Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast

In The People’s Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming regional identities in East Germany and in a reunified Germany, and as a popular pastime. Although characterized by mediocrity compared to other sports in East Germany, McDougall demonstrates the ways in which football gave people a means of expressing identities that were separated from and even opposed to that endorsed by the state. At the same time, he argues, this was a “constrained autonomy,” one that was shaped by the tensions between Eigen-Sinn and conformity. The East German state has been viewed as a monolith, but recent scholarship – including this book – reveals its fractures. McDougall’s analysis exposes the limits and dysfunctionalities of the state and the communist party’s leadership. The People’s Game not only adds to our understanding of communist Eastern Europe, it also contributes to the growing field of sports history. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe.

The competition seems to be a crucial part of the classical music world. In Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Lisa McCormick, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh, offers a unique insight into the history, function and meaning of the classical music competition. The book offers both a rich history of competitions along with a detailed ethnography of competitors, juries and audiences. McCormick uses a detailed engagement with contemporary cultural sociology to grapple with one of the core questions facing the study of culture, of how performances can be measured, codified and judgements ultimately made. The book also engages with gender, comportment and the body, to think through the interaction of performer, judges and audiences, giving an insight into not only the classical competition, but the nature and function of culture in contemporary society. The book will be important reading beyond sociology, for music scholars and anyone interested in arts and culture.

Calling into question common assumptions regarding the supposedly antagonist relationship between literary criticism and psychoanalytic reading, Jean-Michel Rabatepaints a picture of reconciliation rather than rift. Drawing from a vast store of cultural incident–from Sophie Calle’s modern art to the novels of Henry James–The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge University Press, 2014) argues that psychoanalysis and active literary reading are both implicated in the same process, one which engages the unconscious and makes one an “ambassador” thereto. In our interview, Rabate holds court on various issues, including the similarities between Jacques Lacan and Carl Jung, as well as the status of James Joyce as sinthome of literature. Moving beyond the textual, he also captivatingly considers not only the relationship between trauma and perversion but also the ways in which Lacan and Derrida differed in their interpretation of the “public intellectual” role and its responsibilities. A startling intellectual himself, Rabate illuminates and enthralls in his conversation as much as in his writing. Michael Mungiello is interested in the implications psychoanalysis has on broader cultural studies, ranging from literature to politics to television and film. He lives in Washington, DC and is originally from New Jersey.

Some books fly high above the field, making sweeping generalizations about big questions. Other books circle over a specific problem, analyzing it in great detail to say something important about a single subject. Joshua Zimmerman‘s The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) shows how important and valuable books that adopt the latter approach can be. The book is an exceptionally rich account of the attitudes, politics, policies and actions of the Polish Underground regarding Polish Jews during the Second World War. Zimmerman, Associate Professor of History at Yeshiva University in New York, spent years exploring archives, memoirs and secondary sources in preparing the book. Nearly every page of the book displays this research, with extensive quotes from newspapers, internal communications and leaders within the army. Zimmerman is well-aware of the historical and political stakes involved in his question. His answers are careful, nuanced and balanced. I can imagine people disagreeing with his conclusions (although I personally am convinced), but it’s hard to imagine a more thorough attempt to approach the question. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the interaction of Polish Jews and Polish institutions and individuals during the war. Kelly McFall is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. His research and teaching concentrates on the history of violence and human rights, focusing especially on the history of genocide. His writing centers around a pedagogy titled Reacting to the Past. Here he has written, among others, The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994. He can be reached at [email protected].

Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov are the authors of Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Klar is assistant professor of political science at the University of Arizona; Krupnikov is assistant professor of political science at Stony Brook University. Independents voters number up into 40% range in some elections, but are largely misunderstood. Are they apathetic? Centrist? Or undecided voters? Klar and Krupnikov suggest something quite different. They argue that many independent voters are partisans in disguise, hiding partisan-leanings because of a perceived social stigma. Through a series of experiments and related studies, they show that the social desirability of independence prevents many from declaring a party affiliation, but also diminishes other forms of political participation.

Parsis, also known as Zoroastrians, were deeply entwined with the colonial legal system of British India and Burma, far beyond what one might expect from their relativity small numbers. Mitra Sharafi, in her wonderful new book Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), explores this anomaly and how – as legislators, lawyers, litigants, judges and lobbyists – they managed to maintain the contours of their distinctive ethno-religious community. With fascinating legal cases, lively personalties and a deep discussion of how identity and litigation interact, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia is a compelling and engaging account of a community with a unique and intriguing relationship with colonial rule.

For most of recorded history, single rulers such a kings, queens, chiefs, and emperors exercised authority over human populations. Jeroen Duindam (Professor of Early Modern History, Leiden University) examines an important part of this story in his new book Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He employs an easy-to-follow, four-level comparative framework that explains how dynastic power evolved in kingdoms as diverse as the Qing Empire, Mughal Empire, France, and Dahomey in Africa. The use of this framework allows Duindam to move beyond the pitfalls of many comparative works. With careful attention to detail, he recounts how “divergent practices” of dynastic rule “can be seen as part of the same pattern,” as well as how “striking similarities hide profound differences (14).” This approach allows him to illustrate the tendency of scholars to overstate the differences between “Eastern” and “Western” dynasties; it also puts him in a strong position to make astute observations about the role women played in the functioning of dynastic power. Just as important, Duindam’s analysis of dynastic power raises important questions about how modern governments maintain their authority and how the “masses” view the exercise of power over them. Whatever one thinks of Duindam’s specific arguments, he has authored a well-crafted, thought-provoking work that should be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about global history and the exercise of power.

