Editors’ Picks for February 2023

10 reviews handpicked from the latest issue of Choice.

Posted on February 9, 2023 in Editors' Picks

---

Project researchers’ activity pushed back against the party line, pointing out that the indigenous peoples were not really nomadic and had much useful knowledge to offer with respect to living in the region.

—P. L. Kantor, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy

Beyond the lab and the field: infrastructures as places of knowledge production since the late nineteenth century, ed. by Eike-Christian Heine and Martin Meiske. Pittsburgh, 2022. 292p bibl index ISBN 9780822946373, $60.00; ISBN 9780822987789 ebook, contact publisher for price.

When a book title begins with the word beyond there is always hope that it is blazing some new frontier. This collection of essays doesn’t really do that. An excellent conference volume, edited by Heine (Technical University of Braunschweig) and Meiske (German Museum, Munich), the book is straightforward and topical, looking at the ways in which infrastructure projects can be an excellent focus and resource for all types of research in the sciences, social sciences, and engineering. Contributed articles draw on such projects as the Panama Canal, which generated research in geology, epidemiology, botany, and migration patterns, leading to the establishment of major research centers nearby. A social science example can be found in the petroleum industry established in Siberia, which sought to “civilize” the nomad inhabitants of the area and, perhaps ironically in hindsight, to replace their communitarian barter systems with ones driven by capital. Project researchers’ activity pushed back against the party line, pointing out that the indigenous peoples were not really nomadic and had much useful knowledge to offer with respect to living in the region. Despite overreliance on the word “bonanza,” this text makes an excellent springboard for many discussions of what can be learned by looking at large-scale infrastructure development. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. —P. L. Kantor, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy

---

Through a transnational lens, Bradford analyzes adult decisions, government structures, and institutions that built the foundation for unaccompanied-migrant laws following various immigration dilemmas occurring between 1930 and 2020.

—E. K. Jackson, Colorado Mesa University

Casavantes Bradford, Anita. Suffer the little children: child migration and the geopolitics of compassion in the United States. North Carolina, 2022. 304p bibl index ISBN 9781469667638, $105.00; ISBN 9781469669175 pbk, $24,95; ISBN 9781469667645 ebook, $19.95.

When Emma Lazarus wrote in 1883, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the US federal government maintained relatively open immigration policies with regard to children—the world’s most vulnerable immigrants. As Casavantes Bradford (Chicano/Latino studies and history, Univ. of California, Irvine) details in her meticulously researched book, World War II prompted a new view of unaccompanied child migrants as a unique immigrant population that could be used to gain political favor. A “geopolitics of compassion”—which saw children as tools of diplomacy and prioritized political objectives over goodwill and empathy—drove US foreign and domestic policy. Through a transnational lens, Bradford analyzes adult decisions, government structures, and institutions that built the foundation for unaccompanied-migrant laws following various immigration dilemmas occurring between 1930 and 2020. These included Jewish and British children and “war orphans”; Hungarian youth after the failed revolution; and the influx of Southeast Asian, Sudanese, Haitian, Mexican, and Central American children in the 21st century. Bradford’s timely analysis reminds readers that children are autonomous individuals deserving of basic human rights—not political pawns in the game of American exceptionalism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty and general readers. —E. K. Jackson, Colorado Mesa University

---

This book will be valuable to social scientists and ecologists, and essential to philosophers of human-fungi relationships.

—E. N. Anderson, emeritus, University of California, Riverside

Hathaway, Michael J. What a mushroom lives for: matsutake and the worlds they make. Princeton, 2022. 296p bibl index ISBN 9780691225883, $26.95; ISBN 9780691225890 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Tricholoma matsutake is one of the most valuable organisms in the world because of its popularity in Japan and elsewhere. Its career goes back tens of millions of years to its origin in the ancient world of fungi. This mushroom has created its own worlds, living in symbiosis with pine and oak roots. In this text, Hathaway (Simon Fraser Univ.) continues the work of Anna Tsing on the worlds matsutake has made, not only in forests but also in kitchens and international commerce. Hathaway conducted his research in Yunnan among Yi and Tibetan people, formerly subjugated by Han Chinese but now able to obtain financial independence as they profit from collecting and marketing the mushrooms. Their futures, nevertheless, are still precarious. Hathaway also provides a general introduction to fungi, their mycorrhizal association with trees, and the way humans have adjusted to that relationship. He ventures into the philosophy of perception and experience and into the multispecies turn in social science. Thus trees, fungi, and other life-forms are taken as actors with their own agendas and behaviors—not mere “resources.” As discussed here, trees can actually communicate, using fungal nets to carry chemicals. This book will be valuable to social scientists and ecologists, and essential to philosophers of human-fungi relationships. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. —E. N. Anderson, emeritus, University of California, Riverside

---

This book arrives at a crucial moment, offering a theoretically rich account of the dangers liberalism faces today.

