SUP New Books

SUP New Books http://www.sup.org/rss/newbooks.xml The latest titles from Stanford University Press en-us Copyright 2008 Stanford University Press webmaster@www.sup.org (Webmaster) Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Grace Peña Delgado "This path-breaking history is a probing analysis of the interconnected worlds that the Chinese in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands created, inhabited, and sometimes contested. Making the Chinese Mexican is a stunning example of borderlands history."—Erika Lee, University of Minnesota "Delgado gives new life to the argument that the U.S.-Mexico borderlands were diverse and unpredictable. Her attentiveness to the commonalities and differences in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as the historical possibilities and tragedies, will make this required reading for all social historians of the region."—Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=9775">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Making the Chinese Mexican is the first book to examine the Chinese diaspora in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It presents a fresh perspective on immigration, nationalism, and racism through the experiences of Chinese migrants in the region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Navigating the interlocking global and local systems of migration that underlay Chinese borderlands communities, the author situates the often-paradoxical existence of these communities within the turbulence of exclusionary nationalisms. The world of Chinese fronterizos (borderlanders) was shaped by the convergence of trans-Pacific networks and local arrangements: against a backdrop of national unrest in Mexico and in the era of exclusionary immigration policies in the United States, Chinese fronterizos carved out vibrant, enduring communities that provided a buffer against virulent Sinophobia. This book challenges us to reexamine the complexities of nation-making, identity formation, and the meaning of citizenship. It represents an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Grace Peña Delgado is Assistant Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=9775 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=9775 Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890–1930 Networks in Tropical Medicine: Internationalism, Colonialism, and the Rise of a Medical Specialty, 1890–1930 Deborah J. Neill "Neill's cutting-edge work opens up significant new perspectives on the relationship among different colonial powers, international politics, and the management of disease, on the one hand; and, on the other, the particular role played by medicine in the construction of racialized identities in the modern era."—Alice Conklin, The Ohio State University "Deborah Neill makes an important and original argument about the interplay of nationalism and internationalism in the European colonial project. In emphasizing the internationalism of colonialism, Networks in Tropical Medicine shows how the rise of international organizations continued significant aspects of the formal colonial rule that they also displaced."—Andrew Zimmerman, George Washington University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=11368">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Networks in Tropical Medicine explores how European doctors and scientists worked together across borders to establish the new field of tropical medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book shows that this transnational collaboration in a context of European colonialism, scientific discovery, and internationalism shaped the character of the new medical specialty. Even in an era of intense competition among European states, practitioners of tropical medicine created a transnational scientific community through which they influenced each other and the health care that was introduced to the tropical world. One of the most important developments in the shaping of tropical medicine as a specialty was the major sleeping sickness epidemic that spread across sub-Saharan Africa at the turn of the century. The book describes how scientists and doctors collaborated across borders to control, contain, and find a treatment for the disease. It demonstrates that these medical specialists' shared notions of "Europeanness," rooted in common beliefs about scientific, technological, and racial superiority, led them to establish a colonial medical practice in Africa that sometimes oppressed the same people it was created to help. Deborah Neill is Assistant Professor of History at York University. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=11368 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=11368 Learning From the Global Financial Crisis: Creatively, Reliably, and Sustainably Learning From the Global Financial Crisis: Creatively, Reliably, and Sustainably Edited by Paul Shrivastava and Matt Statler "The editors and contributors are on target in identifying creativity—human, social, organizational, and ecological—as key to any paradigm shift in the economy. This volume makes tangible this key insight, engaging readers with essays that are at once informative and provocative."—Ronald Purser, San Francisco State University, co-editor of 24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society "Yes, we have considered the financial crisis, but no other book has fruitfully examined this historical moment in the same way as this volume. It is through taking on new perspectives-like creativity, sustainability, and reliability-that we reveal the deeper fallacies in our approaches to markets and organizations. We know what caused the crisis; in this book we come to understand what underpinned those causes and how to shift our foundations."—Hans Hansen, Texas Tech University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=18621">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book is motivated by the simple hope that the cloud of the global financial crisis may yet have a silver lining—that political leaders, economists, and management scholars might seize this opportunity to reflect critically on the assumptions, practices, and infrastructures that have precipitated the crisis and to imagine and create new forms of organization that sustainably enhance the well-being of global stakeholders. The contributors suggest that aesthetic management, high reliability and crisis management, and sustainability science have much to contribute to the resolution of the collapse that we've witnessed, and to providing enduring lessons for how to structure the institutions of the future. Learning From the Global Financial Crisis devotes a section to each of these areas, offering full-length chapters which explore key issues in depth, as well as shorter commentaries that focus on practical considerations. The chapters progress from micro-level issues that pertain to individuals and teams who act creatively; to the meso-level issues that pertain to the structures, practices, and processes; to the macro-level issues that pertain to the interdependent, ecological systems. Together, the contributions emphasize the importance of developing holistic responses to the financial crisis. The result is a volume that casts new light on traditional economic and managerial theories and policies and provides fresh ideas to a new generation of scholars and practitioners. Paul Shrivastava is the David O'Brien Distinguished Professor and Director of the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University. Matt Statler is the Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at NYU Stern School of Business. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18621 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18621 Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain Building Colonial Cities of God: Mendicant Orders and Urban Culture in New Spain Karen Melvin "Deep in primary research and offering a strikingly original interpretation of the role of mendicant orders at the generative heart of Mexico itself, Melvin's study ought to be consulted by all serious students of New Spain for the foreseeable future."—Kenneth Mills, University of Toronto <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20050">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book tracks New Spain's mendicant orders past their so-called golden age of missions into the ensuing centuries and demonstrates that they had equally crucial roles in what Melvin terms the "spiritual consolidation" of cities. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, cities became home to the majority of friars and to the orders' wealthiest houses, and mendicants became deeply embedded in urban social and cultural life. Friars ministered to urban residents of all races and social standings and engaged in traditional mendicant activities, serving as preachers, confessors, spiritual directors, alms collectors, educators, scholars, and sponsors of charitable works. Each order brought to this work a distinct identity that informed people's beliefs and shaped variations in the practice of Catholicism. Contrary to prevailing views, mendicant orders flourished during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and even the eighteenth-century reforms that ended this era were not as devastating as has been assumed.Even in the face of new institutional challenges, the demand for their services continued through the end of the colonial period, demonstrating the continued vitality of baroque piety. Karen Melvin is Assistant Professor of History at Bates College. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20050 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20050 Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan Sarah Kovner "Sarah Kovner has written a path-breaking work of Japanese history using a broad range of sources from Japanese, American, and British Commonwealth archives. This book will serve as the base line for studies in the history of sex work in postwar Japan for many years to come. Beyond that, it is an important study of women's history, sexuality, and military occupation in the twentieth century, and should be of interest to scholars in these fields worldwide."—William Johnston, Wesleyan University "Rich, theoretically-informed, and based on extensive archival research in several countries, Sarah Kovner's study sheds new light on a hitherto unexplored aspect of the Allied occupation of Japan—its sexual politics."—Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong, and author of Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality "This thorough and authoritative study enables the reader to gain a fresh understanding not only of the interactions between Japanese women and postwar occupying forces but also of the nation's view of itself at a time when Japan—despite its persistent reluctance to embrace interracial individuals—was concerned about its 'moral' standing in the international community."—Akira Iriye, Harvard University "Sarah Kovner has tackled a delicate subject with tact, thoughtfulness, and academic rigor. Her important book will be of great interest not just to specialists in Japanese history, but to anyone interested in the consequences of war, occupation, and indeed human relations across cultures."—Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism, Bard College <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=21270">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> The year was 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops poured into war-torn Japan and spread throughout the country, altering both the built environment and the country's psychological landscape. The effect of this influx on the local population did not lessen in the years following the war's end. In fact, the presence of foreign servicemen also heightened the visibility of certain others, particularly panpan—streetwalkers—who were objects of their desire. Occupying Power shows how intimate histories and international relations are interconnected in ways scholars have only begun to explore. Although sex workers became symbols of Japan's diminished status, by earning scarce dollars they helped jump-start economic recovery. But sex workers who catered to servicemen were nonetheless a frequent target. They were blamed for increases in venereal disease. They were charged with diluting the Japanese race by producing mixed-race offspring. In 1956, Japan passed its first national law against prostitution. Though empowered female legislators had joined with conservatives in this effort to reform and rehabilitate, the law produced an unanticipated effect. By ending a centuries-old tradition of sex work regulation, it made sex workers less visible and more vulnerable. This probing history reveals an important but underexplored aspect of the Japanese occupation and its effect on gender and society. It seeks to shift the terms of debate on a number of controversies, including Japan's history of forced sexual slavery, rape accusations against U.S. servicemen, opposition to U.S. overseas bases, and sexual trafficking. Sarah Kovner is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Florida. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21270 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21270 Theater of State: Parliament and Political Culture in Early Stuart England Theater of State: Parliament and Political Culture in Early Stuart England Chris R. Kyle "Kyle frames the demotics, theatrics, and staging of parliamentary speech in terms of the history of communication. No account of early modern politics will be complete without reference to the murmuring, hissing, shouting, and silences that this books reveals."—David Cressy, The Ohio State University "Kyle will wake everyone up. He has an inspired idea of setting parliamentary history firmly within contemporary political culture, arguably the most influential mode of scholarly analysis in the period. This book could well transform the field."—Thomas Cogswell, University of California, Riverside <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=7783">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book chronicles the expansion and creation of new public spheres in and around Parliament in the early Stuart period. It focuses on two closely interconnected narratives: the changing nature of communication and discourse within parliamentary chambers and the interaction of Parliament with the wider world of political dialogue and the dissemination of information. Concentrating on the rapidly changing practices of Parliament in print culture, rhetorical strategy, and lobbying during the 1620s, this book demonstrates that Parliament not only moved toward the center stage of politics but also became the center of the post-Reformation public sphere. Theater of State begins by examining the noise of politics inside Parliament, arguing that the House of Commons increasingly became a place of noisy, hotly contested speech. It then turns to the material conditions of note-taking in Parliament and how and the public became aware of parliamentary debates. The book concludes by examining practices of lobbying, intersections of the public with Parliament within Westminster Palace, and Parliament's expanding print culture. The author argues overall that the Crown dispensed with Parliament because it was too powerful and too popular. Chris R. Kyle is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University. He is the editor ofParliament, Politics and Elections (2001) and The Oxford Works of Francis Bacon, Vol VII: Legal and Political Writings 1613–1626 (forthcoming). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=7783 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=7783 Nelly Sachs, Flight and Metamorphosis: An Illustrated Biography Nelly Sachs, Flight and Metamorphosis: An Illustrated Biography Aris Fioretos Translated by Tomas Tranæus "For some years the time has been ripe for a literary biography of Nelly Sachs. Now these thorough, thoughtful, deeply studied pages, enlivened by remarkable images, should become a definitive source. Along with her close comrade Paul Celan, though not wholly like him, Sachs draws us into a molten history we forget at our peril."