Shana Kushner Gadarian and Bethany Albertson are the authors of Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World (Cambridge UP, 2015). Gadarian is assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University; Albertson is assistant professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin. Anxious Politics explores the emotional side of politics. Albertson and Gadarian argue that political anxiety triggers politics engagement in ways that are potentially both promising and harmful for democracy. Using public health, immigration, terrorism, and climate change, the book demonstrates that anxiety affects how we consume political news, who we trust, and what politics we support. Anxiety about politics triggers coping strategies in the political world, where these strategies are often shaped by partisan agendas.

When former Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas traveled to Havana in 1959 to celebrate the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Fidel Castro in front of a crowd of thousands, providing the early sketches of an image of unquestioned Mexican support for revolutionary Cuba that would...

Erica Fox Brindley‘s new book is a powerful study of the history of conceptions of ethnicity in early China that focuses on the Hua-xia and the peoples associated with its southern frontier (Yue/Viet). Informed by a careful accounting of extant textual, linguistic, and archaeological forms of evidence, Ancient China and the...

Hildegard of Bingen was many things: a religious leader, a prolific letter-writer, a visionary prophet, possibly a compiler of medical lore, and certainly one of the most important composers of the 12th century. In recent years, Hildegard’s reception in academic circles has, for good and compelling reasons, focused on her status as a powerful, educated, and brilliantly creative woman in an era when few women were afforded such opportunities. But this has not been Hildegard’s only legacy. Jennifer Bain‘s recent book, Hildegard of Bingen and Musical Reception: The Modern Revival of Medieval Composer (Cambridge University Press,2015), charts the 19th-century reception of Hildegard’s life and music, and in doing so provides valuable perspective on the version of Hildegard that we know and love today. As Bain demonstrates, Hildegard has been in an almost constant state of revival since the early 19th century, and at every turn she has meant something different: depending on the interests of the scholars who were reviving her (who were, themselves, grappling with very specific historical circumstances, including the long-term fallout of the Napoleonic wars and the very long-term fallout of the Protestant Reformation), Hildegard has been important as a German, a Catholic, a Benedictine, and a mystic, as well as as a woman. Further reading/listening: For listeners who are unfamiliar with Hildegard’s music, here is LaReverdie’s recording of one of the melodies mentioned in the interview: O virga ac diadema. There are also three publications by Prof. Bain which expand on issues that we discussed in this interview: “Hildegard on 34th Street: Chant in the Marketplace.” Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 6, no. 1 (2004). “Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style.” Journal of Music Theory 52, no. 1 (2008). “Hooked on Ecstasy: Performance ‘Practice’ and the Reception of the Music of Hildegard of Bingen,” in The Sounds and Sights of Performance in Medieval and Renaissance Music: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee, ed. Brian Power and Maureen Epp (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 253-273.

Christopher Phelps is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham and co-author of Radicals in America: The U.S. Left since the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Phelps and Howard Brick have written a comprehensive history of the American left. Beginning with the multiple strands of radicalism prior to 1940, the book traces its development to recent movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Queer Nation, and Earth First! As a heterogeneous group the left has sought to expand personal freedom, and social, economic and political equality through the broad distribution of power. Instead of progressive reforms of existing systems radicals have called for a change in the structures of society. Under a large ideological tent the movement has included socialist, communist, labor activist, anarchist, and pacifists working against the hierarchies of class, race, and sex. From the New Left of the 1960s to the sanctuary movement of the religious left, as activist they have challenged all forms of inequality, militarization, capitalism, and ecological disaster. Radicals have continually struggled with factional disputes, cooptation by the mainstream, and a lack of a coherent and unifying political strategy. Currently at low ebb, radicalism is facing extremes form of capitalism, police states, resource scarcity, and a dystopian future calling for a new realism and for reaching out to a wider constituency. The authors argue that the effectiveness of radical movements must reflect egalitarian and democratic values while retaining a concern for the rights of the individual.

In Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press 2015), Peter Thorsheim explores the role of waste and recycling in Britain under conditions of total war. Thorsheim argues wartime salvage efforts linked civilians socially as well as materially to the war. Salvage drives served to focus people’s efforts and helped them make sense of the events around them and their role in the conflict. The ebb and flow of resource scarcity served as a metric in which to measure changing military and strategic concerns against the Axis, but also complicated the wartime alliance between the British Empire and the United States. Although essential for national survival, Thorsheim shows how wartime salvage tended to alienate as much as unite the British public. Vigorous, but often ill-conceived, salvage efforts led to infringements of civil liberties, destroyed historical artifacts, and damaged private property. Some materials were never recycled and left to languish in enormous dumps long after the end of the war. The national salvage effort angered thousands and left many without compensation for their losses, souring a generation on recycling. Unlike the environmental movement of the 1970s, Waste into Weapons shows recycling was a means to further destruction rather than conservation. Thorsheim’s book sheds light on a little known episode in environmental history and provides alternative genealogy of recycling in the twentieth century.

Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the Enlightenment. What happened? Why did it become embarrassing for Isaac Newton to have sought the philosopher’s stone, and for Robert Boyle to have urged the British Parliament to repeal a ban on transmuting base metals into silver and gold? In Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Brian P. Copenhaver shows that for millenia magic was taken seriously by the learned classes, sustained by a philosophical foundation drawn from Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In this fascinating account of the historical conceptual framework of magic, Copenhaver, who is distinguished professor of philosophy and history at UCLA, explains the difference between good and bad magic, why Catholic Church fathers endorsed some magical beliefs (but drew the line at amulets and talismans), and how the rise of mechanistic philosophy transformed magic from being reputable to being a joke.

The new edited volume by Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black and Dagmar Schafer is a wonderfully interdisciplinary global history of rice, rooted in specific local cases, that spans 15 chapters written by specialists in the histories of Africa, the Americas, and several regions of Asia. Rice: Global Networks and...

Today, sustainability is all the rage. But when and why did the idea of sustainable development emerge, and how has its meaning changed over time? Stephen Macekura’s new book, Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2015) explores this question by connecting three of the most important aspects of the twentieth century: decolonization, the rise of environmentalism, and the pursuit of economic development and modernization in the Third World. Macekura, who is an Assistant Professor of International Studies at Indiana University, demonstrates how environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attempted to promote environmental protection in the post-colonial world, then, after failing to do so, challenged the economic development approaches of the United States, World Bank, and United Nations. The book reveals how environmental activists initially conceived of “sustainable development” as a way to link environmental protection with Third World concerns about equality and justice in the global economy, but how, over time, the phrase’s meaning moved far away from this initial conception. In addition to exploring the idea of “sustainable development,” Macekura also examines the growth and limits of the environmental movement’s power. He pays close attention to how international political disputes have scuttled major global treaties over issues such as climate change; he also documents the evolution of international development politics and policy since 1945. In sum, Of Limits and Growth offers a new history of sustainability by elucidating the global origins of environmental activism, the ways in which environmental activists challenged development approaches worldwide, and how environmental non-state actors reshaped the United States’ and World Bank’s development policies.

In her shining new book Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Hina Azam, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas-Austin, explores the diversity and complexity of pre-modern Muslim legal discourses on rape and sexual violation. The reader of this book is treated to a thorough and delightful analysis of the range of attitudes, assumptions, and hermeneutical operations that mark the Muslim legal tradition on the question of sexual violation. Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of this book is the way it showcases the staggering range and diversity of approaches to defining and adjudicating rape that populate the Muslim legal tradition. Focusing primarily on the Maliki and Hanafi schools of law, Azam convincingly demonstrates that Muslim legal discourses on rape were animated and informed by competing ways of imagining broader categories such as sovereignty, agency, property, and rights. In our conversation, we talked about problems of translation involved in using the category of rape in relation to pre-modern discursive archives, proprietary and theocentric approaches to sexual ethics in medieval Islam, the differences between the Maliki and Hanafi school on defining and punishing male-female rape, and the implications and significance of this study to the contemporary legal landscape in Muslim societies. This meticulously researched and lucidly written book will be of much interest to students of Islam, Islamic Law, Gender and Sexuality, and Muslim intellectual history. It will also make a great contribution to upper level undergraduate and graduate seminars on these topics.

In Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Karen Bauer tackles one of the foremost hot-button questions of the day: What is the role of gender in the Qur’an? Dr. Bauer’s adroit study will leave the reader informed but perhaps also disrupted, given the vast spectrum of competing, sometimes contradictory, interpretive paradigms that she explores. A key strength of the text, moreover, is that in addition to its meticulous investigation of primary texts from medieval and modern traditions of Qur’anic exegesis, Dr. Bauer also conducts numerous in-person interviews with prominent scholars across the Muslim world, including Iran and Syria. Thus, from a literary perspective, the text presents the reader with a compelling style seldom found in Qur’anic studies publications, seamlessly weaving together close textual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork. Notably, Bauer also gives attention to Sunni as well as Shi’i perspectives on her study, thus offering provocative comparison and breadth of analysis. Given the careful scholarship of the book combined with its equally careful presentation, Bauer’s masterful monograph will almost certainly become standard reading for anyone interested in questions related to the Qur’an and gender. It will also interest scholars, more broadly, in the fields of Qur’anic studies, gender studies, law, political science, and the history of Islamic thought.

