809333431 ebook, $40.00 ☐ Required Meyers (Seattle Univ.) simultaneously provides insightful critical analysis and a fascinating story about the intersections of literacy, education, and migration in the rural Mexican ☐ Recommended community of Villachauto. Meyers describes the educational experiences of this community as based on a "literacy contract" that “does not always deliver on its promise.” As such, immigrant families come to value literacy in ways that are different from those of Mexican and US educational systems. To this end, her research provides valuable insight—particularly for educators—on the challenges facing students in rural Mexico as well as migrant students in US schools. Meyers’s descriptions of students’ and families’ experiences are rich and vibrant, and her analyses are grounded firmly in literacy theory as well as a detailed history of Villachauto and the Mexican and American education systems. Current and prospective educators working with migrant youth will undoubtedly find Meyers’s research enlightening. Qualitative researchers will also be engaged by this book, as it is a model of extraordinarily rich ethnographic research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Nunn, Lisa M. Defining student success: the role of school and culture. Rutgers, 2014. 175p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9780813563626 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780813563619 pbk, $25.95 ☐ Required This book provides readers with a valuable framework for understanding the enculturation of academic values in different types of secondary schools. In the first type of institution, the ☐ Recommended mantra of the school is that effort and dedication lead to success. First-generation college students are enrolled and then prepared to meet the competencies promoted by the state 37 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 for graduation and college preparation. Although the school achieves good college attendance rates, students tend to enroll in non-selective post-secondary institutions. A second school is one typically found in close-in suburban communities. Students vary from first generation to those coming from middle-class homes. Advanced courses are available to students in their areas of strength, recognizing that people are good at some subjects and weak in others. The third institution attracts academically ambitious students. The motivational underpinning of the school is that being smart is important and also involves taking initiative and pushing oneself to mastery and creativity. The students and faculty aspire to elite colleges and universities and are devoted to meeting these goals. The volume’s rich descriptions and structured comparisons allow for thoughtful deliberation of what would be an optimal school message and mission for adolescents with different backgrounds, academic abilities, and aspirations. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections Faculty Member: Diving in: Bill Ayers and the art of teaching into the contradiction, ed. by Isabel Nuñez, Crystal Click here to enter text. T. Laura, and Rick Ayers. Teachers College Press, 2014. 216p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755778 pbk, $31.95 ☐ Required In this compilation of 26 essays, educational researchers, philosophers, and leaders (including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Sonia Nieto, and philosopher-teacher Joel Westheimer) contribute a ☐ Recommended variety of perspectives on "the art of teaching into the contradiction." Most authors in the volume identify a hegemonic status quo as the central contradiction they face, maintained through static socioeconomic structures desperately in need of revolutionary change. In many ways, Ayers's life itself is contradictory; he moved from American political dissent and terrorism, acting as a leader in the anti-war Weather Underground in the 1960s, to leadership in American higher education, philosophy, and politics, a more peaceful reactionary level. As this book demonstrates, Ayers has since succeeded in impacting mainstream American educational philosophers. Though some essays in the compilation seem overly adulatory, several writers identify powerful and positive changes Ayers and company have implemented to defy the mainstream groupthink. Indeed, dissenting voices are necessary in a country still espousing democratic dialogue. Look for references to Martin Luther King Jr., Paulo Freire, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Mao Zedong as well as current events references to race, culture, place, and space inequities indicating that work still needs to be done in the quest for equity and justice. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: U.S. Latinos and education policy: research-based directions for change, ed. by Pedro R. Click here to enter text. Portes, Spencer Salas, Patricia Baquedano-López, & Paula J. Mellom. Routledge, 2014. 230p bibl index afp ISBN 9780415747820 cloth, $145.00; ISBN 9780415747837 pbk, $44.95 ☐ Required This edited book offers a near comprehensive view on the challenges Latino students face throughout various levels of the US education system. A series of well-articulated ☐ Recommended contributions communicates a seamless experience for readers. Critical issues (e.g., societal identity, public policy, pedagogical practices, individual learning needs) carry readers through three interdependent sections. The first presents readers with analyses of sociological paradigms and identity construction that affect Latinos within the context of the US school system and ultimately society. Concerns with inequality are presented with a sense of urgency, thus effectively communicating the gravity of presented issues. The second section builds on this foundation by examining educational policies and the poor longitudinal outcomes for Latinos (e.g., school failure and the increased likelihood of incarceration) along with recommendations to facilitate positive change. The third section offers readers programming practices and pedagogy to meet the diverse needs of Latino students (e.g., English-language learners and mixed-status families). The contributors examine critical issues Latino students face and offer readers many implementable recommendations. This book is highly recommended for current and future educators as well as any associated professionals throughout all levels of education. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections 38 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Everyday youth literacies: critical perspectives for new times, ed. by Kathy Sanford, Theresa Click here to enter text. Rogers, and Maureen Kendrick. Springer, 2014. 199p bibl index afp ISBN 9789814451024 cloth, $129.00; ISBN 9789814451031 ebook, $99.00 ☐ Required This collection offers research on literacies most prevalent in an adolescent’s life— nontraditional forms such as video gaming, social and digital media, street-based urban ☐ Recommended literacy forms, and film. The volume not only looks at the value of incorporating such literacies into student development but also explores the positive impact these literacies have had in a variety of world youth cultures (Canada, England, Africa, the US). (In the latter regard they take into consideration how outcomes varied based on socioeconomic demands and the availability of current technologies and equipment within schools and regions.) Researcher contributors share thoughts on their successes and challenges; aspects of implementation that went well; and how strategies can be restructured to accommodate technological, regional, and student learning needs. Most important, contributors reveal the significant development in literacy among the students involved. Contributors encourage literacy educators to move away from a literacy curriculum focused on traditional textbook instruction to one that readily adapts to and utilizes a multitude of nontraditional literacy forms students are regularly exposed to and have available in their everyday lives. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Shute, Jonathan W. Fixing truancy now: inviting students back to class, by Jonathan W. Shute Click here to enter text. and Bruce S. Cooper. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 167p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475810059 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475810066 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781475810073 ebook, $28.99 ☐ Required Across the US, various institutional and societal barriers affect student success. Among the barriers are poverty, violence, and a lack of institutional resources. When it comes to ☐ Recommended absenteeism and truancy, many school organizations continue to offer only negative consequences to struggling students. In this book, Shute (Fordham Univ.) and Cooper (Brigham Young Univ.–Hawaii) examine the issue of truancy as it pertains to the changing student population—particularly ethnic minority students and English language learners— and educational challenges unique to our times. After providing a thorough review of truancy, data analyses, and a discussion of truancy's long-lasting effects, the authors guide readers through a thoughtful examination of past and current recommended practices. Recommended practices include making genuine efforts to foster collaboration between home and school and providing professional development to help educators become culturally competent. Although the text does not address every issue related to truancy, the discussion is focused and serves as an effective impetus to facilitate professional reflection. The book will be very useful for both current and future educators, as well as professionals in ancillary fields. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Torres, Carlos Alberto. First Freire: early writings in social justice education. Teachers College Click here to enter text. Press, 2014. 177p ISBN 9780807755341 cloth, $92.00; ISBN 9780807755341 pbk, $43.95; ISBN 9780807772898 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required This excellent book focuses on the early writings and thoughts of Brazilian educator/philosopher Paolo Freire (1921–1997), a giant in the areas of education and political ☐ Recommended thought. Cultural power and political power are as relevant to education today as they were when Freire wrote his classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Eng. tr., 1970). Freire's writings still have an impact on educational, societal, and cultural political studies and analysis. As founding director of the Paolo Freire Institute at UCLA, Torres is uniquely qualified to write on this topic. His depth of understanding of Freire’s ideas is enriched by his deep personal relationship with Freire over many years. Every chapter of this book offers insights, but the last chapter bears particular mention because it looks at Freire in the current global setting. The book will be a wonderful resource in a wide variety of disciplines, including international and cross-cultural education, curriculum theory, sociology, philosophy, and 39 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 history of education. The bibliography is excellent. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals

40 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Computer Information Systems/Mathematics Faculty Member: Bilu, Yuri F. The problem of Catalan, by Yuri F. Bilu, Yann Bugeaud, and Maurice Mignotte. Click here to enter text. Springer, 2014. 245p bib index afp ISBN 9783319100937 cloth, $109.00 ☐ Required Though not as famous as Fermat's conjecture (settled by A. Wiles around 1994), Catalan's conjecture also describes all the solutions to an elegant exponential diophantine ☐ Recommended equation. To wit, Catalan guessed (in 1842) and P. Mihailescu proved (in 2001) that 8 and 9 constitute the only pair of consecutive perfect powers. This undergraduate-level book contains (more than) a complete (almost) self-contained proof. Count the hedge "almost" as innocuous: appendix A contains unproved statements of standard but advanced algebraic number theory (up to class field theory); several books systematically provide the details. R. Schoof's Catalan's Conjecture (CH, Oct'09, 47-0924) also exposits the proof, but this volume offers several advantages. Schoof freely uses graduate-level material; here one learns from scratch considerable amounts concerning the basics of cyclotomic fields. Finally, the "more than." French academics Bilu (Univ. of Bordeaux and CNRS) and Bugeaud and Mignotte (both, Univ. of Strasbourg and CNRS) contrast the decisive attack with an independent and important earlier approach, due to R. Tijdeman (1976). Tijdeman succeeded merely in bounding the perfect powers that might occur, thus reducing the problem to a finite but infeasible search. It is instructive to see how the coup de grace begins afresh rather than develops further methods considered so spectacular in their own day! Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Bodine, Erin N. Mathematics for the life sciences, by Erin N. Bodine, Suzanne Lenhart, and Click here to enter text. Louis J. Gross. Princeton, 2014. 608p index afp ISBN 9780691150727 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required The challenge of a mathematics textbook designed for the life sciences is one of consistently providing legitimate applications using the conceptual procedures being presented. This ☐ Recommended book succeeds admirably. Bodine (Rhodes College) and Lenhart and Gross (both, Univ. of Tennessee) introduce five major branches of mathematics, including statistics, matrix algebra, probability, and differential and integral calculus. Generally, each section opens with a mathematical overview followed by examples from the life sciences. Often these applications are cross-referenced to actual research results. The same format is echoed in the homework sets, with selected answers provided in the back of the book. The book includes MATLAB exercises along with an appendix introducing the use of this software. The content is challenging, but serious readers should be able to profit from this book outside a classroom setting. Applications range over such diverse considerations as population dynamics, genetics, drug absorption, epidemics, population carrying capacity, and ecological change and succession. Both life science students and college instructors should find the content intriguing and impressive, especially in light of the consistent use of nontraditional but highly pertinent applications. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and faculty. Faculty Member: Mathematicians on creativity, ed. by Peter Borwein, Peter Liljedahl, and Helen Zhai. Click here to enter text. Mathematical Association of America, 2014. 199p bibl index ISBN 9780883855744 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required This interesting work is an alphabetic compilation of quotes excerpted from the writings of numerous mathematicians on mathematical creativity (going back many centuries) plus the ☐ Recommended responses of many contemporary mathematicians to seven questions regarding the creative process. The genesis of this project was a survey done by Jacques Hadamard around 70 years ago. Borwein and Liljedahl (both, Simon Fraser Univ., Canada) and Zhai (bachelor's degree, Simon Fraser) asked five questions (or combinations of questions) from the original survey and two additional ones. Only the most prominent mathematicians were asked to participate. Many are winners of Fields Medals, Wolf Prizes, and other prestigious awards. While not all those surveyed responded to the questions asked, the responses were all relevant. This book is another treasure from the MAA "Spectrum" series and is sure to be 41 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 a source of inspiration to student and teacher alike. Those who want to go to the source of motivation for this book might read Jacques Hadamard's The Mathematician's Mind: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (1996). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Casas-Alvero, Eduardo. Analytic projective geometry. European Mathematical Society, 2014. Click here to enter text. 620p bibl index afp ISBN 9783037191385 cloth, $78.00 ☐ Required Projective geometry has always been an important branch of geometry, although it has gone in and out of fashion throughout its history of almost 300 years. The introduction of ☐ Recommended coordinates opened analyses that have been exploited in computer vision and graphics in recent years. Felix Klein spread the word in the Erlangen program that projective geometry could be used to house models of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries by making a choice of conic envelope. The associated families of points together with the cross ratio leads to a metric geometry that gives the models. This book presents these developments in a clear, thorough appendix. The main part of the book treats the idea of a projective structure and how that organizes objects that are not simply lines in affine space. Casas-Alvero (Univ. of Barcelona, Spain) gives a careful exposition of the projective theory of quadrics, rich with detail, rigor, and motivation. He has crafted an accessible and thorough introduction to this beautiful subject. The book should be on the shelf of any serious undergraduate library. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Cooksey, Ray W. Illustrating statistical procedures: finding meaning in quantitative data. 2nd Click here to enter text. ed. Tilde Publishing, 2014. 604p bibl index ISBN 9780734611727 pbk, $69.95 ☐ Required More thorough and comprehensive than its predecessor (1st ed., 2007), this book provides a clear, "painless" approach to many statistical procedures from the most basic to the more ☐ Recommended complex. Cooksey (Univ. of New England, Australia) emphasizes a conceptual rather than a computational understanding of the material, and he demystifies some difficult concepts. This unique approach eliminates often confusing and unclear language and focuses on the meaning of statistical procedures, what researchers hope to accomplish through them, and their benefits and drawbacks. Numerous examples from a broad range of disciplines, such as business, education, criminology, public policy, and health, are used. However, there is a purposeful lack of formulas and problems to make the narrative more readable. In many chapters, Cooksey discusses the advantages and disadvantages of many familiar statistical procedures, but he includes less-well-known procedures as well; this makes the work useful for both novices and more- experienced researchers. The book also contains very detailed, informative comparisons of several software packages, e.g., Statgraphics, SPSS, Systat, EViews, SAS, and Mplus. Appendixes provide a review of basic mathematics, statistical notation, and simple formulas and include helpful suggestions on how to write statistical analyses using cross tabulations, correlation, principal component analysis, etc. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and professional library collections in statistics Faculty Member: Dasgupta, Abhijit. Set theory: with an introduction to real point sets. Birkhauser, 2013. 444p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9781461488538 cloth, $59.99 ☐ Required This book is an excellent introduction to set theory. Dasgupta (Univ. of Detroit Mercy) promotes reader/student interaction by integrating problems throughout the text instead of ☐ Recommended just providing occasional exercise sets. Readers should have paper and pencil handy to work problems as they encounter them. The textual material begins with the necessary background in sets, relations, and functions. The first part of the book, chapters 2 through 4, covers the construction of the natural and real numbers using the Dedekind-Peano axioms. Part 2 is the core of the text. Cardinals, order, and ordinals are the main topics, spread over eight chapters. This section includes discussions of the axiom of choice and Zorn's lemma. Part 3, chapters 13 through 19, focuses on real point sets; highlights include the Baire category theorem and Brouwer's theorem. In the final section, chapters 20 through 22, Dasgupta discusses various paradoxes and the Zermelo-Frankel system as well as some 42 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 more modern results. The book contains more than 630 frequently challenging exercises that will interest both upper-division students and readers with strong mathematical backgrounds. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Isaacson, Walter. The innovators. Simon & Schuster, 2014. 542p index ISBN 9781476708690 Click here to enter text. cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Isaacson (CEO, Aspen Institute) follows his Jobs biography, Steve Jobs (CH, Apr'12, 49- 4500), with an exceptional history of the innovations that drove the digital ☐ Recommended revolution. Besides revealing the technologies involved, he integrates succinct profiles of important individuals and corporations, emphasizing the management styles deployed that either encouraged innovation or foiled success. The collaboration between Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in the 1840s launched the digital revolution. Babbage’s Analytical Engine and Lovelace’s accompanying commentary and algorithms were inspirational for later generations. The author discusses the transformation of the 19th-century world of human calculators into today’s digital world of the web, and explains that ubiquitous computers, smart appliances, and virtual social spaces required many significant innovations. Switching circuits, transistors, microchips, microprocessors, the mouse, and memory storage were prerequisite; the conceptual shift away from single-use computers, e.g., the ENIAC for hydrogen bomb calculations, to multipurpose programmable computers was critical. The journey of innovation continued with the birth of time-sharing and ARPANET, which evolved into the Internet; the successful launch of personal computers by Gates and Jobs; e-mail, Usenet groups, and bulletin boards creating community; and operating systems like Linux becoming open and free. Isaacson concludes his engaging history with recent innovations that are building the web. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Jarvis, Frazer. Algebraic number theory. Springer, 2014. 292p bibl index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9783319075440 pbk, $49.99; ISBN 9783319075457 ebook, $39.99 ☐ Required Undergraduate mathematics students need both to develop facility with numerical and symbolic calculation and comfort with abstraction. Algebraic number theory offers an ideal ☐ Recommended context for encountering the synthesis of these goals. One could compile a shelf of graduate- level expositions of algebraic number theory, and another shelf of undergraduate general number theory texts that culminate with a first exposure to it. Four features makes this the rare undergraduate-level introduction: a leisurely pace; the presence of all foundational material (both algebraic and number-theoretical) necessary for a self-contained treatment; the inclusion of, not just mere examples, but detailed case studies (which graduate texts would either reduce to exercises or omit entirely, deferring to complete treatments in even more advanced monographs); and an ample supply of worked exercises. Of the case studies, imaginary quadratic fields get the most attention, with additional sections on real quadratic, biquadratic, cubic, and cyclotomic fields. Final chapters introduce analytic methods and applications to integer factorization. Students will need Galois theory for graduate-level sequels, as Jarvis (Univ. of Sheffield, UK) sidesteps it by concentrating on low-degree fields, much as M. Trifković does in Algebraic Theory of Quadratic Numbers (CH, May'14, 51- 5073). As they work different examples, these competing books complement one another. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates Faculty Member: Katz, Victor J.. Taming the unknown: history of algebra from antiquity to the early twentieth Click here to enter text. century, by Victor J. Katz and Karen Hunger Parshall. Princeton, 2014. 485p bibl index ISBN 9780691149059 cloth, $49.50 ☐ Required Taming the Unknown is a comprehensive history of algebraic thought from ancient to early modern times, beginning with Egyptian and Mesopotamian problems arising from commerce ☐ Recommended and geometry and concluding with the publication of B. van der Waerden’s two-volume Moderne Algebra in 1930–1931. Katz (emer., Univ. of the District of Columbia) and Parshall (Univ. of Virginia) describe the parallel developments in the art of solving equations in ancient and medieval cultures (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic) and detail the gradual shift from tight connections with geometric techniques and justifications to 43 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 more algorithmic methods and the emphasis on the equations themselves as centerpiece. The westward migration of these ideas to Europe during the Renaissance and afterward and the (slow) emergence of concise symbolic notation enabled the evolution of more refined and general techniques for solving polynomial equations, as well as new perspectives afforded through analytic geometry. As mathematical scholars began to determine which classes of polynomial equations could be solved (and with what stipulations on the solutions), they were ultimately led to the 19th- and early-20th-century focus on the formal structures of modern abstract algebra. This meticulously constructed and detailed mathematical story is technically accessible and very readable and should interest a broad audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Alfred Tarski: early work in Poland—geometry and teaching, ed. by Andrew McFarland, Click here to enter text. Joanna McFarland, and James T. Smith. Birkhauser, 2014. 499p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9781493914739 cloth, $149.00; ISBN 9781493914746 ebook, $119.00 ☐ Required One of the four greatest logicians of all time, Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) is well known for the mystifying Banach-Tarski paradox, which deals with the equidecomposability of two- and ☐ Recommended three-dimensional objects. This work sheds new light on mathematicians' understanding of Tarski and his work. As a scholarly contribution, it provides translations of many of Tarski’s publications, especially those dealing with geometry and teaching. The text also provides a context—scientific, philosophical, and cultural—for these publications, offering great insight into Tarski’s work as a logician, a geometer, and a teacher. Readers will learn much about Tarski as well, such as how he did original research in logic while surviving financially as a high school teacher in Poland at the start of WW II. The text also shares his original collection of mathematical problems designed to challenge students and teachers alike and sections of his coauthored high school geometry textbook, both a direct contrast to his research contributions to set theory, algebraic logic, model theory, and universal algebra. Throughout the text, the editors serve as guides who provide relevant fascinating historical details, biographical asides for many logicians and mathematicians, and thorough documentation, commentary, and references as necessary. This work is a gem. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: O'Regan, Gerard. Introduction to software quality. Springer, 2014. 354p bibl index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9783319061054 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required This book is true to its title: a comprehensive introduction to software quality aimed primarily at undergraduate students. In a relatively short number of pages, O'Regan (SQC Consulting, ☐ Recommended Ireland), author of Giants of Computing (CH, Mar'14, 51-3887), touches on a variety of topics that make up a multifaceted and lively view of an admittedly large body of knowledge. He even covers formal methods, a more advanced topic left to the end of the book but one essential to grasping the true extent of the field. Rather than providing a unifying approach, the author assembled the most relevant topics into chapters, leaving their systematization to readers. Every chapter ends with review questions, but there are no exercises, which is a limitation to textbook adoption. Undergraduate students may benefit from some guidance in approaching this book; graduate students and practitioners, on the other hand, will profit from the material immediately. Although the references section is thin, the breadth and the appropriateness of the topics covered make this book a welcome addition both to a university library bookshelf and to personal libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students of all levels, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners Faculty Member: 50 visions of mathematics, ed. by Sam Parc. Oxford, 2014. 198p bibl ISBN 9780198701811 Click here to enter text. cloth, $44.95 ☐ Required The Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications (United Kingdom) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014. Visions of Mathematics is its celebratory publication. But it is no flimsy ☐ Recommended pamphlet. This book is a collection of 50 four-page essays by mathematicians worldwide. The chapters are diverse: e.g., infinite series ("Proof by Pizza"); drag on soccer 44 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 balls ("Dimples, Grooves, and Knuckleballs"); epidemic modeling ("Pigs Didn’t Fly but Swine Flu"); forensic science ("How Does Mathematics Help at a Murder Scene?"); the Kalman filter ("Finding Apollo"); Kaprekar’s operation ("The Mysterious Number 6174"); and meteorological modeling ("Leapfrogging into the Future"). The captivating essays are successfully written for a general audience, and the topics selected show the pervasiveness of mathematics in our lives. Other valuable features of the book include 50 photographs of our mathematics-filled world; tidbits on Pythagoras’s theorem, from serious to whimsical; and a clever and humble foreword not to be missed by would-be mathematics scholars. This is no boring recreational mathematics book. It is exactly as intended by the Institute: a gleaming celebration of mathematics, c.2014—and it is a smashing success. Bookstores must stock it; libraries must keep it on their shelves; and people must buy it for their own personal collections. Summing Up: Essential. All mathematics collections Faculty Member: Rodman, Leiba. Topics in quaternion linear algebra. Princeton, 2014. 363p bibl index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780691161853 cloth, $79.50 ☐ Required Quaternions have proven useful in a number of academic disciplines, including physics (quantum mechanics), engineering (control systems), and computer science (graphics). As a ☐ Recommended result, the research papers utilizing quaternions appear in a wide spectrum of journals. Rodman (College of William & Mary) fills a void in the monographic literature with this work, part of the "Princeton Series in Applied Mathematics." Although most of the included material has never appeared in a book before, it is accessible to those with a background in linear algebra and some knowledge of complex analysis. The first part of the book covers the fundamentals of quaternions in matrix analysis, including canonical forms and invariant subspaces. The second part is essentially a research monograph on quaternions with an emphasis on matrix pencils with symmetries. There are plenty of exercises and open questions in the text that will encourage research even at the undergraduate level. As the first book in the field, it also serves as an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in doing linear algebra and matrix analysis over the skew field of quaternions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Salter, Anastasia. Flash: building the interactive web, by Anastasia Salter and John Murray. Click here to enter text. MIT, 2014. 180p bibl index ISBN 9780262028028 cloth, $24.95 ☐ Required Flash belongs to the "Platform Studies" series, which started with Racing the Beam, by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost (CH, Aug'09, 46-6853). Books in the series examine the systems ☐ Recommended underlying computing. Salter (Information Arts and Technologies, Univ. of Baltimore) and Murray (PhD student, Expressive Intelligence Studio, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) chronicle Flash as it evolved from a simple content creation tool to becoming a platform and its own form of media prior to its purported demise in 2011. The authors explore how Flash democratized interactive media production and unshackled its distribution for ubiquitous web, mobile, and game interactivity. The narrative is accessible to nontechnical audiences, but those with computer backgrounds will especially enjoy the finer technical details that trace Flash’s ongoing legacy to modern technologies and beyond. Game researchers will also appreciate the impact and influence of Flash on video games and playable media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students and researchers/faculty in game design hardware and software development programs Faculty Member: Stewart, Ian. Professor Stewart's casebook of mathematical mysteries. Basic Books, 2014. Click here to enter text. 307p ISBN 9780465054978 pbk, $16.99; ISBN 9780465056880 ebook, $16.99 ☐ Required As always, prolific writer Stewart (emer., Univ. of Warwick, UK) provides a lively collection of mathematical investigations, puzzles, and anecdotes that intrigue and entertain. His ☐ Recommended presentation is clearly accessible to readers of popular mathematics, requiring only a solid high school background. That is not to say that the vignettes are trivial. Many of the settings are mathematically rich and require true insight; others simply call for a bit of patience and puzzle-solving strategies. The phrase “mathematical mysteries” in the title manifests itself 45 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 through the dialogues between Hemlock Soames and Dr. John Watsup (yes, indeed, a marvelous spin-off of Holmes and Watson!). Their conversations are good fun and lead to various mathematical mysteries, with the tone of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lurking in the background. Scattered throughout are snippets that introduce a broad spectrum of interesting considerations, such as John Napier’s dishonest servants, flight patterns of geese, and the estimation of heights of trees by looking through one's legs! Add a few jokes, a few serious applications, and plenty of references for further online exploration, and the result is another fine book from Stewart. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries

46 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Criminal Justice Faculty Member: Burns, Robert P. Kafka's law: The trial and American criminal justice. Chicago, 2014. 186p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780226167473 cloth, $29.00 ☐ Required Burns (Northwestern Univ. School of Law) here continues his meditation on trials and trial courts. He argues that courts are hampered in their ability to do justice by certain “features, ☐ Recommended tendencies and latent dangers of the modern legal world” that can best be understood when viewed through the lens of Franz Kafka’s 100-year-old novel The Trial. Just as Kafka’s protagonist is caught up in, and eventually crushed by, a nightmarish procedure that appears complex, arbitrary, and unknowable, so modern criminal defendants find themselves overwhelmed when they are entangled in procedures that they can barely understand. And yet the complexities that seem so dysfunctional seem also, by some weird logic, necessary. Burns argues that the “hydraulics of the system” are influenced by ambition, politics, and mass culture; levels of formality and bureaucratization are circumvented by levels of informality (notably plea bargaining), and reliance on science and evidence is tempered by resorts to instinct and psychology. He suggests that “spaces of freedom” are needed where juries and similar institutions can cut through the complexity. Students will find Kafka’s Law an accessible introduction to the insights of this important thinker. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Constable, Marianne. Our word is our bond: how legal speech acts. Stanford, 2014. 217p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780804774932 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780804774949 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780804791687 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required Beginning with the fumbled oath during President Obama’s first inauguration and ending with Benjamin Cardozo’s opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (1928), selections from the ☐ Recommended California Penal Code, and a brilliant bibliography, this book shows various ways that words matter in law. Constable (rhetoric, Univ. of California, Berkeley) is an active contributor to scholarship in the tradition of “law and society” or, really, law in society. In this, her third book, she looks at familiar territory, extracting highlights and drawing attention to important scholarship. For instance, the discussion of Palsgraf is fresh in its insights as it crosses familiar territory. Readers should not ignore the rhetorical quality of Cardozo’s opinion, she says, because that would relegate law to “statements of rules.” The four substantive chapters are organized into mini-chapter-length sections that investigate J. L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, some Germans, and the Greeks. The commentary is penetrating and illuminating as it draws on what is known and what is unknown about how words matter in law. This is, as Constable says, a challenge to positivism that shows, again and again, how much words matter in law. As with her earlier books, passion and scholarship engage to provoke thought without being argumentative. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through researchers Faculty Member: Freyer, Tony Allan. The passenger cases and the commerce clause: immigrants, blacks, and Click here to enter text. states' rights in antebellum America. University Press of Kansas, 2014. 204p bibl index afp ISBN 9780700620081 cloth, $39.95; ISBN 9780700620098 pbk, $19.95; ISBN 9780700620524 ebook, $19.95 ☐ Required Freyer (emer., law and history, Univ. of Alabama) has contributed to a notable series of studies of landmark law cases by situating, describing, and tracing the consequences of the ☐ Recommended Passenger Cases of 1849. In that five-to-four decision, featuring eight separate opinions, the US Supreme Court invalidated New York and Massachusetts taxes on ships transporting immigrants. Freyer situates the decision among a host of earlier laws, including the national Passenger Acts, which sought to mandate appropriate space for immigrant transport, and the leading cases on commerce powers. He further demonstrates how discussions of whether to distinguish between the transport of persons and property were tied to possible federal control over interstate transportation of slaves, to personal liberty laws, and to state police powers. Freyer traces the impact of the Passenger Cases on the Compromise of 1850 and the 47 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Civil War but demonstrates that from 1875 forward, the national government has largely dominated the field of immigration (sometimes pursuing more restrictive policies than it did in the 19th century), despite occasional state attempts to share the responsibility. A chronology highlights leading laws and related cases. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper- division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections Faculty Member: Gaskew, Tony. Rethinking prison reentry: transforming humiliation into humility. Lexington Click here to enter text. Books, 2014. 191p bibl index afp ISBN 9780739183120 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780739183137 ebook, $79.99 ☐ Required "Black bodies, white justice" is just one proposition calling for rethinking raised in this provocative book. Prior to his academic career, Gaskew (criminal justice, Univ. of Pittsburgh, ☐ Recommended Bradford) was a detective with the Melbourne (Florida) Police Department, where he became a member of Florida's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Since 2007, he has taught prisoners at McKean Federal Correctional Institution. From this experience the author has evolved a passionate, highly personal critique drawn from his life experiences. The author's argument might be summarized as follows: whites are numerically the greatest criminal offenders, whereas blacks disproportionately offend and are incarcerated. Black crime causation initially stems from slavery, then from Jim Crow policies, and most recently from racism, thanks to white privilege. Persistent white supremacy keeps prisons full of black bodies. But Gaskew, who is African American, has plenty of sharp words for his own race. Many black convicts are narcissistic and show scant regard for their communities and children left behind. Black cultural privilege is a pedagogical resource that, once fully understood, can redirect lives. This is a timely, fact-filled stem-winder. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, professionals Faculty Member: The War on terror encyclopedia: from the rise of Al-Qaeda to 9/11 and beyond, ed. by Jan Click here to enter text. Goldman. ABC-CLIO, 2014. 492p bibl index afp ISBN 9781610695107 cloth, $100.00; ISBN 9781610695114 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required With more than 200 alphabetical, signed entries, the contributors to this volume focus "on the conflict between the United States and groups that seek to commit acts of terror against ☐ Recommended Americans and their allies." Readers have access to a wide variety of concise and information-packed articles on numerous aspects of terrorism; entries include terms (martyrdom, jihad, terrorism), events (assassinations, bomb plots, Arab Spring), people (McChrystal, Petraeus, Rudolph), places (Benghazi, Lockerbie, Beirut), groups (Sunni Islam, Hezbollah, Anglo-American Alliance), and issues (Arab-Israeli Conflict, coercive interrogation techniques, cultural imperialism). A time line from 1787 to 2014 covers events, actions, and decisions concerning terrorism and provides a quick overview of specific information covered in the encyclopedia. September 11, 2001, has its own detailed time line, from 12:45 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., to provide users with information about the sequence of events at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon attacks. A variety of tools (bibliography, index, and reading lists) make the volume easy to use and provide access to additional resources. Goldman (Georgetown Univ.) has more than 30 years of experience in the intelligence community along with numerous publications in the area; his knowledge and experience are evident in this comprehensive publication. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels; general readers Faculty Member: African Americans and criminal justice: an encyclopedia, by Delores D. Jones-Brown, Beverly Click here to enter text. D. Frazier, and Marvie Brooks. Greenwood, 2014. 631p bibl index afp ISBN 9780313357169 cloth, $100.00; ISBN 9780313357176 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Recent events in Ferguson, MO, cast new attention on the relationship between black Americans and the criminal justice system, making this volume particularly ☐ Recommended important. Coeditors Jones-Brown and Frazier (both, John Jay College of Criminal Justice) and coeditor Brooks (formerly, CUNY) are assisted by some 50 contributors who read like a who’s who of criminal justice scholars. More than 120 alphabetically arranged entries cogently illustrate how blacks came to make up 30 percent of arrests, nearly 50 percent of the prison population, yet only 12 to 13 percent of the total population. Entries include suggested 48 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 additional readings and references. This encyclopedia demonstrates how, beginning with enslavement, people of African descent have been systematically, legally oppressed at the local, state, and federal levels. Efforts to resist legalized oppression are documented from early American history to the present. This volume also features biographies of famous and infamous black crime suspects and victims from early American history to contemporary times. The text provides coverage of law and criminal justice practices from the precolonial period up to the present and a candid, inclusive assessment of how black Americans have come to be strongly identified with criminality. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Pliley, Jessica R. Policing sexuality: the Mann Act and the making of the FBI. Harvard, 2014. Click here to enter text. 293p afp ISBN 9780674368118 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required Drawing extensively on public documents, Pliley (women's history, Texas State Univ.) dissects the 1910 Mann Act and government operatives who sought to foster its ☐ Recommended implementation. Employing records from the Bureau of Investigation; its successor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Immigration Bureau, she explores longstanding efforts to police sexuality, particularly “white slavery.” Prostitutes and their pimps and patrons, progressive reformers, federal agents, and local law enforcement officials all comprise part of the story, which both quickly and ultimately involved sexism, racism, class biases, and genuine humanitarian concerns, albeit not always simultaneously. Changed generational emphases also come into play, both reflecting and refracting alterations in attitudes regarding sexuality, women’s purportedly proper roles, and US society in general. The book's sweep is considerable, reaching from before the Progressive Era through the Great Depression. Pliley emphasizes the “gender conservatism” of the FBI and director J. Edgar Hoover and how the agency expanded its operations to enforce the Mann Act. All the while, the FBI focused almost wholly on white victims, generally young women. This book delivers a carefully calibrated treatment of one important facet of the Bureau’s too-little- studied “day-to-day tasks of fighting crime.” Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries Faculty Member: Romano, Renee C. Racial reckoning: prosecuting America's civil rights murders. Harvard, Click here to enter text. 2014. 268p index afp ISBN 9780674050426 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Since 1990, varied agendas have intersected to push for reopening the more than 100 unsolved, racially motivated murders from the civil rights era. These efforts—on the parts of ☐ Recommended family members, local groups, journalists, prosecutors, and law professors—have led not only to convictions of murderers like Edgar Ray Killen and Byron De La Beckwith, but also to commemoration, dialog—through truth commissions such as the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation—and legislation, most notably the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. In a splendid cultural and intellectual history of this movement, Romano (history, Oberlin College) explores what it means. For some, the closure is about identifying who was legally responsible for murder. But for many, closure has meant distancing the present from the past, the culpable community from individual violent perpetrators, and the exceptional US from the racist south. By its very nature, prosecution opens doors for understanding but narrows the analysis to identifying legal, as opposed to societal, responsibility and allows interested elites to distance themselves from the ongoing residual of the Jim Crow past. Romano observes that legal justice, even when it leads to successful prosecution, does not equal social justice. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty/researchers; general readers Faculty Member: Sered, Susan Starr. Can't catch a break: gender, jail, drugs and the limits of personal Click here to enter text. responsibility, by Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk. California, 2014. 216p bibl index afp ISBN 9780520282780 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9780520282797 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9780520958708 ebook, $29.95 49 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required This is a moving ethnography about the struggles of 47 women who were forced into homelessness, unemployment, drug dependence, and frequent incarceration by the ☐ Recommended structural violence of poverty, racism, and gendered violence. Such women suffer physical and psychological illnesses caused by nightmarish abuses, but they continue to dream of living the middle-class lives they grew up aspiring to or even enjoyed in the past. Although the majority of the women in the study were white, the authors curiously suggest that the concept of "caste" is a more suitable description of the race-class-gender intersectionality of oppressions that combine to destroy the lives of impoverished women. Some privileged members of society avoid the needy under the assumption that poor people must have individually made bad decisions and should take individual responsibility to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The authors conclude by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. to suggest that the Violence against Women Act signed by President Bill Clinton has failed to adequately protect poor women from structural violence and that there is still a need for better legislation to "regulate the heartless" exploiters of abused women. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Simon, Jonathan. Mass incarceration on trial: a remarkable court decision and the future of Click here to enter text. prisons in America. New Press, 2014. 209p index ISBN 9781595587695 cloth, $26.95 ☐ Required Examining landmark decisions regarding prison conditions, Simon (Univ. of California, Berkeley, School of Law) has written an important book detailing the 2011 Brown v. Plata ☐ Recommended case, which declared prison conditions in some California prisons unconstitutional. Simon covers both history and contemporary issues related to prisons. The first several chapters provide a contextual history as well as a theoretical and doctrinal one. Simon details the inhumane conditions in prisons across the US for several generations. He weaves sociolegal literature and case law to show the series of torturous acts that constitute the history of prisons in the US. The middle chapters explain how prison overcrowding has become the norm; as such, issues such as medical treatment for prisoners have often been ignored. Simon is especially helpful in detailing how this has evolved into a human rights issue that can be compared to human rights violations across the world. The book closes with a commonsense approach to the constitutional issues surrounding prison populations and the prison industrial complex. Mass Incarceration on Trial is a progressive and valuable book, best suited for graduate students, law students, scholars, and those generally interested in issues related to criminal justice and law. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Turner, Michael A. Historical dictionary of United States intelligence. 2nd ed. Rowman & Click here to enter text. Littlefield, 2014. 383p bibl afp ISBN 9780810878891 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9780810878907 ebook, $94.99 ☐ Required Turner (political scientist and former Central Intelligence Agency analyst) explores the American intelligence world in this recent addition to the publisher's "Historical Dictionaries ☐ Recommended of Intelligence and Counterintelligence" series. While American agents have always engaged in intelligence gathering and counterintelligence work, the enterprise only became systematic following World War II. The volume offers a useful chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, appendixes listing past US intelligence agency leaders, and a detailed, classified bibliography. Everything is covered in this volume, from people (e.g., Gerald Ford, John Brennan) to places, operations, and events—the Vietnam War's Operation Phoenix, long-term intelligence operations, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and so forth. Some of the 600-plus entries are just a few sentences, but many are a page or longer, and most are cross-referenced to other entries. This volume belongs in library collections holding similar works, e.g., Nigel West's Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence (CH, Feb'07, 44-3056). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Zirin, James D. The mother court: tales of cases that mattered in America's greatest trial Click here to enter text. court. American Bar Association, 2014. 325p index afp ISBN 9781627223225 cloth, $29.95 50 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required Zirin is a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He argues that this "mother court” is “preeminent": characteristically fair and wise, as well as ☐ Recommended widely respected. A gifted storyteller, Zirin is most entertaining when he describes the colorful characters associated with the court, but he fails to prove his assertion. The mother court daily tries important legal tangles dealing with corporate governance, administrative regulations, and securities law, but Zirin does not profile this important routine work. Instead, his argument is based on anecdotal summaries of a few landmark cases, including the Hiss and Rosenberg spy trials, the obscenity trial for James Joyce’s Ulysses, and various organized crime and corruption cases. Zirin has personal knowledge of some cases, but some predate him and for all he relies mostly on previously available sources. He adds little that is new. Students will not find a description of how an important court routinely works, nor will they find detailed information about any of the landmark cases. However, the general reader interested in court history will find a lively evening’s entertainment. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduate students Faculty Member: Zoukis, Christopher. College for convicts: the case for higher education in American prisons. Click here to enter text. McFarland, 2014. 290p bibl index afp ISBN 9780786495337 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required Incarcerated author Zoukis gives excellent examples to demonstrate that the US would benefit from higher education for inmates in prisons. He describes how poorly the system ☐ Recommended prepares prisoners for life after prison, and how this leads to more crime and more prison overcrowding, costing society billions. The author cites statistics that show that prisoners with higher education have a much lower recidivism rate. Zoukis reviews how society has denied this education in prison, but lists many particular examples where it continues to work. The book ends with important appendixes on the FBI's position, on becoming pen pals with prisoners, funding, free books, and other information. A strongly suggested purchase. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries

51 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Economics Faculty Member: Brown, Ian. Burma's economy in the twentieth century. Cambridge, 2013. 229p bibl index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9781107015883 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9781107680050 pbk, $29.99 ☐ Required Burma, or Myanmar as its government prefers it to be called, once was the richest country in Southeast Asia. However, in the decades following the military takeover of the government ☐ Recommended in 1962, the country's economy steadily deteriorated within the isolationist state the regime imposed. The conventional wisdom is that the foolish policies and poor governance of the military regime reduced most of the population to the penury from which it is only now emerging. In this highly readable book, Brown (School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of London) disputes that view as too shallow. In seeking the origins of what went wrong in the course of the full 20th century, he traces much of the blame to colonial policy decisions (and nondecisions) under British rule prior to 1948. The author is a well-known economic historian of Thailand who has shifted his focus to Burma over the last two decades, and with this publication, he provides a highly readable and invaluable analytic synopsis of his conclusions. Richly footnoted, this scholarly work will become both a valuable resource and a source of much dispute. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: The Great Depression in Latin America, ed. by Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight. Duke, 2014. 362p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780822357384 cloth, $94.95 ☐ Required Drinot (Univ. College London) and Knight (Oxford Univ.) have assembled an excellent collection of essays by an accomplished group of Latin American, US, and UK ☐ Recommended scholars. Breaking new ground in its treatment of the Great Depression's impact on Latin America, in nine country-focused chapters, contributors examine issues illuminating the impact of the Depression on the six largest economies (Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico) as well as Chile, Cuba, and Central America. The contributors take a multidisciplinary approach, covering broad social, institutional, and political processes, including the mobilization of workers, the increased role of the state, and class conflicts. A concluding chapter provides an overview, and an introductory chapter locates the volume in contemporary scholarship and summarizes each chapter. This work revises some existing beliefs, for example noting that the slump did not cause the transition from export–oriented growth to ISI (import-substituting industrialization). The differences in country policies and politics—including movements toward or away from authoritarian governments—and the variation in the severity of the slump are ably demonstrated. In sum, the collection provides a wealth of detail and undermines the idea that there was a single set of responses to the Great Depression or a uniform impact across countries and regions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Eswaran, Mukesh. Why gender matters in economics. Princeton, 2014. 392p index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780691121734 cloth, $45.00 ☐ Required Examining economic reasoning and relative economic conditions affords insight into and awareness of a great many consequential beliefs, policies, and behaviors. As this scholarly ☐ Recommended book amply illustrates, gender has played—and continues to play—a significant role in many of these actions and outcomes. Eswaran (Univ. of British Columbia, Canada) outlines issues and policies with profound consequences, and he does so in the context of relevant scholarly research. Consequently, the book provides a practical understanding of how economic reasoning informs discussions around such topics as the balance of power in households, labor markets, wealth, credit markets, fertility and health care, marriage, suffrage, and empowerment. Exploring market and nonmarket settings as well as the developed and developing worlds, the author examines the implications and consequences of gender on the economic, social, and political lives of women and their children, families, and communities. This book is a comprehensive and discerning work that should provide readers with the context and understanding to more effectively comprehend the substantive 52 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 economic role of gender. It is recommended for a wide audience of interested readers ranging from undergraduates to graduate students and researchers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fridell, Gavin. Coffee. Polity, 2014. 180p bibl index ISBN 9780745670768 cloth, $49.95; ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780745670775 pbk, $19.95 ☐ Required At first, one might expect this book with its minimalist title to be a guide to the beverage for connoisseurs. Instead, this recent addition by Fridell (St. Mary's Univ., Canada) to the "Polity ☐ Recommended Resources Series" is a serious book—with several dimensions to it—about the world coffee economy. Unlike Mark Kurlansky’s books on codfish (Cod, CH, Dec'97, 35-2109) and salt (Salt, CH, Jul'02, 39-6398), each of which tells the story of a single commodity’s positive social impact, Fridell's book describes a commodity whose economy has contributed to backward labor practices and held back many of the countries that depend on its export. The book covers the history of the coffee industry, from its origins in Yemen to its more recent reshaping through various corporate and state forces. The author shows how coffee benefited from slavery and aggressive government policies, both of which kept labor costs low while helping those managing the post-production chain of the market reap substantial profits. Attention is also given to the heavy environmental toll of sustained coffee cultivation. Though one might expect that a book describing the negative background of coffee production in such detail would be arduous, Fridell’s work is well written and deserves a wide audience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Goodwin, Craufurd D. Walter Lippmann: public economist. Harvard, 2014. 414p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780674368132 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Anyone interested in the great economic and political events of the middle of the last century will have encountered Walter Lippmann. The prolific journalist and public intellectual wrote ☐ Recommended regular newspaper columns and numerous books wrestling with the challenges of economic depression, war, and reconstruction. In this volume, Goodwin (emer., Duke Univ.) provides a synthesis of the evolution of Lippmann’s views on economic issues, drawing largely on his published work and supplementing the history of this icon with material drawn from his correspondence and earlier biographies. As Goodwin documents, Lippmann corresponded with almost everyone who mattered, and he read widely and thought critically about economics, economic theory, and the policy challenges that confronted the US. After three short biographical chapters tracing Lippmann’s formative years, Goodwin describes Lippmann’s evolving thoughts about the causes of the Great Depression, Keynesian macroeconomics, monopoly, redistribution, and other topics. By the early 1940s, Lippmann’s concerns shifted, as Goodwin describes, to the war effort and the diplomatic challenges of the postwar world. Goodwin concludes this fascinating volume with a brief chapter summing up Lippmann’s importance in creating the role of the public intellectual in economic policy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Jerven, Morten. Economic growth and measurement reconsidered in Botswana, Kenya, Click here to enter text. Tanzania, and Zambia, 1965-1995. Oxford, 2014. 215p bibl index ISBN 9780199689910 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required This book, stemming from the author's substantially revised dissertation on economic history, finds the data used to make evaluations of economic growth in African countries wanting. In ☐ Recommended considerable detail, Jerven (London School of Economics) looks at how national accounts were developed in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. He shows how disaggregated (sectoral) data can provide more insight into economic growth in a country than aggregate GDP. Additional topics he addresses include the treatment of informal, unrecorded economic activity; the price data used to determine real growth rates over time; and the role of exogenous events. The book clearly shows how information that lacks reliability and/or validity can lead to questionable conclusions about economic growth in specific countries or regions in sub-Saharan Africa. Though data collection and statistics are not thought of as exciting and are rarely given high priority in poorer countries, problems with data and data 53 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 collection are serious impediments to the evaluation of a country's performance and policies. This book, which includes useful notes, bibliography, and index, is highly recommended for those interested in economic growth and development. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Jevons, Marshall. The mystery of the invisible hand: a Henry Spearman mystery. Princeton, Click here to enter text. 2014. 342p afp ISBN 9780691163130 cloth, $24.95 ☐ Required The fourth title in the collection by pseudonymous author Jevons, this book is hands down (all wordplay intentional) the best in this delightful murder mystery series. Owing to the ☐ Recommended 2011 death of William Breit, his coauthor on the first three books, University of Virginia economist Ken Elzinga has their protagonist, Henry Spearman (one should think Milton Friedman), solve yet another murder while dispensing economic instructional pearls—some Holmesque elementary and others quite sophisticated—along the way. With a healthy, entertaining dose of academic mores and foibles (are academics really that strange?) integrated throughout, the campus characters will bring smiles to the faces of current and former undergraduates. Paying implicit homage to his friend and former colleague, Elzinga sets the book in San Antonio, where Breit taught at Trinity University. A suicide or a murder? An art theft or a con? More thoughtful and reflective than the earlier volumes and with more convincing dialogue, this book passes muster as a novel. No footnotes, index, references, figures, or tables—just a good story told by a talented writer who also just happens to be a card-carrying practitioner of the dismal science. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Kleinbard, Edward D. We are better than this: how government should spend our money. Click here to enter text. Oxford, 2015. 509p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199332243 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This book focuses on Kleinbard’s value judgments concerning fiscal policy; specifically, it centers on his opinions about government taxation and spending policies. Kleinbard’s ☐ Recommended decidedly progressive bent is reflected in the book’s title—a reference to the implementation of conservative economic policies beginning with President Reagan’s tax cuts and continuing with the rise of the Tea Party in the last few years. Under these policies, which embrace limited governmental intervention in the economy, the distribution of income and wealth in this country has become much more unequal. Kleinbard (Univ. of Southern California) refutes neoliberal and libertarian arguments for limited government spending by citing the ways that the government could spend on nutrition, education, and health care programs. He argues that the benefits to society from such investments would far exceed the costs. To bolster his argument, Kleinbard compares US tax rates and public spending on health care and education to those of other industrialized countries. A second book on this same topic that has a similarly progressive orientation but is less technical is Garrison Keillor’s Homegrown Democrat (2004). Kleinbard's book should be required reading for all elected officials. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Lardy, Nicholas R. Markets over Mao: the rise of private business in China. Peterson Institute Click here to enter text. for International Economics, 2014. 185p bibl index ISBN 9780881326932 pbk, $21.95 ☐ Required A popular view in the West is that China achieved unprecedented economic growth in the past few decades through state capitalism. This viewpoint frustrated many academicians and ☐ Recommended politicians, who assumed free markets were no longer applicable to China. In this eye- opening book, Lardy (Peterson Institute), who has written extensively on China, argues that market capitalism was the driver of Chinese growth all along. The author painstakingly combs through statistical data and provides convincing evidence to support his arguments. He shows that China achieved phenomenal growth primarily because of market forces that allocated resources more efficiently; he finds little evidence to support the popular claim that the Hu-Wen leadership (2003–13) significantly increased the role of state-owned firms. Lardy further argues that future growth will be market-driven instead of state- driven. Private firms have displaced state-owned firms since economic reform started decades ago, and they will continue to do so. That alone was and will be the source of 54 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 economic growth in China, contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Chinese miracle was the victory of state capitalism. Not intended as a textbook, the book is accessible to readers at all levels, and it is valuable for anyone interested in China. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: What Adam Smith knew: moral lessons on capitalism from its greatest champions and fiercest Click here to enter text. opponents, ed. by James R. Otteson. Encounter Books, 2014. 279p bibl index afp ISBN 9781594037603 pbk, $16.99 ☐ Required This book is a superb collection of 22 articles focusing on the social and moral content of capitalism. Editor Otteson (political economy, Wake Forest Univ.), who wrote the book’s ☐ Recommended introduction, organized the articles into four categories dealing with the economic implications of liberty, equality, social order, and human motivation respectively. What sets this book apart from other commentaries on capitalism is the way the history of economic thought is woven into the book’s discussion. Five excerpts from Smith’s two classic works and individual excerpts from Locke, Spencer, Rousseau, and Hume provide valuable background in the philosophical and historical roots of the study of market systems. Articles by 20th-century analysts such as Schumpeter, Hayek, and Taylor, among others, build upon the ideas of those earlier thinkers. An article by Thaler and Sunstein outlines the notion of libertarian paternalism. Critical views are provided in excerpts from Marx and Mandeville, and arguments for socialism are considered in an article by Cohen. At a time when economics education too often overlooks the history of economic thought, this volume provides a corrective that should be read by any serious observer of capitalism in the present time. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Pinto, Brian. How does my country grow?: economic advice through story-telling. Oxford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 249p bibl index ISBN 9780198714675 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required In spite of its playful title and easy-on-readers subtitle, economist Pinto’s brief book is a sophisticated, engaging odyssey on economic growth and development. Laden with ☐ Recommended equations, figures, tables, “boxes,” annexes (appendixes), notes, and 20 pages of references and index, the book is an authoritative complement to more abstract, theoretical treatments of economic growth. Drawing on models of economic growth and development, his 30 years of professional work at the World Bank, and personal fieldwork observations and knowledge, the author delves into "country economics" to tell the stories and explain in detail the challenges and crises four countries—Poland, Kenya, India, and Russia—faced in their transition from developing nations to market economies in the period from 1990 to the Great Recession (2008–2009). Wrapped around the experiences in these four countries is pragmatic advice and lessons for academic researchers, institutions, practitioners, and policy makers whose purview and interests are in economic growth and development. For those audiences in particular, this is an engaging, well-written volume not to be missed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Powell, Benjamin. Out of poverty: sweatshops in the global economy. Cambridge, 2014. 181p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9781107029903 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781107688933 pbk, $29.99; ISBN 9781139898720 ebook, $24.00 ☐ Required Powell (Texas Tech Univ.) provides an economic explanation for the presence of sweatshops in the world. Drawing on historical experiences of developed economies during the early ☐ Recommended stages of their development, the author argues that sweatshops provide opportunities for economies and that they will gradually disappear as countries mature. Powell points out that misplaced sweatshop activism can do more harm than good because it may result in slowing down the economic development process. In addition, sweatshops provide poor people in developing countries with better outcomes than the alternative of criminal activity (e.g., child and adult prostitution). The author also takes a strong stance against slavery as he parallels it to labor exploitation. At the end of the book, he offers suggestions for what activists can do to help poor workers in developing countries. Well written and free of economic jargon, the book is accessible to a large audience. Powell does not rely on mathematical modeling or 55 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 quantitative methods but presents some basic economic principles to help elucidate his points. The book is required reading for anyone interested in the issue of development in general and sweatshops in particular. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Roberts, Russ. How Adam Smith can change your life: an unexpected guide to human nature Click here to enter text. and happiness. Portfolio/Penguin, 2014. 261p bibl index ISBN 9781591846840 cloth, $27.95 ☐ Required Author of three novels about economics (The Choice, The Invisible Heart, and The Price of Everything) and creator of a rap-like video on Keynes vs. Hayek, economist and writer Roberts ☐ Recommended (Stanford Univ.) has now entered the nonfiction world with this new contribution. His subject in this book is not Adam Smith the consensus founder of the discipline of economics as revealed in his famous 1776 volume The Wealth of Nations, but Smith’s earlier, “softer side" in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and what that author and volume have to tell people about how to be happy, how to be loved as well as lovely, how to be good, and how to live and prosper (in one’s heart rather than wallet) in the world. In this short, engaging book, readers learn from—and about—the 18th-century Scottish philosopher and, implicitly, about this 21st-century creative—and evolving—free-market economist as a person (now “Russ” Roberts instead of the “Russell” on his earlier publications). The references and index are mediocre, but those features are not so important. For lower-level students with multidisciplinary interests beyond economics and intelligent general readers. Roberts has done himself—and Adam Smith—proud. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Schryer, Frans J. They never come back: a story of undocumented workers from Mexico. ILR Click here to enter text. Press, 2014. 160p bibl afp ISBN 9780801453144 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9780801479618 ebook, $18.95 ☐ Required As the current national attention continues to focus on undocumented workers, this book will prove to be an accessible aid to general readers hoping to gain insight into the world of these ☐ Recommended workers. Schryer (emer., Univ. of Guelph, Canada) rightly points to the fact that though the economic integration of goods and capital has made tremendous progress in US-Mexico relations, people moving across the border have been the victims of a dysfunctional immigration policy. This dysfunction results in enormous human cost and consequences on both sides of the border; families and children experience great personal trauma, especially the undocumented who live in the shadow of fear. Through anecdotes from the lives of people of the Altos Balsas region of Mexico, Schryer illustrates the push and pull factors that have created the situation of the "undocumented worker" and the benefits to rural Mexican villages where migrant dollars help sustain local economies. A human account of the anguish and life journeys of undocumented workers, the book is written in an accessible manner, which will serve both readers and policy makers well as they try to peer behind the statistics and polemics surrounding the policy response to undocumented workers in the US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: The G20 macroeconomic agenda: India and the emerging economies, ed. by Parthasarathi Click here to enter text. Shome. Cambridge, 2014. 304p index ISBN 9781107051102 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required The Group of 20 (G20) came into international prominence, replacing earlier variants such as G7 and G8, around the time of the 2008 global financial crisis. The coordinated effort of the ☐ Recommended G20 countries in preventing the world economy from sinking into a great depression at that time received international attention and praise. A subgroup of the G20, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), have taken on leadership roles, signaling their increasing importance in the world economy. This book edited by Shome (adviser to finance minister, government of India) assesses the progress of the G20, its reform initiatives, and impasses in the broader context of the BRIC economies, with special focus on India. The book consists of chapter-length essays written by renowned observers of the Indian economy. Not much new research is presented. Nevertheless, the essayists bring a great deal of depth to discussions surrounding issues such as global macroeconomic policy coordination, capital controls, the 56 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 international monetary system, and the need for global structural reform. The volume is timely; it is precisely at this moment in history when the old economic order of Europe and the US is slowly and grudgingly yielding supremacy to a new order dominated by the BRIC countries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above

57 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Education Faculty Member: Ayers, Rick. Teaching the taboo: courage and imagination in the classroom, by Rick Ayers and Click here to enter text. William Ayers. 2nd ed. Teachers College Press, 2014. 144p bibl ISBN 9780807755280 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9780807772867 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required In the spirit of Dewey, Freire, Foucault, and Gramsci, R. Ayers (Berkeley High School) and W. Ayres (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago) contend that schools in the US not only limit but also ☐ Recommended discourage, stifle, and suppress curiosity, creativity, imagination, and healthy skepticism among students and teachers. Throughout the book, the authors present examples of stagnation, oppression, humiliation, and top-down policies in teaching and learning that are antithetical to empowerment, enlightenment, and respectful treatment of students (e.g., the Arkansas mandate requiring that each report card include the child's Body Mass Index). The ideas in the nine chapters are provocative in the positive sense; for example, a sixth-grade teacher suggests there are two sides of the current school debate—people who teach and those who talk about teaching. The authors repeatedly mention that schools with narrow, quantifiable outcomes (test scores) invite heartlessness, mindlessness, ignorance, suffocation, and entrapment. Such statements provide excellent opportunities for upper- division education students and all practicing stakeholders, such as school board members, legislators, parents, teachers, administrators, and nonprofit organizations, to discuss the nature of schooling in the US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Baker, David P. The schooled society: the educational transformation of global culture. Click here to enter text. Stanford, 2014. 342p bibl index afp ISBN 9780804787369 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780804790475 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780804790482 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required More often than not, books that focus on the history of public schooling emphasize the role of school as a catalyst to entry into the "real world." This view assumes that schooling ☐ Recommended prepares individuals for life after school through the vetting of students based upon various criteria and the resulting credentialing that are part of formal schooling. Using the lens of neo-institutionalism, Baker (Pennsylvania State Univ.) extends this view by providing data to suggest that the reach of schooling is far more than preparation for life and career. Rather, ways of developing and delivering curriculum, ideas about intelligence, and the increasing reach of schooling though compulsory attendance and credentialing affect society. To explicate this reciprocal interaction between schools and society, Baker structured the book into two sections with an introduction. The introduction provides context for the central claim of the book. The first section examines the prevailing forces that led to the increased scope of formal education. The second section considers the consequences of this increased scope. Suggested companion books, both by David Labaree, are Someone Has to Fail (CH, Jul'11, 48-6429) and How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning (CH, Feb'98, 35-3448). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: The Musical experience: rethinking music teaching and learning, ed. by Janet R. Barrett and Click here to enter text. Peter R. Webster. Oxford, 2014. 343p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199363032 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780199363049 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required The demands for change that permeate education as a field have caused many in musical education to reexamine long-used theories and practices that may no longer accomplish their ☐ Recommended goals. Contributors to this book explore the calls for change and offer a variety of alternative practices for teachers serving in classrooms. The book is organized in six sections that examine how philosophy, listening, cultural dimensions, creativity, evolving roles, and teacher education affect the “musical experience.” These well-written, informative contributions focus on ways that music teachers can better engage students in the primary forms of musical engagement—composing, improvising, listening, and performing. The contributors suggest that concentrating on these four forms, rather than emphasizing performing at the 58 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 expense of the other three, would transform music education into an occasion that more closely approximates the ways students listen to and engage with music. The editors have compiled a volume that offers both theoretical justifications for shaping students’ musical experience and practical methods for implementing this change by including a variety of authors, including leaders in the field as well as relative newcomers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Beach, Richard. Understanding and creating digital texts: an activity-based approach, by Click here to enter text. Richard Beach et al. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442228733 pbk, $45.00; ISBN 9781442228740 ebook, $44.99 ☐ Required This book promotes authentic reading and writing opportunities through use of digital tools— e.g., blogs, wikis, websites, annotations, Twitter, mapping, and forum discussions—that can ☐ Recommended be easily adapted for any secondary and college classroom activity. The text provides excellent links among the theoretical reasons underpinning technology’s use in the classroom, research-based supports of technology’s coursework relevance, and the practical implications for adopting technology—mainly online applications and programs—into individual lessons and throughout units. New educators or those leery of entering the digital education maelstrom will find helpful suggestions and models to aid them through the transition. Educators who consider themselves digital natives will find refreshing new perspectives and perhaps even new digital tools to enrich their teaching. However, some readers may have difficulty wading through the dense narrative and the numerous hyperlinks embedded in the explication. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty, professionals, and practitioners Faculty Member: Brock, Cynthia H.. Engaging students in disciplinary literacy, K-6: reading, writing, and Click here to enter text. teaching tools for the classroom, by Cynthia H. Brock et al. Teachers College Press, 2014. 144p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755273 pbk, $27.95 ☐ Required The authors present the why, what, and how of "disciplinary literacy." Disciplinary literacy involves applying writing and reading skills to science, mathematics, and social studies. The ☐ Recommended authors describe how three teachers experimented with disciplinary literacy instruction— including the strengths of the teachers' work, the challenges they faced, the instructional practices they found useful, and the instructional practices they plan to modify in the future. Their teaching practices include applying real-life situations to lessons, such as a study of a school budget, and they stress the need for real-world writing within the disciplines. Part 3 describes ways that teachers can design discipline literacy instruction for their own classrooms while ensuring they have addressed the common core state standards. Teachers are advised to reflect on their own teaching and refine their practices in order to be more effective. The authors argue that it is necessary for practitioners to be aware of cultural and linguistic differences among students and scaffold instruction to help students use available resources. This book contains practical steps and suggestions for implementation. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Cohen, Jeffrey W. Confronting school bullying: kids, culture, and the making of a social Click here to enter text. problem, by Jeffrey W. Cohen and Robert A. Brooks. L. Rienner, 2014. 253p bibl index afp ISBN 9781626371521 cloth, $58.50 ☐ Required Driven by their inquisitive nature to examine the complexities of bullying behaviors, Cohen (Univ. of Washington) and Brooks (Worcester State Univ.) encapsulate their three-year long ☐ Recommended research project in this timely publication. Through the application of the social constructivist perspective, the authors present their findings in eight distinct chapters that guide the audience on a journey to understanding school bullying. Beginning with "Bullying and the Shifting Construction of a Social Problem" to the concluding "Finding Comfort in Complexity," each chapter presents a unique viewpoint that challenges the traditional mind-set on such a socially significant issue. This book should be a permanent part of the libraries of scholars, practitioners, and parents who are seeking an extensive review of bullying and techniques to effectively address factors associated with school bullying. Summing Up: Highly 59 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Conn, Carmel. Autism and the social world of childhood: a sociocultural perspective on theory Click here to enter text. and practice. Routledge, 2014. 186p bibl index ISBN 9780415838337 cloth, $155.00; ISBN 9780415838344 pbk, $51.95 ☐ Required This book provides excellent discussions of the complexities of the sociological underpinnings of autism and how children with this condition develop and grow compared to more ☐ Recommended "typically developing children." Conn in several instances posits that some authorities in the field contend that autism is not necessarily a "disability" but rather a separate "culture" unto itself, much like the generally accepted cultures of the deaf or the blind. The challenge for many adults and educators is in developing an understanding and a willingness to accept those cultural differences in the population of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Of particular interest is the chapter dedicated to researching autism in natural contexts. Emphasizing that there is no one best way to discover how children with autism learn and socialize with others, Conn offers a number of proven techniques to investigate how these children can be understood and provided with meaningful educational and social experiences in and out of school. The final chapter on reflective teaching principles provides several excellent frameworks for effective management of learning experience for this population. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Cozolino, Louis. Attachment-based teaching: creating a tribal classroom. W. W. Norton, 2014. Click here to enter text. 276p bibl index ISBN 9780393709049 pbk, $27.50; ISBN 9780393709643 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Cozolino (psychology, Pepperdine Univ.) calls on teachers to look beyond their students' test scores and, by paying attention to students’ psychological and social needs, mold their ☐ Recommended students into teams, what he calls "tribes" committed to helping all team members learn. He calls on teachers to foster citizenship, where the needs of the group outweigh the wants of the individual, producing a classroom valuing "mutual respect, cooperation, and caring." Cozolino explains that the goal is to develop "a group of individuals tied together by time, familiarity, affection, and common purpose." Focusing on neuropsychology and the social needs of human beings, the author divides the book into four parts: "The Social Brain," Turning Brains Off to Learning," "Turning Brains On to Learning," and "Tapping into Primitive Social Instincts." He also offers a series of exercises that teachers can use to build a classroom of committed learners. Cozzolino finds that "by relying on science," educators "have repeatedly underestimated the inherent wisdom in culture and human experience, which has been shaped over millions of years." Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Craver, Kathleen. Developing quantitative literacy skills in history and the social sciences: a Click here to enter text. Web-based common core standards approach. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 191p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475810509 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475810516 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781475810523 ebook, $28.99 ☐ Required Craver (head librarian, National Cathedral School) uses a Web–based approach to transform the national common core standards requirement for quantitative literacy in the humanities ☐ Recommended into a powerful instrument for teachers. She provides history and social science educators with resource sites for lesson plans, educational activities, and opportunities to use the search software that accompanies these sites. Many teachers and their students avoid using numbers as evidence in history and the social sciences due to their own math anxiety. Craver addresses the fear of numbers in the first two chapters of this book, and provides basic instructions for how to use, interpret, display, and visualize quantitative sources. The remaining chapters contain a variety of quantitative websites that include relevant topics for high school students such as piracy or natural disasters, plus site-related critical thinking questions. Educators may want to recommend this book to their secondary students as a potential term paper resource book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership 60 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 levels Faculty Member: Dikel, William. The Teacher's guide to student mental health. W. W. Norton, 2014. 310p index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780393708646 cloth, $32.00 ☐ Required The Teacher’s Guide to Student Mental Health is a practitioner-friendly resource that serves as a comprehensive road map for understanding school mental health and the ☐ Recommended implementation of evidence-based practices across classroom settings. A leading expert in his field, Dikel (child and adolescent psychiatrist) embeds years of clinical and field experiences into three distinct sections ("Why School Mental Health?" "The Scope of Mental Health Disorders Affecting Children and Adolescents," and "A School’s Mental Health Framework") and strategically guides readers through the complexities of such timely topics. The wealth of knowledge captured in each section exemplifies the significance of school-based mental health service and support. This guide should be a permanent reference in the public and personal libraries of practitioners and parents who seek an extensive review of evidence–based techniques to effectively address factors associated with school mental health. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Egan, Kieran. Whole school projects: engaging imaginations through interdiscplinary inquiry, Click here to enter text. by Kieran Egan with Bob Dunton and Gillian Judson. Teachers College Press, 2014. 184p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755846 cloth, $78.00; ISBN 9780807755839 pbk, $36.95 ☐ Required With an eye toward developing 21st-century learning skills, this book proposes Whole School Projects (WSP) as a means of getting learners to collaborate, communicate, and think ☐ Recommended critically and creatively. A WSP—an in-depth, supplemental curriculum centered around a specific topic and spanning a three-year time period—provides a means for students to build emotional and imaginative engagement around a large-scale, interdisciplinary undertaking and engage in experiential activities that otherwise might not be available to them. Suggestions for WSP include natural world topics such as studying a local river or gorge, cultural themes focused on castles or historical battlefields, and local neighborhood topics including community mapping or school gardens. The authors provide specific examples of schools that have implemented this pedagogy, so they are able to relate the benefits and challenges that accompany WSP implementation. The beauty of this educational approach is that it turns educators away from traditional subject-divided, age- separated curriculum, encouraging teachers to get students of different ages working together on a common issue that combines disciplines. With this approach, students see how different subjects in school overlap and are given an opportunity to mentor. This inspiring and practical strategy is worth a try. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Sociocultural issues in physical education: case studies for teachers, ed. by Sara Barnard Flory, Click here to enter text. Amy Tischler, and Stephen Sanders. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 163p bibl afp ISBN 9781475808285 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475808292 pbk, $26.95; ISBN 9781475808308 ebook, $25.99 ☐ Required This well-written, well-edited book appears very appropriately at a time when there is so much national attention on schools' roles in promoting healthful lifestyle choices. The editors ☐ Recommended have gathered an outstanding collection of case studies, discussions, and leading questions that get at both the value of physical education and the problems associated with the way physical education is often taught. The book deals in a down-to-earth way with issues of competitiveness, peer pressure, community expectations, gender traps, the rigidity of curricula, and the lack of options for students to develop long-lasting, positive attitudes about fitness. The editors wisely organize the book so that each chapter focuses on a specific topic and is written by a recognized expert on the issue. The case studies could be used in upper- level undergraduate or graduate teacher preparation classes, by practitioners, or by anyone—including parents and community members—concerned about physical education programs on a local school or school district level. The book would also make an excellent resource for any teacher preparation program focused on developmentally and 61 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 socioculturally sensitive education—and not just for the area of physical education. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fossey, Richard. Student dress codes and the First Amendment: legal challenges an policy Click here to enter text. issues, by Richard Fossey and Todd A. DeMitchell. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 114p index afp ISBN 9781475802030 cloth, $50.00; ISBN 9781475802047 pbk, $25.95; ISBN 9781475802054 ebook, $24.99 ☐ Required Fossey (Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette) and DeMitchell (Univ. of New Hampshire) effectively and conclusively enlighten professors, school administrators, educational scholars, ☐ Recommended researchers, and graduate students of school administration on the challenges, complexity, and controversy regarding student expression and their choice of clothing. The authors have created a resource guide book that carefully examines the problems that confront school administrators who are responsible for honoring the constitutional rights of students regarding dress while simultaneously ensuring a safe, orderly, positive, and constructive learning environment for all students. The legal authority for managing these challenges is discussed in extensive detail, as well as the implications for dress code policy and implementation. The balance among students’ First Amendment rights, school administrator responsibilities, and all students’ rights to learn are carefully discussed. This is a must read for anyone desiring detailed knowledge of matters pertaining to student dress, school law, First Amendment rights, and the rights of all students to learn in an orderly environment. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Fullan, Michael. Big-city school reforms: lessons from New York, Toronto, and London, by Click here to enter text. Michael Fullan and Alan Boyle. Teachers College Press/Ontario Principals' Council, 2014. 178p index afp ISBN 9780807755198 cloth, $66.00; ISBN 9780807755181 pbk, $27.95 ☐ Required In an era when school-reform efforts seem never ending, many of these attempts are thwarted by a lack of understanding of the process that undergirds change. Fullan provides a ☐ Recommended masterly overview of the school-reform efforts of three of the largest urban school districts: New York, Toronto, and London. Using case studies that explain each city’s experience with school reform, the book is organized into five chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the challenges of urban education, emphasizing demographic challenges, attitudes regarding equity issues, and strategies used for improvement. This is followed by three chapters, each devoted to the experiences in each city with reform efforts. A final chapter analyzes the experiences, emphasizing those strategies that were effective. Emphasis is given to the background against which each district’s leaders chose certain paths and how the context of each city affected those choices. Eloquently written, compelling, topical, and full of fascinating details about each city’s reform efforts, the work is a marvelous complement to Daniel L. Duke’s The Challenges of School District Leadership (2010) or Fullan’s own Leading in a Culture of Change (2007) and is appropriate for any audience. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels Faculty Member: Gilbert, Jen. Sexuality in school: the limits of education. Minnesota, 2014. 120p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780816686377 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780816686391 pbk, $20.00 ☐ Required Gilbert (York Univ., Canada) reportedly struggled with this intriguing, provocative, and forward-thinking book for many years before pulling it together from her doctoral ☐ Recommended dissertation. Her deep examination of queer studies is based on her personal experiences, which are fraught with day-to-day decisions based on how, as a lesbian, she might be perceived by her students, peers, and others. She argues most powerfully about the need to move beyond teaching tolerance, away from subsuming sexual identity under the broad umbrella of anti-bullying programs, and taking sexuality education out of its isolated corner as part of the health education program or the counselor’s office. Sexuality, she argues, is a “human right,” deserving of a broad-based airing of all of its complexities. Anyone seeking recommendations for how to implement such an approach in the curriculum will not find it here; however, the book can well serve those who are in a position to bring about changes that can lead to affirmation and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer 62 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 youth. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Goldstein, Dana. The teacher wars: a history of America's most embattled profession. Click here to enter text. Doubleday, 2014. 349p bibl index ISBN 9780385536950 cloth, $26.95 ☐ Required Goldstein, a Spencer Foundation fellow in educational journalism, has composed a sweeping history of the politics and controversies surrounding American public school teaching. The ☐ Recommended author claims that, for nearly 200 years, public schools tried to solve various social problems, yet teachers endured constant criticism. Dividing the time period among 12 chapters, Goldstein covers the difficulties characteristic of each era. The first four chapters detail the common school movement, the feminization of teaching, and the plight of African American teachers after the Civil War. In subsequent chapters, the author traces the contemporary concerns of the growth of teacher unions, the War on Poverty, the rise of community control and Black Power, and teacher accountability. The final chapter and the epilogue explain the need for teacher empowerment. Accordingly, Goldstein concludes that sustainable reforms could come from teachers themselves, provided the public foregoes fears of bad teachers and allows educators to build on their expertise. Interested readers might also consult Daniel H. Perlstein's Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (2004) or William J. Reese and John L. Rury's Rethinking the History of American Education (2008). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Hansen, Dee. The music and literacy connection, by Dee Hansen, Elaine Bernstorf, and Gayle Click here to enter text. M. Stuber. 2nd ed. National Association for Music Education (NAfME)/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 290p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475805987 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9781475805994 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9781475806007 ebook, $39.99 ☐ Required Pressure to improve student literacy skills has grown in this era of common core state standards (CCSS) and the Race to the Top initiative. Many administrators and specials ☐ Recommended teachers have sought to tie subjects such as music to literacy as a means of obtaining greater student achievement in this area. The Music and Literacy Connection provides a framework that will permit music education specialists, administrators, reading specialists, and general education teachers to teach musical activities in a way that allows students to transfer certain skills to reading. The book, which also contains an introduction and appendices, is organized into four parts that treat children as interactive learners, explore the connection between literacy and music instruction, discuss ways to teach literacy through multiple processes, and examine the lifelong benefits of musical training. The book includes detailed explanations of some of the fundamentals of music and literacy instruction and a variety of charts, tables, figures, and other visuals that make the work accessible to all. Especially useful are a variety of subsections directed at practitioners, including recommendations for using instructional strategies with cooperative groups, children of different ages, and connections with the CCSS. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Kahlenberg, Richard D. A smarter charter: finding what works for charter schools and public Click here to enter text. education, by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter. Teachers College Press, 2014. 229p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755808 cloth, $72.00; ISBN 9780807755792 pbk, $30.95 ☐ Required Kahlenberg and Potter (both, The Century Foundation) present their perspectives on the evolution of charter schools in the US from the original idea espoused by Albert Shanker, one- ☐ Recommended time leader of both the United Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, to the present. The authors discuss how the original charters were supposed to have a fully integrated student body in terms of race and include students with diverse cultural, social, and economic backgrounds. The exact opposite happened: the majority of present-day charters have student bodies that are racially and economically segregated and tend to have fewer credentialed teachers; in addition, teacher union members are for the most part nonexistent. This said, the authors provide some excellent examples of current charter schools in which teachers and administrators think outside the box and display creativity in curriculum development and instructional delivery, and in which students are 63 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 both motivated and excited about learning. Given the current trend toward educational reform, school vouchers, and privatization of the American educational system, this book is an excellent source of inspiration and a must read for anyone contemplating charter schools as an alternative to the typical public school. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Indian subjects: hemispheric perspectives on the history of indigenous education, ed. by Click here to enter text. Brenda J. Child and Brian Klopotek. School for Advanced Research (SAR), 2014. 330p bibl index afp ISBN 9781938645167 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required These contributions examine lesser-known aspects of indigenous education in North and South America and contrast these aspects to the current emphasis on historical trauma borne ☐ Recommended by some indigenous people today that is attributed to their forebears' damaging boarding school experiences. Coeditor Child notes the “wide-ranging continuum of Indian experiences,” where some indigenous students enjoyed attending boarding school and others hated it; most indigenous children only attended day schools. However, even when students enjoyed their school experiences, their families only had, at most, limited say about the type of instruction their children received, whether in a boarding or day school. Even when there were attempts to adapt education to the unique needs of indigenous peoples, too often it was a matter of an “indigenous program that was created for indigenous people but not by them.” As one contributor notes, “The editors of this volume asked us to imagine alternatives where indigenous peoples create their own educational goals.” Editors Child and Klopotek and their contributors are to be commended for this collection of nuanced glimpses of the diverse educational experiences of America’s indigenous peoples. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Lewis-McCoy, R. L'Heureux. Inequality in the promised land: race, resources, and suburban Click here to enter text. schooling. Stanford, 2014. 212p index afp ISBN 9780804790703 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9780804792134 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9780804792455 ebook, $24.95 ☐ Required America’s suburbs are no longer the bastions of homogeneity they were during the era of “white flight” from the cities. Increasingly, racially and economically diverse suburban school ☐ Recommended districts have to face what were once thought of as strictly urban challenges regarding perceptions, power, and access to resources. In this well-researched and well-written book, Lewis-McCoy (sociology and black Studies, City College of New York) does a good job of combining an academic framework with interviews with dozens of parents, students, and educators in one such suburban school district. The findings and analysis complement the work of others who have shown that misapprehensions, distrust, and naiveté serve as roadblocks to creating genuine, interrelated communities, and equitable social systems. If there is a downside to the book, it is that it feels incomplete. While it ends on a note of hope, it does not sufficiently examine models for turning things around. Nevertheless, the questions and supporting evidence that Lewis-McCoy develops would make excellent starting points for further research into evidence-based solutions. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Magee Lowery, Alyssa. The heart and mind in teaching: pedagogical styles through the ages, Click here to enter text. by Alyssa Magee Lowery and William Hayes. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 153p index afp ISBN 9781475805437 cloth, $55.00; ISBN 978147580544-4 pbk, $28.00; ISBN 978147580545-1 ebook, $27.99 ☐ Required Lowery and Hayes claim their aim is to identify various individuals and movements that influenced the evolution of teaching. They divide the book into 16 chapters. The first eight ☐ Recommended chapters move from the Sophists in Ancient Greece to the last half of the 20th century in 83 pages. The second section covers the present in five chapters that discuss the effects of the federal legislation No Child Left Behind and the impact of educational choice on teaching. The last section has chapters on the influence of technology and the impact of educational research as well as a chapter devoted to concluding thoughts. Pointing out that their book asks whether teaching is an art or a science, the authors describe how 64 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 achievement tests constrain teaching. Nonetheless, they contend that good teachers can rise above those limits if educational resources are equal in schools. Other descriptions of teachers’ work include The American Public School Teacher (CH, Jan'12, 49-2805), edited by Darrel Drury and Justin Baer, and America’s Teachers: An Introduction to Education, by Joseph W. Newman (5th ed., 2006). Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower- division undergraduate students Faculty Member: Making space for active learning: the art and practice of teaching, ed. by Anne C. Martin and Click here to enter text. Ellen Schwartz. Teachers College Press, 2014. 196p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755396 pbk, $33.95 ☐ Required Classrooms are in many ways created spaces—space for community, space for learning, space for exploration. Martin and Schwartz (both former public school teachers) have assembled ☐ Recommended essays concentrating on the classrooms teachers strive to create. The book examines the collaborative inquiry process developed at the Prospect School and Center in Vermont. The 17 essays are divided into five parts: these explore children’s needs for meaningful space, ways of considering teachers’ practices, assessing and documenting learning, understanding children’s perspectives, and sustaining the struggle for reform. All the essays are well written, and together they provide a marvelous overview of progressive thought regarding the best ways to enhance and ensure children’s learning in a safe environment that values their imaginations and creativity. The book provides many first-person examples of a reflective and collaborative group of teachers joining forces to tackle common problems. Containing many examples of effective practice and reflections on what is effective instruction, the book will be an outstanding tool for both the classroom veteran and the prospective educator. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers/faculty, professionals, general readers Faculty Member: Martinez, Monica. Deeper learning: how eight innovative public schools are transforming Click here to enter text. education in the twenty-first century, by Monica Martinez and Dennis McGrath. New Press, 2014. 209p index ISBN 9781595589590 cloth, $26.95 ☐ Required Call them high-impact educational practices or attempts at "deeper learning"; nearly everyone who has taught understands that more-active forms of learning often yield good ☐ Recommended outcomes. These ideas are well known in the education establishment and have been supported by numerous empirical studies. The roots of these ideas can be found in the Oswego Plan (based upon the methods of Johann Pestalozzi) as well as the writings of the American education reformer John Dewey, who promoted experiential education and various hands-on learning activities. Deeper Learning, by Martinez (President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics) and McGrath (sociology, Community College of Philadelphia), provides additional examples of how these forms of learning and teaching are desirable, particularly in American K–12 schools. The authors provide rich descriptions of deeper learning in eight public schools, and educators could conceivably pick up a tip or two to apply in their own schools. However, little attention is paid to the many, often powerful dynamics preventing the application of these practices in the nation's schools. In the 2014 context, a description of those factors as well as examples of how educators overcame them seems so much more important than yet another endorsement of their use. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and professionals Faculty Member: Mason, Kevin O. Preparing for the classroom: what teachers really think about teacher Click here to enter text. education. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 209p bibl afp ISBN 9781475800418 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475800425 pbk, $33.95 ☐ Required Mason (science education, Univ. of Wisconsin, Stout) offers a unique approach to learning about those who provide instruction in today’s classrooms in America. He examines current ☐ Recommended practices in pre-service teacher education through the lens of practicing teachers. The author surveyed and interviewed teachers about their views on pre-service education. The use of two research methodologies allows for the triangulation of data. The survey methodology allows for a greater sample size so that the results, in this case the views of teachers, can be 65 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 better generalized. The interviews provide a qualitative lens to explore the views of a smaller sample of in-service teachers in more depth. The sample was randomly selected from a list of middle and high school teachers in the state of Wisconsin. One thousand teachers were sent the survey and 191 responded (a response rate of 19.1 percent), which resulted in a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 7.1 percent for the survey results. The author reveals the core beliefs, values, and interests of the teachers interviewed, such as realistic preparation, field experience, classroom management, content preparation, group psychology professionalism, respect, and concern for unprepared student teachers. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Matthews, Michael R. Science teaching: the contribution of history and philosophy of science. Click here to enter text. 20th anniversary rev. and expanded ed. Routledge, 2015. 454p indexes ISBN 9780415519335 cloth, $160.00; ISBN 9780415519342 pbk, $68.95 ☐ Required Matthews (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) states that research in the history and philosophy of science and science teaching contributes to the resolution of theoretical ☐ Recommended questions science teachers face on the nature of science, science curricula, and pedagogy. Noting the long-standing challenge in teaching science—namely, knowing the history and philosophy of the subjects—Matthews reviews the European Enlightenment traditions in science education, historical and current developments in science curricula, and the history and philosophy of science utilized in the classroom. The author illustrates these foundational studies by discussing the study and teaching of an assortment of science topics, including air pressure, pendulum motion, and photosynthesis. Concluding that constructivism has been the major theoretical influence in contemporary science and mathematics education and that science teaching is affected by world views such as realism, atomism, the spirit world, and traditional non-Western metaphysics, Matthews argues that for science teachers to be well-prepared educators, they need subject matter competence, foundational training, and knowledge of the history and philosophy of science. Fully updated and expanded, this 20th anniversary edition includes four new chapters. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Meyers, Susan V. Del otro lado: literacy and migration across the U.S.- Mexico border. Click here to enter text. Southern Illinois, 2014. 195p bibl index afp ISBN 9780809333424 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9780809333431 ebook, $40.00 ☐ Required Meyers (Seattle Univ.) simultaneously provides insightful critical analysis and a fascinating story about the intersections of literacy, education, and migration in the rural Mexican ☐ Recommended community of Villachauto. Meyers describes the educational experiences of this community as based on a "literacy contract" that “does not always deliver on its promise.” As such, immigrant families come to value literacy in ways that are different from those of Mexican and US educational systems. To this end, her research provides valuable insight—particularly for educators—on the challenges facing students in rural Mexico as well as migrant students in US schools. Meyers’s descriptions of students’ and families’ experiences are rich and vibrant, and her analyses are grounded firmly in literacy theory as well as a detailed history of Villachauto and the Mexican and American education systems. Current and prospective educators working with migrant youth will undoubtedly find Meyers’s research enlightening. Qualitative researchers will also be engaged by this book, as it is a model of extraordinarily rich ethnographic research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Nunn, Lisa M. Defining student success: the role of school and culture. Rutgers, 2014. 175p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9780813563626 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780813563619 pbk, $25.95 ☐ Required This book provides readers with a valuable framework for understanding the enculturation of academic values in different types of secondary schools. In the first type of institution, the ☐ Recommended mantra of the school is that effort and dedication lead to success. First-generation college students are enrolled and then prepared to meet the competencies promoted by the state 66 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 for graduation and college preparation. Although the school achieves good college attendance rates, students tend to enroll in non-selective post-secondary institutions. A second school is one typically found in close-in suburban communities. Students vary from first generation to those coming from middle-class homes. Advanced courses are available to students in their areas of strength, recognizing that people are good at some subjects and weak in others. The third institution attracts academically ambitious students. The motivational underpinning of the school is that being smart is important and also involves taking initiative and pushing oneself to mastery and creativity. The students and faculty aspire to elite colleges and universities and are devoted to meeting these goals. The volume’s rich descriptions and structured comparisons allow for thoughtful deliberation of what would be an optimal school message and mission for adolescents with different backgrounds, academic abilities, and aspirations. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections Faculty Member: Diving in: Bill Ayers and the art of teaching into the contradiction, ed. by Isabel Nuñez, Crystal Click here to enter text. T. Laura, and Rick Ayers. Teachers College Press, 2014. 216p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807755778 pbk, $31.95 ☐ Required In this compilation of 26 essays, educational researchers, philosophers, and leaders (including Gloria Ladson-Billings, Sonia Nieto, and philosopher-teacher Joel Westheimer) contribute a ☐ Recommended variety of perspectives on "the art of teaching into the contradiction." Most authors in the volume identify a hegemonic status quo as the central contradiction they face, maintained through static socioeconomic structures desperately in need of revolutionary change. In many ways, Ayers's life itself is contradictory; he moved from American political dissent and terrorism, acting as a leader in the anti-war Weather Underground in the 1960s, to leadership in American higher education, philosophy, and politics, a more peaceful reactionary level. As this book demonstrates, Ayers has since succeeded in impacting mainstream American educational philosophers. Though some essays in the compilation seem overly adulatory, several writers identify powerful and positive changes Ayers and company have implemented to defy the mainstream groupthink. Indeed, dissenting voices are necessary in a country still espousing democratic dialogue. Look for references to Martin Luther King Jr., Paulo Freire, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Mao Zedong as well as current events references to race, culture, place, and space inequities indicating that work still needs to be done in the quest for equity and justice. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: U.S. Latinos and education policy: research-based directions for change, ed. by Pedro R. Click here to enter text. Portes, Spencer Salas, Patricia Baquedano-López, & Paula J. Mellom. Routledge, 2014. 230p bibl index afp ISBN 9780415747820 cloth, $145.00; ISBN 9780415747837 pbk, $44.95 ☐ Required This edited book offers a near comprehensive view on the challenges Latino students face throughout various levels of the US education system. A series of well-articulated ☐ Recommended contributions communicates a seamless experience for readers. Critical issues (e.g., societal identity, public policy, pedagogical practices, individual learning needs) carry readers through three interdependent sections. The first presents readers with analyses of sociological paradigms and identity construction that affect Latinos within the context of the US school system and ultimately society. Concerns with inequality are presented with a sense of urgency, thus effectively communicating the gravity of presented issues. The second section builds on this foundation by examining educational policies and the poor longitudinal outcomes for Latinos (e.g., school failure and the increased likelihood of incarceration) along with recommendations to facilitate positive change. The third section offers readers programming practices and pedagogy to meet the diverse needs of Latino students (e.g., English-language learners and mixed-status families). The contributors examine critical issues Latino students face and offer readers many implementable recommendations. This book is highly recommended for current and future educators as well as any associated professionals throughout all levels of education. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections 67 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Everyday youth literacies: critical perspectives for new times, ed. by Kathy Sanford, Theresa Click here to enter text. Rogers, and Maureen Kendrick. Springer, 2014. 199p bibl index afp ISBN 9789814451024 cloth, $129.00; ISBN 9789814451031 ebook, $99.00 ☐ Required This collection offers research on literacies most prevalent in an adolescent’s life— nontraditional forms such as video gaming, social and digital media, street-based urban ☐ Recommended literacy forms, and film. The volume not only looks at the value of incorporating such literacies into student development but also explores the positive impact these literacies have had in a variety of world youth cultures (Canada, England, Africa, the US). (In the latter regard they take into consideration how outcomes varied based on socioeconomic demands and the availability of current technologies and equipment within schools and regions.) Researcher contributors share thoughts on their successes and challenges; aspects of implementation that went well; and how strategies can be restructured to accommodate technological, regional, and student learning needs. Most important, contributors reveal the significant development in literacy among the students involved. Contributors encourage literacy educators to move away from a literacy curriculum focused on traditional textbook instruction to one that readily adapts to and utilizes a multitude of nontraditional literacy forms students are regularly exposed to and have available in their everyday lives. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, professionals Faculty Member: Shute, Jonathan W. Fixing truancy now: inviting students back to class, by Jonathan W. Shute Click here to enter text. and Bruce S. Cooper. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 167p bibl index afp ISBN 9781475810059 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781475810066 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781475810073 ebook, $28.99 ☐ Required Across the US, various institutional and societal barriers affect student success. Among the barriers are poverty, violence, and a lack of institutional resources. When it comes to ☐ Recommended absenteeism and truancy, many school organizations continue to offer only negative consequences to struggling students. In this book, Shute (Fordham Univ.) and Cooper (Brigham Young Univ.–Hawaii) examine the issue of truancy as it pertains to the changing student population—particularly ethnic minority students and English language learners— and educational challenges unique to our times. After providing a thorough review of truancy, data analyses, and a discussion of truancy's long-lasting effects, the authors guide readers through a thoughtful examination of past and current recommended practices. Recommended practices include making genuine efforts to foster collaboration between home and school and providing professional development to help educators become culturally competent. Although the text does not address every issue related to truancy, the discussion is focused and serves as an effective impetus to facilitate professional reflection. The book will be very useful for both current and future educators, as well as professionals in ancillary fields. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Torres, Carlos Alberto. First Freire: early writings in social justice education. Teachers College Click here to enter text. Press, 2014. 177p ISBN 9780807755341 cloth, $92.00; ISBN 9780807755341 pbk, $43.95; ISBN 9780807772898 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required This excellent book focuses on the early writings and thoughts of Brazilian educator/philosopher Paolo Freire (1921–1997), a giant in the areas of education and political ☐ Recommended thought. Cultural power and political power are as relevant to education today as they were when Freire wrote his classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Eng. tr., 1970). Freire's writings still have an impact on educational, societal, and cultural political studies and analysis. As founding director of the Paolo Freire Institute at UCLA, Torres is uniquely qualified to write on this topic. His depth of understanding of Freire’s ideas is enriched by his deep personal relationship with Freire over many years. Every chapter of this book offers insights, but the last chapter bears particular mention because it looks at Freire in the current global setting. The book will be a wonderful resource in a wide variety of disciplines, including international and cross-cultural education, curriculum theory, sociology, philosophy, and 68 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 history of education. The bibliography is excellent. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals

69 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 English Faculty Member: Appleford, Amy. Learning to die in London, 1380-1540. Pennsylvania, 2015. 320p bibl index Click here to enter text. afp ISBN 9780812246698 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required In this important book, Appleford (Boston Univ.) examines the ways in which Londoners became more educated about death and saw such schooling as a contributing element to ☐ Recommended living a good life. The 15th and 16th centuries produced a number of vernacular texts about not only the practicalities of dying and death but also dying as a craft and an art--a culture of death that was both civic-minded and literary. Of the many texts Appleford draws from, seven form the core of her argument. Three are deathbed manuals--Visitation of the Sick (c. 1380), The Book of the Craft of Dying (c. 1430), and Erasmus’s Preparation to Death (1538). Two are treaties on death mediation: Suso’s Learn to Die (c. 1335), which was available to Londoners in two other works, including Hoccleve’s Series (c. 1420); and Whitford’s Daily Exercise of Death (1534). And two are miscellaneous texts: the wall panel series Daunce of Poulys, which was based on Lydgate’s Dance of Death (c. 1430s), and Lupset’s A Treatise of Dying Well (1534). Appleford should be commended for her scholarly insight and rigor. Though the subject matter could be viewed as macabre, this book is a delight to read. Includes extensive, discursive endnotes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Battistella, Edwin L. Sorry about that: the language of public apology. Oxford, 2014. 217p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780199300914 cloth, $24.95 ☐ Required Though apologies are a fact of life, one rarely encounters analysis of the language people use to apologize or of how apologies can be used for other purposes. Building on the work of ☐ Recommended sociologist Erving Goffman, Battistella (Southern Oregon Univ.) has written a readable, well- organized examination of the language of apology. What distinguishes Battistella’s study is the scope of his examples: he includes apologies from both Richard Nixon and Barack Obama and apologies from business, entertainment, and media. Much of the earlier scholarship surrounding this topic has been narrow and comparative; other work—for example, Aaron Lazare’s On Apology (CH, Jan'05, 42-3108)—has focused on the emotional impact of apologies on relationships and the people involved. By contrast, Battistella takes an analytical approach: he examines why people apologize, the strategies they use, why apologies succeed or fail, and how one can better understand what is being said in an apology. The book is an easy read, and the author even includes a section at the end that invites readers to practice their own analysis of apologies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Beecroft, Alexander. An ecology of world literature: from antiquity to the present day. Verso, Click here to enter text. 2015. 312p bibl index ISBN 9781781685723 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9781781685730 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781781685747 ebook, $29.95 ☐ Required Crediting linguists and scholars such as Sheldon Pollock, Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, and David Damrosch for providing him with "insights into how literature circulates" ☐ Recommended globally, Beecroft (Univ. of South Carolina) approaches the classification of world literature from a truly distinctive standpoint. He finds connections between literatures that do not impose modern valuations onto texts. In making this effort, Beecroft postulates "a scheme of six patterns" to describe the connectivity between literatures and their "ecology," a term that denotes the persistent biological metaphor that runs throughout the book. He denominates these patterns--which form the titles of his main chapters and the nucleus of his arguments-- as epichoric, panchoric, cosmopolitan, vernacular, national, and global. In elucidating these configurations, Beecroft challenges readers' assumptions about authorial linguistic choice. Furthermore, he interrogates the complex implications of localized, national, and global interactions of literature within and between equally complex and specifically identified political, economic, religious, cultural, and technological matrixes. Beecroft's ability to negotiate Eastern and Western literatures while avoiding the dichotomy so common to discussing these traditions is astonishing in scope and expertise. Hence, An Ecology of World 70 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Literature demands and rewards close attention. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Bentley, G. E.. William Blake in the desolate market. McGill-Queen's, 2014. 244p bibl index Click here to enter text. afp ISBN 9780773543065 cloth, $49.95 ☐ Required Required reading for William Blake scholars and art historians, this volume provides a detailed account of the costs, materials, patrons, and sales of Blake's work, both literature ☐ Recommended and art. Drawing on previous scholarship and his own careful research, Bentley (emer., English, Univ. of Toronto) has compiled a comprehensive database of facts and figures that makes a number of invaluable arguments: Blake was a prolific creator and tireless laborer, unfortunate in relation to overall acceptance and commercial success, and often a poor judge of opportunity and/or character in business situations. His career was sustained by professional diversity and the generous patronage of friends. Bentley surveys the pragmatics of pursuing art as a career, showing the income needed to sustain creativity at this period in history and demonstrating the intricate balance between production costs and sales profits. The nine chapters are illuminated by 17 detailed tables of data and 33 color, high- resolution illustrations; also provided are an exhaustive 85-page list of Blake's patrons, 18 pages of notes, a strong bibliography, and a comprehensive index. In an age of digitally diluted research practices, this exemplary volume testifies to traditional scholarly rigor and the continuing necessity of historicist methodologies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Boisseron, Bénédicte. Creole renegades: rhetoric of betrayal and guilt in the Caribbean Click here to enter text. diaspora. University Press of Florida, 2014. 223p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813049793 cloth, $74.95 ☐ Required Boisseron’s provocative use of the word renegades in her engaging, wide-ranging treatise on self-exiled Caribbean writers suggests distance yet intimate connection to and association ☐ Recommended with a homeland permanently etched in memory. The Francophone and Anglophone writers Boisseron (Univ. of Montana) covers share a common postcolonial experience. Each remains physically distant yet emotionally and psychologically attached to a land viewed through the prism of detachment and isolation. Boisseron gives particular attention to Martiniquan Maryse Condé, Haitians Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière, Trinidadian V. S. Naipaul, Antiguan Jamaica Kincaid, and native New Orleanian Anatole Broyard (ostensibly a person of color, self-identified as white, who sought refuge in New York City). Uprooted and exiled by choice, these writers tell stories of a familiar place that they reclaim by birthright. That rootedness legitimizes their right to offer critical perspectives and allows them free rein to pass judgment. The curious placement of Broyard in the introductory chapter suggests the overarching themes of betrayal and guilt dominant among the writers discussed in the ensuing chapters. This interesting, thoughtful study will enable scholars to reexamine their engagement with these Caribbean writers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Brim, Matt. James Baldwin and the queer imagination. Michigan, 2014. 214p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780472072347 cloth, $70.00; ISBN 9780472052349 pbk, $25.95 ☐ Required Theorists have debated for decades about issues such as sexual identity and orientation, desire, and what is gay, queer, or trans. Brim (English, queer studies, CUNY) adds a brilliant, ☐ Recommended provocative perspective to these conversations. He shows that gay and queer are far more complicated than most people imagine, and he draws attention to the concept of queer paradox. One of the most paradoxical figures of all is James Baldwin, who has been embraced by gay/queer men as an iconic literary forefather and source of inspiration. However, Baldwin was never comfortable with the word gay. Brim quotes him as saying “I simply feel it’s a word that has very little to do with me, with where I did my growing up. I was never at home with it.” But Baldwin is useful to gay and black men even though he eschewed being identified as gay or queer. Other paradoxes abound, as queer men, including black queer men, may enjoy the benefits of male privilege relative to women 71 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 even as simultaneously they are demonized by straight men as non-heteronormative. This is part of Brim’s “gay conundrum,” as he calls it. Baldwin may have been in such a position. This is a great book, but the uninitiated may find it difficult. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Brontë, Emily. The annotated Wuthering Heights, ed. by Janet Gezari. Belknap, Harvard, 2014. Click here to enter text. 454p bibl afp ISBN 9780674724693 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required An enduringly popular novel, Wuthering Heights (1847) has variously been cited as erotic, evil, mythical, realistic, and/or moral. This wonderfully printed annotated edition provides ☐ Recommended fascinating illustrations and a useful introduction. Gezari (Connecticut College) retains Brontë's original two-volume, 20-chapter structure, and her annotations fill in countless gaps that few could have known existed. Included are genealogy, maps, photographs, and textual notes galore. For ease of reading, Brontë's text is printed on the left side of each page with supporting editorial materials appearing on the right. Annotations are factual, providing many contexts—such as history, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and linguistics—and elucidating literary allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, folklore, and so on. In the introduction, Gezari explains her plan and indebtedness to earlier work on Brontë, including Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), Terry Eagleton's Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës (CH, Oct'75), and Winifred Gerin's Emily Brontë: A Biography (CH, Oct'72). The volume's "Further Reading" lists primary sources, biographical and critical books, and essays. Wuthering Heights has never been so usefully packaged for readers. An important edition of a work by an important Victorian novelist. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Acknowledged legislator: critical essays on the poetry of Martín Espada, ed. by Edward J. Click here to enter text. Carvalho. Fairleigh Dickinson, 2014. 337p bibl index afp ISBN 9781611476415 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9781611476422 ebook, $89.99 ☐ Required Poet Martín Espada (b. 1957), who has become synonymous with political activism, is a strong advocate of social equality, often to the detriment of his exposure to a more ☐ Recommended mainstream audience. This collection offers a comprehensive biographical-critical study of a poet who could be considered the unofficial voice of marginal Latinos. He writes from the perspective of a first generation Nuyorican who experienced overt racial discrimination, and his knowledge of Latin American literature of protest is extensive. In the introductory material, Carvalho (DeVry Univ.) provides important biographical information about Espada’s humble origins. The child of a “dark-skinned Puerto Rican” father and a Jewish mother, Espada was born in the projects of New York City. Against all odds, he eventually became a lawyer, and his academic training is often evident in his politically inspired poetry. As the essays in this volume reveal, Espada’s poetry reflects the poet’s activism as a lawyer who fought for the rights of undocumented Latinos. Another of the book's critical focuses is Espada’s pro-independence poetry in support of the construction of a Puerto Rican nation. This volume introduces readers to the complex colonialist history that promoted the imposition of American citizenship on Puerto Ricans. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Dowling, David. Emerson's protégés: mentoring and marketing transcendentalism's future. Click here to enter text. Yale, 2014. 332p index afp ISBN 9780300197440 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required Dowling (School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Univ. of Iowa) has written a delightful study of Emerson's acolytes in his transcendental Concord ☐ Recommended circle. Individual chapters focus on Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Christopher Cranch, Samuel Gray Ward, Ellery Channing, Jones Very, Charles King Newcomb, and Ellen Sturgis Hooper. Emerson, at one point or another, mentored these individuals. However, as a mentor, Emerson was an anti-mentor, pushing his acolytes away as he accepted them. He was influenced as much by them as they were by him. In his essay “Friendship,” Emerson defined friends as “beautiful enemies,” and Dowling elaborates on Emerson's affection for and conflict with his protégés. But the more one quarrels with Emerson, the more 72 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Emersonian one becomes. Dowling’s study is well researched, and he does a beautiful job of connecting Emerson’s universal statements in his essays to the particularity of his relationship with his protégés. Dowling’s focus on friendships sheds light on the transcendentalist influence on American literature and literary studies. Though certainly useful for those studying Emerson, this book will be even more important to those interested in the protégés listed above. It is also a fascinating read for those interested in American cultural history and the regional history of New England. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Dowling, Robert M. Eugene O'Neill: a life in four acts. Yale, 2014. 569p index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780300170337 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Dowling (Central Connecticut State Univ.) has written a fascinating biography of O’Neill (1888–1953), the only American dramatist to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The ☐ Recommended biography portrays O'Neill's dysfunctional childhood, his life as a sailor, and his eventual discovery by the Provincetown Players. His early works, from the "sea plays” to such full- length masterpieces as Desire under the Elms and Anna Christie, mark the transformation of American drama. The strength of the book is the meticulous weaving of the events that had happened, or were happening, in the playwright's life with the plays themselves. This is particularly evident in Exorcism, written in 1919 but found only recently. Dowling does not shy away from the more unsettling aspects of O’Neill’s life, including his alcoholism, his outright negligence as a father, and his troubled marriages. He might once and forever have set the record straight on the strange events surrounding the publication and staging of the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night. Making extensive use of letters, diaries, and newspaper reviews of O'Neill's works, Dowling paints a picture of a scared, emotionally troubled playwright using the theater as a means to escape the past—and in so doing forging a new American drama. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Italoamericana: the literature of the great migration, 1880-1943, ed. by Francesco Durante Click here to enter text. with Robert Viscusi, James J Periconi, and Anthony Julian Tamburri. 1st American ed. Fordham, 2014. 997p bibl index ISBN 9780823260621 cloth, $40.00; ISBN 9780823260621 ebook, $22.00 ☐ Required First published in Italian (2v., 2001, 2005), Italoamericana is in its English translation (which focuses on volume 2 of the original) a monument of Italian American scholarship. The ☐ Recommended collection represents only a fragment of the ephemeral writing of Italians in the US in the late 19th/early 20th century—a wave at one point so large that Viscusi (English, Brooklyn College), who is general editor of this US edition, calls it "the most significant fact of our entire [immigration] history." As a sampler of the political and artistic culture of Italian America, the volume opens a "world of extraordinary wealth and complexity … clarity and emotional balance" sufficient to replace the flat "abject narrative" of Guidos and godfathers. In its girth, the volume is a metaphorical feast, suggesting both the collective heft of the rediscovered output and the unique works still waiting to be discovered. (That said, like some feasts it may be literally too big: the book is difficult to pick up to read and unsettling in its mix of tones and translation skills.) All readers, be they experts or novices, will want to start with Viscusi's masterful introduction to the US edition and will return to it again and again. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. Faculty Member: Gerhardt, Christine. A place for humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the natural world. Iowa, Click here to enter text. 2014. 268p bibl index afp ISBN 9781609382711 pbk, $47.50; ISBN 9781609382919 ebook, $75.00 ☐ Required Argued here is that in the mid-19th-century US—thanks to the influence of popular environmental writing, natural history essays, and increasingly visible proto-ecological ☐ Recommended sciences (notably botany, geology, and geography)—people's attitudes toward nature began to shift from an emphasis on exploitation to a concern with conservation. Gerhardt (American studies, Univ. of Bamberg, Germany) discusses Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman in the context of these green developments, showing how the poets were affected by the 73 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 culture's shifting views and analyzing their nature-related poems on four geographic scales or levels: micro, local, regional, and global. Gerhardt concludes that Dickinson and Whitman, in spite of their apparently disparate poetic subjects and styles, share a reverence for nature and express in many of their poems an "environmental humility," a perspective that avoids both anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. A Place for Humility impressively extends and, in certain respects, supersedes the critical commentary of two comparable, earlier studies: Agnieszka Salska's Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: Poetry of the Central Consciousness (1985) and M. Jimmie Killingsworth's Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics (2004). Gerhardt's study is at once an exemplary contribution to the field of ecocriticism and a truly groundbreaking comparison of two of America's greatest poets. Summing Up: Essential Faculty Member: Hardie, Philip. The last Trojan hero: a cultural history of Virgil's Aeneid. I.B.Tauris, 2015. 249p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9781780762470 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780857735065 ebook, $94.00 ☐ Required As one of the most influential works of Western literature, Virgil's Aeneid has not lacked for regular and abundant scholarly attention. However, important aspects of the poem remain ☐ Recommended understudied. Chief among them is how subsequent writers, artists, and thinkers have used and been influenced by this epic. In this book, distinguished Latinist Philip Hardie (Univ. Cambridge, UK) remedies that neglect by providing a succinct, informative, and thought- provoking investigation into the afterlife of the Aeneid. He charts the poem's powerful relationship with Christianity, depictions of the underworld, discovery and conquest of the Americas, and the visual arts; he also investigates the ways writers have interpreted the poem's central figures, Dido and Aeneas, or stitched together individual lines and half-lines of the Aeneid to create new work that is usually humorous and often parodic. In addition to supplying abundant quotations from many relevant texts, Hardie includes 24 figures and 15 color plates, judiciously chosen, that complement well his entire discussion. Readers thus learn much, not only about the Aeneid but also about Western art and literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Harding, Wendy. The myth of emptiness and the new American literature of place. Iowa, Click here to enter text. 2014. 243p bibl index afp ISBN 9781609382797 pbk, $47.50; ISBN 9781609382926 ebook, $47.50 ☐ Required Rarely does this reviewer say that he cannot praise a book enough, but this is the case with The Myth of Emptiness. Harding's grasp of the illusion and reality of emptiness in ☐ Recommended American culture is gripping and unique. Every chapter offers remarkable insights. In chapter 2, for instance, Harding (Univ. of Toulouse, France) dissects American myth in the context of colonialism. For Puritans, landscape was reduced to a "void" so early settlers could imagine the American terrain as a "desert" and establish European community in a threatening wilderness. On the verge of the 20th century, "emptiness and fullness are no longer opposed as the contrasting zones of wilderness and civilization." Cooper, Whitman, Thoreau, and other fashioners of the "hybrid figure" of the half-civilized pioneer merged the line between "native" and "settler." Subsequently, discovering unspoiled wilderness became a summons in itself (this is case with Rick Bass's Winter, 1991). Harding does an admirable job of explicating the struggle by such authors as Charles Bowden, Ellen Meloy, Jonathan Raban, Rebecca Solnit, and Robert Sullivan to restrain Americans from mentally "blanking out" empty spaces. In her conclusion, the author eloquently revisits the need to revise one's view of the planet as a dichotomy of "fullness or emptiness." A perceptive and challenging book. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Harrison, Sheri-Marie. Jamaica's difficult subjects: negotiating sovereignty in anglophone Click here to enter text. Caribbean literature and criticism. Ohio State, 2014. 192p bibl index afp ISBN 9780814212639 cloth, $59.95; ISBN 9780814273173 ebook, $59.95 ☐ Required This exceptionally well-written work explores the politics of sovereignty in postcolonial West Indian literary discourse. From the start—when Harrison engages with Marlon James’s John ☐ Recommended Crow's Devil (2005) and Christopher Coke’s extradition to the US in May 2010—the work 74 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 resonates with a special relevance. Although its primary focus is difficult “disparate moments of confusion” in Jamaican literature and literary criticism, the introduction offers a model for evaluating the literature of the entire region. The author maintains that Caribbean writing continues to engage problems of sovereignty in the postcolonial period. Harrison discusses Caribbean writings in terms of four waves: the first wave (1930s–1960s) focused on “agitating for and imagining” independence from the British; the second (late 1960s–1970s) addressed the gap between writers in exile and their homes/subjects; the third (1980s– 1990s) witnessed the rise of the female voice; the fourth (and current) “seeks to reinhabit and rewrite the oppositional strategies that proceeded it." Each chapter offers readings that challenge “popular critical paradigms.” Chapter 4, “Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Nation: Queering Twenty-First-Century Caribbean Literature,” is especially thought provoking. Harrison's project, she writes, is to supplement recognized discourse as opposed to that of a dismissive enterprise. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Holderness, Graham. Tales from Shakespeare: creative collisions. Cambridge, 2014. 245p Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9781107071292 cloth, $44.99 ☐ Required Spanning imaginative historical fiction, a comedic play set at the gates of heaven, and a spy thriller, Holderness's "tales" examine encounters between the Shakespearean drama and ☐ Recommended what prior critical discourse has marked as "not-Shakespeare." The tales and the more traditional essays that accompany them are centered on a collision metaphor: post-collision one cannot separate the original from the material with which it has collided. Tales from Shakespeare is an innovative departure from criticism on adaptation and appropriation, which, even as it has steadily moved away from concerns with fidelity to the source text, often still cannot help but concern itself with what is and is not source material. Although in his introduction Holderness (Univ. of Hertfordshire, UK) situates his four "tales" within his prior work on film and stage adaptations of Shakespeare's dramas, this book offers a useful line of flight for adaptation studies, presenting four examples of adaptation as criticism. An intriguing study for those interested in adaptation studies and Shakespeare in transcultural contexts. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Yeats and afterwords, ed. by Marjorie Howes and Joseph Valente. Notre Dame, 2014. 348p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780268011208 pbk, $34.00; ISBN 9780268081768 ebook, $34.00 ☐ Required This impressive collection of essays is organized around the theme of "Yeats's sense of cultural belatedness," his tendency to place himself "at the end" of Romanticism, of the ☐ Recommended Protestant ascendancy, of a particular cycle of civilization. The volume stands alongside other recent work on Yeats—such as Helen Vendler's Our Secret Discipline (CH, Jul'08, 45-6042) and Michael Woods's Yeats and Violence—that demonstrates the attraction this poet continues to exert on many of the finest contemporary critics. Among the strongest essays are those by Elizabeth Cullingford, Marjorie Howes, and Joseph Valente; also excellent are Ronald Schuchard on Yeats and contemporary Irish poetry, Jed Esty on Yeats and Eliot, and Margaret Mills Harper on the two editions of A Vision. Less compelling are the essays that read Yeats through a lens of Lacan and Žižek, one of which includes the unintentionally comic image of Yeats "tak[ing] on the mantel [sic] of the Anglo-Irish bard." One wonders if he carried off the rest of the fireplace as well. Several essays offer provocative and competing readings of Yeats's late play Purgatory, and these alone make the volume worth reading. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Hunt, Aeron. Personal business: character and commerce in Victorian literature and culture. Click here to enter text. Virginia, 2014. 225p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813936314 cloth, $39.50; ISBN 978081393621 ebook, $39.50 ☐ Required This is a fascinating, in places brilliant, investigation of the personal dimension of Victorian commerce as depicted in the period's literary fiction and in nonliterary forms of writing, such ☐ Recommended as handbooks for businessmen, business biographies, official correspondence, and bank records. Hunt (Brown) connects the efforts of Victorian novelists to represent the role of 75 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 individual moral character (in an increasingly impersonal economy) to Victorian businessmen's strategies for "reading" the characters of their employees and agents to determine their trustworthiness and reliability. The book begins with a chapter titled "The Trusty Agent," in which the author discusses Dickens's Dombey and Son against the background of mid-Victorian criminal betrayals of trust by agents and managers, offering a sensitive analysis of the contrasting figures of Carker (the unscrupulous expert reader of character) and Captain Cuttle (the hopeless businessman whose simplicity and flatness of character are signs of his honest nature). The other three chapters feature illuminating, extended readings of Margaret Oliphant's Hester, Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Hunt's prose is polished and precise, and her research is thorough and pathbreaking. Though the conclusion is unsatisfying and too brief, this is a thought-provoking and valuable work of original scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Irr, Caren. Toward the geopolitical novel: U.S. fiction in the twenty-first century. Columbia, Click here to enter text. 2013. 264p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231164405 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780231164412 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required Irr (Brandeis) offers a wide-ranging study that redefines “the political novel”—not altogether persuasively—and, more important, extends understanding of the “American” novel as it is ☐ Recommended being written in the era of globalization—in English, and in many “genres,” by authors originally not just from the US but also from many newly emergent migrant diasporas. The author draws on a truly impressive number of novels and some important theoretical traditions; her deft extension of Fredric Jameson’s work on national allegory and cognitive mapping enriches the book and makes the section devoted to national allegories and contemporary international fictions the most compelling part of this consistently insightful work. Irr discusses numerous connected topics—the literature of diasporas, transnationalism, migration, and new networks—and shows how the authors of the new geopolitical novel modify existing novelistic genres and themes, enriching domestic themes and contexts by drawing on, naturalizing, and domesticating normally destabilizing narratives of global experience. The works of authors both well known—Aleksandar Hemon, David Eggers, Gary Shteyngart, Junot Díaz, Susan Choi—and less familiar are illuminated by brief, original analyses. No comparable volume exists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Johnson, Barbara. A life with Mary Shelley. Stanford, 2014. 198p afp ISBN 9780804790529 Click here to enter text. cloth, $70.00; ISBN 9780804791250 pbk, $22.95; ISBN 9780804791267 ebook, $22.95 ☐ Required This unusual book gestures toward filling the hole that was left in 2009 by the death of Barbara Johnson at age 62, who brought together deconstruction and feminism in ways that ☐ Recommended forever changed literary theory and criticism. Johnson’s friends Mary Wilson Carpenter, Shoshana Felman, Judith Butler, and Cathy Caruth have collected and commented on three of Johnson’s well-known early essays and on her last work, "Mary Shelley and Her Circle." Only 55 pages long, Johnson’s draft of that last work narrates the “impossible autobiography” of Mary Shelley through chapters on her famous husband and parents, Byron, and Polidori. By contrast with the earlier essays reproduced alongside it, the draft shows the strain of Johnson’s long struggle with terminal illness. But Barbara Johnson impaired was still Barbara Johnson, as this book ingeniously demonstrates. The collection is valuable for retelling the critical history of Shelley’s Frankenstein, for showing the interplay between feminism and deconstruction, for narrating a story of Shelley’s life by looking at her circle, and for modeling another circle of interlocutors centered on a brilliant woman writer, Johnson herself. This is a book for specialists, though the embedded "Mary Shelley and Her Circle" extends the audience to advanced undergraduates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers Faculty Member: Lahr, John. Tennessee Williams: mad pilgrimage of the flesh. W. W. Norton, 2014. 765p index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780393021240 cloth, $39.95 76 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required This new biography of playwright Tennessee Williams was conceived as a sequel to the late Lyle Leverich’s Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (CH, Mar'96, 33-3772), which ☐ Recommended concludes with the staging of The Glass Menagerie (1944). However, longtime New Yorker theater critic John Lahr decided that “to reinterpret the plays and the life, [he] needed to revisit Williams’s childhood and to take a different tack from Lyle’s encyclopedic chronological approach.” The result is indeed a “stand-alone biography,” a masterful treatment of the often-tempestuous professional and personal relationships that shaped Williams’s characteristically autobiographical dramas, from Battle of Angels through his last major play, A House Not Meant to Stand. Although Lahr makes limited reference to the extensive secondary scholarship on Williams’s work, he cites interviews, memoirs, and manuscript collections in libraries from California to Massachusetts. Lahr’s deep knowledge of the theater is evident in his attention to the impact of producers, directors, agents, actors, and reviewers on A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and other gripping dramas of Williams's “mad pilgrimage of the flesh.” Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: a life. Knopf, 2014. 488p index ISBN 9780385352345 Click here to enter text. cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Prize-winning author of Edith Wharton (CH, Nov'97, 35-1380), Willa Cather (1990), and Virginia Woolf (CH, Jan'08, 45-2476), Lee (Univ. of Oxford, UK) here gives British writer ☐ Recommended Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) the royal treatment in a work that is as much social history as it is biography. To understand Fitzgerald, Lee suggests, her family's background in Edwardian England has to be thoroughly investigated, for there among churchmen and women's rights advocates, writers and educators, she learned the virtues of understatement that formed the background of her novels and biographies. Fitzgerald is not an easy person to know even when she writes about her family, but Lee does well interpreting the nuances of her subject's narratives. The result is a deeply grounded but sometimes ponderous biography. Fitzgerald, who was highly valued for her brief novels, might have been dismayed at the lengths to which her biographer goes. Still, this magisterial work brings Fitzgerald's world alive and illuminates the sources of her novels, which gradually moved farther afield to encompass Russia before the revolution and the life of the Romantic writer Novalis—a significant accomplishment for a writer who published her first book when she was approaching the age of 60. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Lesser, Zachary. Hamlet after Q1: an uncanny history of the Shakespearean text. Click here to enter text. Pennsylvania, 2014. 292p bibl index afp ISBN 9780812246612 cloth, $59.95 ☐ Required Lesser’s engrossing book makes textual study alluring even to the non-practitioner. In looking at the quarto (Q1) edition of Hamlet, Lesser (Univ. of Pennsylvania) puts lyrical energy into ☐ Recommended excavating old texts, as seen in his use of Thomas Browne’s Urn-Burial (1658) as a metaphor for “the accidents of time and history" that underlie textual criticism. Knowledge of Q1 is accidental—Henry Bunbury discovered it in his Suffolk manor in 1823—yet that accident frames and haunts, making the text "uncanny." Lesser rejects material historicism and sees the temporality of texts as compound and accretive. Because of its rediscovery, he sees Q1 as the latest Hamlet text and—as it raises the possibility of an ur-Hamlet before Shakespeare’s—something that can make Shakespeare’s Hamlet go back beyond even itself. As an alternative Hamlet, Q1 can reframe meaning: e.g., Lesser argues that conscience in Hamlet’s third soliloquy might mean “consciousness" and that the speech cannot be a Christian anti-suicide injunction. Using Q1 to give a guided tour of Shakespearean textual epiphenomena from John Payne Collier's forgeries to the formalist bibliography of W. W. Greg, Lesser's study excites and edifies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Whitman among the bohemians, ed. by Joanna Levin and Edward Whitley. Iowa, 2014. 254p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9781609382728 pbk, $47.50; ISBN 9781609382933 ebook, $47.50 77 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required Against all odds, given the seemingly exhaustive scholarship now existing on Walt Whitman and his writings, this collection of 12 essays (by various hands) actually blazes new trails. It ☐ Recommended focuses on a neglected period of Whitman's life, the late 1850s and early 1860s. At a crossroads in his career as a poet, Whitman began to frequent Pfaff's, a rathskeller in lower Manhattan. There he met writers, editors, actors, artists, musicians, and assorted rebel souls reveling in la vie bohème. He encountered camaraderie, stimulating conversation, defiance of bourgeois convention, a sense of community, and good German beer. He interacted with counterculture "celebrities," such as Henry Clapp Jr. (newspaper editor and "King of Bohemia"), Ada Clare (columnist and "Queen of Bohemia"), Fitz-James O'Brien (theater critic), Ned Mullen (illustrator), Adah Isaacs Menken (actor, poet), and Hugo Fritsch (Austrian consulate attaché). Among the book's highlights is Stephanie Blalock's discussion of Whitman's involvement at Pfaff's with the Fred Gray Association, a group of animated young bachelors who modeled the comradeship Whitman celebrated in his "Calamus" poems. Another highlight: Mary Loeffelholz's account of the role played by Edmund Clarence Stedman—literary critic, anthologist, and early Pfaffian habitué—in establishing Whitman's place in the emerging canon of American poetry. Other highlights abound. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. Faculty Member: Martin, Justin. Rebel souls: Walt Whitman and America's first Bohemians. Da Capo Press/A Click here to enter text. Merloyd Lawrence Book, 2014. 339p index ISBN 9780306822261 cloth, $27.99; ISBN 9780306822278 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required In this captivating study, Martin (a freelance writer) transports the reader to the 1850s inside smoky Pfaff’s saloon—the meeting place of the US’s first Bohemians—located in the ☐ Recommended basement of 674 Broadway in New York City. Run by Charles Pfaff, a cheerful German immigrant, the subterranean vault became the stomping grounds of Henry Clapp Jr., editor of the Saturday Press, who wished to re-create in New York the Bohemian scene he had experienced while living in Paris. Pfaff’s offered the ideal venue. In its heyday—the years leading up to the Civil War—the saloon was frequented by artists, writers, actors, and comics, including a handful of women, who became known as Pfaff’s Bohemians. Among those who patronized the saloon most nights was Walt Whitman, whose time at Pfaff’s, Martin argues, was critical in the evolution of the poet’s verse. Whitman's immersion in the Bohemian scene provided him with the freedom to experiment with his poetry and his sexuality. Thanks to meticulous research, Martin was able to re-create the Bohemian scene, and Whitman’s place in it, in vivid detail. This book is a lively and entertaining read for students of American literature, history, and culture. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Moss, Daniel D. The Ovidian vogue: literary fashion and imitative practice in late Elizabethan Click here to enter text. England. Toronto, 2014. 256p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442648685 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9781442617483 ebook, $64.95 ☐ Required Moss (Southern Methodist Univ.) opens new territory in the study of Ovid's influence on Elizabethan narrative poetry, showing that by the 1590s, Ovidian imitation entailed much ☐ Recommended more than an engagement with Ovid. Rather, as Moss demonstrates, Ovidianism had become a subject of literary contention in which poets competed against the imitative strategies of their rivals in the quest for readers, patrons, and audiences. The author identifies responses from a spectrum of writers, ranging from those who strove to immerse themselves in the Ovidian vogue to those who eschewed or hoped to alter it. The discussion ranges widely over a number of works, many of which are not frequently studied. In the first chapter, Moss looks at Thomas Nashe and William Shakespeare; the author devotes subsequent chapters to George Chapman, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and John Donne. This wide range of authors will prove daunting to uninitiated readers, especially because Moss's focus on intertextuality means that individual chapters require being read in the context of the contents of other chapters. Nonetheless, Moss's prose is certainly lucid and accessible to those with some experience, and he provides extensive endnotes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Enterprising upper-division undergraduates 78 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 and above Faculty Member: The Dating of Beowulf: a reassessment, ed. by Leonard Neidorf. D. S. Brewer, 2014. 250p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9781843843870 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required The publication of The Dating of Beowulf, ed. by Colin Chase (1981), instigated three decades of often-impassioned scholarly debate. Prior to 1981, most Beowulf scholars assumed that ☐ Recommended the poem was composed early in the Anglo-Saxon period, most likely in the seventh or eighth century. The 1981 collection presented a range of arguments for both early and late dates, but the late-date arguments changed the field. The present volume provides a thorough overview of recent scholarship that argues, contrary to late-date assertions made in the 1981 collection, that Beowulf was indeed composed in the seventh or eighth century. The contributors are prominent, well-established Anglo-Saxonists, most of whom have already published more detailed studies on the dating question. Essays summarize this previous work, presenting a wide range of linguistic, metrical, onomastic, paleographic, and historical evidence. The contributors’ various methodologies are more technical and more objective than those of pre-1981 early-dating arguments, and collectively offer a cohesive and compelling case for Beowulf’s early composition. Not only is this volume a necessary companion for the 1981 collection, it stands on its own as an introduction to key issues in the dating of Old English poetry. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Oldenburg, Scott. Alien Albion: literature and immigration in early modern England. Toronto, Click here to enter text. 2014. 290p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442647190 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required In Alien Albion, Oldenburg (Tulane Univ.) makes a strong case for early-modern England as being a more diverse and accepting place for foreigners than is usually allowed. Through ☐ Recommended discussions of literary works by authors such as Deloney, Dekker, and Shakespeare, and building on the works of critics such as Andrew Pettegree, Oldenburg argues that despite periods of xenophobic activity the England of the 16th and 17th centuries was in fact found to be a refuge by foreign peoples. In historicized readings of literary works, the author shows that there was often a concerted effort to protect communities of foreign religious believers who agreed with the ruling religious view or foreign craftsmen who participated in particular trades and guilds. Providing contextualization for the literature of the time, Oldenburg's well- researched book helps to undermine the concept of a xenophobic English nation and literature in the early modern period. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Rifkin, Mark. Settler common sense: queerness and everyday colonialism in the American Click here to enter text. Renaissance. Minnesota, 2014. 293p bibl index afp ISBN 9780816690572 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9780816690602 pbk, $25.00 ☐ Required In a thoughtful study that will be of interest to scholars of queer, Native, and frontier studies, Rifkin (English and women's studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro) provides refreshing ☐ Recommended new readings of canonical texts. He examines the ways that major texts by white, male authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville—though not explicitly about Native Americans—contributed to the systemic dispossession of indigenous peoples. Situating these men's works within the larger context of the social and political pressures facing Native people at the time of their publication, Rifkin employs queer theory to explore the ways that Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Thoreau’s Walden, and Melville’s Pierre participate in the construction of a “settler” personhood that erases Native personhood and encourages removal of Native Americans from political representation and participation. Although limited to an investigation of three works, Rifkin’s study provides a useful starting point for further analysis, laying the groundwork for future scholars to explore how a variety of cultural products clearly—if subtly—encouraged the dispossession of Native Americans during one of the US's most important periods of physical growth and ideological development. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty 79 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Russell, Richard Rankin. Seamus Heaney's regions. Notre Dame, 2014. 498p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780268040369 pbk, $55.00 ☐ Required Joining Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (2010), Russell's new book provides an extensive study of regionalism in Heaney's poetry and ☐ Recommended prose. Russell (Baylor Univ.) provides a broad view of current perceptions of Heaney's work and a history of regionalism in Northern Ireland. Against this background, he describes the poet's participation in and commentary on Northern Ireland's struggles. Beginning with the poet's work for BBC radio and his political agenda, Russell applies his understanding of sense of place to successive periods of the laureate's publications. From these roots, Russell extends the study to other influences in the poet's work, always returning to the primary source—Ulster. The author concludes, as he began, with a recognition of the centrality of the North to Heaney's thought and, therefore, to his writing. Especially valuable for the close reading of Heaney's oeuvre in support of the focus on sense of place, the book is a valuable resource for Irish studies. Includes extensive endnotes and a bibliography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Ridiculous critics: Augustan mockery of critical judgment, ed. by Philip Smallwood and Min Click here to enter text. Wild. Bucknell/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 245p bibl index afp ISBN 9781611486148 cloth, $90.00 ☐ Required Smallwood (emer., Univ. of Birmingham, UK) and Wild (Plymouth Univ., UK) provide a fascinating hybrid collection/anthology on the role of ridicule in criticism produced during the ☐ Recommended long 18th century. They focus on ridicule of critics/criticism rather than by critics (though sometimes the boundary blurs). In both the critical commentary it offers and the primary texts by the period's "ridiculous critics" it includes, the volume stands as a history of a body of criticism that has been largely ignored, and which has implications for today's critical practices. In part 1, the editors consider the balance of serious and unserious in English criticism and "suggest that a corpus of comic and satirical writings with its own genealogy" reveals "what criticism was, and should be." In part 2, they provide examples of such writings (and some satirical prints), beginning with Buckingham's Rehearsal and proceeding to satirical jabs by Rochester, Swift, Wycherley, Pope, Parnell, Fielding, Smart, Johnson, Goldsmith, Mackenzie, Sterne, Gibbon, et al. In part 3, the editors suggest that bringing together the "laughter of critics [and] their own laughable vices ... offers a way of being serious about things … that serious expression renders trivial, obscure, or ineffective." All who profess themselves literary critics should take a serious look at this book. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Stokes, Claudia. The altar at home: sentimental literature and nineteenth-century American Click here to enter text. religion. Pennsylvania, 2014. 281p bibl index afp ISBN 9780812246377 cloth, $59.95 ☐ Required Although Jane Tompkins’s Sensational Designs (CH, Nov'85) revived sentimentalism’s critical fortunes, Stokes (Trinity Univ.) argues that critics have acknowledged sentimentalism’s ☐ Recommended politics at the expense of its religious investments. Drawing on writers expected (Harriet Beecher Stowe), unexpected (Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy), and, to many, unfamiliar (the Mormon poet Eliza Snow), Stokes demonstrates that for the “middle-class, Protestant white woman,” sentimentalism was a route to religious authority. Stokes grounds religious sentimentalism in the Second Great Awakening, when women writers, influenced by Methodist revivalism, developed apparently nondogmatic (but fundamentally Protestant) models of Christian belief that opposed a perceived Catholic threat. In the second chapter, the author links women’s success as hymnodists to their appropriation of sentimentalist tropes (e.g., “authenticity” and “private domesticity”). She goes on to analyze how Stowe’s sentimentalism and postmillennialism together shaped her “Protestant” plotting of historical change; how Snow and other Mormons appropriated sentimentalism to challenge anti- Mormonism, authorize polygamy, and develop a theology of "heavenly mother"; and Eddy’s attempts to use sentimentalism to construct her position as Christian Science’s "mother," even though literary sentimentalism itself had imploded. A provocative, important 80 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 contribution to the study of literature and religion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Tally, Robert T.. Fredric Jameson: the project of dialectical criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Click here to enter text. 2014. 187p index ISBN 9780745332109 pbk, $28.00 ☐ Required Jameson is one of the most influential and significant literary critics of the last 60 years, and Tally (English, Texas State Univ.) offers a clear, organized survey of Jameson's work from ☐ Recommended its beginnings to his recent book on Karl Marx’s Capital (Representing Capital, 2011). Because Tally covers so much ground (Jameson has published more than 20 books) in so few pages, readers looking for deep analysis will need to turn to Jameson himself or to one of his other critics. But the present volume serves well as an introduction. Each chapter presents three books individually but also makes assertions about the books as elements of a coherent intellectual narrative. For instance, the chapter that takes up Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (CH, Apr'91, 28-4470) considers the two preceding books as part of the same project: mapping the cultural terrain of multinational capitalism. Those who are comfortable with the basic jargon of literary theory will find a lively, cogent outline of the major books. Readers unfamiliar with Jameson will discover where they might want to start exploring his oeuvre, and readers with more experience will find a valuable review. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Templin, Mary. Panic fiction: women and antebellum economic crisis. Alabama, 2014. 246p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9780817318109 cloth, $49.95; ISBN 9780817387198 ebook, $49.95 ☐ Required According to Templin (Honors College, Univ. of Toledo), “panic fiction” was an established 19th-century genre in American literature--a genre written, by men and women, in response ☐ Recommended to the financial uneasiness of the early 1800s, particularly to the so-called panics of 1819, 1837, and 1857. Templin "seeks to ... consider women’s antebellum panic fiction as a separate genre and examine how it performed the cultural work of making sense of economic change and crisis within narratives of home and family relationships, and in so doing ... blurred the (imaginary) generic boundary between domestic and economic fiction.” To this end, she includes a considerable amount of economic history to help the reader contextualize the fiction. Dozens of such novels, many now forgotten, were written during this period by authors such as Caroline Kirkland, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Maria Cummins, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Emma Embury, Hannah Lee, and Maria McIntosh. Templin carefully delineates issues of race, class, gender, and geography in these women's novels, making important distinctions between northern and southern panic fiction. Templin’s prose is accessible, and her persuasive argument emerges from considerable literary, historical, and economic research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates through faculty. Faculty Member: Twain, Mark. Mark Twain on potholes and politics: letters to the editor, ed. by Gary Click here to enter text. Scharnhorst. Missouri, 2014. 208p index afp ISBN 9780826220462 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780826273390 ebook, $35.00 ☐ Required This reviewer has been waiting for 30 years for the publication of this material. Scharnhorst (emer., Univ. of New Mexico) arranges the 101 letters (1866–1910) in chronological order to ☐ Recommended show the true, rough-house Twain who is lost when read as a “classic” author. As aggressive a moralist and critic as Twain seems in his more conventional fiction, here Twain is assertive, fantastically comic, lawlessly imaginative—unruly, strident, and irascible. This raw newspaper journalism is central to understanding the writing style of “Mark Twain” as it had to be adjusted by editors like Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Livy Clemens for his work to rise to universal stature as art. More important, the journalism is central to understanding the pragmatic, human-centered ideology that drives Twain's work. Twain's 1867 burlesques of the female suffrage movement lead to burlesque defenses of his own moral character in the 1870s and a later defense of universal suffrage; attacks on local incompetence and political dishonesty lead to later protests of everything from street construction to con games to exploitation of China following the Boxer Rebellion. Those who wish to understand the full 81 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 spectrum of Twain’s genius need this unique collection, which—in style and substance— establishes the lifelong continuity of a great comic moralist at work. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Zhou, Xiaojing. Cities of others: reimagining urban spaces in Asian American literature. Click here to enter text. Washington, 2014. 334p bibl index afp ISBN 9780295994024 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9780295994031 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required Engaging such disciplines as history, sociology, and geography, and drawing from theories that range from postcolonial to environmental studies, Zhou’s City of Others offers an ☐ Recommended innovative interpretation of Asian American literature in terms of the relationship between Asian American identity formations and US urban spatial construction. Zhou (Univ. of the Pacific) expands the intellectual horizon by moving beyond the critique of ethnic enclave as simply space of marginalization and by arguing that Chinatown mutually constitutes and transforms the US city and provides an alternative space for Asian American everyday practice as well as reimagining of a national subject. The author has produced other works on ethics and poetics and Asian American aesthetics, and in this book she covers a variety of prose fiction, from the popular work of Karen Yamashita to the neglected Lin Yutang, from the established author Chang-rae Lee to the emerging voice of Lê Thị Diễm Thúy, from Sui Sin Far’s short stories of the late 19th century to Meena Alexander’s novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Zhou’s accessible critical work will break new ground in studies of Asian American literature and US fiction more broadly. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Zim, Rivkah. The consolations of writing: literary strategies of resistance from Boethius to Click here to enter text. Primo Levi. Princeton, 2014. 323p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691161808 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required "From Boethius to Primo Levi," according to Zim (King’s College, London) in this revelatory study, prisoners of conscience and detained members of persecuted minorities have ☐ Recommended employed a variety of literary strategies to resist the injustice of coerced confinement, probe the meaning of existence, and salve the anguish of deracinated selves. By creatively juxtaposing pairs of victimized individuals across cultural and temporal lines, Zim demonstrates convincingly that prison narratives constitute a distinctive, though difficult to define, genre of expression that manifests itself through characteristic forms, themes, and functions. Collectively, these writings in extremis, be they letters, poems, journal entries, philosophical treatises, theological musings, analytical essays, or personal confessions, testify eloquently to the resiliency of besieged human beings as they struggle courageously against the ravages of unwarranted deprivations to maintain mind and body and preserve the core civilizing values that have sustained people through the ages. Zim's close readings of these in-tandem texts bear haunting witness to enduring conditions in the world that ought not to be but unfathomably are, despite all the vociferous protestations that decry inhumane treatment of the other. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty

82 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Health Administration Faculty Member: Ablin, Richard J. The great prostate hoax: how big medicine hijacked the PSA test and caused Click here to enter text. a public health disaster, by Richard J. Ablin with Ronald Piana. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 262p index afp ISBN 9781137278746 cloth, $27.00 ☐ Required Ablin (pathology, Univ. of Arizona), discoverer of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), provides a very-well- written argument against the reliability and validly of the PSA as a ☐ Recommended diagnostic test for cancer. In doing so, Ablin, along with science/medical writer Piana, outlines the potential negative psychosocial impact that such a test can have on the public health system. While orchestrating their argument(s), the authors provide a catalyst to other concerns—as the conflicts and challenges presented in this text reflect a myriad of other problems that exist in the current health care (or rather care-less) system. In short, the book eloquently describes a system that is rooted in fear-based, procedure-dependent, and profit- driven marketing that has ultimately contaminated the doctor-patient relationship. This is an excellent read for a wide-ranging audience, including health care practitioners and patients who are seeking alternative explanations in complicated diseases and who are fed up with the current (profit-centered) standard of care model. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic, general, and professional health sciences collections Faculty Member: Apesoa-Varano, Ester Carolina. Conflicted health care: professionalism and caring in an urban Click here to enter text. hospital, by Ester Carolina Apesoa-Varano and Charles S. Varano. Vanderbilt, 2014. 195p bibl index afp ISBN 9780826520081 cloth, $59.95 ☐ Required Sociologists Apesoa-Varano (Univ. of California, Davis) and Varano (California State Univ., Sacramento) provide an excellent account of how various health care professionals— ☐ Recommended physicians, nurses, pharmacists, etc.—perceive their roles and responsibilities in an in-patient health care delivery setting. The "Hospital General" is portrayed very authentically, and readers can become totally involved in each patient scenario. Having shadowed health care professionals and their interactions with patients for 3,200 hours and conducted 500 hours of follow-up interviews with these same health care professionals, the authors have captured the depth and soul of what actually transpires in a hospital. They also illustrate very realistically the conflicts that occur on a daily basis at a busy general hospital in the US today. The book offers excellent applications of theoretical concepts that can help readers understand the work culture of health care. The penultimate chapter on unions is very appropriately subtitled "The Elephant in the Room” and may be especially interesting to readers who have been patients in busy medical centers recently. A comprehensive reference list supports this very-well-written book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students of all levels, researchers/faculty, professionals/practitioners, and general readers Faculty Member: Global bioethics and human rights: contemporary issues, ed. by Wanda Teays, John-Stewart Click here to enter text. Gordon, and Alison Dundes Renteln. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 443p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442232136 cloth, $110.00; ISBN 9781442232143 pbk, $44.95; ISBN 9781442232150 ebook, $43.99 ☐ Required There is something paradoxical and honest about this book: though its title patently suggests there is such a thing as global bioethics (for many, a rather volatile concept), its contents ☐ Recommended challenge and support that notion in equal measure, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. This in itself makes the volume recommendable. The book is organized into four sections ranging from the theoretical perspectives of global bioethics to issues of human rights, culture, and public health. The theoretical perspectives are well balanced between those who support the notion—Bernard Gert and Tom Beauchamp—and those who challenge it—Søren Holm, quite eloquently. The remaining sections offer a similar degree of equilibrium, and the articles are consistently interesting, though some seem more convincing than others, perhaps depending on readers' previous views of global bioethics. In sum, this is a thought-provoking, interesting volume for those who want to better understand what global bioethics may or may not be and the sorts of issues it addresses. For those looking for 83 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 a body of doctrine about global bioethics, this book, paradoxically, may cause doubt about the very existence of such a notion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Reich, Adam D. Selling our souls: the commodification of hospital care in the United States. Click here to enter text. Princeton, 2014. 233p ISBN 9780691160405 cloth, $39.50 ☐ Required If there is one thing people can be assured of, it is that perspectives on health care vary. Is it a right or a privilege? Can it be bought or sold? Beginning with this latter concept of ☐ Recommended commodification, Reich (sociologist, Columbia Univ.) focuses on hospital care as it is organized and delivered in three separate institutions within the same medium-sized California community: "PubliCare," "HolyCare," and "GroupCare." The work is, accordingly, divided into three parts, each with a chapter on the origins of the hospital, the inconsistencies (contradictions) in the hospital’s conception of care, the organization of physician work, and the organization of the delivery of care within the hospital. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, Reich shapes a thoughtful account of how hospital care is differentiated and marketed in each context. Moreover, the comparative analysis serves to illustrate the inherent problems and risks that accompany the different representations of hospital care. The author's writing does suffer a bit from jargon, but the text is easy to read. Eight pages each of chapter notes and references support the text. This book is an important resource for academic audiences and professionals in the health disciplines as well as those in the social sciences. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Voigt, Kristin. Childhood obesity: ethical and policy issues, by Kristin Voigt, Stuart G. Nicholls, Click here to enter text. and Garrath Williams. Oxford, 2015. 251p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199964482 cloth, $55.00 ☐ Required The causal chain appears obvious: childhood obesity leads to adult obesity, which leads to adverse medical outcomes such as diabetes or psychological problems such as ☐ Recommended depression. The remedy seems simple: eat less and exercise more. However, once those chains are put under a magnifying glass, simplicity disappears and is replaced by complex policy and ethical issues. Obesity's definition is often revised. Measurements are difficult, and applying them to individuals is an ecological fallacy. Is any one person or entity to blame and therefore responsible for remedying the situation? Should, for example, public health interventions in schools focus on improving eating habits? Such interventions are more easily adopted by wealthy families. The health of wealthy children improves, and the health of poor children declines in comparison, which increases the disparities between the groups. Because childhood obesity occurs through a causal web, not chain, Voigt (McGill Univ.), Nicholls (Univ. of Ottawa), and Williams (Lancaster Univ., UK) suggest that focusing on other areas, such as the "obesogenic environment," might be more effective than an obesity- only policy. Their one exception to this approach is that the stigma surrounding obesity must be removed. Well researched (over 500 references!), clearly written, and cogently argued, this is an excellent book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

84 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 History Faculty Member: Anson, Edward M. Alexander's heirs: the age of the successors. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 224p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9781444339628 cloth, $99.95 ☐ Required The 42 years after the death of Alexander the Great are among the most complex and difficult to teach in Greek history. Yet they were critical for the emergence of the Hellenistic ☐ Recommended state system. A reliable guide through the seemingly endless wars of the period has long been a desideratum for teachers and students. Anson (Univ. of Arkansas) addresses that need with this book. After a lucid introduction surveying the Macedonian background of the period and the extant historical sources, four chapters treat the succession crisis following Alexander’s death and the wars of his successors between 321 BCE and the official end of the Argead dynasty in 306 BCE. A final chapter traces the wars leading to the emergence of the principal Hellenistic kingdoms between 306 BCE and 281 BCE. The author analyzes the character of the new kingdoms in a brief epilogue, with particular emphasis on relations between the Macedonian kings and their non-Greek subjects. Reference materials include source notes in the text, extensive endnotes, and a detailed bibliography. Particularly welcome are appendixes explaining the chronology adopted in the book. An excellent history of an important period. Summing Up: Essential. Belongs in all university libraries Faculty Member: Bartoloni-Tuazon, Kathleen. For fear of an elective king: George Washington and the Click here to enter text. presidential title controversy of 1789. Cornell, 2014. 252p bibl index afp ISBN 9780801452987 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required The richness of sources from the founding years of the US has fueled historical studies on a wide range of subjects. Still, there are overlooked topics. Bartoloni-Tuazon, a visiting scholar ☐ Recommended at the First Federal Congress Project in Washington, DC, addresses one of them in this study of the heated debate over attaching an honorific title to a US president. The author establishes that the question of title was more than just a political fight between the two houses of Congress; it was an issue being argued throughout the nation in the months before Washington’s inauguration. Her well-crafted study provides a solid footing to understanding why Congress chose not to attach a title. Although not a tome (six chapters and 165 pages of text), this is a first-rate scholarly work. The text supports the fact that the author has diligently researched the use of titles within the US during this period. Her research is also responsible for her deep knowledge of the national debate over a presidential title. Helpful to scholars and advanced students will be the 56 pages of notes and the 16-page bibliography. A mandatory acquisition for four-year institutions and major public libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Most public and academic levels/libraries Faculty Member: Burke, Edmund. The ethnographic state: France and the invention of Moroccan Islam. Click here to enter text. California, 2014. 273p bibl index afp ISBN 9780520273818 cloth, $49.95 ☐ Required This study in French colonial history focuses on the “development of the French colonial archive on Morocco and on the struggle for the control of research on Morocco in the period ☐ Recommended 1890-1925.” The author’s meticulous research into the political and cultural history of France’s colonial venture in North Africa and specifically Morocco reveals the complex interplay of knowledge and power in the development of colonial policy and administration. Burke (emer., history, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) has written a critical study of “scientific imperialism” as he illustrates how French scholars were tasked with gathering information on Moroccan society and culture in order to better serve the administration and governance of the country and mitigate the cost of its conquest. The repository of the information or intelligence gathered by a generation of French ethnographers is the multivolume Moroccan archive, which, among other things, offers insights into the lives of ordinary Moroccans and their world on the eve of the modern period and the transformation of their traditional society under the impact of French colonization. Burke’s comparative perspective and impressive analysis of the French colonial experiment in Morocco is a major contribution to scholarship on European colonization and 85 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Islam. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division unergraduates and above Faculty Member: Chang, Jeff. Who we be: the colorization of America. St. Martin's, 2014. 403p index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780312571290 cloth, $32.99; ISBN 9781466854659 ebook, $16.99 ☐ Required Historically, the US has been defined by whiteness. Stephen Douglas (1858) was famously paraphrased as saying, “this government of ours was founded on the white basis. It was ☐ Recommended founded by the white man for the benefit of the white man.” This was popularized and simplified as “This is a white man’s country.” Yet massive demographic shifts since the 1960s and the rise of multiculturalism and the culture wars have given people of color new prominence. Chang (Stanford) calls the massive shifts that began taking place as the civil rights movement ebbed “colorization.” Weaving together art history, politics, cartoons, and media, he suggests that American visual culture has been “colorized.” Never in US history have so many nonwhite people been so visible in commercials, advertising, politics, or the media. But what good has it done? What difference has it made? Race continues to haunt the nation like a painful wound, a blind spot, marked by silence, denial, evasion, and amnesia. Whether one discusses Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or the deportation of “illegal” immigrants, the agony of race persists. The war between the ethnocentric nation and the ideal of a universal nation continues. Great photos. A masterpiece. Required reading. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Charters, Erica. Disease, war, and the imperial state: the welfare of the British armed forces Click here to enter text. during the Seven Years' War. Chicago, 2014. 285p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226180007 cloth, $50.00; ISBN 9780226180144 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Charters (Wolfson College, Oxford) places medical history closer toward the center of history, which it has long deserved. She examines the medicine practiced in the mid-18th-century ☐ Recommended British army, but her focus on the role of military medicine as part of the growing presence of the imperial state is what makes the book of much greater significance. Charters looks at diseases in all the major colonial areas and analyzes both success and failure by the medical corps. She ties the growth and acceptance of the imperial government to the growth of military medicine. As the state proved itself concerned with the well-being of its soldiers and sailors, it also gave citizens the sense that it was a legitimate part of their lives. Thus, military medicine played an important bureaucratic role as Britain became a dominant world power. Charters’s research is solid, and her arguments about the state are interesting and convincing. This book will be valuable to scholars interested in the empire, the growth of the modern British state, and the evolution of medicine. In fact, it is hard not to make inferences about some of the contemporary debates about the role of government from it. An important contribution in a number of ways, it should be read beyond the scholarly community. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Daly, Jonathan. Historians debate the rise of the West. Routledge, 2015. 190p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781138774803 cloth, $150.00; ISBN 9781138774810 pbk, $44.95 ☐ Required Although faculty often incorporate books they have read into courses they teach, never before has this reviewer wanted to develop a course around a particular text until reading ☐ Recommended Daly’s Historians Debate the Rise of the West. Presenting various historical theories examining the rise of the West in world history and its corollary of “why not China,” Daly (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago) writes an excellent volume of such diverse theories as the uniqueness of Western culture, the development of world systems and geographic imperatives, and the importance of East Asia as a determinant of the West’s rise without trying to force students into accepting one theory over another. Rather, he follows his aim of providing “a glimpse of their fundamental scholarship” without projecting his own bias or theoretical preferences into his short overviews. Lack of extensive extracts from specific works does not detract from the text, although the longer explanations of Joseph Inikori’s labor contribution, Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, and Joseph Needham’s question prove the best of the manifold analyses. Daly’s easy writing style, straightforward presentation of various theories, and inclusion of maps, notes, and further reading materials 86 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 make this a text worth having. Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries. Faculty Member: Gaskill, Malcolm. Between two worlds: how the English became Americans. Basic Books, Click here to enter text. 2014. 484p bibl index afp ISBN 9780465011117 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780465080861 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required The 17th century was a turbulent era for English folk on both sides of the Atlantic. This vividly written work effectively explores the multiple ways each colonial venture reflected and ☐ Recommended influenced a rapidly transforming, crisis-ridden England, as well as the effects of England's experience on them. The focus is on “mutually transformed mentalities on both continents.” Historiographically, the book bridges a wide gulf. As Gaskell (Univ. of East Anglia, UK) writes, “Too many American scholars still see England as backstory; too many of their colleagues across the Atlantic lose interest in the migrants as they exit the European map.” The organization is generational, denominated by dominant transatlantic imagery— planter, saint, warrior. Within each section are narrative chapters illustrating the interactions and capturing the broad geographic scope of the English experience, 1607-92. In keeping with this ambitious agenda, the notes are full and plentiful. There is also a superb essay, “Further Readings,” which alone would be worth the price of admission. In short, this book provides an excellent synthesis and nuanced interpretation of a complex and crucial era of English and American history. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Gibson, Carrie. Empire's crossroads: a history of the Caribbean from Columbus to the present Click here to enter text. day. Atlantic Monthly, 2014. 447p bibl index ISBN 9780802126146 cloth, $28.00; ISBN 9780802192356 ebook, $28.00 ☐ Required Gibson synthesizes and integrates some of the most important insights from recent historical scholarship on slavery, capitalism, and empire into an accessible survey of over five centuries ☐ Recommended of Caribbean history. The Cambridge-educated author combines the careful reflexivity and nuance of a seasoned historian with the verbal dexterity and attention to current events of an accomplished journalist, producing a book that is both readable and thought provoking, regionally specific and globally aware, historical yet exceedingly relevant to today’s most pressing issues. Although the author strays from the traditional argument-driven narrative, she points out that her most pervasive theme is “the genius of adaptation” to the convergence of worlds and all the violent forces it wrought in the Caribbean: slavery, racism, poverty, disease, tourism. Gibson's expertise on Cuba in the era of the Haitian Revolution is evident in an excellent synthesis of the way that development set in motion changes in the institution of slavery and the debates and duties of empire for decades afterward. Although greater variation from the conventional top-down approach would have been welcome, this is an excellent introduction to Caribbean history for non-specialists. Summing Up: Essential. Public and undergraduate collections Faculty Member: Gribetz, Jonathan Marc. Defining neighbors: religion, race, and the early Zionist-Arab Click here to enter text. encounter. Princeton, 2014. 287p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691159508 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required In the ever-growing and highly saturated field of Arab-Israeli conflict studies, it is rare for a book to break new ground and challenge long-held and well-entrenched perceptions. This is ☐ Recommended one of those rare exceptions. Based on a wide array of archival documentation, contemporary intellectual journals, and secondary literature, Gribetz (Princeton) offers a compelling new reading of mutual perceptions of self and other between the main protagonists of that conflict—Jews and Arabs, Zionists and Palestinians—at the very historical moment it was about to erupt. Moving back and forth between the writings of fin-de- siècle Arab intellectuals, such as Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi’s unpublished manuscript “as- Sayūnizm,” and Jewish journalists such as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the author convincingly demonstrates that at its base, the encounter between these two groups was not based solely or even primarily on converging nationalist sentiments. Rather, the mostly indirect discourse often involved the language of race and religion, not necessarily always in an adversarial fashion. For that important contribution, this book should be hailed as a significant addition 87 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 to the scholarly literature about late Ottoman Palestine. Summing Up: Essential. Upper- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Hankins, Joseph D. Working skin: making leather, making a multicultural Japan. California, Click here to enter text. 2014. 277p bibl index afp ISBN 9780520283282 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9780520283299 pbk, $29.95 ☐ Required Debates regarding Japan's often-hidden outcast population, most commonly known as burakumin, periodically surface in news and in brief sections of academic research. There ☐ Recommended have been few full-scale studies in English, and no other author has explained or analyzed this issue with the finesse and virtuosity that we find in this work by Hankins (Univ. of California, San Diego). The "skin" in the title refers to leather processing, one of the stigmatized occupations ascribed to buraku community members. Hankins tracks the murky historical accounts, varied lived realities, and thorny politics that characterize understandings and experiences related to the origin and continuation of this stigmatized status. Some activists are reconfiguring buraku identity in a novel manner by lobbying the UN to recognize and monitor a new category of discrimination based on work and descent. By recasting buraku as a cultural minority group, activists hope to pressure the Japanese government to establish antidiscrimination legislation. Indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary Japanese nationalism, multiculturalism, and identity politics. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Kent, Neil. The Sámi peoples of the North: a social and cultural history. Hurst & Company, Click here to enter text. 2014. 331p bibl index ISBN 9781849042574 cloth, $32.50 ☐ Required The Sámi (Saami) of Scandinavia and Russia’s adjacent Kola Peninsula can be characterized as world famous yet poorly understood at the same time. This comprehensive treatment of ☐ Recommended Sámi societies will familiarize a broad audience with all aspects of the complex Sámi historical experience. Beginning with archaeological reflections of deep prehistory, Kent (Cambridge) charts the origins of Northern Europe’s oldest surviving indigenous culture through millennia of continuity and change. He chronicles diverse Sámi peoples speaking distinct languages, ranging from the critically endangered Ter Sámi in the east to the robustly spoken Northern Sámi in western Scandinavia. Kent’s painstaking historiography traces Europe’s evolving awareness of the Sámi. Meticulously researched and extensively referenced, this book captures how each Sámi group interacted with neighboring peoples and identifies recurrent themes among the vicissitudes of local differences. The last two centuries and their profound effects upon every Sámi group receive the lion’s share of attention. The book’s thoroughgoing historical context enriches its authoritative assessment of today’s Sámi across four countries. The emergent picture illuminates a nation with a rich past, a dynamic present, and a future awaiting more scholarly attention. A true foundation for a wide readership. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Marston, Daniel. The Indian Army and the end of the Raj. Cambridge, 2014. 386p bibl index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780521899758 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9781139898126 ebook, $76.00 ☐ Required Marston (military studies, Australian National Univ.) has authored such books as The Seven Years’ War (2001), The French-Indian War 1754-1760 (2003), The American Revolutionary ☐ Recommended War (2011), The American Revolution 1774-1783 (2003), and, with reference to South Asia, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign (2003). This latest book offers an important assessment of the Indian Army, especially with regard to the controversial failure to maintain peace at the time of partition in 1947. The book covers the army during the 20th century and is laudatory about its activities, whether fighting in the two world wars or maintaining peace in Southeast Asia after 1945. With regard to the charge of communalization and failure to prevent the carnage of 1947, Marston is certain, “In the final analysis, the historical record shows unequivocally that the vast majority of Indian Army soldiers, NCOs, VCOs, and officers were as loyal to one another and to the regiment as many previous generations had been, and under far more trying circumstances.” This volume is superb and indispensable reading. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries 88 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Motadel, David. Islam and Nazi Germany's war. Belknap, Harvard, 2014. 500p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780674724600 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Motadel (Cambridge) is thorough, balanced in his judgments, and clear in exposition of the facts. Nazi attempts to instrumentalize Islam in the Arab world, the Caucasus, and the ☐ Recommended Balkans in order to foment rebellions in the empires of their enemies (Britain, USSR, and the US) were unsuccessful. The recruitment of Muslim soldiers for the Wehrmacht and Waffen- SS proved more fruitful, but despite great expenditure of funds and personnel, the Germans never attained their unrealistic goals. Beginning his account with the failed attempts to mobilize Muslims in WW I, Motadel details the reasons for Nazi failures in WW II. The several competing agencies of the Third Reich vastly overestimated the homogeneity of the Islamic world. They also made it too obvious that Germany had no interest in guaranteeing Muslim independence after victory. Propaganda portraying the Jewish-dominated Allies as atheistic enemies of Islam, in stark contrast to Germany as its champion, could not overcome the Nazis’ too-obvious primary goal: the ruthless exploitation of Muslim manpower to make up for mounting German losses. An outstanding contribution. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Nirenberg, David. Neighboring faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Click here to enter text. today. Chicago, 2014. 341p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226168937 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9780226169095 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Nirenberg’s Communities of Violence (CH, Nov'96, 34-1725) was a fresh look at what had been accepted as the origin of intolerance against “outside” groups in the later Middle ☐ Recommended Ages. In it, he concluded that far from being alien presences in the medieval polity, Jews, lepers, and other objects of communal violence were vital elements in enabling those societies to establish norms. Here, he continues this approach by looking at the three religious communities in the late medieval Crown of Aragon—Christian, Islamic, and Jewish— and examining how they defined themselves and one another and formed their identities in a dialectic with one another. Nirenberg (history, Chicago) calls this the “co-production of religious communities.” The book’s core concerns relations between Jews and Christians in Aragon (Nirenberg’s area of specialization) and their anxieties about cross-fertilization, both sociotheological and literal. The author examines the concept of raza and its origins in medieval ideas of biological inheritance, but he declines to draw a connection between those ideas and modern hang-ups about race that first appear in the 18th century. The concluding chapter is an amazing meditation on the meaning of Islamic societies and the Christian West to each other and themselves. This penetrating and densely written book is a must for all academic libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Parker, Geoffrey. Imprudent king: a new life of Philip II. Yale, 2014. 438p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780300196535 cloth, $40.00 ☐ Required Eminent early modern historian Parker (Ohio State) has authored a splendid biography of Philip II, ruler of Spain and the world’s greatest empire (1556–1598). In 19 short, highly ☐ Recommended readable chapters, the author examines Philip’s youth and education for his future role; work habits and efforts to control people and events; marriages and children; foreign relations and multiple enemies—the Turks, the Dutch, the English, and, at times, the pope and the French; constant fiscal problems as a result of war on one or more fronts for all but six months of his rule; and deep religious faith and belief in miracles as a result of his engagement in God’s work. Parker demonstrates that Philip’s obsessive-compulsive personality, inability to leave trivial matters to others, secrecy, willingness to employ “spiritual blackmail,” and duplicity produced both great results and major disasters in an age in which rapid, reliable communications with non-Iberian parts of the empire were impossible. Based heavily on extensive research in primary sources and a cache of previously unknown documents, the book contains nearly 60 illustrations and figures. Scholars, students, and general readers will enjoy this book. All libraries should purchase it. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/librareis 89 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Phillips, George Harwood. Chiefs and challengers: Indian resistance and cooperation in Click here to enter text. southern California, 1769-1906. 2nd ed. Oklahoma, 2014. 434p bibl index afp ISBN 9780806144900 pbk, $26.95 ☐ Required Phillips’s pioneering study (CH, Dec’75) has been significantly expanded and revised, and it deserves close attention from readers of Native American, California, and western history ☐ Recommended interested in patterns of military and cultural resistance and accommodation from the late 18th century forward. This foundational history now considers the period from the Civil War into the early 20th century, reevaluates earlier arguments in the light of scholarship published since 1975, and analyzes historical actors who did not appear in the first version. The scope is broader, the research is more prodigious, and new maps and visuals deepen the argument of the original narrative. In short, this important text will continue to serve as a touchstone for both scholars and general readers interested in race relations on the West Coast. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Phuntsho, Karma. The history of Bhutan. Haus Publishing, 2014. 663p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781908323583 cloth, $50.00 ☐ Required Other than the occasional travelogue and a handful of scholarly works on Bhutanese language, art, and politics, there are few histories of this small, isolated Himalayan ☐ Recommended country. Phuntsho’s book fills that void. The author begins with a review of the geography and the languages spoken. Subsequent chapters follow a chronological pattern with the early diffusion of Buddhism and its consolidation, cover the era of unification during the medieval period under the early monk rulers, and recount the subsequent rise of the lay rulers. Phuntsho (Cambridge) then covers the relations with the British in India, the civil wars, and the rise of Ugyen Wangchuk. The book ends with the modern period, the consolidation of the monarchy under Jigme Wangchuk, and the ongoing process of decentralization and democracy. The book is based on secondary and published primary sources; there are no archival sources. A main strength of the manuscript is its extensive use of Bhutanese language sources. The book stands out as a unique and comprehensive survey of Bhutanese history and as such is a must-have for any researcher of the country. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Rosbottom, Ronald C. When Paris went dark: the City of Light under German occupation, Click here to enter text. 1940-1944. Little, Brown, 2014. 447p bibl index ISBN 9780316217446 cloth, $28.00; ISBN 9780316217453 ebook, $14.99 ☐ Required This account of the Nazi occupation of Paris tells a familiar story with originality, erudition, and nuance. One of the volume’s great strengths is its balance: Rosbottom (Amherst ☐ Recommended College) seeks to recount the four harrowing years of the city’s captivity from the perspective of both the French and their German masters. Informed by archival collections and printed primary sources, the book illustrates the complex and contradictory attitudes that shaped a depressing and at times terrifying mentalité that united Parisians and Germans in unexpected ways. Both felt the burden of captivity: the French, in the shame of their abject defeat; the Germans, in their submission to Paris the seductress. Both veered between savage resistance cum retribution and intimate collaboration. Should Parisians grudgingly do business, fraternize, or avoid all contact with their captors? For their part, Germans went to see Picasso at his studio; they read Camus; they were depressed at the disdain their captives never fully concealed. They also tortured and killed those who dared resist their occupation. No book in English better captures the terror, boredom, deprivation, and humiliation that was occupied Paris. An important addition for modern history collections. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Viswanath, Rupa. The pariah problem: caste, religion, and the social in modern India. Click here to enter text. Columbia, 2014. 396p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231163064 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780231537506, contact publisher for price 90 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required This volume is a thorough, very comprehensive analysis of the role of the British colonial powers in the creation and reinforcement of India’s pariah populations. Until now, ☐ Recommended much of the understanding of the lowest “outcaste” (Dalit) members of Indian society was strongly linked to Hindu sacred scriptures. Viswanath (Univ. of Göttingen, Germany) offers a brilliant set of insights into the colonial rule of India and the influence of Christian missionaries who were complicit, along with the government, in maintaining the subordination of the lowest levels of Indian social organization. The author is to be commended for this tour de force. Rarely has there been such a comprehensive, well researched, powerfully written volume on this topic. It is a history of the subordination of the Dalits (untouchables) in order to keep them yoked to a system of unfree labor. The plight of untouchables has long concerned scholars on the Indian subcontinent. Viswanath peels back the layers of cultural history that shaped the present state of the Dalits. The volume is meticulous in its scholarship and written with great care and precision. A must read for South Asian specialists and general educated readers. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Wang, Hui. China from empire to nation-state, tr. by Michael Gibbs Hill. Harvard, 2014. 179p Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780674046955 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This is a scholarly, judicious, fluent, helpful translation of the overview that introduces the four-volume Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004), by Wang Hui (Tsinghua Univ. Beijing), a ☐ Recommended prominent, highly productive public intellectual with an international reputation, reflected in the translator’s footnote steering readers to rather extensive English-language reviews of the full four volumes. (For reviews of Wang’s previous books, see The Politics of Imagining Asia (CH, Dec'11, 49-2236) and The End of the Revolution (CH, Jan'11, 48-2855). The present book is an erudite, stimulating, thought provoking, nuanced, but highly condensed overture to Wang’s ambitious macro history of the formation of Chinese intellectual modernity. Sensitive to both continuities and disruptions, Wang engages traditional thought as well as Western and Japanese scholarly discourse. As intended, this volume leaves readers wanting more, hoping for a translation of the full work. In the meantime, it illuminates 21st-century Chinese discourse and provides ample food for thought for scholars grappling with interpreting modern and premodern Chinese intellectual history. It is not for beginners but will greatly reward as well as challenge advanced students of Chinese intellectual history and of modernization. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Welles, Gideon. The Civil War diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's secretary of the Navy: the Click here to enter text. original manuscript edition, ed. by William E. Gienapp and Erica L. Gienapp. Illinois/Knox College Lincoln Studies Center, 2014. 825p bibl index afp ISBN 9780252038525 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9780252096433 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Welles, USN Secretary 1861–1869, was at the center of Union prosecution of the Civil War. Extremely diligent and busy with all manner of naval minutia, he also found time to ☐ Recommended maintain a detailed diary that has become one of the primary sources for understanding both the Northern war effort and the federal government at its highest levels. A vitriolic scribe, Welles commented on all manner of activity from disputes over war aims and the failures of his colleagues to matters of Washington gossip and observations on Lincoln’s greatness. He edited his own entries, sometimes much later. The diaries, held by the Library of Congress, were published in 1911 and 1960 editions. The editors returned to the original diaries, removed any of Welles's revisions, and cleaned up their organization, publishing the diaries’ entries as they originally appeared. In addition to extensive annotated footnotes, the volume includes much supplementary material, including profiles of cabinet members, a retrospective written after Welles left office, additional diary entries from the 1911 edition not in the LC manuscript, and numerous letters. Extremely important for all libraries, including those holding the 1911 and 1960 editions, because of its unexpurgated presentation. Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries Faculty Member: Williams, Michael. To pass on a good earth: the life and work of Carl O. Sauer, by Michael Click here to enter text. Williams with David Lowenthal and William M. Denevan. Virginia, 2014. 252p bibl index afp 91 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ISBN 9780813935669 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9780813935775 ebook, $45.00 ☐ Required Although much has previously been written of parts of the life and much of the thought of geographer Carl Sauer, the work under review constitutes the first biography of one of the ☐ Recommended US's best-known geographers of the 20th century. Williams (Oxford) wrote a large part of this work prior to his passing; Lowenthal and Denevan joined to complete the study. After a rigorous education in his early years (part of it in Germany), Sauer commenced his university education at Chicago, followed by teaching at the Salem Normal School, the University of Michigan, and, in 1923, the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent the remainder of his career. In the latter institution, Sauer shared with historians and anthropologists and unilaterally developed what he was to call “cultural geography.” To that end, he undertook much fieldwork, especially in Latin America. En route, Sauer won his way to many publications and demonstrated with a splendid fusillade of articles the legitimacy of historical geography, complete with a winning literary style and a following of his 37 successful doctoral students. This excellent work, carefully annotated, constitutes a significant part of the history of US geography in the making. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above

92 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Hospitality & Tourism Management Faculty Member: Gruen, J. Philip. Manifest destinations: cities and tourists in the nineteenth-century American Click here to enter text. West. Oklahoma, 2014. 286p bibl index afp ISBN 9780806144887 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required In 1898, the around-the-world English bicyclist John Foster Fraser spent a few days in San Francisco, disappointed that he never saw a cowboy or a gunfight in the street. Like all too ☐ Recommended many tourists, Fraser misunderstood the built environment of the western US. Tourists flocked to Chicago to see the stockyards, Denver for the Rockies, Salt Lake City for the Mormons, and San Francisco for Chinatown. They came to see if the buildings equaled those of the east or Europe, to enjoy the natural environment, or to satisfy their prurient curiosity. As an architectural historian, Gruen (Washington State Univ., Pullman) takes special interest in the buildings and ways others perceived them. Many thought the modern skyscrapers with their steel skeleton construction disingenuous, and balloon frame architecture, both products of Chicago, appeared flimsy. Tourists vacillated between the bird’s eye views and joyous brochures prepared by boosters to showcase the natural scenery and built achievements with the reality of grime, dirt, and disorder. Gruen’s use of booster literature and travelers’ accounts produces a readable, intriguing analysis of life in the 19th- century urban West. His monograph fits nicely with Catherine Cocks's Doing the West (2001). Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries Faculty Member: Laing, Jennifer. Explorer travellers and adventure tourism, by Jennifer Laing and Warwick Click here to enter text. Frost. Channel View, 2014. 263p bibl index ISBN 9781845414580 cloth, $159.95; ISBN 9781845414573 pbk, $49.95 ☐ Required Laing and Frost (both, La Trobe Univ., Australia) deliver a wonderfully written volume highlighting the nexus of exploration and tourism. The impetus for this work comes from the ☐ Recommended typological categorization of travelers (categories made popular by Erik Cohen include "explorers" and "drifters"). According to Liang and Frost, these explorers set the trends for travel holidays, shaping people's desires and helping to forge travel demand. In four main parts (spread across 12 chapters), the authors intimately examine the "worlds and influence of explorer travelers through their own firsthand accounts." This is a sound approach that helps establish the existence of this particular niche form of travel, and provides rich descriptions of the phenomenon that should offer future researchers considerable material to work with. Even though explorer traveler is not a novel concept, the authors have done well to build on extant conceptualizations concerning the phenomenon in an effort to develop theory. Given the specificity of the topic, libraries with extensive travel and tourism collections should consider purchasing this volume. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty Faculty Member: The Wiley Blackwell companion to tourism, ed. by Alan A. Lew, C. Michael Hall, and Allan M. Click here to enter text. Williams. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 650p bibl index ISBN 9781118474488 cloth, $195.00 ☐ Required As what is probably the 50th anniversary of the study of tourism as an academic discipline approaches, a “companion to tourism” charting the state of the tourism art would appear to ☐ Recommended be both timely and necessary. This companion, like many other reference works, is both good and bad in attempting this kind of comprehensive coverage. High points of the 50 chapters are the quality of the editing, the contributors, and the content they provide, albeit with much that might be seen as marginal, jargon ridden, and arcane. The editors are giants in the field, and the contributors are in the forefront of tourism research. A strength of the volume is that many contributors, such as Donald Getz on events and Tom Hinch et al. on sport tourism, bring readers up to date on their earlier seminal contributions to the discipline. The weakness of this companion is what is (invariably?) left out. There is a chapter on medical tourism, for example, but no reference to areas such as dark tourism, slow tourism, garden tourism, “voluntourism,” or attractions—all germane to 21st-century tourism yet all ignored. Indeed, this companion to tourism has only one reference in the index to Disney! Verdict? Excellent … as far as it goes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- 93 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Thomas, Lynnell L. Desire and disaster in New Orleans: tourism, race, and historical memory. Click here to enter text. Duke, 2014. 256p bibl index afp ISBN 9780822357148 cloth, $89.95; ISBN 9780822357285 pbk, $24.95 ☐ Required Tourism as an economic development strategy in the urban South piqued historians’ attention in the past decade. Stephanie Yuhl focused on Charleston (A Golden Haze of ☐ Recommended Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston, 2005), and J. Mark Souther (New Orleans on Parade, 2006) and Anthony Stanonis (Creating the Big Easy, 2006) examined New Orleans. Thomas (American studies, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) extends this inquiry, contending that “New Orleans’s tourism narrative represents black culture through two distinct but interesting frames: desires and disaster.” Catering to a predominantly white clientele, heritage tourism professionals have constructed and promoted a “desirable” black cultural experience featuring Creole cuisine, “second line” parades and jazz funerals, and exotic stories about quadroon balls and voodoo rites. Thomas contends that the dominant heritage narrative subtly but pervasively interprets emancipation and desegregation as diminishing this culture and cultivating a post–civil rights urban environment beset by poverty, crime, immorality, educational failure, and political corruption. Applying this thesis, Thomas analyzes how desire and disaster influenced media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and steered the city’s efforts to recover from that disaster by rekindling the familiar heritage narrative. Both provocative and compelling, this work should stimulate additional scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Tourism methodologies: new perspectives, practices and proceedings, ed. by Jane Widtfeldt Click here to enter text. Meged et al. Copenhagen Business School, 2014. 235p ISBN 9788763003179 pbk, $50.00 ☐ Required Eighteen scholars, mostly hailing from Scandinavian universities, contributed to this anthology of new and innovative approaches to an already well-established repertoire of ☐ Recommended tourism methodologies. Chapters include discussions about rethinking the division between primary and secondary materials, the use of travel information posted by tourists on social media networks, and the employment of mobile methods in tourism research. Other topics include applying the actor-network theory to tourism, adopting smart phone apps in tourism research, and using the qualitative comparative method as a means of bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative approaches. This ambitious and highly theoretical work, which addresses how the issues of meaning-making, mobility, and performance are integrated elements in the research process, will be useful for graduate students and seasoned researchers who already have a solid grounding in traditional and current tourism research methodologies. Undergraduates and beginning researchers should see more- introductory works, such as Stephen L. J. Smith’s Practical Tourism Research (2010) or Sirakaya-Turk et al.’s Research Methods for Leisure, Recreation and Tourism (2011). Summing Up: Recommended. Tourism and leisure collections serving graduate students, faculty, and researchers

94 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Human Services Faculty Member: Anderson, Steven G. New strategies for social innovation: market-based approaches for Click here to enter text. assisting the poor. Columbia, 2014. 329p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231159227 cloth, $105.00; ISBN 9780231159234 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required An academic with substantial experience in politics and public service, Anderson (Michigan State Univ.) challenges the traditional assumption that helping disadvantaged citizens is ☐ Recommended purely a government responsibility. In this book, he examines four market-based approaches to addressing fundamental human needs: corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, private sustainable development, and fair trade. Anderson then discusses the historical and political development of each approach and identifies its primary beneficiaries and its strengths and limitations. He forms balanced assessments of these social innovations: corporate social responsibility initiatives may benefit corporate employees and subcontractors, consumers, and local community members, but such activities are almost always based within a profit-making framework. Social entrepreneurship has encouraged business experts to become involved in solving difficult social problems, but, so far, proof of its effectiveness is hard to find. The author continues with capable analyses of the latter two approaches (private sustainable development and fair trade), similarly weighing their advantages and disadvantages within society. Noting progress as well as the need for more research and experimentation, Anderson argues for the potential of market-based approaches as growing and necessary companions to, or replacements for, traditional reliance on government assistance. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Chin, Jean Lau. Diversity and leadership, by Jean Lau Chin and Joseph E. Trimble. SAGE Click here to enter text. Publications, 2015. 320p bibl index afp ISBN 9781452257891 pbk, $55.00 ☐ Required In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgement among leadership scholars (and others) that the academic discipline of leadership studies is in dire need of new blood. In this ☐ Recommended excellent book, Chin (Adelphi Univ.) and Trimble (Western Washington Univ.) argue that in light of the emergence of increasingly global and diverse societies, leadership theory must now include multiculturalism and leadership diversity. The authors cover an impressive amount of social science research on both leadership theory and diversity theory, including recommendations for developing leadership diversity in various contexts and organizations. However, critics will identify three shortcomings: the book focuses more on the development of culturally competent, diverse leaders than followers, perpetuating the myth of follower passivity; there is no discussion (or acknowledgement) of evolutionary leadership theory, and therefore no "ultimate" biological explanations are offered for in- group/out-group bias or racial, ethnic, and gender identity; and there is no attempt to integrate leadership and diversity with political theory or deal with the use of aggression to advance political goals and subdue intolerant organizations. Despite these comparatively minor omissions, this well-written, thoroughly referenced scholarly work provides a much-needed initial foray into the convergence of state-of-the-art social scientific research on leadership and diversity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Clawson, Dan. Unequal time: gender, class, and family in employment schedules, by Dan Click here to enter text. Clawson and Naomi Gerstel. Russell Sage Foundation, 2014. 324p bibl index afp ISBN 9780871540140 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required In a very well-researched book, sociologists Clawson and Gerstel (both, Univ. of Massachusetts) argue that workers’ control of their time is not only a key employment issue ☐ Recommended for the 21st century, but also critical to understanding social and economic inequality. The authors do a deep dive into four professions within the growing US health care sector— doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and certified nursing assistants. In each of these cases they highlight the intersections of class and gender (and race, to a lesser 95 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 extent), noting how control over time (or, more aptly, the lack thereof) contributes to the growing divides in workplaces and the labor market. The authors discuss the “norms of unpredictability” in the working time of health care professionals and how it manifests quite differently depending on the occupation a worker holds. Clawson and Gerstel have made significant contributions to literature on workplace flexibility and inequality studies, and this reviewer is hopeful that this work will serve to inform policies in both workplaces and governments that can truly support all workers’ control of their time, and not just privilege a select few. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Craig, David M. Health care as a social good: religious values and American democracy. Click here to enter text. Georgetown University, 2014. 268p bibl index afp ISBN 9781626161382 cloth, $49.95; ISBN 9781626160774 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781626160989 ebook, $29.95 ☐ Required This book presents a range of important information with profound implications. It could become as significant for discussions of American life as Habits of the Heart (1985; updated ☐ Recommended ed., 2008) and The Good Society (CH, Mar'92, 29-4200), both by Robert N. Bellah et al., were for the late 20th century. Craig (religious studies, Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ. Indianapolis) draws upon the history of health care delivery, fieldwork among health care managers and providers, and analysis of economic constraints and ethical norms implicated in health care services and needs. Part 1 frames the discussion in terms of health care alternatively viewed as a private benefit, a public right, and/or a social good. Part 2 assesses policies, markets, and the politics of health care availability. As with Bellah's works, social ethics provides the hinge on which the discussion turns. Craig's treatment enlarges and corrects some of the perspectives put forward in Reforming America's Health Care System: The Flawed Vision of Obamacare, ed. by Scott Atlas with Richard Epstein et al. (CH, May'11, 48-5207), and goes deeper than the discerning treatment in T. R. Reid’s The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (CH, Mar’10, 47-3846). Summing Up: Recommended. All academic, general, and professional library collections Faculty Member: Farrell, Chris. Unretirement: how baby boomers are changing the way we think about work, Click here to enter text. community, and the good life. 1st U.S. ed. Bloomsbury, 2014. 245p index ISBN 9781620401576 cloth, $26.00 ☐ Required Millions of baby boomers will have reached the age of 65 by 2030. These boomers will deplete Social Security benefits and reduce their personal spending (they might not have ☐ Recommended saved for retirement), thereby harming the US economy. Farrell, an economics and finance authority and a renowned journalist, counters that many older Americans work later in life, earn incomes, delay filing for Social Security, and maintain meaningful lifestyles, thus cushioning the US economy and making it possible for social systems to assist those who cannot work into later years. The book's structure is solid and complete, with a preface, 14 chapters, an afterword, an appendix, and notes. The notes section lists an assortment of references, but most remain in-text, to be located by readers through simple Internet searches. Relevant song lyrics introduce each chapter. The useful appendix provides URLs, books, and resources on an assortment of topics, including unretirement, encore careers, entrepreneurship, aging and work, and finances for planning purposes. The author writes in non-complicated narrative style, using future verb tenses for data-driven predictions, drawing on research to support his arguments, and narrating stories about company and individual activities to elucidate his assertions. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Gasaway, Brantley W. Progressive evangelicals and the pursuit of social justice. North Click here to enter text. Carolina, 2014. 324p bibl index afp ISBN 9781469617725 pbk, $29.95 ☐ Required In the US, one typically associates Protestant Evangelicalism with the religious Right and political conservatism. This work discusses a smaller, lesser-known progressive group within ☐ Recommended Evangelicalism—important for highlighting a lesser-known wing and serving as a reminder that although Evangelical progressives are a minority within the contemporary movement, progressivism was a significant force within Evangelicalism for much of its history. Gasaway 96 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 (Bucknell Univ.) offers a historical narrative of the emergence of contemporary Evangelical progressivism in the mid-1970s before addressing a number of issues important to progressive Evangelicals, including race, gender, poverty, war, and abortion. Of particular interest, given the current climate of protest around issues of race and law enforcement, is the chapter on race, in which the author does an excellent job of parsing the differences between progressive Evangelicals and their more centrist and conservative counterparts. Also of note is the way in which Gasaway discusses the fine line progressive Evangelicals attempted to draw on the issue of abortion. This book offers an important perspective on progressive Evangelicalism and will prove valuable to audiences ranging from students and scholars to general readers with an interest in either Evangelicalism or religious progressivism. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Jaffe, Lee. How talking cures: revealing Freud's contributions to all psychotherapies. Rowman Click here to enter text. & Littlefield, 2014. 100p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442239890 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9781442239906 ebook, $64.99 ☐ Required Jaffe (Univ. of California, San Diego) offers a brief but brilliant account of the ways in which the elements of Freudian therapeutic action play out in both individual and couples ☐ Recommended therapy. Jaffe identifies six generic modes of therapeutic action in the writings of Freud: direct support, introjection, catharsis, insight, identification, and working through. These six modes account for the change process in psychoanalysis, and some combination of them accounts for the mutative process in most psychotherapies, including the popular cognitive- behavioral therapy. The brevity of this account of psychotherapeutic action—the book comprises six chapters (one an introduction) plus a preface and a conclusion—makes it eminently suitable for teaching mental health professionals, whether psychoanalytically inclined or not. Students of psychology, psychoanalysis, and social work will find this an indispensable introduction to diagnosis and treatment. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates throufh faculty and professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Madsbjerg, Christian. The moment of clarity: using the human sciences to solve your toughest Click here to enter text. business problems, by Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. 214p index afp ISBN 9781422191903 cloth, $28.00 ☐ Required Madsbjerg and Rasmussen, both consultants on innovation and strategy, revisit the strategic mantra of thinking outside the box. Although they acknowledge that traditional, rational ☐ Recommended approaches to management and strategy often work well to increase productivity, the authors use theories and tools from the human sciences—anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and psychology—to offer their “sensemaking” approach as a method to supplement “default thinking” to improve strategy making and performance. Through case studies and their direct experience with LEGO, Samsung, Adidas, Coloplast, and Intel, the authors focus on how people experience the world in conjunction with the rational approach and offer abductive reasoning as a general approach. In essence, their recommendation is to use a qualitative analysis from the humanities in addition to currently used quantitative tools. Their own summary says “getting people right is the key to taking your business out of a fog." They offer a number of examples to make the point. The book offers some useful information, but managers and business owners may benefit from supplementing their reading with a large available library of articles and books on social dimensions of work and organizational sociology. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Murdie, Amanda. Help or harm: the human security effects of international NGOs. Stanford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN 9780804791977 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780804792479 ebook, $60.00 ☐ Required Building upon constructivist international relations theory as articulated in Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink’s seminal work on NGOs, Activists Beyond Borders (CH, Dec'98, 36-2418), ☐ Recommended Murdie (Univ. of Missouri) skillfully questions what makes these actors successful in improving human security. Her political analysis addresses service as well as advocacy NGOs 97 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 and offers measured doses of both praise and critique. Shared values indeed serve as a powerful tool operating below and above the state, but underlying motives are not always as angelic as some NGO scholars would have readers believe. As Murdie outlines, some NGOs make decisions to please international donors rather than address local needs. Even worse, others are rent-seeking operations designed to enrich their leadership. Chapters 4 and 5 form the heart of the analysis, applying game-theoretical models outlined in chapter 3 to examine groups targeting freedom from want (service) and fear (advocacy). International relations scholars and practitioners will find Murdie’s work engaging. Despite its human rights focus, the theoretical argument is generalizable to other issue arenas, such as the environment, and a welcome addition to the broader “second image reversed” literature, which highlights how intergovernmental organizations are not the only actors shaping domestic politics. NGOs do too. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Reich, Adam D. Selling our souls: the commodification of hospital care in the United States. Click here to enter text. Princeton, 2014. 233p ISBN 9780691160405 cloth, $39.50 ☐ Required If there is one thing people can be assured of, it is that perspectives on health care vary. Is it a right or a privilege? Can it be bought or sold? Beginning with this latter concept of ☐ Recommended commodification, Reich (sociologist, Columbia Univ.) focuses on hospital care as it is organized and delivered in three separate institutions within the same medium-sized California community: "PubliCare," "HolyCare," and "GroupCare." The work is, accordingly, divided into three parts, each with a chapter on the origins of the hospital, the inconsistencies (contradictions) in the hospital’s conception of care, the organization of physician work, and the organization of the delivery of care within the hospital. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, Reich shapes a thoughtful account of how hospital care is differentiated and marketed in each context. Moreover, the comparative analysis serves to illustrate the inherent problems and risks that accompany the different representations of hospital care. The author's writing does suffer a bit from jargon, but the text is easy to read. Eight pages each of chapter notes and references support the text. This book is an important resource for academic audiences and professionals in the health disciplines as well as those in the social sciences. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Rogers, Adam. Proof: the science of booze. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 264p bibl index Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780547897967 cloth, $26.00; ISBN 9780547898322 ebook, $26.00 ☐ Required The topic of this book, alcoholic beverages, is similar to that of Roger Barth's The Chemistry of Beer (CH, Oct'14, 52-0848), but Rogers (journalist, Wired) goes into more detail and also ☐ Recommended covers distilled beverages. After the introductory section, in chapter 1, "Yeast," he discusses the fungus that is the essential ingredient for fermentation, a natural but domesticated process that is the basis for creating all alcoholic beverages. Subsequent chapters include "Sugar," "Fermentation" (especially the history of domestication), "Distillation" (with an equally fabulous history), "Aging" (whiskeys and brandies), and "Smell and Taste" (incredibly complicated and poorly understood). Chapter 7, "Body and Brain," covers the effects of alcohol consumption, ranging from drinking small amounts through over drinking; these effects are also not well understood. Chapter 8, "Hangover," addresses both causes and remedies. In the conclusion, Rogers further describes the social aspects and psychology of drinking, especially in bars. He describes the science reasonably accurately throughout the book, except for some glaring errors in chemistry in chapter 7. Overall, an entertaining and informative work. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and undergraduate students Faculty Member: Salamon, Lester M. Leverage for good: an introduction to the new frontiers of philanthropy Click here to enter text. and social investment. Oxford, 2014. 162p ISBN 9780199376520 cloth, $74.00; ISBN 9780199376537 pbk, $19.95 98 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required This work is a companion volume of New Frontiers of Philanthropy (2014), a collection of readings in philanthropy and social investment that Salamon (Director, Center for Civil Society ☐ Recommended Studies, Johns Hopkins Univ.) edited. This new volume is a modestly expanded version of the introduction to that work. That said, Leverage for Good stands on its own as a useful overview of topics that New Frontiers covers in depth. Salamon outlines contemporary philanthropy’s new actors (capital aggregators, secondary markets, social stock exchanges, foundations acting as philanthropic banks, quasi-public investment funds, enterprise brokers, capacity builders, online portals and exchanges, corporate-originated charitable funds, conversion foundations, and funding collaboratives) and new tools (loans and credit enhancements, fixed-income securities, securitization, equity and quasi-equity, social impact bonds, microinsurance, socially responsible investing and purchasing, and grants, prizes and crowd-sourcing). The work also includes explanations of the supply and demand reasons for the appearance of these actors and tools now in particular, discussions of the obstacles that stand in the way of philanthropic and social investment success, and proposals for what can be done to overcome these obstacles. All in all, this concise introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible roadmap to important advances in the areas of philanthropy and social investment. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Schechtman, Marya. Staying alive: personal identity, practical concerns, and the unity of a Click here to enter text. life. Oxford, 2014. 214p bibl index ISBN 9780199684878 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required Questions about the nature of both personhood and personal identity have been at the forefront of human inquiry since Socrates's famed claim, "Know thyself." In this work, ☐ Recommended Schechtman (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago) continues to build on her previous discussion of these and related matters. Building on her earlier defense of the narrative self-constitution view as presented in The Constitution of Selves (CH, Jun'97, 34-5626), Schechtman delivers a new account of personhood—considered both in terms of synchronic and diachronic identity. This new account does not provide necessary and sufficient conditions for identity— Schechtman convincingly makes the case that there are not any. However, she provides strong arguments for an account of persons as the "loci of interpersonal interaction whose integrity as unified wholes results from complex and dynamic interactions among biological, psychological, and social processes." By highlighting the practical nature of her approach while effectively responding to some key challenges posed by the animalist tradition, Schechtman brings a refreshingly new perspective to an area of philosophical literature that desperately needed revitalization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Sustainable lifestyles and the quest for plenitude: case studies of the new economy, ed. by Click here to enter text. Juliet B. Schor and Craig J. Thompson. Yale, 2014. 264p ISBN 9780300192322 pbk, $25.00 ☐ Required This is a solid collection of case studies of people forming communities centered on the ideas of the “new economy.” The key idea is that communities can reject capitalism as usual and ☐ Recommended commit to live within the limits of the natural world. These communities take a variety of forms but share the vision of equalitarian social relations and self-sufficiency while de- emphasizing paid employment. The ethnographic case studies include urban settings (Boston, Chicago) as well as rural (France, Alaska). The cases are well written and referenced. There is a concluding chapter critical of the plenitude movement for ignoring the middle class and a chapter that places the movement in the context of political economy. This book will appeal to sociologists and anthropologists interested in rural society, sustainable community, and social movements. It will also appeal to practitioners of community-supported agriculture and community building. The arguments reflect an earlier work by Schor (Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, 2010) as well as the classic Small Is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher (1973). Each chapter includes a bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries

