All the threads | ROROTOKO

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February 17, 2010

Political Affect

John Protevi

The recent earthquake in Haiti echoed—on a much larger scale—the events of Hurricane Katrina, provoking a depressingly familiar reaction from the authorities responsible for militarizing or “securitizing” relief efforts.In Chapter...

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February 17, 2010

Political Affect

John Protevi

What I wanted to do in Political Affect was write a book on advances in the sciences that would use a continental figure (Deleuze) as part of its theoretical basis,...

In a nutshell

February 17, 2010

Political Affect

John Protevi

In Political Affect I address human nature as bio-cultural. Each one of us is a “body politic” that connects the social and the somatic. I avoid the extremes of social...

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February 15, 2010

Investing in Protection

Mark S. Manger

I’ve developed an analytical framework in which politicians and bureaucrats mainly respond to demands from economic interest groups in deciding trade policy. Institutions and culture do matter, but only idiosyncratically....

The wide angle

February 15, 2010

Investing in Protection

Mark S. Manger

The idea for the book was born from a conversation with Noboru Hatakeyama, a former top official in Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry—the (in)famous MITI—in the fall of...

In a nutshell

February 15, 2010

Investing in Protection

Mark S. Manger

One of the most notable developments in international trade after the end of the Cold War has been the explosion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In 1990, there were about...

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February 12, 2010

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Catherine M. Cole

While most of my book is about the TRC as performance rather than artistic performances about the TRC, the final chapter returns to the aesthetic realm by examining Philip Miller’s...

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February 12, 2010

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Catherine M. Cole

Once at a dinner party, when I described my book as being about the performative dimensions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an attorney who was there quipped, “Well, that...

In a nutshell

February 12, 2010

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Catherine M. Cole

Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission is about the messy, uncertain process of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, and the quasi-judicial ritual that South Africa used to help accomplish such...

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February 10, 2010

The Tyranny of Opinion

Pablo Piccato

There are two episodes, in chapters two and seven, that I hope will reward the patience of the reader. Two duels, one in 1880 and the other in 1894, mark...

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February 10, 2010

The Tyranny of Opinion

Pablo Piccato

We tend to assume that freedom of speechnaturally accompanies other democratic rights. But the construction of the virtual and physical spaces where modern individuals could publicly and freely use their...

In a nutshell

February 10, 2010

The Tyranny of Opinion

Pablo Piccato

Mexico emerged as a modern nation in the 1860s, after half a century of civil war, foreign invasion and political instability. In a new nation divided by ethnicity, class, religion...

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February 8, 2010

What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?

Kevin Mattson

On page 149 I start to describe the Disco Demolition rally in Chicago that occurred just a few days before Jimmy Carter gave his speech. The rally is a wonderful...

The wide angle

February 8, 2010

What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?

Kevin Mattson

The book addresses broad questions of American national identity. Who are we as a nation: selfish individualists or citizens and members of a commonwealth? Can America be a nation with...

In a nutshell

February 8, 2010

What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?

Kevin Mattson

I want a reader to enter a truly bizarre world: America in 1979. It was a period of disco and disco demolition, cocaine and divorce, an Iranian revolution and oil...

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February 5, 2010

Coyote at the Kitchen Door

Stephen DeStefano

The preface provides a perspective for the book, as well as an explanation of the structure of each chapter, so that might be the appropriate place to start browsing. The prologue...

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February 5, 2010

Coyote at the Kitchen Door

Stephen DeStefano

In much of the world, cities are expanding and growing to astronomical sizes. Along with the growth of cities comes the spread of suburbs. Suburban areas now dominate the perimeter...

In a nutshell

February 5, 2010

Coyote at the Kitchen Door

Stephen DeStefano

Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia is about what the relatively recent phenomenon of wide-scale urban and suburban development means to the landscape, to wildlife, to...

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February 3, 2010

Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy

Jonathan Walker

Pistols! Treason! Murder! contains numerous original illustrations, which I scripted and storyboarded, and which were created by Dan Hallett. The one reproduced here, titled The Wounds of Giulio Cazzari, accompanies...

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February 3, 2010

Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy

Jonathan Walker

Venice in the 1610s and 1620s was the first European state to undertake systematic surveillance of private individuals, and to entrust the supervision of such surveillance to a permanent committee,...

