Fall 2024 University Press Recommendations

All past and future seasonal recommendation lists can be found here.

Fall 2024 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

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Adamou, Endangered Languages (MIT)

Allan, Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin (Regina)

Beckman, A Twist in the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine (Hurst)

Bedera, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence (California)

Canessa and Lavinas Picq, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (Arizona)

Clark, From Paragraphs to Plots: Architecture of the Novel (LSU)

Coan, The Buried Man: A Life of H. Rider Haggard (Hurst)

Dimick, Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures (Columbia)

Fadaee, Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics (Manchester)

Graf von Hardenberg, Sea Level: A History (Chicago)

Hone, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know (Princeton)

Hyra, Slow and Sudden Violence: Why and When Uprisings Occur (California)

Jacobs, Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures (Reaktion)

Kiaer, Whose Language Is English? (Yale)

Lieberman and Eldredge, Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould (Columbia)

McMeekin, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Hurst)

Miller, ed., Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State)

Minnis and Freedman, Plants for Desperate Times: The Diversity of Life-Saving Famine Foods (Arizona)

Mynott, The Story of Nature: A Human History (Yale)

Peebles, The War Comes with You: Enduring War in Life, Fiction, and Fantasy (South Carolina)

Peirse, Rewriting Television (Rutgers)

Robbins, Atrocity: A Literary History: How We Learned Indignation in the Face of Mass Violence (Stanford)

Sakcey, Trespassing Natures: Species Migration and the Right to Space (Ohio State)

Segalovitz, How Close Reading Made Us: The Transnational Legacies of New Criticism (SUNY)

Strayer, Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands (Johns Hopkins)

Taylor, Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History (California)

Welch, The Epic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford)

World Cultural Studies

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Ahmadi, Bordering on War: A Social and Political History of Khuzestan (Texas)

Al-Bulushi, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford)

Armston-Sheret, On the Backs of Others: Rethinking the History of British Geographical Exploration (Nebraska)

Aylward, Beothuk: How Story Made a People (Almost) Disappear (McGill-Queen’s)

Baird, Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia (Wisconsin)

Billings, Twenty-Nine Goodbyes: An Introduction to Chinese Poetry (Fordham)

Boutaghou, White Tongue, Brown Skin: The Colonized Woman and Language (Virginia)

Butterwick, Lithuania: A Short History (Hurst)

Chickering, The German Empire, 1871–1918 (Cambridge)

Chung, Cinema under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea’s Cold War Film Culture (Rutgers)

Cinotto, Gastrofascism and Empire: Food in Italian East Africa, 1935-1941 (Bloomsbury)

Connell, Multicultural Britain: A People’s History (Hurst)

Daly, Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa after Empire (Duke)

Daut and Glover, eds., A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge)

De, Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia (Illinois)

Dunlop, The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France (Chicago)

Falola, Daily Life in Colonial Africa (Bloomsbury)

Filiu, Gaza: A History (Second Edition) (Hurst)

Flores, Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World (Penn Press)

Fraser, By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories (Manitoba)

Fromherz, The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present (California)

Gavin, Ashes of Our Fathers: Inside the Fall of Nagorno-Karabakh (Hurst)

Glynn and Cupples, Transmedia Geographies: Decoloniality, Democratization, Cultural Citizenship, and Media Convergence (Rutgers)

Graves, Tir: The Story of the Welsh Landscape (Wales)

Greene, Box 25: Archival Secrets, Caribbean Workers, and the Panama Canal (North Carolina)

Guy, Three Impeachments: Guo Xiu and the Kangxi Court (Washington)

Hamdani, City of Kashmir: Srinagar, A Popular History (Hurst)

Han, Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor (Minnesota)

Handel, Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (Washington)

Hartung, The Pashtun Borderland: A Religious and Cultural History of the Taliban (Cambridge)

Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound: A Critical Edition (MSU)

