Harvard University Press - SOCIAL SCIENCE

Selling Sounds

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

David Suisman
From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.
Hardcover May 2009

Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Zygmunt Bauman
Bauman urges us to think in new ways about a newly flexible, newly challenging modern world. In an era of routine travel, where most people circulate widely, the inherited beliefs that aid our thinking about the world have become an obstacle. He challenges members of the “knowledge class” to overcome their estrangement from the rest of society.
Paperback May 2009

Hope and Despair in the American City

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gerald Grant
In Hope and Despair, Gerald Grant compares two cities—his hometown of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina—in order to examine the consequences of the nation’s ongoing educational inequities. The result is an ambitious portrait—sometimes disturbing, often inspiring—of two cities that exemplify our nation’s greatest educational challenges, as well as a passionate exploration of the potential for school reform that exists for our urban schools today.
Hardcover May 2009

No Place to Hide

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Spring Miller
James L. Cavallaro
Seventeen years after the civil war in El Salvador came to an end, violence and insecurity continue to shape the daily lives of many Salvadorans. This book examines the phenomenon of youth gangs, as well as related police abuse, clandestine violence, and their collective impact on the rule of law. The book’s findings are based on primary research conducted in El Salvador between 2006 and 2008.
Paperback May 2009

Street Stories

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Robert Jackall
Based on years of fieldwork with the New York City Police Department and the District Attorney of New York, this book examines the moral ambiguities of the detectives' world as they shuttle between the streets and a bureaucratic behemoth. In piecing together street stories to solve intriguing puzzles of agency and motive, detectives crisscross the checkerboard of urban life. This book brims with the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction violence of the underworld and tells about a justice apparatus that splinters knowledge, reduces life-and-death issues to arcane hair-splitting, and makes rationality a bedfellow of absurdity.
Paperback May 2009

Symbols in Clay

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Steven A. LeBlanc
Lucia R. Henderson
In late prehistory, the ancestors of the present-day Hopi in Arizona created a unique and spectacular painted pottery tradition referred to as Hopi Yellow Ware. This ceramic tradition inspired Hopi potter Nampeyo’s revival pottery at the turn of the twentieth century. Extending the Peabody’s influential Awatovi project of the 1930s, Symbols in Clay calls into question deep-seated assumptions about pottery production and specialization in the precontact American Southwest.
Paperback May 2009

The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Robert D. Crews
Edited by Amin Tarzi
The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan explores the paradox at the center of a challenging phenomenon: how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future? Grounding their analysis in a deep understanding of the country's past, leading scholars of Afghan history, politics, society, and culture show how the Taliban was less an attempt to revive a medieval theocracy than a dynamic, complex, and adaptive force rooted in the history of Afghanistan and shaped by modern international politics.
Paperback May 2009

The Birthright Lottery

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Ayelet Shachar
The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs.
Hardcover April 2009

Borderline Americans

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Katherine Benton-Cohen
“Are you an American, or are you not?” This is the question at the heart of Katherine Benton-Cohen’s provocative history, which ties that seemingly remote corner of the country to one of America’s central concerns: the historical creation of racial boundaries. By showing the multiple possibilities for racial meanings in America, Benton-Cohen’s insightful and informative work challenges our assumptions about race and national identity.
Hardcover April 2009

Mothers and Others

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. Renowned anthropologist Sarah Hrdy argues that if human babies were to survive in a world of scarce resources, they would need to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. In essence, mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.
Hardcover April 2009

The Program Era

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mark McGurl
In The Program Era, Mark McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. An engaging and stylishly written examination of an era we thought we knew, The Program Era will be at the center of debates about postwar literature and culture for years to come.
Hardcover April 2009

Fresh

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Susanne Freidberg
That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Freidberg takes six common foods from the refrigerator to discover what each has to say about our notions of freshness. Local livelihoods; global trade; the politics of taste, community, and environmental change: all enter into this lively, surprising, yet sobering tale about the nature and cost of our hunger for freshness.
Hardcover April 2009

Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John Nesbitt
Assisted by Cecile Morrisson
The combined Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg collection of Byzantine seals is one of the largest in the world, containing 17,000 specimens. Volume 6 in the catalogue presents the seals of emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople. More than 250 seals are illustrated and accompanied—where appropriate—by a full commentary regarding each specimen’s date, biographical information on its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and iconographic features.
Hardcover April 2009

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Frederick Douglass
Introduction by Robert B. Stepto
No book more vividly explains the horror of American slavery and the emotional impetus behind the antislavery movement than Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. In an introductory essay, Robert Stepto re-examines the extraordinary life and achievement of a man who escaped from slavery to become a leading abolitionist and one of America's most important writers. The John Harvard Library text reproduces the first edition, published in Boston in 1845.
Paperback April 2009

Alone Together

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Paul R. Amato
Alan Booth
David R. Johnson
Stacy J. Rogers
Based on two studies of marital quality in America twenty years apart, Alone Together shows that while the divorce rate has leveled off, spouses are spending less time together. The authors argue that marriage is an adaptable institution, and in accommodating the changes that have occurred in society, it has become a less cohesive, yet less confining arrangement.
Paperback March 2009

Becoming African Americans

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Clare Corbould
Africa has always played a role in black identity, but it was in the tumultuous period between the two world wars that black Americans first began to embrace a modern African American identity. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa. Their consciousness of a dual identity anticipated the hyphenated identities of new immigrants in the years after World War II, and an emerging sense of what it means to be a modern American.
Hardcover March 2009

Beyond Facts

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Inter-Amer Dev Bank
Traditionally, the concept of quality of life has been viewed through objective indicators of living conditions, basic needs, or capabilities. In Beyond Facts, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) looks at quality of life through the perceptions of millions of Latin Americans. Using an enhanced version of the recently created Gallup World Poll that incorporates Latin America–specific questions, the IDB surveyed people from throughout the region and found that reality and perceptions of quality of life are often very different. Beyond Facts attempts to explain these differences and consider their implications for both politics and policy.
Hardcover March 2009

Down a Narrow Road

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jay Dautcher
The Uyghurs, a Turkic group, account for half the population of the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. The narrative is framed around the terms identity, community, and masculinity. As the author shows, Yining’s Uyghurs express a set of individual and collective identities organized around place, gender, family relations, friendships, occupation, and religious practice.
Hardcover March 2009

Dry Spells

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke
Chinese officials put considerable effort into managing the fiscal and legal affairs of their jurisdictions, but they also devoted significant time and energy to performing religious rituals on behalf of the state. This groundbreaking study explores this underappreciated aspect of Chinese political life by investigating rainmaking activities organized or conducted by local officials in the Qing dynasty.
Hardcover March 2009

The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen K. White
In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen will appeal to a wide audience.
Hardcover March 2009

Feeling Backward

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Heather Love
Feeling Backward weighs the costs of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. While the widening tolerance for same-sex marriage and for gay-themed media brings clear benefits, gay assimilation entails other losses--losses that have been hard to identify or mourn, since many aspects of historical gay culture are so closely associated with the pain and shame of the closet.
Paperback March 2009

How Professors Think

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michèle Lamont
Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it? Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world. Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.
Hardcover March 2009

The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Steven Hahn
Pulitzer Prize–winner Steven Hahn’s provocative new book challenges deep-rooted views in the writing of American and African-American history. Moving from slave emancipations of the eighteenth century through slave activity during the Civil War and on to the black power movements of the twentieth century, he asks us to rethink African-American history and politics in bolder, more dynamic terms. Throughout, Hahn presents African Americans as central actors in the arenas of American politics, while emphasizing traditions of self-determination, self-governance, and self-defense.
Hardcover March 2009

Stri

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Kevin McGrath
This book is a study of heroic femininity as it appears in the epic Mahabharata, and focuses particularly on the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother, on how these women speak, and on the kinship groups and varying marital systems that surround them.
Paperback March 2009

