"The Art of Status"

New from Oxford University Press: The Art of Status: Looted Treasures and the Global Politics of Restitution by Jelena Subotić.

About the book, from the publisher:

An illuminating exploration of the relationship between the restitution of looted art, global status, and the international construction of national cultural heritage.

Why is art restitution a matter of politics? How does the artwork displayed in national museums reflect the international status of the state that owns it? Why do some states agree to return looted art and others resist?

National art collections have long been a way for states to compete with each other for status, prestige, and cultural worth in international society. In many former imperial nations, however, these collections include art looted during imperial expansions and colonial occupations. While this was once a sign of high international standing, the markers of such status, particularly in the context of art, have since significantly changed. A new international legal and normative architecture governing art provenance developed after World War II and became institutionalized in the 1990s and 2000s. Since then, there have been national and global social movements demanding the return of looted art. This shift has established not only that looting is wrong but, more importantly, that restitution is morally right. As a result of this reframing of what it means to own art, an artifact's historical provenance has become a core element of its value and the search for provenance and demands for restitution a direct threat to state status. The same objects that granted states high international status now threaten to provoke status decline.

In The Art of Status, Jelena Subotic examines this relationship between the restitution of looted art and international status, with a focus on the Parthenon ('Elgin') Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, and a collection of paintings looted during the Holocaust that are now housed at the Serbian National Museum. Subotic tells the story of these artworks, how they were looted, how they ended up on display in national museums, and how the art restitution disputes have unfolded. While these cases are different in terms of their historical context of looting and ownership claims, the movements for their restitution, and resistance to it, illustrate the larger questions of how national cultural heritage is internationally constructed and how it serves states' desire for international status and prestige.

An in-depth and nuanced account of art restitution disputes, The Art of Status illuminates the shifting political significance of art on the international stage, from ownership to restitution.

Visit Jelena Subotić's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"This House Will Feed"

New from Kensington: This House Will Feed by Maria Tureaud.

About the book, from the publisher:

Amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a mysterious position at a remote manor house haunted by a strange power and the horror of her own memories in this chillingly evocative historical novel braided with gothic horror and supernatural suspense for readers of Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts and The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins.

County Clare, 1848: In the scant few years since the potato blight first cast its foul shadow over Ireland, Maggie O’Shaughnessy has lost everything—her entire family and the man she trusted with her heart. Toiling in the Ennis Workhouse for paltry rations, she can see no future either within or outside its walls—until the mysterious Lady Catherine arrives to whisk her away to an old mansion in the stark limestone landscape of the Burren.

Lady Catherine wants Maggie to impersonate her late daughter, Wilhelmina, and hoodwink solicitors into releasing Wilhelmina’s widow pension so that Lady Catherine can continue to provide for the villagers in her care. In exchange, Maggie will receive freedom from the workhouse, land of her own, and the one thing she wants more than either: a chance to fulfill the promise she made to her brother on his deathbed—to live to spite them all.

Launching herself into the daunting task, Maggie plays the role of Wilhelmina as best she can while ignoring the villagers’ tales of ghostly figures and curses. But more worrying are the whispers that come from within. Something in Lady Catherine’s house is reawakening long-buried memories in Maggie—of a foe more terrifying than hunger or greed, of a power that calls for blood and vengeance, and of her own role in a nightmare that demands the darkest sacrifice...

Visit Maria Tureaud's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Intelligence Intellectuals"

New from Georgetown University Press: The Intelligence Intellectuals: Social Scientists and the Making of the CIA by Peter C. Grace.

About the book, from the publisher:

The untold story of how America's brightest academic minds revolutionized intelligence analysis at the CIA

In the early days of the Cold War, the United States faced a crisis in intelligence analysis. A series of intelligence failures in 1949 and 1950, including the failure to warn about the North Korean invasion of South Korea, made it clear that gut instinct and traditional practices were no longer sufficient for intelligence analysis in the nuclear age. The new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Walter Bedell Smith, had a mandate to reform it.