Eitan Hersh is the author of Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Hersh is an assistant professor of political science at Yale University. We’ve come to think of political campaigns as highly sophisticated data-processing machines, capable of precisely targeting voters based on the last item they bought on Amazon. Hacking the Electorate suggests something very different about how campaigns actually target voters. Hersh argues that political campaigns vary greatly in how detailed their data actually are, at the whim of whether the state collects detailed or more general information about voters. Campaigns typically use the best available public data to design targeting strategies. As a result, strategies vary across the country based on how campaigns perceive voters in different information environments. If you just haven’t had enough podcasting for the day, click over to my good friends at the Scholar Strategy Network and their new podcast, No Jargon. Listen to their first podcast featuring my new book, Tea Party Divided (Praeger, 2015) and learn about how the Tea Party is shaping the contentious politics of Congress and on the presidential campaign trail.

In YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Cecile E. Kuznitz, Associate Professor of Jewish History and Director of Jewish Studies at Bard College, offers the first book-length history of YIVO, the center for Yiddish scholarship founded in the 1920s by a group of Eastern European Jewish intellectuals. Could scholarship serve as the foundation for a diaspora nationalism? Kuznitz traces the ups and downs of YIVO, using unpublished documents from the center’s archives.

Malick Ghachem‘s recent book The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2012) takes a long look at Haiti’s colonial history on the legal questions around slavery. In particular, he traces the implementation of the Code Noir, France’s earliest attempt to impose a legal structure on its American...

Douglas L. Kriner and Andrew Reeves have written The Particularistic President: Executive Branch Politics and Political Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Kriner is associate professor of political science at Boston University; Reeves is assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis In the midst of a presidential election in which every candidate claims to want to serve the entire country, can we believe them? Are presidents servants of the nation or do they pursue much more narrow constituencies? Kriner and Reeves argue that, rather than governing as universalists, presidents are particularistic, adhering to the electoral and partisan goals of re-election and advancing their party. They show this with evidence on presidential decisions on base closure, trade, and disaster relief.

The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2015) is a new contribution to the study of Islam and more specifically to the history of Islamic Law and its development. Guy Burak, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies librarian at New York University, explores the Ottomans’ adoption of one branch of the Hanafi legal tradition as the official school (madhhab) of the dynasty. The period of time in which this process occurred was during the 15th to 18th centuries, and Burak focuses on the lands of Greater Syria. What Burak seeks to illustrate is that through the adoption of an official school of law, the Ottoman hierarchy played a significant role in how the school of law was shaped. Examples Burak provides to demonstrate this phenomenon are the institutionalization of the position of mufti, the formalization of genealogical literature (tabaqat), and the canonization process of books essential to the school. In addition to examining the propagators of official Ottoman positions, Burak also examines how scholars not part of the Ottoman mainstream branch functioned and responded to these changes. Overall, this work represents and important contribution to the study of Islam, the history of Islamic Law, and Ottoman Studies.

A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2013) is the latest book by Gyanendra Pandey. The book analyses prejudice and democracy through a comparison of African Americans and Indian Dalits. Pandey’s method of exploring these disparate populations and enormously complex themes, is to focus on particular case studies that are at once both very private and public, and thus allow for a truly unique, subtle and delicate analysis of what would be unwieldy topics in another’s hands. Simultaneously small and large, the book’s protagonists and author’s questions remain in the reader’s mind, long after putting down the book.

In the historiography on South Asian Islam, the creation of Pakistan is often approached as the manifestation of a vague loosely formulated idea that accidentally emerged as a nation-state in 1947. In his magisterial new book Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Venkat Dhulipala, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, thoroughly and convincingly debunks such a narrative. Creating a New Medina is an encyclopedic masterpiece. Through a careful reading of a range of sources, including the religious writings of important 20th-century Muslim scholars, Dhulipala shows ways in which Pakistan was crafted and imagined as “The New Medina” that was to represent the leader and protector of the global Muslim community. What emerges from this thorough examination is a nuanced and complicated picture of the interaction of nationalism, religion, and politics in modern South Asian Islam. In our conversation, we talked about a range of issues including the rise of Muslim nationalism in late colonial India, the contribution of B.R. Ambedkar to the public discussions and debates on Pakistan, ‘Ulama’ discourses and debates on Pakistan, and the partition and its afterlives. This wonderfully written and painstakingly researched book will be of tremendous interest to students and scholars of Muslim politics, nationalism and religion, and South Asian Islam.

Korea presents a fascinating chapter in the history of Christianity. For instance, the first continuous Christian community in the peninsula was founded by Koreans themselves without any missionaries coming into the country. In their new book, A History of Korean Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2014),Sebastian C. H. Kim and Kirsteen Kim provide the first English-language study that covers the history of Christianity, including Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy, from its beginnings in the peninsula to the present day. This thoroughly-researched work skillfully weaves together such subjects as church-state relations, spirituality, and the global impact of Korean Christianity, into a narrative that is easy for someone unfamiliar with the subject to follow, but deep enough that experts in the field will gain much from a careful reading.