Worrying about China

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gloria Davies
What can we do about China? Davies pursues this inquiry through a wide range of contemporary topics, including the changing fortunes of radicalism, the peculiarities of Chinese postmodernism, shifts within official discourse, attempts to revive Confucianism for present-day China, and the historically problematic engagement of Chinese intellectuals with Western ideas.
Paperback March 2009

Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts II

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited and translated by Gregory G. Maskarinec
This volume is a bilingual collection of shaman oral texts from the Bhuji Valley of Western Nepal, in the original Nepali and with line-by-line English translation. Accompanying the book is a DVD of audio recordings of the shaman oral texts, supplementary texts not included in the published volume, videos of shaman performances, and additional video and photographic documentation of the social context in which these shamans are found.
Hardcover March 2009

Palaces of the Ancient New World

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Susan Toby Evans
Edited by Joanne Pillsbury
As in the Old World, kings and nobles of ancient Mexico and Peru had luxurious administrative quarters in cities, and exquisite pleasure palaces in the countryside. This volume explores the great houses of the ancient New World, from palaces of the Aztecs and Incas, looted by the Spanish conquistadors, to those lost high in the Andes and deep in the jungle.
Paperback March 2009

Rai Mythology

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Karen H. Ebert
Martin Gaenzle
The more than two dozen Rai languages in eastern Nepal, which make up the larger part of the Kiranti language family, are linguistically highly varied. This volume, which includes introductory chapters to Rai mythology and Rai grammar, for the first time brings together different variants of myths from various Rai languages, presenting them with linguistic glossings in interlinear translations. The book is of special interest to linguists, anthropologists, and folklorists with a focus on the Himalayas.
Hardcover March 2009

Everyday Jihad

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bernard Rougier
Translated by Pascale Ghazaleh
As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Rougier plunges us into the heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which became a site for militant Sunni Islamists in the early 1990s. Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, through their own interpretations of sacred texts and jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu, and explains how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment in communities marked by poverty and despair.
Paperback February 2009

Love for Lydia

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Nicholas D. Cahill
This generously illustrated volume, presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey.
Hardcover February 2009

Stealing Lincoln's Body

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Thomas J. Craughwell
On the night of the 1876 presidential election, a gang of counterfeiters attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context. This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens offers an unusual glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America.
Paperback February 2009

The Two Princes of Calabar

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Randy J. Sparks
In 1767, two "princes" of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors--and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement. Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience. Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes' correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it.
Paperback February 2009

How Free Is Free?

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Leon F. Litwack
Despite two major efforts to reconstruct race relations, injustices remain. From the height of Jim Crow to the early twenty-first century, struggles over racism persist despite court decisions and legislation. Although a painful history to confront, Litwack’s book inspires as it probes the enduring story of racial inequality and the ongoing fight for freedom in black America.
Hardcover February 2009

The Question of Animal Culture

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Kevin N. Laland
Edited by Bennett G. Galef
The issue of animal culture is hotly debated. Laland and Galef have gathered key voices in the often rancorous debate to summarize the views along the continuum from “Culture? Of course!” to “Culture? Of course not!” The result is essential reading for anyone interested in the validity of animal culture, and what it might say about our own.
Hardcover February 2009

Exiles at Home

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Shirley Elizabeth Thompson
New Orleans has always captured our imagination as an exotic city in its racial ambiguity and pursuit of les bons temps. In tracing the experiences of creoles of color, Thompson illuminates the role ordinary Americans played in shaping an understanding of identity and belonging.
Hardcover February 2009

First Lady of the Confederacy

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Joan E. Cashin
When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions.Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.
Paperback February 2009

Off the Books

Sun, 1 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate and remarkable ways in which a community survives. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.
Paperback February 2009

Accidental Incest, Filial Cannibalism, and Other Peculiar Encounters in Late Imperial Chinese Literature

