"Joseph Beuys and History"

New from Princeton University Press: Joseph Beuys and History by Daniel Spaulding.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking study of one of the most important and influential artists of the postwar period

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) was one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century—and one of the most controversial. Working in Germany in the aftermath of World War II, he explored a radically expanded concept of art through a practice that ranged from performative actions to large-scale sculptural ensembles. While some contemporaries found his claim that “everyone is an artist” liberating, even revolutionary, others accused him of fostering a dangerous cult of personality. In Joseph Beuys and History, the first rigorous art historical study of the artist in English, Daniel Spaulding presents a striking new interpretation of Beuys’s work and career.

By putting Beuys in the context of Germany’s postwar recovery, Spaulding shows that the artist’s superimposed biological, political, and economic metaphors offered a powerful way to think about the trajectory of human freedom, the place of art in capitalist modernity, and the possibility of an ecological aesthetics. At the same time, his oeuvre’s disquieting echoes of the Nazi past suggest that not everything could be reconciled in what Beuys called “social sculpture.”

A definitive account of an often-misunderstood figure, Joseph Beuys and History proposes an ambitious rewriting of the dominant narrative of modern and contemporary art, drawing from Marxian value-form theory, Hans Blumenberg’s “metaphorology,” and ecological thought. Precisely because Beuys went to the extremes of art, the book demonstrates, he belongs at the center of its history.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Barn Identity"

New from Minotaur Books: The Barn Identity: A House-Flipper Mystery (Volume 8) by Diane Kelly.

About the novel, from the publisher:

The eighth in the House-Flipper mystery series set in Nashville, where the real estate market is to die for.

In Nashville, carpenter Whitney Whitaker is ecstatic when the owner of an antebellum livery stable approaches her about rehabbing the barn and offers Whitney free rein with the design. While unproven, it’s rumored that the building once served as part of the Underground Railroad. The project presents a unique opportunity to work on a site of significance and help preserve history, and she convinces her cousin to take a chance on the old property.

When a local journalist reporting on the renovation is found dead on the property, investigators suspect he might have been murdered for any one of several exposés he’d published about local politicians, movers, and shakers. Whitney wonders if there’s more to the story and whether the journalist’s fate might be tied directly to the stable renovation. Can she solve the murder and bring a killer to justice? Or might this goal be too lofty?

Visit Diane Kelly's website, Facebook page, and Instagram page.

Coffee with a Canine: Diane Kelly & Reggie, Junior, and Brownie.

Writers Read: Diane Kelly (January 2015).

My Book, The Movie: Death, Taxes, and Cheap Sunglasses.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Believing in Light after Darkness"

New from the University of California Press: Believing in Light after Darkness: Displacement and Refugee Resettlement by Molly Fee.

About the book, from the publisher:

War, persecution, and climate change too often force people from their homes and across borders. Most remain in difficult conditions in neighboring countries. The less than one percent of refugees offered resettlement to a different country gain an alternative path forward, with access to specialized supports and services that are traditionally understood as a solution to displacement and a program of integration. Examining the complexities of refugees' lived experiences, Molly Fee's deeply humanistic ethnography reframes resettlement as a period of disruption and disorientation, when newly arrived refugees must navigate the rules and expectations of a new country. For those who have already rebuilt their lives numerous times, resettlement becomes yet another uprooting. Believing in Light after Darkness reveals how humanitarian solutions, though well intentioned, do not immediately resolve the conditions of displacement.

Visit Molly Fee's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ruins"

New from Grand Central Publishing: Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton.

About the novel, from the publisher:

From critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Light Pirate comes a powerful, deeply resonant novel about an ambitious archaeologist in pursuit of a rare artifact from an ancient civilization that would not only change her life but potentially society at large.

Professor Ember Agni is a rising star in archeology, trying to balance an unfulfilling career in academia and a crumbling marriage, all while pursuing her true passion: unearthing a lost empire that no one else believes existed. Just as she’s about to give up on the ambitious expedition she spent a decade trying to fund, a message arrives from overseas. A former student claims to have found something extraordinary—an artifact that hints at the forgotten world lying beneath history’s tidy surface.