Iriarte, The Archaeology of Amazonia: A Human History [Open Access] (Bloomsbury)

Jassal, Gods in the World: Placemaking and Healing in the Himalayas (Columbia)

Kamran, Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan (Reaktion)

Keniston, Apartheid Spies and the Revolutionary Underground (Wits)

King, Fraudulent Lives: Imagining Welfare Cheats from the Poor Law to the Present

Klaus, Tangled Transformations: Unifying Germany and Integrating Europe, 1985–1995 (Toronto)

Kotsonis, The Greek Revolution and the Violent Birth of Nationalism (Princeton)

Kuwada, The Mana of Translation: Translational Flow in Hawaiian History from the Baibala to the Mauna (Hawai’i)

Laugesen, Australia in 100 Words (NewSouth)

Li, Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China (Stanford)

Long and Hayward, The Rise of Pacific Literature: Decolonization, Radical Campuses, and Modernism (Columbia)

Ma, China Pop! Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups (Ohio State)

Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Ohio)

McGarr, Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War (Cambridge)

McQuire, Black Witness: The Power of Indigenous Media (Queensland)

Meyrick, Theatre and Australia (Bloomsbury)

Okihiro, Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation (Duke)

Peri, Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women (Harvard)

Pollin-Galay, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (Penn Press)

Prunier, Colonialism Devours Itself: The Waning of Françafrique (Hurst)

Radchenko, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge)

Reeves and Friedman, Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard)

Reid, The African Revolution: A History of the Long Nineteenth Century (Princeton)

Sapir and Lundgren, A Grammar of Elfdalian (UCL)

Suettinger, The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer (Harvard)

Teeger, Distancing the Past: Racism as History in South African Schools (Columbia)

Tertitskiy, Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung (Hurst)

Tesfai, An African People’s Quest for Freedom and Justice: A Political History of Eritrea 1941–1962 (Hurst)

Troupe and MacKinnon, eds., Métis Matriarchs: Agents of Transition (Regina)

Wahutu, In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge)

Walker, Hitler’s Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima (Cambridge)

Wall, Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985 (McGill-Queen’s)

Westad and Jian, The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform (Yale)

Williams, If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi (Columbia)

Wright, Unruly Labor: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea (Stanford)

American Studies

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Abel, Gluten Free for Life: Celiac Disease, Medical Recognition, and the Food Industry (NYU)

Biehler, Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History (Washington)

Biesecker, Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State (Penn State)

Brady, Mother Trouble: Mediations of White Maternal Angst after Second Wave Feminism (Toronto)

Brazeal, The Hero and the Victim: Narratives of Criminality in Iraq War Fiction [Open Access] (Lever Press)

Brown, Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack (Minnesota)

Bumsted, TeenSet, Teen Fan Magazines, and Rock Journalism: Don’t Let the Name Fool You (Mississippi)

Calloway, Hard Neighbors: The Scotch-Irish Invasion of Native America and the Making of an American Identity (Oxford)

Cates, Dancing on the Devil’s Playground: The Amish Negotiate with Modernity (Johns Hopkins)

Chen, Charting America’s Cold War Waters in East Asia: Sovereignty, Local Interests, and International Security (Cambridge)

Dixon, Nuggets of Gold: Further Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet (Georgia)

Emmons, History’s Erratics: Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930 (Illinois)

Evers and Grynaviski, The Price of Empire: American Entrepreneurs and the Origins of America’s First Pacific Empire (Cambridge)

Fivecoate and Kitta, eds., Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society (Wisconsin)

Fixico, The State of Sequoyah: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Quest for an Indian State (Oklahoma)

Gray and Morris, eds., Matoaka, Pocahontas, Rebecca: Her Atlantic Identities and Afterlives (Virginia)

Grzybowski, The Big Story: The Oral History of Philadelphia TV News (Temple)

Haley, Hopis and the Counterculture: Traditionalism, Appropriation, and the Birth of a Social Field (Arizona)

