Blackwell Publishing

The handbook of organic and fair trade food marketing.

Assembled for those involved in the organic and fair trade food industries, business consultants Wright and McCrea present 13 chapters that provide information on global marketing of organic and fair trade food products. The volume begins with a broad overview of the international market for such products and profiles of the organic consumer and the fair trade consumer. It then presents six case studies of successful brands operating around the world, followed by profiles of organic and fair trade marketing in Germany, Italy, and the United States. A final chapter discusses organic and fair trade crossover and convergence. An appendix lists useful organic and fair trade websites. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Immortality defended.

Leslie (emeritus, U. of Guelph, Canada) writes about three kinds of immortality. The first involves an afterlife of thoughts after bodies have died. The second, which he calls Einsteinian, posits continuing existence back along the fourth dimension after apparent death. The third is part of a unified cosmic reality in which all conscious beings live past, present, and future lives. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Inside the economist's mind; conversations with eminent economists.

Barnett (macroeconomics, U. of Kansas) and Samuelson (emeritus, economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) collect 16 interviews with prominent economists that were first published in the Cambridge U. Press journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics. The interview series was begun with the intention of giving subjects far greater freedom in discussing their views than is typically allowed in a peer-reviewed journal. "Personal attacks, claims of unfairness or prejudice, of religious perscutino, or of political oppression; and unvarnished strong statements about politicians, administrators, and public policy" are all allowed. Eight Nobel Laureates are included: Wassily Leontief, Robert Lucas, Franco Modigliani, Robert Solow, Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Robert Aumann, and James Tobin. The other economists included are David Cass, Jáno Kornai, Paul Volcker, Martin Feldstein, Christopher Sims, Robert Shiller, Stanley Fischer, Jacques Dréze, and Thomas Sargent. A second volume of further interviews from the journal is planned. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The introductory reader in human geography; contemporary debates and classic writings.

For this undergraduate-level introduction to human geography, the editors (professors of geography at Macalester College and the U. of Georgia) have adopted a broad view of the field as applicable to human-environment dynamics (or the nature-society tradition). They have arranged the 37 chapters of the text according to the major thematic areas covered in most introductory human geography courses: population and migration; environment, agriculture, and society; cultural geography and place; urban geography; economic geography; development geography; and political geography. Each section contains theoretical and empirical work and is introduced by a short essay tracing connections from the papers to the broader debates within each subfield. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Late antique and medieval art of the Mediterranean world.

Hoffman (art history, Tufts U., Boston, Mass.), a specialist in early Islamic art, has drawn from her long experience in the field to gather a fascinating collection of articles and chapters concerning the art of the Mediterranean, with a focus throughout on the shared characteristics of the art of the different religions and states in the area. The 21 selections are grouped into six topics, including late antiquity (with selections on Roman, Jewish, and Sasanian art), early non-classical art, luxury arts, and the later Mediterranean, when Venice, Norman Sicily, and the Islamic world were dominant. Among the scholars whose work is included are Henry Maguire, Lisa Golombek, Oleg Grabar, Jerrilynn Dodds, and William Tronzo. This will be a terrific resource for the art history classroom. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The learning society from the perspective of governmentality.

Scholars of education and other social sciences investigate different educational ideas and programs — enlightenment, creativity, participation, inclusion, learning, critique — from the perspective of governmentality, which was opened by the later Foucault. They assume that educational technologies are intrinsically related to how political power is wielded and how people govern themselves. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Metallica and philosophy; a crash course in brain surgery.

Irwin (philosophy, King's College) finds the lyrics of James Hetfield, lead singer of the influential heavy metal band Metallica, to be "rock poetry rivaling Dylan and the Doors and more philosophically significant than the Beatles or U2." These lyrics therefore are the principal focus of this collection of 20 essays in which professional philosophers examine the songs of Metallica and relate them to such questions of emotion and morality, religious belief, nonconformity and truth, authenticity and the writings of Kierkegaard, Foucault's work on insanity and confinement, the ethics of euthanasia, and the mind body problem. A handful of the essays depart from examination of the lyrics to explore such issues as the band's argument against the file sharing website Napster and the obligations of fans and bands to each other. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Museums after modernism; strategies of engagement.

Pollock (social and critical histories of art, U. of Leeds) and Zemans (arts and media administration, York U., Toronto) present a collection of essays by 13 international artists, curators, art historians, and cultural analysts exploring the museum, its time, its place, and its function now. The text includes discussions about art-making, curation, exhibition, display, special projects, access, publics, communities, histories, controversies, public reception, pedagogy, and readings of exhibitions and explorations of exhibitions as readings of contemporary culture. Collectively they explore in what sense the museum can become a public place, publicly responsible for stimulating and housing critical thinking in and through art. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

People/states/territories; the political geographies of British state transformation.

Jones (human geography, U. of Wales, UK) constructs a model of the state that sees it as an ensemble of highly peopled institutions, which seeks to exercise power over a defined territory. Thus highlighting the twin importance of state personnel and territoriality in shaping the emergence and development of states, he offers an account of the forms of the British state from medieval times to late modernity. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Political keywords; a guide for students, activists, and everyone else.

In entries rarely less than a page and often several pages long, Levine (philosophy, U. of Maryland-College Park) explains the current usage of 66 terms used widely in politics and political science, touching only lightly on the history of the word. This is politics, he warns, so there is no such thing as an objective perspective. After each entry, he provides a bibliographical essay. A glossary (without pronunciation guides) briefly defines terms that are used throughout the main entries. There is no index. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Publics and the city.

