Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - REFERENCE — Social & Behavioral Sciences — African and African American Studies

This reference work functions as textbook and documentary history to cover large-scale atrocities, from the 190407 Herero Genocide in German South-West Africa (modern Namibia) to the ongoing slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan.  Sections begin with a general overview, helpful maps, and essays on the causes, consequences, perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and international reactions relevant to each specific case.  Cases are amplified by multipage time lines and numerous A-Z encyclopedia entries covering events, organizations, individuals, movements, groups, and places.  Wrapping up each section are essays on historical dilemmas (e.g., why the Armenian Genocide is less well known, or to what extent the US supported genocide in East Timor and Guatemala), a selection of historical documents (eyewitness accounts, official reports, excerpts from literary works), and an extensive bibliography.  Appendixes survey relevant laws and international organizations, and particular crimes against humanity, such as the mass Ukrainian starvation (Holodomor) or the brutal "Rape of Nanking" in the 1930s.

This extraordinary collection of primary-source documents, introduced, translated, and edited by a prominent scholar of the Haitian Revolution, offers a fascinating window into the slave uprising that began in Saint-Domingue in 1791 and culminated with the emergence of an independent black Haiti in 1803.  Geggus (Univ. of Florida) has carefully selected rarely seen documents from multiple international archives, ranging from eyewitness accounts of slave trading, racial discrimination, and insurrection to contemporary descriptions of Toussaint Louverture, his government, and varied overseas reactions to Haitian independence.  It offers more detailed coverage than Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus'sSlave Revolution in the Caribbean, 17891804: A Brief History with Documents (2006) by providing twice the number of primary documents.  The introduction is crisp and concise and concludes with a helpful time line of important events.  Each of the ten chronologically and thematically arranged chapters includes a succinct introductory section and primary source extracts preceded by a brief explanatory note.  Serious readers of Caribbean history will benefit from the insights this rich collection offers.  A must for all academic and public libraries.Summing Up: Essential. Undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.

Designed for scholars and advanced students, this encyclopedia is the first on Atlantic history, a historical perspective for understanding the interactions of people, events, and natural phenomena of the Atlantic Ocean region from the mid-15th century through the mid-19th century.  The conceptual framework, defined in five introductory essays, covers regional interrelationships, influences, and differences among the nations and people facing the Atlantic in Europe, Africa, North America, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands.  International scholars from various fields (mainly historians from the US) have contributed more than 120 scholarly essays arranged alphabetically.  The authors' analytical, historiographical approaches reveal multidisciplinary themes and trends from regional perspectives.  Essays focus on concepts, e.g., frontier, creolization, and gender and cover, among other topics, political systems, communities, ethnic groups, family networks, economics, military strategies, slaving, independence, literature, religion, technology, climate, and diseases.  A bibliography of important works follows each essay.  Users will not find articles on people or places except as part of regional concepts (e.g., under "healing, African"), but a subject index and topical list enhance access.  The only other comparable reference work isOxford Bibliographies Online: Atlantic History, which, like others in the series (CH, Aug'13, 50-6491), serves mainly as a guide to selected publications.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers.

One wonders how many people know that Arabic is a linguisticnot ethnic, racial, tribal, or religiousdesignation?  Or that Japanese communication styles shift according to status and gender?  How about inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent having a plethora of ways to say "no" without actually uttering the word?  Or that in Latin America, maintaining good relationships is more important than absolute truthfulness?  Readers will learn about many interesting facets of culture in this new SAGE encyclopedia.  Its signed entries cover diverse topics, including "Body Language," "Expatriates," "Gender as Culture," "Ingroup/Outgroup," "Internet Identity," "Mindfulness," "Peacebuilding," "Speech Acts," or "World Englishes."  Each entry, usually less than five pages long, is followed by a useful list of further readings.  The discussion of concepts is understandable for community-college students on up; this book serves as a companion to the more scholarlyRoutledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication (CH, Aug'12, 49-6706).  Appendixes offer "Selected Readings on Intercultural Relations," "Professional Associations and Organizations," and an "Intercultural Timeline."