Based on new archival research in declassified documents and the participants' personal papers, The Intelligence Intellectuals reveals the neglected history of how America's brightest academic minds were recruited by the CIA to revolutionize intelligence analysis during this critical period. Peter C. Grace describes how the scientifically sound analysis methods that they introduced significantly helped the United States gain an advantage in the Cold War, and these new analysts legitimized the role of the recently created CIA in the national security community. Grace demonstrates how these professors―such as William Langer from Harvard, Sherman Kent from Yale, and Max Millikan from MIT―developed systematic approaches to intelligence analysis that shaped the CIA's methodology for decades to come.

Readers interested in the history of the Cold War and in intelligence, scholars of intelligence studies, Cold War historians, and intelligence practitioners seeking to understand their craft's foundations will all value this insightful history about the place of social science in national security.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Clutch"

New from Tin House: Clutch: A Novel by Emily Nemens.

About the book, from the publisher:

Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows a group of five friends as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?

As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.

The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue reunion: Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.

Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and hear

Visit Emily Nemens's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Who Belongs"

New from NYU Press: Who Belongs: White Christian Nationalism and the Roberts Court by Stephen M. Feldman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Examines how Roberts Court decisions have reshaped "We the People" to favor a narrow vision of belonging rooted in white Christian nationalism and minority rule

Who belongs to “We the People”? Are “the People” exclusive, inegalitarian, and hierarchical, or inclusive and egalitarian? For much of American history, an exclusionary and inegalitarian republican democracy predominated, but in the 1930s, political forces lifted an egalitarian and participatory pluralist democracy to ascendance. Although a conservative Supreme Court initially resisted this change, the Court acquiesced in 1937 and then subsequently deepened the nation’s commitment to pluralist democracy by invigorating constitutional protections for individual rights―religious freedom, free expression, and equal protection. Protection of individual rights facilitated the acceptance of diverse values and the expression of those values in the pluralist democratic arena. Disgruntled with these constitutional developments, conservatives eventually denounced the 1937 transition and urged the Court to restore the original Constitution.

In Who Belongs, Stephen M. Feldman assesses how the conservative justices of the Roberts Court seem intent on undoing the 1937 constitutional transformation. Yet, Feldman reveals, they are not returning the nation to pre-1937 republican democratic constitutional principles. Instead, the justices reinterpret the post-1937 rights of religious freedom, free speech, and equal protection to privilege a narrow segment of the American people―white, Christian, heterosexual men. The Roberts Court is limiting who fully belongs to “We the People,” narrowing the rights of non-Christians, people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Ultimately, the conservative justices are interpreting individuals’ rights to serve minority rule―in harmony with the political agenda of white Christian nationalism.

Providing a powerful assessment of white Christian nationalism in American constitutionalism, Who Belongs reminds us that a healthy democracy depends on not only what rights exist but also who enjoys them.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blade"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Blade by Wendy Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:

From USA Today bestselling author―and former competitive skater―Wendy Walker comes a chilling psychological thriller set in the cutthroat world of elite figure skating.

Ana Robbins was an Olympic star in the making―until tragedy forced her to leave that world behind. At the age of sixteen, she gave up her dream and never looked back. Fourteen years later, she’s a successful defense attorney, revered for her work with minors. But when her former coach turns up dead, Ana lands right back where it all began, and abruptly ended: The Palace, a world-renowned skating facility nestled high in the mountains of Colorado.

Ana returns to The Palace to defend the young skater accused of the brutal crime―Grace Montgomery. Despite her claims of innocence, all evidence points squarely at Grace’s guilt, and she’s days away from facing charges of first-degree murder.

But Ana’s investigation dredges up childhood memories of her own, triggering the fear that permeates this place where she once lived and trained far from home as an “Orphan.” With a blizzard raging outside, and time running out for Grace, Ana is determined to uncover the truth―even if it means exposing her own secrets that she buried here long ago.

Visit Wendy Walker's website.

The Page 69 Test: Four Wives.

The Page 99 Test: Social Lives.

