Palgrave Macmillan
After the event; new perspectives on art history.
The 18 essays of this collection were presented in earlier form at symposia held in conjunction with the Biennale of Sydney 2006, and several discuss art works displayed there (and curated by Merewether). Although the art discussed is contemporary, the focus of the volume is the paradigm of art history itself, with repeated questioning of Western European norms and values and exploration of the meanings and representations of globalization. The character of contemporary art, including performance art, and methods for its interpretations are a central theme. Merewether is director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore; Potts teaches media, music and cultural studies at Macquarie U., Sydney, Australia. Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
America's challenges in the greater Middle East; the Obama administration's policies.
In this volume (supported by the Australian Research Council) 13 contributions address US policies in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, the GCC states, and Central Asia. Under discussion are partnerships, revolution, strategic interests, pragmatism, and prospects. The first chapter, by editor Akbarzadeh (Asian politics and Islamic studies, U. of Melbourne, Australia) is titled "Obama in the Middle East: Failure to Bring Change." Contributors are scholars and diplomats with deep experience and affiliations with diverse entities that include the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, the Gulf Research Center (UAE), Australian National U., Queen's University Belfast (Ireland), and Bilkent U. (Turkey), among others. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
American global challenges; the Obama era.
The author's experience and background give him an unusual vantage point and lend credence to his analysis and proposals. He served in the Indian army for close to four decades and was involved in counterinsurgency operational planning and execution. He earned a doctorate in counterterrorism, has taught in numerous academic settings, and wrote a previous book on the global war on terror. The present work outlines various challenges, advocates a coherent counter-terrorist policy on the part of the US, suggests ways to improve relations with the Muslim world, and discusses global warming and climate change, US and Russian relations, and strengthening the United Nations. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The artistic links between William Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More; radically different Richards.
Elaine S. Hallett (former editor of Theatre Arts Books) and Charles A. Hallett (emeritus, English, Fordham U.) join forces to analyze the dramatic structure of Shakespeare's Richard III and how More's History of King Richard III sparked the playwright's dramatic conceptions. From the preface: "The book studies the process through which Shakespeare transformed the eloquent narrative prose of More's History into compelling drama....Shakespeare takes More's archetypal tyrant and transforms him into a consummate dramatist who offers his theater audience a showcase of well-crafted scenes." (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Beat sound, Beat vision; the Beat spirit and popular song. (reprint, 2007)
In this cultural history, Coupe (English, Manchester Metropolitan U.) offers five interconnected essays about ideas at the foundation of the Beat movement in the United States. He discusses Alan Watts and the visionary tradition, Jack Kerouac and the beatific vision, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder and Nick Drake. This is a paperbound reprint of a 2007 book distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Bloody Pacific; American soldiers at war with Japan, rev.ed.
Written in semi-narrative style with a wealth of excerpts from previously unpublished letters and diaries, this work describes the real world of American fighting men in WWII's Pacific Theater, showing how harsh conditions, culture shock, and disease led men to extreme behavior in battle and to a desire for retribution and revenge. Schrijvers (history, U. of New South Wales, Australia) looks at all branches of the American military, including rear area troops and naval, air, and amphibious forces. Accounts of atrocities are balanced to cover the bad behavior of both sides. The book begins with the often cruel initiation rituals onboard transport ships and an exploration of the narrow-minded prejudices passed on through the soldiers' training and education about Asian and Pacific sexual mores, religion, and race. Later chapters recount the shock of combat and the soldiers' lack of preparation for Japanese suicide missions. American encounters with natives' religious and spiritual beliefs are also explored. The book is illustrated with 16 b&w historical photos. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Body piercing and identity construction; a comparative perspective — New York, New Orleans, Wrocaw.
This study is organized in chapters on nonverbal and verbal communication; Bohemian network; ideological apparatus; economic, digital, and biker contestation; and sexual, political, aesthetic, and organic sabotage. Romanienko, currently affiliated with Graz University of Technology, Austria, earned undergraduate degrees in the US and a PhD fro Wroclaw U., Poland. She is an applied sociologist who has lived close to the communities she discusses and has advocated for the poor in many contexts. This study is a serious attempt to document, understand, and set in context the body-altering practice of piercing as it occurs in three cities in two countries. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Business for the 21st century; towards simplicity and trust.
Dupuy is an independent consultant specializing in the sociology of organizations. He has worked at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and for some major corporations in Europe and has taught in the United States (Indiana U.) and in France. He has organized this book in three parts, the first two titled "How Companies Lost their Grip," with subtitles "Managerial Sloth and its Consequences" and "Front-line Managers Have Been Sacrificed on the Altar of Intermediate Bureaucracies." The author has definite opinions about how everyday life at work is shaped, how workers are motivated, and how organizations can be better managed. The third section comprises two chapters on the difficulty of changing endogenous organizations, and on simplicity, trust, and communities of interest. A translator is indicated, but there's no indication whether the book was first published in French, or whether this English edition is its first appearance in print. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The business of human rights; an evolving agenda for corporate responsibility.
This book is part of The Open University module "Business, Human Rights Law and Corporate Social Responsibility," which can be used in various postgraduate programs, including the Postgraduate Certificate in Human Rights and Development Management and the Master in Business Administration. Contributors offer ethical, political, and legal perspectives on the need for international human rights standards in a globalized market economy, in order to prevent abuses such as poor working conditions and the destruction of the environment. Some specific topics are corporate reputation management, violent corporate crime and human rights, and human rights within the normative ordering of global capitalism. Other areas examined include ways to combat transnational corporate corruption, and human rights and international business in Nigeria. The book will be of interest to students and practitioners in law, development, business, and international studies. Voiculescu teaches socio-legal studies and human rights at the University of Westminster, UK. Yanacopulos is senior lecturer in international politics and development at The Open University. Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Capitalism and class in the Gulf Arab states.
The author clearly states the scope and intent of this work in his preface: "In order to appreciate how the Gulf is penetrating the broader Middle East, we first need to grasp the processes at work within the political economy of Gulf capitalism. This means taking seriously the Gulf states as capitalist — not simply monarchies that sit atop an oil spigot...." Hanish (development studies, University of London, UK) bases this book on ideas developed for his PhD dissertation (2009, political science, York U., Canada); he did much of the research during the 18 months he taught at Zayed University in Dubai. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Castles and colonists; an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland.
Klingelhofer (history, Mercer U., Georgia, US) examines how the short-lived English colony in Munster collapsed at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and what material evidence survives for it. Very specifically, he looks at the archaeology of the Ireland that Elizabethan English men and women created, however briefly. He covers Elizabeth's empire, fortifications, colonial settlement, vernacular architecture, Kilcolman Castle, and Spenserian architecture. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Celebrating Katherine Mansfield; a centenary volume of essays.
A 2008 conference at Birkbeck, University of London, UK celebrated the centenary of Katherine Mansfield's arrival in London (July 1908) and the start of her professional career. Previous volumes celebrated the centenary of her birth in 1988, but this collection of essays represents the considerable scholarship that has been undertaken since then and a resurging acknowledgment of her importance. Fifteen contributions offer studies that focus on biographical readers and fiction, Mansfield and modernity, psychoanalytical readings, and autobiography and fiction. The two editors are affiliated as follows: Gerri Kimber (The Open University, UK) and Janet Wilson (U. of Northampton, UK). (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Christmas in nineteenth-century England.
Armstrong (history, Teesside U., the UK) demonstrates an impressive command of primary sources related to the practice and representation of Christmas in Victorian times, including newspapers, pamphlets, autobiographies, advertising, and annual reports of charitable organizations. From these materials, Armstrong reconstructs in detail a range of issues and practices, including charitable traditions such as goose clubs, the denial of extra food at Christmas in workhouses, attitudes towards work and leisure, the development of the archtype for Santa Claus in advertising, the iconography of Christmas cards and other print materials, feasts and festivals, and the development of traditions of shopping and gift-giving. The volume is distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Citizen youth; culture, activism, and agency in a neoliberal era.
