Editors’ Picks for August 2025

10 reviews handpicked from the latest issue of Choice.

Posted on August 14, 2025 in Editors' Picks

Beasley’s work painstakingly explores the social construction of diabetes and convincingly argues that the association of diabetes with the nervous system and especially its framing as a mental disorder were the products of ‘a male hysteria.’

—J. Rankin, East Tennessee State University

Beasley, Edward. A male hysteria: diabetes and the Victorian mind. American Philosophical Society Press, 2024. 434p bibl index ISBN 9781606189009, $87.92; ISBN 9781606189016 pbk, $49.50; ISBN 9781606189023 ebook, contact publisher for price.

A Male Hysteria is an interesting and in-depth evaluation of how diabetes was understood and treated largely before 1921. Beasley (emer., history, San Diego State Univ.) explores how diabetes became classified as a nervous complaint exacerbated by stress. He argues that the sweetness of a diabetic’s urine encouraged doctors to attempt to regulate a patient’s diet. At the same time, worries about weakness and disability meant that many patients (especially men because most doctors believed that men had more to be concerned about) were advised to minimize physical and mental strain, which would not only deplete their energy but might also induce a coma. Beasley explains that many patients ignored the strict caloric diets and that even doctors suffering from diabetes continued to work despite being well aware of the concerns associated with overtaxing their minds and bodies. Beasley’s work painstakingly explores the social construction of diabetes and convincingly argues that the association of diabetes with the nervous system and especially its framing as a mental disorder were the products of “a male hysteria.” Ultimately, A Male Hysteria is an excellent and riveting read that will be of interest to scholars of the history of science and medicine and their students. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —J. Rankin, East Tennessee State University

Rather than treating paganism as a vanished tradition or a wholly modern invention, the authors present it as a recurring idea emerging from Europe’s enduring cultural memory.

—A. Sheppard, Arkansas State University

Douglas, Robin. Paganism persisting: a history of European paganisms since antiquity, by Robin Douglas and Francis Young. University of Exeter Press, 2024. 228p bibl index ISBN 9781804131237, $120.00; ISBN 9781804131251 ebook, contact publisher for price.

In Paganism Persisting, Douglas (independent scholar) and Young (Oxford Univ.) explore the recurring reappearance and persistence of pagan religious expression and practice in European history. Acknowledging the lack of a standard definition of paganism, the authors begin by situating the term within its historical and cultural contexts, illustrating how both insiders and outsiders have shifted its meaning over. The core of the book follows this shift chronologically, starting with an examination of classical paganism in the fourth century and continuing through the birth of the first enduring modern pagan religion, Wicca. The book traces how individuals and movements across time have attempted to revive or reimagine pagan religions. Rather than treating paganism as a vanished tradition or a wholly modern invention, the authors present it as a recurring idea emerging from Europe’s enduring cultural memory. Chapters include excerpts from primary sources, poetry, and scholarly commentary, offering valuable insight into the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual motivations behind each revival. The book is densely packed with history, names, and analysis, including 158 pages of core content and 50 pages of extensive notes and references. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —A. Sheppard, Arkansas State University

His well-written book is rich with insights, many of which even led this reviewer to reconsider ideas about history as a discipline.

—T. Farmer, Belmont Abbey College

Sager, Eric William. The thinking historian: a search for history as understanding. De Gruyter, 2025. 163p bibl index ISBN 9783111563275, $87.99; ISBN 9783111570853 pbk, $29.99; ISBN 9783111563800 ebook, $87.99.

Historians often prefer to conduct archival research rather than ruminate on the role of theory in their work, but Sager (Univ. of Victoria, Canada), who also wrote Inequality in Canada (CH, Oct’21, 59-0552), urges historians to think of history as “a way of seeing … an active discipline of the mind” (p. 21). In this brief yet wide-ranging and thought-provoking book, he explores the logic historians use, often unawares, in their work: e.g., examining the relation between parts and wholes, consilience, perspectives, analogies, quantification, and abductive reasoning. Sager argues, pace Sam Wineburg, that this logic has much in common with other disciplines. His well-written book is rich with insights, many of which even led this reviewer to reconsider ideas about history as a discipline. Although Sager convincingly argues that historical thinking shares much in common with other disciplines, he does not spend as much time discussing what features are unique to it, and this reviewer would have appreciated further clarity as to what sets history apart. Even so, this excellent book would be an ideal guide for first-year graduate students and a useful reminder for their professors. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students and faculty. —T. Farmer, Belmont Abbey College

A rising scholar who deserves notice, Shanta has produced a stellar study to show how any people, Native or otherwise, can maintain their dignity in the face of oppression.

