Stationery and miscellaneous items

Book SynopsisUsing more than a decade''s worth of fieldwork in South Sudan, Clémence Pinaud here explores the relationship between predatory wealth accumulation, state formation, and a form of racismextreme ethnic group entitlementthat has the potential to result in genocide. War and Genocide in South Sudan traces the rise of a predatory state during civil war in southern Sudan and its transformation into a violent Dinka ethnocracy after the region''s formal independence. That new state, Pinaud argues, waged genocide against non-Dinka civilians in 2013-2017. During a civil war that wrecked the region between 1983 and 2005, the predominantly Dinka Sudan People''s Liberation Army (SPLA) practiced ethnically exclusive and predatory wealth accumulation. Its actions fostered extreme group entitlement and profoundly shaped the rebel state. Ethnic group entitlement eventually grew into an ideology of ethnic supremacy. After that war ended, the semi-autonomous state tuTrade ReviewClemence Pinaud's book, War and Genocide in South Sudan, is one of the few books on South Sudan that attaches importance to oral tradition as a means for reconstructing unwritten history. War and Genocide in South Sudan adds to the historiography on a range of topics relative to the Sudan: war, conflict, the politics of liberation, the economy, and genocide. Future scholars who wish to write about the Second and Third Civil Wars will start from where Pinaud's research stops. * H-Diplo *A deeply researched, arresting, and often brutal account of civil war in South Sudan, the violent events of which Pinaud argues constitute genocide. Based on 550 interviews across a range of locations, it is the detailed, first-person accounts of people's experiences of the war that brings the intimate experience of violence into sharp, and often brutal, relief. Required reading for the many people who care about South Sudan and its future. * Global Responsibility to Protect *Pinaud's approach is clear-eyed and systematic. She walks a careful line, avoiding oversimplifications that would characterize the war as an 'ethnic' conflict while demonstrating the central role that instrumentalized ethnicity played in fomenting and prosecuting events and is nuanced in her analysis of the various factions. Pinaud's book will be essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the roots of the present South Sudanese conflict; it also makes a significant contribution to sociological understanding of the political formation of mass atrocity. * International Affairs *Table of ContentsFrom Predation to Genocide 1. From the Turkiyya to the Second Civil War: 1820–1983 2. The SPLA and the Making of an Ethnic Dinka Army: 1983–2005 3. The War Economy and State-Making in SPLA Areas: 1983–2005 4. SPLA Violence, Group-Making, and Expansion: 1983–2005 5. Nationalism, Predation, and Ethnic Ranking: 2005–13 6. The Making of a Violent Ethnocracy: 2005–13 7. Civil War and the First Genocidal Phase: December 2013 8. The Second Phase of the Genocide in Unity State: 2014–15 9. The Third Phase of the Genocide in Equatoria: 2015–17 Ethnic Supremacy and Genocidal Conquest

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Book SynopsisUnpacking of the dynamics of conflict under conditions of nuclear monopoly, Paul C. Avey argues in Tempting Fate that the costs and benefits of using nuclear weapons create openings that weak nonnuclear actors can exploit. Avey uses four case studies to show the key strategies available to nonnuclear states: Iraqi decision-making under Saddam Hussein in confrontations with the United States; Egyptian leaders'' thinking about the Israeli nuclear arsenal during wars in 196970 and 1973; Chinese confrontations with the United States in 1950, 1954, and 1958; and a dispute that never escalated to war, the Soviet-United States tensions between 1946 and 1948 that culminated in the Berlin Blockade. Strategies employed include limiting the scope of the conflict, holding chemical and biological weapons in reserve, seeking outside support, and leveraging international non-use norms. Avey demonstrates clearly that nuclear weapons cast a definite but limiTrade ReviewIn Tempting Fate, Avey puts forth a simple but meaningful question: Why do states that do not have nuclear weapons pick fights with states that do? Avey's logic is sound and straightforward. This is a cogent and well-researched book. * Choice *Tempting Fate illustrates that, when it comes to challenging the strong, the weak seem to oscillate between faith in the nuclear taboo and fear of nuclear retaliation. This insight will make few theorists happy, but it does mark a step forward in our understanding of how nuclear weapons alter the calculus of risk accepting decision makers. * Perspective on Politics *Tempting Fate makes a meaningful and insightful contribution to security studies and nuclear security. [T]his book is an important and novel contribution. * H-Diplo *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Strategic Logic of Nuclear Monopoly 2. Iraq versus the United States 3. Egypt versus Israel 4. China versus the United States 5. The Soviet Union versus the United States Conclusion

