Compiled by Nina C. Ayoub

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

Black Venus: They Called Her "Hottentot" edited by Deborah Willis (Temple University Press; 238 pages; $34.95). Scholarly and other writings on the life and cultural afterlife of Sarah Baartman, a South African woman exhibited in Europe in the early 19th century.

AMERICAN STUDIES

Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in Post-World War II America by Abigail Cheever (University of Georgia Press; 256 pages; $59.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Draws on literary and popular culture in a study of the twinned notions of phoniness and authenticity in the mid-to-late 20th century.

ANTHROPOLOGY

Beyond Perestroika: Axiology and the New Russian Entrepreneurs by Gary G. Gallopin (Rodopi; 361 pages; $110). Describes the values of post-Soviet Russian entrepreneurs.

Death in a Church of Life: Moral Passion During Botswana's Time of AIDS by Frederick Klaits (University of California Press; 352 pages; $60 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of healing practices in an Apostolic church in the capital city of Gaborone.

Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India by Kalyani Devaki Menon (University of Pennsylvania Press; 224 pages; $49.95). Draws on fieldwork in Delhi in a study of how Hindu nationalist women represent history, religion, social responsibility, in their efforts to recruit support.

Journeys West: Jane and Julian Steward and Their Guides by Virginia Kerns (University of Nebraska Press; 414 pages; $55). Discusses Paiute and Shoshone elders who were guides for the anthropologist and his wife during work in the Great Basin.

Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life by Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz (Indiana University Press; 198 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Combines a history of observational filmmaking with a defense of the practice, which has been criticized for objectifying and dehumanizing its subjects.

The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society by Bryan Tilt (Columbia University Press; 192 pages; $89.50 hardcover, $29.50 paperback). An ethnographic study of Futian, a township in Sichuan province plagued by pollution.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

The Art of Urbanism: How Mesoamerican Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Architecture and Imagery edited by William L. Fash and Leonardo Lopez Lujan (Dumbarton Oaks, distributed by Harvard University Press; 480 pages; $49.95). Writings on such topics as social identity and cosmology at El Tajin, a site in Veracruz.

Michelangelo in Print: Reproductions as Response in the Sixteenth Century by Bernadine Barnes (Ashgate Publishing Company; 226 pages; $99). Explores Michelangelo's public reception through a study of the choices made by printmakers and publishers who reproduced his work.

Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture edited by Pearl James (University of Nebraska Press; 398 pages; $30). Topics include recruitment posters and the masculine ideal, representations of the "Hun" in Britain, North America, Australia and beyond, and race and empire in French posters of the war.

Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship Between Rome and Sasanian Iran by Matthew P. Canepa (University of California Press; 425 pages; $60). Examines the visual and ritual representation of sacred kingship as a shared idea in imperial Rome and the Sasanian dynasty of Persia, the last pre-Islamic dynasty.

BIOLOGY

Deep-Sea Biodiversity: Pattern and Scale by Michael A. Rex and Ron J. Etter (Harvard University Press; 354 pages; $55). Examines the relationship between the form of deep-sea creatures and the ecology of the ocean floor.

BUSINESS

The Last Male Bastion: Gender and the CEO Suite in America's Public Companies by Douglas M. Branson (Routledge; 263 pages; $100 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Traces the careers of 21 women who made it to the top position in major American public companies.

CULTURAL STUDIES

Progress and Values in the Humanities: Comparing Culture and Science by Volney Gay (Columbia University Press; 231 pages; $29.50). Contrasts the objects of study and notions of progress in science and the humanities.

ECONOMICS

Contemporary Capitalism and its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century edited by Terrence McDonough, Michael Reich, and David M. Kotz (Cambridge University Press; 360 pages; $90 hardcover, $32.99 paperback). Writings that apply SSA theory, an approach that draws on both Marxian and Keynesian macroeconomic thought; case studies include the United States, South Africa, Mexico, and the Arab world represented by Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait.

