"The Buried Hours"

New from Thomas & Mercer: The Buried Hours: A Novel by R.S. Grant.

About the book, from the publisher:

Is she following a path of redemption or an enemy’s revenge? A crime reporter’s traumatic past comes back to haunt her in a twisting novel of lies, betrayals, and killer secrets.

Investigative crime journalist Signe Gates’s life became a nightmare the day she was kidnapped and drugged. After forty-eight missing hours, she woke to a blur of unsettling memories and a warning from her unknown abductors: tell anyone what happened and they’ll die. They’ve already proved they will deliver on that threat.

For two years, Signe has been haunted by what she knows she did and terrified of what else could be buried in her memories.

Then an informant tells her two men recently found dead in Yosemite are connected to her missing hours, and more answers await her in the park’s backwoods. But she must hurry. Desperate to know who targeted her and why, she has no choice but to embark on the dangerous journey.

With a seasoned hiker acting as her guide, Signe ventures into the wilderness to solve a crime, get justice for the crimes committed against her, and overcome her demons. If only she could trust the man leading her into the backwoods…

Because with each new suspicion, deliverance is starting to look more and more like a trap.

Visit R.S. Grant's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Imaginary Empires"

New from Louisiana State University Press: Imaginary Empires: Women Writers and Alternative Futures in Early US Literature by Maria O'Malley.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Imaginary Empires, Maria O’Malley examines early American texts published between 1767 and 1867 whose narratives represent women’s engagement in the formation of empire. Her analysis unearths a variety of responses to contact, exchange, and cohabitation in the early United States, stressing the possibilities inherent in the literary to foster participation, resignification, and rapprochement.

New readings of The Female American, Leonora Sansay’s Secret History, Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, Lydia Maria Child’s A Romance of the Republic, and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl confound the metaphors of ghosts, haunting, and amnesia that proliferate in many recent studies of early US literary history. Instead, as O’Malley shows, these writings foreground acts of foundational violence involved in the militarization of domestic spaces, the legal impediments to the transfer of property and wealth, and the geopolitical standing of the United States. Racialized and gendered figures in the texts refuse to die, leave, or stay silent. In imagining different kinds of futures, these writers reckon with the ambivalent role of women in empire-building as they negotiate between their own subordinate position in society and their exertion of sovereignty over others.

By tracing a thread of virtual history found in works by women, Imaginary Empires explores how reflections of the past offer a means of shaping future sociopolitical formations.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Above the Fire"

New from Blackstone Publishing: Above the Fire by Michael O'Donnell.

About the book, from the publsher:

O'Donnell's debut, Above the Fire, is a novel which finds hope and resilience in the timelessness of nature and the connection between parent and child. Perfect for fans of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Laboring under a shared loss, a father and son set out on a late-season backpacking trip through the mountains of New Hampshire. They find beauty and solidarity in the outdoors, making friends along the way and falling into the rhythms of an expedition. But when war breaks out during their hike, they are forced to withdraw even further into the backcountry.

Surviving an alpine winter by themselves, father and son must endure the elements, the solitude, and the ever-present danger of outsiders. As their isolation intensifies, their bond with each other grows more fierce. From their mountain refuge they must confront the perils of a changed world until they are forced to decide whether--and how--to rejoin society.

Visit Michael O'Donnell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"From Perception to Pleasure"

New from Oxford University Press: From Perception to Pleasure: The Neuroscience of Music and Why We Love It by Robert Zatorre.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why do we love music? What enables us to create it, perceive it, and enjoy it? In From Perception to Pleasure, Robert Zatorre provides answers to these questions from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, explaining how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. The book is organized around a central thesis: that pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops that enable processing of sound patterns, and subcortical circuits responsible for reward and valuation. This model integrates knowledge derived from basic neuroscience of the auditory system and of reward mechanisms with the concept that perception and pleasure depend on mechanisms of prediction, anticipation, and valuation.

The first part of the book describes the pathways to and from the auditory cortex that generate internal representations of musical structure at different levels of abstraction, which then interact with memory, sensory-motor, and other cognitive mechanisms that are essential to perceive and produce music. The second part of the book focuses on the functional anatomy of the dopaminergic reward system; its involvement in musical pleasure; the links between prediction, surprise, and complexity; and what happens when the system is disrupted.

The book is richly illustrated to help the reader follow the scientific findings. Most of all, From Perception to Pleasure provides an integrative model for a large body of scientific knowledge that explains how patterns of abstract sounds can generate profoundly moving hedonic experiences.

--Marshal Zeringue

"For the Last Time"

New from Crooked Lane Books: For the Last Time: A Novel by Heidi Perks.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dark secrets are revealed when a therapist becomes obsessed with her troubled new patients, for fans of Alex Michaelides and The Golden Couple.

When Erin and Will walk into Maggie’s office for a marriage counseling session, Maggie believes they are an ordinary couple with ordinary problems: communication, intimacy, the usual. But as Maggie struggles to get the couple to open up about what brought them here, she begins to sense that not all is as it seems.

When Erin mentions something connected to Maggie’s past that she couldn’t possibly know, Maggie is disturbed and confused. Why does Erin know anything about Maggie’s long-missing sister? Erin is connected to her somehow, and Maggie is no longer trying to fix the couple’s marriage–she’s trying to uncover her own truth. Maggie knows her code of ethics as a therapist should immediately stop her working with this couple, but she’s desperate for answers about her sister’s disappearance, and she can’t resist using her position to delve deeper into Erin’s memories and what she might know. Erin and Will might not be what they seem–but neither is Maggie.

This dual-perspective psychological thriller will keep readers turning pages until every last secret comes to light.