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Book SynopsisFrom the tenor of contemporary discussions, it would be easy to conclude that the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex is a uniquely contemporary phenomenon. Not so, argues Gary Ferguson in Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome. Making use of substantial fragments of trial transcripts Gary Ferguson brings the story of a same-sex marriage to life in striking detail. He unearths an incredible amount of detail about the men, their sex lives, and how others responded to this information, which allows him to explore attitudes toward marriage, sex, and gender at the time. Emphasizing the instability of marriage in premodern Europe, Ferguson argues that same-sex unions should be considered part of the institution's complex and contested history.Trade ReviewFerguson's findings about a group of foreign immigrants appropriating the social and religious ritual of marriage within their own self-defined community open up a new window on homosexual activity in Renaissance Rome. The author has deftly uncovered a clandestine subculture that departed from traditional gender norms, sexual stereotypes, and marriage practices, making an important contribution to the history of marriage and sexuality. * American Historical Review *In its analysis of texts, narrative and legal, Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome is truly exemplary. * Journal of Modern History *This is a short book, but it punches above its weight. Although the book will be of most interest to historians of sexuality and other early modern historians, I would not hesitate to give it to students as an excellent model of how to read historical documents as texts while also placing them within several different relevant contexts and opening up productive ambiguities. * Journal of the History of Sexuality *[The book is a] splendid microhistorical investigation, a piece of archival detective work that challenges prevailing views about sexual identity in early modern Europe.... It is compelling reading that should make scholars, students, and activists think again about the history of sexuality. * H-Net Reviews/H-Histsex *An original and deeply thoughtful study.... Ferguson's sensitive discussion of the men's testimonies, fragmentary though they are, challenges 'some engrained historiographical notions' about same-sex erotic relationships in early modern Europe.... Ferguson's extraordinary, compassionate and poignant book allows these events to speak to us urgently about sexuality past and the present. * Gender & History *Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome will be of interest to historically inclined scholars from all disciplines, but will especially delight historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and art historians.... The case of the men at the church of Saint John at the Latin Gate demands attention, and should not be thought of as an exceptional event but as a new window into the diverse forms of historical sexuality and as a methodological example of the way to excavate these latent pasts. * H-Histsex *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Engagement PART I. STORIES—OBSERVERS 1. A French Writer Visits: Montaigne's Travel Journal and a Thrice-Told Tale 2. "Our Marriages"? Male to Male / Like Husband and Wife 3. Marriage— Rites, Analogues, Meanings 4. Other Witnesses, Other Stories PART II. STORIES—ACTORS 5. Final Hours: Wills and Execution 6. Voices on Trial: Beginning with Battista the Boatman 7. Saint John at the Latin Gate: Marco Pinto 8. Marriage as Alibi, as Euphemism, as Recruitment 9. Marriage and Community PART III. HISTORIES 10. Looking Forward / Looking Back: The History of Sexuality 11. Ghost Stories: Queer History

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe collection's concluding essays address methodological questions, frameworks, and terminology, offering many possibilities for approaching trans-centered analysis in medieval and early modern scholarship. Overall, the collection is an important contribution to the premodern era, and the diversity of sources, methodologies, and approaches will appeal to a wide variety of students and scholars. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Benefits of Being Trans Historical, by Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna M. Klosowska Part I: Archives: Revisiting Law and Medicine 1. Mapping the Borders of Sex, by Leah DeVun 2. Elenx de Céspedes: Indeterminate Genders in the Spanish Inquisition, by Igor H. de Souza 3. The Case of Marin le Marcis, by Kathleen Perry Long 4. The Transgender Turn: Eleanor Rykener Speaks Back, by M.W. Bychowski 5. Wojciech of Pozna and the Trans Archive, Poland, 1550–1561, by Anna M. Klosowska Part II: Frameworks: Representing Early Trans Lives 6. Recognizing Wilgefortis, by Robert Mills 7. Performing and Desiring Gender Variance in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, by Abdulhamit Arvas 8. Without Magic or Miracle: The Romance of Silence and the Prehistory of Genderqueerness, by Masha Raskolnikov 9. Transgender Translation, Humanism, and Periodization: Vasco da Lucena's Deeds of Alexander the Great, by Zrinka Stahuljak Part III: Interventions: Critical Trans Methodologies 10. Visualizing the Trans-Animal Body: The Hyena in Medieval Bestiaries, by Emma Campbell 11. Maimed Limbs and Biosalvation: Rehabilitation Politics in Piers Plowman, by Micah James Goodrich 12. Where Are All the Trans Women in Byzantium?, by Roland Betancourt 13. Performing Reparative Transgender Identities from Stage Beauty to The King and the Clown, by Alexa Alice Joubin 14. Laid Open: Examining Genders in Early America, by Scott Larson 15. Epilogue: Against Consensus, by Greta LaFleur