EDUCATION

Mediumism: A Philosophical Reconstruction of Modernism for Existential Learning by Rene V. Arcilla (State University of New York Press; 144 pages; $55). Draws lessons from modernism for how liberal education can resist consumerism.

Whatever Happened to Inclusion? The Place of Students With Intellectual Disabilities in Education edited by Phil Smith (Peter Lang Publishing; 251 pages; $119.95 hardcover, $33.95 paperback). Essays that offer national and state perspectives on the continuing segregation of students with intellectual disabilities in the United States.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World's Migratory Animals by Mark Cioc (Ohio University Press; 232 pages; $49.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Traces the history of major conservation treaties in the 20th century, including those that protected key species in settings from Africa to the Antarctic.

FILM STUDIES

Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande (Anthem Press; 197 pages; $99). Writings on such topics as constructions of subjectivity, freedom, and enjoyment in popular Indian cinema.

The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain by Emma Hanna (Edinburgh University Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 190 pages; $75). Discusses BBC documentaries from The Great War series in 1964 to such recent productions as Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (2008).

Studying German Cinema by Maggie Hoffgen (Auteur, distributed by Columbia University Press; 222 pages; $85 hardcover, $26.50 paperback). Analyzes, decade by decade, key films since the 1920s to trace the development of German cinema.

HISTORY

About Faces: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Sharrona Pearl (Harvard University Press; 288 pages; $49.95). A study of how Victorians linked facial features to character and various social types; topics include criminality, acting, portraiture, and the caricature of Irish and Jews.

Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff (University of North Carolina Press; 320 pages; $35). Discusses the Federal Arts Project and other programs in a study of how the government promoted the work and political expression of African Americans.

Capitalism and the Jews by Jerzy Z. Muller (Princeton University Press; 272 pages; $24.95). Topics include how anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism have been linked, but also how Jews have been among the fiercest anti-capitalists and communists.

Children of the Gulag by Cathy A. Frierson and Semyon S. Vilensky (Yale University Press; 450 pages; $55). Documents the experiences of children whose parents were arrested, executed, or sent to the Gulag from the start of the Soviet Union to Stalin's death.

FDR's Republicans: Domestic Political Realignment and American Foreign Policy by Robert E. Jenner (Lexington Books; 216 pages; $70). Discusses debates over foreign policy before World War II and the faction of Republicans who came to support Roosevelt's interventionist position.

Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War by Scott Christianson (University of Illinois Press; 214 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). A study of Charles Nalle, a fugitive slave from Culpeper, Va., who was forcibly liberated by Harriet Tubman and others in Troy, N.Y., on April 27, 1860, after he had been arrested for return to Virginia.

Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy: The Case of Nanette Leroux by Jan Goldstein (Princeton University Press; 264 pages; $29.95). Translation and study of a previously unpublished manuscript detailing the psychological malady of a semiliterate peasant girl in France who fell ill in 1822.

Juries and the Transformation of Criminal Justice in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by James M. Donovan (University of North Carolina Press; 262 pages; $65). Considers how the jury system, introduced in 1791, transformed criminal justice in France with high rates of acquittal by jurors opposed to harsh punishments.

Latin America and the Origins of Its Twenty-First Century by Michael Monteon (Praeger Publishers; 425 pages; $54.95). Traces the region's history since the "long" 19th century.

Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War by Burrus M. Carnahan (University Press of Kentucky; 165 pages; $30). Focuses on the president's responses to the mistreatment of Southern civilians; contrasts instances of foreknowledge or approval to instances in which he learned of abuses through petitions after the fact.

Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England by Catherine Adams and Elizabeth H. Pleck (Oxford University Press; 265 pages; $99 hardcover, $21.95 paperback). Traces black women's quest for freedom beyond legal emancipation.

