Editors’ Picks for July 2022

10 reviews handpicked from the latest issue of Choice.

Posted on July 21, 2022 in Editors' Picks

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Every library should obtain a copy for collections on labor, grassroots politics, and social movements history.

—J. G. Moreno, Northern Arizona University

Brantley, Allyson P. Brewing boycott: how a grassroots coalition fought Coors and remade American consumer activism. North Carolina, 2021. 304p bibl index ISBN 9781469661025, $95.00; ISBN 9781469661032 pbk, $29.95; ISBN 9781469661049 ebook, $24.99.

This book examines the multiethnic, grassroots struggle to boycott the Coors Brewing Company during the 1970s and 1980s. Brantley (history, Univ. of La Verne) organized the book into six critical chapters, bookended by an introduction and a conclusion, which focus on the cultural impacts and social transformation of the Coors boycott. She argues that the Coors Brewing Company’s racist historical politics and labor practices catalyzed not only the boycott against the company but also the broader trend of using consumer boycotts as a major tool of grassroots struggle, making this the first academic text to examine this subject critically. Brantley provides a strong, in-depth review of the event, analyzing it through historical accounts, oral interviews, and primary source materials, which makes for an original and organic argument. This book comes out of (and fits within) a new wave of historical scholarship focused on social and activist movements, which contextualizes the grassroots consumer boycott struggle in the US. The text is sure to result in major contributions for future research and scholarship on this important subject matter. Every library should obtain a copy for collections on labor, grassroots politics, and social movements history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —J. G. Moreno, Northern Arizona University

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This text makes an important contribution to the literature by integrating cognition and moviegoing.

—G. C. Gamst, University of La Verne

Cutting, James E. Movies on our minds: the evolution of cinematic engagement. Oxford, 2021. 400p bibl index ISBN 9780197567777, $45.00; ISBN 9780197567791 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Cutting (emer., Cornell Univ.) is an experimental cognitive psychologist. During the last two decades, he has focused his research on cognitive processes underlying the perception and enjoyment of viewing films. The goal of this engaging, readable narrative is to depict the psychological mechanisms filmmakers exploit to manipulate viewers’ perception and attention and how the process corresponds to encoding and retrieval of information and to subsequently experienced emotion, all within historical context. Cutting achieves this in 14 chapters examining, e.g., methods of watching movies; technological innovations, including camera, lens, angles, and ways of capturing motion; staging and space; transitions between shots, shot duration and type, and reaction shots conveying emotionality; scenes and continuity, including montage (sequences of scenes); and storytelling and narrative complexity. Finally, Cutting offers a proposed structure for popular movies. Each chapter includes interesting notes and citations. A comprehensive list of references and, crucially, helpful subject/author index conclude the book. This text makes an important contribution to the literature by integrating cognition and moviegoing. However, this reviewer was surprised by its relative silence about the impact of the filmmaking industry on encouraging normative ideology (as represented by pro-capitalist, pro-US military perspectives and predominantly white American life experiences) through the marketing of mainstream movies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. —G. C. Gamst, University of La Verne

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These concepts are largely in-depth discussions of what many people are already aware of, but it is good to be reminded of the value play can bring to life and locations.

—L. B. Allsopp, Arizona State University

Duarte, Fábio. Urban play: make-believe, technology, and space, by Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez. MIT, 2021. 224p bibl index ISBN 9780262045346 pbk, $30.00; ISBN 9780262366311 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Digital technology and forensic analysis of play can ruin its spontaneity. However, in Urban Play, Duarte and Álvarez, both associated with the MIT Senseable City Lab, argue that “technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional but when it is essentially playful—when imagining and tinkering with technology equals imagining and tinkering with possible futures” (p. xi). In the book’s introduction and seven chapters, the authors present technology and the transformation of spatial design by examining serendipity, fantasies (e.g., Frank Gehry’s architecture), spatialities (e.g., digital water parks), deception (e.g., optical illusions), and empathy (e.g., that enabled by virtual reality headsets), to name a few. In numerous ways, all can shape urban environments. The authors also mention projects such as Playable City’s project Shadowing: when a “streetlight detects a pedestrian it not only lights up but also projects … shadows of other people who passed the streetlight earlier,” thus promoting instant play. These concepts are largely in-depth discussions of what many people are already aware of, but it is good to be reminded of the value play can bring to life and locations. This playful book joins such works as Cathy Baldwin and Robin King’s Social Sustainability, Climate Resilience and Community-Based Urban Development: What about the People? (2018). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; students in two-year programs. —L. B. Allsopp, Arizona State University

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Together the two volumes constitute an outstanding reference series on the beetles of North America that will remain immensely valuable to professional and amateur entomologists and anyone with a serious interest in natural history.

—D. A. Brass, independent scholar

Evans, Arthur V. Beetles of western North America. Princeton, 2021. 624p bibl index ISBN 9780691164281 pbk, $45.00; ISBN 9780691221373 ebook, contact publisher for price.

