Fall 2022 University Press Recommendations

The master list of university presses, catalogs, and Twitter accounts can be found here (this list will help you get a sense of the shorthands I use for Press names). All past and future seasonal recommendation lists can be found here.

---

Fall 2022 Book Recommendations by . . .

General Interest
World Cultural Studies
American Studies
Ancient and Medieval Studies
SF / Fantasy / Horror Studies

Some notes about my recommendations:

• The lists below are organized alphabetically by the author surname.

• These recommendations reflect my personal interests as well as my scholarly ones, and as such cannot wholly capture all the many hundreds of interesting, worthwhile, and significant books put out by university presses this season.

General Interest

---

Ashcraft, Wronged and Dangerous: Viral Masculinity and the Populist Pandemic (Bristol)

Bakker, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants (Princeton)

Bar-El, How Slavoj Became Žižek: The Digital Making of a Public Intellectual (Chicago)

Benjamin, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (Princeton)

Bess, Planet in Peril: Humanity’s Four Greatest Challenges and How We Can Overcome Them (Cambridge)

Birkhead, Birds and Us: A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation (Princeton)

Bixby, License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport (California)

Bruno, Tunguska: A Siberian Mystery and Its Environmental Legacy (Cambridge)

Bucar, Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation (Harvard)

Clegg, Punk Rock: Music Is the Currency of Life (SUNY)

Fertel, Brown Pelican (LSU)

Gigliotti, The Creative Lives of Animals (NYU)

Goldsmith, Fanaticism: A Political Philosophical History (Penn Press)

Greenwalt, Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils (Princeton)

Guest, Neoliberal Religion: Faith and Power in the Twenty-first Century (Bloomsbury)

Guillory, Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (Chicago)

Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations (Toronto)

Hone, How Fast Did T. rex Run?: Unsolved Questions from the Frontiers of Dinosaur Science (Princeton)

Kennedy, Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment (Princeton)

Kirby and Snowling, Dyslexia: A History (McGill-Queen’s)

Jackson and Jensen, An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity (Notre Dame)

Leeming, World Mythology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford)

Low, Why Public Space Matters (Oxford)

Matejowsky, Smothered and Covered Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary (Alabama)

Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (Chicago)

McHugh, The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories Through Sound (Columbia)

Morina, The Invention of Marxism: How an Idea Changed Everything (Oxford)

Pitcher, Back to the Stone Age: Race and Prehistory in Contemporary Culture (McGill-Queen’s)

Rubenstein, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (Chicago)

Schalk, Black Disability Politics (Duke)

Schuster, What Is Extinction? A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals (Fordham)

Seaver, Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation (Chicago)

Smith, Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity (California)

Taylor, Charleston to Phnom Penh: A Cook’s Journal (South Carolina)

Townsend, Cod: A Global History (Reaktion)

Viestad, Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal (Reaktion)

World Cultural Studies

---

Afolabi, Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities (SUNY)

Baranski, The Globalization of Wheat: A Critical History of the Green Revolution (Pittsburgh)

Beemer, et al., Islands and Cultures: How Pacific Islands Provide Paths toward Sustainability (Yale)

Birnie, My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania (Monash)

Blackler, An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa (Penn State)

Bocketti, Claiming Brazil: Performances of Citizenship in the Centenary of Independence (Pittsburgh)

Burgess, Soviets in Space: Russia’s Cosmonauts and the Space Frontier (Reaktion)

Chaturvedi, Hindutva and Violence: V. D. Savarkar and the Politics of History (SUNY)

Daut, et al., eds., Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology (Virginia)

Heatherton, Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution (California)

Ingram, Women’s Work: How Culinary Cultures Shaped Modern Spain (Vanderbilt)

Foliard, The Violence of Colonial Photography (Manchester)

Kalliney, The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature (Princeton)

McCusker, Fictions of Whiteness: Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean Novel (Virginia)

Montejo, Mayalogue: An Interactionist Theory of Indigenous Cultures (SUNY)

Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (Wisconsin)

Oeser, When Will We Talk about Hitler? German Students and the Nazi Past (Berghahn)

Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford)

Perritt, Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency (Illinois)

Pettinà, A Compact History of Latin America’s Cold War (North Carolina)

Pittock, Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present (Yale)

Price, Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity (NYU)

Price, Translation and Epistemicide: Racialization of Languages in the Americas (Arizona)

Probst, What Is African Art? A Short History (Chicago)

Rieber, Stalin as Warlord (Yale)

Rieger, Minna Wagner: A Life, with Richard Wagner (Rochester)

Robinson, A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili (Ohio)

Rosen, Tirana Modern: Biblio-Ethnography on the Margins of Europe (Vanderbilt)

Sarreal, Yerba Mate: The Drink That Shaped a Nation (California)

Sherman, Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths (Princeton)

Stovall, From Near and Far: A Transnational History of France (Nebraska)

Trasper, Indigenous Economics: Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (Arizona)

Unangst, Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 (Toronto)

Younis, On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought (California)

American Studies

---

Adjetey, Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (North Carolina)

Andersson and Posthumus, Lakhota: An Indigenous History (Oklahoma)

Aquila, Rock & Roll in Kennedy’s America: A Cultural History of the Early 1960s (Johns Hopkins)

Balmer, Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America (North Carolina)

