Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Labadi (Univ. of Kent, UK) provides an excellent review of international sustainable development initiatives that aim to leverage heritage. The aim is to understand where and how heritage has contributed to key dimensions of sustainable development--poverty reduction, gender equality, and environmental sustainability. The first two chapters review various agencies' investments from 1970 to the present, including those of UNESCO, ICOMOS, and the World Bank. The author points out limitations to these efforts that arise from donor-driven evaluative goals, centralized project management, fragmented funding sources, and traditional capacity-building approaches. She also highlights the importance of obtaining local governments' buy-in and contextualizing capacity-building to local norms. The next chapters dive into four African case studies to illustrate these points. The final chapter offers a series of recommendations to more closely embed heritage within the UN's Agenda 2030. While this work focuses on government-funded development projects, many of the findings can be applied to private sector funders (e.g., private foundations and individual donors). Labadi, who is well qualified to write on this topic, takes an expanded view of both tangible and intangible heritage, and weaves in cultural and political considerations. This is critical reading for students, scholars, and practitioners.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Slenderman is a well-researched, true crime story of the attempted murder by two middle-school girls of their friend in Wisconsin. Hale, a writer, spent seven years conducting exclusive interviews and studying court transcripts, police reports, and publicly available psychiatric evaluations in addition to other research to understand this transgression. She provides a detailed chronology of the events leading up to and following the 2014 crime, which captured the nation, both because of the age of the children involved and the horrific nature of the attempted murder of a good friend. Hale presents a coherent and accessible understanding of online obsession and mental illness in the context of a society that does not expect and does not really know how to contend with early onset schizophrenia. The book includes the recorded thoughts and perceptions of parents, teachers, and police, along with existing research that takes a factual look at the systems in place to help children who are severely mentally ill. Slenderman is a vivid analysis of how all those layers of help failed Morgan Geyser, one of the perpetrators. It is a must-read volume for social workers, school counselors, teachers, and parents.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

Literature on white Christian nationalism is expanding, and prior works have explored it through the lenses of journalism, biography, and philosophy. Sociologists Philip Gorski (Yale) and Samuel Perry (Univ. of Oklahoma) make a distinctive contribution to this literature with this report on their carefully designed survey, which exposes the links between race, religion, party affiliation, and political views. Topics include immigration, COVID-mask mandates, and individual economic liberty. The authors put this data in a historical context that sets the roots of white Christian nationalism far earlier in American history then do other books on the topic, a finding that makes an important contribution to understanding this phenomenon. The authors note that this nationalism is a political ideology unconnected to historic Christian teachings; in fact their survey shows that Christians who attend church are more likely to be sympathetic to the vulnerable and the outsider than are those who claim to be Christian but are not churchgoers. Though the book classes as religion, it will be important reading for students of sociology and political science as well as students of religion, given its sophisticated survey work. It will also interest nonacademic readers struggling to understand the impact of this movement on American politics.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.