Visit Heidi Perks's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A History of Fake Things on the Internet"

New from Stanford University Press: A History of Fake Things on the Internet by Walter Scheirer.

About the book, from the publisher:

As all aspects of our social and informational lives increasingly migrate online, the line between what is "real" and what is digitally fabricated grows ever thinner―and that fake content has undeniable real-world consequences. A History of Fake Things on the Internet takes the long view of how advances in technology brought us to the point where faked texts, images, and video content are nearly indistinguishable from what is authentic or true.

Computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer takes a deep dive into the origins of fake news, conspiracy theories, reports of the paranormal, and other deviations from reality that have become part of mainstream culture, from image manipulation in the nineteenth-century darkroom to the literary stylings of large language models like ChatGPT. Scheirer investigates the origins of Internet fakes, from early hoaxes that traversed the globe via Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), USENET, and a new messaging technology called email, to today's hyperrealistic, AI-generated Deepfakes. An expert in machine learning and recognition, Scheirer breaks down the technical advances that made new developments in digital deception possible, and shares behind-the-screens details of early Internet-era pranks that have become touchstones of hacker lore. His story introduces us to the visionaries and mischief-makers who first deployed digital fakery and continue to influence how digital manipulation works―and doesn't―today: computer hackers, digital artists, media forensics specialists, and AI researchers. Ultimately, Scheirer argues that problems associated with fake content are not intrinsic properties of the content itself, but rather stem from human behavior, demonstrating our capacity for both creativity and destruction.

Visit Walter Scheirer's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Break the Glass"

New from Lake Union: Break the Glass by Olivia Swindler.

About the book, from the publisher:

Overnight, in a small town, careers, friendships, reputations, and futures are all on the line in a razor-sharp novel about scandals, secrets, and hard-earned dreams coming true.

A small-town campus is rocked by scandal. Suddenly, four women find themselves in the crosshairs of an investigation that threatens to upend their lives.

Lauren is the wife of a charismatic, now disgraced, university athletic director. To keep their marriage from crumbling, she’s cleaned up his messes before. This one she never saw coming. Nora is the director’s interim replacement. The groundbreaking career she’s worked for is on the rise. As wife of the English department’s dean, so is the scrutiny and the pressure. Anne is Nora’s wide-eyed intern, thrust unprepared into the chaos of a headline-making story. And there’s Alexis, an English professor in panic mode. Her own secret has always been safe. Until now.

As the media descends, colleagues and friends begin to question everything they thought they knew about each other. Every one of them is getting caught off guard. And it feels like the whole world is watching.

Visit Olivia Swindler's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Taste of Water"

New from the University of California Press: The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage by Christy Spackman.

About the book, from the publisher:

Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.

Visit Christy Spackman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Hunt On Dark Waters"

New from Del Rey: Hunt On Dark Waters by Katee Robert.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sail the magical high seas with this first book in a new sexy fantasy romance series from Katee Robert, the New York Times bestselling author of the TikTok smash-hit Neon Gods.

Evelyn is a witch with a perfect storm of impulses: terrible taste in bed partners, sticky fingers, and a lust for danger. After she steals from her vampire ex and falls through a portal to another realm, she’s fished out of the waters by a band of seafarers and their telekinetic captain. She’s immediately given a choice—join their group or die.

Bowen has no memory of his life before he became one of the Cŵn Annwn. He and his pirate crew are bound by vow to patrol through Threshold, the magical sea in between realms, keeping the portals to other worlds safe. When he rescues Evelyn, he doesn’t expect to be attracted to the unflappably brassy pickpocket. The longer he spends in her presence, the more he begins to question if his heart is the next thing she’ll steal.

But as tension heats up between Bowen and Evelyn, danger escalates as well. Because Evelyn has no intention of keeping her vows to the Cŵn Annwn, and if she betrays the crew, both she and Bowen will pay the ultimate price....

Visit Katee Robert's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Gnosis"

New from Oxford University Press: American Gnosis: Political Religion and Transcendence by Arthur Versluis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Greek word "gnosis," defined as direct spiritual knowledge or insight, has its origins in historical offshoots of Christianity in late antiquity. But the terms “Gnosticism” and “gnosis” have become widespread in many other contexts. They are common in contemporary scholarship on religion and in popular usage among magical, religious, and spiritual practitioners. And they have entered popular usage in contemporary society, with applications in numerous political, religious, and cultural contexts. Gnosis and Gnosticism have become leitmotifs in popular culture, in films such as The Matrix and Dark City, as well as in anime and other popular art forms.

In American Gnosis, Arthur Versluis explores the fascinating connection between the Gnostic tradition and contemporary American spirituality, politics, and popular media. Versluis surveys themes of Gnosticism and gnosis in American culture, both within the United States and in global contexts. Versluis shows that gnosis is key to understanding a wide spectrum of global syncretic religious and intellectual movements-some sensational, even wild, but all fascinating. American gnosis, he argues, is a defining feature of hybrid new religious forms in the twenty-first century.

Versluis provides case studies of major contemporary figures and texts that are emblematic of neo-gnosticism, offering a comprehensive framework of gnosis and an understanding of gnostic trends in modernity. He explores how neo-gnostic memes recur in social media and shows how American gnosis has manifested as spiritual independence, reflecting the ever-growing demographic category “spiritual but not religious.” In delving into the intersection of contemporary American spirituality, politics, and literature, American Gnosis uncovers the remarkable prevalence of neo-gnostic elements today.

Visit Arthur Versluis's website.

The Page 99 Test: American Gurus.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death Sets Sail"

New from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: Death Sets Sail by Robin Stevens.

About the book, from the publisher:

Daisy and Hazel take their detective skills to the Nile River in Egypt in this thrilling ninth and final novel in the Murder Most Unladylike series.