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Book SynopsisFlying Camelot brings us back to the post-Vietnam era, when the US Air Force launched two new, state-of-the art fighter aircraft: the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon.It was an era when debates about aircraft superiority went public—and these were not uncontested discussions. Michael W. Hankins delves deep into the fighter pilot culture that gave rise to both designs, showing how a small but vocal group of pilots, engineers, and analysts in the Department of Defense weaponized their own culture to affect technological development and larger political change.The design and advancement of the F-15 and F-16 reflected this group''s nostalgic desire to recapture the best of World War I air combat. Known as the Fighter Mafia, and later growing into the media savvy political powerhouse Reform Movement, it believed that American weapons systems were too complicated and expensive, and thus vulnerable. The group''s leader was Colonel John Boyd, Trade ReviewIn this lively, absorbing account, Hankins demonstrates the influence of a specific culture that celebrated the fighter pilot as a "knight of the air" who thrilled to aerial combat. * Foreign Affairs *[Dr. Hankins] writes in an engaging and accessible way that makes some occasionally highly-technical discussions quite lucid and illuminating. * Sir Richard Williams Foundation *Flying Camelot, he has written a superlative, accessible, and balanced study of the influence Boyd and his acolytes had on the US Air Force (hereafter "Air Force") and national defense establishment in the last quarter of the twentieth century. * Michigan War Studies Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Fighter Pilot with a Thousand Faces 2. You Can Tell a Fighter Pilot (But You Can't Tell Him Much)" 3. What We Mean When We Say "Fighter" 4. "The Right Fighter" 5. "The Lord's Work" 6. Writing Heresy 7. "Zealots of the Classic Variety" 8. Kicking Vietnam Syndrome Conclusion

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Book SynopsisRoma Traversata analyzes pathways to decipher the complexity of Rome''s urban layout. Nearly all of the prehistoric country paths converging on what was to become the Roman Forum (the ancient city center) are still traceable in the modern city. To these were added other major streets in ancient times. Additional Medieval and Renaissance streets developed the city further as its center shifted from the Forum toward the Vatican. Some of these provided the framework for Rome''s late 19th century urban development. Ceen follows nine routes: three prehistoric, three ancient, and three post-classical pathways through the city, showing us that streets are not merely the space left over between buildings but have a formal character of their own and even determine certain aspects of buildings. Rather than insisting upon the greater importance of streets over buildings, Ceen studies the interactions between buildings and public space, something he describes as urbaTable of ContentsI. INTRODUCTION 1. Pathways 2. Maps II. IDENTITY OF THE STREET 1. A Counter-theory to the Street as "Leftover Space" 2. Street Types 3. Street Theory III. URBAN RECIPROCITY: STREET-BUILDING INTERACTIONS 1. Borgo Nuovo 2. Palazzo della Cancelleria Area 3. Palazzo Massimo Area 4. Palazzo Farnese 5. Via Capitolina and the Campidoglio 6. Palazzo Borghese IV. PATHWAYS 1. Pathway Precedents 2. Nine Historic Pathways through Rome V. VIA AURELIA VETUS VI. VIA SALARIA VETUS VII. VIA SUBURRANA VIII. VIA DELLE SETTE SALE IX. MAIOR VIA ARENULAE X. VIA RECTA XI. VIA PAPALE XII. VIA PEREGRINORUM XIII. VIA TRINITATIS XIV. EPILOGUE: ROMA RITROVATA