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Tina Lu
Writers of late imperial fiction and drama were, Lu argues, deeply engaged with questions about the nature of the Chinese empire and of the human community. This book traces how these political questions were addressed in fiction through extreme situations: husbands and wives torn apart in periods of political upheaval, families so disrupted that incestuous encounters become inevitable, times so desperate that people have to sell themselves to be eaten.
Hardcover January 2009

Charisma and Compassion

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

C. Julia Huang
Tzu-Chi (Compassion Relief) began as a tiny, grassroots women's charitable group; today in Taiwan it runs three state-of-the-art hospitals, a television channel, and a university. Based on extensive fieldwork in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States, this book explores the transformation of Tzu-Chi.
Hardcover January 2009

El Niño, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in Ancient America

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss
Edited by Jeffrey Quilter
This book summarizes research on the nature of El Niño events in the Americas and details specific historic and prehistoric patterns in Peru and elsewhere.
Hardcover January 2009

Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Sean Safford
This book compares the recent history of Allentown, Pennsylvania, with that of Youngstown, Ohio. Safford offers a probing historical explanation for the decline, fall, and unlikely rejuvenation of the Rust Belt.
Hardcover January 2009

Up from History

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Robert J. Norrell
This compelling biography reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Booker T. Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination.
Hardcover January 2009

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Justin Daniel Cammy
Edited by Dara Horn
Edited by Alyssa Quint
Edited by Rachel Rubinstein
Ruth Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and one of our most fearless public intellectuals on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, Wisse's colleagues pay tribute to her with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.
Hardcover January 2009

Civilization and Enlightenment

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Albert M. Craig
The idea that society progresses through stages of development, from savagery to civilization, arose in eighteenth-century Europe. Craig traces how Fukuzawa Yukichi, deeply influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, “translated” the idea for Japanese society, both enriching and challenging the concept.
Hardcover January 2009

The Latino Education Crisis

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Patricia Gándara
Frances Contreras
Drawing on both extensive demographic data and compelling case studies, this book reveals the depths of the educational crisis looming for Latino students, the nation’s largest and most rapidly growing minority group.
Hardcover January 2009

Artistry of the Everyday

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Lisa Bernasek
Photographs by Hillel S. Burger
Photographs by Mark Craig
Foreword by Susan Gilson Miller
Imazighen! Beauty and Artisanship in Berber Life presents the Peabody Museum's collection of arts from the Berber-speaking regions of North Africa. The book gives an overview of Berber history and culture, focusing on the rich aesthetic traditions of Amazigh (Berber) craftsmen and women. The book also tells the stories of the collectors--both world-traveling Bostonians and Harvard-trained anthropologists--who brought these objects to Cambridge in the early twentieth century.
Paperback December 2008

Creating a Nation of Joiners

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Johann N. Neem
Ever since Alexis de Tocqueville published his observations in Democracy in America, Americans have recognized the distinctiveness of their voluntary tradition. In a work of political, legal, social, and intellectual history, Neem traces the origins of this venerable tradition to the vexed beginnings of American democracy in Massachusetts.
Hardcover December 2008

Deliverance and Submission

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Kelly H. Chong
South Korea is home to some of the largest evangelical Protestant congregations in the world. This book investigates the meaning of—and the reasons behind—a particular aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul that explores the relevance of women’s experiences to Korean evangelicalism, Kelly H. Chong not only helps provide a broader picture of the evangelical movement’s success in South Korea, but addresses the global question of contemporary women's attraction to religious traditionalism.
Hardcover December 2008

Democracy Denied, 1905-1915

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Charles Kurzman
Kurzman proposes that the collective agent most directly responsible for democratization was the emerging class of modern intellectuals, a group that had gained a global identity and a near-messianic sense of mission following the Dreyfus Affair of 1898. Each chapter of this book focuses on a single angle of this story, covering all six cases by examining newspaper accounts, memoirs, and government reports.
Hardcover December 2008

The Economy of Prestige

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

James F. English
This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige.
Paperback December 2008

