Announcements • The Temple University Press annual holiday book sale begins today and runs through Dec. 5. The sale runs from 11am - 2pm in Mitten Hall at the Diamond Club lobby at Temple University (main campus). All books on display are discounted. • Temple University Press is proud to announce that we now have a presence on the social networking site Facebook. Check out the site here. (NOTE: You must be a registered user to view). Featured Authors • December 4 at 6:30 pm, Marc Bekoff, author of Animals at Play will be reading from and signing books at the Boulder Bookstore, located at 1107 Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado. Bekoff will also be reading/signing from Animals at Play on December 6 at the Tattered Cover Book Store, 9315 Dorchester Street in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. • On Monday, Nov. 24, the KPFA-FM/KFCF-FM (94.1 FM, Berkeley) program Against the Grain aired an interview with Samuel Lucas, author of Theorizing Discrimination in an Era of Contested Prejudice from his November 6 bookstore appearance at Diesel books in Oakland, California. The interview is available online at both www.kpfa.org and also archived at www.againstthegrain.org. • Jim Hilty's Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector was selected as one of the Top 10 Political Biographies by Foreword Magazine. The listing can be found online here.
Book Reviews • The December 1 issue of Publishers Weekly gave a Starred review to Bruce Jackson's Pictures from a Drawer. The review read, "In a stimulating introductory essay accompanying this collection of extraordinary photographic portraits, Jackson ( The Story Is True) recalls visiting in 1975 Arkansas's Cummins state prison farm, where an inmate invited him to fill his pockets with about 200 discarded prisoner identification photographs, likely dating from 1915 to 1940.... Shrewdly, Jackson balances their remarkable refurbishment with a strong sense of provenance (retaining staple holes and creases, for example), while eschewing any attempt to connect each haunting image with a particular crime or narrative. Given unprecedented and (from the perspective of their original purpose) utterly unintended scope, the human dimensions of these images grant each an irreversible dignity for the first time, while simultaneously taking on the essential characteristic Jackson names: they become 'mirrors' of ourselves." • The December 2008 issue of CHOICE reviewed four Temple University Press titles. The review of Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling read, "[T]his book is informative, well written and interesting.... The detail is rich and informative.... A very interesting read on a topic about which conclusive information is difficult to find. Summing Up: Highly recommended." The review of Pedagogy of Democracy read, "Just when one thought the occupation of Japan had been thoroughly covered, along comes this excellent study.... Koikari presents her evidence with verve and flair, clarity and even drama (the chapter on Beate Sirota Gordon is remarkable, fascinating and spellbinding). She handles the full complexity of heir analyses with outstanding research presented in accessible prose.... Highly recommended." The review of Global Television by Barbara Selznick read, "An interesting treatment of this phenomenon. Summing Up: Recommended" The review of David Paul Haney's The Americanization of Social Science read, "[V]ery readable...The author's documentation of the debate over sociology's appropriate identity from the 1930s to the 1960s provides rich quotes illustrating the professional arguments about sociology's purpose. Drawing on strong research, Haney deftly argues through the voices of major spokesmen.... Recommended." • The December 1, 2008 issue of Library Journalreviewed two Temple University Press titles. The review of Michael Ezra's Muhammad Ali read, "[T]his book increases our understanding of how difficult it is to know the real Ali, a simple man paradoxically imbued with great complexity. Recommended." The review of Rosalee Clawson and Eric Waltenburg's Legacy and Legitimacy read "The concept of political legitimacy as a stabilizing force is central to the book’s theme and is particularly important in a pluralist democracy such as the United States, where constituents regularly lodge competing demands, thereby placing stresses upon the political system. The authors seek to measure, through a series of extended surveys and intricate statistical analysis, the one institution of government that most effectively regulates pluralist conflicts and rallies support for the regime. They then conclude that relative to other institutions, the Supreme Court has the greatest capacity to legitimize policies. Recommended." • City and Environment by Christopher Boone and Ali Modarres was reviewed in Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 2008, Volume 35, No. 6. The review read, "[C]risply written... it is a strength of the volume that it produces debate rather than closing it down by reaching constantly for the moral high ground. The authors are to be congratulated for producing an evenhanded treatment that will work well in advance undergraduate and introductory graduate courses." • More Recent Reviews
"Johnston presents the ways antivirus workers think in fascinating detail. She is very astute and effective in analyzing and explicating the underlying assumptions of their logic. Technological Turf Wars is insightful, interesting, and it unfolds in ways that are quite surprising. Johnston demonstrates that this industry is as much a social world as it is a technical world." —John L. Caughey, Professor of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
"An excellent overview of the role that Asians and Asian Americans have come to play in the world of Western classical music. It is beautifully written, extremely lucid, and well researched. What is particularly enlightening here is the author's dedication in seeking out many musicians to interview and her integration of these stories into a coherent whole." —Timothy D. Taylor, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles
"On behalf of all of the Hoofer’s, we thank you and salute you for every moment of truth, love and dedication translated to us all through your art form, your dance. Thank you Frankie Manning. I Love You!" —Savion Glover
"Jackson's goal is to deconstruct the stories, to determine what is true about them, why and how they work, how they differ from reality, and how and why they are central to our everyday experiences…[W]riting with breakneck energy, he consistently entertains...Happily, Jackson's opinions, even those that annoy, make for good reading." —Publishers Weekly
"A tour-de-force sojourn into a never-before-told zone of small town American bigotry. Hapa Girl is consistently stylish, permanently courageous, bitingly tragic, but always rationally detached with a Marx Brothers' wit. This is May-lee Chai's best comment yet about America." —Anthony B. Chan, author of Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong
"Psychiatry and Behavioral Science is a well crafted, simply written, comprehensive review of evidenced-based psychiatric theory and practice. Edited by two leaders in psychiatric education--one of whom, David Baron, is an internationally acclaimed psychopharmacologist--it provides not only medical students but also all health professionals regardless of subspecialty or years of experience a comprehensive review of the state of the art of psychiatry. The charts and references to critical recent contributions to the literature provided throughout the volume coupled with multiple-choice review exams at the end of each chapter make it particularly useful for preparation for board and recertification examinations. I recommend it to all both within the medical profession as well outside of it to read and enjoy." —Andrew E. Slaby, MD, PhD, MPH,, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, New York University and New York Medical College
"Gerald Horne has done it again. Adding to a remarkable body of work on the linked fate of ‘worlds of color,’ he convincingly demonstrates how enduring ties of imagination, affiliation and political aspiration conjoined Black America and India in the acceleration of global struggles against racism and colonialism in the first half of the twentieth-century. Not only does Horne once again illuminate the irreducibly international contours of African American history, he also makes an indispensable contribution to writing global history from the ‘bottom-up’." —Nikhil Pal Singh, Associate Professor of History, University of Washington, and author of Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy
"David Baronov has not hesitated to tread where few would dare. His study of African biomedicine is a unique application of the world-systems perspective to an area that has not heretofore been an object of the perspective's analytical lens." —Roderick Bush, St. John's University
"Women's Activism and Feminist Agency in Mozambique and Nicaragua provides a compelling account of women's contributions to revolutionary struggle and social transformation in two nations, illuminating the enormity of the challenge posed by gender equality, the effects of revolution on women's and men's lives, and the increasing precariousness of social justice struggles in a globalizing world." —Mary Hawkesworth, Professor and Chair, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, and Editor in Chief, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