—John Felstiner, author of Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, and Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20748">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This richly illustrated biography is the first book in English to chronicle the life of Nelly Sachs (1891–1970), recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature. The book follows Sachs from her secluded years in Berlin as the only child of assimilated German Jews, through her last-minute flight from the Nazis in 1940, to her exile in "peaceful Sweden"—a time of poverty and isolation, but also of growing fame. Enriched by over 300 images of Sachs's manuscripts, photographs, and possessions, Flight and Metamorphosis not only offers detailed insights into the contexts of Sachs's formation as a writer, but also looks at themes of trauma and testimony in her central works. Aris Fioretos draws upon many previously unknown manuscripts, documents, medical records, and photos to produce the first reliably detailed narratives of Sachs's foundational experiences: her teenage years when she experienced the unrequited love later designated as the source for her entire oeuvre; her involvement with the Jewish Cultural League—seven years marked by mounting terror but also by her first public recognition as a writer; and her exposure to the radical Modernism of Swedish poetry in the 1940s. The book further describes the years of public recognition, addresses the paranoia that marked Sachs's final decade, and scrutinizes her close but complicated friendship with Paul Celan. An interview with Sachs's dear friend Margaretha Holmqvist provides touching insights into both her life in the 1960s and the events leading up to the Nobel Prize. Throughout, the book emphasizes the singularity of Sachs's accomplishments as a writer and the exemplarity of her existential situation—as a woman, as an exile, and—as she herself said—"a battleground." A professor of Aesthetics at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, Aris Fioretos was educated at Stockholm and Yale Universities. The recipient of numerous prizes and fellowships, most recently from the Swedish Academy and All Souls College, Oxford, he has published several novels and book-length essays and has rendered the works of Paul Auster, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Vladimir Nabokov into Swedish. His latest, award-winning novel is entitled The Last Greek (2009). Fioretos is also the general editor of the first commented edition of the complete works of Nelly Sachs in German. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20748 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20748 Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century France Raymond Birn "Birn's new study is an invaluable contribution to [his] impressive corpus. It offers richly documented insight into the complex mental world of Enlightenment-era censors, along with a compelling account of how the government managed their work, and in the effort, ended up encapsulating so many of the key paradoxes of modernization in the eighteenth century."—H-France <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17802">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Today, we are inclined to believe that intellectual freedom has no greater adversary than the censor. In eighteenth-century France, the matter was more complicated. Royal censors envisioned themselves not as fulfilling a mission of state-sponsored repression but rather as guiding the literary traffic of the Enlightenment. By awarding pre-publication and pre-distribution approvals, royal censors sought to insulate authors and publishers from the scandal of post-publication condemnation by parliaments, the police, or the Church. Less official authorizations were also awarded. Though censors did delete words and phrases from manuscripts and sometimes rejected manuscripts altogether, the liberal use of tacit permissions and conditional approvals resulted in the publication and circulation of books that, under a less flexible system, might never have seen the light of day. In essence, eighteenth-century French censors served as cultural intermediaries who bore responsibility for expanding public awareness of the progressive thought of their time. Raymond Birn is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Oregon. His most recent books are Forging Rousseau: Print, Commerce and Cultural Manipulation in the Late Enlightenment (2001) and Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe and the World, 1648-1789 (2005). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=17802 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=17802 Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice Dominique Kirchner Reill "Dominique Reill presents an extremely sophisticated and subtle theoretical argument about the relationship between nationalism and pluralism, and does so in a way that is both novel and clear. One need not be independently interested in the Adriatic (as I, admittedly, happen to be) in order to recognize the importance of this manuscript's contribution to the study of nationalism."—Alison Frank, Harvard University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20101">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> We can often learn as much from political movements that failed as from those that achieved their goals. Nationalists Who Feared the Nation looks at one such frustrated movement: a group of community leaders and writers in Venice, Trieste, and Dalmatia during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s who proposed the creation of a multinational zone surrounding the Adriatic Sea. At the time, the lands of the Adriatic formed a maritime community whose people spoke different languages and practiced different faiths but identified themselves as belonging to a single region of the Hapsburg Empire. While these activists hoped that nationhood could be used to strengthen cultural bonds, they also feared nationalism's homogenizing effects and its potential for violence. This book demonstrates that not all nationalisms attempted to create homogeneous, single-language, -religion, or -ethnicity nations. Moreover, in treating the Adriatic lands as one unit, this book serves as a correction to "national" histories that impose our modern view of nationhood on what was a multinational region. Dominique Kirchner Reill is Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the University of Miami. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20101 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20101 The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822–1888 The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822–1888 Ian Read "This book offers a unique perspective on slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil. As a work of historical demography that spans most of the nineteenth century, The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822–1888 is an ambitious study. It offers the most comprehensive view of a discrete, urban Brazilian slave population yet to be produced and is a very important contribution to the history of slavery, not only in Brazil but also in comparative perspective."—Linda Lewin, University of California, Berkeley "This impressively and, indeed, massively researched study is the first to demonstrate, systematically and in depth, that how slaves exercised their agency often depended in part on who owned them and how they were employed. It is a pioneering work, standing out for its analysis of urban slavery from multiple angles and for its use of such a wide variety of sources."—B.J. Barickman, University of Arizona <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=18049">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Despite the inherent brutality of slavery, some slaves could find small but important opportunities to act decisively. The Hierarchies of Slavery in Santos, Brazil, 1822–1888 explores such moments of opportunity and resistance in Santos, a Southeastern township in Imperial Brazil. It argues that slavery in Brazil was hierarchical: slaves' fleeting chances to form families, work jobs that would not kill or maim, avoid debilitating diseases, or find a (legal or illegal) pathway out of slavery were highly influenced by their demographic background and their owners' social position. By tracing the lives of slaves and owners through multiple records, the author is able to show that the cruelties that slaves faced were not equally shared. One important implication is that internal stratification likely helped perpetuate slavery because there was the belief, however illusionary, that escaping captivity was not necessary for social mobility. Ian Read is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Soka University of America. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18049 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18049 Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime Robert Zaller "Robert Zaller's book sets out to be the fullest and most detailed explication of Jeffers' large body of poetry and his literary career, and it delivers on that ambition. It is the best single critical book about Jeffers and sets a benchmark that will be difficult to meet, let alone surpass."