The Fires of Vesuvius

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Mary Beard
Although Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem, Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, she offers us the big picture of the inhabitants of the lost city.
Hardcover December 2008

Men

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Richard G. Bribiescas
Men presents a new approach to understanding the human male by drawing upon life history and evolutionary theory.
Paperback December 2008

Men of Letters Within the Passes

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Chang Woei Ong
The main theme of this book is the interaction between two “places,” China and Guanzhong, the capital area of several dynasties. This work examines how Guanzhong literati conceptualized three sets of relations: central/regional, “official”/“unofficial,” and national/local. It further traces the formation over the last millennium of the imperial state of a critical communal self-consciousness.
Hardcover December 2008

A Nation by Design

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Aristide R. Zolberg
In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building. This is an authoritative account of American immigration history and the political and social factors that brought it about. Zolberg's book shows how America has struggled to shape the immigration process to construct the kind of population it desires.
Paperback December 2008

Remembering Awatovi

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Hester A. Davis
Remembering Awatovi is the engaging story of a major archaeological expedition on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Centered on the large Pueblo village of Awatovi, with its Spanish mission church and beautiful kiva murals, the excavations are renowned not only for the data they uncovered but also for the interdisciplinary nature of the investigations. In archaeological lore they are also remembered for the diverse, fun-loving, and distinguished cast of characters who participated in or visited the dig.
Hardcover / Paperback December 2008

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 53/54, Spring and Autumn 2008

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Francesco Pellizzi
Among other articles, this double volume includes: The value of forgery, Jonathan Hay; Affective operations of art and literature, Ernst van Alphen; Betty’s Turn, Stephen Melville.
Paperback December 2008

Saltwater Slavery

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Stephanie E. Smallwood
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Saltwater Slavery is animated by deep research and gives us a graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade.
Paperback December 2008

Stonehenge

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Rosemary Hill
Hill guides the reader on a tour of Stonehenge in all its cultural contexts, as a monument to many things—to Renaissance Humanism, Romantic despair, Victorian enterprise, and English Radicalism.
Hardcover December 2008

Hysterical Men

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Mark S. Micale
Over the course of several centuries, Western masculinity has successfully established itself as the voice of reason, knowledge, and sanity—the basis for patriarchal rule—in the face of massive testimony to the contrary. This book boldly challenges this triumphant vision of the stable and secure male by examining the central role played by modern science and medicine in constructing and sustaining it.
Hardcover November 2008

Migration Miracle

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Jacqueline Maria Hagan
Migration Miracle humanizes the immigration controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrants’ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertaking—the role of religion and faith in surviving the journey.
Hardcover November 2008

Practical Idealists

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Alissa Wilson
Ann Barham
John Hammock
This book will help you make the choices that matter and live your life as a practical idealist. Through examples and exercises, this book explores how to clarify your values and passions, gain relevant skills, find work, use college and graduate school effectively, manage finances, and build a community of support.
Paperback November 2008

Seven Deadly Sins

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Aviad Kleinberg
Translated by Susan Emanuel
With intellectual insight and deadpan humor, Kleinberg deftly guides the reader through Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman thoughts on sin. Each chapter weaves the past into the present and examines unchanging human passions and the deep cultural shifts in the way we make sense of them.
Hardcover November 2008

Your Spirits Walk Beside Us

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Barbara Dianne Savage
Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent.
Hardcover November 2008

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Gilles Kepel
Kepel urges us to escape the ideological quagmire of terrorism and martyrdom and explore the terms of a new and constructive dialogue between Islam and the West. This book sounds the alarm to the West and to Islam that both of these exhausted narratives are bankrupt—neither productive of democratic change in the Middle East nor of unity in Islam.
Hardcover November 2008

Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Kristin Luker
This book is both a handbook for defining and completing a research project, and an astute introduction to the neglected history and changeable philosophy of modern social science.
Hardcover October 2008