The Page 69 Test: Don't Look for Me.

Q&A with Wendy Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Protest and Pedagogy"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Protest and Pedagogy: Charlottesville's Black Freedom Struggle and the Making of the American High School by Alexander D. Hyres.

About the book, from the publisher:

Protest and Pedagogy traces how, and in what ways, high school teachers and students sustained and propelled the Black freedom struggle in Charlottesville, Virginia. It centers the relationship between protest and pedagogy within classrooms and the surrounding community of Charlottesville. The story spotlights the resistance of Black teachers and students in the American high school throughout the nation during the twentieth century. Rather than act simply as passive participants in the Black freedom struggle―or outright opponents―Black high school teachers and their students, this book argues, employed a variety of organizing and protest strategies to make schools and communities more just and equitable spaces. Black teachers’ pedagogical approaches in the classroom underpinned protest within and beyond schools. At the same time, Black teacher and student organizing, activism, and protest led to pedagogical reforms in classrooms and schools.

Visit Alexander D. Hyres's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Love Me Tomorrow"

New from Sarah Barley Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: Love Me Tomorrow by Emiko Jean.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tokyo Ever After comes “an endearing, lightly magical romantic comedy” (Kirkus Reviews) about a girl who starts receiving letters from the love of her life—writing to her from years in the future

What if your true love could write to you from the future?

Seventeen-year-old Emma Nakamura-Thatcher doesn’t believe in love, not after her parents’ bitter divorce. So when she attends the festival of Tanabata, her wish is simple: proof that love is real and can last.

Emma thinks little of her wish…until she finds a note from someone claiming to be her greatest love writing to her from the future. It has to be a prank, right? But as the notes pour in, each revealing secrets only she knows, Emma is forced to accept the impossible: This is really happening. Someone is actually reaching out to her from across time.

But who? Ezra, the musical prodigy who makes her pulse race? Theo, the literal boy next door who’s known her since childhood? Or Colin, the overly confident, overly handsome, overly rich kid she meets while cleaning his mega-mansion?

As Emma races to uncover the identity of the letter writer, she’ll discover that love is more than real—it’s the most powerful force in the universe. And it’s been waiting for her all along.

Visit Emiko Jean's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After Fission"

New from Cambridge University Press: After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age by Sidra Hamidi.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nuclear status is typically treated as a stable feature of a state's capacity to possess, use, or build nuclear weapons. Challenging this view, After Fission reveals how states contest their nuclear status in the atomic age. By examining the legal structure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, technical ambiguities surrounding nuclear testing, and debates over rights and responsibilities in the global nuclear regime, Sidra Hamidi argues that a state's nuclear status is not simply a function of technical capability. Instead, states actively contest the way they want their nuclear status to be presented to the world, and powerful states like the US, either recognize or reject these formulations. By analysing key diplomatic junctures in Indian, Israeli, Iranian, and North Korean nuclear history, this book presents a theory of when and how states contest their nuclear status which has key policy implications for negotiating with ostensible “rogues” such as Iran and North Korea.

Visit Sidra Hamidi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Forest on the Edge of Time"

New from Tor Books: The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Future of Another Timeline meets The Bone Clocks in this dazzling piece of time-travel climate fiction.

Recruited by the mysterious Project Kairos to change history and save the future from ecological disaster, Echo and Hazel are transported through time to opposite worlds. Echo works as a healer’s assistant in Ancient Athens, embroiled in dangerous politics and wild philosophy. Hazel is the last human alive, in a laboratory on a polluted island with nothing but tiny robots and an untrustworthy AI for company.

Both women suffer from amnesia, but when they fall asleep, their consciousnesses transcend time and they meet in their dreams. Together, they start to uncover their past – but soon discover the past threatens humanity’s survival.

If Echo and Hazel have a chance of changing the future, they must remember to forget…

THE FOREST ON THE EDGE OF TIME is a novel about family and duty and the worlds we try to save along the way.

Visit Jasmin Kirkbride's website.

--Marshal Zeringue