Rebecca Earle‘s recent book The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America (Cambridge University Press, 2012) investigates the importance of food during the first two centuries of Spanish imperialism in the Americas. She explores how food took a central place in conceptions of bodily health and composition, both in the Old and New Worlds. Not only did the Spanish come to see themselves as different from Amerindians due to the different foods that they both ate, but missionaries worried about the potential to convert native peoples in the colonial absence of theologically-mandated wheat bread and grape wine. This work adds an important layer of analysis to studies of early Spanish imperialism, as well as to the historical debate on colonial ideas about race and perceptions of bodily difference.

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Michael Birkel‘s Qur’an in Conversation (Baylor University Press, 2014) challenges its readers to think deeply about the Qur’an. The book will likely leave the reader with many answers but also many questions. By drawing on academic scholars, imams, lawyers, and activists this edited volume presents a series of compelling, masterfully written, digestible, and personal accounts of the Qur’an. It addresses tough questions about violence, gender, interfaith relations, and authority, but not in an apologetic manner. The authors make clear that the Qur’an is not merely an old text, but also a living text, teeming with evolving interpretations and debates. Because all of the writers are based in the United States, moreover, the Qur’an in Conversation seamlessly incorporates discussions of the Qur’an with contemporary issues in American culture. It thus becomes clear that the Qur’an is an American text as well as an Arabic text and a Muslim text. The chapters are arranged thematically, and one could reasonably read them sequentially or not, depending on the purpose. The text, therefore, offers a range of pedagogical functions and is sure to benefit classroom use, especially because of its readable and erudite prose. Birkel has set a high bar for future edited volumes that follow models anything like Qur’an in Conversation.

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Pedro Machado‘s Ocean of Trade:South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a richly detailed and engaging account of Gujarati merchants and their role in the trade of textiles, ivory and slaves across the Indian Ocean. The book not only enhances our understanding of an under researched pan-continental trade network but also, through its sensitive treatment of local markets as drivers of merchants’ patterns, pushes us to re-examine our understanding of trading networks themselves.

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Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen have produced a landmark volume. Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China (University of Washington Press, 2015) collects 19 essays (plus an Introduction and an Afterword) devoted to exploring the built environment and archaeology of Han Chang’an, sociopolitical transformations in the late Western Han, and leading figures of the period. Equally significant as a contribution to Chinese studies and to the fields of urban and empire studies more broadly conceived, Chang’an 26 BCE is remarkable for its success in bringing together the work of Chinese and US scholars, and all in a series of very clear and engaging discussions of a wide range of topics, from the provisioning of Western Han Chang’an with food and water, to the figure of Chengdi as a ruler and his relationships with high-ranking princes, to potential comparisons and differences between the city and Rome, to tomb structures and murals, amid much else. This is a book that will be on researchers’ shelves for repeated consultation – and on teachers’ shelves for excerpting and assigning – for many many years to come. It is an astounding achievement, as well as a beautifully illustrated object.

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Struggles over information in the digital era are central to Tim Jordan‘s new book, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society (Pluto Press, 2015). The book aims to connect a critical theoretical reading of the idea of information with the architectures and practices surrounding information. The text begins by setting out how information is not separated from contemporary struggles over liberation and exploitation and points towards the principles of information politics that guide the reader through an engagement with contemporary theories, including the work of Haraway and Deleuze. These principles then inform theories of networks, recursion and the affordances of technologies that are used, in turn, to account for the platforms and battlegrounds of informational politics. The book does not offer up information as a new master discourse for political struggles, but rather shows, through examples including Facebook, the ICloud, the iPad, online gaming, and hacktivism, how information can be connected to, and can shape, other areas of social contestation. The text will be of interest to anyone using the internet, in particular those concerned with who is control of that space and how it might be reimagined.

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Just a few weeks ago, we heard Matthew Green discuss the minority in the House. Green explained that the minority party may not be as powerless as we typically think. In Too Weak to Govern: Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the U.S. Senate (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Peter Hanson offers another side of a similar story. Hanson argues that the majority party in the Senate, more restrained by rule and convention than in the House, has an equally interesting story to tell. Hanson draws on his experience as a staffer for Senator Tom Daschle to explain the evolution of “regular order” and emergence of continuing resolutions as a tool of the majority. Hanson’s analysis may not convince you to love the Senate, but he sheds needed light on what’s behind the maddening procedures of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Hanson is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver.