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Book SynopsisUnpacked offers a critical, novel perspective on the Caribbean''s now taken-for-granted desirability as a tourist''s paradise. Dreams of a tropical vacation have become a quintessential aspect of the modern Caribbean, as millions of tourists travel to the region and spend extravagantly to pursue vacation fantasies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, travelers from North America and Europe thought of the Caribbean as diseased, dangerous, and, according to many observers, the white man''s graveyard. How then did a trip to the Caribbean become a supposedly fun and safe experience?Unpacked examines the historical roots of the region''s tourism industry by following a well-traveled sea route linking the US East Coast with the island of Cuba and the Isthmus of Panama. Blake C. Scott describes how the cultural and material history of US imperialism became the heart of modern Caribbean tourism. In addition, he explores how advances in tropTable of ContentsIntroduction: Growing Up in Florida's Vacationland 1. Empire's Lake: Tourism in the Wake of US Expansion 2. Service Sector Republics: Transnational Development in Panama and Cuba 3. Changing Routes from Sea to Air: The Rise of Pan American World Airways 4. The Nature of Tourism: Naturalist Explorers as Scientific Guides 5. Traveling Writers: Literary Dreams of Tropical Escape 6. Burning Privilege: Luxury in the Age of Decolonization Conclusion: Perilously Cruising into the Future Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Plastic Turn offers a novel way of looking at plastic as the defining material of our age and at the plasticity of plastic as an innovative means of understanding the arts and literature. Ranjan Ghosh terms this approach the material-aesthetic and, through this concept, traces the emergence and development of plastic polymers along the same historical trajectory as literary modernism. Plastic''s growth as a product in the culture industry, its formation through multiple application and chemical syntheses, and its circulation via oceanic movements, Ghosh argues, correspond with, and offers novel insights into, developments in modernist literature and critical theory.Through innovative readings of canonical modernist texts, analyses of art works, and accounts of plastic''s devastating environmental impact, The Plastic Turn proposes plastic''s unique properties and destructive ubiquity as a theory machine to explain literature and life in tTrade ReviewGhosh uses plastic metaphorically and in an innovative way to advance understanding of literature, art, and life in the present. In so doing, he develops a new material aesthetic, one that offers a new way to view history, ontology, and ecology as well as literature and the arts. * Choice *Ecocriticism's ongoing heterogenization mirrors broader strides in the environmental humanities, including advances in green postcolonial analysis, ice humanities, plant studies, waste studies, and related ecohumanistic domains. As a case in point, a significant contribution to ecocritical examinations of waste is Ranjan Ghosh's The Plastic Turn. Through a material-aesthetic optic, Ghosh genealogizes the impact of the plastic polymer on critical theory and literary modernism * The Year's Work in Critical & Cultural Theory *An original and worthwhile reading experience for all those concerned with the humanities, the Anthropocene, the written word and the ecology of good and bad ideas. Ghosh's The Plastic Turn not only breaks the mold of literary criticism but asks others to refashion critical literature in elastic, versatile and plastic ways. * LSE Review of Books *Table of ContentsTurn to... 1. The Plastic Turn 2. Plastic Literary 3. Plastic Touch 4. Plastic Literature 5. Plastic Affect Turn on...

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Book SynopsisIn The Fragile Balance of Terror, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the worlda volatile mix of variables. The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger. The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, brings together a diverse collection of rigorous and creative scholars who analyze how the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. Scholars, pundits, and policymakers who think that the spread of nuclear weapons can create stable forms of nuclear deterrence in the future will be forced to think again. Contributors: Giles David Arceneaux, Mark S. Bell, Christopher Clary, Peter D. Feaver, Jeffrey Lewis, Rose McDermott, Nicholas L. Miller, Vipin Narang, Ankit Panda, Scott D. Sagan, Caitlin Talmadge, Heather Williams, Amy Zegart

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Book SynopsisFor Putin and for Sharia examines what it means to support sharia in twenty-first-century Dagestan, where calls for an Islamic state coexist with nostalgia for the days of Stalin''s rule and Mecca calendars hang alongside portraits of Putin. Confronting existing narratives about sharia, terrorism, and anti-terrorism through ethnographic fieldwork, Iwona Kaliszewska looks at the beliefs and practices of Dagestani Muslims, revealing that the pursuit of sharia can assume a range of forms from sweeping visions of an Islamic state imposed through violence, to minor acts of everyday resistance against injustice, to attempts to restore the security and stability once afforded by the Soviet state. In For Putin and for Sharia, Kaliszewska challenges the official dichotomy of Muslims as supporting either the political underground or state authorities and deconstructs the Salafi/Sufi division between the so-called reformists and traditional Islam.Trade ReviewFor Putin and for Sharia is a fine ethnographic description of a part of the Caucasus that has received little attention from Western scholars. Throughout the book Kaliszewska takes the perspective of her interlocutors toward the state and its actions against citizens. This is not only brave, as she is confronted with violence and the state security apparatus for doing so, her approach also uncovers the controversial world of Salafi-oriented Muslims. * The Russian Review *Table of ContentsPrologue: Pizza with Shakhidkas Introduction: Sipping Coffee to the Sound of Gunfire 1. Political and Social Instability in Dagestan 2. Torture, Exorcisms, and Checkpoints: Experiencing the "Fight against Terrorism" 3. The Resurgent Importance of Islam in the Everyday Life of Dagestanis 4. Wahhabis, Tariqatists, and "New Muslims" 5. Sharia: Thinking beyond the (Secular) State? Conclusion

