Monday, August 31, 2015

"Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago"

New from Oxford University Press: Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago by Heath W. Carter.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Gilded Age America, rampant inequality gave rise to a new form of Christianity, one that sought to ease the sufferings of the poor not simply by saving their souls, but by transforming society. In Union Made, Heath W. Carter advances a bold new interpretation of the origins of American Social Christianity. While historians have often attributed the rise of the Social Gospel to middle-class ministers, seminary professors, and social reformers, this book places working people at the very center of the story. The major characters--blacksmiths, glove makers, teamsters, printers, and the like--have been mostly forgotten, but as Carter convincingly argues, their collective contribution to American Social Christianity was no less significant than that of Walter Rauschenbusch or Jane Addams.

Leading readers into the thick of late-19th-century Chicago's tumultuous history, Carter shows that countless working-class believers participated in the heated debates over the implications of Christianity for industrializing society, often with as much fervor as they did in other contests over wages and the length of the workday. The city's trade unionists, socialists, and anarchists advanced theological critiques of laissez faire capitalism and protested "scab ministers" who cozied up to the business elite. Their criticisms compounded church leaders' anxieties about losing the poor, such that by the turn-of-the-century many leading Christians were arguing that the only way to salvage hopes of a Christian America was for the churches to soften their position on "the labor question." As denomination after denomination did just that, it became apparent that the Social Gospel was, indeed, ascendant--from below.

At a time when the fate of the labor movement and rising economic inequality are once more pressing social concerns, Union Made opens the door for a new way forward--by changing the way we think about the past.
Visit Heath W. Carter's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, August 30, 2015

"Russia in the Microphone Age"

New from Oxford University Press: Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919-1970 by Stephen Lovell.

About the book, from the publisher:
The story of radio begins alongside that of the Soviet state: Russia's first long-range transmission of the human voice occurred in 1919, during the civil war. Sound broadcasting was a medium of exceptional promise for this revolutionary regime. It could bring the Bolsheviks' message to the furthest corners of their enormous country. It had unprecedented impact: the voice of Moscow could now be wired into the very workplaces and living spaces of a population that was still only weakly literate.

The liveness and immediacy of broadcasting also created vivid new ways of communicating 'Sovietness' - whether through May Day parades and elections, the exploits of aviators and explorers, or show trials and public criticism. Yet, in the USSR as elsewhere, broadcasting was a medium in flux: technology, the broadcasting profession, and the listening audience were never static. Soviet radio was quickly earmarked as the mouthpiece of Soviet power, yet its history is also full of unintended consequences. The supreme irony of Soviet 'radiofication' was that its greatest triumph - the expansion of the wireless-listening public in the Cold War era - made possible its greatest failure, by turning a part of the Soviet audience into devotees of Western broadcasting.

Based on substantial original research in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Nizhnii Novgorod, Russia in the Microphone Age is the first full history of Soviet radio in English. In addition to the institutional and technological dimensions of the subject, it explores the development of programme content and broadcasting genres. It also goes in search of the mysterious figure of the Soviet listener. The result is a pioneering treatment of broadcasting as an integral part of Soviet culture from its early days in the 1920s until the dawn of the television age.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, August 29, 2015

"Slaves of One Master"

New from Yale University Press: Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire by Matthew S. Hopper.

About the book, from the publisher:
In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines the interconnected themes of enslavement, globalization, and empire and challenges previously held conventions regarding Middle Eastern slavery and British imperialism. Whereas conventional historiography regards the Indian Ocean slave trade as fundamentally different from its Atlantic counterpart, Hopper’s study argues that both systems were influenced by global economic forces. The author goes on to dispute the triumphalist antislavery narrative that attributes the end of the slave trade between East Africa and the Persian Gulf to the efforts of the British Royal Navy, arguing instead that Great Britain allowed the inhuman practice to continue because it was vital to the Gulf economy and therefore vital to British interests in the region.

Hopper’s book links the personal stories of enslaved Africans to the impersonal global commodity chains their labor enabled, demonstrating how the growing demand for workers created by a global demand for Persian Gulf products compelled the enslavement of these people and their transportation to eastern Arabia. His provocative and deeply researched history fills a salient gap in the literature on the African diaspora.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, August 28, 2015

"Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice"

New from Stanford University Press: Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice by Peter Jones.