In a nutshell

February 3, 2010

Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy

Jonathan Walker

Pistols! Treason! Murder! describes the short, disturbing and unprecedented career of a Venetian spy, Gerolamo Vano, who was executed for perjury in 1622. In the years immediately preceding his death, Vano...

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February 1, 2010

Animals as Persons

Gary L. Francione

If a “just browsing” reader were to pick up Animals as Persons in a bookstore, I would hope that s/he would first encounter pages 26-28, where I first describe the...

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February 1, 2010

Animals as Persons

Gary L. Francione

Animals as Persons can be understood as a reaction to and rejection of the paradigm of animal welfare that has dominated our thinking about the moral status of nonhuman animals...

In a nutshell

February 1, 2010

Animals as Persons

Gary L. Francione

For most of us, the central issue of animal ethics is our treatment of animals. We believe that animals have some moral value but that we are morally justified in...

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January 29, 2010

Macaulay

Robert E. Sullivan

The introduction, the envoi, and two pictures may be worth several thousand words.The introduction surveys the book, and the envoi traces Macaulay’s impact to our times.The book’s dust jacket reproduces...

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January 29, 2010

Macaulay

Robert E. Sullivan

The interaction of modern religion and its surrogates interests me. It’s often misleadingly called “belief versus unbelief.” In fact, all of us believe a lot. For centuries intelligent people, both...

In a nutshell

January 29, 2010

Macaulay

Robert E. Sullivan

Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power is a cultural biography of Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). The eclipse of his reputation may suggest that there’s nothing deader than a dead empire....

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January 27, 2010

The Language of the Heart

Trysh Travis

I’ve got two of these. The first is on pages 16-17, where I talk about what this book is not. Unlike most of the writings on the topic, The Language...

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January 27, 2010

The Language of the Heart

Trysh Travis

Two phenomena led me to this project. A number of people close to me are recovering addicts of one sort or another, and when I attended meetings with them I...

In a nutshell

January 27, 2010

The Language of the Heart

Trysh Travis

My book is about that loosely defined cultural phenomenon known as “the recovery movement”—an agglomeration of self-help groups and practices that have grown out of Alcoholics Anonymous since its founding...

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January 25, 2010

Birthright

Roger Ekirch

The prologue of Birthright is the portion to which I devoted the most energy. If it does not capture the reader’s imagination, chances are that the rest of the book...

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January 25, 2010

Birthright

Roger Ekirch

Although the inspiration for five novels, Annesley’s ordeal has attracted scant attention from historians, in part because the principal primary source associated with his abduction is a volume, first published...

In a nutshell

January 25, 2010

Birthright

Roger Ekirch

Birthright sets out to recount, for the first time, the real-life saga of James Annesley, which not only captivated eighteenth-century Britain but inspired five novels, most famously Robert Louis Stevenson’s...

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January 22, 2010

Lenin's Brother

Philip Pomper

In the book’s last chapter, I try to explain Vladimir’s development, showing how family history shapes people and how parents and siblings interact in complex ways.The Ulyanov family and its...

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January 22, 2010

Lenin's Brother

Philip Pomper

Lenin’s Brother follows my earlier work on Lavrov, Nechaev, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. The book allowed me to revisit Lenin’s entry into the revolutionary movement—a fateful moment. Most historians agree...

In a nutshell

January 22, 2010

Lenin's Brother

Philip Pomper

Lenin’s Brother tells the tragic story of a brilliant young scientist and his turn to terrorism, and the history of the family that his actions devastated. During his senior year at...

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January 19, 2010

Animal Lessons

Kelly Oliver

Throughout Western history, philosophers have suggested that what is human is determined by what we eat. Whether they think that we are what we eat (like Rousseau and Herder) or...

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January 19, 2010

Animal Lessons

Kelly Oliver

Animal Lessons engages with, yet radically departs from, discussions of animal rights and animal welfare that dominate philosophical conversations about animals. I move away from the framework of animal rights...

In a nutshell

January 19, 2010

Animal Lessons

Kelly Oliver

Animal Lessons is about how philosophers throughout Western history have used animals to make the case that humans are special. Philosophers have argued that humans are so unique that they...

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January 18, 2010

Everything but the Coffee

Bryant Simon

On page p. 90 of Everything but the Coffee there is the start of a rather long riff on bathrooms that captures the way in which corporate powers, posing as...