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are in Egypt taking a cruise along the Nile. They are hoping to see some ancient temples and a mummy or two...What they get instead is murder.

Also travelling on the SS Hatshepsut is a mysterious society called the Breath of Life: a group of genteel English ladies and gentlemen who believe themselves to be reincarnations of the ancient pharaohs. Three days into the cruise their leader, Theodora Miller, is found dead in her cabin, stabbed during the night. It soon becomes clear to Daisy and Hazel that Theodora’s timid daughter, Hephzibah, who is prone to sleepwalking, is being framed. After all, within the society, everyone has a reason to want Theodora dead.

Daisy and Hazel leap into action to investigate, but this will prove to be their most difficult case yet. And with more danger than ever all around, this time only one of the Detective Society will make it home alive...

Visit Robin Stevens's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black Scare / Red Scare"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States by Charisse Burden-Stelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

A radical explication of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has infused the US government’s anti-communist repression.

In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa.

Beginning her account in 1917—the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act—Burden-Stelly traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare / Red Scare: US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness embodied the government’s fear of both Black insurrection and Red instigation. The state’s actions and rhetoric therefore characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were interchangeable threats.

Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation. Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working within and alongside the international communist movement and analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.

Visit Charisse Burden-Stelly's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fall"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Fall (Detective Harriet Foster) by Tracy Clark.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the second book in the Detective Harriet Foster thriller series, author Tracy Clark weaves a twisted journey into the underbelly of Chicago as Harriet and her team work to unmask a serial killer stalking the city’s aldermen.

The Chicago PD is on high alert when two city aldermen are found dead: one by apparent suicide, one brutally stabbed in his office, and both with thirty dimes left on their bodies―a betrayer’s payment. With no other clues, the question is, Who else has a debt to pay?

Detective Harriet Foster is on the case before the killer can strike again. But even with the help of her partner, Detective Vera Li, and the rest of their team, Harriet has little to go on and a lot at risk. There’s no telling who the killer’s next target is or how many will come next.

To stop another murder, Harriet and her officers will have to examine what the victims had going on behind the scenes to determine who could be tangled up in this web of betrayal…and who could be out for revenge.

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Future Is Feminist"

New from Cornell University Press: The Future Is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria by Sara Rahnama.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Future Is Feminist by Sara Rahnama offers a closer look at a pivotal moment in Algerian history when Algerians looked to feminism as a path out of the stifling realities of French colonial rule. Algerian people focused outward to developments in the Middle East, looking critically at their own society and with new eyes to Islamic tradition. In doing so, they reordered the world on their own terms—pushing back against French colonial claims about Islam's inherent misogyny.

Rahnama describes how Algerians took inspiration from Middle Eastern developments in women's rights. Empowered by the Muslim reform movement sweeping the region, they read Islamic knowledge with new eyes, even calling Muhammad "the first Arab feminist." They compared the blossoming women's rights movements across the Middle East and this history of Islam's feminist potential to the stifled position of Algerian women, who suffered from limited access to education and respectable work. Local dynamics also shaped these discussions, including the recent entry of thousands of Algerian women into the workforce as domestic workers in European settler homes.

While Algerian people disagreed about whether Algeria's future should be colonial or independent, they agreed that women's advancement would offer a path forward for Muslim society toward a more prosperous future. Through its use of Arabic-language sources alongside French ones, The Future Is Feminist moves beyond Algeria's colonial relationship to France to illuminate its relationship to the Middle East.

Visit Sara Rahnama's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Where There's Smoke"

New from Knopf Books for Young Readers: Where There's Smoke by E. B. Vickers.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this fast-paced thriller, eighteen-year-old Calli finds herself alone after the loss of her father—until a bruised and broken girl shows up on her property, forcing her to face the present, rethink her future, and unearth the skeletons of her own past.

Life has never been easy in the small desert town of Harmony, but even on the day Calli Christopher buries her father, she knows she is surrounded by people who care about her. But after the funeral, when everyone has finally gone home, Calli discovers a girl on her property. A girl who’s dirty and bruised and unable to speak. And petrified.

Calli keeps the girl secret—well, almost secret. She calls her Ash and begins to nurture her back to health. But word spreads in a small town, and soon a detective comes around asking questions about a missing girl from another town. But these only raise more questions—about Ash and about the people Calli knows well. Still, she must ask: is Ash in danger…or is she the danger?

Visit E. B. Vickers's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres"

New from Cambridge University Press: Blindness and Spectatorship in Ancient and Modern Theatres: Towards New Ways of Looking and Looking Back by Marchella Ward.

About the book, from the publisher:

The use of disability as a metaphor is ubiquitous in popular culture – nowhere more so than in the myths, stereotypes and tropes around blindness. To be 'blind' has never referred solely to the inability to see. Instead blindness has been used as shorthand for, among other things, a lack of understanding, immorality, closeness to death, special insight or second sight. Although these 'meanings' attached to blindness were established as early as antiquity, readers, receivers and spectators into the present have been implicated in the stereotypes, which persist because audiences can be relied on to perpetuate them. This book argues for a new way of seeing – and of understanding classical reception - by offering assemblage-thinking as an alternative to the presumed passivity of classical influence. And the theatre, which has been (incorrectly) assumed to be principally a visual medium, is the ideal space in which to investigate new ways of seeing.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death in the Dark Woods"

New from Berkley: Death in the Dark Woods (A Monster Hunter Mystery) by Annelise Ryan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A potential Bigfoot sighting is linked to a vicious murder, but skeptical cryptozoologist Morgan Carter is on the case in this new Monster Hunter Mystery by USA Today bestselling author Annelise Ryan.