About the book, from the publisher:
Track Two Diplomacy consists of informal dialogues among actors such as academics, religious leaders, retired senior officials, and NGO officials that can bring new ideas and new relationships to the official process of diplomacy.

Sadly, those involved in official diplomacy often have little understanding of and appreciation for the complex and nuanced role that Track Two can play, or for its limitations. And many Track Two practitioners are often unaware of the realities and pressures of the policy and diplomatic worlds, and not particularly adept at framing their efforts to make them accessible to hard-pressed officials. At the same time, those interested in the academic study of Track Two sometimes fail to understand the realities faced by either set of practitioners.

A need therefore exists for a work to bridge the divides between these constituencies and between the different types of Track Two practice—and this book crosses disciplines and traditions in order to do just that. It explores the various dimensions and guises of Track Two, the theory and practice of how they work, and how both practitioners and academics could more profitably assess Track Two. Overall, it provides a comprehensive picture of the range of activities pursued under this title, to provoke new thinking about how these activities relate to each other, to official diplomacy, and to academe.
The Page 99 Test: Open Skies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, August 27, 2015

"Christian Human Rights"

New from the University of Pennsylvania Press: Christian Human Rights by Samuel Moyn.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Christian Human Rights, Samuel Moyn asserts that the rise of human rights after World War II was prefigured and inspired by a defense of the dignity of the human person that first arose in Christian churches and religious thought in the years just prior to the outbreak of the war. The Roman Catholic Church and transatlantic Protestant circles dominated the public discussion of the new principles in what became the last European golden age for the Christian faith. At the same time, West European governments after World War II, particularly in the ascendant Christian Democratic parties, became more tolerant of public expressions of religious piety. Human rights rose to public prominence in the space opened up by these dual developments of the early Cold War.

Moyn argues that human dignity became central to Christian political discourse as early as 1937. Pius XII's wartime Christmas addresses announced the basic idea of universal human rights as a principle of world, and not merely state, order. By focusing on the 1930s and 1940s, Moyn demonstrates how the language of human rights was separated from the secular heritage of the French Revolution and put to use by postwar democracies governed by Christian parties, which reinvented them to impose moral constraints on individuals, support conservative family structures, and preserve existing social hierarchies. The book ends with a provocative chapter that traces contemporary European struggles to assimilate Muslim immigrants to the continent's legacy of Christian human rights.
The Page 99 Test: The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

"When Movements Anchor Parties"

New from Princeton University Press: When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History by Daniel Schlozman.

About the book, from the publisher:
Throughout American history, some social movements, such as organized labor and the Christian Right, have forged influential alliances with political parties, while others, such as the antiwar movement, have not. When Movements Anchor Parties provides a bold new interpretation of American electoral history by examining five prominent movements and their relationships with political parties.

Taking readers from the Civil War to today, Daniel Schlozman shows how two powerful alliances—those of organized labor and Democrats in the New Deal, and the Christian Right and Republicans since the 1970s—have defined the basic priorities of parties and shaped the available alternatives in national politics. He traces how they diverged sharply from three other major social movements that failed to establish a place inside political parties—the abolitionists following the Civil War, the Populists in the 1890s, and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Moving beyond a view of political parties simply as collections of groups vying for preeminence, Schlozman explores how would-be influencers gain influence—or do not. He reveals how movements join with parties only when the alliance is beneficial to parties, and how alliance exacts a high price from movements. Their sweeping visions give way to compromise and partial victories. Yet as Schlozman demonstrates, it is well worth paying the price as movements reorient parties’ priorities.

Timely and compelling, When Movements Anchor Parties demonstrates how alliances have transformed American political parties.
Visit Daniel Schlozman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

"Deceit on the Road to War"

New from Cornell University Press: Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy by John M. Schuessler.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Deceit on the Road to War, John M. Schuessler examines how U.S. presidents have deceived the American public about fundamental decisions of war and peace. Deception has been deliberate, he suggests, as presidents have sought to shift blame for war onto others in some cases and oversell its benefits in others. Such deceit is a natural outgrowth of the democratic process, in Schuessler's view, because elected leaders have powerful incentives to maximize domestic support for war and retain considerable ability to manipulate domestic audiences. They can exploit information and propaganda advantages to frame issues in misleading ways, cherry-pick supporting evidence, suppress damaging revelations, and otherwise skew the public debate to their benefit. These tactics are particularly effective before the outbreak of war, when the information gap between leaders and the public is greatest.