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Book Synopsis"The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere offers a lucid, dynamic, and highly readable history of Japan's attempt to usher in a new order in Asia during World War II." â Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy A. Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions-one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines. Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.Trade ReviewThe author's insights, based on extensive research, add depth to understanding of Japan's wartime decision-making process while also correcting misreadings of the role played by its erstwhile collaborators in Burma and the Philippines * Choice *No English-language monographs have [yet] explored the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—Japan's wartime effort to impose a new regional order—from the vantage point of Japanese high policy. Jeremy Yellen has admirably filled this gap, offering innovative insights into Japan's abortive effort to redefine the international relations of East and Southeast Asia from the late 1930s to 1945. * Global Asia *Yellen offers a useful examination of the changing and contested meaning of Japan's proclaimed 'Co-Prosperity Sphere.' [His] work helps inform about an important but opaque aspect of World War II history that influenced the receding of Asian empires after that war. * Journal of Military History *The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is in fact a truly timely addition to the historiography of modern Japan in general and a fundamental contribution to the study of the Japanese wartime experience. * The Japan Society *In this outstanding new study of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen challenges the longstanding view that the Sphere was little more than a facade for Japan's predatory imperialism and that Asian leaders who collaborated with Japan were traitors to their countries. [E]ssential reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Japanese empire and its enduring legacy in Southeast Asia. * Pacific Historical Review *We had to wait forty-four years, but Yellen's The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War was worth the wait. In his masterful account regarding the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Yellen argues that it was nothing more than 'a failed dream'—an incoherent vision that was contested and an idea that never coalesced into a coherent policy that could be enacted. * Journal of Asian Studies *The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere offers a lucid, dynamic, and highly readable history of Japan's attempt to usher in a new order in Asia during World War II. * Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review *With his excellent command of Japanese and use of rich Japanese sources, Yellen reveals the ambivalence evident in Japan's policy making and implementation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. * Southeast Asian Studies *Yellen's study is a welcome step toward a fuller understanding of GEACPS led by international scholars on a truly global basis. * Pacific Affairs *Yellen describes in his deep empirical analysis, showing mastery of the archival record in Japan and the long stretch of Japanese secondary scholarship, how Japan was attempting to shape its own new world order. The delicious banquet that [he] serves up is the complex and at times completely incongruous definition of the sphere. * Journal of Japanese Studies *

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Book SynopsisDocumenting Impossible Realities explores the limitations of conventional accounts through which belonging is documented, focusing on the experiences of adoptees, deportees, migrants, and other exilic populations. Susan Bibler Coutin and Barbara Yngvesson speak to the current historical moment in which the dichotomy between an above ground inhabited by dominant groups and an underground to which unauthorized immigrants, political exiles, and transnational adoptees are relegated cannot be sustained. This dichotomy was made possible by the illusion that some people do not belong, that some forms of kin are not real, or that certain ways of knowing do not count. To examine accounts that challenge such illusions, Coutin and Yngvesson focus on the spaces between groups, where difference is constituted and where the potential for new forms of relationship may be realized. By juxtaposing and moving between entangled realities and modes of expression, DocumentTable of ContentsPrologue: "What Lies Back of the Work" 1. Counterfeiting Reality: Legal Fictions and the Construction of Everyday Belongings 2. Fieldsight: Multivalent Ways of Seeing in Ethnography and Law 3. Schrödinger's Cat: The "Missing Middle," Discredited Histories, and Measurement Problems 4. The Search for a "Back": Archivists of Memory 5. Beyond "Spooky Action at a Distance": An Ethnography of the Future

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Book SynopsisEcological States examines ecological policies in the People''s Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China''s ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, Jesse Rodenbiker argues that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state.Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, Rodenbiker shows that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy. Instead, they creatively navigate resettlement processes in pursuit of their own benefit. However, their resistance is limited by varied forms of state-backed infrastructural violence. Through extensive fieldwork with scientists, urban planners, and everyday citizens in southwestern China, Ecological States exposes the ways in which the scientific logics and practiceTable of ContentsIntroduction: Ecological States Part I: Ecology and State Power 1. Making Ecology Developmental 2. Botany, Beauty, Purification 3. Ecological Territorialization Part II : Ecology and Social Trajectories 4. Ecological Migrations, Volumetric Aspirations 5. Rural Redux 6. Infrastructural Diffusion Epilogue: Global Ecological Futures