The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations by Ira Berlin (Viking; 304 pages; $27.95). A study of the "middle passage" journey from Africa to mainland North America, the internal relocation of African Americans from the Atlantic seaboard to the southern interior in the 19th century, the migration from the rural south to the urban North, and the arrival of immigrants of African descent in recent decades.

Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero by Abigail Green (Harvard University Press; 540 pages; $35). A biography of the Italian-born British financier and philanthropist (1784-1885), who was elected Sheriff of the City of London in 1836 and knighted in 1837.

On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America by Brian P. Luskey (New York University Press; 288 pages; $48). Focuses on the young male clerk in a study of social striving in the mid-century Northeast.

Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison, 400-600 CE by Andrew Chittick (State University of New York Press; 191 pages; $75). Examines how local men in northern Hubei province interacted with members of the southern Jiankang Court.

Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676 by Walter W. Woodward (University of North Carolina Press; 336 pages; $45). Traces the influence of the colonial official and natural philosopher.

The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire by Jack Weatherford (Crown Publishing; 317 pages; $26). A study of Queen Mandhuhai the Wise and five other primary daughters of the Mongol ruler and the legacy of their families.

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Volume 2: Venturing Into Usefulness, 1881-88 edited by Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury (University of Illinois Press; 754 pages; $75). Annotated edition of papers that document Addams's development as a reformer in the years between seminary graduation and her founding of Hull House.

Self, Community, World: Moravian Education in a Transatlantic World edited by Heikki Lempa and Paul Peucker (Lehigh University Press; 300 pages; $55). Essays on such topics as the German sect's use of music, and its practice of autobiographical writing as a collective ritual.

The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing by Yingcong Dai (University of Washington Press; 352 pages; $80 hardcover, $30 paperback). Examines Sichuan's pivotal role in the conflict between China and Zunghar Mongols over Tibet during Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas edited by Jesus F. de la Teja (Texas A&M University Press; 252 pages; $40 hardcover, $19.95 paperback). Essays on 11 prominent Tejanos (Texans of Mexican heritage) from the early 19th century through Texas's brief history as a republic and later annexation by the United States.

The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany by Joel F. Harrington (University of Chicago Press; 437 pages; $45). Explores the fates of abandoned, abused, neglected, and delinquent children in 16th-century Nuremberg through studies of an unmarried mother-to-be, a civic leader, orphaned twins, a homeless teenager turned thief, and a roaming mercenary who was an infrequent presence in his children's lives.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage by Peter Forbes (Yale University Press; 283 pages; $27.50). A study of mimicry in science, art, warfare, and the natural world.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism, 1917-1989 by Paul R. Josephson (Johns Hopkins University Press; 352 pages; $65). Examines the human and environmental costs of technological utopianism in the East Bloc.

LAW

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by Christine Byron (Manchester University Press, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan; 285 pages; $120). Discusses the war crimes and crimes against humanity outlined in Articles 7 and 8 of a statute adopted in 1998.

LITERATURE

American Writers in Istanbul: Melville, Twain, Dos Passos, Bowles, Algren, Baldwin, and Settle by Kim Fortuny (Syracuse University Press; 260 pages; $34.95). Discusses the seven Americans as transnational authors and explores the significance of their writings about and from the Turkish city.

Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House": An Analytic Commentary by Vitaliy Eyber (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; 256 pages; $57.50). A study of Marvell's 1651 long poem that pays particular attention to the work's wit.

By the Breath of Their Mouths: Narratives of Resistance in Italian America by Mary Jo Bona (State University of New York Press; 302 pages; $75 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Traces the influence of oral forms on Italian-American writing from Rosa Cassettari's accounts of 19th-century Italy to Tony Ardizzone's 1999 novel In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu.

Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches edited by Susanna Fein and David Raybin (Penn State University Press; 259 pages; $65). Essays on such topics as the poet's humor, his dream poems, and his relationship to Italy and France, as well as England.