When resorting to deception, leaders take a calculated risk that the outcome of war will be favorable, expecting the public to adopt a forgiving attitude after victory is secured. The three cases featured in the book—Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, and George W. Bush and the Iraq War—test these claims. Schuessler concludes that democracies are not as constrained in their ability to go to war as we might believe and that deception cannot be ruled out in all cases as contrary to the national interest.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, August 24, 2015

"Of Sand or Soil"

New from Princeton University Press: Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia by Nadav Samin.

About the book, from the publisher:
Why do tribal genealogies matter in modern-day Saudi Arabia? What compels the strivers and climbers of the new Saudi Arabia to want to prove their authentic descent from one or another prestigious Arabian tribe? Of Sand or Soil looks at how genealogy and tribal belonging have informed the lives of past and present inhabitants of Saudi Arabia and how the Saudi government’s tacit glorification of tribal origins has shaped the powerful development of the kingdom’s genealogical culture.

Nadav Samin presents the first extended biographical exploration of the major twentieth-century Saudi scholar Ḥamad al-Jāsir, whose genealogical studies frame the story about belonging and identity in the modern kingdom. Samin examines the interplay between al-Jāsir’s genealogical project and his many hundreds of petitioners, mostly Saudis of nontribal or lower status origin who sought validation of their tribal roots in his genealogical texts. Investigating the Saudi relationship to this opaque, orally inscribed historical tradition, Samin considers the consequences of modern Saudi genealogical politics and how the most intimate anxieties of nontribal Saudis today are amplified by the governing strategies and kinship ideology of the Saudi state.

Challenging the impression that Saudi culture is determined by puritanical religiosity or rentier economic principles, Of Sand or Soil shows how the exploration and establishment of tribal genealogies have become influential phenomena in contemporary Saudi society. Beyond Saudi Arabia, this book casts important new light on the interplay between kinship ideas, oral narrative, and state formation in rapidly changing societies.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, August 23, 2015

"For God, King, and People"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia by Alexander B. Haskell.

About the book, from the publisher:
By recovering a largely forgotten English Renaissance mindset that regarded sovereignty and Providence as being fundamentally entwined, Alexander Haskell reconnects concepts historians had before treated as separate categories and argues that the first English planters in Virginia operated within a deeply providential age rather than an era of early modern entrepreneurialism. These men did not merely settle Virginia; they and their London-based sponsors saw this first successful English venture in America as an exercise in divinely inspired and approved commonwealth creation. When the realities of Virginia complicated this humanist ideal, growing disillusionment and contention marked debates over the colony.

Rather than just "selling" colonization to the realm, proponents instead needed to overcome profound and recurring doubts about whether God wanted English rule to cross the Atlantic and the process by which it was to happen. By contextualizing these debates within a late Renaissance phase in England, Haskell links increasing religious skepticism to the rise of decidedly secular conceptions of state power. Haskell offers a radical revision of accepted narratives of early modern state formation, locating it as an outcome, rather than as an antecedent, of colonial endeavor.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, August 22, 2015

"Magazines and the Making of America"

New from Princeton University Press: Magazines and the Making of America: Modernization, Community, and Print Culture, 1741–1860 by Heather A. Haveman.

About the book, from the publisher:
From the colonial era to the onset of the Civil War, Magazines and the Making of America looks at how magazines and the individuals, organizations, and circumstances they connected ushered America into the modern age. How did a magazine industry emerge in the United States, where there were once only amateur authors, clumsy technologies for production and distribution, and sparse reader demand? What legitimated magazines as they competed with other media, such as newspapers, books, and letters? And what role did magazines play in the integration or division of American society?

From their first appearance in 1741, magazines brought together like-minded people, wherever they were located and whatever interests they shared. As America became socially differentiated, magazines engaged and empowered diverse communities of faith, purpose, and practice. Religious groups could distinguish themselves from others and demarcate their identities. Social-reform movements could energize activists across the country to push for change. People in specialized occupations could meet and learn from one another to improve their practices. Magazines built translocal communities—collections of people with common interests who were geographically dispersed and could not easily meet face-to-face. By supporting communities that crossed various axes of social structure, magazines also fostered pluralistic integration.