Business has been booming since Morgan Carter solved the case of the monster living in Lake Michigan. The Odds and Ends bookstore is thriving, of course, but Morgan is most excited by the doors that were opened for her as a cryptid hunter.

Recently, there have been numerous sightings of a Bigfoot-type creature in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest area of Bayfield County, Wisconsin. After a man is found dead from a vicious throat injury in the forest, the conservation warden asks Morgan to investigate.

When Morgan and her dog, Newt, go there to investigate, they uncover a trail of lies, deception, and murder. It seems a mysterious creature is indeed living in the forest, and Morgan might be its next target.

Visit Annelise Ryan's website.

Q&A with Annelise Ryan.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Making the Renaissance Man"

New from Reaktion Books: Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy by Timothy McCall.

About the book, from the publisher:

Looking beyond the marble elegance of Michelangelo’s David, the pugnacious, passionate, and—crucially—important story of Renaissance manhood.

Making the Renaissance Man explores the images, objects, and experiences that fashioned men and masculinity in the courts of fifteenth-century Italy. Across the peninsula, Italian princes fought each other in fierce battles and spectacular jousts, seduced mistresses, flaunted splendor in lavish rituals of knighting, and demonstrated prowess through the hunt—all ostentatious performances of masculinity and the drive to rule. Hardly frivolous pastimes, these activities were essential displays of privilege and virility; indeed, violence underlay the cultural veneer of the Italian Renaissance. Timothy McCall investigates representations and ideals of manhood in this time and provides a historically grounded and gorgeously illustrated account of how male identity and sexuality proclaimed power during a century crucial to the formation of Early Modern Europe.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Different Kind of Gone"

New from Lake Union: A Different Kind of Gone: A Novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

About the book, from the publisher:

The truth behind a teenage girl’s disappearance becomes something to conceal in a gripping novel about justice, lies, and impossible choices by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

When nineteen-year-old Jill Moss goes missing near the Utah-Arizona border, everyone has an opinion. Only Norma Gallagher, a search and rescue volunteer, knows the real story.

Norma’s already found Jill, huddled in a cave and terrified that her abusive boyfriend, Jake, will kill her. If he ever sees her again. To protect Jill from a dangerous man, Norma quietly delivers the girl to her grateful parents in California, even though she’s conflicted. Keeping Jill safe and hidden from Jake, the press, and the public will be their secret. But secrets can’t last forever.

Five years later, the disappearance stirs a new media frenzy when Jake is arrested for the murder of Jill Moss―and Norma knows he didn’t kill her. As Jake is about to stand trial, lust for retribution inflames public opinion and Jill’s family refuses to come forward, forcing Norma to make a life-changing decision.

What are the consequences if she stays silent? And what are the risks if she dares to finally tell the truth?

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

--Marshal Zeringue

"White Man's Work"

New from The University of North Carolina Press: White Man's Work: Race and Middle-Class Mobility into the Progressive Era by Joseph O. Jewell.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the financial chaos of the last few decades, increasing wealth inequality has shaken people's expectations about middle-class stability. At the same time, demographers have predicted the "browning" of the nation's middle class—once considered a de facto "white" category—over the next twenty years as the country becomes increasingly racially diverse. In this book, Joseph O. Jewell takes us back to the turn of the twentieth century to show how evidence of middle-class mobility among Black, Mexican American, and Chinese men generated both new anxieties and varieties of backlash among white populations.

Blending cultural history and historical sociology, Jewell chronicles the continually evolving narratives that linked whiteness with middle-class mobility and middle-class manhood. In doing so, Jewell addresses a key issue in the historical sociology of race: how racialized groups demarcate, defend, and alter social positions in overlapping hierarchies of race, class, and gender. New racist narratives about non-white men occupying middle-class occupations emerged in cities across the nation at the turn of the century. These stories helped to shore up white supremacy in the face of far-reaching changes to the nation's racialized economic order.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Night Side"

New from Severn House: The Night Side by M.M. DeLuca.

About the book, from the publisher:

Twenty years of secrets. One deadly truth.

When Ruby Carlson was eighteen, she ran away from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana, and vowed she'd never return. Never return to life under the control of her manipulative mother, Ida, a self-styled medium and psychic scammer who made a career out of ruining people's lives. Never return to the small town where enemies lurk at every turn.

But now, twenty years later, Ruby is back. Her mother is missing, presumed dead, and Ruby reluctantly returns to a home filled with chilling memories to settle Ida's affairs. Did she really commit suicide by drowning, or is this another dark scheme? Ruby thought she knew everything about her mother, but finds herself unraveling a web of lies and secrets to reveal a story more twisted than anyone could have imagined . . .

Visit M.M. DeLuca's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Jazz Problem"

New from the State University of New York Press: The Jazz Problem: Education and the Battle for Morality during the Jazz Age by Jacob W. Hardesty.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Jazz Problem shows how high schools and colleges were the primary sites of this generational debate around jazz, the century's first cultural war. Schools were crucial sites of dispute between the worldviews of the late nineteenth century and the emerging modern world, one synonymous with jazz. As a major site of character formation where students came of age, high schools and colleges were the places where jazz was simultaneously celebrated and denigrated. Educators saw jazz as inseparable from other vices, such as smoking, drinking, "immodest dress" (for women), and some degree of sexual activity. Yet young people felt jazz was their music and relished the sense of generational autonomy that came with their affinity for jazz. This book offers a fresh and compelling look at the jazz controversy and how it shaped not only America's musical life but our broader cultural identity.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Night Owl"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Night Owl: A Trasker Thriller by Andrew Mayne.

