Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — Education

Beginning in the mid-1880s Australia's pearling industry transitioned from a shore-based enterprise undertaken in small vessels to a large-scale operation consisting of schooner-based fleets known as floating stations. These peripatetic stations enabled the industry to exploit the pearl-rich northern shelf and expand into the Netherlands Indies, ushering in a golden age of pearling that lasted until World War I. In The Octopus Crowd, Mullins examines the important yet overlooked history of these schooner-based pearling fleets, the floating station system, and the men who made it possible. Superbly researched and well written, this book focuses on James Clark and his Clark Combination, a large-scale syndicate. The Clark Combination's effective use of the floating station system exhausted pearling grounds, muscled out small-time competitors, and nearly brought the industry to its knees. Additionally, the book examines the mostly international sailors and divers on whose back the industry flourished. By delving into and drawing parallels to international pearling operations from the Torres Straights to the Great Lakes, this book places Australia's pearling industry in a global context. Expansive and diverse, this book is maritime history at its finest.Summing Up: Essential. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Our Man is required reading, a brilliant sequel to Packer's 2013 bestseller, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013, FSG), spun out in biographies. Richard Holbrooke's life (1941-2010) spanned that of the American Century proclaimed in 1940 but already declining, in Packer's opinion, during the self-absorbed Clinton administration. The author, given full access to Holbrooke's personal archives, spent four years reconstructing his career and complex love life and directly cites more than 40 pages of his diary here. Entering the State Department out of college in 1962, Holbrooke was perhaps the most brilliant and enterprising diplomat of his generation. Volunteering immediately for Vietnam, he quickly discovered the futility of American counterinsurgency campaigns, whether in Vietnam or eventually in Afghanistan. He engineered the Dayton Accords to end the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 but unfortunately never knocked heads for Middle East peace. He avoided the region throughout his career because "it was too easy to piss off American Jewish organizations and hurt himself on his climb" to power and fame in Washington.Summing Up: Essential. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In a fascinating, and provocative, global history of ideas, Fernandez-Armesto argues that global exchanges led to creativity and produced new ideas that defined world history. A particular strength of the book is the early chapters that analyze examples from the time of hunter-gatherers, the Agricultural Revolution, and the emergence of political units demonstrating how profound differences in culture led to the creation of fundamental ideas. The book proceeds by covering topics that include the rise of universal religions, a global enlightenment, and the emergence of scientific theories and political rights. More controversially, the author concludes thathumans are potentially entering a period of winnowing exchanges with the emergence of a global culture that reduces differences and thus leads to a dip in creativity and ideas. Overall, the work has the strengths of Big History, revealing global patterns of humanity's history of thought as well as its weaknesses with brief and selective examples. Still, by repositioning the human mind at the center of world history, the work is a triumph.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Pirates is a magisterial historical synthesis of global piracy from the Middle Ages to the present time. The monograph is divided into three sections, each of which comprise a specific historical era: 700-1500, 1500-1914, and 1914-present. Each focuses on seaborne crime in three geographic regions: the Mediterranean, Northern seas, and Eastern seas. Lehr's nuanced analysis brilliantly illustrates piracy's temporal and regional variations while simultaneously demonstrating its continuities and commonalities, which transcend time and space. It notes, for example, that irrespective of when and where, piracy has "common root causes," such as natural disasters, abject poverty, and endemic warfare, and is dependent on an "enabling environment" of officials, markets, and manpower to survive. Whereas its respectability has gradually waned in the West, in some areas of Southeast Asia and Africa it remains an honorable profession when performed in the service of nationalist or religious ideals. In Pirates, Lehr has taken an exceedingly complex and horribly romanticized topic and rendered it both accessible and authentic. As such, this work offers an exceptional historical survey of piracy that every interested reader should consult.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

The liberation of Paris in August 1944 does not generate much enthusiasm among current readers, many of whom were born after the war's end. But for another generation, it remains an inspiration: American troops marched down the Champs-Elysees and right into combat with the Wehrmacht after receiving the adulation of the Parisian public. Now, 75 years later, Smith (Marshall Univ.), a leading Eisenhower scholar, provides a vivid glimpse into that chapter of the war. Smith's rendition of the liberation involves three men: Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander, who sought to restore France despite opposition from Washington; Charles de Gaulle, the head of the French resistance, who contended with fractured opposition groups in Paris; and Dietrich von Choltitz, the German garrison commander, who realized that the war was lost and sought to save the City of Light from Hitler's madness. All three played key roles, but Choltitz's position was most perilous. Although Hitler held his family hostage, he refused to turn Paris into "a field of ruins." Smith provides a historical masterpiece, recalling a momentous event that should never be forgotten.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Recognizing the enormous potential for political change brought about by the defeat of Nazism in 1945, progressives in several Western democracies seized the initiative and advocated policies that promoted greater social solidarity. In his ambitious new study, Woloch (Columbia) explores how progressive leaders in Britain, France, and the US responded to the common challenges of poverty, healthcare, housing, unemployment, and education in an effort to make their respective societies more equitable. The book is thoughtfully organized into three main sections--the Depression, the war years, and the immediate postwar era--with a chapter dedicated to each nation in each part. Woloch makes a compelling case that in all three countries, progressives saw the end of the war as an opportunity to break with failed prewar policies and chart a new course. Especially remarkable is the comparative conclusion, which investigates progressive achievements (and failures) in the late 1940s and highlights internal tensions within each nation. The fact that recent social protest movements have focused on the key themes of the postwar progressive agenda underscores the continuing relevance of these ideas--and this moment--in the 21st century.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Island studies is now a burgeoning interdisciplinary field, with its own professional organization (International Small Islands Studies Association) and journals. Here, Baldacchino (Universities of Malta and Prince Edward Island) collects more than 20 contributions on many aspects of the topic. Beginning by defining just what an island is and is not (a more complex task than one might imagine) and the range of variation among the world's thousands of islands, the chapters unfold to encompass geology, biogeography, history, economics, sociology, and even literature. Curiously, near-islands with strong physical connections to continents are defined out of the subject, leaving such places as barrier beaches ignored. Nearly every chapter is multi-authored, with extensive coverage of topics such as tourism, development, migration, and governance. A few topics are left less than fully explored, such as religion and traditional culture, international boundaries, international relations, fishing, and sea level rise. Nevertheless, this is a fine overview of the field, with extensive bibliographies for those who wish to delve further.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above.

The conceit of this aptly titled, provocative book is reflected in the question its subtitle poses. The book appears in Manchester University Press's new "Pocket Politics" series, which is designed to provide "short pithy summaries of complex topics on socio-political issues ... aimed at the interested general reader." The book is commendably distinctive in that Sloan (visiting scholar, political science, Middlebury College) eschews any pretense of academic objectivity in favor of a decidedly opinionated, advocatory stance. He argues that the present malaise (hence, the use of the word trauma in the title)--as revealed in Brexit, Trumpism, and the ascendancy of right populist parties in Europe--draws strength from threats from Russia and the Islamic State. As a curative he makes the case for a new "radical centrist populism" to stem the current tide and reassert Western supremacy. Sloan's twofold prescription calls for active deterrence of and resistance to external threats and a reinvigoration of liberal democracy. As relevant as today's headlines, this book is both an eminently readable primer on the current state of transatlantic relations and a call to action.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.