Looking at the important role that magazines had in mediating and sustaining critical debates and diverse groups of people, Magazines and the Making of America considers how these print publications helped construct a distinctly American society.
Visit Heather A. Haveman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, August 21, 2015

"Emotional Diplomacy"

New from Cornell University Press: Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage by Todd H. Hall.

About the book, from the publisher:
In Emotional Diplomacy, Todd H. Hall explores the politics of officially expressed emotion on the international stage, looking at the ways in which state actors strategically deploy emotional behavior to shape the perceptions of others. Examining diverse instances of emotional behavior, Hall reveals that official emotional displays are not simply cheap talk but rather play an important role in the strategies and interactions of state actors. Emotional diplomacy is more than rhetoric; as this book demonstrates, its implications extend to the provision of economic and military aid, great-power cooperation, and even the use of armed force.

Emotional Diplomacy provides the theoretical tools necessary for understanding the nature and significance of state-level emotional behavior and offers new observations of how states seek reconciliation, strategically respond to unforeseen crises, and demonstrate resolve in the face of perceived provocations. Hall investigates three specific strands of emotional diplomacy: those rooted in anger, sympathy, and guilt. Presenting original research drawing on sources and interviews in five different languages, Hall provides new insights into the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the post-9/11 reactions of China and Russia, and relations between West Germany and Israel after World War II. He also demonstrates how his arguments can be extended to further cases ranging from Sino-Japanese relations to diplomatic interactions in Latin America. Emotional Diplomacy offers a unique take on the intersection of strategic action and emotional display, offering a means for making sense of why states appear to behave emotionally.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, August 20, 2015

"Beyond Religious Freedom"

New from Princeton University Press: Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd.

About the book, from the publisher:
In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. Beyond Religious Freedom persuasively argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. She shows how these initiatives make religious difference a matter of law, resulting in a divide that favors forms of religion authorized by those in power and excludes other ways of being and belonging. In exploring the dizzying power dynamics and blurred boundaries that characterize relations between "expert religion," "governed religion," and "lived religion," Hurd charts new territory in the study of religion in global politics.

A forceful and timely critique of the politics of promoting religious freedom, Beyond Religious Freedom provides new insights into today’s most pressing dilemmas of power, difference, and governance.
--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

"American Zoo: A Sociological Safari"

New from Princeton University Press: American Zoo: A Sociological Safari by David Grazian.

About the book, from the publisher:
Orangutans swing from Kevlar-lined fire hoses. Giraffes feast on celebratory birthday cakes topped with carrots instead of candles. Hi-tech dinosaur robots growl among steel trees, while owls watch animated cartoons on old television sets. In American Zoo, sociologist David Grazian takes us on a safari through the contemporary zoo, alive with its many contradictions and strange wonders.

Trading in his tweed jacket for a zoo uniform and a pair of muddy work boots, Grazian introduces us to zookeepers and animal rights activists, parents and toddlers, and the other human primates that make up the zoo’s social world. He shows that in a major shift away from their unfortunate pasts, American zoos today emphasize naturalistic exhibits teeming with lush and immersive landscapes, breeding programs for endangered animals, and enrichment activities for their captive creatures. In doing so, zoos blur the imaginary boundaries we regularly use to separate culture from nature, humans from animals, and civilization from the wild. At the same time, zoos manage a wilderness of competing priorities—animal care, education, scientific research, and recreation—all while attempting to serve as centers for conservation in the wake of the current environmental and climate-change crisis. The world of the zoo reflects how we project our own prejudices and desires onto the animal kingdom, and invest nature with meaning and sentiment.

A revealing portrayal of comic animals, delighted children, and feisty zookeepers, American Zoo is a remarkable close-up exploration of a classic cultural attraction.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

"The Dictator's Army"

New from Cornell University Press: The Dictator's Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes by Caitlin Talmadge.

About the book, from the publisher:
In The Dictator's Army, Caitlin Talmadge presents a compelling new argument to help us understand why authoritarian militaries sometimes fight very well—and sometimes very poorly. Talmadge's framework for understanding battlefield effectiveness focuses on four key sets of military organizational practices: promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management. Different regimes face different domestic and international threat environments, leading their militaries to adopt different policies in these key areas of organizational behavior.