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January 18, 2010

Everything but the Coffee

Bryant Simon

Starbucks is not really all that special or unique. Despite its claims of good deeds and better works, the company, at the end of the day, is typical—typical of how...

In a nutshell

January 18, 2010

Everything but the Coffee

Bryant Simon

Obviously, this isn’t the first book about Starbucks. But Everything but the Coffee is first to examine the company’s rise and fall and look ahead to its uncertain future in...

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January 15, 2010

Transforming Toxic Leaders

Alan Goldman

In my work with business leaders and their organizations, I bring an active counseling psychology perspective into play, working with executives one-on-one. Naturally, I entertain the possibility that highly intelligent...

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January 15, 2010

Transforming Toxic Leaders

Alan Goldman

I argue that a single-minded concentration on positive leadership alone is one-sided, skewed, and unable to address the psychology of high-level leaders and extremely complex organizational systems. A failure in...

In a nutshell

January 15, 2010

Transforming Toxic Leaders

Alan Goldman

In my new book Transforming Toxic Leaders I speak from behind closed corporate doors to provide a unique view into the dark side of leadership. Based on executive coaching and...

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January 13, 2010

Aging by the Book

Kay Heath

Midlife anxiety thrived in other forms of Victorian print culture as well. One good example is soap advertisements. At mid-century, an array of mass produced products were put on display...

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January 13, 2010

Aging by the Book

Kay Heath

I became interested in writing about age as a “non-traditional” graduate student in my early forties. Not just self-conscious about being older than my classmates, I also couldn’t help but...

In a nutshell

January 13, 2010

Aging by the Book

Kay Heath

In an 1852 Punch cartoon, a middle-aged man looks in a mirror and says, “Good gracious! Is it possible?—No! Yes! No!—Yes! Yes, by Jupiter, it's a grey hair in my...

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January 11, 2010

The Arts and the Definition of the Human

Joseph Margolis

In the Prologue to my book, I offer a summary of my theory of the human self and explain the conceptual linkage between the definition of the human and the...

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January 11, 2010

The Arts and the Definition of the Human

Joseph Margolis

Looking at paintings and reading books, I suggest, are abilities to “penetrate,” culturally informed and culturally transformed by our mastery of language and our sense of the practices and history...

In a nutshell

January 11, 2010

The Arts and the Definition of the Human

Joseph Margolis

I show how looking at paintings and reading literature depend on how sensory perception and understanding are formed and transformed by the way in which we ourselves are first formed,...

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January 8, 2010

Youth in a Suspect Society

Henry A. Giroux

I have always been concerned about the role that theory might play as a resource in providing both a language and a context for understanding and addressing important social issues....

The wide angle

January 8, 2010

Youth in a Suspect Society

Henry A. Giroux

Youth in a Suspect Society takes as its major organizing idea the notion that youth are under assault in ways that are entirely new. My assumption is that young people...

In a nutshell

January 8, 2010

Youth in a Suspect Society

Henry A. Giroux

In many ways, Youth in a Suspect Society is motivated by a sense of outrage and a sense of hope. While youth have always represented an ambiguous category, they have within...

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January 6, 2010

The Relentless Revolution

Joyce Appleby

I’d like my fresh reader to read the introduction carefully because it lays out my argument and makes the assertions that the text must back up. Many believe that capitalism...

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January 6, 2010

The Relentless Revolution

Joyce Appleby

A history does more than narrate events—it also reveals the decisive moments that give shape to a life or country. It permits consideration of turning points and alternative directions for...

In a nutshell

January 6, 2010

The Relentless Revolution

Joyce Appleby

The Relentless Revolution begins with the puzzle of why it took so long for capitalism to emerge. Defining capitalism as a cultural system based on a particular economy, I show...

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January 4, 2010

Chicago 1890

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

One of the most revered buildings in Chicago’s architectural history is also one of the strangest. Looming over the intersection of Dearborn and Jackson Streets, Burnham’s and Root’s Monadnock building,...

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January 4, 2010

Chicago 1890

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

Although I was trained as a professional architect, I am principally an architectural historian, drawn especially to the social and political context of architecture and urbanism in nineteenth and early...