—M. Gonzalez, University of San Diego

Shanta, David G. American Indian cowboys in Southern California, 1493—1941: survival, sovereignty, and identity. Lexington Books, 2024. 272p bibl index ISBN 9781666957044, $105.00; ISBN 9781666957051 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Historians have long lamented that from the 1700s through modern times, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans abused the Native populace of California. However, newer scholars like Shanta (California State Univ., San Bernardino) contend that some Native Americans resisted this degradation. Focusing on Southern California, Shanta argues that Native Americans displayed resilience by learning how their oppressors raised cattle. Native communities thus proved indispensable to non-Native ranchers who needed experienced hands to rope, slaughter, and brand the herds. By mastering the skills required to manage livestock, and sometimes seizing the opportunity to acquire their own ranches, these Native Americans upheld traditions like exchanging gifts and nurturing their attachment to lands that had supported them for generations. When federal and state leaders in the 20th century ignored the harm caused by their policies, many Native Americans continued to use their herding skills to reaffirm their identity as a sovereign people. A rising scholar who deserves notice, Shanta has produced a stellar study to show how any people, Native or otherwise, can maintain their dignity in the face of oppression. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty. —M. Gonzalez, University of San Diego

This provocative historicization of gender crossing in late imperial China should be read widely.

—G. Li, California State University, Long Beach

Sommer, Matthew H. The fox spirit, the stone maiden, and other transgender histories from late imperial China. Columbia, 2024. 384p bibl index ISBN 9780231214124, $120.00; ISBN 9780231214131 pbk, $30.00; ISBN 9780231560207 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This groundbreaking study explores transgender lives and practices in late imperial China, inspired by Susan Stryker’s definition of transgender and Natalie Zemon Davis’s skillful interpretation of the voices of the past. According to Stryker, self-determination is a core value of modern transgender politics, which emphasizes “the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place.” In imperial China, people moved away from the gender they were assigned at birth in different ways and for varied reasons. This book addresses critical questions, such as how transgender people and practices were represented and understood by the authorities who produced legal cases, and how authors of fanciful fiction explored transgressions and anomalies of sex. It starts with an overview of transgender paradigms from cross-dressing comedies to modern transphobia. Through close readings of court cases, zhiguai fictions, and modern newspaper accounts, Sommer (Stanford Univ.) deftly examines the paranoid fantasy of transgender predation, focusing on six cases of male-to-female cross-dressers or intersex commoners who appeared in legal disputes. Ironically, despite identifying as women, some transgender people were treated as men in the legal case records, showcasing how Confucian elites maneuvered gender nonconformism in Chinese contexts. This provocative historicization of gender crossing in late imperial China should be read widely. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —G. Li, California State University, Long Beach

Stark (journalist) does an excellent job documenting this account with 369 chapter notes, engaging prose, and 18 text figures.

—H. T. Armistead, formerly, Free Library of Philadelphia

Stark, Mike. Starlings: the curious odyssey of a most hated bird. Nebraska, 2025. 272p bibl ISBN 9781496242020, $24.95; ISBN 9781496242778 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This important monograph records the first release of European starlings in America, in Central Park in 1889, and their consequent rapid spread to all the lower 48 states and most of Canada. In those days, releasing non-native songbirds was popular. There were soon massive roosts, sometimes millions, of these messy, noisy birds in many cities and mostly unsuccessful attempts to disrupt them using firearms, noise, chemicals, etc. Starlings also cause considerable crop damage and aircraft collisions. In the 1970s, aircraft sprayed countless starling roosts, especially in Kentucky and Tennessee. Stark (journalist) does an excellent job documenting this account with 369 chapter notes, engaging prose, and 18 text figures. He describes starlings’ skills as mimics and their enormous pre-roost, shifting, cloud-like formations, called murmurations—one of the great spectacles of nature. Stark documents the damage starlings inflict on native birds, especially bluebirds, competing with them and other cavity-nesting species. A document of many virtues, this volume could have been improved with an index and a general reference list. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —H. T. Armistead, formerly, Free Library of Philadelphia

Tippen offers multiple strategies for finding new models of storytelling, a spectrum of suffering in southern cookbook writing that may be tools for truth and reconciliation.

—R. Tolley, East Tennessee State University

Tippen, Carrie Helms. Unpalatable: stories of pain and pleasure in southern cookbooks. University Press of Mississippi, 2025. 264p bibl index ISBN 9781496854797, $110.00; ISBN 9781496854803 pbk, $30.00; ISBN 9781496854810 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Tippen’s analysis of commercially published southern cookbooks from the 1990s on examines the tension between cookbook audience’s desires for pleasure and joy from upbeat headnotes, mouth-watering recipes, and aesthetic food photography and the reality of the South’s creativity generated within its legacy of suffering, poverty, segregation, enslavement, and violence. All geographic regions struggle with the general expectation of the cookbook genre to erase pain “through its orientation toward pleasure.” Thus southern writers are not unique in this practice as they contextualize authenticity and identity (p. 8). Tippen (Chatham Univ.) argues that southern authenticity is achievable when writers “speak the truth of their painful experiences to powerful audiences,” and when they amplify the contributions of Black southerners to regional culture, thus creating space for reconciliation, reparation, and apology for the past (p. 9). Tippen offers multiple strategies for finding new models of storytelling, a spectrum of suffering in southern cookbook writing that may be tools for truth and reconciliation. Each chapter examines southern cookbooks through a different lens: race, class, gender, ability, and grief (via funerary food practices). A delightful book for food scholars, folklorists, cultural historians, anthropologists, community organizers, and activists interested in food justice and memory. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty. —R. Tolley, East Tennessee State University

