"One and All"

New from Stanford University Press: One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty by Laikwan Pang.

About the book, from the publisher:

The concept of sovereignty is a crucial foundation of the current world order. Regardless of their political ideologies no states can operate without claiming and justifying their sovereign power. The People's Republic of China (PRC)—one of the most powerful states in contemporary global politics—has been resorting to the logic of sovereignty to respond to many external and internal challenges, from territorial rights disputes to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this book, Pang Laikwan analyzes the historical roots of Chinese sovereignty. Surveying the four different political structures of modern China—imperial, republican, socialist, and post-socialist—and the dramatic ruptures between them, Pang argues that the ruling regime's sovereign anxiety cuts across the long twentieth century in China, providing a strong throughline for the state–society relations during moments of intense political instability. Focusing on political theory and cultural history, the book demonstrates how concepts such as popular sovereignty, territorial sovereignty, and economic sovereignty were constructed, and how sovereign power in China was both legitimized and subverted at various times by intellectuals and the ordinary people through a variety of media from painting and literature to internet-based memes. With the possibility of a new Cold War looming large, globalization disintegrating, and populism on the rise, Pang provides a timely reevaluation of the logic of sovereignty in China as power, discourse, and a basis for governance.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Some Doubt About It"

New from Lake Union: Some Doubt About It: A Novel by Marion McNabb.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this fun, feisty romp, a celebrity life coach collides with her former mentor as both women struggle with the choices they’ve made, the lives they have now, and the legacy they’ll leave behind.

Caroline Beckett is living the dream. A self-help guru with a glamorous clientele and a marriage to a handsome photographer, she’s proof women really can have it all. But one night leaves Caroline reeling, forcing her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about her life―and what (if any) business she has teaching anyone how to live theirs.

Retired professor Devorah van Buren is spending her time getting herself and her Chihuahua, Mary Magdalene, kicked out of local restaurants for causing scenes with tourists. When she learns about Caroline’s rise to success and the personal scandal that’s followed, Devorah has a new purpose: sue her former student for stealing the ideas that made Caroline famous.

Back in her hometown to handle this new problem, Caroline is surprised to find reconnections with not only Devorah but her high school sweetheart too. After the way her life fell apart, Caroline is beginning to wonder if, with Devorah’s help, maybe she can build something better.

Visit Marion McNabb's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Hollow Parties"

New from Princeton University Press: The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major history of America's political parties from the Founding to our embittered present

America’s political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes readers from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today’s parties, at once overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.

Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld paint unforgettable portraits of figures such as Martin Van Buren, whose pioneering Democrats invented the machinery of the mass political party, and Abraham Lincoln and other heroic Republicans of that party’s first generation who stood up to the Slave Power. And they show how today’s fractious party politics arose from the ashes of the New Deal order in the 1970s. Activists in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention transformed presidential nominations but failed to lay the foundations for robust, movement-driven parties. Instead, modern American conservatism hollowed out the party system, deeming it a mere instrument for power.

Party hollowness lies at the heart of our democratic discontents. With historical sweep and political acuity, The Hollow Parties offers powerful answers to pressing questions about how the nation’s parties became so dysfunctional—and how they might yet realize their promise.

Visit Sam Rosenfeld's website and Daniel Schlozman's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Polarizers by Sam Rosenfeld.

The Page 99 Test: When Movements Anchor Parties by Daniel Schlozman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lion of the Sky"

New from Balzer and Bray: Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani.

About the book, from the publisher:

An evocative historical novel in verse about a boy and his family who are forced to flee their home and become refugees after the British Partition of India. Perfect for fans of Other Words for Home.

Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence.

But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.

Forced to flee and become refugees, Raj’s family is left to start over in a new country. After suffering devastating losses, Raj must summon the courage to survive the brutal upheaval of both his country and his heart.

Inspired by the author’s true family history, Lion of the Sky is a deeply moving coming-of-age tale about identity, belonging, and the power of hope.

Visit Ritu Hemnani's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Jazz Migrations"

New from Oxford University Press: Jazz Migrations: Movement as Place Among New York Musicians by Ofer Gazit.

About the book, from the publisher:

Since the 1990s, migrant musicians have become increasingly prominent in New York City's jazz scene. Challenging norms about who can be a jazz musician and what immigrant music should sound like, these musicians create mobile and diverse notions of jazz while inadvertently contributing to processes of gentrification and cultural institutionalization. In Jazz Migrations, author Ofer Gazit discusses the impact of contemporary transnational migration on New York jazz, examining its effects on educational institutions, club scenes, and jam sessions.