In a nutshell

January 4, 2010

Chicago 1890

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

This book is about the first skyscrapers in the world, those built in Chicago in the 1880s and 90s. The unprecedented sixteen-story buildings lining La Salle and Dearborn Streets gave...

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January 1, 2010

How Wars End

Dan Reiter

The chapter on the American Civil War describes what may have been Lincoln’s finest moment as president. During the summer of 1864, Northern public support for the war was collapsing....

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January 1, 2010

How Wars End

Dan Reiter

I started thinking about this book in the early 2000s. On the policy side, in 2002 the George W. Bush administration announced the National Security Strategy, sometimes called the Bush...

In a nutshell

January 1, 2010

How Wars End

Dan Reiter

How Wars End starts with Carl von Clausewitz’s famous insight that war is politics by other means. War is not just an exercise in martial engineering, two waves of soldiers...

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December 30, 2009

Socrates in the Boardroom

Amanda Goodall

Why do experts make better leaders? I interviewed twenty-six presidents and deans in universities in the US and UK, including Amy Gutmann at U Penn, Lawrence Summers and Derek Bok, former...

The wide angle

December 30, 2009

Socrates in the Boardroom

Amanda Goodall

There are literally thousands of books on leadership on the market. And one of the common criticisms about them is that they are often anecdotal and lack convincing evidence. Also, various...

In a nutshell

December 30, 2009

Socrates in the Boardroom

Amanda Goodall

Socrates in the Boardroom argues that it is experts, not managers that make the better leaders. This is a message that, recently, has been almost unfashionable. I go a step...

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December 28, 2009

The Theater of Truth

William Egginton

In the introduction I draw some close parallels between baroque manipulation of appearances and the control exerted by the Bush administration over the news media. The use of the media...

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December 28, 2009

The Theater of Truth

William Egginton

The baroque, as I theorize it, be it as a stylistic marker or period in art history, may be difficult to recognize for those who thought they knew it well....

In a nutshell

December 28, 2009

The Theater of Truth

William Egginton

The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)baroque Aesthetics argues that seventeenth-century baroque and twentieth-century neobaroque aesthetics have to be understood as part of the same complex. Rather than a return...

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December 25, 2009

Shoot an Iraqi

Wafaa Bilal

Here in the U.S. we read and watch the news of countless deaths in Iraq and other war-torn countries around the world. We briefly take note of the incidents, sometimes...

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December 25, 2009

Shoot an Iraqi

Wafaa Bilal

For Americans following media coverage of the past two Iraq wars, Saddam Hussein was something of a cliché, a ridiculous megalomaniacal figure whose very existence provided cover for two wars...

In a nutshell

December 25, 2009

Shoot an Iraqi

Wafaa Bilal

I live in two worlds. I fled my native Iraq in 1991 during the Gulf War, and after almost two years in horrific refugee camps in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,...

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December 23, 2009

Knut Hamsun

Monika Zagar

Hamsun’s actions in the few short summer months of 1943 define him, clarifying his unreserved support of the Nazi program. He writes an admiring letter to Joseph Goebbels and sends...

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December 23, 2009

Knut Hamsun

Monika Zagar

While searching for answers to Hamsun’s support for the Third Reich, I was struck by several things. First, I felt that the critical texts about Hamsun were too narrowly focused on his...

In a nutshell

December 23, 2009

Knut Hamsun

Monika Zagar

Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance explains how and why the extraordinary Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun supported, enthusiastically and to the bitter end, the German occupation of Norway...

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December 21, 2009

The History of Islam in German Thought

Ian Almond

The aspect of my research which took me most by surprise happened half-way through my writing of the book. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for all his stunning complexity, notoriously dismissed...

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December 21, 2009

The History of Islam in German Thought

Ian Almond

My book takes issue with a number of positions, the first of which being that a complete and coherent history of European thought can be written without reference to non-Europe....

In a nutshell

December 21, 2009

The History of Islam in German Thought

Ian Almond

This book is about the reception of the Muslim world in the works of eight major German thinkers, but differs from other histories of ideas on two points. First of...

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December 18, 2009

True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China

Robert E. Hegel

There are many cases in my book that should be of particular interest to an inquisitive reader wanting to find out what happened, why, and what the punishment might have...