While the "youth citizen" is often associated with qualities and characteristics that are valuable to the liberal-democratic nation-state, the "youth activist," according to Kennelly (sociology, Carleton U., Canada), "exists as an ambivalent near-relation," sometimes embodying the qualities of the "youth citizen" and other times seen as undesirable, irrational, and disruptive. This dichotomy, she argues, is illustrative of a central dilemma faced by young people today: "that the possibility for creating a public sphere of contestation within (neo)liberal democracies is being continually and increasingly placated, repressed, and commodified through institutional, cultural, and social factors." She explores youth responses to this dilemma trough this ethnographic study of urban Canadian youth working on activist causes linked to globalization, poverty, war, and colonialism around the world. She examines how state ideas about the "good and moral citizen" shape potentials for activism, the social and cultural forces that legitimize the "good citizen" and demonize the "bad activist," and the classed subcultural pressures and modalities of agency experienced by youth activists. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Civic republicanism and civic education; the education of citizens.
Peterson (Canterbury Christ Church U., UK) explores processes of civic education, focusing primarily on formal teaching and learning of civic education in schools for pupils between the ages of 11 and 16 in contemporary Western democracies, while recognizing that civic education is a diffuse process that also involves the whole system of laws, institutions, and civic participation within political communities across the life-span. He is prompted in the work by a concern that civic republican ideas are being used to frame and inform the aims and purposes of civic education, as well as its curricular content, without a clear understanding of the true nature and complexities of contemporary civic republican thought, including the historical tradition upon which it is based. He addresses what such an understanding might contribute to civics education practices. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Conflicts in curriculum theory; challenging hegemonic epistemologies.
Paraskeva (education policy analysis and studies, U. of Massachusetts-Dartmouth) puts the emergence and development of the history of curriculum theory into historical context, identifies the emergence of a group of critical theorists within the field, offers a new metaphor of the field as a critical curriculum river that meanders, and examines and critiques the reconceptualist movement. The future of critical curriculum theory requires overcoming current tensions and contradictions, he argues, and creating an itinerant curriculum theory committed to the struggle against epistemicides. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The concept of truth.
In Truth and Historicity, Campbell (emeritus, philosophy, Australian National U.) traced the philosophical understanding of "truth" from ancient Greece to contemporary times, concluding with a sketch of a metaphysical, "action-based" conception of truth that provides a means of responding to skeptical relativism while taking account of human historicity. In this work, he develops that idea more systematically, presuming no familiarity with the earlier volume. He seeks to turn the philosophy of truth away form a preoccupation with the "linguistic conception" of truth and towards an understanding of truth as a feature of the successful actions integral to life. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Copts of Egypt; challenges of modernisation and identity.
Ibrahim (post-doctoral research fellow, U. College, Cork, Ireland) offers a revisionist look at the Coptic population of Egypt, suggesting that they have presented an image of themselves as an oppressed minority that is not true, partly because of the extensive divisions within the Coptic community itself, which prevents them from being a unified entity. Her argument is divided into two sections, the Copts' relations with the state from 1805-1946, and the internal divisions within the Coptic community from 1882 to 1954. The latter section includes extensive discussion of the church's structure, hierarchy, and the activities of its successive patriarchs. The result is an account of Egyptian history that questions established views. Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Corporate psychopaths; organizational destroyers.
Boddy's background is not as a psychotherapist or even a sociologist, but rather as a marketer, a founding director of an Asia-Pacific market research company, and a professor of marketing in the UK and Australia. Still, everyone knows that a psychopath is someone who acts in ways that destroys other people (or companies, or countries) but has no conscience or remorse. The author has been collecting data on psychopaths in corporations by interviewing hundreds of managers over the past five years. He offers discussion of bullying, conflict, and unfair supervision in the workplace, organizational constraints, workload and job satisfaction when a psychopath has power, and psychopaths compared with other dark leadership personalities. He also discusses the global financial crisis in terms of corporate psychopaths theory, and ethical issues. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Counterterrorism and international power relations; the EU, ASEAN and hegemonic global governance.
Beyer (politics, U. of Hull) combines theories of international relations and global governance in order to develop a reinterpretation of the "Global War on Terrorism." She argues that in contrast to understandings of global governance as heterarchic, the "Global War on Terrorism" represents a hegemonic form of global governance in which the United States, as hegemon, persuades and coerces international states into participating in US counterterrorism goals. Beyond the need to revise theoretical understandings of global governance regimes that the emergence of hegemonic international governance implies, she argues that hegemonic governance in the security sphere is dangerous to human rights and civil liberties, even if it has led to a remarkable degree of international cooperation in areas previously thought difficult, such as financial control, the control and policing of crime, and military intervention. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
