"The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War"

New from Oxford University Press: The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War: Experiences of Exile in Early Modern Europe, 1632-1648 by Thomas Pert.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Palatine Family and the Thirty Years' War examines the experience of exiled royal and noble dynasties during the early modern period through a study of the rulers of the Electorate of the Palatinate during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). By drawing on a wide range of archival source materials, ranging from financial records, printed manifestos, and considerable quantities of diplomatic and personal correspondence, it investigates the resources available to the exiled 'Palatine Family' as well as their attempts to recover the lands and titles lost by Elector Frederick V—the son-in-law of King James VI and I of England and Scotland—in the opening stages of the Thirty Years' War.

This work focuses on the years between Frederick's death in 1632 and the partial restoration of his son Charles Louis under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Although the 'Palatine Question' remained one of the most divisive and important issues throughout the entire Thirty Years' War, the years 1632-1648 have been greatly overlooked in previous examinations of the Palatine Family's exile. By considering the experiences of exiled elites in early modern Europe—such as the relationship between the Palatine Family and the Stuart Dynasty—this work will reveal the influence of dynastic and familial obligations on the high politics of the period, as well as the importance of conspicuous display and diplomatic recognition for exiled regimes in seventeenth-century Europe. It will demonstrate that that dispossessed rulers and houses were not automatically rendered politically insignificant after losing their lands and titles, and could actually remain an important player on the geo-political stage of early modern Europe.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Reclaiming Time"

New from State University of New York Press: Reclaiming Time: The Transformative Politics of Feminist Temporalities by Tanya Ann Kennedy.

About the book, from the publisher:

The post-2016 election era in the United States is commonly presumed to be an era of crisis. Reclaiming Time argues that the narratives used to make this crisis a meaningful national story (e.g., Hillbilly Elegy, Strangers in Their Own Land) are not only gendered and racialized but also give a thin account of time, one so superficial as to make the future unimaginable. Examining the work of feminist theorists, performance artists, writers, and activists—from Octavia Butler and Jesmyn Ward to the Combahee River Collective and Congresswoman Maxine Waters—Tanya Ann Kennedy shows how their work disturbs dominant temporal frames; rearticulates the relations between past, present, and future; and offers models for "doing" the future as reparation. Reclaiming Time thus builds on while also critiquing feminist literary critical practices of reparative reading. Kennedy further aligns the method of reparative reading with the theories and aims of reparative justice, making the case for more fully engaging with social movement activism.

Tanya Ann Kennedy is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Maine at Augusta. She is the author of Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Vaccine Wars"

New from Johns Hopkins University Press: Vaccine Wars: The Two-Hundred-Year Fight for School Vaccinations by Kim Tolley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The first comprehensive history of efforts to vaccinate children from contagious disease in US schools.

As protests over vaccine mandates increase in the twenty-first century, many people have raised concerns about a growing opposition to school vaccination requirements. What triggered anti-vaccine activism in the past, and why does it continue today? Americans have struggled with questions like this since the passage of the first school vaccination laws in 1827.

In Vaccine Wars, Kim Tolley lays out the first comprehensive history of the nearly two-hundred-year struggle to protect schoolchildren from infectious diseases. Drawing from extensive archival sources—including state and federal reports, court records, congressional hearings, oral interviews, correspondence, journals, school textbooks, and newspapers—Tolley analyzes resistance to vaccines in the context of evolving views about immunization among doctors, families, anti-vaccination groups, and school authorities. The resulting story reveals the historic nature of the ongoing struggle to reach a national consensus about the importance of vaccination, from the smallpox era to the COVID-19 pandemic. This well-researched and engaging book illustrates how the history of vaccination is deeply intertwined with the history of education. As stopping the spread of communicable diseases in classrooms became key to protection, vaccination became mandatory at the time of admission to school, and the decision to vaccinate was no longer a private, personal decision without consequence to others.