The wide angle

December 18, 2009

True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China

Robert E. Hegel

The history of China’s interactions with Western cultures is fraught with misunderstandings, especially on the part of the West. Based on information supplied by pioneering Jesuit missionaries in China at...

In a nutshell

December 18, 2009

True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China

Robert E. Hegel

My book presents a sample of crime reports from eighteenth-century China in English translation. All are capital crimes. Since all capital crimes might carry the death penalty, detailed reports of...

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December 16, 2009

Naked City

Sharon Zukin

Not surprisingly for a book about consuming authenticity, a lot of the writing revolves around food. Food is the new “art” in the urban cultural experience. This is true not...

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December 16, 2009

Naked City

Sharon Zukin

In a nutshell

December 16, 2009

Naked City

Sharon Zukin

Are cities losing their soul? Stroll around the center of the world’s great cities, and you see the same gentrified neighborhoods, certified historic buildings, spectacular skyscrapers and new modern art...

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December 14, 2009

Radical, Religious, and Violent

Eli Berman

The final chapter of Radical, Religious, and Violent examines religious radicalism in a historical context. Having established earlier in the book why religious radicals can be lethal terrorists and especially...

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December 14, 2009

Radical, Religious, and Violent

Eli Berman

My book offers a fresh way of understanding insurgency and terrorism. I outline a constructive approach to confronting localized insurgencies like those in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the international terrorism...

In a nutshell

December 14, 2009

Radical, Religious, and Violent

Eli Berman

Why are the Taliban such a threat in Afghanistan? And why are violent radical Islamists such resilient terrorists? You won’t believe this but the answer is communism. I’m not kidding....

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December 11, 2009

The Tactile Eye

Jennifer M. Barker

The full-bodied, mutual suffusion of film and viewer is illustrated graphically and literally by The Big Swallow (James Williamson, 1901). The film begins with a medium-long shot of a gentleman...

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December 11, 2009

The Tactile Eye

Jennifer M. Barker

The Tactile Eye emerged as a response to my own craving for what anthropologist Paul Stoller calls “sensuous scholarship.” I was inspired by certain film and art history scholarship in...

In a nutshell

December 11, 2009

The Tactile Eye

Jennifer M. Barker

In Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep (2006), Gael García Bernal plays a frustrated artist with a penchant for quirky handmade objects and stop-motion animation who falls in love with...

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December 9, 2009

Household Gods

Deborah Cohen

The idea that interiors reveal personalities is such a truism of contemporary culture that it is difficult to imagine that it was not always so. While the well-to-do in previous...

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December 9, 2009

Household Gods

Deborah Cohen

My book began as an inquiry into the origins of consumer demand. In the past two decades, economic historians have established that consumer demand provided an important catalyst for industrialization....

In a nutshell

December 9, 2009

Household Gods

Deborah Cohen

Household Gods is a history of the British love-affair with the domestic interior from the age of mass manufacture to modernism. In no other country was domesticity so celebrated and...

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December 7, 2009

On Civic Friendship

Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach

In the book’s preface I dive into what I has been much overlooked in the modern period: the importance of friendship, how it seems to differ for women, and not...

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December 7, 2009

On Civic Friendship

Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach

Despite the major transformation of consciousness occasioned by the 20th century women’s movement, and on a scale that suggests powerful historical forces are at work, the modern political state is...

In a nutshell

December 7, 2009

On Civic Friendship

Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach

Historically speaking, theorizing the nature of the political state from a feminist point of view is in its earliest stages. So my book offers a novel feminist account of the...

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December 4, 2009

At Home in the Law

Jeannie Suk

In many jurisdictions, the moment a misdemeanor domestic violence arrest enters the system, prosecutors routinely seek a protection order banning the alleged assailant from the home, whether or not the...

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December 4, 2009

At Home in the Law

Jeannie Suk

The image of the home as a place of coercion and abuse has gained ground in our culture. The notion that the home shields subordination within its walls is becoming...

In a nutshell

December 4, 2009

At Home in the Law

Jeannie Suk

At Home in the Law argues that the past 40 years have witnessed important transformations in the legal idea of what the home is. For centuries the familiar adage, a...

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December 2, 2009

The Frankfurt School in Exile

Thomas Wheatland

In the wake of 1968, Herbert Marcuse and, by extension, his former colleagues from the Frankfurt School became forever linked with the student protests of that era. While most of...