—Albert Gelpi, Emeritus, Stanford University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=10149">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime is the most comprehensive and most substantial critical work ever devoted to the major American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962). Jeffers, the best known poet of California and the American West, particularly valorized the Big Sur region, making it his own as Frost did New England and Faulkner, Mississippi, and connecting it to the wider tradition of the American sublime in Emerson, Thoreau, and John Muir. The book also links Jeffers to a Puritan sublime in early American verse and explores his response to the Darwinian and Freudian revolutions and his engagement with modern astronomy. This discussion leads to a broad consideration of Jeffers' focus on the figure of Christ as emblematic of the human aspiration toward God—a God whom Jeffers defines not in Christian terms but in those of an older materialist pantheism and of modern science. The later sections of the book develop a conspectus of the democratic sublime that addresses American exceptionalism through the prism of Jeffers' Jeffersonian ethos. A final chapter places Jeffers' poetic thought in the larger cosmological perspective he sought in his late works. Robert Zaller is Professor of History at Drexel University and a leading scholar of Robinson Jeffers. His previous works on Jeffers include The Cliffs of Solitude and an edited volume, Centennial Essays for Robinson Jeffers. He is also the author of The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford 2007). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=10149 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=10149 Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870 Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870 Huping Ling "A unique and valuable study, sure to deepen our understanding of extra-national migratory studies in the development of modernity."—John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York University & Museum of Chinese in America "Huping Ling, a prolific and leading scholar of Chinese America, gives us yet another refreshingly exciting book. An excellent community study, it offers fascinating stories about various aspects of Chinese America life in the community, ranging from food, laundry-shop work, school life, and family life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chicago. The book situates these stories in larger contexts, specially the Chinese American transnational world, providing extraordinary insights into the connection between the local and the global. It also connects the past to the present by taking an in-depth look at the post-war forces that have transformed and continue to transform Chinese Chicago."—Yong Chen, author of Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community "An insightful interpretation of Chinese community as an integral part of a multiethnic Chicago, Ling's book is a landmark addition to the growing Chinese American transnational historiography."—Haiming Liu, author of The Transnational History of a Chinese Family <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20872">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Numerous studies have documented the transnational experiences and local activities of Chinese immigrants in California and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less is known about the vibrant Chinese American community that developed at the same time in Chicago. In this sweeping account, Huping Ling offers the first comprehensive history of Chinese in Chicago, beginning with the arrival of the pioneering Moy brothers in the 1870s and continuing to the present. Ling focuses on how race, transnational migration, and community have defined Chinese in Chicago. Drawing upon archival documents in English and Chinese, she charts how Chinese made a place for themselves among the multiethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, cultivating friendships with local authorities and consciously avoiding racial conflicts. Ling takes readers through the decades, exploring evolving family structures and relationships, the development of community organizations, and the operation of transnational businesses. She pays particular attention to the influential role of Chinese in Chicago's academic and intellectual communities and to the complex and conflicting relationships among today's more dispersed Chinese Americans in Chicago. Huping Ling is Professor of History at Truman State University and Executive Editor for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has published eleven books and over one hundred articles. Most recently, she coedited Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20872 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20872 Looking for Balance: China, the United States, and Power Balancing in East Asia Looking for Balance: China, the United States, and Power Balancing in East Asia Steve Chan "Looking for Balance compellingly argues for serious change in prevalent American foreign policy thinking about power dynamics in world affairs, and thus for how to deal with China and East Asia. It should cool the zealots for additional U.S. pursuit of military dominance in distant regions."—Davis B. Bobrow, Emeritus Professor of Public and International Affairs and Political Science, University of Pittsburgh <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=21177">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Debate surrounding "China's rise," and the prospects of its possible challenge to America's preeminence in international relations in East Asia, has focused on two questions, rooted in power-balancing theory: whether the United States should "contain" or "engage" China; and whether the rise of Chinese power has inclined other East Asian states to "balance" against Beijing by alignment with the United States. By drawing on alternative theoretic approaches—most especially "balance-of-threat" theory, political economic theory, and theories surrounding regime survival in multilateral rather than bilateral contexts, Steve Chan is able to create an explanation of what is in motion in the region that differs widely from the traditional "strategic vision" of national interest. He concludes that China's primary IR aim is not to match U.S. military might or the foreign policy influence that flows from that power, and that its neighbors are not balancing against its rising power. This is because, in today's guns-versus-butter fiscal reality, balancing policies would entail forfeiting possible gains that can accrue from cooperation, economic growth, and the application of GDP to nonmilitary ends. Instead, most East Asian countries have collectively pivoted to a strategy of elite legitimacy and regime survival based on economic performance. Steve Chan is Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of China, the U.S., and the Power-Transition Theory: A Critique. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21177 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21177 Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa David Ellenson and Daniel Gordis "This is a concise, timely, and well-researched survey of modern Jewish conversion law, and the politics that underlie it. By tracing a wide range of Jewish legal decisions in different countries over two centuries, Ellenson and Gordis underscore the importance of context and biography in the shaping of Jewish law. They explain the diversity of Orthodox opinion concerning the acceptance of converts, and clarify how the whole process of rabbinic decision-making works. A miracle of compression and clarity, this book provides the background for policies affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews and would-be Jews throughout the world."—Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=21014">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Since the late 1700s, when the Jewish community ceased to be a semiautonomous political unit in Western Europe and the United States and individual Jews became integrated—culturally, socially, and politically—into broader society, questions surrounding Jewish status and identity have occupied a prominent and contentious place in Jewish legal discourse. This book examines a wide array of legal opinions written by nineteenth- and twentieth-century orthodox rabbis in Europe, the United States, and Israel. It argues that these rabbis' divergent positions—based on the same legal precedents—demonstrate that they were doing more than delivering legal opinions. Instead, they were crafting public policy for Jewish society in response to Jews' social and political interactions as equals with the non-Jewish persons in whose midst they dwelled. Pledges of Jewish Allegiance prefaces its analysis of modern opinions with a discussion of the classical Jewish sources upon which they draw. David Ellenson, President and I. H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought at Hebrew Union College–Jewish institute of Religion, is a distinguished rabbi, scholar, and leader of the Reform Movement. Daniel Gordis is President of the Shalem Foundation and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21014 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=21014 Accident Society: Fiction, Collectivity, and the Production of Chance Accident Society: Fiction, Collectivity, and the Production of Chance Jason Puskar "Accident Society is skillfully executed and makes important contributions to existing debates over the role of individual agency and moral responsibility in the age of incorporation leading up to the New Deal. Puskar uncovers original historical contexts to buttress new readings of crucial authors and texts."—Maurice S. Lee, Boston University "The intellectual range of this book is staggering. Each chapter not only shifts the discourse about a particular literary text, finding hidden illuminations, but also radiates new possibilities for understanding the social, philosophical, and political coordinates that situate the texts. It is truly a brilliant book."—Eric Wertheimer, Arizona State University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20749">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile collisions and occupational injuries became "car accidents" and "industrial accidents." During the post-Civil War period of racial, ethnic, and class-based hostility, chance was an abstract enemy against which society might unite. By producing chance, novels by William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Anna Katharine Green, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and James Cain documented and helped establish new modes of collective interdependence. Chance here is connected not with the competitive individualism of the Gilded Age, but with important progressive and social democratic reforms, including developments in insurance, which had long employed accident narratives to shape its own "mutual society." Accident Society reveals the extent to which American collectivity has depended—and continues to depend—on the literary production of chance. Jason Puskar is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20749 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20749 A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi A Jewish Voice from Ottoman Salonica: The Ladino Memoir of Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi Edited by Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya Stein; Translation, Transliteration, and Glossary by Isaac Jerusalmi "We must be grateful to the two editors and the translator of this memoir for bringing a rare document back to life. Surviving the near-annihilation and dispersion of the Jews of Salonica over the last hundred years, this precious historical source offers a passionate portrait of the struggle between traditionalist and modernizing forces within the late-nineteenth-century Sephardic world. It is a gripping read and will advance the scholarly agenda of Sephardic studies."—Francesca Trivellato, Yale University "Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi was a man who found himself at the threshold of momentous changes that would all but swallow everything that was familiar to him in the early decades of the twentieth century. Yet, rather than meditating nostalgically about a world that was fast disappearing, Sa'adi embraced change with enthusiasm. He hoped that the future that was dawning would be free of the shackles of tradition that held him and the Jewish community of Salonica back. His unusual conviction about the power of progress, his efforts to make intellectual sense of the transformations that surround him, his repeated clashes with those who held power over him, and his repeated disappointments make this an exceptionally engaging book. Aron Rodrigue, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, and Isaac Jerusalmi have done a marvelous job of translating, editing, and making accessible this uniquely valuable source. Their work enriches our understanding of the life of the Jewish communities in and around Salonica and beyond in the second half of the nineteenth century in a profound way."—Resat Kasaba, University of Washington "How marvelous to have the first known memoir in Ladino so beautifully translated and explicated. Sa'adi, an Ottoman Jew, astute observer, and person of diverse accomplishments, lived through the better part of the long 19th century. His invaluable memoir, completed before the cataclysmic events of World War I and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, documents a world already in flux. The beauty of this memoir is the vividness with which Sa'adi conveys the very experience of change as someone who not only witnessed it but also lived and felt it. The reader can hear his voice and visualize what he describes in such telling detail. This is a book to read for the sheer pleasure of it and an accessible way to engage students new to the history of Ottoman Jews."—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=18553">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors. The memoirist, Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the long-ascendant fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel. His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority-Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars. Sa'adi was himself a prominent journalist and publisher, one of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture. He was also a rebel, accusing the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and fanatical; that leadership, in turn, excommunicated him from the Jewish community. The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir, which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing. At Stanford University, Aron Rodrigue is Charles Michael Professor in Jewish History and Culture, Professor of History, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities, and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center. Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Professor of History and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18553 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18553 Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship Monopolizing the Master: Henry James and the Politics of Modern Literary Scholarship Michael Anesko "Michael Anesko's important, fiercely witty book on the mediation—manipulation—of James's works and reputation by his heirs and successive scholars is hard to put down. Not only Jamesians but lovers of literary gossip will relish his treasure trove of archival revelations about the keepers of the Jamesian flame, from Percy Lubbock to Leon Edel. This inside study of the politics of literary institutions is certain to become a classic, of a very remarkable kind."—Philip Horne, University College London "Michael Anesko combines scholarship with the writer's craft to engage both the seasoned Jamesian and the educated general reader. The story he tells is significant and compelling: it promises to change once again the way that we understand Henry James, all while opening a window onto academe's seamier side."— Greg Zacharias, Creighton University "For Jamesians, this is a page-turner, a must-have. It will also absorb the general reader in a compelling narrative that has everything: the fall and rise of a major literary figure; complicated money-making deals, sexual secrets, family dynamics, contention over intellectual property rights, self-protecting Boston/Harvard hierarchies, conspiracies and cover-ups, and power-grabs by an accomplished villain."