Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2025 -

Agenda for Social Justice 3 is a call to action in which activist and academic contributors provide concise insights into pressing social problems and propose solutions for people to implement. The book is divided into six parts: "Crime, Law, and Policy"; "Education"; "Food Insecurity"; "Health and Healthcare"; "Housing Insecurity"; and "Looking Forward." Each section unveils the underlying structure shaping our institutions, policies, and practices while offering solutions and key resources to reduce inequality, violence, and poverty. One of the book's strengths is that it is written without jargon in a way that turns complex phenomena into digestible bites. Chapters are amazingly well researched and organized, and foster a means for readers to engage deeply with the topics that interest them. Some readers will feel that there are chapters for which they wish they could have read more detailed analyses and comprehensive strategies and solutions. This is especially evident in parts dealing with intricate subjects such as health care disparities and education. Above all, Agenda for Social Justice 3 offers fresh perspectives and solutions to complex issues, inspiring readers to take steps toward social justice. This is a must-read book for everyone.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Schipper (Northern Arizona Univ.) makes a unique and much-needed addition to the literature on water in the American West. Using interview data from a wide range of individuals, she reconstructs "water narratives": cultural stories we tell ourselves about water. Five chapters and two appendixes give voice to different ways of knowing and relating to water. The water ethos, widely internalized and institutionalized, is conservation, which, Schipper argues, is an impoverished utilitarian understanding that is insufficiently relational to secure human and environmental well-being. After excavating the history and politics of the conservation ideal, Schipper's major contribution is an interpretation of an Indigenous water ethos that synthesizes deep ecology and Indigenous ways of knowing, calling for treating water as a living being and life-form, which warrants "respect, reverence, and care." This concise and lucid summary of western water is current and sprinkled with examples, and the later chapters reveal a sophisticated understanding of contemporary ideas in environmental sociology and justice while remaining accessible for undergraduate students. Chapters conclude with a sampling of interview quotes, which adds great value by grounding and humanizing the ideas presented in the text. A must-read volume for our present moment.Summing Up: Essential. General readers and undergraduates.

The premise of this excellent book by Durrant (Victoria Univ. of Wellington, New Zealand) is that many invertebrate species are likely to be sentient--they have the capacity for subjectively felt experiences--and hence should be considered to have at least some moral standing. Its 10 chapters are divided into three sections. Part 1 ("The Invertebrate World") shows that humans harm a large number of invertebrates each year and are responsible for significant declines in invertebrate populations. Part 2 ("An Outline of Invertebrate Justice") uses the Invertebrate Justice Model and the theory of sentientist value pluralism to highlight both the direct and the indirect justice that humans owe invertebrates because of our disastrous interactions with them. Part 3 ("Realising Invertebrate Justice") identifies the numerous barriers--social, cultural, corporate, governmental, and legal--that threaten the achievement of justice for the innumerable invertebrate species that we use for feed and food, such as farmed and wild-harvested shrimp. Non-speciesist criminology has needed a book like this for quite some time. It is a major and highly original contribution.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.