"The Ancient House"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: The Ancient House: Constructing Community in the Seventeenth-Century New York Borderlands by Erin B. Kramer.

About the book, from the publisher:

While New Amsterdam has captured public imagination and scholarly attention for centuries, the Dutch borderland settlement that became Albany, New York, was no less vital to the development of early America. In The Ancient House, historian Erin Kramer examines how early relationships between the Dutch and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) built a foundation for the town’s oversized role in European and Indigenous diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Albany (called “the ancient house” by a Haudenosaunee orator) was an essential space where Indigenous people articulated what it meant for Europeans to settle in their world. Kramer illustrates how Haudenosaunee people shaped the town, its politics, and the laws enforced there through a century of negotiations, and how they sought redress and hold colonists to their agreements. By incorporating Haudenosaunee stories into the broader narrative of New York history, The Ancient House reveals how Albany became a negotiated community, a site of dialogue, and a critical central place in early America.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Perfect Hand"

New from Knopf: A Perfect Hand: A Novel by Ayelet Waldman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady’s maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England.

Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady’s maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor—or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick’s blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady’s surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady’s bonnets and gowns.

But when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie’s employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love—then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima’s love for another and Sir Wynstowe’s eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union. Will this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women’s suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself?

A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utter enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.

Visit Ayelet Waldman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Love and Treasure.

The Page 69 Test: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

The Page 99 Test: A Really Good Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Treachery and Diplomacy"

New from Columbia University Press: Treachery and Diplomacy: The Shadow Politics of US-Africa Relations by Sobukwe Odinga.

About the book, from the publisher:

The African allies of the United States are often depicted as mere pawns or clients seeking aid. Yet African leaders have deftly capitalized on security partnerships with the United States in ways that have been widely overlooked. Through skillful negotiating, hosting US military operations, and deploying their soldiers to support Washington’s strategic aims, they have advanced their own interests―sometimes at the expense of their citizens.

Treachery and Diplomacy shines a light on US-Africa security partnerships, revealing their simmering internal tensions, hidden racial politics, and consequences for peace and democracy. Sobukwe Odinga explores the contentious relations between the US and key African allies―Liberia, Ethiopia, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Uganda―from the Cold War to the War on Terror. He brings to life the diplomatic gambits of leaders such as William Tubman, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Yoweri Museveni, documenting how they prodded Washington to back them in regional conflicts, increase aid, and temper criticisms of their domestic policies. Odinga also considers the African American political elites who denounced and championed US-Africa security partnerships―in some moments undercutting the influence of African leaders, in others abetting their authoritarianism. Connecting American racial thought, Pan-Africanism, and Black transnationalism to US security policy toward Africa, Treachery and Diplomacy offers new insight into how African governments have pursued their own agendas.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Done in a Day"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon by Elisa Tamarkin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A searing reflection on the last day of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the end of foreign reporting in the nation's daily newspapers.

Done in a Day turns on a single event: the April 30, 1975, departure of the last helicopter evacuating civilians from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon. Elisa Tamarkin's interest in that helicopter begins with the fact that her stepfather, the Saigon bureau chief for the Chicago Daily News, was on it—the last American correspondent to leave Saigon as it fell. His report was filed from a naval ship on the South China Sea at a time when no other telexes were going through.

Now, more than fifty years later, Tamarkin offers a social and cultural autopsy of that moment, based in personal history but vividly unfolding amid the vast documentation of America's obvious defeat, which never seemed to register even as it got out, in the writings of journalists and essayists, in the backchannel cables between US ambassador Graham Martin and Henry Kissinger, in congressional hearings, and in photographs of the war's end. The story is also set against the imminent disappearance of war coverage in city newspapers—and of the newspapers themselves—once proud, in the words of the Chicago Daily News, of bringing readers the "literature of the day" that was "done in a day."

Done in a Day braids history, criticism, and memoir to tell the paired stories of Saigon's liberation and the demise of the news. The result is a haunting essay about all that ended in a day—and about what it means to recognize and to write about endings even as we live through them.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Enormous Wings"

New from Henry Holt & Company, Inc.: Enormous Wings: A Novel by Laurie Frankel.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Laurie Frankel, an exuberant and timely new novel

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant.

As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubber-neckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.

Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks—even so late in the day—can still change, and then change everything.

Visit Laurie Frankel's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli.

The Page 69 Test: The Atlas of Love.

My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now.

The Page 69 Test: Goodbye for Now.

My Book, The Movie: This Is How It Always Is.

The Page 69 Test: This Is How It Always Is.

Writers Read: Laurie Frankel (February 2017).

The Page 69 Test: One Two Three.

Q&A with Laurie Frankel.

--Marshal Zeringue

"We Are Not South African"

New from Rutgers University Press: We Are Not South African: Mediating National Identity in a Postcolonial and Postapartheid State by Rachel Lara van der Merwe.

About the book, from the publisher:

We Are Not South African explores how national identity functions as a colonial tool of communication, control, and power. Author Rachel Lara van der Merwe examines how humans and the planet are integrally shaped by the idea of the nation and speculates on how different sociopolitical imaginaries, instead of the nation, could inform ways of being-together in the world.

Linking national identity to colonialism, the book broadens the idea of the nation to include its impact on all forms of life, human and more-than-human. Van der Merwe builds her argument on three central observations: that nations are made up of conflicting and fractured imaginaries, not unified, cohesive ones; the nation is divisive by nature, tracing back to its colonial origins; and the nation, along with the state, exploits both humans and more-than-humans. In order to build a more just and sustainable planetary society, she argues, liberation from such colonial formations is vital. In response, the book asks, How could we reimagine how we organize our societies through values of relationality and mutual care rather than rigid borders? What sociopolitical imaginaries do we need, or already possess, that might inform new configurations of community?

--Marshal Zeringue

"An Expanse of Blue"

New from Heartdrum: An Expanse of Blue by Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams.

About the book, from the publisher:

Fans of The Poet X will fall for this powerful, romantic debut novel-in-verse about a Native Hawaiian girl's fight to find belonging in a fracturing family, sharing a message of love with resounding emotional truth.

Aouli Elizabeth Smith is adrift: unheard at home and an unbeliever at church, fighting her sister and losing her best friend. Overflowing with feeling, she pours her secrets and herself into her song journal when the world threatens to sweep her away. The one place she feels tied down to earth is at her Aunty Ehu’s house. Those joyous Saturdays with her extended Native Hawaiian community living in Western Washington are precious to her. Under the maple trees, the fragments of her life fit together, if only for an afternoon.

Then, an unspeakable truth about her father shatters this one perfect corner of her life.

As Aouli’s world constricts around what others wish she could be, language fails her. But when a new boy, Nalu, turns up with eyes that seem to pierce right into her soul, maybe it’s love that can give her the words to set herself free.

Visit Kauakanilehua Mahoe Adams's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making Babies Count"

New from Cambridge University Press: Making Babies Count: The Sheppard-Towner Act and Building the Modern Administrative State by Michelle Bezark.

About the book, from the publisher:

This book is the first comprehensive account of the triumphs and follies of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921-the first federal policy aimed at improving health outcomes for mothers and babies. Michelle Bezark insightfully weaves together the experiences of advocates and federal agents maneuvering around Congress to pass the law; state-level administrators' accounts of implementing its programs at the local level; and individual mothers' and children's experiences of the programs on the ground. This approach reveals the political, technical, and legal challenges of passing and administering early federal social welfare policy, and what this policy provided for-and required of-citizens. In reconstructing the full lifecycle of the law, Bezark tells the untold history of an important federal policy and provides a critical case study for how one group of reformers built out administrative capacity at every level of governance from scratch.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Canon"

New from Viking: Canon: A Novel by Paige Lewis.

About the book, from the publisher:

Two unlikely heroes embark on quests to win God’s favor in this outrageously entertaining, profoundly heartfelt novel that announces an ingenious new voice in the tradition of Chain-Gang All-Stars, No One Is Talking About This, and Martyr!

Yara can’t comprehend why God has chosen them to slay Dominic, the ruthless leader of the army of Bad Guys. Cast out by their family and reeling from a destructive relationship, Yara has never felt weaker—but with nothing left to lose, they strike a deal. Abandoning their solitary days of embroidery and obsessive cleaning, Yara reluctantly embarks on a perilous odyssey designed to prepare them for the daunting mission ahead.

Meanwhile, Adrena, a disillusioned prophet with a terrifying secret power, is determined to become the hero of this story. Desperately seeking the glory of God’s approval and the promise of heaven, where she hopes to reunite with her beloved mother, Adrena must first persuade Harpo, the leader of the Good Guys, that her plan is God’s will.

As their journeys unfold in a series of unforgettable adventures, Yara and Adrena are propelled toward each other and transformative revelations about life, death, and destiny in this intensely captivating, irreverent epic from a singularly brilliant new voice in fiction.

Visit Paige Lewis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Talking Machine Empires"

New from Oxford University Press: Talking Machine Empires: Phonograph Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean during the Acoustic Era by Sergio Ospina Romero.

About the book, from the publisher:

At the turn of the twentieth century, sound recording corporations from the United States and Europe pursued repertoires and consumers from all over the world. Latin America and the Caribbean were a crucial part of the puzzle. As a modern imperial age unfolded and these businesses capitalized on old and new colonial maneuvers, phonograph culture thrived and recorded sound became a matter of everyday life. All these processes took place at the intersection of convoluted imperial networks, mundane interactions between corporate delegates and local artists, improvisations in matters of music and technology, emerging economic paradigms, and unprecedented cultural formations mediated by new ideas about modernity and entertainment.

Talking Machine Empires offers a fascinating cultural and colonial history of the dawn of the sound recording industry in Latin America and the Caribbean in the acoustic era, before microphones and loudspeakers. The details in that history reveal unambiguous imperial practices: sending recording expeditions to the realms of the cultural Other, mobilizing performers from one continent to another, taking their labor and talent for granted, extracting sound and natural resources along with material and immaterial culture, and profiting from all of that by virtue of the imbalances of global capitalism and the enduring strength of coloniality. At the same time, it is a history full of intercultural exchanges around and through recorded media, just as it is a history of musical innovation, resistance, and cultural autonomy despite and because of the unevenness of corporate imperialism and the resilience of coloniality.

Using a vast array of primary resources, including original recording ledgers and travelogues, Talking Machine Empires explores not only the swift globalization of recorded sound in the early twentieth century but also the asymmetries that continue to shape the worlds of music and entertainment today.

--Marshal Zeringue