New Books Network

Here’s an odd thing: there really haven’t been any universally-acclaimed geniuses since Einstein. At least I can’t think of any. Really smart people, yes. But geniuses per se, no. It seems Einstein was such a genius that he destroyed the entire concept of genius for us. Or perhaps we’ve just become tired of “genius.” There is, it must be admitted, something democratic cultures don’t like about “geniuses.” If we’re all equal, well, then how can some of us be “geniuses” and others just ordinary folks? It seems that either we’re all “geniuses” or none of us are. In his fascinating book Divine Fury: A History of Genius (Basic Books, 2013), Darrin M. McMahon explains Einstein’s impact on the idea of “genius” and much more. You will learn, for example, how in Greco-Roman culture a “genius” was a spiritual double: it was something you had, a ghostly sidekick, not something you were. Sometimes your “genius” was good–a guardian angel–and sometimes it was bad–a demon. It’s only since the Enlightenment that we’ve come to think of “genius” as a certain kind of person, namely, someone with truly extraordinary capacities. It’s a fascinating story. Listen in.

In our fast-paced world, it is easy to move from one crisis to another.  Conflicts loom in rapid succession, problems demand solutions (or at least analysis) and impending disasters require a response. It is all we can do to pay attention to the present moment.  Lingering on the consequences of the past seems to take too much of our finite attention. Jennie Burnet‘s fantastic new book Genocide Lives in Us:  Women, Memory and Silence in Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), offers a useful corrective to this fascination with the immediate.  Jennie is interested primarily in what it means to live in a society ruptured by violence.  She writes about how people try to speak, or not speak, about the killing that destroyed their families or those of their neighbors.  She reflects on how the government’s decision to try to forestall future violence by eliminating ethnic categories affects individuals’ efforts to shape their own identity and self-understanding.  She analyzes the way practices of memorialization reflect changing ways of understanding and narrating past atrocities.  And she allows her subjects to share the challenges of living in a world where the past is always present. Jennie, both in print and in the interview, is thoughtful, articulate and compassionate.  I hope the interview gives you a taste of the richness of her book. Genocide Lives in Us won the 2013 Elliot Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. It also received an honorable mention for the 2013 Melville J. Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association.

In The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (University of California Press, 2011), Carla Bellamy explores the role of saint shrines in India, while focusing on a particular venue known as Husain Tekri, or “Husain Hill.” Through her in-depth ethnographic research, Bellamy’s monograph provides vivid description and analysis of the site as well as first-person narratives of pilgrims in order to offer a dynamic portrayal of the shrine complex. Bellamy shows how lines between religious communities are often fluid rather than fixed. She also problematizes notions of so-called spirit possession, interrogates the metaphysical power of frankincense, and articulates myriad perspectives of what healing might mean for those who visit Husain Tekri and participate in its rituals. Bellamy’s rich ethnography should appeal to numerous audiences, including those interested in South Asia, shrine culture, Islam, Indian religion, and Sufism.

Pedro Oliveira provides a fascinating glimpse into his transition from academia into consultancy, with a guide for those like minded to boot. People-Centered Innovation: Becoming a Practitioner in Innovation Research (Biblio Publishing, 2013) chronicles Oliveira’s journey from his work as a clinical psychologist in Portugal, to becoming an anthropologist in the UK, and moving into the world of business and innovation. Written for a general audience, this book is a mix of case studies, theory for practitioners, and autobiographical information that shows how to apply work in the social sciences to the problems facing businesses today. This is a great read for anyone interested in psychology and anthropology, as well as how business and innovation is changing due to the influence of the humanistic sciences.

Stephen Medvic is the author of In Defense of Politicians: The Expectations Trap and Its Threat to Democracy (Routledge 2013). He is associate professor of government at Franklin and Marshall University. Medvic confronts the widespread dissatisfaction with Washington, Congress, and politicians from a new perspective. He argues that much of the antipathy towards politicians is based on faulty expectations, what he calls an “expectations trap”. The public wants often contradictory things from politicians: strongly held beliefs and the willingness to make deals; ambition and wisdom, but not so much of each that they are self-serving. Medvic calls for more realistic expectations of what function politicians play in a democracy to move beyond some of the current public frustrations.