—Martha Banta, University of California, Los Angeles "As this extraordinary work of scholarship shows, it would be family, friends, publishers, biographers, and critics who strove to perpetuate one or another 'Henry James' in accordance with their view of the dead author. Anesko gives a vivid presence to these secondary actors like the novelist's nephew, Percy Lubbock (the first editor of James's letters), and Leon Edel, whose successful campaign to obtain and retain exclusive rights to publish James's letters and biography is a scandal of modern scholarship only now being exposed in detail."—Millicent Bell, Emerita, Boston University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=18378">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Henry James defied posterity to disturb his bones: he was adamant that his legacy be based exclusively on his publications and that his private life and writings remain forever private. Despite this, almost immediately after his death in 1916 an intense struggle began among his family and his literary disciples to control his posthumous reputation, a struggle that was continued by later generations of critics and biographers. Monopolizing the Master gives a blow-by-blow account of this conflict, which aroused intense feelings of jealousy, suspicion, and proprietorship among those who claimed to be the just custodians of James's literary legacy. With an unprecedented amount of new evidence now available, Michael Anesko reveals the remarkable social, political, and sexual intrigue that inspired—and influenced—the deliberate construction of the Legend of the Master. Michael Anesko is Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University. He has published extensively on Anglo-American literary culture, including "Friction with the Market": Henry James and the Profession of Authorship (1986), Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells (1997), and The French Face of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Monsieur de l'Aubépine and His Second Empire Critics (2011). He is a General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Edition of The Complete Fiction of Henry James. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18378 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=18378 America's Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures America's Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures Jerome Christensen "This highly original and engaging study makes a significant contribution to American film history and to film and media theory, particularly media industry studies. No other author has analyzed studio authorship with the depth, care, and complexity that Christensen exhibits here, nor has such an argument been supported with close readings of individual films."—Thomas Schatz, University of Texas at Austin <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20203">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Contrary to theories of single person authorship, America's Corporate Art argues that the corporate studio is the author of Hollywood motion pictures, both during the classical era of the studio system and beyond, when studios became players in global dramas staged by massive entertainment conglomerates. Hollywood movies are examples of a commodity that, until the digital age, was rare: a self-advertising artifact that markets the studio's brand in the very act of consumption. The book covers the history of corporate authorship through the antithetical visions of two of the most dominant Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and MGM. During the classical era, these studios promoted their brands as competing social visions in strategically significant pictures such as MGM's Singin' in the Rain and Warner's The Fountainhead. Christensen follows the studios' divergent fates as MGM declined into a valuable and portable logo, while Warner Bros. employed Batman, JFK, and You've Got Mail to seal deals that made it the biggest entertainment corporation in the world. The book concludes with an analysis of the Disney-Pixar merger and the first two Toy Story movies in light of the recent judicial extension of constitutional rights of the corporate person. Jerome Christensen is Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine. His most recent book is Romanticism at the End of History (2000). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20203 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20203 Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling Jared Gardner "Projections is original, provocative, deeply informed, and a much needed corrective to the presentist bias of comics studies. Gardner says important, eye-opening things about comics, film, and audience, things that should inform all our work from now on. A landmark study."—Charles Hatfield, California State University, Northridge, author of Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature "A succinct and savvy cultural history of American comics in the long twentieth century, Projections is attentive to reading publics and the actual experience of reading comics across different forms, formats, and genres. Focusing on the rise of comics as one media form among many, Gardner crucially asks us to consider its 'interactivity' not only as an abstraction but as a practice."—Hillary Chute, University of Chicago <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20178">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> When Art Spiegelman's Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, it marked a new era for comics. Comics are now taken seriously by the same academic and cultural institutions that long dismissed the form. And the visibility of comics continues to increase, with alternative cartoonists now published by major presses and more comics-based films arriving on the screen each year. Projections argues that the seemingly sudden visibility of comics is no accident. Beginning with the parallel development of narrative comics at the turn of the 20th century, comics have long been a form that invites—indeed requires—readers to help shape the stories being told. Today, with the rise of interactive media, the creative techniques and the reading practices comics have been experimenting with for a century are now in universal demand. Recounting the history of comics from the nineteenth-century rise of sequential comics to the newspaper strip, through comic books and underground comix, to the graphic novel and webcomics, Gardner shows why they offer the best models for rethinking storytelling in the twenty-first century. In the process, he reminds us of some beloved characters from our past and present, including Happy Hooligan, Krazy Kat, Crypt Keeper, and Mr. Natural. Jared Gardner is Associate Professor of English and Film at Ohio State University. He is the author of Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787–1845. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20178 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20178 Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam James G. Hershberg "This is a superb piece of scholarship, a study that will make a major contribution to our understanding of the Vietnam War in general and the Marigold peace initiative in particular. The research base is simply astounding and what is more, Hershberg shows a marvelous ability to take this mass of material and render it into a gripping and powerful narrative. Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam is history-writing at its best—evocative, elegant, well-organized, deeply researched, and authoritative."—Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University, author of Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam "The book will be, I believe, a blockbuster addition to the scholarship of the Vietnam War and, more generally, to Cold War history. Hershberg has produced a remarkably engaging study, a novelesque work of non-fiction that succeeds brilliantly in evoking the feel of 1966 Saigon, Hanoi, Warsaw, Austin, and Washington, It will rank among the finest and most ambitious examples of the 'new Cold War history' and be nothing less than a model for historians and graduate students of how to conduct research in international history and how to weave research drawn from multiple nations into a compelling narrative."—Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin, author of The Vietnam War: A Concise International History and Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam "This is a well-written, in-depth look at the facts of a controversial and convoluted peace effort that could have significantly altered the course of the Vietnam War." —Publisher's Weekly "Hershberg has done remarkable work, piecing together the Marigold story from newly available Soviet documents, D'Orlandi's journals, and numerous interviews. He has calmed oceans of detail into a graceful narrative, an important work for Vietnam-era and Cold War historians."—Karl Helicher, Library Journal "A thoughtful and well-reasoned study, Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam is highly recommended especially for American military history shelves."—Midwest Book Review <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20877">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Marigold presents the first rigorously documented, in-depth story of one of the Vietnam War's last great mysteries: the secret Polish-Italian peace initiative, codenamed "Marigold," that sought to end the war, or at least to open direct talks between Washington and Hanoi, in 1966. The initiative failed, the war dragged on for another seven years, and this episode sank into history as an unresolved controversy. Antiwar critics claimed Johnson had bungled (or, worse, deliberately sabotaged) a breakthrough by bombing Hanoi on the eve of a planned historic secret US-North Vietnamese encounter in Warsaw. Conversely, LBJ and top aides angrily insisted there was no "missed opportunity," Poland never had authority to arrange direct talks, and Hanoi was not ready to negotiate. Conventional wisdom echoes the view that Washington and Hanoi were so dug in that no real opportunity existed. This book uses new evidence from long hidden communist sources to show that Warsaw was authorized by Hanoi to open direct contacts and that Hanoi had committed to entering talks with Washington. It reveals LBJ's personal role in bombing Hanoi at a pivotal moment, disregarding the pleas of both the Poles and his own senior advisors. The historical implications of missing this opportunity are immense: Washington did not enter negotiations with Hanoi until more than two years and many thousands of lives later, and then in far less auspicious circumstances. James Hershberg is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. He was the founding director of the Wilson Center's Cold War International History Project and author of James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Stanford University Press, 1995). http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20877 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20877 The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics The Power of Life: Agamben and the Coming Politics David Kishik "An outstanding piece of work."—Simon Critchley, New School for Social Research "Combining novel biographical research with lucid textual analysis, Kishik's illuminating The Power of Life shows the reader how Agamben's work can help us to imagine new forms of life and radically transform philosophical thought and practice. His reading of Agamben is precise and informative, and I can think of no better or more reliable guide for working through Agamben's complex writings."—Matthew Calarco, California State University, Fullerton <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20514">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Giorgio Agamben's work develops a new philosophy of life. On its horizon lies the conviction that our form of life can become the guiding and unifying power of the politics to come. Informed by this promise, The Power of Life weaves decisive moments and neglected aspects of Agamben's writings over the past four decades together with the thought of those who influenced him most (including Kafka, Heidegger, Benjamin, Arendt, Deleuze, and Foucault). In addition, the book positions his work in relation to key figures from the history of philosophy (such as Plato, Spinoza, Vico, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Derrida). This approach enables Kishik to offer a vision that ventures beyond Agamben's warning against the power over (bare) life in order to articulate the power of (our form of) life and thus to rethink the biopolitical situation. Following Agamben's prediction that the concept of life will stand at the center of the coming philosophy, Kishik points to some of the most promising directions that this philosophy can take. David Kishik is the author of Wittgenstein's Form of Life (2008) and co-translator, with Stefan Pedatella, of Agamben's What Is an Apparatus? (Stanford 2009) and Nudities (Stanford 2010). He is a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, though he usually lives in New York. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20514 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20514 Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class Edited by Katherine Porter "Going to college and buying a home used to be pathways to the middle class. Broke shows that for increasing numbers of Americans they are pathways to personal bankruptcy. This outstanding collection of essays documents the social costs of America's ongoing household debt crisis, and the many ways in which public policy has rigged the game against borrowers."—Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego, author of The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics "For anyone tired of hype and rhetoric, at last a book that analyzes the growing effects of debt and bankruptcy on the middle class with rigor and data. Each chapter, crisply written and rich with analysis, lets readers draw their own conclusions." —John A. E. Pottow, University of Michigan Law School "An important collection on consumer finance that offers a troubling window on the financial stresses on the American middle class. Broke breaks new ground in exploring families in bankruptcy, examining the interaction of issues like race, mortgage debt, and student loan debt with the bankruptcy process."—Adam J. Levitin, Georgetown University Law Center "Too many American families are deep in debt because their wages haven't kept up, their jobs are vanishing, and their homes worth less and less. It's not only a human tragedy for them but also a national problem as their debt burden hobbles the American economy and their inability to repay cripples lenders. What should be done? Here's a useful and insightful guide to policies that can help."—Robert B. Reich, author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future "Risk and return are inseparable. While debt can enable families to buy homes, obtain education, and start businesses, it does so by amplifying both upturns and downturns. Broke clearly illustrates the consequences when overextended families experience the roller coaster ride leading to bankruptcy."—Peter Tufano, University of Oxford <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20202">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> About 1.5 million households filed bankruptcy in the last year, making bankruptcy as common as college graduation and divorce. The recession has pushed more and more families into financial collapse—with unemployment, declines in retirement wealth, and falling house values destabilizing the American middle class. Broke explores the consequences of this unprecedented growth in consumer debt and shows how excessive borrowing undermines the prosperity of middle class America. While the recession that began in mid-2007 has widened the scope of the financial pain caused by overindebtedness, the problem predated that large-scale economic meltdown. And by all indicators, consumer debt will be a defining feature of middle-class families for years to come. The staples of middle-class life—going to college, buying a house, starting a small business—carry with them more financial risk than ever before, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing. This book reveals the people behind the statistics, looking closely at how people get to the point of serious financial distress, the hardships of dealing with overwhelming debt, and the difficulty of righting one's financial life. In telling the stories of financial failures, this book exposes an all-too-real part of middle-class life that is often lost in the success stories that dominate the American economic narrative. Authored by experts in several disciplines, including economics, law, political science, psychology, and sociology, Broke presents analyses from an original, proprietary data set of unprecedented scope and detail, the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Topics include class status, home ownership, educational attainment, impacts of self-employment, gender differences, economic security, and the emotional costs of bankruptcy. The book makes judicious use of illustrations to present key findings and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the data for contemporary policy debates. Katherine Porter is Professor of Law at the University of California Irvine School of Law. In 2010-2011, she was the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. She is an expert in consumer credit law and has testified several times before Congress. Her published research addresses mortgage servicing, financial education, and consumer bankruptcy. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20202 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20202 Cleansing Honor with Blood: Masculinity, Violence, and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845–1889 Cleansing Honor with Blood: Masculinity, Violence, and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845–1889 Martha S. Santos "Santos presents a very important revisionist analysis of patriarchy and male violence in the Brazilian northeast. She historicizes the construction of masculinity and gender norms in the Brazilian rural interior, rejecting stereotypes of sertanejos as inherently violent. Instead, she shows how male identities based on personal courage and the willingness to use violence were linked to socio-economic constraints and discusses how both changed over time. She also explores the historical agency of women within a context of economic scarcity and gender inequality."—Judy Bieber, University of New Mexico <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=11360">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> This book offers a critical reinterpretation of male violence, patriarchy, and machismo in rural Latin America. It focuses on the lives of lower-class men and women, known as sertanejo/as, in the hinterlands of the northeastern Brazilian province of Ceará between 1845 and 1889. Challenging the widely accepted depiction of sertanejos as conditioned to violence by nature, culture, and climate, Santos argues that their concern with maintaining an honorable manly reputation and the use of violence were historically contingent strategies employed to resolve conflicts over scant resources and to establish power over women and other men. She also traces a shift in the functioning of patriarchy that coincided with changes in the material fortunes of sertanejo families. As economic dislocation, environmental calamity, and family separation led to greater female autonomy and an erosion of patriarchal authority in the home, public—and often violent—enforcement of male power maintained patriarchal order in these communities. Martha S. Santos is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at the University of Akron. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=11360 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=11360 Julian Bell: From Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil War Julian Bell: From Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil War Peter Stansky and William Abrahams "An intergenerational conversation, between the younger and the older Peter Stansky, as well as between Julian Bell and his elders in the Bloomsbury Group. A new Julian Bell emerges—even franker about his physical and emotional needs, even more frustrated by claustrophobic England—which makes more telling and inevitable his spectacular end on the battlefields of Spain. A beautiful, tragic book."—Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge "Peter Stansky's revised and expanded biography of Julian Bell is a valuable addition to our knowledge of early twentieth-century English culture. It should be illuminating not just for Bloomsbury enthusiasts but also for those interested in English attitudes toward sexuality, China, and the Spanish Civil War."—S. P. Rosenbaum <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=20606">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> Julian Bell explores the life of a younger member, and sole poet, of the Bloomsbury Group, the most important community of British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century, which includes Virginia Woolf (Julian's aunt), E. M. Forster, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critic Roger Fry. This biography draws upon the expanding archives on Bloomsbury to present Julian's life more completely and more personally than has been done previously. It is an intense and profound exploration of personal, sexual, intellectual, political, and literary life in England between the two world wars. Through Julian, the book provides important insights on Virginia Woolf, his mother Vanessa Bell, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. Taking us from London to China to Spain during its civil war, the book is also the ultimately heartbreaking story of one young man's life. Peter Stansky and William Abrahams wrote four books together, including Journey to the Frontier, a study of John Cornford and Julian Bell. The late William Abrahams went on to be one of the most distinguished editors of the century; Peter Stansky became Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20606 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=20606 Aspiring to Home: South Asians in America Aspiring to Home: South Asians in America Bakirathi Mani "Working with a truly innovative archive, Mani compellingly argues that merely 'adding on' South Asians to the litany of ethnic and national-origin identifications that circulate under 'Asian America' is thoroughly inadequate to pursuing the study of racialization in ways that take seriously the intimacy and depth of the relationship between the local and the global. —Kandice Chuh, CUNY/The Graduate Center "An elegantly written and trenchantly argued book."—Martin F. Manalansan IV, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "An important contribution to the burgeoning field of South Asian American studies, Bakirathi Mani's Aspiring to Home easily traverses a range of cultural practices, moving seamlessly between genres (literature, film, performance) and methodologies (textual analysis, ethnography). Mani compelling transforms our understanding of seemingly transparent assimilationist narratives produced by South Asian Americans in the US. These contradictions, for Mani, point to the ways in which middle class South Asian Americans both collude with and renegotiate dominant notions of belonging in multiple national spaces. Thus Mani argues that we must reconceptualize Asian American studies beyond a familiar mapping of US colonialism in East and South East Asia, and the Pacific Islands, but simultaneously through US and British imperial interests in South Asia."—Gayatri Gopinath, New York University <center><a href="http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=9410">To buy this book or view bibliographic details, click here.</a></center> What does it mean to belong? How are twenty-first-century diasporic subjects fashioning identities and communities that bind them together? Aspiring to Home examines these questions with a focus on immigrants from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Advancing a theory of locality to explain the means through which immigrants of varying regional, religious, and linguistic backgrounds experience what it means to belong, Bakirathi Mani shows how ethnicity is produced through the relationship between domestic racial formations and global movements of class and capital. Aspiring to Home focuses on popular cultural works created by first- and second-generation South Asians from 1999–2009, including those by author Jhumpa Lahiri and filmmaker Mira Nair, as well as public events such as the Miss India U.S.A. pageant and the Broadway musical Bombay Dreams. Analyzing these diverse productions through an interdisciplinary framework, Mani weaves literary readings with ethnography to unravel the constraints of form and genre that shape how we read diasporic popular culture. Bakirathi Mani is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature at Swarthmore College. http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=9410 http://www.sup.org/rss/book_rss.cgi?id=9410