New York U. Pr.

Empires and indigenes; intercultural alliance, imperial expansion, and warfare in the early modern world.

The shape of imperial expansion in the early modern era was everywhere contingent upon the agency of encountered indigenous peoples and the story of imperial "conquest" therefore was often a story of "convincing, cajoling, and coercing indigenous agents of harnessing their own resources in order to project power at the imperial behest or in the imperial interest." It is this interactive process of imperial power projection that is the focus of the 10 papers presented here by Lee (U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), which discuss such specific topics as the blending of European and Amerindian diplomatic and military practices and cultures; the ways in which South Asian military practices determined and shaped British military capabilities in the region; the role of intercultural alliances in the expansion of the land empires of the Ottomans and the Russians; and variations in types of indigenous-imperial alliances in the Dutch, British, and Portuguese empires. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Faith and war; how Christians debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars.

Settje (history, Concordia U. Chicago) ends this book with a series of questions for further study regarding whether Americans look to their churches for guidance regarding foreign policy, whether policy makers look to religious leaders, and whether churches reflect or shape attitudes — these days concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the War on Terror. In the preceding chapters the author details these issues with regard to the Cold and Vietnam Wars, finding that the stances of churches were as wide ranging as the attitudes of the American public itself. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ingratitude; the debt-bound daughter in Asian American literature.

This is passionate, heartfelt literary criticism — meticulous, wise, and enlightening. Ninh (Asian American studies, U. of California, Santa Barbara) began this book a decade ago, and the result is a study of great vitality and strength — a springboard for future work. In her conclusion she states: "... the academic collectivity is now on notice that administering childhood by the family prestige index is not ideologically defensible parenting, that the professional managerial model child costs us something incalculable to make." The study offers a close look at works by Jade Snow Wong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Evelyn Lau, Catherine Liu, Fae Myenne Ng, Elaine Mar, and Chitra Divakaruni. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Keywords for children's literature.

To clarify language associated with children's literature as a means of improving scholarship in the field, editors Philip Nel (English, children's literature, Kansas State U.) and Lissa Paul (education, Brock U.) made a selection of 49 words. They asked contributors to write essays defining each term in a multifaceted way that includes discussion of its use in various disciplines. A sampling of the keywords under consideration: aesthetics, African American, audience body, boyhood, censorship, character, childhood, children's literature culture, education, empire, fantasy, gender, and so on through theory, tomboy, voice, and young adult. The alphabetical arrangement doesn't offer much unification or context, but the index gives access according to themes that cross entries. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Policing methamphetamine; narcopolitics in rural America.

This is an ethnographic study of the politics of policing methamphetamine in a small rural community in West Virginia. Examining how the community and government responded to methamphetamine as it emerged as a perceived drug problem in West Virginia, Garriott (justice studies, James Madison U.) found common practices and logics of narcopolitics in the United States applied to methamphetamine in this rural community. The three key features he identifies as characteristic of this narcopolitics are: a targeting of substances and their effects as the object and means of regulation and intervention, rather than people and their actions; the deployment of multiple methods of state intervention for narcotics control; and the blurring of morality-based and risk-based reasoning in narcopolitics governance and corresponding punitive and actuarial approaches to interventions. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Prophetic activism; progressive religious justice movements in contemporary America.

Slessarev-Jamir is a professor of urban studies at the Claremont School of Theology, and she has participated in a number of the organizations she presents in this broad comparative examination. Aiming in the introductory chapter to identify "...certain qualities of the prophetic commonly found among progressive activists, which distinguish their work from that done by conservatives..." she begins by examining the prophetic tradition within the Hebrew Bible, the texts that motivate activists, Jesus' expansion of the prophetic tradition, activism as nonviolent resistance, lessons from Latin America, and advocacy organizations and their national networks of grassroots activists. She then offers closer examination of organizations in the borderlands communities, and those organized for worker justice, immigrant rights, peacemaking, and global justice. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Punished; policing the lives of Black and Latino boys.

Having himself grown up in the gang life of Oakland, California, prior to earning his doctorate in sociology, Rios (U. of California at Santa Barbara) has turned his analytic lens on the social forces that influence the way young Black and Latino boys organize themselves and create meaning in their lives, focusing particularly on the role of criminalization, which he defines as "the process by which styles and behaviors are rendered deviant and are treated with shame, exclusion, punishment, and incarceration" across social contexts and often extra-legally. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Soundbitten; the perils of media-centered political activism.

Sobieraj (sociology, Tufts U.) did plenty of fieldwork for this study in which she personally observed the activities of organizations interacting with campaign events in a public, media-grabbing way in order to advance particular agendas. She also analyzed news coverage, conducted in-depth interview with activists and journalists, and created a framework for evaluating the impact of activities directed primarily at getting media attention. In this book she presents her observations and conclusions, warning that such strategies very often don't accomplish much and detract from efforts that could be more productive. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)