Authoritarian regimes facing significant coup threats are likely to adopt practices that squander the state's military power, while regimes lacking such threats and possessing ambitious foreign policy goals are likely to adopt the effective practices often associated with democracies. Talmadge shows the importance of threat conditions and military organizational practices for battlefield performance in two paired comparisons of states at war: North and South Vietnam (1963–1975) and Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). Drawing on extensive documentary sources, her analysis demonstrates that threats and practices can vary not only between authoritarian regimes but also within them, either over time or across different military units. The result is a persuasive explanation of otherwise puzzling behavior by authoritarian militaries. The Dictator’s Army offers a vital practical tool for those seeking to assess the likely course, costs, and outcomes of future conflicts involving nondemocratic adversaries, allies, or coalition partners.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, August 17, 2015

"In the Blood"

New from Princeton University Press: In the Blood: Understanding America's Farm Families by Robert Wuthnow.

About the book, from the publisher:
Farming is essential to the American economy and our daily lives, yet few of us have much contact with farmers except through the food we eat. Who are America’s farmers? Why is farming important to them? How are they coping with dramatic changes to their way of life? In the Blood paints a vivid and moving portrait of America’s farm families, shedding new light on their beliefs, values, and complicated relationship with the land.

Drawing on more than two hundred in-depth interviews, Robert Wuthnow presents farmers in their own voices as they speak candidly about their family traditions, aspirations for their children, business arrangements, and conflicts with family members. They describe their changing relationships with neighbors, their shifting views about religion, and the subtle ways they defend their personal independence. Wuthnow shares the stories of farmers who operate dairies, raise livestock, and grow our fruit and vegetables. We hear from corn and soybean farmers, wheat-belt farmers, and cotton growers. We gain new insights into how farmers assign meaning to the land, and how they grapple with the increasingly difficult challenges of biotechnology and global markets.

In the Blood reveals how, despite profound changes in modern agriculture, farming remains an enduring commitment that runs deeply in the veins of today’s farm families.
Read more about In the Blood at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Red State Religion.

The Page 99 Test: Small-Town America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, August 16, 2015

"Contraband: Smuggling and the Birth of the American Century"

New from W.W. Norton: Contraband: Smuggling and the Birth of the American Century by Andrew Wender Cohen.

About the book, from the publisher:
How skirting the law once defined America’s relation to the world.

In the frigid winter of 1875, Charles L. Lawrence made international headlines when he was arrested for smuggling silk worth $60 million into the United States. An intimate of Boss Tweed, gloriously dubbed “The Prince of Smugglers,” and the head of a network spanning four continents and lasting half a decade, Lawrence scandalized a nation whose founders themselves had once dabbled in contraband.

Since the Revolution itself, smuggling had tested the patriotism of the American people. Distrusting foreign goods, Congress instituted high tariffs on most imports. Protecting the nation was the custom house, which waged a “war on smuggling,” inspecting every traveler for illicitly imported silk, opium, tobacco, sugar, diamonds, and art. The Civil War’s blockade of the Confederacy heightened the obsession with contraband, but smuggling entered its prime during the Gilded Age, when characters like assassin Louis Bieral, economist “The Parsee Merchant,” Congressman Ben Butler, and actress Rose Eytinge tempted consumers with illicit foreign luxuries. Only as the United States became a global power with World War I did smuggling lose its scurvy romance.

Meticulously researched, Contraband explores the history of smuggling to illuminate the broader history of the United States, its power, its politics, and its culture.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, August 15, 2015

"The Scholar Denied"

New from the University of California Press: The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology by Aldon Morris.

About the book, from the publisher:
In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Morris uncovers the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies and examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work.

The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In exposing the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois and enabled Park and his colleagues to be recognized as the “fathers” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center.

The Scholar Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, August 14, 2015

"Virtuosi Abroad"

New from Cornell University Press: Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945-1958 by Kiril Tomoff.

About the book, from the publisher:
In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet musicians and ensembles were acclaimed across the globe. They toured the world, wowing critics and audiences, projecting an image of the USSR as a sophisticated promoter of cultural and artistic excellence. In Virtuosi Abroad, Kiril Tomoff focuses on music and the Soviet Union's star musicians to explore the dynamics of the cultural Cold War. He views the competition in the cultural sphere as part of the ongoing U.S. and Soviet efforts to integrate the rest of the world into their respective imperial projects.