About the book, from the publisher:

A shocking act of sabotage draws a retired spy into a deadly conspiracy in an explosive thriller by an Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

After three decades in counterintelligence, Brad Trasker is retired, disillusioned, and dealing with a tragic loss. Spy games are behind him until he attends the launch of a next-generation aircraft. When the project of innovative aerospace CEO Kylie Connor explodes on the tarmac―nearly killing her in the process―Trasker is pulled back into the line of fire.

The mystery of the sabotage quickly deepens. All Kylie’s data has been wiped from the server. One of her engineers has disappeared. A seed investor has died in a suspicious car accident. And a cold-blooded murder raises the stakes even higher.

To discover who’s pulling the strings behind a dangerous conspiracy, Trasker needs to find a motive. Corporate espionage, revenge, or something he can’t yet see? Targeted by assassins, he finds himself overmatched when he realizes he can’t trust anyone―including Kylie. Too long out of a game he no longer understands, Trasker must adapt or die.

Visit Andrew Mayne's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Foreverism"

New from Polity Books: Foreverism by Grafton Tanner.

About the book, from the publisher:

What do cinematic “universes,” cloud archiving, and voice cloning have in common? They’re in the business of foreverizing – the process of revitalizing things that have degraded, failed, or disappeared so that they can remain active in the present. To foreverize something is to reanimate it, to enclose and protect it from time and the elements, and to eradicate the feeling of nostalgia that accompanies loss. Foreverizing is a bulwark against instability, but it isn’t an infallible enterprise. That which is promised to last forever often does not, and that which is disposed of can sometimes last, disturbingly, forever. In this groundbreaking book, American philosopher Grafton Tanner develops his theory of foreverism: an anti-nostalgic discourse that promises growth without change and life without loss. Engaging with pressing issues from the ecological impact of data storage to the rise of reboot culture, Tanner tracks the implications of a society averse to nostalgia and reveals the new weapons we have for eliminating it.

Visit Grafton Tanner's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sunset, Water City"

New from Soho Crime: Sunset, Water City by Chris McKinney.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the powerful conclusion to the sci-fi noir Water City trilogy, faith, power, and tech clash when our nameless protagonist passes the responsibility of saving the world to his teenage daughter. For fans of Phillip K. Dick and The Last of Us.

Year 2160: It’s been ten years since the cataclysmic events of Eventide, Water City, where 99.97 percent of the human population was possessed or obliterated by Akira Kimura, Water City’s renowned scientist and Earth’s former savior.

Our nameless antihero, a synesthete and former detective, and his daughter, Ascalon, navigate through a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by barbaric Zeroes—the permanent residents of the continent’s biggest landfill, The Great Leachate—who cling to the ways of the old world. They live in opposition to Akira’s godlike domination of the planet—she has taken control of the population that viewed her as a god and converted them into her Gardeners, zombie-like humans who plod along to build her vision of a new world.

What that world exactly entails, Ascalon is not entirely sure, but intends to find out. Now nineteen, she, a synesthete herself, takes over this story while her father succumbs to grief and decades of Akira’s manipulation. Tasked with the impossible, Ascalon must find a way to free what’s left of the human race.

Visit Chris McKinney's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Modernism and the Aristocracy"

New from Oxford University Press: Modernism and the Aristocracy: Monsters of English Privilege by Adam Parkes.

About the book, from the publisher:

During a modern age that saw the expansion of its democracy, the fading of its empire, and two world wars, Britain's hereditary aristocracy was pushed from the centre to the margins of the nation's affairs. Widely remarked on by commentators at the time, this radical redrawing of the social and political map provoked a newly intensified fascination with the aristocracy among modern writers. Undone by history, the British aristocracy and its Anglo-Irish cousins were remade by literary modernism. Modernism and the Aristocracy: Monsters of English Privilege is about the results of that remaking.

The book traces the literary consequences of the modernist preoccupation with aristocracy in the works of Elizabeth Bowen, Ford Madox Ford, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, and others writing in Britain and Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century. Combining an historical focus on the decades between the two world wars with close attention to the verbal textures and formal structures of literary texts, Adam Parkes asks: What did the decline of the British aristocracy do for modernist writers? What imaginative and creative opportunities did the historical fate of the aristocracy precipitate in writers of the new democratic age? Exploring a range of feelings, affects, and attitudes that modernist authors associated with the aristocracy in the interwar period--from stupidity, boredom, and nostalgia to sophistication, cruelty, and kindness--the book also asks what impact this subject-matter has on the form and style of modernist texts, and why the results have appealed to readers then and now. In tackling such questions, Parkes argues for a reawakening of curiosity about connections between class, status, and literature in the modernist period.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Alone Time"

Coming May 1 from Thomas & Mercer: The Alone Time by Elle Marr.

About the book, from the publisher:

For two sisters, confronting the past could come at a terrible price in a riveting novel about a family tragedy―and family secrets―by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author Elle Marr.

Fiona and Violet Seng were just children when their family’s Cessna crash-landed in the Washington wilderness, claiming the lives of their parents. For twelve harrowing weeks, the girls fended for themselves before being rescued.

Twenty-five years later, they’re still trying to move on from the trauma. Fiona repurposes it into controversial works of art. Violet has battled addiction and failed relationships to finally progress toward normalcy as a writer. The estranged sisters never speak about what they call their Alone Time in the wild. They wouldn’t dare―until they become the subject of a documentary that renews public fascination with the “girl survivors” and questions their version of the events.

When disturbing details about the Seng family are exposed, a strange woman claims to know the crash was deliberate. Fiona and Violet must come together to face the horrifying truth of what happened out there and what they learned about their parents and themselves. Before any other secrets emerge from the woods.

Visit Elle Marr's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Missing Sister.

