Published this week

J = Review forthcoming

ART AND DESIGN

- Holy Motherhood

By Elizabeth L'Estrange, post-doctoral researcher in history of art, University of Liege

Manchester University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780719075438

Images of holy motherhood and childbearing are brought to the centre of an art-historical enquiry, showing how images worked to script and maintain gender and social roles within patriarchal society and offering viewers ways of managing those roles.

ANTHROPOLOGY

- Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration and Consecration of National Pasts

Edited by Philip L. Kohl, professor of anthropology and Kathryn W. Davis professor of Slavic studies, Wellesley College; Mara Kozelsky, assistant professor of history, University of South Alabama; and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

University of Chicago Press, £34.00 and £13.50. ISBN 9780226450582 and 0599

This work draws on study of such relatively new or reconfigured nation-states as Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, India and Thailand to show how states invoke a remote past to extol the glories of specific peoples or prove claims to ancestral homelands.

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

- The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language

By Gregory Radick, senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of science, University of Leeds

University of Chicago Press, £23.50. ISBN 9780226702247

Drawing on newly discovered archival sources and interviews with key scientists, Radick charts the scientific controversies over the evolution of language from Darwin's day to our own.

CLASSICS

- The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire

By Ando Clifford, professor of classics, University of Chicago

University of California Press, £26.95. ISBN 9780520250833

Clifford argues that the Romans acquired knowledge of the gods through observation of the world, and their rituals were maintained or modified in light of what they learnt.

- Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers

Edited by Tessa Rajak, professor of classics, University of Reading, and Sarah Pearce, senior lecturer in history, University of Southampton

University of California Press, £29.95. ISBN 9780520250840

This volume gathers 16 essays on monarchy and power in the Hellenistic period and charts a new approach to Hellenistic history by focusing attention on biblical and Jewish evidence and reading that evidence in new ways.

EARTH SCIENCES

- Bonebeds: Genesis, Analysis, and Paleobiological Significance

Edited by Raymond R. Rogers, professor and chair of the geology department, Macalester College; David A. Eberth, research director in sedimentary geology, Royal Tyrrell Museum and Anthony R. Fiorillo, curator of palaeontology, Dallas Museum of Natural History

University of Chicago Press, £15.50. ISBN 9780226723716

This book brings together 13 researchers to provide readers with workable definitions, theoretical frameworks and a compendium of modern techniques in bonebed data collection and analysis.

ECONOMICS

- Global Financial Regulation: The Essential Guide

By Howard Davies, director, London School of Economics, and David Green, adviser, Financial Reporting Council

Polity, £50.00 and £15.99. ISBN 9780745643496 and 3502

Davies and Green identify weaknesses in the international system, which is faced with new types of institutions such as hedge funds and private equity funds, and the growth in importance of developing countries that until now have been excluded from key decision-making.

- Beyond Price: Value in Culture, Economics and the Arts

Edited by Michael Hutter, professor of economics, Witten/Herdecke University, and David Throsby, professor of economics, Macquarie University

Cambridge University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780521862233

Different disciplinary viewpoints are combined to identify the processes of valuation that are used in the valuation of the arts and culture, and exploring differences and identifying common ground between the various viewpoints.

GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

- Living in a Dynamic Tropical Forest Landscape

Edited by Nigel Stork, head, School of Resource Management, University of Melbourne, and Steve Turton, associate professor in physical geography, James Cook University

Blackwell, £39.99. ISBN 9781405156431

Stork and Turton employ a wealth of scientific findings and ecological knowledge to survey what has been learnt about the "wet tropics" rainforests of North Queensland, Australia.

HISTORY

-Our Longest Days: A People’s History of the Second World War

Edited by Sandra Koa Wing, development officer in Mass Observation, University of Sussex, until her death in May 2007

Profile Books, £8.99

ISBN 9781846680885

Using previously unpublished diaries, this book tells the story of the war – the military conflict as well as life on the home front – through different voices.

- The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe

By Paul Reitter, associate professor in the department of Germanic languages and literatures, Ohio State University

University of Chicago Press, £18.00. ISBN 9780226709703

Reitter's study of Kraus's writings situates them in the context of fin-de-siecle German-Jewish intellectual society, arguing that rather than stemming from anti-Semitism, Kraus's attacks constituted a critique of mainstream German-Jewish strategies for assimilation.

- Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII

By Sharon Kettering, emerita professor of history, Montgomery College in Maryland

Manchester University Press, £60.00. ISBN 9780719077869

Kettering seeks to defend the reputation of Charles d'Albert, the controversial favourite of Louis XIII, arguing that the traditional historical interpretation is significantly influenced by a devastating character assassination made Richelieu.

- Ireland, India and Empire

By Kate O'Malley, research associate with the centre for contemporary Irish history, Trinity College Dublin

Manchester University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780719077517

O'Malley offers a new perspective on the history of the end of Empire, with the Irish and Indian independence movements as its focus, and details how each country's nationalist agitators engaged with each other and exchanged ideas.

- Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment

By James M. Smith, associate professor in the department of English and Irish studies programme, Boston College

Manchester University Press, £18.99. ISBN 9780719078880

This study interrogates available archival resources, including government reports, legislative debates and court cases to assert that the state was always an active agent in the operation and function of the notorious Magdalen workhouses in which women and girls were in effect imprisoned.

- Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Change in a Post 9/11 World

By Robert Samuels, lecturer in the writing programmes, University of California, Los Angeles

Palgrave, £42.50. ISBN 97802306024

Samuels analyses diverse contemporary reactions to the depiction of the Holocaust and other cultural traumas in museums, movies, television shows, classroom discussions and bestselling books.

- Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital

Edited by Matthew Brown, lecturer in the department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American studies, Bristol University

Blackwell, £19.99. ISBN 9781405179324

This interdisciplinary interrogation of the concept of a British "informal empire" in Latin America builds on recent advances in the historiography of imperialism and studies of the 19th-century modern world.

LAW

- Plunder: When the Rule of Law Is Illegal

Edited by Ugo Mattei, Alfred and Hanna Fromm chair in international and comparative law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and Laura Nader, professor of anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

Blackwell, £50.00 and £19.99. ISBN 9781405178952 and 8945

This book examines the dark side of the rule of law and explores how it has been used as a political weapon by Western countries in order to legitimise plunder - the practice of violent extraction of wealth by stronger political actors victimising weaker ones.

- The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law

By Steven M. Teles, visiting lecturer in law, Yale University

Princeton University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9780691122083

Drawing from internal documents, as well as interviews with key conservative figures, Teles examines the only partially successful conservative challenge to liberal domination of the law and American legal institutions.

LITERATURE

- Archipelagic English: Literature, History and Politics 1603-1707

By John Kerrigan, professor of English, University of Cambridge Oxford University Press, £25.00 ISBN 9780198183846

Kerrigan aims to transform views of 17th-century literature by showcasing writers from Wales, Scotland and Ireland whose work has since been neglected.

- French Laughter: Literary Humour from Diderot to Tournier

By Walter Redfern, emeritus professor of French studies, University of Reading Oxford University Press, £25.00 ISBN 9780199237579

This work, the culmination of a lifetime's fascination with humour, presents new perspectives on philosophers, poets, novelists and playwrights and a new way of thinking about a range of French writers.

- Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment and Servanthood

By John Renard, professor in Islamic studies, St Louis University

University of California Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780520251984

Renard illuminates some of the most delightful tales in world religious literature, producing one of the first global overviews of Islamic hagiography and detailing the characters beyond the Koran and Hadith.

MATHEMATICS

- A Radical Approach to Lebesgue's Theory of Integration

By David M. Bressoud, DeWitt Wallace professor of mathematics, Macalester College

Cambridge University Press, £60 and £24.99 ISBN 9780521884747 and 711838

This introduction to measure theory and Lebesgue integration is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, and is rooted in and motivated by the historical questions that led to its development.

- Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and Control: A Lyapunov-Based Approach

By Wassim M. Haddad, professor of aerospace engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Princeton University Press, £50.00. ISBN 9780691133294

Haddad presents and develops an extensive treatment of stability analysis and control design of nonlinear dynamical systems with an emphasis on Lyapunov-based methods, which lie at the heart of mathematical sciences and engineering.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

- Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History

By Ross Hamilton, assistant professor of English, Barnard College

University of Chicago Press, £18.00. ISBN 9780226314846

This tells a history of Western thought from the perspective of Aristotle's categories of accident and substance. Touching on an array of images and texts, Hamilton provides a new way to map the mutations of personal identity and subjectivity.