Calhoun, Only the Names Have Been Changed: Dragnet, the Police Procedural, and Postwar Culture (Texas)

Chaney, The Grizzly in the Driveway: The Return of Bears to a Crowded American West (Washington)

Cohen, For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America (Oxford)

Cullen, 1980: America’s Pivotal Year (Rutgers)

Diffrient, Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters: Bad Behavior on American Television (Syracuse)

Ekbladh, Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations (Chicago)

Eisler, Writing Wars: Authorship and American War Fiction, WWI to Present (Iowa)

Eitzen, Fooling with the Amish: Amish Mafia, Entertaining Fakery, and the Evolution of Reality TV (Johns Hopkins)

Esty, The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits (Stanford)

Feller, Eternity in the Ether: A Mormon Media History (Illinois)

Goldman, Memory Passages: Holocaust Memorials in the United States and Germany (Temple)

Heath, Forbidden Intimacies: Polygamies at the Limits of Western Tolerance (Stanford)

Helgren, The Camp Fire Girls: Gender, Race, and American Girlhood, 1910–1980 (Nebraska)

Hilliard, Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia (North Carolina)

Huse, et al., The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers (Florida)

Justice, (White)Washing Our Sins Away: American Mainline Churches, Music, Power, and Diversity (SUNY)

Kuklick, Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture (Chicago)

Lewis, Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa (Duke)

Malik, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics (Oxford)

Mura, The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives (Minnesota)

Noel, Deflective Whiteness: Co-Opting Black and Latinx Identity Politics (Ohio State)

O’Malley, Imaginary Empires: Women Writers and Alternative Futures in Early US Literature (LSU)

Pawley, Organizing Women: Home, Work, and the Institutional Infrastructure of Print in Twentieth-Century America (Massachusetts)

Petrzela, Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession (Chicago)

Pfitzer, “Fame Is Not Just for the Fellas”: Female Renown and the Childhood of Famous Americans Series (Massachusetts)

Schwartz, On Target: Gun Culture, Storytelling, and the NRA (Toronto)

Segaloff and Lewis, Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children’s Television (Kentucky)

Shanahan and Kurti, States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Punishment System (Reaktion)

Smith, Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire (NYU)

Stewart, Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World (Minnesota)

Tracy, White Cottage, White House: Irish American Masculinities in Classical Hollywood Cinema (SUNY)

Van Lanen, The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture (Oklahoma)

Zakaras, The Roots of American Individualism: Political Myth in the Age of Jackson (Princeton)

Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern Studies

---

Athanassakis, trans., Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield (Johns Hopkins)

Beckwith, The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China (Princeton)

Brier, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World (Oxford)

Burman, et al., The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650–1650 (California)

Dow and Reed, Economic Prehistory: Six Transitions That Shaped The World (Cambridge)

Golia, A Short History of Tomb-Raiding: The Epic Hunt for Egypt’s Treasures (Reaktion)

Hanley, Two Houses, Two Kingdoms: A History of France and England, 1100–1300 (Yale)

Heim, Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India (Princeton)

Marx, The Tomb of Oedipus: Why Greek Tragedies Were not Tragic (Verso)

Owen, Chaucer’s Italy (Haus)

Parker, Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year (Reaktion)

Pegg, Beatrice’s Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages (Oxford)

Podany, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East (Oxford)

Ross, Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders (D.S. Brewer)

Schellinger, Nubia: Lost Civilizations (Reaktion)

Sen, Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire (Reaktion)

Solecki, The Etruscans in the Modern Imagination (McGill-Queen’s)

Wooding, Tudor England: A History (Yale)

Yadin-Israel, Temptation Transformed: The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple (Chicago)

SF / Fantasy / Horror Studies

---

Anderson, et al., eds., Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (LSU)

Carr and Carstarphen, eds., Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines in Transmedia Spaces (Ohio State)

Finley, In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterrestrial Bodies in the Nation of Islam (Duke)

Gavaler, The Comics Form: The Art of Sequenced Images (Bloomsbury)

Halsall and Warren, eds., The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions (Mississippi)

Kingwell, Singular Creatures: Robots, Rights, and the Politics of Posthumanism (McGill-Queen’s)

Lavender, III, ed., Conversations with Nalo Hopkinson (Mississippi)

Link, Understanding Philip K. Dick (South Carolina)

Mauro, Hacking in the Humanities: Cybersecurity, Speculative Fiction, and Navigating a Digital Future (Bloomsbury)

Meeuf, White Terror: The Horror Film from Obama to Trump (Indiana)

Mittermeier, ed., Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect)

Morgart, The Haunted States of America: Gothic Regionalism in Post-war American Fiction (Wales)

Orosco, Star Trek’s Philosophy of Peace and Justice: A Global, Anti-Racist Approach (Bloomsbury)

Poll, Aquaman and the War against Oceans: Comics Activism and Allegory in the Anthropocene (Nebraska)

• Disclosure: I acquired this book for the series it belongs to before leaving as series co-editor.

Rayner, Australian Gothic: A Cinema of Horrors (Wales)

Stańczyk, Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland (Ohio State)

Venditto, Whiteness at the End of the World: Race in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema (SUNY)

Wagner and Wieland, eds., Almanac for the Anthropocene: A Compendium of Solarpunk Futures (West Virginia)

• Disclosure: I peer reviewed this manuscript and wrote a blurb for it.