In this long-awaited companion volume to Beetles of Eastern North America (CH, Dec’14, 52-1986), Evans expands his extensive coverage of North American beetles to species west of the Continental Divide. Consistent with the structure of the eastern volume, introductory material includes information about beetle anatomy and natural history, observation, collecting, rearing, photography, and conservation. A simplified, illustrated key to several beetle families is also provided. The remainder of the text consists of well-written, highly readable summaries of 131 beetle families, highlighting aspects of natural history, important diagnostic features, comparisons with similar families, and collecting tips. Brief descriptions of 1428 species follow. More than 1,500 full-color macrophotographs complement the text, providing an extensive library of valuable reference images for all species discussed. These will be of considerable use in narrowing identifications, whether in photographs or of physical specimens. The glossary of technical terms and the overall classification scheme for the species discussed (Appendix) are useful additions. Together the two volumes constitute an outstanding reference series on the beetles of North America that will remain immensely valuable to professional and amateur entomologists and anyone with a serious interest in natural history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. —D. A. Brass, independent scholar

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Hellyer’s story is thoughtfully constructed and easy to follow.

—M. D. Ericson, University of Maryland Global Campus

Hellyer, Robert I. Green with milk and sugar: when Japan filled America’s tea cups. Columbia, 2021. 304p bibl index ISBN 9780231199100, $32.00; ISBN 9780231552943 ebook, $31.99.

Hellyer (Wake Forest Univ.) has produced a well-researched, elegantly written history of what appears to be a very niche subject: the drinking of Japanese green tea in the US. However, this focus brings into perspective the history of the Japanese tea industry after 1860, the trends in the trans-Pacific, Japanese-American tea trade before WW II, the marketing and regulation of foreign-origin food in the US, and the impact of anti-Japanese racism on tea consumption. Hellyer judiciously uses his personal connection to the subject—his great grandfather and grandfather owned a green tea factory in Japan and promoted the export of tea to the US—to illustrate aspects of the story. Readers will likely be surprised to learn that ex-Tokugawa samurai were involved in the Shizuoka tea industry after 1868 or that Americans, especially Midwesterners, preferred for decades to drink Japanese green tea every day. Moreover, who knew that the popularity of green tea in Japan today is the result of American choices in more recent years to drink black tea? Hellyer’s story is thoughtfully constructed and easy to follow. By following one commodity, he shows how the drinking and importing/exporting of tea are connected to larger historical movements and events. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. —M. D. Ericson, University of Maryland Global Campus

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Roberts’s work has particular value for advanced researchers looking for specific information about Barbados higher education and for beginning researchers looking for an overview of the global community college movement.

—M. Mutschelknaus, Rochester Community and Technical College

Roberts, Vivienne. Barbados community college experience: leading the Anglophone Caribbean in a global movement. University of the West Indies Press, 2021. 334p bibl index ISBN 9789766407629 pbk, $40.00; ISBN 9789766407643 ebook, contact publisher for price.

This forward-looking book is particularly prescient now that Barbados has a female president (Sandra Mason) and a female prime minister (Mia Mottley). Although the clear purpose is to provide a historical overview of Barbadian higher education, the book also provides a considerable amount of relevant context because it situates the Barbados initiative within the Anglophone Caribbean, the Northern Hemisphere, and the global community college movement that started in the postcolonial 1950s. Roberts’s work has particular value for advanced researchers looking for specific information about Barbados higher education and for beginning researchers looking for an overview of the global community college movement. Roberts (emer., Barbados Community College) debates North-South higher education imperialism, the concept that Europe and North America know what is best for education in other countries, versus South-North accommodation, the concept that developing countries must create educational policies that fit the particular needs of their own people. An expert with decades of experience in community college research, Roberts continues the work Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel began in their classic The Diverted Dream (CH, Jan’90, 27-2831), which established community college research as an academic field. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals. —M. Mutschelknaus, Rochester Community and Technical College

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This valuable resource covers recent issues and concerns in Japan. It is an excellent starting point and a useful compendium.

—A. Reichert, Otterbein University

Routledge handbook of contemporary Japan, ed. by Hiroko Takeda and Mark Williams. Routledge, 2020 (c2021). 532p bibl index ISBN 9781138668614, $250.00; ISBN 9781315544748 ebook, $52.95.