The Page 69 Test: Lies We Bury.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Land Is Kin"

New from the University Press of Kansas: Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites by Dana Lloyd, Foreword by Judge Abby Abinanti.

About the book, from the publisher:

Responding to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s call for all people to “become involved” in the struggle to protect Indigenous sacred sites, Dana Lloyd’s Land Is Kin proposes a rethinking of sacred sites, and a rethinking of even land itself. Deloria suggested using the principle of religious freedom, but this principle has failed Indigenous peoples for decades. Lloyd argues that religious freedom fails Indigenous claimants because settler law creates a tension between two competing rights—one party’s religious freedom and another party’s property rights. In this contest, the right of property will always win.

Through an analysis of the 1988 US Supreme Court case Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, which she interprets as a case about sovereignty and the meaning of land, Lloyd proposes a multilayered understanding of land and the different roles it can simultaneously play. Rejecting the binary logic of sacred religion versus secular property, Lloyd uses the legal dispute over the High Country—an area of the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California sacred to the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa Indigenous nations—to show that there are at least five different, but not equally valid, ways to understand land in the Lyng case: home, property, sacred site, wilderness, and kin. To protect the High Country, the Yurok filed a religious freedom lawsuit but then proceeded to describe the land as their home in court. They lobbied for protecting the High Country through a wilderness designation even as they continued to argue that they had been managing it for centuries. They have purchased large parcels of ancestral land and also declare the land their kin, a relationship that ostensibly excludes the possibility of ownership.

Land Is Kin demonstrates the complexity of land in contemporary religious, political, and legal discourse. By drawing on Indigenous perspectives on the land as kin, Lloyd points toward a framework that shifts sovereignty away from binary oppositions—between property and sacred site, between the federal government and Native nations—towards seeing the land itself as sovereign.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil and Mrs. Davenport"

Coming March 5 from Lake Union: The Devil and Mrs. Davenport: A Novel by Paulette Kennedy.

About the book, from the publisher:

The bestselling author of The Witch of Tin Mountain and Parting the Veil mines the subtle horrors of 1950s America in a gripping novel about a woman under pressure―from the living and the dead.

The first day of autumn brought the fever, and with the fever came the voices.

Missouri, 1955. Loretta Davenport has led an isolated life as a young mother and a wife to Pete, an ambitious assistant professor at a Bible college. They’re the picture of domestic tranquility―until a local girl is murdered and Loretta begins receiving messages from beyond. Pete dismisses them as delusions of a fevered female imagination. Loretta knows they’re real―and frightening.

Defying Pete’s demands, Loretta finds an encouraging supporter in parapsychologist Dr. Curtis Hansen. He sees a woman with a rare gift, more blessing than curse. With Dr. Hansen’s help, Loretta’s life opens up to an empowering new purpose. But for Pete, the God-fearing image he’s worked so hard to cultivate is under threat. No longer in control of his dutiful wife, he sees the Devil at work.

As Loretta’s powers grow stronger and the pleading spirits beckon, Pete is determined to deliver his wife from evil. To solve the mysteries of the dead, Loretta must first save herself.

Visit Paulette Kennedy's website.

The Page 69 Test: Parting the Veil.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Noble Ruin"

New from Oxford University Press: A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic by W. Jeffrey Tatum.

About the book, from the publisher:

A complex and captivating portrait of Mark Antony that offers a fresh perspective on the fall of the Roman Republic

In his lifetime, Mark Antony was a famous man. Ally and avenger of Julius Caesar, rhetorical target of Cicero, lover of Cleopatra, and mortal enemy of Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), Antony played a leading role in the transformation of the Roman world. Ever since his and Cleopatra's demise at the hands of Octavian, he has remained famous, or infamous, a figure of recurring fascination.

His life--variegated, passionate, sensual, bold, and tragic--inspires vigorous reactions. Nearly everyone has a view on Antony. For Cicero, he was a distasteful though talented man. Octavian fashioned him a dangerous failure, a Roman noble corrupted by his appetites and his lust for Cleopatra. Later historians adopted and adapted these themes, delivering their readers an Antony who was irresistibly depraved, startlingly brave, sometimes cunning, but almost always constitutionally incapable of choosing the right side of history. From these, especially Plutarch's compelling portrait, Shakespeare gave us the chivalrous and unstudied Antony of Antony and Cleopatra.

A Noble Ruin, the fullest biography of Antony in English, assimilates the various, often competing, ancient sources to provide a strong and much-needed dose of realism to the caricature we have of this major historical figure. The book gives ample attention to the varied cultural circumstances in which Antony operated, including the social and moral expectations of his republican heritage, as well as the exceptional challenges posed by the convulsion of civil war. In furnishing a complex and captivating portrait of Anthony, A Noble Ruin allows readers to freshly assess his conduct, ambitions, and attainments, as well as the turbulent age in which he lived.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Caught in a Bad Fauxmance"

New from Joy Revolution: Caught in a Bad Fauxmance by Elle Gonzalez Rose.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fresh, fun contemporary rom-com from debut author Elle Gonzalez Rose, about an aspiring artist who agrees to fake date one of his family’s longtime enemies in the hopes of gathering intel good enough to take down their rivals once and for all.

Devin Baez is ready for a relaxing winter break at Lake Andreas. That is, until he runs into his obnoxious next-door neighbors the Seo-Cookes, undefeated champions of the lake’s annual Winter Games. In the hope of finally taking down these long-time rivals, the Baezes offer up their beloved cabin in a bet. Reckless? Definitely.

So when annoyingly handsome Julian Seo-Cooke finds himself in need of a fake boyfriend, Devin sees an opportunity to get behind enemy lines and prove the family plays dirty.