Tomoff argues that the spectacular Soviet successes in the system of international music competitions, taken together with the rapturous receptions accorded touring musicians, helped to persuade the Soviet leadership of the superiority of their system. This, combined with the historical triumphalism central to the Marxist-Leninist worldview, led to confidence that the USSR would be the inevitable winner in the global competition with the United States. Successes masked the fact that the very conditions that made them possible depended on a quiet process by which the USSR began to participate in an international legal and economic system dominated by the United States. Once the Soviet leadership transposed its talk of system superiority to the economic sphere, focusing in particular on consumer goods and popular culture, it had entered a competition that it could not win.
--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, August 13, 2015

"Base Nation"

New from Metropolitan Books: Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World by David Vine.

About the book, from the publisher:
From Italy to the Indian Ocean, from Japan to Honduras, a far-reaching examination of the perils of American military bases overseas

American military bases encircle the globe. More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. still stations its troops at nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon's vast operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills--and actually makes the nation less safe in the long run.

As David Vine demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators and perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories like Guam. They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon underplays the numbers, Vine's accounting proves that the bill approaches $100 billion per year.

For many decades, the need for overseas bases has been a quasi-religious dictum of U.S. foreign policy. But in recent years, a bipartisan coalition has finally started to question this conventional wisdom. With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan and ending thirteen years of war, there is no better time to re-examine the tenets of our military strategy. Base Nation is an essential contribution to that debate.
Learn more about the book and author at David Vine's website.

The Page 99 Test: Island of Shame.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

"Maize for the Gods"

New from the University of California Press: Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn by Michael Blake.

About the book, from the publisher:
Maize is the world’s most productive food and industrial crop, grown in more than 160 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. If by some catastrophe maize were to disappear from our food supply chain, vast numbers of people would starve and global economies would rapidly collapse. How did we come to be so dependent on this one plant?

Maize for the Gods brings together new research by archaeologists, archaeobotanists, plant geneticists, and a host of other specialists to explore the complex ways that this single plant and the peoples who domesticated it came to be inextricably entangled with one another over the past nine millennia. Tracing maize from its first appearance and domestication in ancient campsites and settlements in Mexico to its intercontinental journey through most of North and South America, this history also tells the story of the artistic creativity, technological prowess, and social, political, and economic resilience of America’s first peoples.
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

"Desi Hoop Dreams"

New from NYU Press: Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity by Stanley I. Thangaraj.

About the book, from the publisher:
South Asian American men are not usually depicted as ideal American men. They struggle against popular representations as either threatening terrorists or geeky, effeminate computer geniuses. To combat such stereotypes, some use sports as a means of performing a distinctly American masculinity. Desi Hoop Dreams focuses on South Asian-only basketball leagues common in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, to show that basketball, for these South Asian American players is not simply a whimsical hobby, but a means to navigate and express their identities in 21st century America.

The participation of young men in basketball is one platform among many for performing South Asian American identity. South Asian-only leagues and tournaments become spaces in which to negotiate the relationships between masculinity, race, and nation. When faced with stereotypes that portray them as effeminate, players perform sporting feats on the court to represent themselves as athletic. And though they draw on black cultural styles, they carefully set themselves off from African American players, who are deemed “too aggressive.” Accordingly, the same categories of their own marginalization—masculinity, race, class, and sexuality—are those through which South Asian American men exclude women, queer masculinities, and working-class masculinities, along with other racialized masculinities, in their effort to lay claim to cultural citizenship.

One of the first works on masculinity formation and sport participation in South Asian American communities, Desi Hoop Dreams focuses on an American popular sport to analyze the dilemma of belonging within South Asian America in particular and in the U.S. in general.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, August 10, 2015

"Making 'Nature': The History of a Scientific Journal"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Making "Nature": The History of a Scientific Journal by Melinda Baldwin.

About the book, from the publisher:
Making "Nature" is the first book to chronicle the foundation and development of Nature, one of the world's most influential scientific institutions. Now nearing its hundred and fiftieth year of publication, Nature is the international benchmark for scientific publication. Its contributors include Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, and Stephen Hawking, and it has published many of the most important discoveries in the history of science, including articles on the structure of DNA, the discovery of the neutron, the first cloning of a mammal, and the human genome.

But how did Nature become such an essential institution? In Making "Nature," Melinda Baldwin charts the rich history of this extraordinary publication from its foundation in 1869 to current debates about online publishing and open access. This pioneering study not only tells Nature's story but also sheds light on much larger questions about the history of science publishing, changes in scientific communication, and shifting notions of "scientific community." Nature, as Baldwin demonstrates, helped define what science is and what it means to be a scientist.
Visit Melinda Baldwin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, August 9, 2015

"The End of Tsarist Russia"

New from Viking: The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution by Dominic Lieven.

