Reviews of the Month: September 2026

Spotlighting four book reviews for their relevance or pure reading pleasure

Posted on September 10, 2026 in Reviews of the Month

Happy fall semester! We start September’s Reviews of the Month with Stanford’s Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy. This 2026 title by Dalia Dassa Kaye explores how the US’s Iran policies in the past four decades have positioned Iran as an “abnormal” country, therefore extending ongoing hostilities. Next, we spotlight Amelia Frank-Vitale’s Leave If You Can, which investigates US border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants. Looking at migration through gang borders, this California title underscores the disruptive and violent consequences of deportation.

Our third pick is Seeing Metal Music in Latin America and the Caribbean from Lexington Books. Nelson Varas-Díaz and Daniel Nevárez Araújo examine the intersection of “metal, protest, and cultural identity,” dissecting the visuals, merchandise, and iconography of metal music in Latin America and the Caribbean. We end the month—and commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month—with New York’s Latino Fathers: What Shapes and Sustains Their Parenting by Fatima Suarez. This interdisciplinary title takes a primarily sociological approach to Latinx fatherhood through a series of interviews with Latino fathers in California.

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Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy

Kaye, Dalia Dassa. Stanford, 2026
222p index, 9781503643901 $100.00, 9781503644595 $25.00, 9781503644601 $25.00

This excellent, engaging book fills a major gap in the literature on US policy toward Iran, focusing on the post-hostage crisis after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Kaye (UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations) superbly demonstrates that the persistent antagonistic relationship between the US and Iran over nearly half a century cannot be explained solely by the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric and anti-American actions. She shows that US policymakers and Washington’s foreign policy elite have consistently framed Iran as a “rogue,” fanatical, and “outlaw” state, unbound by notions of “normal” state behavior, making it very difficult to reconsider US positions. Using numerous interviews with policy makers and experts, secondary sources, and her attendance at unofficial “track two” Iran-related meetings, she examines the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Clinton, Obama, and Trump administrations, showing how US policy makers’ framing of Iran as an “abnormal” state led to missed opportunities for a diplomatic breakthrough. The book discusses the prospects and limitations of the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal and its demise under Trump, who harbored the quintessential hostility toward Iran. The conclusion argues that although Iran bears significant blame for the persistence of hostility with the US, restoring direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders could lead to a “grand bargain” and a version of détente.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: M. E. Carranza, emeritus, Texas A&M University–Kingsville
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Political Science – International Relations
Choice Issue: Sep 2026

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Leave If You Can: Migration and Violence in Bordered Worlds

Frank-Vitale, Amelia. California, 2026
272p bibl index, 9780520421349 $95.00, 9780520421356 $29.95, 9780520421363 $29.95

Frank-Vitale (anthropology, Princeton Univ.) documents the normalization of and factors exacerbating the repeated deportation of young Honduran men. She overthrows the fiction that deportations “restore” people to their rightful place, showing how deportation is entirely disruptive and violent. In Honduras’s Sula Valley, where Frank-Vitale conducted fieldwork, young men in particular are immobilized by their neighborhood’s gang identification. Crossing gang borders—for work, school, or family—exposes them to violence, extortion, and even death. Poor young men are further immobilized by the stigma that criminalizes them. When they emigrate, the US “deportation complex,” which extends through Mexico and Guatemala, aims to immobilize, return, and pin them in their country of citizenship. The author exposes the hypocrisy of the term “re-integration,” arguing that deported Hondurans are not out of place or unfamiliar; instead, deportation forces them to return to quite familiar exclusion, precarity, and insecurity. Indeed, “re-integration” programs, encompassing education, entrepreneurship support, and job training, place deportees directly in gang crosshairs. Precarity is why they left and why they will leave again. The chapter on the “hypervisible” migrant caravans provides a welcome foil to the dynamics described above, including the photo of a caravanero shouldering a backpack distributed by USAID to deportees.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: A. E. Adams, emerita, Central Connecticut State University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Sociology
Choice Issue: Oct 2026

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Seeing Metal Music in Latin America and the Caribbean

Varas Díaz, Nelson. by Nelson Varas-Díaz and Daniel Nevárez Araújo Lexington Books, 2024
262p bibl index, 9781666919783 $115.00, 9781666919790

Seeing Metal Music in Latin America and the Caribbean, by Varas-Díaz (Florida International Univ.) and Nevárez Araújo (English, Univ. of Puerto Rico-Rio Piadras) is a watershed work on metal, protest, and cultural identity of the Western hemisphere sector of the Global South (described by the authors as LACA—Latin America and the Caribbean). Released as part of the “Extreme Sound Studies: Global Socio-Cultural Explorations Series,” this work is a must read for heavy metal devotees, scholars, and researchers. While about the sound, meaning, and message of LACA metal, this book’s true focus is on visual imagery and iconography. Through an intense exploration of websites, band and tour merchandise (e.g., concert t-shirts), album artwork, and photos/images/film, the authors explore what they call extreme decolonization dialogues in the book’s four sections: “Seeing,” “Revealing,” “Inverting,” “Appearing.” Standout elements of the book include several interviews (e.g., with Paul Gillman) and a country-by-country chart of album art using Indigenous themes. Throughout the book, many internationally known mainstream metal bands are referenced, most conspicuously the Big Four: Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: D. V. Moskowitz, University of South Dakota
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies, Native American Studies
Subject: Humanities – Performing Arts – Music
Choice Issue: Apr 2025

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Latino Fathers: What Shapes and Sustains Their Parenting

Suarez, Fatima. New York University, 2025
239p bibl index, 9781479826285 $89.00, 9781479826322 $30.00, 9781479826353 $21.00

Much of the sociological scholarship on Latinx men centers on crime, poverty, and immigration. By contrast, this groundbreaking book examines how Latinx men interpret evolving cultural notions of fatherhood and masculinity. The study opens the door to understanding the positive aspects of Latinx fatherhood and its contradictions. Suarez (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas) starts by asking an important question: where are Latinx fathers? To answer that question, she challenges myths about Latinx fatherhood by sharing Latinx men’s own interpretations and reflections on the topic. The Latinx men she interviewed share their experiences of fatherhood and what it means to them as they navigate the social landscape of stereotypes, political economy, and racism. Mirroring the book’s opening question, the text concludes with a series of reflective questions for readers regarding their own relationships with fathers, father figures, or parents in general. Overall, this work makes a substantial contribution to sociology and Latinx studies by critically examining and expanding on prevailing conceptions of Latinx fatherhood.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.
Reviewer: L. H. Moreno, Bowling Green State University
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Latin American & Latina/o Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Racial Justice
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – Sociology
Choice Issue: Jun 2026

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