99 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Journalism & New Media Studies Faculty Member: Bailard, Catie Snow. Democracy's double-edged sword: how Internet use changes citizens' Click here to enter text. views of their government. Johns Hopkins, 2014. 162p bibl index afp ISBN 9781421415253 pbk, $34.95; ISBN 9781421415260 ebook, $34.95 ☐ Required Ballard (George Washington Univ.) has written an outstanding book on democracy and the Internet. While the democratic implications of the web have been widely explored, Ballard ☐ Recommended focuses on a narrow research question: does the Internet contribute to citizens’ willingness to engage in political action? She derives four hypotheses from a dense theoretical framework that is well informed by the literature. These hypotheses are then tested with a wealth of data collected from several sources, including field experiments. The result is a highly original exploration of the democratic potential of the Internet that will fully satisfy neither cyber- optimists (those convinced of the revolutionary democratic implications of the Internet) nor cyber-pessimists (those convinced of the opposite). While the book’s contribution is empirical, it is also a model of sophisticated research for future work in this area. This is a book written primarily for academics in media studies, political science, and other related disciplines. While undergraduates and a general audience may struggle with the discussions of some findings in the analytical chapters, the book is very well written. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections Faculty Member: Battistella, Edwin L. Sorry about that: the language of public apology. Oxford, 2014. 217p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780199300914 cloth, $24.95 ☐ Required Though apologies are a fact of life, one rarely encounters analysis of the language people use to apologize or of how apologies can be used for other purposes. Building on the work of ☐ Recommended sociologist Erving Goffman, Battistella (Southern Oregon Univ.) has written a readable, well- organized examination of the language of apology. What distinguishes Battistella’s study is the scope of his examples: he includes apologies from both Richard Nixon and Barack Obama and apologies from business, entertainment, and media. Much of the earlier scholarship surrounding this topic has been narrow and comparative; other work—for example, Aaron Lazare’s On Apology (CH, Jan'05, 42-3108)—has focused on the emotional impact of apologies on relationships and the people involved. By contrast, Battistella takes an analytical approach: he examines why people apologize, the strategies they use, why apologies succeed or fail, and how one can better understand what is being said in an apology. The book is an easy read, and the author even includes a section at the end that invites readers to practice their own analysis of apologies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Bazin, André. André Bazin's new media, ed. and trans. by Dudley Andrew. California, 2014. Click here to enter text. 337p index afp ISBN 9780520283565 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780520283572 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9780520959392 ebook, $29.95 ☐ Required Bazin died in 1958. For him, new media meant not digital media but new analog media: television, 3-D movies, Cinerama, CinemaScope, VistaVision. Much as the advent of digital ☐ Recommended media prompts contemporary theorists to rethink traditional media, the innovations of the 1950s prompted Bazin to rethink his notions of realism, as this collection of his writings reveals. Live television created a sense of intimacy and presence and “an illusion of ubiquity,” conveying “the simultaneity of an object’s existence with [one's] perception of it.” On the other hand, 3-D cinema provided an illusion of depth but “add[ed] nothing essential to the action of flat cinema.” It is Cinerama and CinemaScope that could “renew [one's] vision.” Their wider angle of view contrasted with the narrower range of 3-D, suggesting that realism lay in the rendering of space not depth, in interactions within a broader frame between “man and nature.” These technologies made space “a dramatic component of the event being filmed.” Andrew also includes a marvelous interview with Renoir and Rossellini, who discuss making films for television. Renoir wanted to make his Dr. Cordelier “in the spirit of live television”; Rossellini talks of making his ten-part film, India, with television (and the 100 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 expansiveness it permits) in mind. This is excellent cultural criticism. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Becker, Jo. Forcing the spring: inside the fight for marriage equality. Penguin Press, 2014. Click here to enter text. 470p index ISBN 9781594204449 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This account is a superb examination of the most important civil rights issue of the early-21st century. It begins with the campaign to defeat Proposition 8 in California. This is political and ☐ Recommended legal journalism on the issue of marriage equality at its best. Becker was able to gain incredible access to the plaintiffs' team of lawyers. Readers see the legal strategies develop, the politics of the same-sex marriage issue play out, and the human sides of the story on vivid display. The book reads like a thriller, unfolding page by page with an examination of the trial seeking to overturn Proposition 8 that brought together the legal odd couple of Ted Olson and David Boies. Becker examines the key players in the Department of Justice and the White House (including the evolution of President Obama on the issue) and the initial reluctance of the gay community to pursue victory through the judicial process following the passage of Proposition 8. Although Becker was not given access to the internal workings of the defense team, lead defense lawyer Chuck Cooper later spent many hours with the author explaining the defense's thinking and strategy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduate students at all levels Faculty Member: Brownell, Kathryn Cramer. Showbiz politics: Hollywood in American political life. North Click here to enter text. Carolina, 2014. 311p bibl index afp ISBN 9781469617916 cloth, $39.95 ☐ Required Joe McGinniss’s popular The Selling of the President (CH, Jan'70) surprised many readers with its detailed account of how advertising agencies and political consultants successfully ☐ Recommended marketed and sold Richard Nixon as a presidential product. Now Brownell (history, Purdue Univ.) demonstrates how show business and media savviness have been integral to American political life since at least the early 1930s. In her introduction she writes that entertainment "was not a by-product of the shift toward advertising and consultants but a driving force in this historical development." Showbiz Politics traces this fascinating history through several significant case studies: the California governor’s race in 1934; the propagandistic entertainment produced by movie studios during WW II; Hollywood’s political organizations, such as the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the Hollywood Democratic Committee, and the Motion Picture Industry Council, during the Cold War; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s collaborations with advertising agencies and movie stars in the 1950s; John F. Kennedy’s construction of a celebrity image in his 1960 campaign; and Nixon’s careful orchestration of the media in his 1968 campaign. Brownell writes clearly, concisely, and incisively, using a variety of archival, manuscript, and secondary sources that nicely illuminate her subject. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Cockburn, Patrick. The Jihadis return: ISIS and the new Sunni uprising. OR Books, 2015. 144p Click here to enter text. ISBN 9781939293596 pbk, $15.00; ISBN 9781939293602 ebook, $10.00 ☐ Required This timely little book by Cockburn (The Independent, London) on the rise of ISIS and the widespread failure to see it coming will not disappoint those who are used to his penetrating ☐ Recommended journalism. He shows that before the takeover of Mosul in June 2014, the media had largely stopped reporting on Iraq, and he argues that since 2001 there has been a gap between reality and the impressions the media presented, as journalists who cover battles do not stay around to understand the broader situation. Also, he opines that Western governments deceived themselves. He points to the absurdity of the notion of division between the extremists and “America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies” in Syria and argues that aid to the latter helped to destabilize Iraq. He deplores the failure to understand the centrality of Saudi Arabia (and its anti-Shia, anti-Sufi Wahhabi doctrines) and of Pakistan in movements that the “war on terror” was directed at and suggests that it may be too late for these two countries to stop the Frankenstein they created. This is an important work on today’s Middle East and on its presentation in the Western media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels 101 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Cronin, Thomas W. Visual ecology, by Thomas W. Cronin et al. Princeton, 2014. 405p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780691151847 cloth, $69.50 ☐ Required Cronin (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County) and colleagues provide a tour de force of light and vision, spanning the realms of physics, physiology, neurobiology, and even ecology. The ☐ Recommended volume's 13 chapters are devoted to topics such as the physics of light and optics; photo pigments and photoreceptors; the diversity of eyes among animals; spatial, color, and polarization vision; the effects of environmental media on the transmission of light; dim light vision; and motion detection and tracking. The final two chapters, "Visual Orientation and Navigation" and "Signals and Camouflage," represent the main ecological components of the volume. People take vision for granted, yet the experience of vision represents only a small part of the great diversity in visual detection in what is considered the “nonvisible” portion of the spectrum. Numerous examples are illustrated with color photographs and charts. Various filters are used to illustrate that organisms see the same object differently than human observers do. Capitalization of species names would have clarified some discussions and figure legends. For the most part, the complexities of physics and physiology are rendered with sufficient clarity for nontechnical readers who can enjoy the copious illustrations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals; informed general readers. Faculty Member: Lichter, S. Robert. Politics is a joke!: how TV comedians are remaking political life, by S. Click here to enter text. Robert Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, and Jonathan S. Morris with Daniel Amundson. Westview, 2014. 253p bibl index ISBN 9780813347172 pbk, $32.00 ☐ Required Taking advantage of data gathered by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Lichter (communication, George Mason Univ.) and his coauthors Baumgartner and Morris (both, ☐ Recommended political science, East Carolina Univ.) did extensive research and provide a thorough examination of “late night” humor about presidential campaigns and politics in general from 1992 to 2012. The late night comedians' jokes are analyzed and categorized. Humor scholars may be disappointed that the style of the jokes, as described by Rod Martin in The Psychology of Humor (CH, Jan'08, 45-2902), has not been assessed. As might be expected, however, most of the examples (drawn from 102,435 jokes in total) are aggressive, targeting sex and dishonesty. The study considers politicians in particular and politics in general, but mainly examines candidates and whether the negative humor brought about unfavorable ratings. Graphs of ratings--showing directed jokes and unfavorable news--show clear effects on some occasions and no impact on others. The correlations are small but significant. Jokes and negative news are related to ratings but seem independent of each other. As a final note, the efforts of politicians to retaliate indicate a positive effect of self-deprecation. This book is informative, entertaining, and timely. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Plaisance, Patrick Lee. Virtue in media: the moral psychology of excellence in news and public Click here to enter text. relations. Routledge, 2015. 233p bibl index ISBN 9780415707435 cloth, $160.00; ISBN 9780415707442 pbk, $49.95 ☐ Required Plaisance (Colorado State Univ.) does an admirable job of expanding understanding of journalism and public relations ethics. Reinforcing the Aristotelian approach to media ethics, ☐ Recommended this study of moral exemplars in the two professions challenges traditional approaches. Grounded in moral psychology, Plaisance’s intriguing volume identifies 24 practitioners, 12 in each of the two professions, equally divided by gender and encompassing a diverse group. He examines each exemplar to determine his/her life accomplishments and professional predilections, and he weaves the moral fabric the two dozen create to show how they relate to one another on a moral level. Plaisance argues persuasively that moral actions result from moral motivations rather than from an embrace of duties or concern about consequences. Moral behavior, he contends, stems from conscientiousness, commitment, and care, not from rational determinations. Humans are intrinsically moral, though individual morality evolves over time. Plaisance’s approach has pedagogical implications: it suggests 102 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 that at least part of a media ethics curriculum should involve reading about worthy practitioners. This superb book opens interesting avenues to the examination of how practitioners, having good motives, can make nuanced and well-grounded ethical decisions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Salter, Anastasia. Flash: building the interactive web, by Anastasia Salter and John Murray. Click here to enter text. MIT, 2014. 180p bibl index ISBN 9780262028028 cloth, $24.95 ☐ Required Flash belongs to the "Platform Studies" series, which started with Racing the Beam, by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost (CH, Aug'09, 46-6853). Books in the series examine the systems ☐ Recommended underlying computing. Salter (Information Arts and Technologies, Univ. of Baltimore) and Murray (PhD student, Expressive Intelligence Studio, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) chronicle Flash as it evolved from a simple content creation tool to becoming a platform and its own form of media prior to its purported demise in 2011. The authors explore how Flash democratized interactive media production and unshackled its distribution for ubiquitous web, mobile, and game interactivity. The narrative is accessible to nontechnical audiences, but those with computer backgrounds will especially enjoy the finer technical details that trace Flash’s ongoing legacy to modern technologies and beyond. Game researchers will also appreciate the impact and influence of Flash on video games and playable media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students and researchers/faculty in game design hardware and software development programs Faculty Member: Twain, Mark. Mark Twain on potholes and politics: letters to the editor, ed. by Gary Click here to enter text. Scharnhorst. Missouri, 2014. 208p index afp ISBN 9780826220462 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780826273390 ebook, $35.00 ☐ Required This reviewer has been waiting for 30 years for the publication of this material. Scharnhorst (emer., Univ. of New Mexico) arranges the 101 letters (1866–1910) in chronological order to ☐ Recommended show the true, rough-house Twain who is lost when read as a “classic” author. As aggressive a moralist and critic as Twain seems in his more conventional fiction, here Twain is assertive, fantastically comic, lawlessly imaginative—unruly, strident, and irascible. This raw newspaper journalism is central to understanding the writing style of “Mark Twain” as it had to be adjusted by editors like Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Livy Clemens for his work to rise to universal stature as art. More important, the journalism is central to understanding the pragmatic, human-centered ideology that drives Twain's work. Twain's 1867 burlesques of the female suffrage movement lead to burlesque defenses of his own moral character in the 1870s and a later defense of universal suffrage; attacks on local incompetence and political dishonesty lead to later protests of everything from street construction to con games to exploitation of China following the Boxer Rebellion. Those who wish to understand the full spectrum of Twain’s genius need this unique collection, which—in style and substance— establishes the lifelong continuity of a great comic moralist at work. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Väliaho, Pasi. Biopolitical screens: image, power, and the neoliberal brain. MIT, 2014. 186p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9780262027472 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Väliaho (film and screen studies, Goldsmiths, Univ. of London, UK) maps uncharted critical terrain in what Nicholas Mirzoeff has termed “critical visuality studies” by skillfully joining ☐ Recommended recent work in neuroscience with current economic and political thought. Väliaho argues that contemporary culture is characterized by a “shift from ‘selfhood’ to ‘brainhood,’” a new model of subjectivity “that seeks to apply political power to virtually every aspect of human life and that conceptualizes and defines the 'human’ as … a productive entity rooted in biology and, more precisely, the brain.” In addition to a fascinating theoretical first chapter, the book includes three chapters in which Väliaho explores the power of first-person shooter video games to reshape perception and corporeality, the role that virtual reality technologies have played in treating post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility for video installation artists to disrupt “the current logics of 103 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 power.” Focusing on current issues and combining the most recent interdisciplinary tools to do so, this book is of the moment. It is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the intersection of images, politics, and media in 21st-century culture. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals

104 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Modern Languages Faculty Member: Castro, Rosalía de. On the edge of the river Sar: a feminist translation, ed. and trans. by Click here to enter text. Michelle Geoffrion-Vinci. Fairleigh Dickinson, 2014. 249p bibl index afp ISBN 9781611476798 cloth, $70.00 ☐ Required All the poems featured in this edition belong to Castro's last collection identified with the river Sar in Galicia, Spain, the poet's ancestral land. The selection is quite small, but the ☐ Recommended complete list of poems--a total of 98--appears in the back. The original text and its translation are placed on facing pages, so the reader can follow Geoffrion-Vinci's explanations on word choices and syntactic changes by checking the explanatory notes, which offer clear and specific details along with comments on English-Spanish contrasts. Informed by a feminist approach, the translation is enriched by the notes, many of which deal with use of pronouns to specify gender, subjectivity, and other issues that address the male-female binary opposition. Geoffrion-Vinci (Lafayette College) focuses on Castro's skill in mining the ambiguities created by Spanish with the female position in the language. The poems are grouped according to topics such as passion, fertility and barrenness, motherhood, agency, authorship, and subjectivity. These topics were not Castro's declared concern in the original publication, but the editor's interest is to demonstrate how she was already confronting these matters in her poetry. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduate through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Colonial itineraries of contemporary Mexico: literary and cultural inquiries, ed. by Oswaldo Click here to enter text. Estrada and Anna M. Nogar. Arizona, 2014. 317p bibl index afp ISBN 9780816531080 cloth, $55.00 ☐ Required Comprising 13 essays, an ample introduction, and a "postscriptum," this collection assesses particular literary and cultural aspects around the Mexican colonial period and its legacy in ☐ Recommended works written or created since 2000. The volume includes inquiries about poems, short stories, films, plays, children's books, chronicles, and novels by celebrated figures ranging from Sor Juana de la Cruz to Laura Esquivel, Carlos Monsiváis, and actor Gael García Bernal— in company with somewhat less-known figures such as Inma Chacón and Claudia Burr, among others. Estrada (Univ. of Arizona) and Nogar (Univ. of New Mexico), who contribute an essay each as well as the cowritten introduction, aim to present interdisciplinary works with new interpretations, innovative perspectives, and alternative readings that go beyond the theories developed around the historical Latin American novel during the last two decades of the 20th century. The book revisits Mexico’s colonia to problematize notions of personal and national identity. The contributors' goal is to offer different angles of analysis around diverse subjects of the Mexican colonia in connection to a present reality of marginalities and political power. This is a book for those interested in Mexican cultural studies and colonial literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Herrero, Javier. Lorca, young and gay: the making of an artist. Juan de la Cuesta, 2014. 359p Click here to enter text. bibl ISBN 9781588712493 cloth, $31.46 ☐ Required Herrero's stated intention is "to use new resources, and new readings of existing sources, to develop a clearer, more coherent, and more nuanced account of Lorca's development as an ☐ Recommended artist." Giving short shrift to the public portrait of Lorca, Herrero seeks out the private man, beginning with his childhood. He provides the reader with engaging insights into the persona of one of Spain's greatest artists, and his meticulous research is evident. In challenging longstanding depictions of Lorca, Herrero calls on documents he perused—school records, correspondence, and so on—and conversations with Lorca's extended family (the latter disclose how they cherished the author). Lorca's letters to his contemporaries reveal but do not publicize his acknowledged sexual orientation. This book recalls Nelson Orringer's Lorca in Tune with Falla (CH, Sep'14, 52-0159). Indeed, in the ninth chapter of the present study, the author focuses on Lorca and Manuel de Falla's relationship, which Falla characterized as "one of intense mutual personal and artistic understanding." Includes copious footnotes. 105 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Pasolini, Pier Paolo. The selected poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini, ed. and tr. by Stephen Click here to enter text. Sartarelli. Bilingual ed. Chicago, 2014. 494p bibl filmography index afp ISBN 9780226648446 cloth, $45.00 ☐ Required In the English-speaking world, Pasolini (1922–1975) is remembered today chiefly as filmmaker; somewhat as novelist, dramatist, literary critic, and political commentator; and ☐ Recommended scarcely at all as poet. This is in stark contrast to the way he is remembered in his native Italy. Pasolini's immense output of poetry—the writing of which was his earliest literary activity and a constant preoccupation throughout his life—remains almost unknown to his Anglophone admirers for the simple reason that relatively little of it has been translated. This substantial bilingual edition of 76 poems, most drawn from seven major collections published in Italian between 1954 and 1971 and including some that appeared posthumously in 2003, is a welcome step toward redressing the damaging imbalance in the image of Pasolini conventionally offered to readers of English. Sartarelli's intelligent, stylish translations are accompanied by copious and helpful notes, a bibliography and filmography, and a spirited and very useful introduction. Wide-ranging, authoritative, and handsomely produced, Sartarelli's volume establishes itself immediately as by far the best selection of Pasolini's poetry available in English; its publication is a landmark in Pasolini studies. Summing Up: Essential. All readers Faculty Member: Rupp, Stephen. Heroic forms: Cervantes and the literature of war. Toronto, 2014. 254p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9781442649125 cloth, $60.00 ☐ Required In this beautifully organized and engaging study, Rupp (Univ. of Toronto) analyzes the treatment of war and heroism in Cervantes’s writings and contemplates the portrayal of ☐ Recommended heroic sacrifice in La Numancia, viewed against traditional notions of valor. Rupp uses the author’s variations on pastoral conventions to suggest that this mode allowed Cervantes to comment on the norms and values of society. Correspondingly, Rupp reads Cervantes’s reflections on the holy wars of the period through the lens of romance, with emphasis on the captivity plays and the soldier Ruy Pérez de Viedma’s tale in Don Quijote. Rupp considers, as well, the role of the common citizen who is recruited into military service and then must adapt on return to civilian life. In scrutinizing this phenomenon, both Cervantes and Rupp rely on multiple genres, notably the picaresque. A superb contribution to early modern Spanish studies, Heroic Forms is, ultimately, a survey of the blending of genres in Cervantes with admirable nods to the sages of classical antiquity, the theory and practice of warfare, political and social history, and the range of Cervantes’s literary output. Rupp’s approach offers rich, thought-provoking, unique perspectives. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Scham, Michael. Lector ludens: the representation of games and play in Cervantes. Toronto, Click here to enter text. 2014. 384p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442648647 cloth, $70.00 ☐ Required The study of play and leisure activities seems to have an automatic connection to Don Quixote, whose protagonist goes mad from reading in his otiose hours and whose creator, ☐ Recommended Miguel de Cervantes, addresses his first words to the “idle reader.” Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class at the very end of the 19th century, and the classic cultural study Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga, appeared in 1938. As society has advanced, people have learned to take time for recreation and relaxation ever more seriously. Early modern Spain offers examples of spare moments used both poorly and constructively, but mainly poorly, because there is, as a rule, more of a story in eccentricity than in exemplarity. The first part of Lector Ludens focuses on play in general, with attention to the picaresque, the epic, the humanist tradition, and spiritual exercises. Part 2 concentrates on Don Quixote and part 3 on Cervantes’s novellas. The range and depth of the study are admirable. The approach is scholarly and distinctive—with some surprising and effective juxtapositions—and the treatment of the topic is, appropriately, entertaining. Highly recommended for academic libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division 106 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Venegas, José Luis. Transatlantic correspondence: modernity, epistolarity, and literature in Click here to enter text. Spain and Spanish America, 1898-1992. Ohio State, 2014. 241p bibl index afp ISBN 9780814212561 cloth, $64.95; ISBN 9780814293591 other, $14.95 ☐ Required There is much (often vicarious) enjoyment to be had in reading other people’s letters– especially if the correspondents are as distinguished as those Venegas (Wake Forest Univ.) ☐ Recommended investigates! Literary gossip is not the goal here; instead the author makes a brave attempt to plumb the “third space” afforded in personal correspondence to track temporal, epistemological, and geographical dislocations present in the symbolic partitions, borders, frontiers, and hierarchies that articulate the move from the disaster of 1898 to the 1992 quincentennial of Columbus's landing in the New World. On the whole, the method works well: usual categories such as “movement,” “generation,” and “national literature” are left behind in the conflictive points of convergence in Unamuno’s epistolamanía and Salinas’s defense of “epistolary communication,” and later postdictatorial transitions to democracy are charted intelligently in the “anamorphic” stances taken by Carmen Martín Gaite, Ricardo Piglia, and then Gabriel García Márquez—all responding to distinct historical conditions, but pointing up resistance to neoliberalism as the most worthy interpretation of modernity. An engaging prose style, useful bibliography, and good English translations of the quotations contribute greatly to this volume, which will be valuable to those interested in cultural studies within a literary framework in the Hispanic world. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty

107 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Music Faculty Member: Berry, Paul. Brahms among friends: listening, performance, and the rhetoric of allusion. Click here to enter text. Oxford, 2014. 389p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199982646 cloth, $45.00 ☐ Required This study reveals that Brahms's friends were more relevant to his composition process than previous biographers have indicated. Berry (Yale School of Music) makes his case using ☐ Recommended compositions for which sufficient evidence survives in the form of letters, manuscripts, copyists’ drafts, published volumes, and performance reviews. He supplements this information with carefully chosen music-analytic evidence and biographical facts. In ten chapters, each a separate case study, the author points to direct musical borrowing, emulated pieces or musical structures from friends, and Brahms’s repeated uses of his own compositional ideas. With these musical devices, Brahms made meaningful connections with his friends. Berry emphasizes that Brahms and his circle would have had a common understanding of these moments, that his compatriots would have heard and immediately understood his allusions. With the network of evidence he offers, Berry builds a remarkable sphere around each example, in so doing bringing the music to life as an artifact within 19th- century cultural life. Berry’s scholarly attention to detail and his ability to weave together many strands make this imaginative re-thinking of Brahms, his friends, and his compositions a convincing and revelatory study. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Cohen, Ronald D. Roots of the revival: American and British folk music in the 1950s, by Ronald Click here to enter text. D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson. Illinois, 2014. 182p index afp ISBN 9780252038518 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9780252080128 pbk, $25.00 ☐ Required Much has been written about the folk revival, but this book is unusual in examining its progression in both the US and Britain. Folk-music fans might be unaware that there was ☐ Recommended strong interest in American and British folk music before the highly publicized revival, and Cohen (emer., history, Indian Univ. Northwest) and Donaldson (independent scholar) have done that important research. The authors provide detailed and valuable background information on significant collectors, collections, and performers in the early 20th century and before, such as Cecil Sharp, who collected in his native Britain and in the US. They go on to discuss many seminal American and British revival figures. A particularly important American was Alan Lomax, whom the authors show to have been active and influential in Britain. Appropriately, the topic of the revival evokes commentary on the leftist politics in which so many of its major figures were involved. It also brings out interesting information on folk music’s business aspects. The authors, both respected writers on American folk music, carefully document their work, providing many informative footnotes and a significant bibliography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Decker, Todd. Who should sing "Ol' man river"?: the lives of an American song. Oxford, 2015. Click here to enter text. 241p index afp ISBN 9780199389186 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required Following up on his excellent Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical (CH, May'13, 50-4902), Decker (Washington Univ., St. Louis) now examines the performance ☐ Recommended history of its most popular number, “Ol’ Man River,” and what singers “from pop to jazz to rock to soul to doo-wop to opera did with and to this famous song.” Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein originally wrote the number for Paul Robeson, and Decker discusses in detail how Robeson lived with the song, performing it on stage, in film, and in concerts for a half century. Over the years Robeson and other performers made their own changes to the song, especially the lyrics, to reflect changing social sensibilities or political and social movements. Decker even devotes a chapter to parodies. Revealing his own devotion to the song, Decker adds a personal dimension. He supports the text with numerous illustrations, a selective chronology of recordings, and bibliographical references in the endnotes. Most important, a companion website features sound extracts of many performances. This jewel of a volume will be valuable to all who are interested in performing arts or African American 108 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 studies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Gingerich, John M. Schubert's Beethoven project. Cambridge, 2014. 358p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780521650878 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required Music scholars have long known that Franz Schubert (1797–1828) revered Beethoven (1770– 1827). Born and musically educated in Beethoven’s adopted city of Vienna, the younger ☐ Recommended composer had ample opportunity to experience the master’s music, although he hardly knew him. Extant sources such as Schubert letters and anecdotes from friends document the deep impression Beethoven's music made on Schubert. In this study, an expansion of his dissertation, Gingerich details his thesis that from 1824 onward, Schubert deliberately strove for public success in the large-scale forms that brought Beethoven acclaim. The author presents intriguing evidence that Schubert followed Beethoven’s example by composing substantial works such as symphonies, piano sonatas, and string quartets for public performance and publication. This is significant because his earlier works in such forms were mainly for private gatherings, and his earlier publications were mostly works in smaller forms, such as songs. Gingerich's investigation casts new light on Schubert’s late instrumental works and shows how, even though inspired by Beethoven, Schubert imbued them with his highly personal style. A thought-provoking contribution to Schubert scholarship. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Macdonald, Hugh. Bizet. Oxford, 2014. 300p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199781560 cloth, $35.00 Click here to enter text. ☐ Required Except for the frequently performed Carmen, the music (and biography) of Georges Bizet (1838–1875) receives scant attention in the Anglophone world. This book does much to bring ☐ Recommended to a wider audience the entirety of Bizet’s oeuvre and life. Macdonald (emer., Washington Univ., St. Louis) presents Bizet’s life and career with a real sense of geographic detail, describing the actual neighborhoods in Paris in which Bizet grew up, studied, and worked. Of particular interest are the chapters describing Bizet’s musical family, the milieu of the Paris Conservatory, the composer’s lesser-known operas and non-operatic works, and Bizet’s uncle, who was one of the first proponents of early music. Macdonald includes numerous musical examples of Bizet’s lesser-known compositions, and these are extremely useful, as are the appendixes "List of Works" and "Personalia." Released in "The Master Musicians" series, this book is an important addition to the English-language literature on French music. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Messing, Scott. Marching to the canon: the life of Schubert's Marche militaire. Rochester, Click here to enter text. 2014. 319p bibl index afp ISBN 9781580464383 cloth, $80.00 ☐ Required Supported by a subvention from the American Musicological Society, this book follows another major study on Schubert from musicologist Scott Messing (Alma College): Schubert in ☐ Recommended the European Imagination (CH, Nov'07, 45-1388). Messing’s Schubert research concerns reception history, and this study is an outgrowth of that earlier work. The Marche Militaire no. 1 has been beloved since its publication in 1826. Written for piano four-hands, it has appeared in many other arrangements over time. It might seem odd to devote an entire monograph to an essentially small and seemingly unpretentious piece, but Messing’s in-depth investigation reveals that its reception and influence in society have been great. Marches tend to be popular, and this one, originally intended for private home performance, eventually became a staple in concert halls. For example, virtuosic 19th-century arrangements for solo piano brought it into the repertoire of concert pianists. It was influential even in times of war. Most dramatically, a woman’s ability to play it on a cello saved her life at Auschwitz. This carefully documented study is a welcome addition to the literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Montparker, Carol. The composer's landscape: the pianist as explorer: interpreting the scores Click here to enter text. of eight masters. Amadeus Press, LLC, 2014. 257p bibl index CD ISBN 9781574674521 pbk, 109 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 $29.99 ☐ Required In this fascinating overview of the piano works of eight major composers (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn), Montparker brings to ☐ Recommended bear a lifetime of experience as a performer and educator, along with wisdom gleaned from her many interviews with prominent pianists for Clavier magazine. Conversational in style, the book does not conform to a formula. Each chapter offers Montparker’s own insights into interpretative challenges unique to that composer, and a brief summary of the composer's major piano works. This is not intended to be a scholarly book (there are no footnotes or endnotes), nor is it intended to be an exhaustive bibliography of the piano works by each of these composers; instead, it is a guide that helps answer some of the most fundamental questions pianists face when interpreting these eight composers. In two appendixes, Montparker provides interpretative notes on the Chopin barcarolle and Fourth Ballade, as provided through her interviews with 12 prominent pianists. This wealth of information alone makes the book a worthwhile read. The included CD provides 16 of the pieces she mentions in the book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Morgan, Robert P. Becoming Heinrich Schenker: music theory and ideology. Cambridge, 2014. Click here to enter text. 275p bibl index ISBN 9781107067691 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9781316057070 ebook, $79.00 ☐ Required A major contribution to the scholarly literature on one of the most important (and controversial) music theorists of the 20th century, Becoming Heinrich Schenker traces the ☐ Recommended emergence and development of Schenker’s mature theory through each of his published works. The book provides commentary on existing Schenker (1868-1935) literature and on translations of and scholarship on his work, including extensions of the analytical techniques. Quoting abundantly from Schenker’s own works, Morgan (emer., Yale) carefully considers how Schenker’s mature theory came to be, how it is grounded in and influenced by German culture of the time, and how it reflects and is linked forever to Schenker’s personal ideology, including his religious and philosophical beliefs. Acutely aware of how contentious Schenker’s theory has been, the author avoids taking sides, but rather attempts to explain how Schenker came to each new point of understanding in the emergence of his theory. This is a guide not to using Schenkerian analysis, but rather to how the method came to be and what it represents. Morgan's book will be an important companion resource for anyone studying Schenkerian analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Puslowski, Xavier Jon. Franz Liszt, his circle, and his elusive oratorio. Rowman & Littlefield, Click here to enter text. 2014. 193p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442238022 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9781442238039 ebook, $74.99 ☐ Required The spate of Liszt books appearing since the 2011 bicentennial of his birth has yielded some treasures, including the current volume. The title gives only the barest clue to the contents; ☐ Recommended in fact, the book provides a thorough account of Liszt's interest in Poland, which had ceased to exist as a formal political entity by the end of the 18th century. The oratorio is not Liszt's Christus (which may be "elusive" on stylistic and other grounds) but Saint Stanislas, a work that occupied the composer for years but remained unfinished at his death. Saint Stanislas was to have been Liszt's crowning contribution to the “Polish purpose,” which was important to him and some of his contemporaries (the circle of the book's title). Puslowski (formerly, Howard Univ.) not only documents the tortuous development of the oratorio but also examines several of Liszt's relationships in light of Poland's then role in European culture. The book, with its fascinating perspective, constitutes an unexpected but lovely supplement to Alan Walker's Franz Liszt (CH, Dec'89, 27-2050), which remains the most useful biography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Roholt, Tiger C. Groove: a phenomenology of rhythmic nuance. Bloomsbury, 2014. 175p bibl Click here to enter text. discography index ISBN 9781441104182 pbk, $29.95 110 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required Roholt (philosophy, Montclair State Univ.) provides an eminently approachable study of a commonplace phenomenon in music—groove, or the rhythmic feel of music that makes ☐ Recommended listeners want to move. The author is a professional drummer as well as a philosopher, and he does an excellent job of combining philosophy and musical experience. The study will be particularly useful in introducing music students to the phenomenology of music and recent developments in music psychology. The argument is lucid yet sophisticated, and the groove phenomenon is so universal and appreciable that the book has excellent interdisciplinary potential. The useful bibliography—a blend of music, philosophy, and psychology titles— could make the backbone for a graduate seminar. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Shank, Barry. The political force of musical beauty. Duke, 2014. 330p bibl discography index Click here to enter text. afp ISBN 9780822356462 cloth, $94.95; ISBN 9780822356585 pbk, $25.95 ☐ Required Shank (comparative studies, Ohio State Univ.) does a fantastic job of discussing ways that music has been effective in political arenas. His chapter on the use of musical anthems is ☐ Recommended particularly groundbreaking: he scrutinizes the “Star-Spangled Banner,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and “We Shall Overcome” in novel ways. His discourse on the role of music in the political landscape of Japan in the early 20th century, and of Toru Takemitsu and Yoko Ono as polarizing figures of music in Japan, is invigorating. Droning in the music of the Velvet Underground and in Indian classical music receives attention as well, making comparisons of two styles using a similar technique. Shank explores authenticity in rock, a topic certainly explored by others, but considers the topic in the context of both Patti Smith and the District of Columbia hardcore punk scene, including Bad Brains. Furthermore, he situates the music of 1969 in varying types of landscapes then prevalent in society, ranging from Stockhausen and Reich to the Beatles. In short, this book is very well researched and abounds with fresh ideas. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Wynne, Ben. In tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the roots of American music. Click here to enter text. Louisiana State, 2014. 270p bibl index afp ISBN 9780807157800 cloth, $38.00; ISBN 9780807157824 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Charley Patton (1891–1934) and Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) are popular subjects for scholars of American roots music. Both recorded tunes that have become standards and ☐ Recommended both died tragically and young. A lot has been written about each performer’s life and his respective significance in the history of blues, country music, and recording. With this admirable and instructive book, Wynne (history, Univ. of North Georgia) adds to and enriches the literature dedicated to these musicians by juxtaposing their lives as contemporary Mississippians growing up within 100 miles of one another. This approach yields new readings of Patton's and Rodgers’s cultural legacies by encouraging critical connections between the two men that dramatically highlight the discrepancies in the cultures circumscribing each man’s experience. For example, though both came from poor families, Wynne convincingly shows how Rodgers’s status as a poor white man in Mississippi afforded him social privileges unavailable to Patton. Likewise, though both artists’ original music utilized and synthesized widespread, traditional idioms, Patton’s recorded output was marketed as “race recordings” whereas Rodgers’s songs were classified as “country music.” As Wynne observes, regardless of these unfortunate differences, both artists were historically significant and had a profound influence on American roots music. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers

111 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Natural Sciences: Chemistry/Physics Faculty Member: Burch, Sarah L. Understanding climate change: science, policy, and practice, Sarah L. Burch Click here to enter text. and Sara E. Harris. Toronto, 2014. 307p index afp ISBN 9781442646520 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9781442614451 pbk, $39.95 ☐ Required The complex interdependencies underlying the climate change problem have led some to refer to it as a “wicked problem.” This book is an excellent overview of the scientific and ☐ Recommended human dimensions of anthropogenic climate change, providing readers with the knowledge required to formulate individual responses or take positions with respect to collective action to avoid dangerous consequences. Burch (Univ. of Waterloo) and Harris (Univ. of British Columbia) cover a respectable amount of ground in terms of the physical aspects of climate change, including natural climate variability and causes of climate variability and change, as well as climate modeling, scenario development, and potential climate change impacts. The clear writing and excellent figures make this book easy to read and give it potential to reach a wider audience than books with similar overviews of the physical science. The main contribution, however, is the seamless integration between the physical science and the social science, with the latter focusing on science communication, impacts of climate change on natural and human systems, and climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, along with ethics and environmental decision making. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Capecchi, Danilo. The problem of the motion of bodies. Springer, 2014. 554p bibl index afp Click here to enter text. ISBN 9783319048390 cloth, $119.00; ISBN 9783319048406 ebook, $89.99 ☐ Required This work, part of the "History of Mechanism and Machine Science" series, looks at the development of the physics of motion through six periods: classical-Hellenistic, Middle Ages, ☐ Recommended early Renaissance, the age of Galileo and Descartes, Newton's (golden) age, and the 18th century. These periods are distinguished by the mathematics used and the background knowledge the scientists of the period possessed. Capecchi (Sapienza Univ. of Rome, Italy) chooses a couple of examples for each period. He looks at how these examples were viewed during their respective time periods and compares the views between periods. The comparison of these periods adds greatly to the book. This is an intriguing text. Too often, scientists see scientific progress as a simple refinement of ideas and do not appreciate how radically different some ideas have been. The work is not at all a popularization. Readers will need to have completed at least upper-division course work on mechanics to follow the dense text. The author uses sophisticated historical language, but he is careful to explain and clarify terminology. Overall, a very interesting and illuminating read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Coupland, John N. An introduction to the physical chemistry of food. Springer, 2014. 182p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9781493907601 cloth, $69.99; ISBN 9781493907618 ebook, $49.99 ☐ Required Coupland (Penn State) states in the preface that he wrote this book “to help food science students” understand aspects of the physical chemistry of foods. He uses the work in a ☐ Recommended graduate course he teaches. This reviewer (who has a PhD in physical chemistry) gained more practical knowledge here than from any other science book he has read. As Coupland presents information relating thermodynamic properties to molecular behavior, he includes very insightful examples, all food-related. They make the topic come alive and more relevant to the real world than other science texts. The physical chemistry is largely thermochemistry, kinetics, and topics related to intermolecular interactions. Physical properties are connected to food properties through discussions of ingredient miscibility, surface tension, rheology, and crystallization, to name some examples. Informative chapters on crystals, polymers, dispersions, and gels finish up the book. Food science majors would be fortunate to take a course that could utilize this text. This very enjoyable, informative work is also useful for anyone with an interest or background in physical chemistry. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above 112 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Crease, Robert P. The quantum moment: how Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg taught Click here to enter text. us to love uncertainty, by Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber. W.W. Norton, 2014. 332p index ISBN 9780393067927 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This especially interesting book examines the origins of quantum mechanics—material previously mined in a number of similar books. It is the result of a collaboration between a ☐ Recommended philosopher (Crease) and a physicist (Goldhaber), both professors at Stony Brook University, who co-taught several classes on the subject. The physics discussions are mostly qualitative yet surprisingly clear and accurate. Some equations do appear, but they may be omitted by those for whom any mathematics is forbidding. Treatments of the uncertainty principle, wave particle duality, and Bell’s theorem are excellent. These are interwoven with both biographical material and social and literary connections. They are made to be seamless and always to the point. The interplay of ideas and the people who created them contains some new, for this reviewer, and helpful insights. The quotes from original sources support the authenticity and enliven the treatments. A collection of notes (with references) is quite extensive and supplies additional explanatory material. The tone of the text benefits from an extensive set of cartoons that enhance the insights and the readability. This work is a pleasure to read. It belongs in all college libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students, researchers/faculty, and general readers Faculty Member: Dentith, Michael. Geophysics for the mineral exploration geoscientist, by Michael Dentith and Click here to enter text. Stephen T. Mudge. Cambridge, 2014. 438p bibl index ISBN 9780521809511 cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required The combined search for and exploitation of mineral commodities is an expensive but valuable endeavor, and geophysical survey methods are an essential aspect of mineral ☐ Recommended exploration. As the title indicates, this book emphasizes geophysical methods in the search for minerals, but the content is also relevant to other types of geological exploration. Critical features of the book include discussions of physical phenomena and petrophysical properties, descriptions of techniques for obtaining geological information from geophysical data, and integration of these data with the interpretation of other types of data to produce a geological model of the subsurface. Another significant aspect of the book is the introduction of the concept of geophysical paradox to explain the relationship of geophysical signal to noise in which the noise is essential to recognizing the geophysical signal. Australian geophysicists Dentith (Univ. of Western Australia) and Mudge (consultant, Vector Research) use plain language with minimal mathematics to enhance the readability of the text. The book includes numerous high-quality color figures and clear, concise descriptions. The online appendixes provide detailed mathematics, additional figures, and resources for instructors. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners Faculty Member: Farmer, G. Thomas. Modern climate change science: an overview of today's climate change Click here to enter text. science. Springer, 2014. 106p bibl afp ISBN 9783319092218 cloth, $54.99; ISBN 9783319092225 ebook, $39.99 ☐ Required Farmer (consultant; formerly, Los Alamos National Laboratory) is coauthor, with John Cook, of Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis: v.1: The Physical Climate (CH, Dec'13, 51- ☐ Recommended 2094) and is thus well qualified to write this book. Part of the "SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science" series, it is a most welcome addition to the literature. The text is organized into two chapters: "Overview of Climate Change Science" and "Status of Climate Change Research." Both short chapters are full of succinct, clearly explained information about the many causes and effects of climate change. The only omission that this reviewer noticed is that the author did not mention the long-term effects of the Milankovitch astronomical cycles on Earth's climate. The explanations, frequently of somewhat esoteric subjects, are written so that general audiences can understand them; a "References and Additional Reading" section is available at the end of each chapter in case readers wish to pursue topics further. Farmer acknowledges the difficulty of covering such a broad topic in limited space, but he does a good job in accomplishing his goal. Summing Up: Highly 113 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Is the planet full?, ed. by Ian Goldin. Oxford, 2014. 245p bibl index ISBN 9780199677771 Click here to enter text. cloth, $50.00 ☐ Required This book answers the question posed in the title: “The planet may not yet be full, but it is filling up.” The multidisciplinary work considers water supply, energy, minerals, health care, ☐ Recommended and food supply, each in separate chapters, along with other matters. The authors are almost all associated with Oxford University, but they seem to be well versed in what is occurring all over the world. In at least one case, the author of one chapter was aware of the contents of another one. There is, appropriately, a chapter on The Limits to Growth (CH, Nov'73), by Donella Meadows et al. There is also a chapter on demographic transitions. A final chapter focuses on governance. Goldin believes that Earth's problems demand more-effective global communication and cooperation, but that these are getting worse, not better. The book is well referenced and almost free from usage errors. Many references are to Internet sites, listed with the date accessed—a good practice. The work also includes appropriate graphs and figures. The well-done work should serve as a useful reference for current and future professionals. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Goodman, Steven M. Extinct Madagascar: picturing the island's past, by Steven M. Goodman Click here to enter text. and William L. Jungers. Chicago, 2014. 206p indexes afp ISBN 9780226143972 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9780226156941 ebook, $45.00 ☐ Required The modern fauna of Madagascar reflects the country's long history of isolation from Africa (and Eurasia), despite its relatively close proximity. All its primates, for example, are in the ☐ Recommended broad "lemur" category, found nowhere else today. Its mammalian fossil record is very short, almost all within the last 5,000 years. But the diversity is high, with 17 species of extinct "lemur," including many far larger in size than their extant cousins. In this volume, zoologist Goodman (Field Museum) and paleoanthropologist Jungers (Stony Brook Univ.) present these past denizens of Madagascar to a wide audience. Eight short chapters introduce concepts of geology, paleontology (including extinction), anthropology, and climate. The following 18 chapters, each focusing on one fossil-producing site (some sites are treated in several chapters), are built around a color reconstruction by artist Velizar Simeonovski. Two final chapters present a mammalian and an avian predator and their prey. The text is aimed at laypeople but is just technical enough to keep scholars satisfied. Unfortunately, the book is printed on low-quality paper, and the in-text monochrome versions of the color plates (and other photos) are muddy. Other than that, this is a superb book for all readers, including those for whom Madagascar is unknown. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Gray, Theodore. Molecules: the elements and the architecture of everything, photographs by Click here to enter text. Nick Mann. Black Dog & Leventhal, 2014. 240p index ISBN 9781579129712 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This wonderfully illustrated and informative book, used with the author's previous book, The Elements (CH, May'10, 47-5023), could serve as a “crash” but enjoyable introduction to ☐ Recommended chemistry, especially organic chemistry. Early on, Gray (popular science writer; cofounder, Wolfram Research) defines the terms compound, chemical, and organic and attempts to dispel all-too-common misconceptions about them and their misuse. Designations such as natural and artificial and the sources of chemicals should not really matter. All chemical compounds described are illustrated with chemical formula line drawings, photographs of the compounds or materials (often commercial) made from them, or both. In the introduction, Gray explains that the book's organization is more like going through a chemistry set (still available!) rather than a typical textbook. He describes more than a dozen classes of chemicals and materials, and facts and factoids abound. The book is a storehouse of information on “descriptive chemistry,” the kind of information that attracts so many to chemistry (and is often lacking in chemistry texts), even those not destined to become chemists. Gray provides excellent material to combat "chemophobia." This reasonably priced work is useful for introductory chemistry courses, including precollege and “chemistry 114 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 for poets,” science education majors, and laypeople. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduate and secondary school students; general readers Faculty Member: Henson, Robert. The thinking person's guide to climate change. American Meteorological Click here to enter text. Society, 2014. 497p 497 ISBN 9781935704737 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required Meteorologist and journalist/author Henson (Univ. Corporation for Atmospheric Research) makes a strong contribution to the crowded field of climate science. Writing with ☐ Recommended nonspecialists in mind, Henson dispenses with equations while effectively translating recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into clear English. The book covers the full scope of climate change, from the evidence supporting the fact that the planet is warming to a range of possible future changes not only to climate, but also to society and ecosystems. Although the content is provided in a just-the-facts style with far less personality than William Hay’s Experimenting on a Small Planet: A Scholarly Entertainment (CH, Sep’13, 51-0297), the book is still eminently readable, with the occasional witty pun and some of the clearest explanations written for the general public this reviewer has seen of the physics of greenhouse gases and sea-level rise. Henson also leaves ample room to provide evenhanded discussions of arguments raised by climate skeptics, and avoids making the entire field come off as full of doom and gloom. The book is also well designed, featuring numerous color photographs and illustrations, and frequent sidebars that allow for diversions from the main topic. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Facing it: epiphany & apocalypse in the new nature. Texas A&M, Click here to enter text. 2014. 323p bibl index afp ISBN 9781623491451 pbk, $30.00 ☐ Required This thoughtful book is the first in a promising new series, "The Seventh Generation: Survival, Sustainability, Sustenance in a New Nature." Noted Whitman scholar Killingsworth (formerly, ☐ Recommended Texas A&M) demonstrated in Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America, coauthored with Jacqueline Palmer, (CH, Nov'92, 30-1771), and other work that he can blend an informed ecocritic’s gaze with writerly grace. The argument here is grounded in the personal, directed to global concerns, and presented with a warm, human voice. The apocalypse of the title refers to potentially catastrophic environmental threats, from conflicts over dams, mining, and other extractive industries to weapons testing and to global warming, which Killingsworth faces with a sharp but not despairing eye. During decades of daily early- morning walks and longer hikes through remote desert landscapes and an edge-of-suburbia ditch bank, the author trained his sensory awareness. Here, he shares small moments of connection with nature, beginning with a childhood memory of grandparents, lightning bugs, and lily of the valley, highlighting those few that rise to the level of “epiphany.” These experiences of epiphany, he argues, are essential to the understanding of and engagement with the world. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Kovács, Lajos. 100 chemical myths: misconceptions, misunderstandings, explanations, by Click here to enter text. Lajos Kovács et al., tr. by Gábor Lente and Katalin Ősz. Springer, 2014. 396p bibl index afp ISBN 9783319084183 cloth, $69.99; ISBN 9783319084190 ebook, $49.99 ☐ Required Lying at the cusp of the trajectories of science journalism and journalistic science, 100 Chemical Myths, written by a quartet of "magical" Hungarian chemists from the Universities ☐ Recommended of Szeged and Debrecen, entertainingly explains in spirited stories the misconceptions and misunderstandings embalmed within the discipline of chemistry, which have so often made it little more than alchemy. Beginning with "Misconceptions in General" (12 myths), progressing to "Food" (25 myths) and "Medicine (34 myths), and ending with "Catastrophes, Poisons, Chemicals" (29 myths), the authors have hit their mark. Their subjects, as seemingly incongruent as absinthe and ascorbic acid, cisplatin and thalidomide, DDT and MSG, Albert Szent-Györgi and Erin Brockovich, saccharin and sarin, and water and willow fever, all emerge harmoniously and ring true. Fortunately, the authors have thoughtfully compiled a 30-page annotated bibliography to accompany their 100 myths, giving voice and validity to their stories. Readers should especially take note of the foreword by syndicated journalist of the Montreal Gazette and McGill University professor Joe Schwarcz, the fifth Hungarian chemist 115 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 and "magician." What more could anyone ask for by way of authentication and citation? Read on, everyone; then read again. Here is chemistry, magically decoded. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Krishan, Vinod. Plasmas: the first state of matter. Cambridge, 2014. 250p index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781107037571 cloth, $70.00 ☐ Required This survey of the full range of plasma science is consistent and uniform throughout, making it an excellent intermediate-level course text. Part 1, "The Plasma Universe," provides a ☐ Recommended concise summary of plasmas in astrophysical, solar-terrestrial, fusion, application, and laboratory contexts. Krishan (Raman Research Institute, India) covers the basics in part 2. Later sections are titled "Plasma Confinement," "The Waving Plasmas," and "The Radiating Plasmas." Helpful appendixes follow. These lecture materials were clearly refined over many years of teaching and are accompanied by carefully selected end-of-chapter problems. Given this history, which contributes to the text's coherence, very few references are provided; the author instead refers readers to a brief two-page bibliography. Though the bibliography is helpful, it does not include references from the past decade. In particular, the inclusion of Anthony Peratt's key work, Physics of the Plasma Universe (1st ed., 1992; 2nd ed., 2015), would have been especially appropriate. Figures are generally well selected, although some more recent examples would have enhanced their quality (albeit limited to black and white). In particular, recent Solar Dynamics Observatory data very dramatically illustrate many points discussed within the text. Overall, this would be a valuable resource for a first course in plasma physics if supplemented by focused research papers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Lancaster, Tom. Quantum field theory for the gifted amateur, by Tom Lancaster and Stephen Click here to enter text. J. Blundell. Oxford, 2014. 485p bibl index ISBN 9780199699322 cloth, $110.00; ISBN 9780199699339 pbk, $49.95 ☐ Required Amusing title aside, this is an excellent book. Quantum field theory represents the apex of theoretical physics in both its fundamental character and its difficulty. UK academics ☐ Recommended Lancaster (Univ. of Durham) and Blundell (Univ. of Oxford) contend that quantum field theory is too important to be left to professionals, primarily elementary particle theorists, and hope to reach a wider audience of theorists in other fields, and even experimentalists. Their book deserves that broader audience, showing a breadth comparable to A. Zee’s widely admired Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell (2nd ed., CH, Nov'10, 48-1536), but with a higher level of detail. It offers a more complete treatment of basic topics, covering both canonical quantization and the path integral. Advanced topics include coherent states, non-Abelian gauge fields, topological objects, and Majorana fermions. Topics from condensed matter physics include statistical field theory, superfluids, superconductors, and the fractional quantum Hall effect. If this reviewer were to suggest one recent book in this area for any academic library, this would be it. It could be adopted for a graduate course in quantum field theory, or used for self-study by graduate students and advanced undergraduates, or by faculty for course enrichment and reference. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Lincoln, Don. The large hadron collider: the extraordinary story of the Higgs boson and other Click here to enter text. stuff that will blow your mind. Johns Hopkins, 2014. 223p bibl index afp ISBN 9781421413518 cloth, $29.99 ☐ Required Many popular science books have been written about the Higgs boson and its apparent recent discovery at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. This book focuses on the Large ☐ Recommended Hadron Collider (LHC) itself—the massive particle accelerator built at CERN to detect the Higgs boson. That successful search led to the discovery of the Higgs in 2012, and Peter Higgs and François Englert received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for this important achievement. Lincoln (senior scientist, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), author of The Quantum Frontier (CH, Oct'09, 47-0928), has a close involvement with the LCH, so he writes from experience. His knowledge shows in his clarity of expression and familiarity with the 116 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ups and downs of the LHC, a scientific and technological marvel that is probably the largest, most complex machine in the world. This book discusses the motivation for building it, how it works, and the difficulties overcome during construction and checkout. Readers will be fascinated by the project’s sheer mechanical challenges and the failure that caused it to be shut down and rebuilt before being operated at its design power. This engaging story will be appreciated by readers interested in the frontiers of science. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Marshall, George. Don't even think about it: why our brains are wired to ignore climate Click here to enter text. change. Bloomsbury, 2014. 260p bibl index ISBN 9781620401330 cloth, $27.00 ☐ Required Thousands of books deal with climate change. This book has a different approach. Marshall (founder, Climate Outreach and Information Network, http://www.climateoutreach.org.uk/) ☐ Recommended differs from other “concerned, well informed, liberal minded environmentalists” by talking with climate deniers, skeptics, and unconvinced persons (he offers distinct definitions for each) as a part of an analysis of how people form opinions about climate change. With clinical objectivity, sardonic wit, and sound bites, the author shows, in 41 short chapters, why people develop an aversion to the subject of global climate change and how approaches widely used by environmental campaigners can produce unintended results—including hostility. Almost all the chapters contain novel research results or insights. Collectively, they paint a chastening picture of subjectively driven thinking on all sides of this controversial issue. The last chapter provides dozens of capitalized slogans suggesting what environmental activists should do (e.g., "CREATE A HEROIC QUEST") and what to avoid (e.g., "DROP THE ECO- STUFF"). Selected references and data sources support the text. This book, which has no illustrations and does not rehash climate science, belongs on the desk of every environmental activist. Though it is very well written, its concentrated and sophisticated insights may be too advanced for undergraduates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Informed general readers, graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners. Faculty Member: Pastore, Christopher L. Between land and sea: the Atlantic Coast and the transformation of Click here to enter text. New England. Harvard, 2014. 302p index afp ISBN 9780674281417 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required In this highly descriptive, carefully written volume, Pastore (Univ. at Albany, SUNY) takes a close look at the interaction between nature, humans, and the built environment with a focus ☐ Recommended on New England's Narragansett Bay. He traces changes in climate, resources, and European settlers' attitudes in the context of a fascinating geographic-conceptual zone that traverses the "unknowable" sea to "uncertain" estuaries to an "unknown" inland. It turns out—not surprisingly—that this place with a great abundance of natural resources, from waterpower to biological productivity, also yields an abundance of historical riches. Especially interesting was a section on wampum, including its production, use, and cultural importance. The narrative on the extirpation of beaver populations and the "desiccation" of New England provided food for thought. It was useful to read an analysis of Enlightenment scientific thought on climate and its relationship to religious attitudes of the time. Most fascinating is the juxtaposition here of the liminal space between land and sea and the liminal conceptual space between science and popular culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and general library collections Faculty Member: Rand, Tom. Waking the frog: solutions for our climate change paralysis. ECW Press, 2014. Click here to enter text. 245p bibl index ISBN 9781770411814 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required Referring to "decarbonization" or the "war against carbon," Rand (ArcTern Ventures), author of Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit (CH, Dec'10, 48-2108), hits the naysayers with rational conviction, ☐ Recommended coherence, and consistency. By viewing climate disruption from many angles and utilizing solid facts described in colorful language, Rand awakens readers to the global threat of environmental and economic instability that may result from excessive combustion of fossil fuels. He also asserts that brilliant scientists are terrible communicators: they must connect with artists who can inform the world in a manner that will linger. In addition to advocating for a low-carbon economy, Rand is a provider of clean-energy venture capital, is actively 117 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 involved in "green" companies, and has developed an extremely low-carbon hotel, Planet Traveler, in downtown Toronto. Noting that commercial buildings account for 40 percent of carbon emissions, he demonstrates the overall money and energy savings resulting from the green construction in Planet Traveler. Twenty pages of chapter endnotes provide a quick reference to important highlights. Rand’s website http://www.tomrand.net/ augments this book with videos, lecture notices, and contact details. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Richter, Brian. Chasing water: a guide for moving from scarcity to sustainability. Island Press, Click here to enter text. 2014. 171p index afp ISBN 9781610915366 cloth, $50.00; ISBN 9781610915380 pbk, $25.00 ☐ Required Richter (Nature Conservancy) provides readers with essential information on how to sustainably manage water resources using simple yet thorough explanations and drawing on ☐ Recommended his own experience and case studies from around the world. The primary thesis of his book is that successful water resources management requires dialogue and collective action involving both local stakeholders and governments. The author makes the case that successful water management includes not only provision of water for human use, but also for maintaining aquatic ecosystems. He carefully describes how top-down management has largely failed in the past, laying out basic elements for sustainable water resources management and providing guidelines for practical application of these elements. The elements include collaboratively outlining shared visions for watershed management and defining maximum volumes of consumptive use, allowing trading between water users, and adjusting management schemes to correct mistakes and adapt to changing environmental conditions. While this short book is primarily aimed at stakeholders interested in solving local watershed management problems, it could be an excellent supplementary text for undergraduate and graduate courses in water policy or natural resources management. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, professionals/practitioners, and general readers Faculty Member: Rudwick, Martin J. S. Earth's deep history: how it was discovered and why it matters. Chicago, Click here to enter text. 2014. 360p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226203935 cloth, $30.00; ISBN 9780226204093 ebook, $18.00 ☐ Required Any book on the history of the earth sciences by Rudwick (emer., Univ. of California, San Diego) is worth reading immediately, and this may be one of his best. This volume is a ☐ Recommended detailed narrative of the construction of the historical framework of earth history. It is not a standard recitation of authors, dates, and publications, but a conceptual journey starting in the 17th century. The primary thesis is that the foundations of our modern chronology were built very early by thinkers not conventionally placed in our pantheon of heroic scientists (Archbishop James Ussher is a notable example). These early works “pre-adapted” later generations to think in broad historical terms, eventually developing histories that long precede humanity. Indeed, the book of Genesis itself may have provided the first conceptual model for a natural history. The popular “science versus religion” theme in the origin of geology has been exaggerated for many reasons on both sides, the author states. Rudwick’s descriptions of the personalities and ideas in the development of “deep history” are fascinating, well written, and novel. His effective dismissal of “young Earth creationism” in the appendix is classic. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Scott, David B. Coastal wetlands of the world: geology, ecology, distribution and applications, Click here to enter text. by David B. Scott, Jennifer Frail-Gauthier, and Petra J. Mudie. Cambridge, 2014. 351p bibl index ISBN 9781107056015 cloth, $120.00; ISBN 9781107628250 pbk, $65.00; ISBN 9781139699433 ebook, $52.00 ☐ Required Many works focusing on the ecology of a specific habitat, such as the coastal wetland that is the subject of this book, provide detailed descriptions of the habitat in a limited number of ☐ Recommended regions and concentrate on environmental processes. Usually such a text will have a chapter, at most, devoted to global variety of the habitat. Here, Scott, Frail-Gauthier, and Mudie (all, Dalhousie Univ., Canada) reverse that formula; they provide detailed descriptions of coastal 118 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 wetlands from all regions of the globe and, secondarily, introduce the important environmental processes that produce global diversity and similarity in coastal wetlands. The result is a book well worth having. This change of perspective, which elevates the global view without overwhelming readers with detail, provides a fresh, instructive understanding of wetlands. One can still appreciate the intricate and complex ecology of coastal wetlands as well as the anthropogenic-induced challenges to their continued existence, but arriving at that appreciation is through an inductive approach. The book contains numerous illustrations, most of which are of good quality, and the numerous citations will lead interested readers to more detailed and relevant literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; two-year technical program students Faculty Member: Taylor, Paul D. History of life in 100 fossils, by Paul D. Taylor and Aaron O'Dea. Smithsonian Click here to enter text. Institution Press, 2014. 224p bibl index ISBN 9781588344823 cloth, $34.95 ☐ Required This beautifully illustrated volume is a showcase of representative fossils through geologic time. It is a gallery of stunning double-page spreads and an example of fine book design. The ☐ Recommended spectacular images are paired with informative and insightful text provided by Taylor (Natural History Museum, London) and O’Dea (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama). The fossils depicted are primarily specimens held by the authors’ respective parent institutions, supplemented by a few from other museums. If these fossils are not already iconic, they ought to be. A section in the back of the book gives further details about the actual specimens for interested readers. The essays are erudite, but not technical. The fossils provided inspiration for the authors to muse on many aspects of evolution, geologic change, and the diversity of life over time. Their prose is further enlivened by accounts of the colorful historical personalities who made key discoveries. Each essay and photo is used as an opportunity to illustrate at least one major concept in paleobiology. It is a perfect book for public libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduates Faculty Member: Wallander, Håkan. Soil: reflections on the basis of our existence, trans. by Greg McIvor and Click here to enter text. Nicole Tyszkiewicz. Springer, 2014. 141p bibl afp ISBN 9783319084572 cloth, $49.99; ISBN 9783319084589 ebook, $39.99 ☐ Required This book is a very brief and very personal reflection on the role of soil in society, agriculture, and the environment. It addresses the indispensability of soil to life on Earth, soil formation, ☐ Recommended nutrient management and the nutrient cycle, biodiversity, biological control, soils and food quality, and soils and climate. The book is pure naturalism, with only a few jabs at political commentary, and a few tangents unrelated to the main topic. The coverage of soil is actually limited with respect to providing in-depth coverage of critical topics such as the soil-forming factors and other finer details of soil science. But one can put that aside because Wallander (Lund Univ., Sweden) articulates an appreciation of soil ecosystem services. Food production is just one of many functions that the author places in global context. The book has a Scandinavian flavor, reflecting its original audience in Sweden. However, the translation from Swedish is excellent and preserves the wonderment of soils and the soil environment. It is an excellent entry into that realm of inquisitiveness for new students. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries

119 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Nursing Faculty Member: Apesoa-Varano, Ester Carolina. Conflicted health care: professionalism and caring in an urban Click here to enter text. hospital, by Ester Carolina Apesoa-Varano and Charles S. Varano. Vanderbilt, 2014. 195p bibl index afp ISBN 9780826520081 cloth, $59.95 ☐ Required Sociologists Apesoa-Varano (Univ. of California, Davis) and Varano (California State Univ., Sacramento) provide an excellent account of how various health care professionals— ☐ Recommended physicians, nurses, pharmacists, etc.—perceive their roles and responsibilities in an in-patient health care delivery setting. The "Hospital General" is portrayed very authentically, and readers can become totally involved in each patient scenario. Having shadowed health care professionals and their interactions with patients for 3,200 hours and conducted 500 hours of follow-up interviews with these same health care professionals, the authors have captured the depth and soul of what actually transpires in a hospital. They also illustrate very realistically the conflicts that occur on a daily basis at a busy general hospital in the US today. The book offers excellent applications of theoretical concepts that can help readers understand the work culture of health care. The penultimate chapter on unions is very appropriately subtitled "The Elephant in the Room” and may be especially interesting to readers who have been patients in busy medical centers recently. A comprehensive reference list supports this very-well-written book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students of all levels, researchers/faculty, professionals/practitioners, and general readers Faculty Member: Hallett, Christine E. Veiled warriors: allied nurses of the First World War. Oxford, 2014. 359p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9780198703693 cloth, $34.95 ☐ Required In looking at the iconic WW I nurse, Hallett (history of nursing, Univ. of Manchester, UK) distinguishes between myth and reality. Those who nursed at the front were a complex, ☐ Recommended heterogeneous lot including both professional and volunteer nurses, the latter often from higher social classes. Though friction between the groups was reported, in reality the dependence on one another in providing care with scarce resources called for respect. Hallett looks at the nurses and their work from three angles: their experience treating the wounded, some with horrific injuries, and trying to save as many as possible; their struggle to give care in hostile environments with minimal resources, where they were subject to personal danger; and their fight for recognition as professionals through state registrations and women’s suffrage. Gathered from diaries and oral histories, stories of providing expert care with unwavering compassion in dire circumstances are gripping, and the graphic descriptions of the work counter the propagandist ideal of the nurse as an angel of mercy. Marked by excellent, in-depth research, this volume does not overlook the nurses' battle beyond the war zone and the military hospitals: when they returned to society from the war, professional nurses fought to be accorded full recognition for their clinical contributions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty/professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Nursing diagnoses: definitions and classification, 2015-2017, ed. by T. Heather Herdman and Click here to enter text. Shigemi Kamitsuru. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. 483p index ISBN 9781118914939 pbk, $35.99 ☐ Required Much as physicians and psychiatrists use the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of ☐ Recommended Mental Disorders (DSM-V) to make diagnoses, this book is an important tool for consistent nursing diagnoses. Written by NANDA International, Nursing Diagnoses is updated every two to three years. This new edition includes 25 new and 13 revised diagnoses for a total of 235 diagnoses. Though some changes were made, the taxonomy system (named NANDA-I Taxonomy II) remains largely the same as in past editions. The book notes that NANDA International will revisit the taxonomy in 2016 and potentially make significant changes in the next edition of the book. The diagnoses section is organized into 13 domains (e.g., "Health Promotion," "Nutrition," "Coping Responses," "Comfort," "Elimination and Exchange"), and each domain has several subsections called classes. The diagnoses fall under the classes. For 120 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 example, under the domain "Activity/Rest" is the class "Sleep/Rest." Under that are the diagnoses "Sleep Deprivation," "Readiness for Enhanced Sleep," and "Disturbed Sleep Pattern." Each diagnosis includes a definition, defining characteristics, and related factors. Diagnoses are based on evidence, but the references themselves are not included in this book. Instead, each diagnosis lists the original research to be made available at the NANDA-International website (http://www.nanda.org/). The book is much more than a listing of diagnoses; almost half of it focuses on using the book and the taxonomy system and, more broadly, making nursing diagnoses. Written in student-friendly language, the book features many charts, figures, case studies, and even an FAQ section. Overall, this volume, available in print and electronic formats, is an important tool for both student nurses and practicing nurses. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, two-year technical program students, graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals Faculty Member: Rodriquez, Jason. Labors of love: nursing homes and the structures of care work. New York Click here to enter text. University, 2014. 207p bibl index afp ISBN 9781479864300 pbk, $24.00 ☐ Required This revised dissertation discusses the ethnographic research that Rodriguez (sociology, Univ. of Missouri) conducted to analyze the operation of two nursing homes—one for profit and ☐ Recommended one nonprofit. He describes the conflicts, constraints, and competition between nursing home caregivers and administration, as well as the reality of a government bureaucracy (Medicare/Medicaid) that defines client care, encourages fraud, and creates a scenario in which cost outweighs client care. Rodriguez presents nursing home care as a corporate enterprise but argues that nurses function to soften the harshness. He describes what professional nurses have traditionally called “storge” as “labor of love.” Unfortunately, the author’s bibliography ignores references to the plethora of research on the concept of caring in the discipline of nursing. Moreover, Rodriquez labels caregivers of all educational levels as nurses, assumes education and training are identical, and offers mundane ideas such as “autonomy and team”—ideas that have been ineffective since the 1950s—as a potential solution to the warehousing of the aged. Nonetheless, the aged wait—captive for study in an existential quagmire and with no viable solutions offered by sociologists. This well-written, interesting book is primarily useful for laypeople. Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Health sciences students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners; general readers. Faculty Member: Picturing women's health, ed. by Francesca Scott, Kate Scarth, and Ji Won Chung. Pickering & Click here to enter text. Chatto, 2014. 208p index afp ISBN 9781848934245 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required Nine British essayists examine 19th-century representations of women’s health and illness in this scholarly work. Three chapters focus on constitution and nervous sensibility, the breast ☐ Recommended in fashion and nurturing, and the influence of atmospheric miasma on psychic trauma as presented in three novels, Ethelinde, Belinda, and Villette, respectively. The first of two essays on public health links dietary reform movements and feminist activism. The second compares prescribed regimens for adolescent girls in the interest of future maternal health. Patient records form the basis of two essays, one showing how unsettling photographs of dying anorectics portray failed male medical control and a second investigating “gendered insanity” in a private asylum. Medical professionals are the subject of two essays. The problematic memoir of a missionary nurse on a perilous journey to succor “outcast Siberian lepers” illustrates the conflicted role of the Victorian nurse. The tenacious early generations of women medical students contended with an array of expectations about their mental, moral, and physical fitness. These collected essays raise issues of control and emancipation, health and illness as societal threat, and the politics of women’s bodies. The thought-providing work will be valuable for collections in women's history and the history of medicine. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. Faculty Member: Summers, Sandy. Saving lives: why the media's portrayal of nursing puts us all at risk, by Click here to enter text. Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers. Updated ed. Oxford, 2014. 419p index afp ISBN 121 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 9780199337064 cloth, $22.95 ☐ Required This updated work (1st ed., 2009) explores the public's perception of nurses and the role nurses play in health care. Organized like its predecessor, the three-part book begins with a ☐ Recommended brief history of nursing and the impact of nursing's image on the value of the profession. In part 2, Sandy Summers (founder, Truth About Nursing) and Harry Summers (advisor, Truth About Nursing; attorney) review the multimedia presentation of the nurse's image, from angel of mercy with a bedpan to sex symbol and, of course, the grouchy old battle- ax. Specific examples of news reports, TV series dialogue, and reality show action or the lack thereof are provided. The authors reinforce the fact that nurses are "critical front-line caregivers" making "the difference between life and death, self-sufficiency and dependency, and hope and despair" on a daily basis. Part 3 delineates strategies nurses can employ to change and improve the image and perception of their profession. Strategies range from what nurses can do as individuals to actions executives might take in health care organizations in both the public and private sector. The common thread is communication and education. The authors conclude, "We could do better, and we must." A valuable resource for nursing students and professionals. Summing Up: Recommended. All nursing students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners

122 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Organizational Management Faculty Member: Chin, Jean Lau. Diversity and leadership, by Jean Lau Chin and Joseph E. Trimble. SAGE Click here to enter text. Publications, 2015. 320p bibl index afp ISBN 9781452257891 pbk, $55.00 ☐ Required In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgement among leadership scholars (and others) that the academic discipline of leadership studies is in dire need of new blood. In this ☐ Recommended excellent book, Chin (Adelphi Univ.) and Trimble (Western Washington Univ.) argue that in light of the emergence of increasingly global and diverse societies, leadership theory must now include multiculturalism and leadership diversity. The authors cover an impressive amount of social science research on both leadership theory and diversity theory, including recommendations for developing leadership diversity in various contexts and organizations. However, critics will identify three shortcomings: the book focuses more on the development of culturally competent, diverse leaders than followers, perpetuating the myth of follower passivity; there is no discussion (or acknowledgement) of evolutionary leadership theory, and therefore no "ultimate" biological explanations are offered for in- group/out-group bias or racial, ethnic, and gender identity; and there is no attempt to integrate leadership and diversity with political theory or deal with the use of aggression to advance political goals and subdue intolerant organizations. Despite these comparatively minor omissions, this well-written, thoroughly referenced scholarly work provides a much-needed initial foray into the convergence of state-of-the-art social scientific research on leadership and diversity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Cunningham, Lawrence A. Berkshire beyond Buffett: the enduring value of values. Columbia Click here to enter text. Business School, 2014. 307p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231170048 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required In this important, insightful, and clearly written book, Cunningham (George Washington Univ.) explains how Warren Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway from a small company ☐ Recommended with problems into a $300 billion conglomerate with 50 diversified subsidiaries. In essence, Buffett created a corporate culture that values cost consciousness, integrity, fairness, generosity, ethical behavior, entrepreneurship, both autonomy and teamwork, and a sense of permanence. Rich with lessons for those wishing to profit from the Berkshire model, the book provides many examples and chapter-long cases of the diverse companies Berkshire acquired that achieved success. Buffett's policies encourage low debt, social responsibility, a decentralized organization structure, and very careful selection of companies with excellent managers who had fine reputations. Beyond that, delegating clear responsibilities and decision-making authority to these managers, as well as having performance appraisals and rewards based on performance and long-term success, is critical to Berkshire's success. The author emphasizes that these values ensure the conglomerate's perpetual prosperity. A major contribution to the management literature, this book should be read by managers of all organizations, business professors and students, business owners, and investors. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Millennial spring: designing the future of organizations, ed. by Miriam Grace and George B. Click here to enter text. Graen. Information Age, 2014. 286p bibl ISBN 9781623967451 cloth, $49.99; ISBN 9781623967444 pbk, $24.99 ☐ Required The organizational lens of “design thinking” comes into its own with this collection of essays, which proposes this new mind-set as the answer to creating organizations that are friendly ☐ Recommended and hospitable to the under-30 workforce. Socialized to feel special from the moment they stepped foot on the planet, Millennials seem to be voting with their feet and leaving organizations unresponsive to their sensibilities. The authors provide an unsentimental look at the contexts baby boomer parents left for their progeny-turned-colleagues and suggest new structures and reward systems, as well as a challenge to be adaptive in responding to growing discontinuities in the workplace and in career development trajectories. A bonus is 123 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 that the conversations also serve as an accessible and cohesive history of organizations as the arena for human development, meaning, and transcendence. Rather than succumbing to the ponderous form of most organizational literature reviews, the authors provide a historical perspective in narrative form by examining recent trends in careers with "growing tip" companies such as Apple, Boeing, Microsoft, and US and international design schools. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners Faculty Member: Hess, Edward D. Learn or die: using science to build a leading-edge learning organization. Click here to enter text. Columbia Business School, 2014. 267p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231170246 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required With its apt and dramatic title, this book addresses the challenges of learning as technology, globalization, and other factors drive the velocity of change at an ever-accelerating rate. Hess ☐ Recommended (Univ. of Virginia Darden School of Business) does the great service of examining the processes of both organizational and individual learning, including how those processes overlap and interact. By focusing on structures and culture in the organizational milieu—while comparing and contrasting this milieu with individual cognitive and emotional behavior, largely in lay terms—the author conducts a dialogue with readers that is refreshingly unobscured by jargon and cant. Hess presents strategies to encourage the creation of high-performance learning organizations and sprinkles his discussion with practical case studies throughout. Through the author's methodology, the text presents both theory and practice in a no-nonsense, practical discussion about how to create an actionable blueprint for becoming a leading-edge learning organization. Innovation without learning causes organizations to become stale—and perhaps even die—in this age of ongoing and accelerating change. How refreshing it is to have a serious discussion of these important issues. Bravo! Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Kellerman, Barbara. Hard times: leadership in America. Stanford, 2014. 387p index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780804792356 cloth, $27.95; ISBN 9780804793018 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required In this book, leadership scholar Kellerman (Kennedy School, Harvard) argues that leadership in any American organization—whether in education, business, government, or the nonprofit ☐ Recommended world—is more challenging than ever because society has become more complex. The author argues that before leaders can even begin to be effective, they need to know and develop contextual expertise; that is, leaders need to understand the broad picture of the issues affecting society. Kellerman has selected 24 issues to discuss—economics, religion, law, technology, media, money, and culture, among others. For each topic, she provides historical background and, more important, an analysis of recent trends and how they impact leaders and their followers. For example, she examines how the ubiquity of law and the US's litigious culture complicate the situation and possibly restrain leaders if they do not understand the myriad laws that affect citizens at every level. In contrast, the culture of the Internet is essentially leaderless because followers are free to communicate and connect with one another without someone's being in charge. Thorough understanding of contemporary issues, argues the author, is what prepares an individual to be a leader in today's complicated world. This book, like Kellerman's others, is engaging, challenging, and well researched. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Pollak, Lindsey. Becoming the boss: new rules for the next generation of leaders. Harper Click here to enter text. Business, 2014. 301p bibl ISBN 9780062323316 pbk, $16.99 ☐ Required The Millennials—those born from 1982 to 2000 and also known as Generation Y—are coming, and they will change the workplace. This is the argument Pollak, a corporate ☐ Recommended consultant and recognized expert on Millennial generation career and workplace issues, raises. Drawing on original research, her own experience, and interviews with Gen Y managers and entrepreneurs around the world, Pollak has written a book about Millennials for Millennials. For older readers, the book's first three chapters provide valuable insights into how Millennials operate differently in the workplace; the remaining five chapters provide Gen Y readers advice and tips on improving leadership skills and honing a 124 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 management style. For example, there is a helpful quiz for discerning a person’s time management style. These later chapters are also valuable to older readers trying to understand how best to manage younger workers. The writing is crisp, but the style at times appears to be a series of blog posts strung together. The book is reminiscent of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (CH, Dec'13, 51-2183), although Pollack focuses on youth in general, not just on women as Sandberg does. Summing Up: Highly recommended, All readership levels Faculty Member: Westerman, George. Leading digital: turning technology into business transformation, by Click here to enter text. George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, and Andrew McAfee. Harvard Business Review Press, 2014. 292p index afp ISBN 9781625272478 cloth, $30.00 ☐ Required This book creates a road map for companies that want to aspire to digital mastery through examples from leading companies, illustrative data-driven models, and periodic self- ☐ Recommended assessments. Based on a study of more than 400 global firms, including Asian Paints, Burberry, Caesars Entertainment, and Nike, the book positions itself as a manual for business owners and managers who are trying to create lasting digital initiatives—and it succeeds. The authors have created a well-written, well-researched, and clearly structured book. The primary model linking digital masters, fashionistas, conservatives, and beginners (laid out early in the book) could be regarded with the same esteem as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or Kurt Lewin’s model of change. All the data, interviews, and models presented map out a comprehensive blueprint for understanding and implementing digital solutions for a wide variety of disciplines. The book also scales well for organizations and projects of all sizes. The information is accessible to small business owners who need to improve their processes, large businesses looking for competitive advantage, academics who need to study transformational leadership, and anyone else who would like to implement successful digital initiatives at their organization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers

125 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Philosophy Faculty Member: Brighouse, Harry. Family values: the ethics of parent-child relationships, by Harry Brighouse Click here to enter text. and Adam Swift. Princeton, 2014. 216p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691126913 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required This thoughtful work addresses tensions between the liberty of parents to raise children as they see fit, parents’ duty to ensure that children develop the capacity for autonomy, and the ☐ Recommended role of the family as an obstacle to fair equality of opportunity. Brighouse (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) and Swift (Univ. of Warwick, UK) first argue that because familial relationship goods are best achieved by rearing children in families, children have the right to parents, and adults have the right to parent. Parents’ rights, however, are fiduciary ones and are entirely derived from and justified by appeal to children’s interests. Relationship goods ground parents’ rights to confer some economic advantages on their children and to shape some of their values but much less extensively than parents currently believe. The protection of parent-child interaction dictates some advantage conferral and some value transmission, but these are instrumental to the relationship, not intrinsically valuable. If one regards familial relationship goods as dependent on resources to which all families should have equal access, this equality need not conflict with family values. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Chappell, Timothy. Knowing what to do: imagination, virtue, and Platonism in ethics. Oxford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 339p bibl index ISBN 9780199684854 cloth, $74.00 ☐ Required Chappell (The Open Univ.) argues against prevailing orthodoxies and approaches in ethics, whether consequentialist, deontological, or expressivist. He also focuses on highly stylized ☐ Recommended hypotheticals, nicely demolishing, for instance, the "ticking bomb" hypothetical used to justify torture. Chappell thinks that, of course, Mill, Kant, and others were onto something important, but rejects the temptation to let Kantian or consequentialist "insights" swallow up everything. In developing his argument the author takes up a variety of contemporary metaethical issues, in particular internalism versus externalism and realism versus "irrealism." His thoughtful discussion will leave readers not only better informed, but also skeptical of the overriding importance of many of the distinctions he discusses. Chappell is particularly interesting on the nature of moral imagination and its importance; reasons and persons; and, finally, moral certainties. Because he opposes system building, readers should not be surprised that he does not offer a candidate to, say, replace consequentialism. However, his own views find inspiration in Wittgenstein, Iris Murdoch, and Plato. With its easy, engaging style, this book would be an ideal complement to an undergraduate or graduate course in moral philosophy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Digby, Tom. Love and war: how militarism shapes sexuality and romance. Columbia, 2014. Click here to enter text. 226p index afp ISBN 9780231168403 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9780231168410 pbk, $22.00 ☐ Required Fresh, passionate, and long overdue, this book by Digby (Springfield College) offers an engaging analysis of the contrasting strands that comprise people's culturally programmed ☐ Recommended ideas about love. The first is that romantic love is a cultural ideal in which people live happily ever after and, at the same time, a "battle of the sexes." In today's militaristic (warrior) culture, men are conditioned to conquer the enemy by means of depersonalization. In the decline of actual (physical) combat, this has a natural societal spillover into ideas of gender and sexuality. Moreover, as one sees a trend of more women than men in higher education and a rise in misogyny in pornography, the "pool of viable partners for straight women" is steadily shrinking. What Digby recognizes on the horizon, though, is a "degendering of war" that leads to a "demilitarizing of gender." The social presence of women as soldiers coupled with the use of drone warfare (in which one tries to avoid civilian casualties—signs of de- masculine empathy) will lead, one hopes, to an alignment and de-escalation in the false conflict between genders. Timely and vital, this volume presents complex ideas in simple language. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general 126 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 readers. Faculty Member: Gowans, Christopher W. Buddhist moral philosophy: an introduction. Routledge, 2014. 333p Click here to enter text. bibl index ISBN 9780415890663 cloth, $125.00; ISBN 9780415890670 pbk, $44.95 ☐ Required This interesting volume by Gowans (Fordham Univ.) looks at Buddhist ethics from the hermeneutic of Western moral philosophy. Focused primarily on the early Indian tradition ☐ Recommended and texts, the book creates a framework for looking at key concepts and issues in Buddhism, such as karma and rebirth, from the many contrasting methodologies available to moral philosophers in contemporary Western academia. The later sections of the book also use this hermeneutic to address contemporary forms of Buddhism that have, in the author's opinion, created a social ethic that was not present in the early tradition, and that is more compatible with moral philosophy. Also addressed are modern issues such as human rights and environmental responsibility. This volume is insightful and engaging for anyone with a strong background in moral philosophy who is interested in how Buddhist ethics can be approached through a Western lens. Advanced students and scholars studying Buddhism will appreciate the analysis of how Western philosophical thought works to understand a tradition that does not fall cleanly within its methodologies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: The Neoplatonic Socrates, ed. by Danielle A. Layne and Harold Tarrant. Pennsylvania, 2014. Click here to enter text. 256p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9780812246292 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9780812210002 ebook, $75.00 ☐ Required Prior to the publication of this engaging, often exhilarating, collection of essays, a lacuna existed in studies of the reception of the image of Socrates in the Western philosophical ☐ Recommended tradition with respect to the period of late antiquity. Edited by a veteran of the Platonic tradition (Tarrant) and a younger scholar (Layne), this volume contains ten essays covering a broad range of Neoplatonic interpretations, adaptations, and appropriations of Socrates— whether as a lover, hierophant, or dialectician. Hermias’s Commentary on the Phaedrus and the Alcibiades commentaries of Proclus and Olympiodorus receive recurrent discussion in several of the essays. This is especially significant for providing a sense of continuity among the various pieces because the commentary of Hermias has garnered scant attention in English-language studies (and remains without an English translation). The lucidity of the individual essays combines with the importance of the interpretive angles developed and the depth of examination of the Neoplatonic texts under scrutiny. With a useful introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix canvassing the Neoplatonists (in chronological order) who are relevant for the reception of Socrates, this volume will be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate students. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de. The point of view of the universe: Sidgwick and contemporary Click here to enter text. ethics, by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer. Oxford, 2014. 403p bibl index ISBN 9780199603695 cloth, $55.00 ☐ Required Two philosophers sympathetic with Henry Sidgwick’s arguments as presented in his The Methods of Ethics here re-create those arguments and consider Sidgwick's utilitarianism in ☐ Recommended light of a century of commentary and criticism. Lazari-Radek (Univ. of Łódź, Poland) and Singer (Princeton) have two goals. First, they aim to present Sidgwick’s ideas in a way accessible to contemporary readers and in so doing reinvigorate discussion of his classic work. Second, they hope to defend his version of utilitarianism and use their discussion of The Methods of Ethics as a springboard for this defense. They conclude by addressing three difficult issues confronting utilitarianism: whether only human happiness matters, whether only aggregate happiness matters (as opposed to the distribution of happiness), and whether only the happiness of existing beings matters (as opposed to the happiness of future generations). In making their case, the authors engage the arguments of many of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. In addition to the defense of utilitarianism, this work provides a sophisticated introduction to the recent history of moral philosophy 127 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 (including some of the most important and most recent work on the subject). Anyone with a serious interest in moral philosophy should read this book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Levin, Susan B. Plato's rivalry with medicine: a struggle and its dissolution. Oxford, 2014. 299p Click here to enter text. bibl indexes afp ISBN 9780199919802 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required In this original study, Levin (Smith College) explores Plato's engagement with the medical knowledge compiled in the Hippocratic writings. The first two chapters on the Gorgias ☐ Recommended contrast a normative concept of techne (rational discipline) with unscientific knacks such as rhetoric. Medical practice is based on knowledge, but its attention to the body and focus on health as the highest good are inferior to philosophy's concern for virtue and psychic health. In chapters 3 and 4, on the Symposium and Republic, Levin articulates Plato's developing critique of medicine as a model for philosophical knowledge based on medicine's limited understanding of human nature and happiness. The Republic's focus on the divine character of the philosopher, its assignment of lesser value to ordinary people, and the rejection of medicine as a techne shift in the Statesman and Laws (chapters 5 and 6). The more realistic acceptance of human fallibility and weakness, coupled with the disappearance of the divine philosopher, in the Laws, Plato's last dialogue, grounds an expanded role for medicine's contribution to human flourishing and social cohesion. The final chapter offers stimulating reflections on Plato's legacy to contemporary bioethics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Empathy and morality, ed. by Heidi L. Maibom. Oxford, 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780199969470 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required This collection of 12 essays features contributions from philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, an ethnologist, and an ethologist. It offers cutting-edge rethinking of the complex ☐ Recommended phenomenon of empathy, understood to be based on neurobiological processes and embodied forms of attunement and intersubjectivity. Well-established scientists such as Daniel Batson, Peter Hobson, and Nancy Eisenberg contribute to a paradigm shift in perspective from the view that empathy consists of abstract inferences about other minds to the view that it calls on the "community dimension" of morality, a deeply embedded cognitive-affective structure. This structure emerges in infancy and childhood out of shared, emotionally infused experiences of collaborative communication, joint attention, and "action à deux." This "entangled empathy aspect of morality" is found to be impaired in specific ways in populations of autistic, psychopathic, and sex-offending people. Remedial practices can address various components of "altruism failure," such as distorted beliefs and attitudes, intimacy deficits, and issues of emotional regulation. However, more research is needed on the varieties and components of the empathic response. For another valuable interdisciplinary volume on morality, see The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happiness, edited by Nancy Snow and Franco Trivigno (CH, Feb'15, 52-3578). Faculty Member: Miles, Malcolm. Eco-aesthetics: art, literature and architecture in a period of climate change. Click here to enter text. Bloomsbury, 2014. 241p bibl index ISBN 9781472529404 pbk, $29.95 ☐ Required In this slim, elegantly written volume, Miles (Univ. of Plymouth, UK) charts a radical new path for the field of environmental aesthetics. Miles’s book is a fitting addition to the "Radical ☐ Recommended Aesthetics-Radical Art (Ra-Ra)" book series. The purpose of the series is to "reconsider the relationship between practicing art and thinking about art." As Miles convincingly demonstrates through his clear expositions of a wide scope of both theories and practices of art, aesthetics is a refusal of routine, and as such, it can be enlisted to help one think more deeply about Earth and its fragile future. Miles is not naïve: he does not present art as something that can magically bring today's environmental state of emergency into sharper focus. Nonetheless, through rethinking and contextualizing ecologies, aesthetics, and cultures of climate change by reference to art, Miles brings readers face-to-face with both the despair of Earth’s future and the hope that one can indeed take some positive action against the ravages of climate change. The hope illuminated so intelligently in this book is an offering 128 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 of beauty, which, as "radically other to routine," can indeed re-inflect today's culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Moati, Raoul. Derrida/Searle: deconstruction and ordinary language, tr. by Timothy Attanucci Click here to enter text. and Maureen Chun. Columbia, 2014. 138p ISBN 9780231166706 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780231166713 pbk, $20.00; ISBN 9780231537179 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Moati (Univ. of Chicago) analyzes anew a dispute that took place in the late 1970s between Jacques Derrida and John Searle, two major figures of the divergent Continental (Derrida) and ☐ Recommended analytic (Searle) philosophical traditions. The several essays in which this skirmish took place are interesting both for the issues involved—the conflict centered on the interpretation of J. L. Austin’s theory of the "performative"—and for the fact that direct exchange between important representatives of the Continental and analytic traditions is quite rare. This very polemical exchange has elicited some correspondingly polemical third-party interventions, but Moati successfully steers clear of this trap, producing a thoughtful and judicious analysis of the relevant texts. He manages to be sympathetic to both sides by bringing to light the sources of misunderstanding between Derrida and Searle and thus opening up an avenue for more productive reflection on the issues involved. Though this book is clearly written and not unduly technical, it does presuppose a fairly high level of familiarity with the texts under discussion, perhaps making it unsuitable for lower-level undergraduates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: The Cambridge companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics, ed. by Ronald Polansky. Click here to enter text. Cambridge, 2014. 474p bibl index ISBN 9780521192767 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780521122733 pbk, $36.99; ISBN 9781139989091 ebook, $30.00 ☐ Required This fine addition to the "Companion" series will serve serious students who seek a deep, informed, lucid reading of Aristotle’s revered Nicomachean Ethics (NE). Polansky’s collection, ☐ Recommended assembling both veteran and emerging scholars, marches linearly through NE’s classic themes: happiness; the mean; deliberation; virtues: courage, magnanimity, justice; practical wisdom; weakness of will; friendship; pleasure; and contemplation. In each case, the emphasis is less on polemics or ancient influences (for classic examples of which, compare Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji's edited Articles on Aristotle: v2. Ethics and Politics, CH, Mar'80, or Amélie Oksenberg Rorty’s edited Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, CH, Sep'81), and more on extracting a compelling account of each step of the NE from Aristotle’s telegraphic prose. Often, this deceptively simple procedure leads to insights that advanced scholars of Aristotle will appreciate: C. D. C. Reeve connects Aristotle’s claim that politics is the most architectonic science to the content of happiness; T. D. Roche carves out a position between happiness and unhappiness, determined by lack of external goods. Closing chapters add complexity by relating NE to Aristotle’s other works and overall purpose. The volume’s topical bibliography is worth buying on its own. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Schechtman, Marya. Staying alive: personal identity, practical concerns, and the unity of a Click here to enter text. life. Oxford, 2014. 214p bibl index ISBN 9780199684878 cloth, $65.00 ☐ Required Questions about the nature of both personhood and personal identity have been at the forefront of human inquiry since Socrates's famed claim, "Know thyself." In this work, ☐ Recommended Schechtman (Univ. of Illinois at Chicago) continues to build on her previous discussion of these and related matters. Building on her earlier defense of the narrative self-constitution view as presented in The Constitution of Selves (CH, Jun'97, 34-5626), Schechtman delivers a new account of personhood—considered both in terms of synchronic and diachronic identity. This new account does not provide necessary and sufficient conditions for identity— Schechtman convincingly makes the case that there are not any. However, she provides strong arguments for an account of persons as the "loci of interpersonal interaction whose integrity as unified wholes results from complex and dynamic interactions among biological, psychological, and social processes." By highlighting the practical nature of her approach 129 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 while effectively responding to some key challenges posed by the animalist tradition, Schechtman brings a refreshingly new perspective to an area of philosophical literature that desperately needed revitalization. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Sher, George. Equality for inegalitarians. Cambridge, 2014. 182p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781107009578 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780521251709 pbk, $29.99 ☐ Required Sher (Rice Univ.) engages in an abstract exploration of issues related to luck egalitarianism, following Thomas Nagel, who objects to inequalities in goods or evils for agents for whom ☐ Recommended "the possession of which they are not responsible." Dispensing with the limit of responsibility, Sher challenges Ronald Dworkin’s claim that agents are equal because of equal concern by the state. Rather, moral equality arises "because we are all equally centers of consciousness." Egalitarian models must include unequal results that emerge from differences as a person lives "the sort of life that his form of mental organization makes possible." An effective life, which is dynamic and sufficientarian, is the standard Sher introduces. To the practical question, "to what level of that overall ability is the state obligated to elevate its citizens?" Sher proposes that "a moderately affluent society may well be able to maintain institutions whose collective effect is to put even those who have dug themselves into the deepest holes in a position to climb out themselves." "Effectiveness" is a shift from Rawls’s notion of choice prior to life’s contingencies, but it has similar problems. Can a lone individual be effective in any meaningful sense without a structuring or supporting community? Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Van Inwagen, Peter. Metaphysics. 4th ed. Westview, 2014. 342p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780813349343 pbk, $42.00; ISBN 9780813349350 ebook, $29.99 ☐ Required Van Inwagen (Univ. of Notre Dame) examines the main problems in metaphysics as that field is understood in contemporary analytic philosophy. Organized topically, this volume offers ☐ Recommended discussions of God, minds, free will, time, individuality, and more. The author occasionally introduces figures from the history of philosophy (e.g., in his discussion of J. M. E. McTaggart’s views on time), but the book's focus is on the current state of understanding of these issues. Additionally, Van Inwagen critically analyzes the positions that developed in response to these problems and the arguments offered for them. Some changes were made to this fourth edition but none so significant that a library need acquire the new edition if it already owns a previous one. However, Metaphysics is a very helpful introduction to a difficult area in philosophy, and any library that does not have this book should get it. Most of the material will be familiar to faculty who specialize in analytic metaphysics, but the clarity of the writing makes this volume extremely useful to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and those faculty who are interested in these issues but have only a passing acquaintance with them. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Vidal, Clément. The beginning and the end: the meaning of life in a cosmological perspective. Click here to enter text. Springer, 2014. 379p bibl index afp ISBN 9783319050614 cloth, $69.99 ☐ Required Vidal (Free Univ. of Brussels) offers a large-scale interdisciplinary work packed with interesting and challenging ideas. He attempts to answer the big questions: (1) How did the ☐ Recommended universe begin? (2) How will it end? (3) What does it all mean? Vidal organizes his book into three parts. The first, "Overview of Worldviews," takes up an evaluation of philosophical, scientific, and religious worldviews. The second, "The Beginning of the Universe," delves into cosmological speculation, and the third, "Our Future in the Universe," addresses further cosmological speculation about the very distant future. The closest comparison to this work is Lee Smolin’s The Life of the Cosmos (1997), though Smolin’s work is considerably less philosophical. Vidal’s book is an impressive work of up-to-date, scientifically informed philosophy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. 130 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Wu, Wayne. Attention. Routledge, 2014. 313p bibl index ISBN 9780415532228 cloth, $155.00; Click here to enter text. ISBN 9780415532242 pbk, $37.95 ☐ Required Attention is a hot topic in cognitive science and philosophy. The link between consciousness and attention is especially vexing, but the role of attention in one's mental economies goes ☐ Recommended beyond consciousness. This careful and knowledgeable discussion by Wu (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) devotes considerable effort to examining whether attention might be required for consciousness (no definitive answer is given). Wu skeptically explores the recent theory of Jesse Prinz that consciousness is simply a form of attention, but he does not rule out that attention may be essentially related to consciousness (perhaps serving as a gatekeeper). Wu makes a strong case that information capacity accounts of attention do not easily account for the apparent experiential richness of ongoing conscious experience, as, for example, in one's experience of large spatial extents. Beyond constitutive questions about consciousness, Wu provides insights into how attention impacts agency, thought, epistemic justification, and introspective awareness. He is deeply acquainted with a vast range of empirical work but manages to keep philosophical issues clearly before the reader. The book is both a rich philosophical exploration of attention, and, now, with its clear and comprehensive accounts of classic and recent empirical work, the indispensable starting point for anyone with a philosophical interest in attention. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty.

131 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Political Science Faculty Member: Abbenhuis, Maartje M. An age of neutrals: great power politics, 1815-1914. Cambridge, 2014. Click here to enter text. 289p bibl index ISBN 9781107037601 cloth, $95.00 ☐ Required Neutrality, according to the author, is not about absolutes, "absentionism," or isolationism, although they play a role in times of war and peace. Before 1815, neutrality was a pragmatic ☐ Recommended tool. But it was an important part of the international arena, helped to define the nature of war, and contributed to diplomacy and international relations. In the 19th century, it became a permanent and central component of the international law system and a tool of diplomacy. Abbenhuis (Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand) distinguishes three kids of neutrality: permanent, long-term, and occasional. Belgium and Switzerland were good examples of permanent neutrality. In 1914, Germany violated the 1839 Treaty of London, which guaranteed Belgian neutrality. Various parts of Europe and the world, such as the Suez and Panama Canals, were also neutralized. In all such instances, the Concert of Europe was successful in preventing or limiting war. The Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 defined neutral rights. Neutrality did not fail in 1914; other factors caused that war. A very important contribution to the history of 19th-century diplomacy, based on a great variety of sources. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Abraham, Itty. How India became territorial: foreign policy, diaspora, geopolitics. Stanford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 217p bibl index afp ISBN 9780804791632 cloth, $50.00; ISBN 9780804792684 ebook, $50.00 ☐ Required Abraham (National Univ. of Singapore) utilizes critical approaches to international relations to reconceptualize the ways in which "territory" is thought of. He argues that the criterion for ☐ Recommended independent statehood in the international system is unified political control over a defined piece of land (territorial sovereignty). Loss of territory equals loss of state power. In addition, once territorial boundaries are set, national identity is produced around them. These two realities combine, making it hard for states to compromise on territorial sovereignty. To support his theory, Abraham expertly uses India as a case study, demonstrating how its foreign policy has been essentially a boundary-making (i.e., territorial) enterprise. He offers a novel way to understand why territorial disputes with neighboring states, such as Pakistan, have been hard to resolve by focusing on issues such as national identity and statehood. The act of building national identity around territorial sovereignty also has implications for the relationships between the majority and minority communities within states (Hindu-Muslim relations, in India’s case), which Abraham uses to demonstrate the linkages between the domestic and the international sphere. This work is an important contribution to the field of international relations and foreign policy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Becker, Jo. Forcing the spring: inside the fight for marriage equality. Penguin Press, 2014. Click here to enter text. 470p index ISBN 9781594204449 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required This account is a superb examination of the most important civil rights issue of the early-21st century. It begins with the campaign to defeat Proposition 8 in California. This is political and ☐ Recommended legal journalism on the issue of marriage equality at its best. Becker was able to gain incredible access to the plaintiffs' team of lawyers. Readers see the legal strategies develop, the politics of the same-sex marriage issue play out, and the human sides of the story on vivid display. The book reads like a thriller, unfolding page by page with an examination of the trial seeking to overturn Proposition 8 that brought together the legal odd couple of Ted Olson and David Boies. Becker examines the key players in the Department of Justice and the White House (including the evolution of President Obama on the issue) and the initial reluctance of the gay community to pursue victory through the judicial process following the passage of Proposition 8. Although Becker was not given access to the internal workings of the defense team, lead defense lawyer Chuck Cooper later spent many hours with the author 132 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 explaining the defense's thinking and strategy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduate students at all levels Faculty Member: Byrne, Malcolm. Iran-Contra: Reagan's scandal and the unchecked abuse of presidential Click here to enter text. power. University Press of Kansas, 2014. 436p bibl index afp ISBN 9780700619917 cloth, $34.95 ☐ Required Since the inception of the 22nd Amendment, second-term, lame duck presidents have found themselves embroiled in constitutional crises involving the abuse of presidential ☐ Recommended power. Ronald Reagan was not immune to this phenomenon. In this meticulously researched work, Byrne (research director, National Security Archive) revisits the sordid scandal that cast a pall over the final years of the Reagan administration. Using recently declassified documents, interviews, and other primary sources, Byrne carefully and clearly lays out the details of the Iran-Contra affair and the ensuing investigations. He provides readers with a scintillating story of espionage, White House intrigue, and Cold War drama. Two features make this work unique. First, Byrne does not portray Reagan as a passive, disengaged president victimized by maverick policy makers. Through the use of primary sources, the author demonstrates that Reagan was actively involved in every stage of Iran-Contra from its initiation through the cover-up. Second, Byrne provides readers with a cautionary tale about structural issues in the American political system that perpetuate the unchecked abuse of power by the executive branch. This work is a must read for students of the presidency and all who want to know more about this largely forgotten scandal. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Cockburn, Patrick. The Jihadis return: ISIS and the new Sunni uprising. OR Books, 2015. 144p Click here to enter text. ISBN 9781939293596 pbk, $15.00; ISBN 9781939293602 ebook, $10.00 ☐ Required This timely little book by Cockburn (The Independent, London) on the rise of ISIS and the widespread failure to see it coming will not disappoint those who are used to his penetrating ☐ Recommended journalism. He shows that before the takeover of Mosul in June 2014, the media had largely stopped reporting on Iraq, and he argues that since 2001 there has been a gap between reality and the impressions the media presented, as journalists who cover battles do not stay around to understand the broader situation. Also, he opines that Western governments deceived themselves. He points to the absurdity of the notion of division between the extremists and “America’s supposedly moderate opposition allies” in Syria and argues that aid to the latter helped to destabilize Iraq. He deplores the failure to understand the centrality of Saudi Arabia (and its anti-Shia, anti-Sufi Wahhabi doctrines) and of Pakistan in movements that the “war on terror” was directed at and suggests that it may be too late for these two countries to stop the Frankenstein they created. This is an important work on today’s Middle East and on its presentation in the Western media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. Faculty Member: Colaresi, Michael P. Democracy declassified: the secrecy dilemma in national security. Oxford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 379p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199389773 cloth, $29.95 ☐ Required Colaresi’s study contributes to an important yet underdeveloped area of scholarship: analyzing the impact of institutional variation among democratic states and the implications ☐ Recommended this has for their foreign policies. Colaresi (Michigan State Univ.) does an excellent job of placing his wider theoretical and empirical contribution within the literature by constructively critiquing liberal philosophies and theories of international politics. He demonstrates that the capacity for secrecy when conducting foreign policy is essential for leaders to carry out successful foreign policies but that this secrecy has the potential to erode the central role of accountability in democracies, thereby degrading the quality of foreign policies or democracy. Retrospective national security oversight theory addresses this puzzle by convincingly demonstrating that retrospective oversight on classified information can create the conditions necessary for effective foreign policy and democratic accountability. Colaresi highlights the complex issue of how and why democracy impacts foreign policy. By saving much of the technical notation for the appendix, he is able to 133 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 demonstrate the broad strokes and nuance of the formal and empirical analyses through illustrative examples that are accessible to undergraduate and graduate students alike. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates at all levels; graduate and research collections Faculty Member: Constable, Marianne. Our word is our bond: how legal speech acts. Stanford, 2014. 217p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780804774932 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9780804774949 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780804791687 ebook, $27.95 ☐ Required Beginning with the fumbled oath during President Obama’s first inauguration and ending with Benjamin Cardozo’s opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad (1928), selections from the ☐ Recommended California Penal Code, and a brilliant bibliography, this book shows various ways that words matter in law. Constable (rhetoric, Univ. of California, Berkeley) is an active contributor to scholarship in the tradition of “law and society” or, really, law in society. In this, her third book, she looks at familiar territory, extracting highlights and drawing attention to important scholarship. For instance, the discussion of Palsgraf is fresh in its insights as it crosses familiar territory. Readers should not ignore the rhetorical quality of Cardozo’s opinion, she says, because that would relegate law to “statements of rules.” The four substantive chapters are organized into mini-chapter-length sections that investigate J. L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, some Germans, and the Greeks. The commentary is penetrating and illuminating as it draws on what is known and what is unknown about how words matter in law. This is, as Constable says, a challenge to positivism that shows, again and again, how much words matter in law. As with her earlier books, passion and scholarship engage to provoke thought without being argumentative. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through researchers Faculty Member: Dolan, Kathleen A. When does gender matter?: women candidates and gender stereotypes in Click here to enter text. American elections. Oxford, 2014. 245p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199968275 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780199968282 pbk, $24.95 ☐ Required Dolan (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) conducts an original analysis of gender stereotyping and campaigns, concluding that the connection between gender stereotypes and actual voting ☐ Recommended behavior is more marginal than is often assumed. Dolan provides a thorough scholarly foundation for her analysis, including gender stereotyping, women’s campaign strategies, and voting behavior. Dolan conducted a two-wave panel survey of 3,150 respondents, focusing on attitudes about abstract gender stereotyping and on actual voting behavior in the 2010 House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. The author tests whether holding gender stereotypes influences how one actually votes. Dolan finds less evidence of gender stereotyping among survey respondents. Moreover, she finds that holding stereotypes plays only a marginal role in candidate evaluations, vote choice, and campaigns. Instead, political party preferences are the strongest factor shaping campaigns and voting. Dolan provides significant suggestions for further analysis, noting a need for a better understanding of the interaction between stereotypes and party preferences, as well as analysis of candidates and stereotyping at the state and local level. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above Faculty Member: Johnston, Michael. Corruption, contention, and reform: the power of deep democratization. Click here to enter text. Cambridge, 2014. 296p bibl index ISBN 9781107034747 cloth, $90.00; ISBN 9781107610064 pbk, $32.99; ISBN 9781107723047 ebook, $72.00 ☐ Required This is a daring and essential work from one of the discipline’s shining lights. Going against type and tradition, Johnston (Colgate Univ.) examines how important more indirect and ☐ Recommended gradual approaches to battling corruption are, even though such measures tend to be the least appetizing to government officials and scholars alike. It is a brave maneuver to attempt to turn a discipline on its head by admitting that the well-intentioned desire to see quick and immediate ends to corruption may exacerbate the situation and cause more harm. More important, this book explains how that is and why it is important to pay close attention and give considerable stock to concepts such as deep democratization and how to build societies 134 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 that go beyond the anti-corruption window dressing of electoral or constitutional checks. The book is also a joy to read, sending readers across the world from unevenly developing countries to some of the most economically developed and politically advanced states. In addition, it is not just a volume of fascinating case studies but also research that is firmly grounded in theory and the bigger picture. A major addition to the field. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Levy, David N. Wily elites and spirited peoples in Machiavelli's republicanism. Lexington Click here to enter text. Books, 2014. 149p bibl index afp ISBN 9780739186404 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780739186411 ebook, $79.99 ☐ Required In Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli’s Republicanism, Levy (lecturer, philosophy, John Cabot Univ., Rome) focuses chiefly on the Discourses and argues against the common ☐ Recommended readings in which Machiavelli is a mere way station on the path of historical progress toward contemporary liberalism. Rather than being an atavism, Levy argues, Machiavelli's thought offers an alternative to contemporary liberalism that partakes of both elitism and populism. Liberty, in Levy's Machiavelli, originates in conflict between the classes named in the title. The appendix of the book, which defends the non-historicist approach to Machiavelli, is particularly valuable, as it gently (yet thoughtfully) addresses some difficulties in the historicist approach to the history of philosophy characteristic of Quentin Skinner and R. G. Collingwood. Both the appendix and the main text of Levy’s book deserve scholarly attention. Levy’s book is recommended for readers at all levels. The accessible way in which he has written it will make it particularly valuable for undergraduate students of Machiavelli, and the appendix might well be assigned in its own right. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Melzer, Arthur M. Philosophy between the lines: the lost history of esoteric writing. Chicago, Click here to enter text. 2014. 453p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226175096 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9780226175126 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Melzer (Michigan State Univ.) provides an extensive, in-depth examination of the phenomenon of esoteric writing as it has been practiced down through the centuries in the ☐ Recommended West. He takes into account works of philosophy and literature. This is a landmark scholarly work in the study of the history of political thought. What is of critical importance is that readers come to understand that esoteric writing has been hiding in plain sight all this time. As Nietzsche notes in Aphorism 30 of Beyond Good and Evil, the distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric was formerly known to philosophers across many traditions. What is perhaps most surprising is that the academic West managed to finally lose sight of it, or at least become convinced that it did not exist. Melzer’s book will leave only the most willful in the dark. He carefully documents the phenomenon of esoteric writing from the Greeks to modern times and outlines the various reasons and forms (four) of esoteric writing. His final chapter, explicating the profound problem that esoteric writing poses for historicism, opens up a range of important questions for anyone who seriously reflects on the problem of interpretation in reading old books. An outstanding book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduate, graduate, and research collections Faculty Member: Remington, Thomas F. Presidential decrees in Russia: a comparative perspective. Cambridge, Click here to enter text. 2014. 174p bibl index ISBN 9781107040793 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required This important contribution succeeds in placing Russian politics in a broader comparative context. Remington (Emory Univ.) meticulously examines the use of decree powers during ☐ Recommended the Yeltsin and Putin administrations. Russia is one of only 18 countries where presidents have the right to issue decrees with the force of law. Despite this, Russian presidents, like their counterparts in the US, Latin America, and elsewhere, face constraints in getting their policies implemented. Decree power enables a president to make an end run around a parliament. This has not been a problem for Putin since 2004—by then, he had secured a compliant legislature—but it was a headache for Yeltsin, who vetoed 32 percent of all laws from 1994–1999. Interestingly, in 2012–2013, Putin doubled the number of decrees he 135 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 issued to beat back protesters challenging his return to the presidency. However, in practice, all presidents—including those in Russia—rely on bureaucratic agencies and civil society groups to implement their policies. In Chapter 4, Remington deploys a spatial model for analyzing the policy distance between a president and a congress but has difficulty identifying the locations of key actors on the policy space. He concludes that a strong presidency leads to weaker political parties and that this is the main barrier to improved governance. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates at all levels and above Faculty Member: Roth, Michael S. Beyond the university: why liberal education matters. Yale, 2014. 228p index Click here to enter text. afp ISBN 9780300175516 cloth, $25.00 ☐ Required In this slender but readable volume, Roth chronicles the tradition of liberal learning and makes a compelling case for it in the face of today's strong countercurrents. Roth is the ☐ Recommended author of five books on intellectual history and president of Wesleyan Univ., a highly selective Connecticut liberal arts college. Here he presents the extraordinary place of the liberal arts in America's history; the monumental changes it has undergone; the importance of key figures in its history; and the controversies and issues faced in the past and which are faced today by those who believe in, advance, and conduct liberal learning. The author's core premise is far from unique: while obsolescence is an unwanted but inevitable outcome of vocational/ professional education, liberal education provides the lifelong necessities for a life of quality. Far from reactionary, Roth's perspective is forward-looking and innovative. Though initially a skeptic about massive open online courses (MOOCs), for example, he tells of the rewarding experience in which a virtual worldwide learning community emerged around a MOOC he planned and conducted. This book merits a wide readership. It would provide especially valuable information to parents who are distraught over cost and inclined to see the benefit of higher education only in material terms. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Sperling, Valerie. Sex, politics, and Putin: political legitimacy in Russia. Oxford, 2015. 260p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780199324347 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780199324354 pbk, $24.95 ☐ Required Sperling (Clark Univ.) begins with a description of a sexualized Russian political environment, from Vladimir Putin’s topless exploits to pin-up calendars created by educated women as a ☐ Recommended gift for Putin’s birthday, and asks “What is going on here?” She then examines the use of gender norms in Russian political discourse as significant for the legitimation of power. A social movement studies model is employed to analyze how masculinity, femininity, and homophobia are used politically. Specifically, the work discusses political opportunity structure, economic opportunity structure, political history, cultural components, and the international arena as important to this process. Case studies include how activists use gender norms as political tools, how gender norms are used in relation to military conscription and pro-natalism, and how gender norms affect the new wave of Russian feminist activism. Fieldwork in Russia adds depth to the work. Sperling rightly notes that “understanding gender dynamics of regime legitimation … is important for the study of democratization” and argues that the use of gendered norms undermines democracy in Russia. Overall, this important book highlights how gender and power are inextricably linked. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates of all levels and above Faculty Member: A Different democracy: American government in a thirty-one-country perspective, by Steven Click here to enter text. L. Taylor et al. Yale, 2014. 378p bibl index afp ISBN 9780300198089 pbk, $25.00 ☐ Required This unique book successfully blends two major but traditionally separate political science subfields, American government and comparative politics, by systematically analyzing ☐ Recommended American democratic institutions and comparing them with those of 30 other democracies. The authors focus on the institutional options considered and chosen by the Founding Fathers and how these institutions later evolved. The chapters treat conventional topics in American government texts: constitutionalism; federalism; the electoral system; political parties; interest groups; legislative, executive, and judicial powers; and public policy. Each chapter has two parts: an examination of the US system and a comparison with 136 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 the other democracies, including explanations for their similarities and differences. A hefty 40-page conclusion shows that the US form of government is indeed a unique mix of democratic institutions and that its relatively large number of “veto gates” has a major impact on making and implementing laws and policy. Hence, in comparison to other democracies, the US system is more conservative and stable, or put differently, more prone to inertia. This topical and engaging book is highly recommended for university and public libraries as well as collections specializing in US studies and comparative politics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. Faculty Member: Tronvoll, Kjetil. African garrison state: human rights and political development in Eritrea, by Click here to enter text. Kjetl Tronvoll and Daniel R. Mekonnen. James Currey, 2014. 212p bibl index afp ISBN 9781847010698 cloth, $80.00 ☐ Required This fantastically dense, thorough, rich, comprehensive tome breaks down Eritrean contemporary statehood and civil society in a way that should be copied as a model for ☐ Recommended modern political/national security case studies. First, it is important to evaluate a work for what it is: Tronvoll (Bjørknes College, Norway) and Mekonnen (International Law and Policy Institute, Norway) provide a humanitarian perspective on a single African state. As a result, readers get a unique richness of depth and detail that simply is not possible in a work that would aim to be regional or continental. This approach also allows the authors room to explore theoretical, empirical, and philosophical angles that will give readers intense exposure to issues such as militarization, judicial development, rule of law, torture, ethnic diversity, and future transition. Though not necessarily a massive book in terms of page length, there is no doubt readers will feel competent to discuss Eritrea with any specialist after taking on the work. It is well-written and easily accessible, even if some of the details are disturbing to read. This is an important work and a model for future research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels Faculty Member: Tuckness, Alex. The decline of mercy in public life, by Alex Tuckness and John M. Parrish. Click here to enter text. Cambridge, 2014. 302p ISBN 9781107050143 cloth, $95.00 ☐ Required Contemporary politicians commend their compassion to voters’ attention, but mercy has disappeared from the public vocabulary. Tuckness (Iowa State Univ.) and Parrish (Loyola ☐ Recommended Marymount Univ.) summon considerable learning to describe the changing status and, indeed, definitions of mercy in philosophic and theological thought. The moral and political philosophers of Western antiquity found no inherent tension between justice and mercy; they subsumed both under the rule of reason, which required the prudential exercise of equity in the application of law and restraint of such passions as anger and pity. However, Christian thinkers have attended to the revelations of a Creator–God separated from and radically superior to the nature God made, doing so in the political context of human monarchs charged with imitating that God without enjoying God's all– encompassing wisdom. For Christians, justice and mercy, both esteemed, rested uneasily together. Discounting God, modern philosophers (idealist and utilitarian alike) have endorsed the impersonal, egalitarian, and legalistic rule of the modern state. This leaves room for justice, now conceived of as equal individual rights, but makes acts of mercy seem arbitrary, perhaps unjust. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, graduate students, and research faculty Faculty Member: Wright, Lawrence. Thirteen days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David. Click here to enter text. Knopf, 2014. 345p bibl index ISBN 9780385352031 cloth, $27.95 ☐ Required Pulitzer Prize–winner Wright’s earlier The Looming Tower (CH, Apr'07, 44-4704) was a marvelous contribution. This new book is equally monumental. Thirteen Days in September ☐ Recommended again demonstrates Wright’s ability to write an engaging, soundly researched narrative that incorporates flashback history, exceptional profiles of individuals, and insightful assessments. Beyond William Quandt’s excellent Camp David (1986), not much has been written about this important historical event, so Wright adds immeasurably to the understanding of it. The profiles of Carter, Sadat, Begin, and several second-tier players, 137 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 which address their background, psychological makeup, histories, and psychoses, are remarkable. The picture Wright develops is that the idealistic Carter did an extraordinary job of keeping the conference from self-destructing. Sadat was vain, stubborn, naive, and a statesman. The paranoid, unwavering, hard-line zealot Begin was not. The Camp David Accords accomplished much, but Carter’s romantic quest was undermined by Begin’s deception—welching on the promise to stop settlements, which have remained an implacable obstacle to a larger, lasting peace. The book offers an intriguing insight into the peacemaking negotiation process and is a great read that everyone from scholar to novice should enjoy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

138 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Psychology Faculty Member: Bevan, Thomas E. The psychobiology of transsexualism and transgenderism: a new view Click here to enter text. based on scientific evidence. Praeger, 2014. 257p bibl index afp ISBN 9781440831263 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9781440831270 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Biopsychologist Thomas Bevan offers important and accessible insights about transsexualism and transgenderism (TSTG). Although he does not offer in-depth discussion, he does ☐ Recommended succinctly address most of the topics associated with TSTG. These include genetics, epigenetics (e.g., maternal stress after conception), and early childhood socialization; discrimination TSTG persons encounter in school, health care settings, and the workplace; legal identification, incarceration, and homelessness; secrecy and disclosing TSTG identities; experiences during adolescence; transition/medical procedures, outcomes, and risks; and problems with current medical and psychopathological theories. The abundance of medical jargon (surrounding, for example, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological differences between TSTG and non-TSTG persons) may make the book difficult for those unfamiliar with anatomy, biology, physiology, psychiatry, and medicine. That aside, the book is noteworthy for its refusal to treat TSTG as a disease or mental illness and its refusal to classify TSTG persons as pathological. In addition, it offers a unique survey of TSTG concerns across the life span. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, professionals, general readers Faculty Member: Schadenfreude: understanding pleasure at the misfortune of others, ed. by Wilco W. van Dijk Click here to enter text. and Jaap W. Ouwerkerk. Cambridge, 2014. 320p bibl index ISBN 9781107017504 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required As this collection suggests, schadenfreude is a neglected phenomenon especially given how often people enjoy this sometimes guilty pleasure. Think, for example, of the delight a driver ☐ Recommended experiences when a reckless driver who almost hit him/her is pulled over by the police. The scholars who contribute to this volume represent eight disciplines in the social sciences (the majority are in psychology) and six different countries. The 20 essays address aspects of schadenfreude (which the editors characterize as an emotion) such as hypocrisy, laughter, and morality and also its occurrence in 19th-century US literature. The book includes both theoretical and empirical studies and gives considerable attention to the concepts of "deservingness," envy, and self-enhancement in regard to this emotion. Various forms of schadenfreude and their relationship to issues of morality are discussed in detail. As the driving example above suggests, schadenfreude may reflect a basic desire for justice, although obviously also less noble sources, such as jealousy. Most of the essays are quite readable, and the book is well organized with a helpful introduction. This book is the first to give a solid and distinctive overview of schadenfreude from a social science perspective. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Jaffe, Lee. How talking cures: revealing Freud's contributions to all psychotherapies. Rowman Click here to enter text. & Littlefield, 2014. 100p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442239890 cloth, $65.00; ISBN 9781442239906 ebook, $64.99 ☐ Required Jaffe (Univ. of California, San Diego) offers a brief but brilliant account of the ways in which the elements of Freudian therapeutic action play out in both individual and couples ☐ Recommended therapy. Jaffe identifies six generic modes of therapeutic action in the writings of Freud: direct support, introjection, catharsis, insight, identification, and working through. These six modes account for the change process in psychoanalysis, and some combination of them accounts for the mutative process in most psychotherapies, including the popular cognitive- behavioral therapy. The brevity of this account of psychotherapeutic action—the book comprises six chapters (one an introduction) plus a preface and a conclusion—makes it eminently suitable for teaching mental health professionals, whether psychoanalytically inclined or not. Students of psychology, psychoanalysis, and social work will find this an 139 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 indispensable introduction to diagnosis and treatment. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates throufh faculty and professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Rochat, Philippe. Origins of possession: owning and sharing in development. Cambridge, Click here to enter text. 2014. 323p bibl index ISBN 9781107032125 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required Rochat's purpose is to make sense of the psychology of human possession by looking at how it is unique when compared to animal possession, where it comes from culturally and ☐ Recommended developmentally, and what determines it. Rochat (Emory Univ.) argues that the human sense of right and wrong can be understood in terms of conflicts over possessions. Human moral principles can be seen to arise from the necessary selective pressure of avoiding conflict and maintaining social order. If this premise is accepted as potentially holding some truth, then it makes sense to explore the psychology of possession from both evolutionary and developmental perspectives. Relying on Rousseau’s “Second Discourse,” Rochat shows how the idea of property led humans to abandon a natural state of sharing with all other animals to a state in which claims of ownership, combined with the acceptance of such claims by others, set a new standard for civil society based on possession. Rochat creates a fascinating discourse by integrating ideas from philosophy, biology, sociology, and anthropology to understand the development of laws of property in Western and non-Western cultures and the impact of these cultural systems on the psychological development of a sense of possession across the life span. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Ross, Howard J. Everyday bias: identifying and navigating unconscious judgments in our daily Click here to enter text. lives. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 183p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442230835 cloth, $30.00; ISBN 9781442230842 ebook, $29.99 ☐ Required Founder of a diversity consulting company, Ross examines how to identify and overcome unconscious biases in everyday life. He takes up much more than discrimination based on ☐ Recommended race, gender, national origin, and other protected categories. The author delves into perceptions of Democrats and Republicans toward presidential candidates, patient income with respect to health care, shapes of objects relative to the shapes of objects around them, the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin criminal case, and homosexuality. Ross lists a wide variety of biases—such as the tendency to anchor on one trait to make decisions and the inclination to make conclusions about a person based on first impressions—and draws on numerous research studies to support his conclusions. He also points to ways to overcome both personal and organizational bias. The former includes accepting uncertainty in life, exploring awkwardness and uncomfortable feelings, and getting feedback from others; the latter, finding patterns of privilege or exclusion of employees, brainstorming, listening to dissenting opinions, and analyzing the quality of information obtained. This volume joins Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald’s Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (CH, Jun'14, 51-5867). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers

140 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Recreation Faculty Member: Mediated youth cultures: the Internet, belonging and new cultural configurations, ed. by Click here to enter text. Andy Bennett and Brady Robards. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 242p bibl index ISBN 9781137287014 cloth, $75.00 ☐ Required This book’s strength comes from the premise set by editors Bennett and Robards, who argue that because of the rise of digital technology, youth culture is a manifestation of shared ideas ☐ Recommended and values mediated in virtual space, not an amalgamation of geography-dependent youth subcultures. The youth cultures discussed are international, including ones from Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Middle East. Part 1 examines the relationship between online and offline identities: using the Internet with friends made offline, establishing autobiographical presence on Facebook by adding stories about the pre-Facebook period, redefining the public and the private, and displaying alcohol consumption behaviors online. The second part is about engagement and creativity: identity exploration, cultural production by girls, promotion of music among fans, diversification of musical taste, and emergence of digital music files. Part 3 focuses on the bodies, spaces, and places of the Internet: women’s involvement in sport, use of YouTube to appropriate style and image, and flash mobs. These case studies are from specific locales but are highly applicable to and reflective of youth from other locations and cultures. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries Faculty Member: Sport, coaching, and intellectual disability, ed. by David Hassan, Sandra Dowling, and Roy Click here to enter text. McConkey. Routledge, 2014. 266p bibl index ISBN 9780415735773 cloth, $145.00 ☐ Required Hassan, Dowling, and McConkey have added a pioneering (albeit Eurocentric) reference in the maturing field of adapted sports: a European-based survey of sports opportunities for ☐ Recommended athletes with intellectual disabilities conducted under the aegis of the Special Olympics. There are currently 4.1 million athletes with intellectual disabilities around the world, making the sports-oriented network the largest in history. This volume examines various strategies of motivating participants with developmental and intellectual disabilities to reach their highest potentials at various skill levels of competition. Every facet of the organizational structure of sporting events under the aegis of the Special Olympics umbrella-- from task-oriented movements to the creation of community support for the athletes--is highlighted as essays examine sports for intellectually disabled athletes, including participant- generated dance routines. The narrative flows easily, making the book appropriate for a wide audience, but especially useful to mainstream and adapted-sports researchers and organizations. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers Faculty Member: McAdams, David. Game-changer: game theory and the art of transforming strategic Click here to enter text. situations. W. W. Norton, 2014. 303p index ISBN 9780393349894 pbk, $16.95 ☐ Required It is a conundrum: many people struggle to understand game theory while claiming to comprehend the meaning of prisoner’s dilemma. They do not appear to understand how the ☐ Recommended prisoner’s dilemma is the best known and most original game theory application. In their course work, most undergraduates get only a sprinkling of game theory; as a result, they do not grasp its power to improve decision making. McAdams (Duke Univ. Fuqua School of Business) provides readers with a rich understanding of game theory. Like other game theory books in the marketplace, this one begins with definitions of several key terms (e.g., commitment, dominant strategy, payoff matrix). However, this work differs by also describing five distinct applications that individuals might not at first recognize as being applicable to game theory. The author dedicates a chapter to each: regulation, collusion, retaliation, trust, and leverage. In addition, McAdams includes five chapters of mini case studies that enliven the narrative with colorful characters and examples from the worlds of business, medicine, finance, military history, crime, and sports. The author provides a service by clarifying a complex economics topic for general readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above 141 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: McDougall, Alan. The people's game: football, state and society in East Germany. Cambridge, Click here to enter text. 2014. 362p bibl index ISBN 9781107052031 cloth, $99.00 ☐ Required Historian McDougall (Univ. of Guelph) uses soccer as a terrain on which to develop two different but interrelated claims about the relationship between the East German state and a ☐ Recommended society it could not ultimately control. First, with an impassioned, richly detailed, and extensively researched description of the sport, including its players, teams, organizing bodies, etc., the author separates soccer from “Olympic” sports, which the state ruled through doping, talent identification, and training programs. Second, though the communist government may have tried to control the sport and its institutions, even at times flexing its muscles by moving teams from town to town, soccer retained a remarkable degree of autonomy from the state. In fact, McDougall argues, soccer became an arena of broad-based resistance to authority in East Germany as it kept local, regional, national, and transnational identities alive that did not necessarily conform to the state’s communist vision. Reminiscent of the work and quality of Robert Edelman on Soviet soccer in Spartak Moscow (CH, Apr'10, 47-4485), this book is a welcome contribution to the history of sport as well as the history of the GDR. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Rein, Raanan. Fútbol, Jews, and the making of Argentina, tr. by Martha Grenzeback. Stanford, Click here to enter text. 2014. 226p bibl index afp ISBN 9780804792004 cloth, $85.00; ISBN 9780804793414 pbk, $24.95; ISBN 9780804793049 ebook, $24.95 ☐ Required Rein’s new book is an important contribution to both the study of ethnicity in Latin America and the growing research on sport. As the author demonstrates, the Atlanta Fútbol Club in ☐ Recommended Villa Crespo, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, became an important site of interaction for Jews and non-Jews from a variety of backgrounds, as well as a source of pride for immigrants and their children and grandchildren. Even though Jews were not well represented in the higher echelons of sport in Argentina, Rein (history, Tel Aviv Univ.) shows that they were an integral part of the history of soccer there, often in organizational roles. At the same time that Rein integrates ethnicity and sport into his analysis, he also provides an excellent history of the Atlanta club and Argentine soccer more broadly, a topic that has not seen nearly enough scholarship. Moving mostly chronologically, Rein shows the often-precarious nature of early fútbol clubs (Atlanta included) and their centrality in neighborhood identity and pride. A fascinating first step in what, hopefully, will become a much larger historiography that touches on ethnicity, sport, and neighborhood/urban identities. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Steidinger, Joan. Sisterhood in sports: how female athletes collaborate and compete. Click here to enter text. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 191p bibl index afp ISBN 9781442230330 cloth, $34.00; ISBN 9781442230347 ebook, $33.99 ☐ Required A specialist in sports psychology, Steidinger offers a fascinating look at the psyche of the female athlete. The subtitle says it all: “How Female Athletes Collaborate and ☐ Recommended Compete.” Interpersonal relationships and skills appear to be as important in predicting women's sport success—especially team success—as physical skill and ability. That males and females are different in terms of brain chemistry is often suggested, but Steidinger delves into the research and presents the findings in a compelling and understandable manner. This is an important work for any female athlete wishing to understand herself and her performance better, for any athlete wishing to take a leadership role on her team, or any coach wishing to maximize team effectiveness as well as individual success. Sport psychologists will gain much from this book because it provides a broad range of strategies about matters from garnering socioemotional “buy in” from female athletes to new styles of coaching and new approaches to offense or defense. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, professionals; general readers Faculty Member: Stewart, Bob. Sport funding and finance. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2014. 282p bibl index ISBN 978- Click here to enter text. 0-415-83983-9 cloth, $170.00; ISBN 978-0-415-83984-6 pbk, $64.95 142 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 ☐ Required This book by Stewart (Victoria Univ., Australia) is, effectively, two volumes in one. The first half, focusing on broader economic strategies as they manifest in the world of competitive ☐ Recommended sports, holds widespread appeal. Topics discussed in this section of the book include the unique characteristics of sports teams as profit-earning businesses, the importance of market power for generating profits in sports leagues, and issues relating to competitive imbalance. These chapters may be of special interest to American economists and economics students because they highlight atypically covered areas, such as international sports leagues and competitions. The second half of the book is a primer on how to run a sporting enterprise, and the chapter titles give a clear sense of what this portion seeks to accomplish: "Complying with Financial Standards," "Making Sense of the Accounts," and "Dealing with Financial Mismanagement." Overall, the book is very well written and uses interesting case studies to illustrate key concepts. However, the second half is geared more toward those in sports business administration/management than general readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above