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Book SynopsisThe Starving Empire traces the history of famine in the modern French Empire, showing that hunger is intensely local and sweepingly global, shaped by regional contexts and the transnational interplay of ideas and policies all at once. By integrating food crises in Algeria, West and Equatorial Africa, and Vietnam into a broader story of imperial and transnational care, Yan Slobodkin reveals how the French colonial state and an emerging international community took increasing responsibility for subsistence, but ultimately failed to fulfill this responsibility. Europeans once dismissed colonial famines as acts of god, misfortunes of nature, and the inevitable consequences of backward races living in harsh environments. But as Slobodkin recounts, drawing on archival research from four continents, the twentieth century saw transformations in nutrition, scientific racism, and international humanitarianism that profoundly altered ideas of what colonialism could

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Book SynopsisFounded as an ecclesiastical center, trading hub, and intended capital of a feudal state, Riga was Old Livonia''s greatest city and its indispensable port. Because the city was situated in what was initially remote and inhospitable territory, surrounded by pagans and coveted by regional powers like Poland, Sweden, and Muscovy, it was also a fortress encased by a wall.The House of Hemp and Butter begins in the twelfth century with the arrival to the eastern Baltic of German priests, traders, and knights, who conquered and converted the indigenous tribes and assumed mastery over their lands. It ends in 1710 with an account of the greatest war Livonia had ever seen, one that was accompanied by mass starvation, a terrible epidemic, and a flood of nearly biblical proportions that devastated the city and left its survivors in misery.Readers will learn about Riga''s peoplemerchants and clerics, craftsmen and builders, porters and day laborersabout its structuresTrade ReviewO'Connor's book is a portrait of a city that is no more, a city whose citizens and guests redefined themselves many times, but not along the lines that today's Rigans would recognize. While the author reminds us that the past is a foreign country, he all the same encourages the reader to see societies as ever-changing entities, exposing the claims to Europe's historical homogeneity as myths built on faulty foundations. * The Russian Review *... careful research is combined with a lively and colourful style.... This vivid and readable account is an excellent concise exposition of the early history of a great city. * Journal of European Studies *The House of Hemp and Butter is an impeccably-researched and very engagingly written account of Riga's fascinating social, economic, and political history. * New Books Network *

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Book SynopsisA Hudson Valley Reckoning tells the long-ignored story of slavery''s history in upstate New York through Debra Bruno''s absorbing chronicle that uncovers her Dutch ancestors'' slave-holding past and leads to a deep connection with the descendants of the enslaved people her family owned. Bruno, who grew up in New York''s Hudson Valley knowing little about her Dutch heritage, was shaken when a historian told her that her Dutch ancestors were almost certainly slaveholders. Driven by this knowledge, Bruno began to unearth her family''s past. In the last will and testament of her ancestor, she found the first evidence: human beings bequeathed to his family along with animals and furniture. The more she expanded her family tree, the more enslavers she found. She reached out to Black Americans tracing their own ancestry, and by serendipitous luck became friends with Eleanor C. Mire, a descendent of a woman enslaved by Bruno''s Dutch ancestors.A Hudson

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Book SynopsisRevolutionary Warfare investigates how efforts to counter a revolution could also be revolutionary. The Algerian War fractured the French Empire, destroyed the legitimacy of colonial rule, and helped launch the Third Worldist movement for the liberation of the Global South. By tracing how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of radical social transformation, Terrence G. Peterson reveals that the conflict also helped to transform the nature of modern warfare.The French war effort was never defined solely by repression. As Peterson details, it also sought to fashion new forms of surveillance and social control that could capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Hygiene and medical aid efforts, youth sports and education programs, and psychological warfare campaigns all attempted to remake Algerian social structures and bind them more closely to the French state.

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Book SynopsisToday's Russia, Unstuck in Time suggests, is a nation of time travelers, living either in memories of the Great Patriotic War and a society that provided for all its citizens or in an alternative future in which the USSR never collapsed. Eliot Borenstein examines the ways in which films, fiction, television, social media, political parties, and even theme parks use the conventions of time travel and alternate history to fantasize about narratives that are more appealing than the post-Soviet present. Unstuck in Time explores the centrality of an uncannily persistent USSR in the post-Soviet cultural imagination through deeply engaged and entertaining readings of an impressive array of texts: fantasies in which characters time-crash into the Soviet past, fictions of triumphant far-future Soviet societies, and real-life enterprises feeding the belief that the Soviet Union never ended. Whether channeled into benign nostalgia or dangerous mythmaking, the cases that Borenstein analyzes reveal the extent to which the psychic shock of the end of the Soviet Union left Russians adrift, caught between a past many still long for and a future few can imagine.

