The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory, by Amanda Anderson (2005, Princeton University Press). With her latest book, Anderson, the Carolina Donovan Professor of English Literature and chair of the English Department, has analyzed arguments in literary, cultural, and political theory, highlighting the complexities of academic debate.
The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It, by David A. Bell (forthcoming in January 2007, Houghton Mifflin). World War I has been called “the war to end all wars,” but historian Bell, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, says the age of Napoleon ushered in nearly every modern aspect of war, including conscription, unconditional surrender, and guerilla warfare.
Impersonality: Seven Essays, by Sharon Cameron (forthcoming fall 2006, University of Chicago Press). In essays on William Empson, Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, Cameron considers impersonality in the works of major American writers and figures of international modernism. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English.
The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este, by Stephen J. Campbell (2006, Yale University Press). History of Art professor Campbell explores the most famous studiolo of all, that of the marchioness of Mantua, which contained a series of seven paintings by some of the most noteworthy artists of the day, including Andrea Mantegna, Pietro Perugino, and Lorenzo Costa. Their works illuminated an emerging Renaissance genre, the mythological image.
Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, by Veena Das (forthcoming in December 2006, University of California Press). Das, the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, weaves together observations from rich fieldwork with critical analysis of case studies including the violence of the Partition of India in 1947 and the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of India Ghandi. A departure from typical anthropological inquiry, Life and Words asks how violence has entered “the recesses of the ordinary.”
The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite, by Ann Finkbeiner (2006, Viking/Penguin). Finkbeiner, a visiting associate professor and director of The Writing Seminars graduate program in science writing, details the story of an elite group of physicists that, for the past five decades, have worked on secret government projects involving defense-related problems. Through interviews with dozens of Jasons past and present, Finkbeiner describes the work of this independent group, which has assembled for several weeks each summer since 1960.
The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines, by Paul A. Kramer (2006, University of North Carolina Press). Kramer, an associate professor of history, has undertaken a comprehensive study of the complex history of American colonial rule in the Philippines. Kramer argues that the colonial history was characterized by struggles over sovereignty and recognition and that it parallels the current U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After This, by Alice McDermott (2006, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In her sixth novel, the acclaimed novelist follows six members of the Irish-Catholic Keane family in Vietnam War-era New York. Critics have praised McDermott for creating an engaging portrait of the “domestic milieu” that is both “gripping” and “poignant.”
Embracing Sisterhood: Class, Identity, and Contemporary Black Women, by Katrina Bell McDonald (August, Rowman & Littlefield). Using Oprah Winfrey as a contemporary test—“can one remain black in spite of one’s success?”—sociology professor McDonald documents and examines pride among black women of different ages, incomes, backgrounds, and education levels.
Arming Slaves From Classical Times to the Modern Age, edited by Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan (2006, Yale University Press). Brown and Morgan, a professor of history in the Krieger School, provide the first survey of the practice of arming slaves as soldiers throughout history, examining classical Greece, the early Islamic kingdoms of the Near East, West and East Africa, as well as the British and French Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America.
Japan and China in the World Economy, edited by Kellee Tsai and Saadia Pekkanen (2006, Routledge). Tsai, an associate professor of political science, and her collaborator review the experiences of Japan and China from the 1980s to the 2000s across the areas of development, trade, investment, finance, and technology. The book offers a comparative framework that provides a firm grasp of the roles that Japan and China stand to play in the world political economy.
