Cornell U. Press
After the peace; Loyalist paramilitaries in post-accord Northern Ireland.
It has been almost a decade since the peace accords were signed in Northern Ireland, yet many loyalist paramilitaries continue to operate. In this book, Gallaher (School of International Service, American U.) explores the reasons these paramilitaries have continued and discusses the possible paths for decommissioning and reintegration, focusing on the experiences of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Gathering her information primarily through interviewing ex-prisoners from the UVF, she examines the divides within the paramilitary between "revanchist" and "political" loyalists and their manifestations in class politics, feuding amongst the loyalists, conflicts over attacks on immigrants, and within the wider loyalist community. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The anabasis of Cyrus.
Xenophon's famous work tells of Greek mercenaries hightailing it home in 401 BC after their Persian client Cyrus and their own top commanders were killed. It is widely read by students of Greek literature and history, but Ambler (humanities, U. of Colorado-Boulder) intends also to make it a resource for students of politics, by highlighting the policies, rhetoric, and other aspects in his substantial introduction. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Artillery of heaven; American missionaries and the failed conquest of the Middle East.
Makdisi (history and Arab studies, Rice U.) recounts the story of the first American Protestant missionaries to the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and the ensuing persecution and death of one of their earliest converts. It illuminates the beginnings of an evolving complex relationship between the US and the Arab world, he says, and provides an opportunity to explain why and how a cultural clash unfolded and changed the actors and cultures on both sides. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Barcelona 1900.
Published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (2007-2008), this abundantly illustrated book offers a multi-faceted view of the artistic, cultural, social, and political history of the city between 1880 and 1910 — a period of incredible growth, change, and creativity in all arenas, culminating in 1909's "Tragic Week" of confrontations between soldiers and workers. Editor Sala (modern and contemporary art, U. of Barcelona) brings together material in seven in-depth thematic essays interwoven with 192 images of paintings, sculptures, drawings, jewelry, buildings, furniture, street scenes. Among those in the spotlight: Gaudi, Picasso, Casas, Domènech, Rusiñol, to name just a few. The format is oversize: 9.5x11.5. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Citizenship across borders; the political transnationalism of el migrante.
Smith and Bakker (both: U. of California, Davis) report findings from community- based ethnographic field research on the practices of U.S.-Mexican transnational citizenship conducted between 2000 and 2005. The text combines data collected in the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Guanajuato and various cities in California, particularly Los Angeles, with political-economic and institutional analysis of neoliberal globalization and state restructuring processes across the U.S.-Mexican border. Through five extended case studies of Mexican migrant transnational activists, the authors examine the transnational politics of incorporation, accommodation, and resistance initiated by grassroot actors at various local, translocal, national, and cross-border levels. The dual citizenship of Mexican migrants is found to be positive, providing a sense of empowerment that fosters migrants' active participation in both American and Mexican politics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Corporate wasteland; the landscape and memory of deindustrialization.
Factories in Youngstown and Detroit, Ohio; paper works in Sturgeon Fall, Ontario and Kalamazoo, Michigan; and coal counties of West Virginia are among the sites that High (public history, Concordia U., Montreal) and photographer and historian Lewis describe. Their concern is not the physical remains of industry, but the stories and memories of the people who were abandoned once their pastures were no longer green. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Getting the goods; ports, labor, and the logistics revolution.
Bonacich and Wilson, both of U. of California, Riverside, use the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as a focal point of discussing global supply chains, and how importing benefits the constantly- changing U.S. economy. The authors concentrate on the logistics of processing both imports and exports across the Pacific Ocean, how these two ports have become instrumental in China's expansion into global trade and how the unions have been affected by these changes. This is a provocative read for anyone interested in global economics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Governing finance; East Asia's adoption of international standards.
When the economies of Asian nations went sour in the late 1990s, the international financial community pointed to domestic financial governance as the cause. As a result major powers determined a set of international standards and charged the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank with disseminating them. The economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand thereby became both targets and test cases for the resulting transition to Western standards, but as Walter (international relations, London School of Economics) points out, Asian capitalism has features (such as family-owned firms) that have made compliance costly and politically difficult. He finds that "mock compliance" resulted, and here describes the lessons learned about the limits of global regulation, especially when that regulation is not supported domestically. This is a strong warning for both national and international financial policy makers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Headhunters; matchmaking in the labor market.
In this work, Finlay and Coverdill, both professors of sociology at the University of Georgia, draw on interviews with headhunters and analysis of headhunting training seminars, lectures, industry newsletters, and a mail survey of headhunting firms. The result is a frank and sometimes unsettling portrait of the aims, attitudes, and tactics of practitioners. This paperback edition includes an afterword answering questions about how to handle headhunters. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Introduction to manuscript studies.
Heavily illustrated with color plates of manuscript pages and details, this oversized volume (9x12 inches) contains an thorough presentation of the study of medieval manuscripts that will be of use to medievalists as well as their students. The process of manuscript production is described in detail, including the production of vellum; the grinding and mixing of inks and pigments; the process of filling the pages with text, illuminated initials, and paintings; different manuscript genres; and how bindings are made. Special attention is devoted to scripts and their study. The text is filled with anecdotes on the history of collecting, details about conservation, and discussion of the various dangers manuscripts face from bugs, rodents, water, and initial- and illumination-clippers. Practical information is provided on how to obtain permission from libraries to view their manuscripts and how to behave once there. A glossary and bibliography are provided. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Knowing Dickens.