Tolley's focus on schools reveals longstanding challenges and tensions in implementing vaccination policies. Vaccine Wars underscores recurring themes that have long roiled political debates over vaccination, including the proper reach of state power; the intersection of science, politics, and public policy; and the nature of individual liberty in a modern democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Partners in Gatekeeping"

New from the University of Georgia Press: Partners in Gatekeeping: How Italy Shaped U.S. Immigration Policy over Ten Pivotal Years, 1891–1901 by Lauren Braun-Strumfels.

About the book, from the publisher:

Partners in Gatekeeping illuminates a complex, distinctly transnational story that recasts the development of U.S. immigration policies and institutions. Lauren Braun-Strumfels challenges existing ideas about the origins of remote control by paying particular attention to two programs supported by the Italian government in the 1890s: a government outpost on Ellis Island called the Office of Labor Information and Protection for Italians, and rural immigrant colonization in the American South—namely a plantation in Arkansas called Sunnyside.

Through her examination of these distinct locations, Braun-Strumfels argues that we must consider Italian migration as an essential piece in the history of how the United States became a gatekeeping nation. In particular, she details how an asymmetric partnership emerged between the United States and Italy to manage that migration.

In so doing, Partners in Gatekeeping reveals that the last ten years of the nineteenth century were critical to the establishment of the modern gatekeeping system. By showing the roles of Italian programs in this migration system, Braun-Strumfels establishes antecedents for remote control beyond the well-studied Chinese and Mexican cases.

Visit Lauren Braun-Strumfels's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death Dust"

New from Stanford University Press: Death Dust: The Rise, Decline, and Future of Radiological Weapons Programs by William C. Potter, Sarah Bidgood, Samuel Meyer, and Hanna Notte.

About the book, from the publisher:

The postwar period saw increased interest in the idea of relatively easy-to-manufacture but devastatingly lethal radiological munitions whose use would not discriminate between civilian and military targets. Death Dust explores the largely unknown history of the development of radiological weapons (RW)—weapons designed to disperse radioactive material without a nuclear detonation—through a series of comparative case studies across the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Iraq, and Egypt. The authors illuminate the historical drivers of and impediments to radiological weapons innovation. They also examine how new, dire geopolitical events—such as the war in Ukraine—could encourage other states to pursue RW and analyze the impact of the spread of such weapons on nuclear deterrence and the nonproliferation regime. Death Dust presents practical, necessary steps to reduce the likelihood of a resurgence of interest in and pursuit of radiological weapons by state actors.

William C. Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Founding Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). Sarah Bidgood is Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at CNS. Samuel Meyer is an Analyst at the Office of Radiological Security, US Department of Energy. Hanna Notte is a Senior Research Associate with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist"

New from Oxford University Press: Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist: The Life and Legacy of Al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by Sajjan M. Gohel.

About the book, from the publisher:

For over half a century, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri repeatedly emerged from the shadows as a vengeful ideologue hell-bent on changing history. Dr. Sajjan M. Gohel provides the first definitive account of one of the world's most wanted terrorists. Having grown up in an illustrious Egyptian family of physicians, lawyers, clergy, and politicians, al-Zawahiri was originally destined to become a successful doctor. However, he chose to rebel against his own society which he deemed to have deviated from its religious identity. By forming his own terrorist group, al-Zawahiri dedicated his life to sedition and violent rebellion against the international order.

Ayman al-Zawahiri led a life incomparable to anyone else. The Egyptian found himself in many of the places where history was being determined. His journey takes us across Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the United States and Russia. Through his close bond with Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri played a critical role in the evolution of al-Qaeda's ideology, recruitment, tactics, and strategy. With the deft touch of a teacher, al-Zawahiri delegated numerous murderous assignments globally. He engaged in the assassination of political leaders, sought to develop chemical and biological weapons, recruited double and triple agents, turned the tables on his enemies, and pioneered the use of new media technology to convey al-Qaeda's zealotry.