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In 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle cried out “Vive le Quebec libre!” from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall. The controversial moment became a myth almost instantly. The four words De Gaulle uttered remain emblematic of an extremely important moment in the histories of Quebec and Canada. Illustrative of the General’s penchant for political provocation and spectacle, they also hold a special place in his dramatic biography.

David Meren‘s With Friends Like These: Entangled Nationalisms in the Canada-Quebec-France Triangle, 1944-1970(University of British Columbia Press, 2012), is anchored by President de Gaulle’s famous cri du balcon. Situating the incident within the broader context of a complex “triangle” of relations between Canada, Quebec, and France, the book deepens our understanding of what De Gaulle said and the meanings his exclamation have carried since. At the same time, the book develops a much broader and richer historical picture of the relationship between these three societies, and their nationalisms, from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1960s.

With Friends Like These is an exciting example of an international history that interweaves the analysis of diplomacy, economic interests, and societal and cultural change over two and half decades. In our conversation, David and I discussed his methodology and the challenges of thinking together these three national communities within a rapidly shifting global context during the period. We also had a chance to talk about some of the legacies of the history of the Canada-Quebec-France triangle for contemporary political and cultural identities and exchanges.

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The development of higher education in Asia has been as dramatic as the region’s rapid economic rise. The landscape of this diverse and ever-changing sector is thoroughly explored in Asia: The Next Higher Education Superpower? (Institute of International Education [IIE] and the American Institute For Foreign Study Foundation, 2015). Dr. Rajika Bhandari, IIE’ Deputy Vice President for Research and Evaluation, and Dr. Alessia Lefebure, Director of the Alliance at Columbia University and Adjunct Professor at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, edited this in-depth volume exploring Asian higher education by bringing together a globally and culturally diverse group of experienced academics, up-and-coming researchers, and even practitioners.The multiple perspectives provided throughout the book weave an expansive analysis of the region’s rich higher educational tapestry–from the reverence of international rankings, to issues of quality control, the branch campus phenomenon, and a myriad of other focused and fascinating inquiry.

Dr. Lefebure joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd.

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Amy Kittelstrom is an associate professor of history at Sonoma State University. In her book The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition (Penguin Press, 2015), Kittelstrom gives us profiles of seven individual and their circle. They embodied the ideas of what she calls an “American Reformation.” Beginning with John Adams, who believed every man had the duty to think for himself, to Jane Addams, who went beyond Christian charity to live among the poor, the book show us how these individuals combined liberalism and moral values to create a post-Christian “religion of democracy.” The “American Reformation” was the process of moving from Protestant orthodoxy and dogma to instituting the values of equality, liberty, and democracy within the social and political structure of the nation. These seven Americans combined the classic liberal values of reason and scientific inquiry with element of reformed Christianity, such as free will and equality before God, while rejecting the Calvinist teaching of human depravity. These ideals were not only political but a social practice in a progressive vision of society. In the process liberals acquired a reputation as “godless” discarding religion for a mere moral relativism. Kittelstrom presents us with individuals whose concern for moral values were derived from their religious roots and argues that the democratic ethos of her subjects valuing the individual, as both free and equal, was due to their reconstituted religious beliefs rather than a rejection of religion. The Religion of Democracy provides the reader an opportunity to consider the religious and moral sensibilities of the liberal tradition in America.

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The intersection between ethnic and religious identities can be both complex and rich, particularly when dealing with a community that still has deep roots in the immigrant experience. In his book, Memory and Honor: Cultural and Generational Ministry with Korean American Communities (Liturgical Press, 2013), Fr. Simon C. Kim explores these issues in the Korean American Catholic community. In this deeply reflective work, Fr. Kim grapples with the many issues, such as the generational divide between ethnic Korean Catholics who immigrated, the children they brought with them from Korea, and their grandchildren born in the United States, and what it means to be a Catholic of Korean ethnicity when Protestant forms of Christianity are linked so tightly with that ethnic group in the popular imagination. This pioneering work will be of interest not only to scholars working in Asian American religion, but anyone who is curious about the connection between ethnicity and Christianity.

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