Financial Speculation in Victorian Fiction: Plotting Money and the Novel Genre, 1815-1901 by Tamara S. Wagner (Ohio State University Press; 232 pages; $44.95). Analyzes works by such novelists as Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Ouida, Mary Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, and Charlotte Riddell.

Herrick, Fanshawe, and the Politics of Intertextuality: Classical Literature and Seventeenth-Century Royalism by Syrithe Pugh (Ashgate Publishing Company; 196 pages; $99.95). A comparative study of two 1648 works: Robert Herrick's Hesperides and Richard Fanshawe's Il Pastor Fido.

Hocus Bogus: Romain Gary Writing as Emile Ajar translated by David Bellos (Yale University Press; 197 pages; $25). First English translation of Pseudo (1976), a work written by the Lithuanian-born French writer using a secret pseudonymous identity as an Algerian in exile.

Ignorance: Literature and Agnoiology by Andrew Bennett (Manchester University Press, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan; 260 pages; $84.95). Discusses literature since the Romantic era in terms of an engagement with not knowing; analyzes works by authors from Wordsworth and Keats to Seamus Heaney and Philip Roth.

The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation edited by Susan Holbrook and Thomas Dilworth (Oxford University Press; 336 pages; $49.95). Edition of some 400 letters that document the friendship and collaboration of the writer and the composer, who worked together on the operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All.

Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of "The Prince" by Alessandra Petrina (Ashgate Publishing Company; 289 pages; $99.95). Focuses on two texts of The Prince before 1640: William Fowler's Scottish translation and the Queen's College, Oxford, English translation.

The Medusa Effect: Representation and Epistemology in Victorian Aesthetics by Thomas Albrecht (State University of New York Press; 208 pages; $75). Analyzes images of horror in the works of such figures as Freud, Nietzsche, Pater, Swinburne, Eliot, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Playful and Serious: Philip Roth as a Comic Writer edited by Ben Siegel and Jay L. Halio (University of Delaware Press; 280 pages; $56). Essays on the American writer since his earliest work, including such relatively neglected works as "Novotny's Pain" and "On the Air."

Sons and Daughters of Self-Made Men: Improvising Gender, Place, Nation in American Literature by Mary Paniccia Carden (Bucknell University Press; 256 pages; $56.50). Discusses works in which the American subject is presented as inheritor or offspring of a male founder-father figure; authors discussed include Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Ralph Ellison.

War of the Fantasy Worlds; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on Art and Imagination by Martha C. Sammons (Praeger Publishers; 237 pages; $44.95). Contrasts the two British writers' strikingly different concepts of fantasy.

Writing the Forest in Early Modern England: A Sylvan Pastoral Nation by Jeffrey S. Theis (Duquesne University Press; 368 pages; $60). An ecocritical study of the depiction of woodlands; analyzes both canonical and lesser-known works, including Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Milton's Mask, John Evelyn's Sylva and James Howells's Dendrologia.

MUSIC

Gilbert and Sullivan: Class and the Savoy Tradition, 1875-1896 by Regina B. Oost (Ashgate Publishing Company; 168 pages; $99.95). Discusses programs, pre-performance publicity, and other materials in a study of how the composing team and Richard D'Oyly Carte shaped their audience's expectations and distinguished their work from other theatrical fare.

Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear by Steve Goodman (MIT Press; 270 pages; $35). Explores the use of "acoustic force" in realms from music to prisoner interrogation and military action.

Stance: Ideas About Emotion, Style, and Meaning for the Study of Expressive Culture by Harris M. Berger (Wesleyan University Press, distributed by University Press of New England; 167 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Offers a phenomenological perspective on stance in musical and other forms of expressive culture.

PHILOSOPHY

Freedom Not Yet: Liberation and the Next World Order by Kenneth Surin (Duke University Press; 415 pages; $94.95 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Examines the inequalities of neoliberalism and offers a Marxist alternative in engagement with the philosophies of such theorists as Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, and Antonio Negri.