About the book, from the publisher:
One of the world’s leading scholars offers a fresh interpretation of the linked origins of World War I and the Russian Revolution

World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the twentieth century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War’s origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened.

Based on exhaustive work in seven Russian archives as well as many non-Russian sources, Dominic Lieven’s work is about far more than just Russia. By placing the crisis of empire at its core, Lieven links World War I to the sweep of twentieth-century global history. He shows how contemporary hot issues such as the struggle for Ukraine were already crucial elements in the run-up to 1914.

By incorporating into his book new approaches and comparisons, Lieven tells the story of war and revolution in a way that is truly original and thought-provoking.
--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, August 7, 2015

"Representing Mass Violence"

New from the University of California Press: Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur by Joachim J. Savelsberg.

About the book, from the publisher:
How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. Representing Mass Violence contributes to our understanding of how the world acknowledges and responds to violence in the Global South.
Joachim J. Savelsberg is Professor of Sociology and Law and Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair at the University of Minnesota. He is the coauthor of American Memories: Atrocities and the Law and author of Crime and Human Rights: Criminology of Genocide and Atrocities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, August 6, 2015

"Christian Imperialism"

New from Cornell University Press: Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic by Emily Conroy-Krutz.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1812, eight American missionaries, under the direction of the recently formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailed from the United States to South Asia. The plans that motivated their voyage were ano less grand than taking part in the Protestant conversion of the entire world. Over the next several decades, these men and women were joined by hundreds more American missionaries at stations all over the globe. Emily Conroy-Krutz shows the surprising extent of the early missionary impulse and demonstrates that American evangelical Protestants of the early nineteenth century were motivated by Christian imperialism—an understanding of international relations that asserted the duty of supposedly Christian nations, such as the United States and Britain, to use their colonial and commercial power to spread Christianity.

In describing how American missionaries interacted with a range of foreign locations (including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore) and imperial contexts, Christian Imperialism provides a new perspective on how Americans thought of their country's role in the world. While in the early republican period many were engaged in territorial expansion in the west, missionary supporters looked east and across the seas toward Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Conroy-Krutz's history of the mission movement reveals that strong Anglo-American and global connections persisted through the early republic. Considering Britain and its empire to be models for their work, the missionaries of the American Board attempted to convert the globe into the image of Anglo-American civilization.
Visit Emily Conroy-Krutz's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

"The Pandemic Perhaps"

New from the University of California Press: The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger by Carlo Caduff.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 2005, American experts sent out urgent warnings throughout the country: a devastating flu pandemic was fast approaching. Influenza was a serious disease, not a seasonal nuisance; it could kill millions of people. If urgent steps were not taken immediately, the pandemic could shut down the economy and “trigger a reaction that will change the world overnight.”

The Pandemic Perhaps explores how American experts framed a catastrophe that never occurred. The urgent threat that was presented to the public produced a profound sense of insecurity, prompting a systematic effort to prepare the population for the coming plague. But when that plague did not arrive, the race to avert it carried on. Paradoxically, it was the absence of disease that made preparedness a permanent project.

The Pandemic Perhaps tells the story of what happened when nothing really happened. Drawing on fieldwork among scientists and public health professionals in New York City, the book is an investigation of how actors and institutions produced a scene of extreme expectation through the circulation of dramatic plague visions. It argues that experts deployed these visions to draw attention to the possibility of a pandemic, frame the disease as a catastrophic event, and make it meaningful to the nation. Today, when we talk about pandemic influenza, we must always say “perhaps.” What, then, does it mean to engage a disease in the modality of the maybe?
--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

"The Insane Chicago Way"

New from the University of Chicago Press: The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia by John M. Hagedorn.

About the book, from the publisher:
The Insane Chicago Way is the untold story of a daring plan by Chicago gangs in the 1990s to create a Spanish Mafia—and why it failed. John M. Hagedorn traces how Chicago Latino gang leaders, following in Al Capone’s footsteps, built a sophisticated organization dedicated to organizing crime and reducing violence. His lively stories of extensive cross-neighborhood gang organization, tales of police/gang corruption, and discovery of covert gang connections to Chicago’s Mafia challenge conventional wisdom and offer lessons for the control of violence today.