Bodenheimer (English, Boston College) seeks through the works of the popular Victorian British for the revealing and concealing intelligence that was Charles Dickens. Curling up in the space between biography and literary criticism, she ignores chronology to follow clusters of thought and feeling in his letters, journalism, and fiction. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The making of minjung; democracy and the politics of representation in South Korea.
Lee (Asian languages and cultures, U. of California-Los Angeles) explores how intellectuals and university students who participated in the South Korean democratization movement of the 1970s and 1980s, articulated, contested, and practices the notion of minjung, "common people." The 20-year campaign, she says, finally transformed the country from an authoritarian military dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy, a victory on par with similar ones in eastern Europe and South Africa. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Organizations at war in Afghanistan and beyond.
The distribution of power within organizations (the structure) that are involved in conflicts has profound impact on conflict outcomes, argues Sinno (political science and Middle Eastern studies, Indian U.). He argues that whether oppositional organizations are centralized, decentralized, defined by a patron-client relationship, or exist in situations of multiplicity or fragmentation creates incentives for organizational members that affect the execution of such processes as formulation and implementation of strategy, coordination of activities, mobilizing resources, maintaining control and discipline, resilience in a hostile environment, attracting foreign aid, balancing intra-organizational cohesion and competition, and generation and preservation of knowledge. He applies this organizational theory to provide a detailed explanation of the evolution of consecutive Afghan conflicts since 1979. In the final chapter he goes beyond Afghanistan to test his theory against the outcomes of forty-one post-World War II ethnic, revolutionary, and secessionist conflicts in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Overkill; sex and violence in contemporary Russian popular culture.
"Overkill" is the term Borenstein (Russian / Slavic studies, New York U.) uses to describe the sensationally violent and abnormally graphic sexual nature of entertainment and mass culture in late- and post-Soviet Russia. In his examination of the "new Russian" pop culture, Borenstein sees overkill as a complex phenomenon born of even more complex circumstances, much more than a pendulous reaction to the end of state censorship. He posits that lurid and disturbing elements of pop culture are a collective expression of anxiety as the people of the Russian Federation confront new truths and fears after 74 years under the Soviet system. Borenstein provides fascinating cultural and political background information about the now-public treatment of subjects and ideas that, only a generation ago, could not be mentioned by name. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Passion and order; restraint of grief in the medieval Italian communes.
Lansing (history, University of California at Santa Barbara) is well known for her scholarly work on the communes of medieval Italy. This study of how the town leaders managed to legislate public mourning and how that changed behavior and attitudes to grief, especially in men, has repercussions that continue to this day. Before the thirteenth century violent public expressions of grief were considered natural and healthy. The bereaved were often joined in their mourning by the rest of the community. Lansing uses art, literature and public records to show how this was suppressed and how emotional outpourings of grief by men came to be considered a lack of self control. She theorizes that this came about through a governmental desire to contain emotional demonstrations as a way of maintaining civic order. She makes a convincing argument for these conclusions. An interesting look at the many ways in which public expectations affect personal ones. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Path of empire; Panama and the California Gold Rush.
The arrival of the California Gold Rush had a large impact on the Isthmus of Panama, which was one of the principal conduits for maritime migration to California, long prior to the building of the Panama Canal. McGuinness (history, U. of Wisconsin at Milwaukee) examines this impact in terms of the transformation of Panama's transit system from a locally owned network to a largely US-owned network of ships and locomotives and the issue of Panamanian sovereignty during an era in which Panama experience the abolition of slavery, the establishment of universal manhood suffrage, the foundation of an autonomous Panamanian state, and the first of many US military interventions. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Peacebuilding in the Balkans; the view from the ground floor.
Pickering (government, The College of William and Mary) argues that ordinary people affect the success or failure of peacebuilding programs in divided societies through their everyday reactions and attitudes. He investigates the decision-making processes of minorities about where to rebuild their lives, the sites they select to develop bridging strategies for social integration, and the shape of their political participation in Bosnia. His research suggests that particularistic understandings of self and social location largely govern people's choices, that informal social networks rooted in tradition are important for building civil society (as opposed to just Western-favored NGOs), and that nondiscriminatory employment should be generated to develop the financial security of ordinary people and the social networks needed to bridge differences. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Signs of grace; religion and American art in the Gilded Age.
Schwain (American art and architecture, U. of Missouri-Columbia) examines the religious work of four late 19th-century American artists — Thomas Eakins, F. Holland Day, Abbott Handerson Thayer, and Henry Ossawa Tanner — arguing that art and religion at that time performed similar functions within American culture. Schwain also shows that these new visual practices emphasized individual encounters with art, and contributed to the evolving debates about art, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. Each artist studied receives an individual and focused chapter: Eakins' clerical portraits; Tanner's Biblical paintings and religious practice; Day and The Seven Last Words of Christ; and the Protestant icons of Thayer. This publication is primarily illustrated in black-and-white, with limited color plates in an insert to the text. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