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Book SynopsisThe Ecosystem of Exile Politics relays the events in Bhutan that led to the exodus of one-sixth of the population, and then recounts the activism by Bhutan's refugee diaspora that followed in response. Susan Banki asserts that activism functions like a physical ecosystem, in which hubs of activism in different locations interact to pressure the home country. For Bhutan's refugee mobilizers, physical proximity offers advantages in Nepal and India, where organizing protests, lobbying, and collecting information about government abuse in Bhutan is aided by being close to the homeland. But in an ecosystem of exile politics, proximity is both a boon and a bane. Sites proximate to Bhutan can be spaces of risk and disempowerment, and refugee activists rarely secure legal, political, and social protection. While distant diasporas in the Global North may not be in precarious situations, they cannot tap into the advantages of proximity. In examining these phenomena, The Ecosystem of Exile Politics adds to theoretical understandings of exile politics and to empirical research on Bhutan and its refugee population.

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Book SynopsisBurying Mussolini addresses the global resurgence in authoritarian and nationalist populism and its connection with valorizations of ordinary life. Predappio is the birthplace and burial site of Benito Mussolini and Italy's premier neo-fascist tourist site with hundreds of thousands of fascist sympathizers descending on the town annually. But, Paolo Heywood asks, what of the people who actually live there? What does 'ordinary life' look like in the shadow of Mussolini's grave? As politicians, commentators, and social scientists seek to understand what lies behind new forms of political authoritarianism, and whether and how they resemble movements once thought consigned to the past, Burying Mussolini narrates how people in Predappio cope with the dark heritage of their home by carefully crafting a sense of 'ordinariness' that is itself inflected by ghosts of their fascist past.

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Book SynopsisVacationing in Dictatorships examines the political effects of international tourism in socialist Romania and Francoist Spain in the postwar era. Despite sharp economic and political differences between the two dictatorial regimes at the start of the Cold War, significant similarities existed as both states took advantage of international tourism to improve their image abroad and pursued processes of economic modernization to acquire hard currencies. By the end of the 1970s though, the two countries achieved rather different results in terms of tourism development, despite the fact that both shared many features in the 1940s and 1950s. By comparing the rise and evolution of international tourism on different sides of the Iron Curtain, Adelina Stefan provides a different assessment of the geopolitics of postwar Europe that further refines the Cold War's geographies separating Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, Vacationing in Dictatorships reveals a new perspective on the Cold War that reveals not only the developmental similarities between Eastern and Southern Europe but also the ideological struggle that pitted socialist East against capitalist West.

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Book SynopsisMisery beneath the Miracle in East Asia challenges prevailing views of the East Asian economic miracle. Existing scholarship has overlooked the severity, persistence, and harmful consequences of the social-welfare crises affecting the region. Arvid J. Lukauskas and Yumiko Shimabukuro fill this gap and put a major asterisk on East Asia''s economic record. Combining big-picture analysis, abundant data, a dynamic interdisciplinary framework, and powerful human stories, they shed light on the social ills that governments have failed to address adequately, including low wages, child abuse, elderly poverty, and substandard housing. One of the major forces behind the multidimensional welfare crises is the region''s productivist welfare strategy, which prioritizes economic growth while abandoning a robust social safety net, leaving the most vulnerable segments of society largely unprotected. Misery beneath the Miracle in East Asia brings the region into debates over the dangers of seeking growth at all costs that are currently embroiling the United States and other advanced industrialized countries.