What Blood Won't Tell

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Ariela J. Gross
Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Gross’s book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society.
Hardcover October 2008

Becoming Brazuca

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Clémence Jouët-Pastré
Edited by Leticia J. Braga
Brazilians in the United States are a relatively new wave of immigrants from South America. This volume offers a broad-ranging discussion of an understudied population and also brings insights into the core issues of immigration research: how immigration can complicate issues of social class, race, and ethnicity, how it intersects with the educational system, and how it fits into the assimilation paradigm.
Paperback September 2008

Governing the Metropolis

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Eduardo Rojas
Edited by Juan R. Cuadrado-Roura
Edited by Jose Miguel Fernandez Guell
Translated by Sarah Schineller
This book explores key metropolitan management issues, presents practical principles of good governance as they apply to the metropolis, and unfolds cases of institutional and programmatic arrangements to tackle such issues.
Paperback September 2008

Islamicate Sexualities

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Kathryn Babayan
Edited by Afsaneh Najmabadi
Babayan explores different genealogies of sexuality and questions some of the theoretical emphases and epistemic assumptions affecting current histories of sexuality.
Paperback September 2008

American Mediterranean

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Matthew Pratt Guterl
How did slave-owning Southern planters make sense of the transformation of their world in the Civil War era Guterl shows that they looked beyond their borders for answers and examines how the Southern elite connected—by travel, print culture, even the prospect of future conquest—with the communities of New World slaveholders as they redefined their world.
Hardcover June 2008

Americans All

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Diana Selig
From the 1920s—a decade marked by racism and nativism—through World War II, hundreds of thousands of Americans took part in a vibrant campaign to overcome racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices. Progressive activists encouraged pluralism in homes, schools, and churches across the country.Selig tells the neglected story of the cultural gifts movement, which flourished between the world wars.
Hardcover June 2008

Benjamin's -abilities

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Samuel Weber
In this book, Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.
Hardcover June 2008

Classic-Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Philip J. Arnold
Edited by Christopher A. Pool
This book explores the diverse traditions and dynamic interactions along the Mexican Gulf lowlands at the height of their cultural florescence. Best known for their elaborate ball game rituals and precocious inscriptions with long-count dates, these cultures served as a critical nexus between the civilizations of highland Mexico and the lowland Maya, influencing developments in both regions.
Hardcover June 2008

Emigrant Nation

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Mark I. Choate
Between 1880 and 1915, thirteen million Italians left their homeland, launching the largest emigration from any country in recorded world history. In its discussion of immigrant culture, transnational identities, and international politics, this book not only narrates the grand story of Italian emigration but also provides important background to immigration debates that continue to this day.
Hardcover June 2008

Method and Meaning in Polls and Surveys

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Howard Schuman
Schuman examines the question-answer process that is basic to polls and surveys. This book is less about the substance of wording effects and more about approaches to interpreting the respondent’s world, and how surveys can make that world understandable—though often in ways not anticipated by the researcher.
Hardcover June 2008

Security in Paraguay

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

James L. Cavallaro
Jacob Kopas
Yukyan Lam
Timothy Mayhle
Soledad Villagra de Biedermann
The perception of rising insecurity has plagued Paraguay over the past decade as the country has continued its transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. At the same time, reforms of the penal code and the code of criminal procedure have been implemented, leading many to attribute the rising sense of insecurity to the new, rights-based approach to criminal justice. In Security in Paraguay, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School assesses the disparity between the sensation of insecurity and actual levels of urban crime.
Paperback June 2008

Free Riding

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Richard Tuck
A proposition of contemporary economics and political science is that it would be an exercise of reason, not a failure of it, not to contribute to a collective project if the contribution is negligible, but to benefit from it nonetheless.Tuck makes careful distinctions between the prisoner’s dilemma problem, threshold phenomena such as voting, and free riding. He analyzes the notion of negligibility, and shows some of the logical difficulties in the idea—and how the ancient paradox of the sorites illustrates the difficulties.
Hardcover June 2008