- A Guide to Writing Academic Essays in Religious Studies

By Scott Brown, former lecturer in the department of religion, University of Toronto

Continuum, £45.00 and £9.99. ISBN 9780826498878 and 9780826498885

This guide on how to write academic essays pertaining to religion seeks to ease the transition for students in this subject. It covers topics such as developing a thesis, rewriting and proofreading, and theoretical and methodological assumptions.

- Kantian Ethics

By Allen Wood, professor of philosophy, Stanford University

Cambridge University Press, £40.00 and £15.99. ISBN 9780521854948 and 671149

Wood investigates Kant's conception of ethical theory, using it to develop a viable approach to the rights and moral duties of human beings addressing topics such as sexual morality, freedom of the will and the state's role in securing economic justice.

- Religion in American Politics: A Short History

By Frank Lambert, professor in history, Purdue University

Princeton University Press, £14.95. ISBN 9780691128337

Lambert tells the story of the uneasy relations between religion and politics from the founding, when moves to make Christianity the national religion were blocked, to the 21st century and the emergence of the religious Left.

POLITICS

- The State of Loyalism in Northern Ireland

By Graham Spencer, senior lecturer in media studies, University of Portsmouth

Palgrave, £50.00. ISBN 9781403989758

Drawing from interview material with key players in British and Irish governments, as well as intermediaries, clergy and paramilitary leaders, this is a contemporary political history of Northern Ireland through the perspectives of direct dialogue.

- Authority in the Global Political Economy

Edited by Volker Rittberger, professor of political science and international relations, University of Tubingen, and Martin Nettesheim, professor in law, University of Tubingen

Palgrave, £55.00. ISBN 9780230573895

This analyses changing patterns of authority in the global political economy, looking at state and non-state actors, and themes such as the provision of global public goods and the potential of new institutions for global governance.

- Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror

By Ian Shapiro, Stirling professor of political science, Yale University

Princeton University Press, £8.95. ISBN 9780691137070

Shapiro explains how the Bush doctrine departs from the best traditions of US national-security policy and accepted international norms, and renders Americans and democratic values less safe.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

- (J)The Finger Book

By John Manning, professor of psychology, University of Central Lancaster

Faber and Faber, £12.99. ISBN 9780571215393

Manning uses the fact that men tend to have a greater "finger ratio" (length of the ring finger relative to the index finger) to examine a group of questions about human behaviour, from sexuality to musical ability and predisposition to disease.

- (J)Proust and the Squid

By Maryann Wolf, director of the centre for reading and language research, Tufts University

Icon Books, £12.99. ISBN 9781840468670

This is the story of the secret history of reading and its relationship with the brain, detailing how people can learn about the brain from dyslexia, the importance of preserving the reading brain and the intrinsic value of the printed word.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

- Empowerment, Participation and Social Work

By Robert Adams, professor of social work, University of Teesside

Palgrave, £17.99. ISBN 9780230019997

Adams's book is now in its fourth edition and offers coverage spanning conceptual debates about empowerment and practice issues. It has been updated to reflect the latest advances in the field.

- Key Concepts in Cultural Studies

By Maja Mikula, senior lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Technology, Sydney

Palgrave, £13.99. ISBN 9780230006461

This book provides a selection of definitions of key cultural studies terms, offers critical references for further reading and places cultural studies in disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.

- Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China

By Susan Greenhalgh, professor of anthropology, University of California, Irvine

University of California Press, £12.95. ISBN 9780520253391

Greenhalgh draws on 20 years of research into China's population politics to explain how the leaders of a nation of 1 billion decided to limit all couples to one child.

THEATRE STUDIES

- London in Early Modern English Drama

By Darryll Grantley, lecturer in drama and theatre studies, University of Kent

Palgrave, £45.00. ISBN 9780230554290

Grantley argues that the presence of London as a setting and as a frame of reference affected the emerging commercial theatre of the time, helping to shape its conventions of representation.

See www.timeshighereducation.co.uk for more listings.