In this podcast I talk with Laura F. Edwards, Peabody Family Professor of History at Duke University about her book, A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (Cambridge University Press 2015). Per the book’s introduction, “[a]lthough hundreds of thousands of people died fighting in the Civil War, perhaps the war’s biggest casualty was the nation’s legal order. A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction explores the implications of this major change by bringing legal history into dialogue with the scholarship of other historical fields. Federal policy on slavery and race, particularly the three Reconstruction Amendments, are the best-known legal innovations of the era. Change, however, permeated all levels of the legal system, altering American’s relationship to the law and allowing them to move popular conceptions of justice into the ambit of government policy. The results linked Americans to the nation through individual rights, which were extended to more people and, as a result of new claims, were reimagined to cover a wider array of issues. But rights had limits in what they could accomplish, particularly when it came to the collective goals that so many ordinary Americans advocated. Ultimately, Laura F. Edwards argues, this new nation of rights offered up promises that would prove difficult to sustain.” Some of the topics we cover are: –The way, in the lead up to the Civil War, all arguments came back to the Constitution. –How wartime policies in both the Confederacy and the states that remained in the Union fundamentally remade the –legal authority of the nation. –Why the Confederacy’s legal order was at odds with its stated governing principles. –Popular conceptions of Reconstruction-era legal change.

Who were the Indo-Europeans? Were they all-conquering heroes? Aggressive patriarchal Kurgan horsemen, sweeping aside the peaceful civilizations of Old Europe? Weed-smoking drug dealers rolling across Eurasia in a cannabis-induced haze? Or slow-moving but inexorable farmers from Anatolia? These are just some of the many possibilities discussed in the scholarly literature. But in 2012, a New York Times article announced that the problem had been solved, by a team of innovative biologists applying computational tools to language change. In an article published in Science, they claimed to have found decisive support for the Anatolian hypothesis. In their book, The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis make the case that this conclusion is premature, and based on unwarranted assumptions. In this interview, Asya and Martin talk to me about the history of the Indo-European homeland question, the problems they see in the Science article, and the form that a good theory of Indo-European origins needs to take.

Sarah S. Bush is the author of The Taming of Democracy Assistance: Why Democracy Promotion Does Not Confront Dictators (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Dunn is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. Bush’s book examines the assortment of strategies countries use to promote democracy abroad. She tracks a change in strategy over the last several decades that are increasingly compatible to existing regimes. Rather than the approaches taken in the 1980s, which often threatened regime change, more recent attempts to spread democracy have become much tamer. The turn to non-governmental organizations to deliver these programs has changed the nature of democracy assistance. The book ends with two interesting illustrative case studies drawn from Tunisia and Jordan.

When the Haitian Revolution abolished slavery in Haiti and established its independence from France, it affected surrounding colonies in profound and unexpected ways. Ada Ferrer‘s new book Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015) centers on the tension between the abolition of slavery...

Americans believe they have a number of protections on the job, which are common in other democracies (free speech and privacy, defense against capricious firing, etc.). They are wrong. And in her fascinating new book The Workplace Constitution from the New Deal to the New Right (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the legal historian Sophia Z. Lee wants to understand why. She explores two major campaigns, stretching roughly from the 1920’s to the 1980’s, to establish constitutional safeguards in the workplace, uncovers their remarkable successes, and ultimate failures. It is a story of unlikely bedfellows: black, pro-union labor activists like C.W. Rice and Charles Houston fighting if not quite alongside then at least parallel to anti-union, right-to-work corporate leaders like Cecil B. DeMille and William T. Harrison for a similar goal to contrary ends. Lee finds that, contrary to what many think, civil rights groups like the NAACP were actively pursuing employment safeguards in the postwar era, using the “exclusive representation” granted by the New Deal to unions to make creative arguments for “state action” on the basis of the “duty of fair representation.” At the same time, conservatives sought to roll back the dramatic expansion of organized labor during the late 1930’s and especially World War II (to a third of the non-agricultural workforce) by arguing that “closed shop” rules forced men to join unions and to pay for such things as lobbying. Initially, the courts rejected these latter petitions, during a time when corporations suffered from its Great Depression reputation. But in the late 1950’s, as Congress uncovered corruption in select unions and the civil rights movement steadily grew, businessmen and liberal Republicans had far more success allying themselves with discrimination cases. The Supreme Court, for its part, was caught between not wanting to uphold segregation in labor, or to establish safeguards that would force integration on the entire private sector. Free marketers had nightmares about the racial and economic implications of a workplace Constitution, and unions did, too, for different reasons. With this deadlock, administrative agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Communications Commission became fertile arenas for legal expansions. The result is a tale of absorbing complexity–thankfully, lucidly and beautifully written.

Dealing with moral issues in a fair and balanced way is never easy. This is especially true since many contemporary moral questions are of such a highly personal nature. However, in his book An Introduction to Catholic Ethics Since Vatican II (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Andrew Kim does an excellent job of sensitively introducing the Catholic Church’s teachings on moral issues and the reasoning behind them. Through his deep knowledge of Catholic moral theology and an ability to explain difficult concepts through easy-to-understand metaphors, Dr. Kim has written a rich and thought-provoking book that will be useful for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of Catholic ethics, as well as for those who have to teach it to undergraduates.

China’s automobile industry has grown considerably over the past two decades. Massive foreign investment and an increased scale and concentration of work spurred the creation of a new generation of autoworkers with increased bargaining power. At the same time, China entered the global competition in mass-producing automobiles at a stage...