Handley, Struggle for the City: Citizenship and Resistance in the Black Freedom Movement (Penn State)

Henry, Trekking across America: An Up-Close Look at a Once-Popular Pastime (Iowa)

Heppner, Woodstock: From World War to Culture Wars (SUNY)

Herring, Born of Fire and Rain: Journey into a Pacific Coastal Forest (Yale)

Hogdson, Young Reds in the Big Apple: The New York Young Pioneers of America, 1923-1934 (Fordham)

Hughes, Redface: Race, Performance, and Indigeneity (NYU)

Hunt, Southern by the Grace of God: Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Hollywood’s American South (Georgia)

Jack, Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago)

Jenkins, Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America (NYU)

Kahle, Energy Citizenship: Coal and Democracy in the American Century (Columbia)

Kaisary, From Havana to Hollywood: Slave Resistance in the Cinematic Imaginary (SUNY)

Kirschner, Sex Work in Popular Culture (Toronto)

Lipman, Squanto: A Native Odyssey (Yale)

Lovejoy and Bezerra, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic (North Carolina)

McCarthy, Contested Kingdom: Fan Attachment and Corporate Control at Disneyland (Mississippi)

Minton, Folk Music and Song in the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives (Mississippi)

Muenchrath, Making World Literature: Actors, Institutions, and Networks in the United States since 1890

Mullen, We Charge Genocide! American Fascism and the Rule of Law (Fordham)

Nebolon, Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawai’i and the Making of US Empire (Duke)

Peck, Race Traffic: Antislavery and the Origins of White Victimhood, 1619-1819 (North Carolina)

Perry, Indigenous Dispossession, Anti-Immigration, and the Public Pedagogy of US Empire (Ohio State)

Ramani, Rudderless Superpower: The United States in Africa (Hurst)

Renfro, The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (North Carolina)

Rhenisch, The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle (Regina)

Richotte, The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution (Stanford)

Rockman, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (Chicago)

Romine, The Zombie Memes of Dixie (Georgia)

Rose-Mockry, Liberating Lawrence: Gay Activism in the 1970s at the University of Kansas (Kansas)

Round, Inscribing Sovereignties: Writing Community in Native North America (North Carolina)

Sparding, No Better Friend? The United States and Germany Since 1945 (Hurst)

Stanciu and Totten, eds., Race in the Multiethnic Literature Classroom (Illinois)

Stone, Black Prison Intellectuals: Writings from the Long Nineteenth Century (Florida)

Street, Black Revolutionaries: A History of the Black Panther Party (Georgia)

Torres Colón, Styles for Flourishing: Histories of Survival in the Racial Niche (Columbia)

Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People (Oxford)

Upadhyay, Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity (Illinois)

Voigt, Reinventing the Warrior: Masculinity in the American Indian Movement, 1968-1973 (Kansas)

Wagner, Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah (NYU)

Whitesell, Living Off the Government? Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare (NYU)

Wilson, The Politics of Hate: How the Christian Right Darkened America’s Political Soul (Temple)

Yagoda, Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English (Princeton)

Yancey and Oh, Who Is Antiracist? Beliefs, Motivations, and Politics (Temple)

Yasutake, The Feminist Pacific: International Women’s Networks in Hawai’i, 1820–1940 (Columbia)

Zimmer, Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement (Oklahoma)

Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern Studies

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Bartlett, History in Flames: The Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts (Cambridge)

Bates, The Origins of Agriculture in the Bronze Age Indus Civilization (Cambridge)

Charles, The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion)

Collins, Disenchanting Albert the Great: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Magician (Penn State)

Collins, The Assyrians: Lost Civilizations (Reaktion)

Doran, From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford)

Farnsworth, Atlantic Crossroads in Lisbon’s New Golden Age, 1668-1750 (Penn State)

Fredriksen, Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton)