Tonge correctly concludes that today, the Nakşibendi stands as the bedrock of a large part of Turkish society and will continue to shape the character of Turkey regardless of what happens to Erdoğan.

—B. A. Yesilada, Portland State University

Tonge, David S. The enduring hold of Islam in Turkey: the revival of the religious orders and rise of Erdoğan. Hurst & Company, 2025. 384p bibl index ISBN 9781911723837, $50.90; ISBN 9781805263401 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This book is a comprehensive study of religious orders in Turkey. It traces how religious orders, particularly the Nakşibendi, rose to confront modernization and secularization since the 19th century. Part 1 introduces the clash between Sultan Abdülhamit and the Young Turks. In part 2 of the book, readers learn how religious orders incubated to find an opportune time for revival during the Republic’s early years. Nakşibendi emerged as the most capable order, with Iskenderpasa leading the politicized movement. Part 3 shows how industrialization, foreign economic and political connections, and democratic reforms enabled these groups to shape large segments of the already traditional society in Turkey. One important group is the Fethullah Gülen movement, which first colluded with Erdoğan but ended in a clash in 2015. The purge of the Gülen Movement paved the way for Erdoğan to consolidate his power. Tonge correctly concludes that today, the Nakşibendi stands as the bedrock of a large part of Turkish society and will continue to shape the character of Turkey regardless of what happens to Erdoğan. Nothing is more accurate in the face of current events in the country. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —B. A. Yesilada, Portland State University

Wander’s work offers an important contribution to the conversations surrounding race, masculinity, queerness, and colonialist American culture.

—D. E. Magill, Longwood University

Wander, Ryan Tan. Settler tenses: queer time and literatures of the American West. Texas Tech, 2024. 256p bibl index ISBN 9781682832271, $34.95; ISBN 9781682832271 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Wander (Valdosta State Univ.) offers a provocative rereading of late-19th and early-20th-century literature of the American West, shifting away from the traditional account of that period as resolutely emblematic of white masculinity to excavate the linkages between queerness and the colonial enterprises that defined American expansion globally and nationally. Wander provides readings of Bret Harte’s regional writings, Wheeler’s Deadwood Dick pulp novels, Frank Norris’s and Jack London’s frontier narratives, and the Westerns of Owen Wister and Zane Grey. In each case, he shows how these authors revealed the queer moments that challenged, and then supported, white settler hegemony in US culture. These narratives offer different configurations by which racial and queer futurity could be managed and the anxieties of colonialism and genocide assuaged or erased. Wander’s writing is challenging, and his rearticulation of this fraught moment in American literary history is sure to open new avenues for discussion of this often marginalized literary period. Wander’s work offers an important contribution to the conversations surrounding race, masculinity, queerness, and colonialist American culture. Scholars of American literature will find this a challenging argument for reading early-20th-century US literature in a different frame. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty —D. E. Magill, Longwood University

Additionally, each chapter is extremely well referenced and includes substantive figures, data tables, graphs, and color photographs.

—J. B. Huffman, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Wurbs, Ralph. Managing water in river and reservoir systems: water resources, institutional practices, and constructed infrastructure in Texas. American Society of Civil Engineers, 2024. 442p bibl index ISBN 9780784416204, $165.00.

Ralph Wurbs (Texas A&M Univ.) offers a comprehensive review of water management practices applied to major rivers, lakes, and other reservoirs across the state of Texas. In their management, he examines the development processes used and outcomes achieved based on the shared efforts between federal, state, and local governments, private sector organizations, and other watershed stakeholders. In eight chapters and 420 pages, Wurbs presents a thorough analyses of Texas water resources, water uses, and water management efforts; government and organizational water management responsibilities; water resource system operational plans and practices; information sources and hydrologic models; Texas watershed hydrology; statewide river system development; and highlights of major statewide water management projects. Each chapter is robust in the information it provides.  Additionally, each chapter is extremely well referenced and includes substantive figures, data tables, graphs, and color photographs. The use of acronyms and abbreviations can be overwhelming to lay readers, but a list is included after the table of contents. The text is very well indexed and two appendices with data about 195 major reservoirs are included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and professionals. —J. B. Huffman, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

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