Rebecca Earle‘s recent book The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America (Cambridge University Press, 2012) investigates the importance of food during the first two centuries of Spanish imperialism in the Americas. She explores how food took a central place in conceptions of bodily health and composition, both in the Old and New Worlds. Not only did the Spanish come to see themselves as different from Amerindians due to the different foods that they both ate, but missionaries worried about the potential to convert native peoples in the colonial absence of theologically-mandated wheat bread and grape wine. This work adds an important layer of analysis to studies of early Spanish imperialism, as well as to the historical debate on colonial ideas about race and perceptions of bodily difference.

Pedro Machado‘s Ocean of Trade:South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a richly detailed and engaging account of Gujarati merchants and their role in the trade of textiles, ivory and slaves across the Indian Ocean. The book not only enhances our understanding of an under researched pan-continental trade network but also, through its sensitive treatment of local markets as drivers of merchants’ patterns, pushes us to re-examine our understanding of trading networks themselves.

Just a few weeks ago, we heard Matthew Green discuss the minority in the House. Green explained that the minority party may not be as powerless as we typically think. In Too Weak to Govern: Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the U.S. Senate (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Peter Hanson offers another side of a similar story. Hanson argues that the majority party in the Senate, more restrained by rule and convention than in the House, has an equally interesting story to tell. Hanson draws on his experience as a staffer for Senator Tom Daschle to explain the evolution of “regular order” and emergence of continuing resolutions as a tool of the majority. Hanson’s analysis may not convince you to love the Senate, but he sheds needed light on what’s behind the maddening procedures of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Hanson is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver.

For almost 100 years, it seemed like a good, even wholesome and optimistic idea to take young, working-class and poor British children and resettle them, quite on their own and apart from their families, in Canada, Australia, and southern Rhodesia. The impulse behind this program was philanthropic: to bring disadvantaged children living in crowded cities a better future by settling them in pristine, wide-open spaces, introducing them to nature, and letting them feel the sun on their backs. Yet the program was shot through with eugenic ideas and the racism of the age. British children were emissaries of the “kith and kin” empire, sent to “whiten” its outposts. But they could also be subject to repatriation–sometimes years after having been sent away in the first place–if their “racial fitness” was called into question. Race, nation, and identity form one of many themes Ellen Boucher examines in her fascinating, and sometimes painful, book Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869-1967 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Others include the rise and evolution of child psychology, changing ideas about the meaning of family, and the politics of empire. One kind of big picture in Empire’s Children is the shift from a unified British imperial identity to the rise of independent nationalisms throughout the empire. Another kind of big picture, though, comes from the stories told by those who grew up as child migrants and how they later came to perceive those experiences as they reflected back. When you study history you are perennially confronted with the fact that a thing that seemed wonderful not too long ago can later come to appear deplorable. Tracing the influences that produce shifts in moral conscience–whether psychological, social, economic, political, or emotional–is one of history’s chief tasks, and it is a task that Boucher accomplishes with great sensitivity and narrative elegance in Empire’s Children.

Conventional wisdom among historians and the public says anticommunism and the Cold War were barriers to reform during their height in the 1950s. In this view, the strong hand of a conservative anticommunism and Cold War priorities thwarted liberal and leftist reforms, political dissent and dreams of social democracy. Jennifer Delton is a professor of history at Skidmore College, and her new book, Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal (Cambridge University Press, 2013) encourages us–as the title suggests–to rethink that conventional view. She argues that in fact the Cold War and anticommunism promoted and justified many liberal goals rather than stifling them. Her book demonstrates that supposed conservatives championed many liberal causes while many liberals genuinely supported the Cold War and anticommunism. For example, she discusses the liberal beliefs and actions of business leaders and politicians like Dwight Eisenhower, who are often thought of as conservative figures, to show the dominance of liberal political ideas during this period. On the other side, she also argues that liberals, such as many labor activists, were themselves strongly anticommunist because they saw communism as truly damaging to their cause, not simply because they aimed to avoid the taint of a communist label. These sentiments had important effects on policy as well. From high taxes to regulation, civil rights and the continuance of New Deal programs, liberal ideas held sway. They had a powerful effect on policy, not in spite of, but because of the larger Cold War context. In the interview, Delton discusses her book and its importance in reforming both historians’ views of the period and our broader thinking about partisan politics and nationalism.

Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a wonderful piece of visual anthropology by Ritu Gairola Khanduri, which uses the history of cartoons, from colonial to current times, to talk about various aspects of Indian society from the state, to political society to modernity. Through archival material and fascinating discussions with cartoonists, the book reveals the various ways in which cartoons talk in India, past and present.