Drawing on four years of musical participation in the scene, as well as interviews with musicians, audience members, venue owners, industry professionals, and institutional actors, Gazit transports readers from music schools in Japan, Israel, and India to rehearsals and private lessons in American jazz programs, and to New York's immigrant jazz hangouts: an immigrant-owned music school in the Bronx; a weekly jam session in a Haitian bar in central Brooklyn; a Colombian-owned jazz room in Jackson Heights, Queens; and a members-only club in Manhattan. Along the way, he introduces the improvisatory practices of a cast of well-known and aspiring musicians: a South Indian guitarist's visions of John Coltrane and Carnatic music; a Chilean saxophonist's intimate dialogue with the sound of Sonny Rollins; an Israeli clarinetist finding a home in Brazilian Choro and in Louis Armstrong's legacy; and a multiple Grammy-nominated Cuban drummer from the Bronx. Jazz Migrations concludes with a call for a collective reconsideration of the meaning of genre boundaries, senses of belonging, and ethnic identity in American music.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Reunion"

New from Harper: Reunion: A Novel by Elise Juska.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the beloved author of the “uniquely poignant” (Entertainment Weekly) novel The Blessings comes a gripping story about three friends in their forties forced to reckon with their lives during a college reunion in coastal Maine.

It’s June 2021, and three old college friends are heading to New England and the twenty-fifth reunion that was delayed the year before. Hope, a stay-at-home mom, is desperate for a return to her beloved campus, a reprieve from her tense marriage, and the stresses of pandemic parenting. Adam is hesitant to leave his bucolic but secluded life with his wife and their young sons. Single mother Polly hasn’t been back to campus in more than twenty years and has no interest in returning—but changes her mind when her struggling teenage son suggests a road trip.

But the reunion isn’t what any of them had envisioned. Hope, always upbeat, is no longer able to downplay the pressures of life at home or the cracks in her longstanding friendships. Adam finds himself energized by the memory of his carefree, reckless younger self—which only reminds him how much has changed since those halcyon days. Polly cannot ignore the ghosts of her college years, including a closely guarded secret. When the weekend takes a startling turn, all three find themselves reckoning with the past—and how it will bear on the future.

Beautifully observed and insightful, Reunion is a page-turning novel about the highs and lows of friendship from a writer at the height of her powers.

Visit Elise Juska's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In the Shadow of the Global North"

New from Cambridge University Press: In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa by j. Siguru Wahutu.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the Shadow of the Global North unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces that organize and circulate journalistic narratives in Africa to show that something complex is unfolding in the postcolonial context of global journalistic landscapes, especially the relationships between cosmopolitan and national journalistic fields. Departing from the typical discourse about journalistic depictions of Africa, j. Siguru Wahutu turns our focus to the underexplored journalistic representations created by African journalists reporting on African countries. In assessing news narratives and the social context within which journalists construct these narratives, Wahutu captures not only the marginalization of African narratives by African journalists but opens up an important conversation about what it means to be an African journalist, an African news organization, and African in the postcolony.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rich Justice"

New from Thomas & Mercer: Rich Justice by Robert Bailey.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this twisty thriller from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Robert Bailey, a disgraced attorney’s mistakes come back to haunt him when he’s tried for a murder he didn’t commit.

Once the flashy, successful lawyer known for his in-your-face billboards―IN AN ACCIDENT? GET RICH―Jason Rich has fallen from grace, his reputation scrubbed of its glitz and his life stripped of the people he cares about. All thanks to meth kingpin Tyson Cade.

But when Cade is shot and killed in the heart of his territory, things go from bad to worse for Jason as he is charged with his murder.

To clear his name, Jason seeks help from an unlikely source: Shay Lankford, an old adversary and attorney almost as disgraced as Jason himself. Now Jason and Shay have even more to lose―their lives―as they dig into the dangerous truth behind Tyson Cade’s murder.

Neither time nor evidence is on their side, but after everything he’s lost, Jason is determined to save his future from the mistakes of his past―no matter the price.

Visit Robert Bailey's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Violent World of Broadus Miller"

New from the University of North Carolina Press: The Violent World of Broadus Miller: A Story of Murder, Lynch Mobs, and Judicial Punishment in the Carolinas by Kevin W. Young.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the summer of 1927, an itinerant Black laborer named Broadus Miller was accused of killing a fifteen-year-old white girl in Morganton, North Carolina. Miller became the target of a massive manhunt lasting nearly two weeks. After he was gunned down in the North Carolina mountains, his body was taken back to Morganton and publicly displayed on the courthouse lawn on a Sunday afternoon, attracting thousands of spectators.

Kevin W. Young vividly illustrates the violence-wracked world of the early twentieth century in the Carolinas, the world that created both Miller and the hunters who killed him. Young provides a panoramic overview of this turbulent time, telling important contextual histories of events that played into this tragic story, including the horrific prison conditions of the era, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the influx of Black immigrants into North Carolina. More than an account of a single murder case, this book vividly illustrates the stormy race relations in the Carolinas during the early 1900s, reminding us that the legacy of this era lingers into the present.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Daughters of Shandong"

New from Berkley: Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung.

About the book, from the publisher:

A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story

Daughters are the Ang family’s curse.

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.

Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.

From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.

Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.

Visit Eve J. Chung's website.

--Marshal Zeringue