This well-designed book provides a useful overview of Japan. Part 1 (“Foundations”), which sets up the second half of the book, covers broad topics intended to provide context. These chapters are meant to look at “core institutional settings,” such as politics, the economy, and international relations, though some topics are more cultural than institutional, providing a look at gender, popular imagination, and history. Part 2 (“Issues”) is particularly well curated. Topics were chosen partly from trending keywords identified in newspaper headlines since 2000 corresponding to topics in part 1 and partly from separate surveys of students and instructors, creating a very timely collection. Essays are consistently engaging, strengthening this work overall, and each maintains a similar structure with an introduction, a conclusion, endnotes, and a bibliography. The indexing is a little sparse, though given the nature of this text, most readers will be looking at specific chapters. Although the book was complete in late 2019, the editors, to their credit, recognized the impact of the pandemic and included addendums to some chapters addressing how COVID-19 would impact those topics. This valuable resource covers recent issues and concerns in Japan. It is an excellent starting point and a useful compendium. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduates. —A. Reichert, Otterbein University

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This is an essential book for activists, practitioners, and scholars of youth and sexuality

—T. E. Adams, Bradley University

Savin-Williams, Ritch C. Bi: bisexual, pansexual, fluid, and nonbinary youth. New York University, 2021. 313p index ISBN 9781479811434, $28.95; ISBN 9781479811465 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Savin-Williams (developmental psychology, emer., Cornell Univ.) offers a necessary, nuanced, and accessible book that foregrounds contemporary uses and understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality. Based on interviews with 69 bisexual youth, many of whom did not easily or strictly identify with the term bisexual, Savin-Williams describes and critiques traditional understandings of bisexuality and, in so doing, demonstrates the difficulty of studying rapidly changing sexual practices, identities, and terminologies. The author also shows how an identity such as bisexual is increasingly complicated, even antiquated, given the increase in self-identified heterosexual cisgender women and cisgender men who engage in same-sex sexual acts; a rising recognition of, and challenges to, toxic gender norms; the acknowledgment and budding acceptance of gender and sexual fluidity; and the growing embrace of, and appreciation for, pansexual, genderqueer, and nonbinary identities. Although a cisgender bias can be found in much of the writing—primarily in the treatment of categories such as female, male, woman, and man as fairly stable, fixed, and comprised of essential traits and desires—this is an essential book for activists, practitioners, and scholars of youth and sexuality. Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals. —T. E. Adams, Bradley University

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Every aspect is covered, from the high commands with their key decisions to the men in the trenches and the city’s civilians in bomb shelters.

—M. J. Smith Jr., emeritus, Tusculum University

Smith, Timothy B. The Siege of Vicksburg: climax of the campaign to open the Mississippi River, May 23–July 4, 1863. University Press of Kansas, 2021. 752p bibl index ISBN 9780700632251, $45.00; ISBN 9780700632268 ebook, contact publisher for price..

After the Union Army’s May 1863 failure to capture Vicksburg by storm, the North’s key campaign against the Mississippi River citadel settled into a siege. Smith (Univ. of Tennessee, Martin), who has written often of the city’s fight, including in his well-received The Union Assaults at Vicksburg (2020), here recounts the climax of the May 23–July 4 crusade. Using all manner of print and non-print resources from both sides, including documents, diaries, newspapers, and more, the author provides the largest, most readable analysis of the fortress’s final month since Ed Bearss’s legendary three-volume The Campaign for Vicksburg (1985). Every aspect is covered, from the high commands with their key decisions to the men in the trenches and the city’s civilians in bomb shelters. In addition, specific operations and events, from those of the Federal Navy to the detonation of a great bomb, the attempted relief of the town by Confederate General Joseph Johnston, negotiations for the final surrender, and other events occasionally addressed in stand-alone books or periodical articles, are insightfully reviewed here. Extensive footnotes, a 39-page bibliography, and full indexing are included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —M. J. Smith Jr., emeritus, Tusculum University

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As the editors rightly state, these 19th-century writers have been long overlooked and even ignored by the fairy tale scholarly community.

—D. V. Dominguez, formerly, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Women writing wonder: an anthology of subversive nineteenth-century British, French, and German fairy tales, ed. and tr. by Julie L. J. Koehler et al. Wayne State, 2021. 384p bibl index ISBN 9780814345009, $92.99; ISBN 9780814345016 ebook, $36.99; ISBN 9780814345023 ebook, contact publisher for price.

Koehler (Wayne State Univ.) and her coeditors and translators have compiled an excellent, important addition to the growing field of fairy tale scholarship. The anthology provides a much-needed focus on the British, French, and German women writing tales of wonder in the 19th century. These writers look back to the “mothers” of the subversive literary fairy tales of the 17th and 18th centuries and look forward to the 20th and 21st-century women re-envisioning the fairy tale from a postmodern, feminist perspective. As the editors rightly state, these 19th-century writers have been long overlooked and even ignored by the fairy tale scholarly community. A general introduction provides historical and sociopolitical context about the development of the fairy tale as a subversive vehicle for writers, and the introductions to each of the book’s three sections—French, German, British—offer more specific sociohistorical and biographical background about the authors and tales in that section. Though the book is not an exhaustive compilation of tales or writers, the editors included a wealth of notes, sources, and further reading suggestions for those who wish to pursue the scholarly study of fairy tales. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —D. V. Dominguez, formerly, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

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