—H. H. Williams, Western Connecticut State University

Law and illiberalism, ed. by Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Merrill Umphrey. Massachusetts, 2022. 168p bibl index ISBN 9781625346704, $90.00; ISBN 9781625346698 pbk, $28.95; ISBN 9781613769478 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Set against the backdrop of rising authoritarianism in ostensibly liberal democracies—most notably, the emergence of Trumpism in the US—the essays in this volume interrogate the use of the law for anti-liberal purposes. In their own ways, the five essays grapple with the tensions inherent in a governing system predicated on both individual liberties and state sovereignty. The chapters explore subjects that include the corrosive effects of neoliberalism, censorship and the politics of free speech, democracy and administrative governance, authoritarian truth-denialism, and the public harm of conspiratorial thinking. Taken together, the essays paint a troubling picture of the contemporary state of liberalism and the liberal belief in individual autonomy and rights. With its focus on the challenges contemporary liberal democracy faces, the book recalls other recent titles, including Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works (Penguin Random House, 2018), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), and Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy (Penguin Random House, 2020). This book arrives at a crucial moment, offering a theoretically rich account of the dangers liberalism faces today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty and general readers. —H. H. Williams, Western Connecticut State University

---

The authors urge embracing machines not as mere tools but as partners and collaborators.

—C. Winkler, Iona College

Leonardi, Paul. The digital mindset: what it really takes to thrive in the age of data, algorithms, and AI, by Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley. Harvard Business Review Press, 2022. 272p bibl index ISBN 9781647820107, $30.00; ISBN 9781647820114 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Leonardi (technology management, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) and Neeley (Harvard Univ.) provide an engaging roadmap for embracing digital literacy—a prerequisite to leading in today’s digital age. By developing a digital mindset, readers can establish a practice for technology and data-driven decision-making and better identify opportunities to maintain competitiveness across almost every industry. The authors introduce the 30-percent rule as a marker to establish competency across the three areas of a digital mindset: collaboration, computation, and change. The first part of the book examines the intersection of how humans and machines interact. The authors urge embracing machines not as mere tools but as partners and collaborators. The book’s second part clarifies the nature of data and how data can translate into information for reasoning and making decisions. The third and final part of the book examines how a digital mindset is an essential driver for understanding and promoting change in today’s digital world. With great examples and case studies, this book is an excellent read for everyone—tech savvy or not—interested in challenging themselves to become better leaders, managers, and data-driven decision-makers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —C. Winkler, Iona College

---

This is an outstanding resource that could be useful as a reference work but which could also easily serve as a class text.

—S. T. Schroth, Towson University

Miller, Jennifer. The transformative potential of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. University Press of Mississippi, 2022. 270p bibl index ISBN 9781496839992, $99.00; ISBN 9781496840004 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9781496840011 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Miller (Univ. of Texas, Arlington) examines the relatively recent genesis of children’s picture books exploring LGBTQ+ issues, and examines a variety of such books written to address these issues. The text is organized in seven chapters that address the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues and children’s literature, a genealogy of the early years of children’s LGBTQ+ books, the treatment of LGBTQ+ adults in such books, coverage of “sissy boys” and tomboys, queer and gender-fluid youth, sexuality, and interpretations of LGBTQ+ individuals and events throughout history. There are three appendixes, the first containing the author’s correspondence with pioneer LGBTQ+ author Jane Severance, the second containing correspondence with author Daniel Haak, and the third containing an archive of most LGBTQ+ children’s books published between 1991 and 2018. This is an outstanding resource that could be useful as a reference work but which could also easily serve as a class text. An interesting complement to works such as Rebecca Strickson’s Queerstory: An Infographic History of the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights (2020) or Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown’s We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation (2019). Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals. —S. T. Schroth, Towson University

---

The publicized horrors of Vietnam pivoted antiwar opposition toward condemning violations rather than challenging the US’s dubiously legal entrance into that conflict.

—R. T. Ingoglia, St.Thomas Aquinas College

Moyn, Samuel. Humane: how the United States abandoned peace and reinvented war. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. 416p bibl index ISBN 9780374173708, $30.00; ISBN 9780374719920 ebook, $14.99.

The desire to mitigate the horrors of war is understandable and laudable but, Moyn (Yale Univ.) argues, a serious misdirection of efforts better aimed at its abolition. A diachronic analysis of the goals of European and American peace movements and their impact on (primarily American) state policy supports this contention. Pre–WW II peace associations focused on abolishing war, not just ameliorating its atrocities—the latter attempted through international conventions—although legal restraints on harming civilians and prisoners did not apply to racially tinged colonial wars. Even the Nuremberg Trials, one can argue, were primarily based on indicting illegal German aggression, not Nazi atrocities. In Korea, MacArthur’s crossing the 38th parallel dashed any hope of founding the Pax Americana on an international legal basis. The publicized horrors of Vietnam pivoted antiwar opposition toward condemning violations rather than challenging the US’s dubiously legal entrance into that conflict. Post-Vietnam, a conjoined effort by peace groups and the government to reduce civilian casualties, e.g., employing targeted killing, led Americans to demand humane war while accepting internationally illegal and interminable military commitments. An analysis of Randolph Bourne’s essay “Twilight of Idols” (1917) would have buttressed the arguments presented here. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. —R. T. Ingoglia, St.Thomas Aquinas College

---

This complex tale is magnificently written, a page-turner in the hands of best-selling author and journalist Randall (Reuters).