It’s that time of year when the panels of experts on sports call-in shows shout opinions on the best and worst of the past twelve months.  To finish the year, New Books in Sports offers its own panels of experts.  But rather than arguing over the biggest matches and plays of the year, they’ll share their insights into some of the most acute problems facing sport today. In the last year, the National Football League has had to contend with a growing body of evidence showing brain damage in former players.  To learn how these discoveries are affecting football, from the professional ranks down to the youth level, and what they mean for the future of the game, we’ll hear from journalist Patrick Hruby and Michael Oriard, a longtime scholar of football and a former NFL player.  We’ll turn from American football to the world game, and look at the impact of last June’s demonstrations in Brazil.  Will the political upheaval in Brazil affect the FIFA World Cup in 2014, and will it change the decisions of FIFA and other organizations in awarding sports mega-events?  We put those questions to economist Victor Matheson, Rio-based geographer and journalist Christopher Gaffney, and Tim Vickery, the BBC’s football correspondent in South America.  And after a year of bad news that spilled from the sports pages to the front pages, we raise the question of whether our fandom compromises our sense of morality.  We hear from journalist and author Gideon Haigh, philosopher Heather Reid, and religion writer Tom Krattenmaker about the toll that sport takes on moral character. And because this is New Books in Sports, we also need to get recommendations on some good reads.  We’ll hear from David Steele of The Sporting News and cricket writers Bernard Whimpress and David Mutton about their favorite books of the last year.

Early modern European imperialism is really pretty easy to understand. Spain, Portugal, England, France, Russia and the rest were ruled by people whose business was war. They were conquerors, and conquering was what they did. So, when they attacked and subdued vast stretches of the world, they did so without regret or second-thought. All that changed after French Revolution. France was not, ostensibly at least, ruled by people whose  business was war. Yet, even for the French republicans, imperialism remained attractive. And so the question was put: how does a republican state “do” imperialism? In her excellent book By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (Cornell University Press, 2011), Jennifer Sessions tells us how with reference to the French conquest and colonization of Algeria. The answer the French gave was strikingly simple: you make you imperial subjects into citizens and your imperial territories part of the mother country. That was the theory, at least. Sessions shows us how it worked out–or didn’t work out–in practice. Listen in.

This is a very timely book, coming as it does in the midst of the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 — the war that gave birth to the maroon community of Prospect Bluff, Florida. In his book The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World (UP of Florida, 2013), Nathaniel Millett shows how an assortment of free African-Americans, escaped slaves, Africans, and Afro-Indians created a thriving, highly organized community in the shadow of the expanding slave empire of the southwestern United States. Inspired by the singular figure of Edward Nichols, and Irish-born British officer of staunch anti-slavery convictions, the men and women of Prospect Bluff forged a community that realized their deepest understandings of freedom in the midst of the era of Atlantic revolutions.

We all know the commonplace that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. After reading Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction (University of Iowa Press, 2012), I’m inclined to extend this wisdom to titles. Though accurate, Metawritings doesn’t capture the storytelling power that editor Jill Talbot gathers in this collection of essays and interviews by thirteen fiction and nonfiction writers. In it, you’ll find a piece by Robin Hemley that opens, “It’s my first full day in Prague, and I desperately want to find someone to pickpocket me.” Or this one by Sarah Blackman that begins, “Once a person has been a girl, it’s hard to write about the subject.” You’ll find a pithy investigation into dating and a poignant account of a son reckoning with an estranged, ageing father. You’ll find writers in pursuit of Janis Joplin and going on blind dates, writers wrestling with the soul-crushing ugliness of Las Vegas and exploring the exotic dangers of Adventure Island. You’ll discover whether or not there’s a dog at the end of the world. And yet Talbot’s title does do import work, because it alerts us to the artistic and even existential investigations that drive these pieces. “Metawriting” is writing that reflects on its own nature as writing, that calls attention to itself as an artificial creation. Metawriting makes the writer’s often invisible hand visible. You might think of Tristram Shandy in his Life and Opinions, constantly belaboring the fact that he can’t get on with the telling of his life, or Hamlet, waxing about the nature of players and playing, in the play that bears his name. Here, however, the genre is nonfiction, so the pieces in Metawritings strike at questions that involve us all. What’s a fact? What’s a lie? What’s at stake if I don’t know or can’t tell the difference? Who is this person that, most days, I think of as me? And how do all those ways I present myself to others, whether I’m face-to-face or on Facebook, capture who I am? To say it in a more “meta-” manner, just how do we go about making selves out of ourselves?

In Russia’s collective memory, the Stalin terror is often remembered and referred to by its most grueling year: “1937.” Following Stalin’s death and the shocking revelations about his regime exposed by his successor Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet citizens began to remember and rethink the turbulent first half of the twentieth century – the decades that, in addition to 1937, included two revolutions, two world wars, a civil war, multiple forced expropriations, and relentless class warfare. During the 1950s and 1960s, Novyi Mir (New World), the most famous literary journal in twentieth-century Russia, forged the language and published the literature that for the first time addressed this tragic Soviet past. The Readers of Novyi Mir: Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past (Harvard University Press, 2013) examines several thousand letters from Soviet readers preserved in the Russian archives. Exploring how the readers responded to those groundbreaking publications in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Denis Kozlov traces the maturation and sophistication of Soviet public memory. In their dialogue with literature, the readers were forced to face their own and the country’s historic ordeal and to literally ‘come to terms’ with this past – to rethink it and reincorporate it in their existence. While some rejected the new truths, a great many people did meet the challenge. Offering a detailed look at the thoughts and hopes of Soviet citizens expressed through their heartfelt, autobiographical letters to the journal, this book brings to light the memories and interpretations of the twentieth-century tragedies that, from the 1960s to this day, have shaped the relationship between the state and the individual in Russia, as well as in other countries of the post-Soviet space.