Mariana Candido‘s book An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and its Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2013) is a powerful and moving exploration of the history and development of the port of Benguela. Founded by the Portuguese in the early seventeenth century, Benguela, located on the central coast of present-day Angola, was the third largest port of slave embarkation on the coast of Africa. In discussing the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on African societies, Candido looks at the formation of new elites, the collapse of old states, and the emergence of new ones. Her book offers a new perspective on the importance of the South Atlantic as a space for the circulation of people, ideas, and crops. But what makes this book truly distinctive is how Candido digs beneath the surface of her evidence to give readers a sense of the lived experiences and feelings of all involved in the trade: the unfortunate victims and those who benefited from the violent capture and selling of human beings. As historian John Thornton observes, Candido’s book “will be a starting point for studies of the region for years to come.”

There’s a longstanding debate in political philosophy regarding the fundamental point or aim of justice. According to one prominent view, the point of justice is to neutralize the influence of luck over individuals’ shares of basic social goods. This view is known as luck egalitarianism. It holds, roughly, that inequality is consistent with justice only if it is due to individuals’ choices rather than their luck. Luck egalitarianism has an undeniable intuitive appeal, and hence has been the subject of a range of critiques and defenses for the past several decades. In Equality for Inegalitarians (Cambridge University Press, 2014), George Sher offers a decisive critical assessment of luck egalitarianism, and develops his own positive view about distributive justice. According to Sher, the aim of justice is to enable each individual to live his or her life effectively. This requires that each be provided a sufficient share of central social goods. But it also requires that individuals be permitted to suffer the consequences of their choices.

Evolution is among the most powerful ideas in the natural sciences. Indeed, the evolutionary theoristTheodosius Dobzhansky famouslysaid nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Yet despite its central place in the life sciences, relatively few geographers employ evolutionary theory in their work. In his new book Evolutionary History:Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Edmund Russell makes a compelling case for why evolution matters for human history. Russell argues that evolution is both important and common. Through a number of case studies, he shows how poaching in Africa led to the evolution of tuskless elephants and intensive fishing fostered the development of smaller salmon and cod. But perhaps more importantly, he shows how anthropogenic, or human shaped, evolution played a pivotal role in two of the fundamental developments of human history: the agricultural and industrial revolutions. His book is a challenge to historians, geographers, and other scholars and the social sciences to recognize the pivotal role evolution has played in human history and to see cultural, political, and economic factors as forces in evolution. Professor Russell is Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas, and is a leading scholar in the fields of environmental history and the history of technology. His previous book, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring, examined the complicated and fraught relationship between chemical weapons production and insecticide development and the consequences of their use for both humans and nature as a whole.

In the annals of cold war history Italy is rarely seen as a crucial locale. In his stimulating new book, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Kaeten Mistry reveals how events in Italy proved surprisingly crucial in defining a conflict that dominated much of the twentieth century. For the United States, it marked the first intervention in the postwar era to influence events abroad through political warfare, the use of all measures ‘short of war’ in foreign affairs. Drawing particular attention to the Italian election of 18 April 1948, he explains how the campaign for the first national election of the newfound Italian republic marked a critical defeat for communism in the early cold war. The United States utilized a range of overt and covert methods against Marxist political and social power. Political warfare seemingly outlined a way to tackle communist strength more widely. Analyzing American political warfare efforts against the Italian left allows Mistry to advance a number of important arguments. He shows how U.S. efforts were largely improvised and many key decisions ad hoc. While officials in Washington like George F. Kennan worked to institutionalize political warfare, Italian actors and a host of non-governmental organizations played a crucial role in the defeat of the Italian left, even if they did not always share the same agenda as American officials. Mistry emphasizes Italian agency, explaining how Christian Democrat Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi pursued his own agenda to protect national sovereignty. The Vatican had its own objectives, as did trade unions, citizen groups, and multinational corporations. Other actors held a less rigid view of the Cold War than their American counterparts. In short, political warfare was more than an American story yet U.S. officials and commentators lined up to praise the election campaign as a distinctly American success. Mistry argues that this ‘perception of success’ contributed to an expanded use of political warfare, as U.S efforts turned to subverting communist power in Eastern Europe and, later, the Global South. The work is a refreshing reminder of how foreign policy is rarely under the control of elite figures in Washington. Rather, it is subject to negotiation with various foreign and non-governmental actors. When viewed in this light, Mistry’s work is a useful reminder that governments will almost always invite trouble when they assume the ‘success’ of their efforts to shape events abroad, overlooking the role and motives of other peoples and groups, to make the case for intervention elsewhere. Enjoy.

Deana A. Rohlinger has just written Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Rohlinger is associate professor of sociology at Florida State University. In the last several weeks, the podcast has featured a variety of political scientists who study interest groups and social movements. This week, Deana Rohlinger brings her perspective as a sociologist to the subject. She examines the way four policy organizations with an interest in abortion policy (National Right to Life Committee, National Organization of Women, Planned Parenthood Federation, and Concerned Women for America) interact with the media. Rohlinger finds quite different strategies for how to court the media, but also in how each organization responds to crises. She uses interviews with organizational leaders to deepen what we know about how social movements and interest groups employ a media strategy.