—J. C. Kricher, emeritus, Wheaton College (MA)

Randall, David K. Monster’s bones: the discovery of T. Rex and how it shook our world. W. W. Norton, 2022. 288p bibl index ISBN 9781324006534, $27.95; ISBN 9781324006541 ebook, contact publisher for price.

The title of this readable and fascinating book affectionately names Tyrannosaurus rex a “monster.” Discovery of this immense carnivorous dinosaur in the early 20th century literally made the nascent and struggling natural history museum in New York, then directed by Henry Fairfield Osborn, who was desperate to find complete skeletons that would attract the general public and allow him to compete with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Osborn got lucky when he hired Barnum Brown, who found THE T. rex that, once mounted and placed on display, would become the museum’s icon. Of course T. rex was not alone as numerous other large dinosaurs—with names now well-known to most children—were gradually added to keep the monster company in the museum’s two large halls of ancient reptiles. This complex tale is magnificently written, a page-turner in the hands of best-selling author and journalist Randall (Reuters). Fossil hunter Barnum Brown is really “the story” here, but the reader learns just how dinosaurs were found—the excruciating labor involved in extracting them from the rocky substrate—and why paleontology, albeit extremely difficult, could pay such large dividends. While Osborn succeeded only because of Brown’s discovery, the real heroes of this early-20th-century tale are New York City and the American Museum of Natural History. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. —J. C. Kricher, emeritus, Wheaton College (MA)

---

This book addresses a critical and timely issue in terms difficult to ignore and important to consider.

—M. S. Gorham, University of Florida

Sloss, David. Tyrants on Twitter: protecting democracies from information warfare. Stanford, 2022. 352p bibl index ISBN 9781503628441, $28.00; ISBN 9781503631151 ebook, contact publisher for price.

In this book, Sloss (law, Santa Clara Univ.) makes the case for cracking down on Russian and Chinese cyber information warfare through the formation of an “Alliance for Democracy”—made up of mostly Western, democratic states—and the creation of a transnational regulatory system governing social media, which would seek to ban Russian and Chinese bad actors and forbid the use of anonymous, public social media accounts. Given its clear threat to liberal democracy, Sloss argues that citizens and nations should abandon the vision of a Utopian internet that is free, open, and totally unregulated. Based on the author’s training in law and experience drafting treatises for the US government, the book is well researched and argued, particularly regarding the legal feasibility of taming Twitter as a hotspot for foreign bad actors. Whether only bad Russian and Chinese actors can be banished from the Twittersphere without innocent collateral damage, however, remains to be seen. This book addresses a critical and timely issue in terms difficult to ignore and important to consider. Though stylistically uneven and occasionally formulaic in places, it is informative and accessible to readers across the educational spectrum—even if they do not find all of its positions palatable or politically feasible. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —M. S. Gorham, University of Florida

---

Tran’s Vietnam-centered narrative provides a vital reassessment of the failure to establish a free and democratic Vietnam, emphasizing the internal disagreements and power struggles of Vietnamese society rather than seeing the country as a pawn on the Cold War chess board.

—D. R. Graber, Wayne State College

Tran, Nu-Anh. Disunion: anticommunist nationalism and the making of the Republic of Vietnam. Hawai’i, 2022. 260p bibl index ISBN 9780824887865, $68.00; ISBN 9780824891626 pbk, $28.00; ISBN 9780824891640 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This work offers a needed revisionist account of the Republic of Vietnam. Tran (history, Univ. of Connecticut) notes that many American scholars poorly understand the Republic of Vietnam, seeing it primarily as an American client state in the Cold War. Tran focuses on domestic Vietnamese political groups and presents Vietnam as a new state going through many internal trials and tribulations and finding its way as various constituents and political organizations argued over the meaning and implementation of independence, democracy, freedom, and national unity. Tran also discusses the authoritarian tendencies of Ngo Dinh Diem’s government in the context of South Vietnam’s struggle to achieve a consensus about the best way to confront the growing threat of the Viet Minh. Tran’s Vietnam-centered narrative provides a vital reassessment of the failure to establish a free and democratic Vietnam, emphasizing the internal disagreements and power struggles of Vietnamese society rather than seeing the country as a pawn on the Cold War chess board. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty. —D. R. Graber, Wayne State College

Related Posts