143 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Religious Studies Faculty Member: Appleton, Naomi. Narrating karma and rebirth: Buddhist and Jain multi-life stories. Click here to enter text. Cambridge, 2014. 229p bibl index ISBN 9781107033931 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9781139898775 ebook, $76.00 ☐ Required This lively study of narratives about karma and rebirth in Buddhist and Jain literature will be welcomed by scholars and non-scholars alike. Many of the stories have a beguiling fairy-tale ☐ Recommended quality; however, they were not conceived as entertainment but rather as instruments to convey key religious and ethical ideals. They also reflect the cosmological and eschatological doctrines of the Buddhist and Jain traditions (chapter 2), making them quite engaging introductions to their respective paths to enlightenment. These stories contain debates about karma and its effects on one's next life, the function of past-life memories, and the ill effects of forgetfulness (chapter 6). Also featured are the karmic effects of actions such as adultery and murder and excursions through the realms of heaven and hell (chapter 3). The most common past-life stories are the Buddhist Jataka tales, which depict the Buddha's previous incarnations (chapter 4). These, and parallel stories about the Jain moral exemplars (the Jinas), provide abundant themes for classical scriptures, contemporary cartoon books, movies, and painting and sculpture. Chapter 5 explores the fascinating social implications of interpersonal karma and shared merit and demerit. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Armstrong, Karen. Fields of blood: religion and the history of violence. Knopf, 2014. 512p bibl Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9780307957047 cloth, $30.00; ISBN 9780385353106 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required Noting that contemporary scholars and culture blame corporate violence on religion, Armstrong—the author of numerous books on religion—responds by saying that faith has ☐ Recommended become the scapegoat. In this monumental treatise, Armstrong locates the source of violence, empathy, and peacemaking in the human neurological system. She then provides a historical study of the relationship of religion to violence and peacemaking, beginning with the origin stories of the major faith traditions and continuing with the relationship of religion to violence in both the Age of Empire and modernity. The author notes that religion, as codified faith traditions separate from other aspects of culture, is a modern phenomenon. In traditional societies, religion and politics are intertwined as part of the human drive to create meaning. In the modern era, she notes, nationalism has been far more destructive and violent than religion. Many of the modern movements—which use religion as an ideology for violence—are responses to deeply felt injustices and indignities. According to Armstrong, we are at a dangerous crossroads where the world could spiral down into endless destructive violence. She concludes that drawing on the empathy and peacemaking resources of religion may be one of the few remaining hopes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers Faculty Member: Barnett, Christopher B. From despair to faith: the spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard. Fortress, Click here to enter text. 2014. 215p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9781451474695 pbk, $39.00 ☐ Required Barnett (Villanova Univ.) examines Kierkegaard's contribution as a spiritual writer, i.e., as a writer who aimed to involve readers in faith in God. This literary aim stems from the ☐ Recommended influence of Catholic and Protestant Pietism on Kierkegaard (including the influence of, for example, Thomas à Kempis, Johannes Tauler, and François Fénelon). It figures in Kierkegaard’s publication of his many "upbuilding" or "edifying" discourses, which seek the spiritual benefit of readers and not the mere imparting of information. Barnett clarifies Kierkegaard’s spiritual literary aim in connection with the latter’s understanding of one’s interior life as a challenge to move from despair to faith in God. He also investigates Kierkegaard’s understanding of pictures of godliness, in the natural world and in biblical personalities, as aids toward faith in God. The book is remarkably lucid and illuminating in its treatment of a widely neglected side of Kierkegaard. Being nontechnical, it is accessible to college students at all levels and will be enlightening to teachers and scholars too. It shows 144 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 critical awareness of the relevant literature on Kierkegaard. For all libraries supporting work on theology, philosophy, and Kierkegaard. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Baumgarten, Elisheva. Practicing piety in medieval Ashkenaz: men, women, and everyday Click here to enter text. religious observance. Pennsylvania, 2014. 334p bibl index afp ISBN 9780812246407 cloth, $69.95 ☐ Required This important book analyzes pious practice among Jews living in northern France and Germany from the First Crusade to the Black Death. In seven chapters, Baumgarten ☐ Recommended (medieval Jewish history, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) mines evidence from both elite rabbinic sources as well as humbler collections of stories, custom books, and communal records to illuminate religious practices, including prayer, fasting, charitable giving, and modes of dress. Practice, Baumgarten argues, led to developments in rabbinical commentary and Halakic interpretation as often as the reverse. In a tradition of scholars that include Ivan Marcus, Dean Bell, and Debra Kaplan, Baumgarten insists that Jewish pious practices cannot be analyzed in isolation from the wider context of developments in Christian culture. The author frequently uses perceptions of women's pious practices to reveal the affinities between Jewish and Christian cultural attitudes. The book is well suited to undergraduate or graduate seminars on medieval piety. However, some readers will need supplementary background information because the book lacks a glossary, and Baumgarten does not consistently define or explain terms related to Jewish piety. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Birkel, Michael. Qur'an in conversation. Baylor, 2014. 282p bibl index afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9781481300971 cloth, $39.95 ☐ Required For many non-Muslims, reading the Qur’an is daunting. Persons from other religious traditions with other scriptures inadvertently try to read the Qur’an in the same manner in ☐ Recommended which they learned to read their own holy texts. The results can be confusing. This collection of interviews—essays that are, for the most part, spoken rather than written—allows non- Muslims (and Muslims, for that matter) to approach the Qur’an in a congenial, even relaxed, manner. Birkel (Earlham College) does not summarize the contents of the Qur’an, however. Rather, a wide variety of North American Muslim authors, many of whom are known personally to this reviewer, reflect on an array of Islamic themes of interest not only to practitioners of other religions but also of universal interest to humanity. The result is wide-ranging in scope and shows a breadth of modern Islamic thought in the US, offered in an accessible form for novices with explanations of Islam for many who do not know what questions to ask. For both novices and professionals, these oral essays share personal accounts of how modern Muslims think and live. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Brown, Jonathan. Misquoting Muhammad: the challenge and choices of interpreting the Click here to enter text. Prophet's legacy. Oneworld, 2014. 361p bibl index ISBN 9781780744209 cloth, $29.99 ☐ Required In his latest book, which could have been called Quoting Muhammad, Brown (Georgetown Univ.) ably navigates the cutting edge of Hadith studies while offering his able insight, ☐ Recommended encyclopedic knowledge of Muslim textual traditions, and awareness of the political contentiousness of scholarship in Islamic studies. Brown maps for readers the outlines of the Muslim scriptural tradition and goes on to reflect on modern and contemporary challenges to that tradition (including Qur’an interpretation and Islamic law), which he renders complex, historically contingent, and negotiated by various actors at all times. Far from being a deconstructionist, Brown positions himself as a defender of Islam as that tradition without denying his and other Muslims’ struggles with the cognitive dissonance inherent in multivalent and contradictory interpretations. Chapter titles such as “The Fragile Truth of Scripture,” “Clinging to the Canon in a Ruptured World,” “Lying about the Prophet of God,” and, not least, “When Scripture Can’t Be True” point to his skillful navigation of such tensions. The author focuses on contentious topics, including apostasy, women’s leadership, 145 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 domestic violence, jihad, and Sunni-Shi'a differences. The resulting book is long, eminently readable, and dense without being overwhelming. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. Faculty Member: Davies, Brian. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: a guide and commentary. Oxford, 2014. Click here to enter text. 454p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199380626 cloth, $99.00; ISBN 9780199380633 pbk, $29.95 ☐ Required Davies (Fordham Univ.) has in recent years produced some splendid studies on Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas (2003) and Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil (CH, Jan'12, 49-2590). This ☐ Recommended commentary on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae is another scholarly triumph. The book begins with a short introduction, containing a biography of Aquinas followed by a brief, speculative account of Aquinas’s purpose in writing the Summa. Davies then wastes no time in launching into his commentary proper—a systematic, article-by-article, question-by-question commentary on the entire Summa. Other fine commentaries on the Summa are available, including F. C. Bauerschmidt's Holy Teaching (2005) and P. J. Glenn's A Tour of the Summa (1960). All are excellent, and students of Aquinas will not want to be without any. However, if one were to have only one such study, Davies’s commentary would be a wise and excellent choice. It is thorough, well organized, and supplemented with copious notes and pie charts that give a visual breakdown of the philosophical and theological subjects covered in the Summa. It will not replace other commentaries that have a narrower, more detailed focus; however, those looking for a comprehensive and accessible companion to Aquinas’s Summa could do no better. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty Faculty Member: Gold, Jonathan C. Paving the great way: Vasubandhu's unifying Buddhist philosophy. Click here to enter text. Columbia, 2014. 322p bibl index afp ISBN 9780231168267 cloth, $55.00 ☐ Required Vasubandhu (4th–5th century CE) is widely known among students of Buddhist philosophy for his pivotal contributions to Buddhist Abhidhamma thought, his turn toward Mahayana ☐ Recommended tradition, and his historically influential Yogacara texts. This book is perhaps the first, at least in English, to focus on Vasubandhu’s integration of several Buddhist scriptural and philosophical traditions that had historical importance for the evolution of a distinctive Mahayana epistemology—several scriptural and philosophical traditions blend into a coherent idealist system of Buddhist philosophy. Accordingly, Gold (Princeton Univ.) has written something extraordinary by pulling together the key strands of Vasubandhu’s thought by demonstrating the underlying unity of seemingly different strands. This book makes a major contribution not only to Vasubandhu scholarship but also to Yogacara scholarship as well as to the history of Indian Buddhist philosophy and contemporary engagement between Western and Asian Buddhist philosophical scholarship. An appendix includes extensive English-language translations of the major texts discussed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: MacDonald, Margaret Y. The power of children: the construction of Christian families in the Click here to enter text. Greco-Roman world. Baylor, 2014. 239p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9781481302234 cloth, $49.95 ☐ Required In the time before privacy and segregation by age cohorts, children were everywhere in home life, MacDonald (St. Mary’s Univ., Canada) points out, and that had profound implications on ☐ Recommended the developing Christian communities at the turn of the second century. MacDonald examines the “household codes”—stereotypical exhortations to moral conduct directed at different household members (husbands, wives, and slaves)—of the later New Testament letters attributed to St. Paul: Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Informed by a broad range of Hellenistic, Jewish, and early Christian sources and archaeological evidence, MacDonald pieces together a circumstantial but ultimately persuasive and revealing portrait of the impact of children in shaping early Christian community life practices. The interaction of slaves and free persons, high mortality rates that made the central conceptions of who was family an ever-moving target, and the need to socialize children and interested outside parties into the movement are spelled out in fascinating detail. By the end of the first century, socialization had become conscious education, and house churches were “home- 146 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 schools.” The book ends with an examination of the increasing institutionalization of the early second century. MacDonald offers biblical scholarship at its best: nuanced, multidisciplinary, detailed, informed, critically engaged, and insightfully reasoned. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Marienberg, Evyatar. Catholicism today: an introduction to the contemporary Catholic Click here to enter text. Church. Routledge, 2014. 246p bibl index ISBN 9780415719421 cloth, $125.00; ISBN 9780415719438 pbk, $44.95 ☐ Required Marienberg (UNC-Chapel Hill) offers a concise, accessible, and impressively comprehensive overview of the Catholic Church, particularly since its emergence from the Second Vatican ☐ Recommended Council (1962–1965). This is a revised and updated version of a Hebrew edition that the author published in 2010. In both, Marienberg—a historian of religions who specializes in Jewish and Catholic lay beliefs and practices—writes with nonspecialists in mind. Accordingly, he confronts and rebuts common misconceptions about Catholicism, from the authority of the pope to the veneration of the Virgin Mary. He begins with a brief summary of Catholic history and then outlines the basic features of Catholic identity, belief, structure, and ritual. Unique to a book like this is a chapter on the Catholic calendar, demonstrating how a common sense of time binds together the faithful. In the conclusion, Marienberg addresses the many complicated challenges Catholicism faces today, such as the priest shortage, the status of women, the sexual abuse scandals, birth control, divorce and remarriage, contraception, and homosexuality. On each topic, Marienberg admirably describes the relevant themes, issues, and debates while avoiding partisanship himself. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and general readers Faculty Member: Early Christianity in contexts: an exploration across cultures and continents, ed. by William Click here to enter text. Tabbernee. Baker Academic, 2014. 602p bibl indexes ISBN 9780801031267 cloth, $42.99 ☐ Required In this book, early “material evidence” gives information about the origins of Christianity in particular areas, providing physical and cultural contexts for the specific kinds of Christianity ☐ Recommended found in those places. Entries on ten geographic areas are written by experts and lavishly illustrated to bring up-to-date archaeological findings into reach. Each chapter contributor surveys features of a region prior to the introduction of Christianity, considering the area's geography, politics, economics, agriculture, social patterns, and (especially) religious thought and practice. Then, drawing on a wide range of material culture findings—coins, inscriptions, mosaics, remnants of church buildings, and many other artifacts—a team of expert historians assembled by Tabbernee (director, Oklahoma Conferences of Churches) reconstructs the region’s specific form of Christianity. The chapters, each designating a region, include "The Roman Near East," "The World of the Nile," "Roman North Africa," "The Balkan Peninsula," and "Italy and Environs." The book makes for fascinating reading, introducing highly intriguing dimensions of the ways early Christianity developed in the specific contexts in which it was variously set. This volume is a splendid technical resource, highly recommended for both scholars and those searching for an engaging way to enter into the diverse nature of early Christianity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Breaking bread, breaking beats: churches and hip-hop: a basic guide to key issues, by The Click here to enter text. Cecil Writing Collective. Fortress, 2014. 253p bibl index afp ISBN 9780800699260 cloth, $29.00 ☐ Required This book is a rare and generative collaboration among academic professionals, artists, and students. Emerging from a team-taught course at Rice University, directed by Anthony Pinn ☐ Recommended (a theologian and religious studies scholar) and Bernard “Bun B” Freeman (a hip-hop artist), the book offers a basic introduction to some major themes that concern rap music and African American Christianity. Through a series of ten chapters jointly authored by students and instructors, readers encounter crisp discussions of the relevance of religion and hip-hop for conceptualizing major issues such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, embodiment, poverty, and globalization. The volume emphasizes hip-hop as a cultural form whose massive impact 147 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 on global cultures has both challenged and resonated with the legacy of black churches. Some essays historicize the black church and hip-hop within the context of racial conflicts and urban transformations that persist to the present. Other chapters elucidate surprising parallels, such as that between prosperity gospel and hip-hop “bling” or heteropatriarchal theology and misogynist rap lyrics. Thorough editing has produced cohesion in both substance and style in a book that should serve as a versatile text for teaching. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. Faculty Member: Walters, Kerry S. Profiles in Christian courage: extraordinary inspiration for everyday life. Click here to enter text. Rowman & Littlefield, 191p index afp ISBN 9781442223318 cloth, $32.00; ISBN 9781442223325 ebook, $31.99 ☐ Required This concise anthology from Walters (philosophy, Gettysburg College) offers 18 profiles of contemporary or near-contemporary Christians, selected because of their extraordinary ☐ Recommended courage (physical, moral, or spiritual, though the author acknowledges that these distinctions are not precise). Some of the figures treated (e.g., C. S. Lewis, Henri Nouwen) are widely known, but the author sheds fresh light on dimensions of their lives that will be new to most. Many more of the subjects are likely to be completely new to readers. Walters's way of telling their stories strikes just the right balance between placing these individuals in their cultural context and letting their powerful stories stand on their own. To accept that this volume is better suited to a nightstand than a reference collection is not to discount its value in any way. Each individual story is compelling in its own right, and the power of the stories is further enhanced by the ensemble format used and by Walters's skillful recounting. An index makes the material more accessible, and a short bibliography for each chapter maps out resources for further inquiry. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers Faculty Member: Westphal, Merold. Kierkegaard's concept of faith. Eerdmans, 2014. 284p indexes afp ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780802868060 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required Westphal (emer., Fordham Univ.) is one of the best writers in continental philosophy. His authorship is known for its philosophical sophistication and argumentative rigor as well as its ☐ Recommended clarity, humor, and accessibility. His new book is no exception. Indeed, it might be regarded as a maximal example of these admirable qualities. This book is the most sophisticated consideration of Kierkegaard’s notion of faith in the existing literature, but it will also prove engaging for readers without a Kierkegaardian background. The author focuses on three of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms: Johannes de Silentio, Johannes Climacus, and Anti- Climacus. Spending five chapters each on Silentio and Climacus and two chapters on Anti- Climacus, Westphal carefully analyzes the ways in which Kierkegaardian faith does not remain static but rather develops throughout his authorship. Westphal presents faith in all its existential depth and theological determinacy while still allowing for serious objections. Although primarily a contribution to the secondary literature on Kierkegaard, this book is also an original and important contribution to the broader contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion. Westphal's text is a joy to read and worthy of serious philosophical consideration. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Faculty Member: Wilson, Brian C. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the religion of biologic living. Indiana, 2014. 240p Click here to enter text. bibl index afp ISBN 9780253014474 cloth, $35.00; ISBN 9780253014559 ebook, $34.99 ☐ Required Most people know the name Kellogg from the cereal brand or T. C. Boyle's novel The Road to Wellville, but there was much more to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg; he was exquisitely a man of ☐ Recommended his times, and Wilson (comparative religion, Western Michigan Univ.) situates him perfectly as an intellectual figure or—as the author puts it—the “doctor as theologian.” Brought up in a Seventh-day Adventist milieu, Kellogg was from a young age taken up by 19th-century obsessions with health and its relationship to morality. This interest was intrinsically tied to Kellogg's close relationship with Ellen G. White. Under her tutelage, he became concerned 148 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 about issues of diet, moral health, and treatment—what Kellogg called 'biologic living," a philosophy that served as the basis of his world famous Battle Creek Sanitarium, which attracted leaders in all fields. What is remarkable is not that some of Kellogg's ideas seem strange or that his ideas on eugenics are offensive but rather that many of his ideas still have cogency. Wilson has written an excellent, thoroughly researched, tightly knit study of a 19th- century phenomenon that still resonates today. The book will be of interest to those in American religious history, history of medicine, and general social history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Wolpe, David. David: the divided heart. Yale, 2014. 153p index afp ISBN 9780300188783 Click here to enter text. cloth, $25.00 ☐ Required In this contribution to Yale's "Jewish Lives" series, Wolpe (rabbi, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles) crafts a poignant and provocative interpretive biography of David. Drawing on the Davidic ☐ Recommended narratives of (predominantly) 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, augmented by other biblical texts, Wolpe focuses on the roles of David as a means to his writing of David’s biography. Thus, he considers the young David, David as lover/husband/fugitive/king/sinner/father/caretaker/Messianic forebear, and other such roles as poet, musician, and warrior. Yet his is more than a biography or a retelling of this classic biblical tale. Wolpe infuses his reading with varied rabbinic sources, text-critical details, parallels with world literature, and an occasional anecdote wherein Davidic deeds or thoughts are reflected in the contemporary world. With Wolpe’s first statement about David—"Our first glimpse of David is his absence"—readers will recognize that this is no ordinary telling or text-critical analysis. At the culmination of this biography, readers are forced to consider the value of the "complexity" of David’s character as a reflection of humanity in general and the significance of this complexity for David’s role as the forerunner of the Messiah. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Fundamentalism: perspectives on a contested history, ed. by Simon A. Wood and David Click here to enter text. Harrington Watt. South Carolina, 2014. 284p bibl index ISBN 9781611173543 cloth, $49.95; ISBN 9781611173550 ebook, $49.95 ☐ Required Of the many studies of "fundamentalism" as phenomenon and as concept, this volume by editors Wood and Watt and their colleagues ranks among the very best available. This ☐ Recommended volume faces the problem of defining fundamentalism and stipulating its traits. Contributors ask whether the term has the explanatory power to be detached from its initial use as a description of an early-20th-century American Protestantism movement to become capable of accounting for a global phenomenon characterized as a militant response to modern secularism. At issue are fundamental questions. Can a term useful for describing an interesting single case be expanded and theorized into an explanation for a global phenomenon, or is the very effort to globalize "fundamentalism" inescapably ethnocentric? Does "fundamentalism" clarify or confuse? Is it an analytic term useful for guiding research? Interpretations go many ways, and the essays serve as models for academic inquiry in their definitional clarity, rigorous use of evidence, and invitation to counterarguments. All the essays are of uniformly high quality. This is an excellent teaching volume. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers

149 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Sociology & Human Relations Faculty Member: Dean, James Joseph. Straights: heterosexuality in post-closeted culture. New York University, Click here to enter text. 2014. 303p bibl index afp ISBN 9780814762752 cloth, $79.00; ISBN 9780814764596 pbk, $26.00 ☐ Required Sociologist Dean (Sonoma State Univ.) examines the politics of sexual identity in the post- Stonewall era, in which the surrounding politics have been dramatically transformed. This ☐ Recommended has impacted the heterosexual community as well as the homosexual community. Dean argues that the days of assuming heterosexuality are gone and provides a historical understanding of heterosexuality, masculinity and femininity, and the emergence of new heterosexualities, such as the metrosexual male. The book, based on 60 in-depth interviews with black and white heterosexual men and women, explores how straight Americans view their sexual and gendered selves. The inclusion of a wider range of races might have provided insightful material in how they position themselves in this new post-closeted culture, but this is perhaps for another book. Dean has masterfully created a unique view of GBLTQ identity and its effect on heterosexuality, something heretofore seriously lacking in GBLTQ studies and highlighted with this book. An appendix of the interviewees' characteristics is included (illuminating who these people are and how they identify themselves), as well as chapter notes, an extensive bibliography worth the purchase in itself, and a thorough index. Valuable for those interested in GBLTQ studies. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Dunkelman, Marc J. The vanishing neighbor: the transformation of American community. W. Click here to enter text. W. Norton, 2014. 291p index ISBN 9780393063967 cloth, $27.95 ☐ Required This book focuses on the transformation of American community since Alexis de Tocqueville delineated the township community as the defining feature of US society. Basing his study on ☐ Recommended a careful review of sociological studies, Dunkelman (Brown) observes that the legacy of American exceptionalism and the American capacity to care for one another have been sliding away. He discusses changes in motives and opportunities, personal relationships and families, the roles of women, corporations and big bureaucracies, and varieties of communities. He shows how globalization and the economic and technological/digital revolutions have undermined the basic building blocks of community life; Americans are becoming more isolated while being more globally connected. Dunkelman argues that a new social architecture, the “networked community,” has emerged, and that it faces a new set of challenges and opportunities. He contends that the key to successful neighborhoods is community trust more than neighborly warmth. He believes that if the US is to thrive in the coming decades, recalibration of the relationships between democracy and community and adjustment of socioeconomic and political institutions to new social structures will be crucial to maintaining the American Dream. This informative, well-written book will be a significant resource for those interested in urban/community studies, social change, and American studies more broadly. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates Faculty Member: Ehrlich, J. Shoshanna. Regulating desire: from the virtuous maiden to the purity princess. Click here to enter text. SUNY Press, 2014. 213p bibl index afp ISBN 9781438453057 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9781438453064 ebook, $80.00 ☐ Required Ehrlich (Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) examines young women’s bodies as the site of public concern and the target of public policy from the 1830s to the present. By examining the ways ☐ Recommended in which both feminist and conservative groups have made the sexualized female body a subject of legal regulation, she provides a succinct, readable, and insightful synthesis of scholarship on such diverse subjects as anti-prostitution activism, age-of-consent campaigns, family planning, and purity balls, paying careful attention to the gender dynamics (as well as the racial and class implications) of public discussions—and denials—of young women’s sexuality. This excellent overview of changing views of female sexuality also builds on the author’s earlier work in Who Decides?: The Abortion Rights of Teens (2006) and raises 150 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 provocative questions about young women’s understanding of and control over their own bodies. A valuable contribution to scholarship in sexuality studies, rhetorical analysis, public policy, and legal history, as well as to the emerging field of girls’ studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries Faculty Member: Gaskew, Tony. Rethinking prison reentry: transforming humiliation into humility. Lexington Click here to enter text. Books, 2014. 191p bibl index afp ISBN 9780739183120 cloth, $80.00; ISBN 9780739183137 ebook, $79.99 ☐ Required "Black bodies, white justice" is just one proposition calling for rethinking raised in this provocative book. Prior to his academic career, Gaskew (criminal justice, Univ. of Pittsburgh, ☐ Recommended Bradford) was a detective with the Melbourne (Florida) Police Department, where he became a member of Florida's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Since 2007, he has taught prisoners at McKean Federal Correctional Institution. From this experience the author has evolved a passionate, highly personal critique drawn from his life experiences. The author's argument might be summarized as follows: whites are numerically the greatest criminal offenders, whereas blacks disproportionately offend and are incarcerated. Black crime causation initially stems from slavery, then from Jim Crow policies, and most recently from racism, thanks to white privilege. Persistent white supremacy keeps prisons full of black bodies. But Gaskew, who is African American, has plenty of sharp words for his own race. Many black convicts are narcissistic and show scant regard for their communities and children left behind. Black cultural privilege is a pedagogical resource that, once fully understood, can redirect lives. This is a timely, fact-filled stem-winder. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, professionals Faculty Member: Goldberg, Wendy A. Father time: the social clock and the timing of fatherhood. Palgrave Click here to enter text. Macmillan, 2014. 232p bibl index ISBN 9781137372710 cloth, $100.00 ☐ Required One might have thought the transition to parenthood had already been investigated and largely understood. Goldberg (psychology, Univ. of California, Irvine) adds to the knowledge ☐ Recommended base by investigating the importance of timing on the social and psychological clocks of first- time fathers in this most interesting book. Specifically, she studied early-timers (25 years old and younger), an on-time group (26 to 34 years of age), and a delayed group (35 years of age and older) and discovered the experiences of these men differed in significant ways. Across the groups, the author compares changes in relationships with the fathers' mothers and fathers and with their in-laws, their senses of self, their involvement in social activities, and their perceived distress. The differences with respect to the advice each group of fathers would give to other new fathers might serve as a summary of between-group characteristics. The primary message of the early fathers was to “be patient,” the on-time group advised others to “be financially stable,” and the delayed group simply said “enjoy it” and “spend time with the child.” Appendixes include all the interviews, questionnaires, and scales used in the study. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Goodman, David S. G. Class in contemporary China. Polity, 2014. 233p bibl index ISBN Click here to enter text. 9780745653365 cloth, $64.95; ISBN 9780745653372 pbk, $24.95 ☐ Required Goodman (Chinese politics, Univ. of Sydney) has done a pioneering integration of numerous large, small, and emergent studies probing the meaning and identification of social class in ☐ Recommended contemporary China. His book's strength is the exploration of the relationship between political and economic elites that has emerged during and after three decades of reform. One of the author's core findings is that class in China needs to be approached as a study less from a statistical category that focuses on economic inequality or as income- specific, and more from a sociological perspective that probes the intergenerational transfer of status, power, and wealth. Goodman provides a concise overview of how social stratification changed within the revolutionary and reform eras. The chapter on the rise of China’s middle class with all the sundry difficulties in trying to conceptualize the phenomenon is worth the price of the book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above 151 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Faculty Member: Global gangs: street violence across the world, ed. by Jennifer M. Hazen and Dennis Rodgers. Click here to enter text. Minnesota, 2014. 300p bibl index afp ISBN 9780816691470 cloth, $82.50; ISBN 9780816691494 pbk, $27.50 ☐ Required For those interested in cross-national trends in youth gangs, there are few choices to turn to for cultural richness, much less history. This edited book provides a broad range of essays ☐ Recommended from which to choose, whether for scholars’ personal interest or for research purposes. Spanning the globe, literally, from the US, where street gangs (gangstas) are supposed to have originated, to Europe, African nations, South America, and beyond, the book’s brilliance is in offering a compare/contrast approach in which commonalities are not ignored in the face of seemingly different cultural contexts. For instance, Mats Utas’s essay (chapter 8) on gangs in war-torn Sierra Leone points out the similarities of life on the streets of Chicago as depicted in Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnographic work Gang Leader for a Day (2008) with the lives of displaced young men, post-military service, in Freetown. Approachable yet rigorous in scholarship, each chapter challenges the meaning of "gang membership" and puts it in world context. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Kivisto, Peter. Religion and immigration: migrant faiths in North America and Western Click here to enter text. Europe. Polity, 2014. 211p bibl index ISBN 9780745641690 cloth, $64.95; ISBN 9780745641706 pbk, $22.95 ☐ Required This accessible, balanced, and well-researched book addresses the critical question of religion in the modern, industrialized, democratic West. Reviewing a sizable secondary literature in ☐ Recommended the social sciences, sociologist Kivisto (Augustana College) covers extensive ground across two continents and many linguistic, religious, and cultural communities. Readers will learn about Taiwanese immigrants in southern California, Bangladeshis in London, and Muslims in Switzerland, among other combinations. The author summarizes and profitably analyzes large-scale studies and indexes, such as the New Ethnic and Immigrant Congregations Project (NEICP) and the Multiculturalism Policy Index (MPI). Kivisto accurately distinguishes between the US, which has a long history of receiving immigrants from around the world, and Europe, which generally does not, particularly as it relates to Muslims. Informed readers will want to know if European governments have looked to the US as a model for their own efforts at becoming more welcoming to immigrants. If so, how has this played out? If not, why not? Given the economic comparisons that are often made between the two continents, a discussion of how European governments view the US history and legacy of immigration would have enhanced an otherwise good book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper- division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Shapers of urban form: explorations in morphological agency, ed. by Peter J. Larkham and Click here to enter text. Michael P. Conzen. Routledge, 2014. 335p bibl index ISBN 9780415738897 cloth, $180.00; ISBN 9780415738903 pbk, $59.95 ☐ Required Key words in the title of this handsomely produced and highly readable book are the last two: morphological agency. Cities do not just happen; formation is as intentional as ☐ Recommended location. Urban morphology—the process of city formation—denotes how humans, individually and institutionally, build cities in legible fashion and what that legibility says about human values, attitudes, and behaviors. Agents, whether royal, ecclesiastical, military, colonial, commercial, or industrial, shape cities to accomplish certain ends; these ends may reflect, for instance, defensive measures, economic interests, transportation efficiency, or residential accommodation. The book’s editors have assembled a balanced set of international and interdisciplinary authors, each with a morphological eye to how cities develop spatially. They present original research on agency in urban morphology across a millennium and from a number of unique settings, although the array is decidedly British, European, and US in emphasis. Chapters have a strong geographical and historical bias, understandable given that urban form is constantly evolving, even if it appears static for long periods. The concluding chapter offers a thoughtful theoretical perspective. Appropriate for academic and general readers interested in urban form. Summing Up: Highly recommended. 152 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Most levels/libraries Faculty Member: McCune, Jeffrey Q.. Sexual discretion: black masculinity and the politics of passing. Chicago, Click here to enter text. 2014. 202p bibl index afp ISBN 9780226096360 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9780226096537 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9780226096674 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required In this superlative study, McCune (Washington Univ.) addresses the concept of the “down low”—officially positioned as African American men having sex with other men while ☐ Recommended maintaining their relationships with their wives or girlfriends—in a sophisticated manner that transcends any of the popular literature on the subject. A combination of ethnographic study, media analysis, and theoretical work, the book challenges both the media hysteria regarding the down low and what this concept actually is. Drawing on history and literature, the author demonstrates how the surveillance of black sexuality has forced many men who have sex with other men to maintain a heterosexual lifestyle in order to maintain the stability of more respectable images. McCune has done his homework by interviewing dozens of men who have sex with men in clubs and Internet chat rooms. He argues that one needs to understand these men beyond the pathologies of “deviance and disease” that have framed their narratives. He interrogates popular magazines, television shows, and literature on the subject, demonstrating the structure of these discussions. Sexual Discretion is a must read for those working in the fields of sexuality, race, and gender studies. One hopes that McCune will continue to revise his research in this rapidly changing culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Ocejo, Richard E. Upscaling downtown: from Bowery saloons to cocktail bars in New York Click here to enter text. City. Princeton, 2014. 257p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691155166 cloth, $35.00 ☐ Required Using bars as a barometer for gentrification, Ocejo (sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice) explores the dynamics of change on New York City’s Bowery, once a working-class ☐ Recommended neighborhood best known for its cheap hotels and skid-row denizens. Cocktail lounges and upscale bars, the author skillfully demonstrates, are a form of commercial activity that disrupts communities by attracting revelers who travel to the neighborhood to drink, eat, and dance late into the night and have little regard for residents whose day begins when the nightlife winds down. The lens on gentrification is unique, and the study contributes to a thriving body of work that explores the conflicts that emerge in formerly downtrodden neighborhoods when luxury housing, restaurants catering to a well-to-do crowd, and evolving concepts of quality of life displace long-term residents. It also provides a welcome survey of sites of participatory democracy and the diverse voices straining to be heard. Chapters focus on the role of the community board, the SLA (State Liquor Authority), and local policing of nightlife scenes, among other perspectives. The strongly grounded analysis is enlivened by many interviews and casual conversations, illustrative of the hours of research and observation that informed the narrative and attest to the author’s commitment to the project. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries Faculty Member: Sawhill, Isabel V. Generation unbound: drifting into sex and parenthood without marriage. Click here to enter text. Brookings, 2014. 209p index afp ISBN 9780815725589 cloth, $32.00; ISBN 9780815726357 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9780815726357 ebook, contact publisher for price ☐ Required The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s created a social norm of what the author terms “drifting into parenthood.” What this means is that young adults live together, have children, ☐ Recommended and often drift apart, which results in a lack of parenting for their offspring. Sawhill (economic studies, Brookings Institution) presents many arguments for this prevailing attitude to change and for parenting skills to be reinforced by both parents remaining together. Various forms of birth control allow women to decide whether or not to have children; this means that the fertility rate in the US is now at its lowest point in recorded history: 1.9 children per woman. However, these options have contributed to high rates of childbearing outside of marriage by reducing the need for “shotgun weddings.” Consequently, over half the births to young adults now occur outside of marriage, and a large percentage are unplanned. Sawhill argues that this casual attitude 153 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 toward reproduction is harmful, and that people need to replace the norms regarding unmarried pregnancy with new norms, such as planned parenting and fewer children, thus providing more resources to devote to these children. An excellent book, well written and full of information regarding parenting. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Solotaroff, Jennifer L. Violence against women and girls: lessons from South Asia, by Jennifer Click here to enter text. L. Solotaroff and Rohini Prabha Pande. World Bank, 2014. 295p bibl ISBN 9781464801716 pbk, $24.99 ☐ Required This excellent study examines various forms and patterns of violence women and girls face in South Asian countries. Coauthors Solotaroff and Pande use ecological and life-course models ☐ Recommended and draw from research in the social sciences, health, and law to discuss physical, sexual, and emotional abuse females experience from infancy to old age. The authors focus on patriarchal cultural norms and political, religious, and legal institutions that contribute to excessive female child mortality, child abuse, child marriage, forced marriage, sexual harassment, dowry-related violence, trafficking, honor killing, widow and elder abuse, and intimate partner violence. This study shows how socioeconomic changes and women’s higher education, increasing employment, and political participation and empowerment have exposed them to increased risk of violence in public life. The report evaluates programs aimed at preventing violence and intervention strategies such as media campaigns, crisis centers, legislation, etc. More important, the study emphasizes the underlying principle that women and girls are citizens who should have the same human rights and privileges as men and boys. Documenting and analyzing the prevalence, typology, and multiple risk factors, costs, and consequences of violence against women and girls in South Asia and providing recommendations for all stakeholders result in an outstanding contribution to women’s studies, sociology, and public policy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Critical terms for the study of gender, ed. by Catharine R. Stimpson and Gilbert Herdt. Click here to enter text. Chicago, 2014. 557p ISBN 9780226774800 cloth, $97.50; ISBN 9780226774817 pbk, $32.50 ☐ Required This collection is nothing short of an intellectual feast for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who relish one another’s investigations and insights. Twenty-three expert ☐ Recommended contributors capture the theoretical complexities that surface and the visionary horizons that appear through astute consideration of critically selected and compelling topics, held up to the scrutiny of gender studies. Exploration of culture, globalization, identity, justice, language, nature, religion, and 14 other equally provocative areas of focus for feminist scholarship presents readers with a sense of participation in a series of advanced seminar sessions that are almost uniformly rewarding. Even with necessarily dense subject matter to navigate, only rarely does an entry achieve its purpose through such specialized discourse that accessibility will be limited to a small circle. Almost all of the contributors have accomplished a rich and engaging treatment of the terms illuminated here through the fertile questions that a gender lens brings into focus. Taken as a whole, the essays convey an impressive reflection of progress and intellectual courage from which readers already familiar with feminist inquiry will take inspiration. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above Faculty Member: Villalobos, Ana. Motherload: making it all better in insecure times. California, 2014. 282p bibl Click here to enter text. index afp ISBN 9780520278097 cloth, $75.00; ISBN 9780520278103 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9780520959729 ebook, $29.95 ☐ Required Villalobos explores the enormous effort mothers make to create a sense of security for themselves and their children, based on 168 interviews with 51 mothers (many interviewed ☐ Recommended multiple times over the first three years of their children’s lives). Previous studies have emphasized the salience to parents of children being safe and happy; this research suggests the emphasis has shifted to safety first—not simply safety from the accidents of childhood but also safety in a world that feels increasingly insecure to mothers. Chapters show how 154 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 strategies that emphasize closely attending to children's emotional states as well as strategies intended to “toughen them up” aim to create a sense of security for mothers and their children. Economic uncertainly, uncertainly about marriage, and a thinning of the social safety net figure large in these narratives. Though the claim that the mother-child relationship is the last refuge for creating a sense of security may be an exaggeration, the book is important in highlighting how personal troubles are rooted in larger social and economic concerns. It provides a broad context for the scrutiny intensive parenting has received and draws much-needed attention to the importance of bringing other caregivers into the equation so that mothers do not labor alone in an insecure world. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries Faculty Member: Whitesel, Jason. Fat gay men: girth, mirth, and the politics of stigma. New York University, Click here to enter text. 2014. 177p bibl index afp ISBN 9780814708385 cloth, $79.00; ISBN 9780814724125 pbk, $22.00 ☐ Required This examination of fat gay men, a marginalized and stigmatized group within the already marginalized and stigmatized group of homosexual men in general, is a critical missing piece ☐ Recommended in GBLTQ studies. Whitesel (women’s and gender studies, Pace Univ.) provides insight into the national social club Girth & Mirth through ethnographic interviews and in-depth field notes as he participates with men who celebrate and transmogrify fat stigma through their own cultures, hierarchies, and comradeship. As a gay man, Whitesel is in a unique position to understand the hierarchy of gay culture. Using a wide range of theories and lenses, Whitesel “builds on fat studies, disability studies, performance analyses of sexualities, and research on stigmatized social groups to examine the social injuries gay big men incur and their responses to those injuries.” Two appendixes, on methodology and theoretical framework, round out this valuable contribution for those interested in fat studies as well as gay studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals Faculty Member: Zoukis, Christopher. College for convicts: the case for higher education in American prisons. Click here to enter text. McFarland, 2014. 290p bibl index afp ISBN 9780786495337 pbk, $35.00 ☐ Required Incarcerated author Zoukis gives excellent examples to demonstrate that the US would benefit from higher education for inmates in prisons. He describes how poorly the system ☐ Recommended prepares prisoners for life after prison, and how this leads to more crime and more prison overcrowding, costing society billions. The author cites statistics that show that prisoners with higher education have a much lower recidivism rate. Zoukis reviews how society has denied this education in prison, but lists many particular examples where it continues to work. The book ends with important appendixes on the FBI's position, on becoming pen pals with prisoners, funding, free books, and other information. A strongly suggested purchase. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries

155 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Speech & Communication Faculty Member: Society and the Internet: how networks of information and communication are changing our Click here to enter text. lives, ed. by Mark Graham and William H. Dutton. Oxford, 2014. 390p bibl index afp ISBN 9780199661992 cloth, $95.00; ISBN 9780199662005 pbk, $40.00 ☐ Required Society and the Internet is a collection of 23 diverse essays, organized into five parts, that look at how society functions in a networked society and the social and cultural challenges and ☐ Recommended decisions people face. Content ranges from the use of the Internet as a modern-day scapegoat to how different cultures interact with the Internet to the changing face of politics and political activism to social issues surrounding up-and-coming technologies. The book includes some well-balanced commentary on usually contentious issues, such as children on the Internet and gender and race issues. Although it does not present a wealth of new information, it is well edited and maintains a neutral tone across a broad spectrum of topics. Perhaps the most attractive aspect is that the essays are clearly and simply written. This makes it an excellent book for related undergraduate course work, with each brief essay providing a springboard to more detailed exploration. The need for prior knowledge is minimal. Many essays focus on a portion of their topic, rather than trying to encompass all related issues, which provides a solid grounding from which to begin a discussion. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. Faculty Member: Knoblauch, C. H. Discursive ideologies: reading western rhetoric. Utah State, 2014. 208p bibl Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9780874219357 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9780874219364 ebook, $24.00 ☐ Required Unique, creative, and insightful, Discursive Ideologies expands and deepens the notion of rhetoric in the Western tradition. Knoblauch (English, Univ. of North Carolina, ☐ Recommended Charlotte) opens by observing the rhetoric of two representative people making statements and daily decisions with meanings based on different ideologies of rhetoric. He then analyzes, in-depth, six ideologies that give grounds for meaning—magical, ontological, objectivist, expressivist, sociological, and deconstructive—and concludes that “what we believe about words influences the way in which we live our lives.” Knoblauch demonstrates how various rhetorical discourses (e.g., domestic, religious, scientific, legal, political, scholarly) rely on assumptions about naming, the ethos of the writer, and reliability of texts, of meaning, and of truth. Discourses or “different worlds of words” involve subconscious as well as conscious use of language that “enables communication.” In succinctly summarizing pertinent philosophers and critics—from Plato to Derrida—Knoblauch urges readers not to mistake his categories and their comprehensiveness as more than heuristic power and to keep in mind that they are based on Western ideologies only. He points out that this rhetorical tradition is not one value but a complexity mediating values. An excellent resource for those interested in rhetoric, philosophy, politics, history, religion, education, and science. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty Faculty Member: Langlois, Ganaele. Meaning in the age of social media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 201p bibl Click here to enter text. index ISBN 9781137356604 cloth, $85.00 ☐ Required One could think of this book as social media criticism 2.0. Langlois (communication, Univ. of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada) applies a broad array of semiotic, psychoanalytic, ☐ Recommended and political theory to social media and other modern communications technologies, which she calls “semiotechnologies”—machines that make meaning. The book reveals, the author writes, that “social media software manages meaning in ways that are often invisible.” By examining how platforms such as Google and Facebook rank search results and curate user posts, Langlois contests oversimplified accounts of social media, taken as a whole, as a tool that simply liberates and empowers users. She provides a nuanced account of how meaning is generated on social media as individual users interact with corporate for-profit technologies designed to “financialize and commodify psychic life." Langlois’s book represents the maturation of Web 2.0 criticism and suggests how humanities scholars can 156 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 contribute to understanding social media technologies. One criticism: though Langlois’s theoretical models are often illuminating, they can sometimes feel intrusive. Parts of the book will be useful to undergraduates, but frequent references to thinkers such as Foucault and Guattari may prove a stumbling block. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers Faculty Member: Autism spectrum disorders in adolescents and adults: evidence-based and promising Click here to enter text. interventions, ed. by Matt Tincani and Andy Bondy. Guilford, 2014. 334p bibl index afp ISBN 9781462517176 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781462517343 ebook, $45.00 ☐ Required Tincani (Temple Univ.) and Bondy (Pyramid Educational Consultants) bring together experts in the field of autism to address the unique needs of adolescents and adults with autism ☐ Recommended spectrum disorders (ASD). These two populations are afforded less consideration than children with ASD, and often lack the resources available to children with ASD through formal educational systems. In the preface, the editors ask the key question: "What is the long-term goal of sending children with ASD to school?" Following an introductory section, the chapters in the remaining three sections address different approaches for realistically increasing the independence and quality of life of adolescents and adults with ASD, including topics like communication, personal relationships, careers, sexuality, and aging. Each chapter gives an excellent overview of the theories and interventions currently in use, the evidence to support their use, and potential areas for future research and improvement. Frequent case examples detail these approaches in practice. This is a valuable resource for students contemplating working with people with ASD, practicing professionals, and family and friends of people with ASD. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries

157 Suggested Titles List April, 2015 Theatre Faculty Member: Dillon, Elizabeth Maddox. New world drama: the performative commons in the Atlantic Click here to enter text. world, 1649-1849. Duke, 2014. 354p bibl index afp ISBN 9780822353249 cloth, $94.95; ISBN 9780822353416 pbk, $26.95 ☐ Required Building on the work of Joseph Roach and Paul Gilroy, Dillon (English, Northeastern Univ.) begins this narrative with the regicide of Charles I in 1649 and closes with the Astor Place ☐ Recommended Riots of 1849, juxtaposing two changing “commons” of the 17th and 18th centuries: the revolutions that relocated power from monarchy to the people and the enclosure movement, which privatized formerly commonly held lands. In six excellent chapters, the author explores how colonial modernity and colonial relations created “intimate distance,” especially through the stages of England and the colonies. The result is “a novel geography of the public stage” encompassing the Atlantic: the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Africa. Individual chapters engage the theatrical representations of race, class, and public sovereignty in specific locations--London; Charleston, South Carolina; Kingston, Jamaica; and New York City-- exploring how metropole/colonial identity was created in each space and how the idea of who is (and is not) English centered around ideas of ethnicity and class more than geographic location. Simultaneously, Dillon argues that the public theater “materializes the sovereignty of the public,” and then attempts to define who is and is not included in that commons. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above