In 2011, al-Zawahiri succeeded bin Laden, to become the head of al-Qaeda and sought to rebuild and reform his organisation whilst being aided by murky ties in Pakistan and Iran and his Taliban allies. Against the background of the Arab Spring and the West's departure from Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri left a deadly legacy for al-Qaeda's future for years to come.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Unraveling the Gray Area Problem"

New from Cornell University Press: Unraveling the Gray Area Problem: The United States and the INF Treaty by Luke Griffith.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Unraveling the Gray Area Problem, Luke Griffith examines the US role in why the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty took almost a decade to negotiate and then failed in just thirty years. The INF Treaty enhanced Western security by prohibiting US and Russian ground-based missiles with maximum ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Significantly, it eliminated hundreds of Soviet SS-20 missiles, which could annihilate targets throughout Eurasia in minutes. Through close scrutiny of US theater nuclear policy from 1977 to 1987, Griffith describes the Carter administration's masterminding of the dual-track decision of December 1979, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiative that led to the INF Treaty. The Reagan administration, in turn, overcame bureaucratic infighting, Soviet intransigence, and political obstacles at home and abroad to achieve a satisfactory outcome in the INF negotiations.

Disagreements between the US and Russia undermined the INF Treaty and led to its dissolution in 2019. Meanwhile, the US is developing a new generation of ground-based, INF-type missiles that will have an operational value on the battlefield. Griffith urges policymakers to consider the utility of INF-type missiles in new arms control negotiations. Understanding the scope and consistency of US arms control policy across the Carter and Reagan administrations offers important lessons for policymakers in the twenty-first century.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Facing Authority"

New from Oxford University Press: Facing Authority: A Theory of Political Legitimacy by Thomas Fossen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Political protest is often at least partially about the question of legitimacy. How can we distinguish whether a regime is legitimate, or merely purports to be so?

In Facing Authority, Thomas Fossen develops a new philosophical approach to political legitimacy, interweaving analyses of key concepts (including representation, identity, and temporality) with examples of real-life struggles for legitimacy, from the German Autumn to the Arab Spring. Instead of asking "what makes authorities legitimate?" in the abstract, Fossen investigates how the question of legitimacy manifests itself in practice.

Facing Authority proposes that judging legitimacy is not simply a matter of applying moral principles, but of engaging in various forms of political contestation: over the representation of power (what is the nature of the regime?), collective selfhood (who am I, and who are we?), and the meaning of events (what happened here--a coup, or a revolution?). Fossen argues that these questions constitute the heart of the question of legitimacy, but thus far have been neglected by theorists of legitimacy. Compelling and original, Facing Authority is a pragmatist alternative to predominant moralist and realist approaches to legitimacy in political philosophy.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Our Palestine Question"

New from Yale University Press: Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978 by Geoffrey Levin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Israel focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights

American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel’s founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel’s existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinians. These now‑forgotten voices, which include an aid‑worker‑turned‑academic with Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti‑Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left‑wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era.

In reconstructing this hidden history, Levin lays the groundwork for more forthright debates over Palestinian rights issues, American Jewish identity, and the U.S.‑Israel relationship more broadly.

Visit Geoffrey Levin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs"

New from Cornell University Press: Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs: Outsiders inside Armenian Los Angeles by Daniel Fittante.

About the book, from the publisher:

Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs presents the story of the Armenians of Glendale, California. Coming from Argentina, Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, and many other countries, this group is internally fragmented and often has limited experience with the American political system. Nonetheless, Glendale's Armenians have rapidly mobilized and remade an American suburban space in their own likeness.

In telling their story, Daniel Fittante expands our understanding of US political history. From the late nineteenth-century onward, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and several other immigrant populations in large American cities began changing the country's political reality. The author shows how Glendale's Armenians―as well as many other immigrants―are now changing the country's political reality within its dynamic, multiethnic suburbs. The processes look different in various suburban contexts, but the underlying narrative holds: immigrant populations converge on suburban areas and ambitious political actors develop careers by driving coethnics' political incorporation.

Daniel Fittante is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Södertörn University. His research areas include political and urban sociology, diaspora studies, and immigration.

--Marshal Zeringue