Mixing topographical approaches to public space, in which one can geographically mark particular places where people can represent themselves to the public, with procedural approaches that see any space that is used for collective action and debate as public space (and somewhat privileging the latter definition), Iveson (urban geography, U. of Sydney, Australia) presents a series of case studies examining the way the urban is used and produced in struggles to establish contesting forms of publicness in Australian cities. His case studies focus on the regulation of protest in Canberra, homosexual cruising in Melbourne, graffiti writing in Sydney, women mobilizing to keep men out of a public swimming pool in Sydney, and youth resistance to neoliberalism in Perth. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Risk management and insurance; perspectives in a global economy.

Incorporating an international perspective, this text explores risk issues, their dynamics, and the economics, social, political, and regulatory environments surrounding global risk and insurance markets. Introductory chapters cover the language of risk management, risk perceptions and reactions, and the economics of international trade. Later sections examine factors shaping the risk environmental internationally, issues related to enterprise risk management in a global economy, and insurance markets worldwide. Theory is illustrated with real-world case studies, and boxes highlight vignettes from newspapers and other publications. Discussion questions, exercises, and a glossary are included. The text is suited for use in core insurance courses in business schools, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Skipper is former chairman of the Department of Risk and Insurance at Georgia State University. Kwon is associate professor of insurance at St. John's University. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Scholastic journalism, 11th ed.

While the 11th edition of this text, first published in 1950, has been expanded to account for changes in student journalism — such as the influence of blogs, the growing professionalism of many high school newspapers, and the reality that students read less news than ever — it maintains that the knowledge and values that make a good and ethical student journalist have hardly changed. Twenty-four well- written chapters address topics including: understanding and gathering news; writing leads, specialty and feature stories, editorials, and sports articles; using journalism style; editing and coaching writers; perfecting typography and production; using layout, pictures, art, and graphics; and advertising in newspapers and yearbooks. The final chapters address student press law and careers in the media. Examples from high school publications around the US are abundant, and exercises conclude each chapter. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Sex discrimination in the workplace; multidisciplinary perspectives.

Despite years of perturbation, legislation and litigation, sex discrimination is still clearly evident in the workplace. This collection of 17 focused articles serves those on both sides of the perturbation, legislation and litigation and includes case studies, personal and evidentiary narratives, and commentary by psychologists, sociologists, social scientists and legal scholars. Topics include the definition of sex discrimination, avoiding litigation and initiating it, dealing with strongly opposing views, looking beyond the statistics, dealing with distrust and dismissal, preparing class action suits, understanding specific laws, serving as an expert witness, learning from case law, taking an "expert" approach (including advice from lawyers and economists), taking a critical look at organizational responses, and actually eliminating sex discrimination in employment. The bibliography is particularly helpful. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Spaces of colonialism; Delhi urban governmentalities.

Legg (U. of Nottingham) takes readers on three treks through the colonial spaces of India's capital. The first is a geographical route between the monumental and residential spaces of New and Old Delhi. The second is historiological, leading from the literature of architecture and town planning to colonial urbanism and post-colonial theory. The third journey attempts seeks a path between the early and late writings of Michel Foucault on power. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Twilight institutions; public authority and local politics in Africa.

Many institutions in Africa, notes Lund (international development studies, Roskilde U., Denmark), display a twilight quality. That is, they are not part of a full-fledged formal state, yet they wield some form of public authority, thus breaking down analytical distinctions between state and society. He presents a collection of 11 papers that explore the dynamic processes in which twilight institutions in Africa are involved. Specific topics include vigilantism and local justice enforcement in southern Nigeria and South Africa, public authority in a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees refugee camp in Tanzania, public authority and the privatization of state services such as customs and police in Senegal, chieftaincy in Mozambique as a dual position of community representative and agent of local state administration, the spatial delimitation of administrative units and the social delimitation of local political communities in Ghana, and the nature of legal legitimacy in Zambia. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Visual factors in reading.

Cornelissen and Singleton bring together 10 papers that consider the role that vision plays in learning to read. They address questions about constraints that the visual system and eye movement control have on visual word recognition, the role of the left and right visual field, what information the brain computes when reading, and the contribution of the visual system towards reading disability, specifically dyslexia. The papers are by UK, US, and Australian scholars of psychology, speech-language pathology, optometry, language and literacy, and linguistics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The weight of things; philosophy and the good life.

Philosophers still address questions of how people should live, says Kazez (philosophy, Southern Methodist U., Texas), but have stopped talking to general readers, thus leaving them to the mercies of religion, psychology, and self-help books. She presents traditional and contemporary views from philosophy on such matters as reason and luck, necessities, hard choices, and trying to be good. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

What is military history?

Morillo (history, Wabash College-Crawfordsville) approaches the question in a pincer movement, looking at what military history is about, and at who studies military history and why. His goal is to introduce beginning students to the history of the field; to its current forms, practitioners, audiences, and controversies; and to its key concepts and directions. Distributed in the US by Blackwell Publishing. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Why youth is not wasted on the young; immaturity in human development.

Examining the long period of physical, social, and intellectual immaturity that humans go through on the way to adulthood, Bjorklund (psychology, Florida Atlantic U.) proposes that though maturity is the desired end state, some aspects of immaturity may be adaptive, or may have been for human ancestors. Contemporary society may be rushing children through childhood for its own purposes, he suggests, and proposes a different approach drawing on evolutionary theory. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Women and leadership; transforming visions and diverse voices.

American psychologists explore whether and how leadership styles of women differ from the existing leadership models, which are based on male leadership styles. Their topics include diverse feminist communication styles, collaborative leadership and social advocacy among women's organizations, feminist leadership among Latinas, and lesbian women and leadership. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)