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Book SynopsisPoet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition, incantation, and meditation.Mazanec traces the historical development of the poet-monk as a distinct actor in the Chinese literary world, arguing for the importance of religious practice in medieval literature. As they witnessed the collapse of the world around them, these monks wove together the frayed threads of their traditions to establish an elite-style Chinese Buddhist poetry. Poet-Monks shows that during the transformative period of the Tang-Song transition

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Book SynopsisThe Dialectics of Absolute Nothingness investigates the appropriations, critiques, and innovative interpretations of German philosophy by the Kyoto School, showing how central concepts of German philosophical traditions found a place within non-Western frameworks such as Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, thereby transcending the original Western context. Kyoto School philosophers critically engaged with their own tradition and grappled with classical German philosophy from Kant to German Idealism and from Neo-Kantianism to German phenomenology. Far from mimicking the western tradition, Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani and other Japanese philosophers overcame their sense of alienation from European philosophy by making its concepts their own and advancing their ideas as a hybrid of European and Japanese philosophy through which they developed their own world historical perspective. Showcasing the ways that Kyoto School philosophers internalized German philosophy and generated their own original

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Book SynopsisThe Kitchen God and His Wives is a modern folk epic on the origin of the Stove God, widely venerated across China. In this tale, the Stove God (or Kitchen God) begins as a mortal man who owes his wealth and success to his loyal wife, the long-suffering Guo Dingxiang. Guo's ungrateful husband divorces her, losing his fortune and eventually becoming a beggar. When he receives charity from his former wife, he is filled with remorse and kills himself by jumping into the stove. This act elevates both the man and his wife to godhood. Set in China's countryside and ranging from heaven to hell, this tale provides a look at traditional marriage customs and the uses and abuses of fortune telling in southeastern Henan. This volume contains Wilt L. Idema's full and annotated translation of the Guo Dingxiang epic together with an extensive study of the textualization of this work in the years following the Cultural Revolution. The Kitchen God and His Wives offers a valuable look at Chinese folk cul

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Book SynopsisAdorno's Gamble offers a startling reinterpretation of the evolution of Theodor W. Adorno's thought, usually seen as a mix of critical Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, aesthetic modernism, and Jewish tradition. Mikko Immanen argues for another, previously unacknowledged source of Adorno's thinking on instrumental reason, dialectic of enlightenment, and frailty of democracy: the intellectual underpinnings of Germany's conservative revolutionary movement of the 1920s. In a dramatic reappraisal of the leading light of the Frankfurt School, Immanen follows Adorno's path of philosophical development from the late Weimar era through years in exile to the postwar period, establishing his debt to thinkers of radical conservative bent. In particular, he focuses on Adorno's enduring, and daring, effort to harness two of the most infamous works from this traditionOswald Spengler's Decline of the West and Ludwig Klages's The Spirit as Adversary of the Souland to repurpose their reactionary teac

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Book SynopsisCultural Capitalism explores Russian literature's eager embrace of capitalism in the post-Soviet era. When the Soviet Union fell, books were suddenly bought and sold as commodities. Russia's first bestseller lists brought attention and prestige. Even literary prizes turned to the market for legitimacy. The rise of capitalism entirely transformed both the economics and the aesthetics of Russian literature. By reconstructing the market's influence on everything from late-Soviet paper shortages to the prose of neoimperialism, Cultural Capitalism reveals Russian literature's exuberant hopes for and deep disappointments in capitalism. Only a free market, it was hoped, could cure endemic book deficits and liberate literature from ideological constraints. But as the market came to dominate literature, it imposed an ideology of its own, one that directed literary development for decades. Through archival research, original interviews, and provocative readings of literary texts, Bradley A. Go

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Book SynopsisIn War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of struggles over sites that are both venerated and contested, and proposes ways for managing these disputes. Holy places can create the potential for clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. Hassner illustrates this complex, violent dynamic through a series of case studies, including the conflict over Jerusalem and competing Hindu and Muslim claims over Ayodhya. He also analyses successful compromises that reduced conflict in Jerusalem in 1967 and in Mecca in 1979. In this updated edition of War on Sacred Grounds, Hassner reevaluates his findings and conclusions and surveys ongoing conflicts over holy sites.

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Book SynopsisFollowing a group of US Midwest farmers who purchased tracts of land in the tropical savanna of eastern Brazil, Welcome to Soylandia investigates industrial farming in the modern developing world. Seeking adventure and profit, the transplanted farmers created what Andrew Ofstehage calls "flexible farms" that have severed connections with the basic units of agriculture: land, plants, and labor. But while the transnational farmers have destroyed these relationships, they cannot simply do as they please. Regardless of their nationality, race, and capital, they must contend with pests, workers, the Brazilian state, and the land itself. Welcome to Soylandia explores the frictions that define the new relationships of flexible farminga paradigm that Ofstehage shows is ready to be reproduced elsewhere in Brazil and exported to the rest of the globe, including the United States. Through this compelling ethnography, Ofstehage takes readers on a tour of Soylandia and the new world of industrial agriculture, globalized markets, international development, and environmental change that it heralds.

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