Syracuse U. Press

Corporal Boskin's cold Cold War; a comical journey.

This humorous and interesting personal history documents the author's participation in a secret Cold War scientific mission scouting air bases in northern Greenland. Boskin, who was the author of the official report of the mission team in the 1950s, retells the story from a personal perspective, showcasing the personality clashes, political orthodoxies and heresies and general ridiculousness of the real mission. Boskin is professor emeritus of history at Boston University. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Disability and mothering; liminal spaces of embodied knowledge.

Editors Lewiecki-Wilson (English, women's studies, Miami U.) and Cellio (English, Northern Kentucky U.) introduce this collection with discussion of feminism and disability studies. They explain that the unifying theme of this volume, as stated in the subtitle, is "liminal spaces," described as "...the borders between the social and the personal, outside and inside, others and self...." Twenty-one contributions address a myriad of topics including visual representation of "fitness" in egg donors, abortion, autism, breastfeeding, mental illness, and poverty. The contributors are mainly English professors and other academics who have a personal involvement with disability. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Islamist opposition in authoritarian regimes; the Party of Justice and Development in Morocco.

Wegner (a researcher with the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the U. of Cape Town, South Africa) examines the electoral strategies pursued by Morocco's Party of Justice and Development in the period 1992 to 2007, analyzing the strategies chosen by the Islamist party in light of organizational, ideological, and institutional constraints and the broader political science literature on opposition, electoral authoritarian regimes, political parties, and social movements. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The life and thought of Louis Lowy; social work through the Holocaust.

During his youth in Nazi Germany, international social worker and educator Louis Lowy (1920-1991) was held in the Terezin ghetto, where he illegally taught Jewish children and served as a youth leader. After the war, Lowy organized Jewish self-government at the Deggendorf Displaced Persons Center. Toward the end of his life, Lowy recorded 16 hours of testimony during nine interview sessions with his friend and colleague Leonard Bloksberg, describing his activities during the Holocaust era and the experiences that formed his later professional identity as a social worker. This book offers a narrative of Lowy's Holocaust memories within a larger historical framework, interweaving Lowy's oral testimony with the voices of three other Holocaust survivors who were in their teens when they were taught and mentored by Lowy. The book also draws on Lowy's books, lectures, personal papers, and correspondence. Author Gardella (social work, Saint Joseph College) attempts to let Lowy and the eyewitnesses speak for themselves with as little editorial interference as possible, but does provide historical background. An afterword discusses the Holocaust's lessons on social work with refugees and displaced persons. Historical b&w photos and maps are included. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The midnight court = Cuirt an mhean oiche; a critical edition.

This comedic poem translated from Gaelic to English was written in the late 18th century during a tumultuous historical time, notably the French and American revolutions, as well as the United Irishmen in Ireland. With its racy themes of casual sex, free love, promiscuity and other taboo behaviors, the Puritan culture banned the book, but that didn't stop its circulation. Written by Merriman around 1780, and translated by the late David Marcus, this poem challenges previously held beliefs and assumptions about Ireland and Irish language literature and culture. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Modernity, sexuality, and ideology in Iran; the life and legacy of popular Iranian female artists.

Kobra Saidi, better known by her stage name Shahrzad, was an Iranian actress, filmmaker, dancer, and poet whose successful career was cut short by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which led to her arrest for protesting against the revolutionary regime's policies towards women and eventual descent into homelessness. Talattof (Persian and Iranian studies, U. of Arizona) explores the life and work of Shahrzad as a window into "the struggle between modernity and religious fundamentalism in Iran," with a focus on competing discourses of sex and sexuality in popular culture and the popular arts. He finds that the circumstances women faced during and after the revolution were rooted in cultural and discursive developments of the 1970s wherein there was a failure to articulate a truly modern understanding of sexuality. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Policing Egyptian women; sex, law, and medicine in Khedival Egypt.

This book looks at the formation of the modern (pre-colonial) Egyptian State in the late 19th century through the lens of police and other official interactions with women, particularly non-elite women where their sexual behavior is concerned. Kozma (Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, Hebrew U.) focuses on women at the margins — slaves, prostitutes and those who had sex before or outside of marriage — because the way the community policed these women registers changes in the over-all relationship between the state and society. The first two chapters focus on the institutions of law and medicine and how these affected traditional family life. The latter three are devoted to those mentioned categories of marginal female identity. Kozma draws heavily on the detailed police records kept in Khedival Egypt, which she argues offers an unparalleled lens on the emerging bureaucracy. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The sport of kings and the kings of crime; horse racing, politics, and organized crime in New York, 1865-1913.

Riess (history, Northeastern Illinois U.) offers an in-depth history of the world of horse racing in New York State in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, describing the web of politics, illegal and legal gambling, organized crime, and political machines connected to the popular sport. Based on exhaustive research, the volume is impressive in its scope and the analysis of the complex interrelationships involved, taking this history beyond horse racing to show how established and prevalent such systems were in New York and America of the time. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Suicide prohibition; the shame of medicine.

Thomas Szasz (emeritus, psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical U.) is known for his theories on the myth of mental illness and is recognized as the leading critic of the coercive interventions employed by the psychiatric establishment. Here, he argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the medical and psychiatric industry should not try to prevent it. He critiques contemporary anti-suicide policies and claims that suicide should not be managed as a medical problem or a disease. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)