Furley, Myths, Muses and Mortals: The Way of Life in Ancient Greece (Reaktion)

Grajetzki, The Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt: History, Archaeology and Society (Bloomsbury)

Hadjinicolaou, The Art of Medieval Falconry (Reaktion)

Hadley and Richards, Life in the Viking Great Army: Raiders, Traders, and Settlers (Oxford)

Homza, The Child Witches of Olague (Penn State)

Källén, The Trouble with Ancient DNA: Telling Stories of the Past with Genomic Science (Chicago)

Kehnel, The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability (Brandeis)

Kosmin, The Ancient Shore (Harvard)

Kuhn, Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England (Penn Press)

Machielsen, The Basque Witch-Hunt: A Secret History (Bloomsbury)

Manguel, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (Revised and Expanded) (Yale)

Mazza, Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts (Stanford)

Milburn, trans., Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue: A Literary Translation of the First Chinese Novel, Wu Yue chunqiu (SUNY)

Mitchell, Instrumentality: On Technical Objects and Orientations in the Later Middle Ages (Minnesota)

Murray, The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present (Harvard)

Paterson, The Troubadours (Reaktion)

Richards and Cummings, Stone Circles: A Field Guide (Yale)

Schine, Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race (Chicago)

Westwall, Maidens or Monsters? Amazons and Goddesses, Queens and Temptresses in Medieval Legend (Washington)

Wiesner-Hanks, Women and the Reformations: A Global History (Yale)

Zhuangi, trans. by Chris Fraser, The Complete Writings (Oxford)

SF / Fantasy / Horror Studies

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Abate, Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States (Rutgers)

Bérubé, The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species (Columbia)

Blažan, Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (Virginia)

Campbell, The Brontës and the Fairy Tale (Ohio)

Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (Minnesota)

Coulthard, Gothic Mētis: Cunning Monstrosity, Shapeshifting, and Subversion Linking the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Wales)

Duns, Theology of Horror: The Hidden Depths of Popular Films (Notre Dame)

Eghigian, After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon (Oxford)

Ekman, Urban Fantasy: Exploring Modernity through Magic [Open Access] (Lever Press)

Esser, Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory (Bloomsbury)

Grady, Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West (Texas)

Haddad, The Detroit Genre: Race, Dispossession, and Resilience in American Literature and Film, 1967-2023 [Open Access] (Lever Press)

Jeon, Bong Joon Ho (Illinois)

Jones, Black Speculative Feminisms: Memory and Liberated Futures in Black Women’s Fiction (Ohio State)

Kee, Corpse Crusaders: The Zombie in American Comics (Michigan)

Langsdale, Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel Comics (Texas)

Lau, Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale (Wayne State)

McFarlane, Outback: Westerns in Australian Cinema (Intellect)

McLaughlin, Making the Literary-Geographical World of Sherlock Holmes: The Game is Afoot (Wales)

Noriega, et al., eds., Science Fiction against the Margins: Cinematic Futures, Global Imaginaries (UCLA Chicano Studies)

Ogren, Reel Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism and Neo-Hasidism in Contemporary Cinema (Rutgers)

Polan, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Bloomsbury)

Roche, Arrival (Texas)

Schmiesing, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography (Yale)

Steirer, Legal Stories: Narrative-Based Property Development in the Modern Copyright Era (Michigan)

Suppia, Brazilian Science Fiction Film: A Critical History (SUNY)

Tang, Specters, Monsters, and the Damned: Fantastic Threats to the Social Order in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction (Vanderbilt)

Tomabechi, Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics (Rutgers)

Townend, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford)

Warner, The Rebirth of Suspense: Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema (Columbia)

Watts, Postracial Fantasies and Zombies: On the Racist Apocalyptic Politics Devouring the World (California)

Welker, Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls‘ Comics Artists and Fans (Hawai’i)

Worden, Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics (Ohio State)