The book centers on the secret history of Spanish Growth & Development (SGD)—an organization of Latino gangs founded in 1989 and modeled on the Mafia’s nationwide Commission. It also tells a story within a story of the criminal exploits of the C-Note$, the “minor league” team of the Chicago’s Mafia (called the “Outfit”), which influenced the direction of SGD. Hagedorn’s tale is based on three years of interviews with an Outfit soldier as well as access to SGD’s constitution and other secret documents, which he supplements with interviews of key SGD leaders, court records, and newspaper accounts. The result is a stunning, heretofore unknown history of the grand ambitions of Chicago gang leaders that ultimately led to SGD’s shocking collapse in a pool of blood on the steps of a gang-organized peace conference.

The Insane Chicago Way is a compelling history of the lives and deaths of Chicago gang leaders. At the same time it is a sociological tour de force that warns of the dangers of organized crime while arguing that today’s relative disorganization of gangs presents opportunities for intervention and reductions in violence.
--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, August 3, 2015

"Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China"

New from the University of California Press: Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions by Matthew H. Sommer.

About the book, from the publisher:
This book is a study of polyandry, wife-selling, and a variety of related practices in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). By analyzing over 1200 legal cases from local and central court archives, Matthew Sommer explores the functions played by marriage, sex, and reproduction in the survival strategies of the rural poor under conditions of overpopulation, worsening sex ratios, and shrinking farm sizes. Polyandry and wife-selling represented opposite ends of a spectrum of strategies. At one end, polyandry was a means to keep the family together by expanding it. A woman would bring in a second husband in exchange for his help supporting her family. In contrast, wife sale was a means to survive by breaking up a family: a husband would secure an emergency infusion of cash while his wife would escape poverty and secure a fresh start with another man.

Even though Qing law prohibited both practices under the rubric “illicit sexual relations,” Sommer shows how magistrates charged with propagating and enforcing a fundamentalist Confucian vision of female chastity tried to cope with their social reality in the face of daunting poverty. This contradiction illuminates both the pragmatism of routine adjudication and the increasingly dysfunctional nature of the dynastic state in the face of mounting social crisis. By casting a spotlight on the rural poor and the experiences of both men and women, Sommer provides an alternative to the standard paradigms of women’s history that have long dominated scholarship on gender and sexuality in late imperial China.
--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, August 2, 2015

"Flowers That Kill"

New from Stanford University Press: Flowers That Kill: Communicative Opacity in Political Spaces by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney.

About the book, from the publisher:
Flowers are beautiful. People often communicate their love, sorrow, and other feelings to each other by offering flowers, like roses. Flowers can also be symbols of collective identity, as cherry blossoms are for the Japanese. But, are they also deceptive? Do people become aware when their meaning changes, perhaps as flowers are deployed by the state and dictators? Did people recognize that the roses they offered to Stalin and Hitler became a propaganda tool? Or were they like the Japanese, who, including the soldiers, did not realize when the state told them to fall like cherry blossoms, it meant their deaths?

Flowers That Kill proposes an entirely new theoretical understanding of the role of quotidian symbols and their political significance to understand how they lead people, if indirectly, to wars, violence, and even self-exclusion and self-destruction precisely because symbolic communication is full of ambiguity and opacity. Using a broad comparative approach, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney illustrates how the aesthetic and multiple meanings of symbols, and at times symbols without images become possible sources for creating opacity which prevents people from recognizing the shifting meaning of the symbols.
--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, August 1, 2015

"Race, Place, and Suburban Policing"

New from the University of California Press: Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort by Andrea S. Boyles.

About the book, from the publisher:
While considerable attention has been given to encounters between black citizens and police in urban communities, there have been limited analyses of such encounters in suburban settings. Race, Place, and Suburban Policing tells the full story of social injustice, racialized policing, nationally profiled shootings, and the ambiguousness of black life in a suburban context. Through compelling interviews, participant observation, and field notes from a marginalized black enclave located in a predominately white suburb, Andrea S. Boyles examines a fraught police-citizen interface, where blacks are segregated and yet forced to negotiate overlapping spaces with their more affluent white counterparts.
Andrea S. Boyles is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Lindenwood University-Belleville. She has also taught inmates and correctional officers within the Missouri prison system.

--Marshal Zeringue