As long as Devin and Julian’s families are at war, there’s only room for loathing between them. Which is a problem because, for Devin, this faux game of love is feeling very real.

Visit Elle Gonzalez Rose's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"England's Insular Imagining"

New from Cambridge University Press: England's Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland by Lorna Hutson.

About the book, from the publisher:

How have the English conceived of Scotland? Lorna Hutson's book is an essential intervention in the contested narrative of British nationhood. It argues that England deployed a mythical 'British History' in pursuing dominion over its northern neighbour: initially through waging war, and then striving to make the very idea of Scotland vanish in new figurations of sea-sovereignty. The author explores English attempts at conquest in the 1540s, revealing how justifications of overlordship mutated into literary, legal and cartographic ploys to erase Scotland-as-kingdom. Maps, treatises and military propaganda are no less imaginative in their eradicative strategies than river poetry, chorography, allegory, epic, tragedies, history plays and masques. Hutson shows how Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Henry V and King Lear, Plowden's theory of the King's Two Bodies, Camden's Britannia, and the race-making in Jonson's Masque of Blackness are all implicated in England's jurisdictional claim and refusal to acknowledge Scotland as sovereign nation.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Flores and Miss Paula"

New from Ecco: Flores and Miss Paula: A Novel by Melissa Rivero.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wry, tender novel about a Peruvian immigrant mother and a millennial daughter who have one final chance to find common ground

Thirtysomething Flores and her mother, Paula, still live in the same Brooklyn apartment, but that may be the only thing they have in common. It’s been nearly three years since they lost beloved husband and father Martín, who had always been the bridge between them. One day, cleaning beneath his urn, Flores discovers a note written in her mother’s handwriting: Perdóname si te falle. Recuerda que siempre te quise. (“Forgive me if I failed you. Remember that I always loved you.”) But what would Paula need forgiveness for?

Now newfound doubts and old memories come flooding in, complicating each woman’s efforts to carve out a good life for herself—and to support the other in the same. Paula thinks Flores should spend her evenings meeting a future husband, not crunching numbers for a floundering aquarium startup. Flores wishes Paula would ask for a raise at her DollaBills retail job, or at least find a best friend who isn’t a married man.

When Flores and Paula learn they will be forced to move, they must finally confront their complicated past—and decide whether they share the same dreams for the future. Spirited and warm-hearted, Melissa Rivero’s new novel showcases the complexities of the mother-daughter bond with fresh insight and empathy.

Visit Melissa Rivero's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tools and the Organism"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Tools and the Organism: Technology and the Body in Ancient Greek and Roman Medicine by Colin Webster.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first book to show how the concept of bodily organs emerged and how ancient tools influenced conceptualizations of human anatomy and its operations.

Medicine is itself a type of technology, involving therapeutic tools and substances, and so one can write the history of medicine as the application of different technologies to the human body. In Tools and the Organism, Colin Webster argues that, throughout antiquity, these tools were crucial to broader theoretical shifts. Notions changed about what type of object a body is, what substances constitute its essential nature, and how its parts interact. By following these changes and taking the question of technology into the heart of Greek and Roman medicine, Webster reveals how the body was first conceptualized as an “organism”—a functional object whose inner parts were tools, or organa, that each completed certain vital tasks. He also shows how different medical tools created different bodies.

Webster’s approach provides both an overarching survey of the ways that technologies impacted notions of corporeality and corporeal behaviors and, at the same time, stays attentive to the specific material details of ancient tools and how they informed assumptions about somatic structures, substances, and inner processes. For example, by turning to developments in water-delivery technologies and pneumatic tools, we see how these changing material realities altered theories of the vascular system and respiration across Classical antiquity. Tools and the Organism makes the compelling case for why telling the history of ancient Greco-Roman medical theories, from the Hippocratics to Galen, should pay close attention to the question of technology.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mistress of Ashmore Castle"

New from Sphere: The Mistress of Ashmore Castle by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

About the book, from the publisher:

Behind the doors of the magnificent Ashmore Castle, secrets are waiting to be uncovered . . .

England, 1903.

Giles, the Earl of Stainton, has fled from his stifling duties to resume his research in Egypt, leaving behind his wife Kitty, and his infant son. Kitty, still reeling from Giles' sudden departure, struggles to keep spirits high in the castle and establish herself as the true mistress of the house, an impossible task given how many secrets the inhabitants are hiding from her...

The Earl's younger sisters, Rachel and Alice, are both pursuing forbidden romances, and his brother Richard begins a new business venture, spurred on by his clandestine lover. And below stairs, a shocking crime sends distrust rippling through the staff, more so when one of their own is accused.

Kitty must draw on her strength to keep the castle from crumbling around her, but with her marriage to Giles left uncertain, and a surprise of her own to conceal, can she ever take her rightful place as true head of her household?

The third novel in the Ashmore Castle historical family drama series, filled with heartbreak, romance and intriguing secrets waiting to be uncovered. The perfect read for fans of Downton Abbey, Bridgerton and rich period dramas.

Visit Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's website.

My Book, The Movie: Headlong.

Writers Read: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (February 2019).

The Page 69 Test: The Secrets of Ashmore Castle.

The Page 69 Test: Before I Sleep.

--Marshal Zeringue

"World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence"

New from the University Press of Kansas: World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence by Mark Stout.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ask an American intelligence officer to tell you when the country started doing modern intelligence and you will probably hear something about the Office of Strategic Services in World War II or the National Security Act of 1947 and the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency. What you almost certainly will not hear is anything about World War I. In World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence, Mark Stout establishes that, in fact, World War I led to the realization that intelligence was indispensable in both wartime and peacetime.