Hegel and History edited by Will Dudley (State University of New York Press; 256 pages; $75). Topics include whether the German thinker's logic of history is Eurocentric.

Hobbes and the Law of Nature by Perez Zagorin (Princeton University Press; 177 pages; $29.95). A study of the 17th-century British thinker and his subversion and transformation of the notion of natural law.

Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba (Fordham University Press, distributed by New York University Press; 311 pages; $65 hardcover, $24 paperback). Includes essays on such thinkers as Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Jean-Luc Marion.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

China and India: Prospects for Peace by Jonathan Holslag (Columbia University Press; 234 pages; $37.50). Documents how the two countries' economic rise has contributed to increased rivalry.

Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, and Democracy by Bonnie Honig (Princeton University Press; 224 pages; $26.95). Draws on Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and other Jewish thinkers in a study of how political emergencies pose challenges to democracies.

Human Rights Along the U.S.-Mexico Border: Gendered Violence and Insecurity edited by Kathleen Staudt, Tony Payan, and Z. Anthony Kruszewski (University of Arizona Press; 230 pages; $55 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Writings by political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars.

Hyperconflict: Globalization and Insecurity by James H. Mittelman (Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Considers how globalization figures in world instability and what is termed a "reorganization of political violence"; topics include the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, the "battle in Seattle" during the meeting of the World Trade Organization, the war on terror, and the current worldwide recession.

Inside Insurgency: Explaining Insurgent Behavior Toward Civilians: On the Front Lines with the FARC, SPLA, and PKK by Claire Metelits (New York University Press; 242 pages; $70 hardcover, $23 paperback). Draws on fieldwork in Colombia, Sudan, Kenya, Turkey, and Iraq.

NATO and the UN: A Peculiar Relationship by Lawrence S. Kaplan (University of Missouri Press; 280 pages; $34.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Traces the shifting and contentious relationship between the two international organizations.

RELIGION

Children of Jesus and Mary: The Order of Christ Sophia by James R. Lewis and Nicholas M. Levine (Oxford University Press; 261 pages; $74). A study of a "new religion" that combines elements of Catholicism, esoteric cosmology, and psychology and was founded in 1999 as an offshoot of an earlier group, the Holy Order Mans.

Homilies on Judges by Origen, translated by Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro (Catholic University of America Press; 138 pages; $29.95). Translation of homilies delivered by the Church father Origen of Alexandria sometime between 238 and 248.

Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature by Gail Labovitz (Lexington Books; 289 pages; $70). Draws on feminist linguistics and metaphor theory in a study of how Jewish literature of the rabbinic period cast marriage in terms of property relations.

Searching for God in the Sixties by David R. Williams (University of Delaware Press; 288 pages; $29.50). Examines the romantic rebellion of the decade.

The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia by Barbara Skinner (Northern Illinois University Press; 295 pages; $42). Examines the shifting identity of Ukrainians and Belarusians in relation to tensions between the Orthodox Church and Eastern rite Catholics.

SOCIOLOGY

Cultures of Violence: Lynching and Racial Killing in South Africa and the American South by Ivan Evans (Manchester University Press, distributed by Palgrave Macmillan; 310 pages; $94.95). Contrasts the "lynch culture" of the historical South and the bureaucratic culture of violence in apartheid South Africa.

Latino Lives in America: Making It Home by Luis Ricardo Fraga and others (Temple University Press; 212 pages; $74.50 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Draws on focus-group interviews, quantitative survey data, and other sources in a study of the growing population of Latinos and its implications for American politics and society.

WOMEN'S STUDIES

Reading Is My Window: Books and the Art of Reading in Women's Prisons by Megan Sweeney (University of North Carolina Press; 332 pages; $65 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A study of how female inmates respond to available reading materials in prison and at times use the texts toward the understanding of their own life experiences; focuses on African-Americans and on the genres of self-help books, urban crime fiction, and narratives of victimization.