In 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back (Cambridge University Press, 2014), David Krugler chronicles the origins and development of ten major race riots that took place in the United States during that year. Although sustained, anti-black violence both predates and succeeds the year under examination, 1919 distinguishes itself by the sheer number of major racial conflicts occurring between late 1918 and late 1919. Krugler argues that these riots can be seen as a direct result of the societal upheavals engendered by the Great War and less directly, as a continuation of Reconstruction violence. Krugler uses the term “race riot” as shorthand for “anti-black collective violence”, which took several forms including mob attacks and lynchings. He describes the armed resistance of African Americans to this systemic and systematic terror as a three-front war comprised of self-defense, “the battle for the truth about the riots”, and the fight for justice.

As a graduate student at Ohio State in the early 1990s, I remember watching the collapse of Yugoslavia on the news almost every night and reading about it in the newspaper the next day.The first genocidal conflict covered in real time, dozens of reporters covered the war from the front lines or from a Sarajevo under siege. Not surprisingly, the media coverage was accompanied by a flood of memoirs and histories trying to explain the wars to a population that, at least in the US, knew little to nothing about the region. These were valuable studies–informative, interesting and often emotionally shattering. Istill assign them in classes today. But histories of the present, to steal a phrase from Timothy Garton Ash, are always incomplete and impressionistic.They lack both the opportunity to engage primary sources and the perspective offered by distance. Twenty years on, we’re now in a position to begin to reexamine and rethink many of the conclusions drawn in the midst of the conflict. Robert J. Donia‘s new book Radovan Karadzic: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2014)is an excellent step in this direction. Donia takes advantage of a remarkable depth of sources, including wiretap records of the phone calls Karadzic made with leading officials in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, to paint a compelling picture of a man transformed by conflict. His argument is simple, that it was the events of the late 1980s and especially early 1990s that made Karadzic into a nationalist willing to employ ethnic cleansing and genocidal massacres in his quest to secure safety and power for his people. In elevating Kardzic, Donia revises our understanding of the role and guilt of Slobodan Milosevic. His argument is detailed and well-supported, made even more compelling by Donia’s recollections of his encounters with Karadzic when Donia was a witness at before the ICTY. It’s a book anyone interested in understanding what happened in the former Yugoslavia will have to read and engage.

Contemporary advances in technology have in many ways made the world smaller. It is now possible for vast numbers of geographically disparate people to interact, communicate, coordinate, and plan. These advances potentially bring considerable benefits to democracy, such as greater participation, more inclusion, easier dissemination of information, and so on. Yet they also raise unique challenges, as the same technology that facilitates interaction also enables surveillance, as well as new forms of exclusion. In Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Carol Gould aims to develop a conception of democracy that acknowledges the new democratic possibilities while being attuned to the need to protect human rights, cultural differences, and individual freedom. The result is a fascinating discussion of modern democracy.

The Federal Republic of Germany is often held up today as one of the world’s great democracies, where the commitment to such ideals as transparency, careful deliberation, social and political equality, a vibrant public sphere, and perhaps most important–political participation–defines the country’s self-image. It was not ever so. In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, literally, not to mention ethically and existentially. And much of its population, in that moment, given the chance, would very likely have chosen to return the Nazis to power. Sean Forner is Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University. His book, German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal: Culture and Politics after 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), deals with that moment in Germany just after the Second World War, when a network of individuals he calls engaged democrats emerged. These individuals occupied a range of political positions, but all shared a dream of a Germany that would be both committed to democracy, and beholden neither to West nor East. That part of their project–creating a Germany between the incipient polarities of the Cold War–was not to be, but the engaged democrats of the immediate post-1945 era are nonetheless a highly significant part of the transformation that arguably helped to create–or lay the foundations for–the Germany of today.

Elizabeth Schmidt‘sForeign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2013)depicts the foreign political and military interventions in Africa during the periods of decolonization (1956-75) and the Cold War (1945-91), as well as the periods of state collapse (1991-2001) and the “global war on terror” (2001-10). In the first two periods, the most significant intervention was intercontinental. The United States, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and the former colonial powers entangled themselves in numerous African conflicts. During the period of state collapse, the most consequential interventions were intracontinental. African governments, sometimes assisted by powers outside the continent, supported warlords, dictators, and dissident movements in neighboring countries and fought for control of their neighbors’ resources. The global war on terror, like the Cold War, increased the foreign military presence on the African continent and generated external support for repressive governments. In each of these cases, external interests altered the dynamics of internal struggles, escalating local conflicts into larger conflagrations, with devastating effects on African populations. Schmidt’s book is an excellent synthesis of the past 70 years of African history and politics. Her book is provocative, thoughtful and passionate. It is a superb book for students, general readers as well as scholars.

The Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, the American psychologist William James, and the British philosopher Bertrand Russell shared an interest in explaining the mind in naturalistic terms – unified with the rest of nature, not metaphysically distinct as Descartes argued. In The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell: Neutral Monism Reconceived (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Erik C. Banks delves into the movement that these three figures launched, for the first time showing how they provide a unified, if incomplete, theory of the mind. Realistic empiricism combines a direct realist view about knowledge with neutral monism – the idea that the basic events that make up the world are neither mental nor physical and can be manifested as either. Banks also advances the position as a non-panpsychist contender in contemporary philosophy of mind, and outlines the underlying mathematical framework for the basic events.