With vindication finally within reach, Ember risks everything for the sake of discovery and undertakes an odyssey that will either make her name or ruin her. Driven by unwavering faith in her vision of the past, she challenges the limits of her nation, her colleagues, and herself in order to exhume the missing pieces of how humanity began. But as she journeys deep into an untouched wilderness, in dogged pursuit of a dead civilization, she collides with the wreckage of her own life.

On the brink of either discovery or destruction, Ember must choose who she wants to be, and to what kind of world she wants to belong.

Visit Lily Brooks-Dalton's website.

Writers Read: Lily Brooks-Dalton (December 2022).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Long Death of Adolf Hitler"

New from Yale University Press: The Long Death of Adolf Hitler: An Investigative History by Caroline Sharples.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating exploration of why Hitler’s death was only confirmed in 2018

Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect vacuum for myth and survival legends, while rival intelligence agencies and propaganda further confounded the investigations of successive historians.

Caroline Sharples explores the aftermath of events at the Führerbunker in the first cultural account of this decisive yet elusive moment. Hitler’s death was widely anticipated, and the news elicited a huge range of emotions as governments and secret services scrambled to verify what they heard. The search for proof of death led to an outpouring of conspiratorial thinking, and the final moments of Hitler’s life have been reimagined ever since.

This is an intriguing, unsettling account of a historical event we all think we know—and a sophisticated examination of how history is written.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Novel Crime"

New from Thomas & Mercer: A Novel Crime by Deborah Levison.

About the novel, from the publisher:

She wanted to write the perfect novel. Instead, she became the perfect villain.

Struggling romance writer and recent divorcée Marcy Jo Codburn feels like a failure. She’s green with author envy and longing for a book deal, a launch party with cupcakes, and the admiration of her daughter. But her dream of literary success is fading faster than her beige hair dye. When she witnesses celebrated author Francesca Barber in a compromising position, Marcy sees her chance. Transforming into Summer Branigan, her bolder, blonder pen name, she leverages Francesca’s secret to secure the ultimate coauthor.

As their collaboration spirals from Marcy’s modest Connecticut home to Francesca’s lavish Hamptons estate, both women discover that in the cutthroat world of publishing, every story has its price. With looming deadlines, a kidnapping plot gone awry, and more than one fraud to hide, their twisted partnership careens toward a surprise ending neither could have written.

In this darkly comic page-turner, critically acclaimed author Deborah Levison skewers the publishing industry with razor-sharp wit. A Novel Crime asks just how far an aspiring writer will go to see her name on a book jacket―and what happens when the stories we tell start to write themselves.

Visit Deborah Levison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Chosen Land"

New from Basic Books: Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity by Matthew Avery Sutton.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of Christianity in America, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the political triumphs of evangelicalism, showing the powerful, singular role the faith has always played in American public life.

In the United States today, there is no faith more dominant than Christianity. In Chosen Land, historian Matthew Avery Sutton chronicles Christians’ five-hundred-year endeavor to turn North America into their version of the kingdom of God, revealing the fruitful and dynamic entanglement between the history of America and the history of American Christianity.

In the centuries after Christianity first arrived on American shores, colonizers and colonized from New England to Spanish California practiced many varieties of the faith. After the founding of the United States, the nation’s lack of a state religion forced new and evolving strains of Christianity to battle for potential adherents, as they still do to this day. As American Christianity has bent, fractured, and adapted to changing times, Christian belief has shaped everything from the promise of Manifest Destiny to Ronald Reagan’s approach to the Cold War, the rise of the Southern Lost Cause narrative to the triumphs of the civil rights movement.

A landmark work of narrative synthesis tracing the faith’s major figures and currents, Chosen Land confirms the unique place that American Christianity—always both steadfast and precarious—occupies at the center of our shared history.

Visit Matthew Avery Sutton's website.