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari‘a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform.

Julia H. Lee is the author of Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937 (New York University Press, 2011). Dr. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Interracial Encounters investigates the overlapping of African American and Asian American literature. By focusing on the diverse attitudes that blacks and Asian Americans had towards each other, Dr. Lee pushes against dominant conceptions of these groups as either totally cooperative or as totally antagonistic. Lee also explores how American nationalism was produced through this comparison, and shows how Afro-Asian representations allowed readers and writers to consider alliances outside of the American nation-state.

2013 has been an annus horribilis for thrash metal legends Slayer. In February, Slayer parted ways with longtime drummer Dave Lombardo for the third and likely final time. In May, guitarist Jeff Hanneman died of alcohol-related cirrhosis, after being sidelined for better than two years for a necrotic spider bite. As these events unfolded, journalist D.X. Ferris was hard at work on his latest book on the band, Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years (6623 Press, 2013). It examines Slayer’s origins and development over the past thirty years and makes a persuasive case for Slayer’s musical and cultural influence. Ferris argues, “Slayer remains the all-time quintessential heavy metal band. And metal, more than ever, is significant. The genre has established itself as a permanent part of popular culture. And Slayer are metal’s pre-eminent prophets of rage.” Drawing on a wide and deep pool of source material, including the author’s own interviews with band members, Slayer 66 2/3 is likely to become the definitive history of this seminal heavy metal band. For his part, Ferris probably knows more about the band than anyone outside of its inner circle. Take a listen. D.X. Ferris is the author of Reign in Blood and has contributed pieces for RollingStone.com, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Popdose, Village Voice, and Decibel, among other publications. He is also the creator of Suburban Metal Dad, Heavy Metal Game of Thrones Reviews and is the proprietor of Pentagrammarian.com, the world’s only metal-oriented grammar and usage website. For his work he was named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists’ Reporter of the Year in 2011 and is the recipient of numerous other journalism and writing awards. Ferris can be reached on Twitter @dxferris and @slayerbook.

London, December 1563. Elizabeth I—Gloriana, the Virgin Queen—has ruled England for five years, but her throne is far from secure. Even though Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister Mary, the idea of a woman sovereign still troubles much of the populace. And although the burnings of Protestants at Smithfield ceased with Elizabeth’s accession, religion remains a source of dissatisfaction and uncertainty. Catholics, once protected by the crown, find themselves subject to unwarranted search and seizure, to having their ears nailed to the pillory or sliced from their heads, to arrest and confinement in the Tower on the merest suspicion of intent to foment unrest. Not all the plots are imaginary, either: several rebellions with religious overtones punctuate Elizabeth’s reign. Amid this atmosphere of mistrust, William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, sits in the light of a single candle, listening to the rain outside his study window, his robe pulled tight against the December chill. A knock on the door sparks in him the fear that would later be familiar to victims of the Soviet secret police: who would demand entrance after curfew other than government troops bent on hauling him in for his allegiance to the pope? But the queen’s forces cannot be denied, so with considerable trepidation Clarenceux orders his servant to open the door. In fact, his visitor is a friend, a betrayed man facing death and determined to pass on his secret mission to Clarenceux. In accepting, Clarenceux has no idea that the mission places at risk his life, his health, his family, his friends, and the safety of the realm. The price of loyalty is high, and betrayal lurks in every corner. The Clarenceux Trilogy, which continues with The Roots of Betrayal and The Final Sacrament, is the work of James Forrester, the pen name of the historian Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England. His novels wear their history with lightness and panache: Sacred Treason (Sourcebooks, 2012) will pull you into Elizabethan London, and you will not want to leave. Enjoy the ride. Those interested in Henry Machyn”s chronicle can find the text online, hosted by the University of Michigan LIbraries.

Molly Worthen, author most recently of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2013), spoke with Ray Haberski about the ideas that moved a variety of evangelicals in America over the last seventy years.  Worthen argues that attentive observers of American evangelical history must contend with the imagination as much as the mind when considering how evangelicals have “navigated the upheavals in modern American culture and global Christianity.”  Expertly weaving the intellectual and religious histories of institutions and movements with the biographies of specific people, Worthen provides a rigorous and fluid analysis of a much maligned and often misunderstood category of American religion.