After a lengthy gestation that started in the late nineteenth century, modern American intelligence emerged during World War I, laying the foundations for the establishment of a self-conscious profession of intelligence. Virtually everything that followed was maturation, reorganization, reinvigoration, or reinvention. World War I ushered in a period of rapid changes. Never again would the War Department be without an intelligence component. Never again would a senior American commander lead a force to war without intelligence personnel on their staff. Never again would the United States government be without a signals intelligence agency or aerial reconnaissance capability.

Stout examines the breadth of American intelligence in the war, not just in France, not just at home, but around the world and across the army, navy, and State Department, and demonstrates how these far-flung efforts endured after the Armistice in 1918. For the first time, there came to be a group of intelligence practitioners who viewed themselves as different from other soldiers, sailors, and diplomats. Upon entering World War II, the United States had a solid foundation from which to expand to meet the needs of another global hot war and the Cold War that followed.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mayors of New York"

New from Pegasus Books: The Mayors of New York: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mystery by S. J. Rozan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The new crime novel from the award-winning S. J. Rozan, where private investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith find themselves thrust into the mystery behind the disappearance of the teenage son of the mayor of New York.

In January, New York City inaugurates its first female mayor. In April, her son disappears.

Called in by the mayor's chief aide—a former girlfriend of private investigator Bill Smith’s—to find the missing fifteen-year-old, Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, are told the boy has run away. Neither the press nor the NYPD know that he’s missing, and the mayor wants him back before a headstrong child turns into a political catastrophe. But as Bill and Lydia investigate, they turn up more questions than answers.

Why did the boy leave? Who else is searching for him, and why? What is his twin sister hiding?

Then a teen is found dead and another is hit by gunfire. Are these tragedies related to each other, and to the mayor's missing son?

In a desperate attempt to find the answer to the boy's disappearance before it's too late, Bill and Lydia turn to the only contacts they think will be able to help: the neighborhood leaders who are the real ‘mayors’ of New York.

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Paper Son.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Violence.

Q&A with S. J. Rozan.

Writers Read: S.J. Rozan (February 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Family Business.

--Marshal Zeringue

"As Legend Has It"

New from the University of Wisconsin Press: As Legend Has It: History, Heritage, and the Construction of Swedish American Identity by Jennifer Eastman Attebery.

About the book, from the publisher:

A study of identity construction through historical legend

Spanning more than 100 years of Swedish American local history in the Midwest and the West, Jennifer Eastman Attebery’s thorough examination of nearly 300 historical legends explores how Swedish Americans employ these narratives in creating, debating, and maintaining group identity. She demonstrates that historical legends can help us better understand how immigrant groups in general, and Swedish Americans in particular, construct and perpetuate a sense of ethnicity as broader notions of nationality, race, and heritage shift over time.

The legends Swedish Americans tell about their past are both similar to and distinct from those of others who migrated westward; they participated in settler colonialism while maintaining a sense of their specific, Swedish ethnicity. Unlike racial minority groups, Swedish Americans could claim membership in a majority white community without abandoning their cultural heritage. Their legends and local histories reflect that positioning. Attebery reveals how Swedish American legends are embedded within local history writing, how ostension and rhetoric operate in historical legends, and how vernacular local history writing works in tandem with historical legends to create a common message about a communal past. This impeccably researched study points to ways in which legends about the past possess qualities unique to their subgenre yet can also operate similarly to contemporary legends in their social impact.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Salt & Broom"

New from 47North: Salt & Broom by Sharon Lynn Fisher.

About the book, from the publisher:

A gifted healer unravels the mysteries of a cursed estate―and its enigmatic owner―in a witchy retelling of Jane Eyre.

Salt and broom, make this room

Safe and tight, against the night.

Trunks packed with potions and cures, Jane Aire sets out on a crisp, clear morning in October to face the greatest challenge of her sheltered girls’-school existence. A shadow lies over Thornfield Hall and its reclusive master, Edward Rochester. And he’s hired her only as a last resort.

Jane stumbles again and again as she tries to establish a rapport with her prickly new employer, but he becomes the least of her worries as a mysterious force seems to work against her. The threats mount around both Jane and Rochester―who’s becoming more intriguing and appealing to her by the day. Jane begins to fear her herb healing and protective charms may not be enough to save the man she’s growing to love from a threat darker and more dangerous than either of them imagined.

Visit Sharon Lynn Fisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Incorrigibles"

New from the University of Nebraska Press: The Incorrigibles: Eugenics and Sterilization in the Kansas Industrial School for Girls by Ry Marcattilio-McCracken.

About the book, from the publisher:

Between September 1935 and June 1936, sixty-two girls from a reformatory in north-central Kansas were sterilized in the name of eugenics. None of the girls were habitual criminals, had multiple children, were living on social welfare, or were found to have IQs below seventy; in other words, almost none of them fit the categories usually described by eugenicists as justification for sterilization or covered by Kansas’s eugenic sterilization law. Yet no one at the time—including the reform school superintendent who ordered the procedures performed—had trouble defending the sterilizations as eugenically minded. The general public, however, found the justifications significantly more controversial after the story hit the newspapers.

In The Incorrigibles Ry Marcattilio-McCracken interrogates the overlooked history of eugenics in Kansas. He argues that eugenics developed alongside Progressive social welfare reforms in public health, criminal deterrence, child welfare, and juvenile delinquency. Between 1890 and 1955, ideas about rural degenerationism and hereditarianism infused the mission of “progressive” reformers, who linked delinquency, incorrigibility, and immorality to inheritable traits. Marcattilio-McCracken shows how the era’s institutional overcrowding, landmark Supreme Court cases, and the economic downturn of the Great Depression contributed to the sterilization of the students from the Girls’ Industrial School in Beloit, Kansas.

--Marshal Zeringue