The Page 99 Test: American Apocalypse.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Fourth Wife"

New from Kensington: The Fourth Wife by Linda Hamilton.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas meets “Sister Wives” in a deliciously chilling, darkly romantic, historical gothic horror with a feminist slant, as a young Mormon woman is haunted by a malevolent presence in the decrepit Salt Lake City mansion she shares with her new husband and his other wives…

Hazel Russon’s life in 1882 Utah territory is defined by three things: the Mormon church, polygamy, and the men who control both. She knows she’s supposed to suppress her sinful dreams of a monogamous life with her sweetheart, and her desire for the freedom to play her beloved piano. Every Mormon woman’s duty is to live obediently and meekly, devoted to her husband and her calling as a sister wife. Her eternal salvation depends upon it.

Commanded to become the fourth wife of a man she’s never met, Hazel is relieved that Jacob Manwaring is attentive and handsome. However, she is shocked to discover that instead of living separately as is custom, all of Jacob’s wives and children live in the same house—a large, dilapidated manor that inexplicably fills Hazel with dread.

Despite Jacob’s tenderness, Hazel senses dark secrets and resentments among her sister wives. She hears strange music, sees blood oozing from the very walls, and glimpses apparitions that grow more terrifying every day. And as her nightmares worsen, Hazel can’t be sure if she has more to fear from the living—including her mysterious husband—or from a sinister presence that seems to animate the house itself...

Drawing on little-known Mormon folklore and the author’s own polygamous ancestors, this fascinating, suspense-filled historical novel debut is by turns darkly romantic, spine-tingling, and wholly unforgettable.

Visit Linda Hamilton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"One True Church"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: One True Church: An American Story of Race, Family, and Religion by Susan B. Ridgely.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summer of 1872, a white doctor and a formerly enslaved African American farmer walked through a field near Newton Grove, North Carolina, and mapped out the dimensions of a new clapboard church. The men, John Carr Monk and Solomon Monk, had been raised together on a nearby plantation. While neighbors attended newly segregated Protestant congregations, the Monks converted to Catholicism, which offered a framework of racial universalism. Alongside the church, the parish ran parochial schools for the area’s Black and white children long before state public schools existed. But visits from night riders emphasized the congregation’s risk to the social order. Despite these threats and others, the church used their common theology and local history to navigate the nativism of the 1920s and the bishop’s decision to segregate. Then, in 1953, the church community reintegrated.

While the parish was far from a utopia, it embraced the daily struggle to embody the true church that its founders believed God desired. Drawing from archives, ethnographic observations, and the living histories of parish members, Susan B. Ridgely offers a rich understanding of the ongoing interplay of race, religion, and rural life in this parish, in North Carolina, and in the United States.

The Page 99 Test: Practicing What the Doctor Preached.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Blue Dress"

New from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR): The Blue Dress by Rebecca Morrison.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Jasmine Warga and Starfish, an Iranian American girl navigates complicated relationships with her mother, her best friend, and her body image in this unflinching and ultimately uplifting middle-grade debut.

Sometimes Yasmin feels like her body isn’t hers. And it’s not just because puberty has mounted a full-on alien invasion, or that emigrating from Iran a year-and-a-half ago has meant one change after another. It’s also because her mother constantly pushes her to lose weight, like sewing Yasmin a beautiful blue dress for Persian New Year that is too tight on purpose.

At school, it doesn’t help that Yasmin’s best friend, Carmen, is petite and close to her own mother, or that popular-girl Zoe always has a mean comment to spare. Yasmin is sure her crush, Jack, won’t ever like her the way she is, either.

With the pressure to fit in closing in on all sides, Yasmin starts taking desperate measures. But if being thin is supposed to make her happier, then why does losing weight feel like losing parts of herself, too?

From debut author Rebecca Morrison comes The Blue Dress, a heart-rending, funny, and hopeful book inspired by her own life, relatable to anyone who has ever needed to break away from someone else’s vision of how they should look in order to embrace their true self.

Visit Rebecca Morrison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue