19 minute read
General Interest
JUST HEALTH
Treating Structural Racism to Heal America DAYNA BOWEN MATTHEW
The author of the bestselling Just Medicine reveals how racial inequality undermines public health and how we can change it
With the rise of the Movement for Black Lives and the feverish calls for Medicare for All, the public spotlight on racial inequality and access to healthcare has never been brighter. The rise of COVID-19 and its disproportionate effects on people of color has especially made clear how the color of one’s skin is directly related to the quality of care (or lack thereof) a person receives, and the disastrous health outcomes Americans suffer as a result of racism and an unjust healthcare system. Timely and accessible, Just Health examines how deep structural racism embedded in the fabric of American society leads to worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy for people of color. By presenting evidence of discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system, Dayna Bowen Matthew shows how racial inequality pervades American society and the multitude of ways that this undermines the health of minority populations. The author provides a clear path forward for overcoming these massive barriers to health and ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to be healthy. She encourages health providers to take a leading role in the fight to dismantle the structural inequities their patients face. A compelling and essential read, Just Health helps us to understand how racial inequality damages the health of our minority communities and explains what we can do to fight back.
Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD is the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. Dr. Matthew is a leader in public health and civil rights law who has also held many public policy roles. These include serving as senior adviser to the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and as a member of the health policy team for U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
“Too often the conversation on health focuses on individual attributes and predispositions. Dayna Bowen Matthews's Just Health offers a brilliant and timely assessment of how racial minorities' poor health outcomes are tied to the structural choices and decisions that society makes in how it treats certain people. Structural problems require structural solutions, and this book offers a clear and compelling vision on how to achieve health equity.” —Osagie K. Obasogie, Haas Distinguished
Chair and Professor of Bioethics, University of California, Berkeley February 2022 336 pages • 6 x 9 20 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479802661 • $27.95A(£20.99)
Current Affairs
Alberta Arthurs is an independent consultant and a frequent commentator on the arts and culture. Michael F. DiNiscia serves as Deputy Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives of the John Brademas Center of New York University.
“Here is the book arts lovers and advocates have been waiting for—and just in the nick of time! This collection of inspiring, practical, and visionary essays shows how the arts can lead our nation's spiritual and economic revival and point the way towards a more just future.” —David Henry Hwang, Tony-Award winning American Playwright
ARE THE ARTS ESSENTIAL?
Edited by ALBERTA ARTHURS and MICHAEL DINISCIA
A timely and kaleidoscopic reflection on the importance of the arts in our society
In the midst of a devastating pandemic, as theaters, art galleries and museums, dance stages and concert halls shuttered their doors indefinitely and institutional funding for entertainment and culture evaporated almost overnight, a cohort of highly acclaimed scholars, artists, cultural critics, and a journalist sat down to ponder an urgent question: Are the arts essential? Across twenty-five highly engaging essays, these luminaries join together to address this question and to share their own ideas, experiences, and ambitions for the arts. Drawing on their experiences across the spectrum of the arts, from the performing and visual arts to poetry and literature, the contributors remind readers that the arts are everywhere and, in one important way after another, they question, charge and change us. These impassioned essays remind us of the human connections the arts can forge— how we find each other through the arts, across the most difficult divides, and how the arts can offer hope in the most challenging times. What answer does this convocation offer to Are the Arts Essential? A resounding Yes.
February 2022 496 pages • 6 x 10 24 full color illustrations Cloth • 9781479812622 • $29.95A(£22.99)
Arts
TAKING DOWN BACKPAGE
Fighting the World’s Largest Sex Trafficker MAGGY KRELL
Insider details from the takedown of Backpage, the world’s largest sex trafficker, by the prosecutor who led the charge
For almost a decade, Backpage.com was the world’s largest sex trafficking operation. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, in 800 cities throughout the world, Backpage ran thousands of listings advertising the sale of vulnerable young people for sex. Reaping a cut off every transaction, the owners of the website raked in millions of dollars. But many of the people in the advertisements were children, as young as 12, and forced into the commercial sex trade through fear, violence and coercion. In Taking Down Backpage, veteran California prosecutor Maggy Krell tells the story of how she and her team prevailed against this sex trafficking monolith. Through a fascinating combination of memoir and legal insight, Krell reveals how she and her team started with the prosecution of street pimps and ultimately ended with the takedown of the largest purveyor of human trafficking in the world. She shares powerful stories of interviews with victims, sting operations, court cases, and the personal struggles that were necessary to bring Backpage executives to justice. Finally, Krell examines the state of sex trafficking after Backpage and the crucial work that still remains. Taking Down Backpage is a gripping story of tragedy, overcoming adversity, and the pursuit of justice that gives insight into the fight against sex trafficking in the digital age.
Maggy Krell is an award-winning impact lawyer and currently serves as Chief Legal Counsel at Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. Maggy started her career as a prosecutor, serving as a deputy district attorney before moving up the ranks at the Attorney General’s Office, most recently as the Supervising Deputy Attorney General of the Special Prosecutions Unit.
“This book is both a fascinating legal thriller about the power of justice and a chilling reminder of how pervasive and horrific human trafficking is. Krell weaves the story together in gripping fashion and leaves the reader with hope and inspiration.” —Ashlie Bryant, Co-founder and CEO of 3Strands Global Foundation January 2022 192 pages • 6 x 9 8 black and white illustrations Cloth • 9781479803040 • $22.95T(£17.99)
Current Affairs
Cecelia Tichi is a native of Pittsburgh, the “Steel City” of the Gilded Age, and is an award-winning author and Professor of American literature and culture at Vanderbilt University. Her books include Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America and What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age. Cecelia currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
JAZZ AGE COCKTAILS
History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Roaring Twenties
CECELIA TICHI
How the Prohibition law of 1920 made alcohol, savored in secret, all the more delectable when the cocktail shaker was forced to go “underground”
“Roaring Twenties” America boasted famous firsts: women’s right to vote, jazz music, talking motion pictures, flapper fashions, and wondrous new devices like the safety razor and the electric vacuum cleaner. The privations of the Great War were over, and Wall Street boomed. The decade opened, nonetheless, with a shock when Prohibition became the law of the land on Friday, January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment banned “intoxicating liquors.” Decades-long campaigns to demonize alcoholic beverages finally became law, and America officially went “dry.” American ingenuity promptly rose to its newest challenge. The law, riddled with loopholes, let the 1920s write a new chapter in the nation’s saga of spirits. Men and women spoke knowingly of the speakeasy, the bootlegger, rum-running, black ships, blind pigs, gin mills, and gallon stills. A new social event—the cocktail party staged in a private home—smashed the gender barrier that had long forbidden “ladies” from entering into the gentlemen-only barrooms and cafés. From the author of Gilded Age Cocktails, this book takes a delightful new romp through the cocktail creations of the early twentieth century, transporting readers into the glitz and (illicit) glamour of the 1920s. Spirited and richly illustrated, Jazz Age Cocktails dazzles with tales of temptation and temperance, and features charming cocktail recipes from the time to be recreated and enjoyed.
November 2021 168 pages • 5.5 x 8 23 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479810123 • $19.95T(£14.99) In Washington Mews Books
Food & Wine
AVIDLY READS OPERA
ALISON KINNEY
“Opera is community, comfort, art, voice, breath, life. It’s hope.”
All art exists to make life more bearable. For Alison Kinney, it was the wild, fantastical world of opera that transformed her listening and her life. Whether we’re listening for the first time or revisiting the arias that first stole our hearts, Avidly Reads Opera welcomes readers and listeners to a community full of friendship, passion, critique—and, always, beautiful music. In times of delirious, madcap fun and political turmoil, opera fans have expressed their passion by dispatching records into the cosmos, building fairy-tale castles, and singing together through the arduous work of social activism. Avidly Reads Opera is a love letter to the music and those who love it, complete with playlists, a crowdsourced tip sheet from ultra-fans to newbies, and stories of the turbulent, genre-busting, and often hilarious history of opera and its audiences. Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Opera is an homage to the marvelous, sensational world of opera for the casual viewer.
“When making a solo trip to the opera, most everyone who wasn't raised on the art faces this question: 'Do I really belong here?' Alison Kinney says 'yes,' and invites you to ride along with her: to performances at Wagner's theater, and also, less conventionally, at a prison. She's insightful and entertaining, but not merely good company. Her larger conversation with the tradition—regarding its pleasures and its problems—should excite anyone eager to see opera with new eyes.” —Seth Colter Walls,
New York Times contributing music critic Alison Kinney is the author of Hood. Her writing on opera, history, and culture has appeared in many venues, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, Lapham’s Quarterly, The New York Times, VAN Magazine, The Guardian, Harper’s, The New Republic, Hyperallergic, The Believer, and The Village Voice. She is Assistant Professor of Writing at Eugene Lang College, The New School.
October 2021 160 pages • 4.37 x 7 1 black & white illustration Paper • 9781479811731 • $14.95T(£10.99) Cloth • 9781479811724 • $89.00X(£71.00)
Cultural Studies
Máel Embser-Herbert is Professor of Sociology at Hamline University. They are a veteran of the US Army and author of Camouflage Isn’t Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality, and Women in the Military and The U.S. Military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Policy: A Reference Handbook.
Bree Fram is a lieutenant colonel in the US Space Force who has held command at the squadron level, led USAF security cooperation with Iraq, and led space acquisition programs. She is the President of SPART*A, a transgender military advocacy organization.
WITH HONOR AND INTEGRITY
Transgender Troops in Their Own Words Edited by MÁEL EMBSER-HERBERT and BREE FRAM
Heartfelt personal accounts from transgender people fighting for the right to serve in the military
On January 25, 2021, in one of his first acts as President, Joe Biden reversed the Trump Administration’s widely condemned ban on transgender people in the military. In With Honor and Integrity, Máel Embser-Herbert and Bree Fram introduce us to the brave individuals who are on the front lines of this issue, assembling a powerful, accessible, and heartfelt collection of first-hand accounts from transgender military personnel in the United States. Featuring twenty-six essays from current service members or veterans, these eye-opening accounts show us what it is like to serve in the military as a transgender person. Contributors share their experiences from before and during President Trump’s ban—what barriers they face at work, why they do or don’t choose to serve openly, and how their colleagues have treated them. Fram, a lieutenant colonel who is serving openly as a transgender woman in the US Space Force, and has advocated for open service policies, shares her experience in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement of the ban on Twitter. Ultimately, Embser-Herbert and Fram provide an inspiring look at the past, present, and future of transgender military service. At a time when LGBTQ rights are under siege, and the right to serve continues to be challenged, With Honor and Integrity is a timely and necessary read.
November 2021 240 pages • 6 x 9 Cloth • 9781479801039 • $28.00A(£20.99) In LGBTQ Politics
LGBTQ Studies
BI
Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, and Genderqueer Youth RITCH C. SAVIN-WILLIAMS
What bisexual youth can tell us about today’s gender and sexual identities
Despite the increasing visibility of LGBTQ people in American culture, our understanding of bisexuality—perhaps one of the least visible sexual orientations—remains superficial at best. Yet five times as many people identify as bisexual than as gay or lesbian, and, if we were to include the many bisexual people who remain hidden from sight, including those who simultaneously identify as pansexual, fluid, genderqueer, and no label, as much as 25 percent of the population is estimated to be bisexual. In Bi, Ritch C. Savin-Williams brings bisexuality out of the shadows, particularly as Gen Z and millennial youth and young adults increasingly reject traditional sexual labels altogether. Drawing on interviews with bisexual youth from a range of racial, ethnic, and social class groups, he reveals to us how bisexuals define their own sexual orientation and experiences—in their own words. SavinWilliams shows how and why people might identify as bisexual as a result of their biology or upbringing; as a bridge or transition to something else; as a consequence of their curiosity; or for a range of other equally valid reasons. Savin-Williams provides an important new understanding of bisexuality as an orientation, behavior, and identity. Bi shows us that bisexuality is seen and embraced as a valid sexual identity more than ever before, giving us timely and much-needed insight into the complex, fascinating experiences of bisexual youth themselves.
Ritch C. Savin-Williams is Professor Emeritus of Developmental Psychology at Cornell University and the author of many books, including Mostly Straight: Sexual Fluidity Among Men and The New Gay Teenager. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, and has appeared on Good Morning America, C-SPAN About-Books, All Things Considered, CBS Newsradio, CNN, BBC, Voice of America and others.
September 2021 328 pages • 6 x 9 2 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479811434 • $28.95A(£21.99)
LGBTQ Studies
Edward E. Curtis IV is the William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of the Liberal Arts and Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis. A recipient of Mellon, NEH, Fulbright, and Carnegie fellowships, Curtis is author of Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy and Muslims in America: A Short History, and editor of The Practice of Islam in America: An Introduction and the Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History.
MUSLIMS OF THE HEARTLAND
How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest
EDWARD E. CURTIS IV
Uncovers the surprising history of Muslim life in the early American Midwest
The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them. Edward E. Curtis IV, a descendant of Syrian Midwesterners, vividly portrays the intrepid men and women who busted sod on the short-grass prairies of the Dakotas, peddled needles and lace on the streets of Cedar Rapids, and worked in the railroad car factories of Michigan City. This intimate portrait follows the stories of individuals such as farmer Mary Juma, pacifist Kassem Rameden, poet Aliya Hassen, and bookmaker Kamel Osman from the early 1900s through World War I, the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Its story-driven approach places Syrian Americans at the center of key American institutions like the assembly line, the family farm, the dance hall, and the public school, showing how the first two generations of Midwestern Syrians created a life that was Arab, Muslim, and American, all at the same time. Muslims of the Heartland recreates what the Syrian Muslim Midwest looked, sounded, felt, and smelled like—from the allspice-seasoned lamb and rice shared in mosque basements to the sound of the trains on the Rock Island Line rolling past the dry goods store. It recovers a multicultural history of the American Midwest that cannot be ignored.
February 2022 256 pages • 6 x 9 12 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479812561 • $30.00S(£22.99)
History
MUTINY ON THE RISING SUN
A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate JARED ROSS HARDESTY
A swashbuckling tale of mutiny and murder illustrating the centrality of smuggling and slavery in early American society
On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast. Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel. Mutiny on the Rising Sun recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun’s final smuggling voyage in vivid detail. Starting from that horrible night in June 1743, it narrates a deeply human history of smuggling, providing an incredible story of those caught in the webs spun by illicit commerce. The case generated a rich documentary record that illuminates an international chocolate smuggling ring, the lives of the crew and mutineers, and the harrowing experience of the enslaved people trafficked by the Rising Sun. Smuggling stood at the center of the lives of everyone involved with the business of the schooner. Larger forces, such as imperial trade restrictions, created the conditions for smuggling, but individual actors, often driven by raw ambition and with little regard for the consequences of their actions, designed, refined, and perpetuated this illicit commerce. At once startling and captivating, Mutiny on the Rising Sun shows how illegal trade created demand for exotic products like chocolate, and how slavery and smuggling were integral to the development of American capitalism.
Jared Ross Hardesty is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Western Washington University and author of Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston and Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England.
October 2021 288 pages • 6 x 9 33 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479812486 • $25.00A(£18.99)
History
Jennifer Frost is Associate Professor of History at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and author of “An Interracial Movement of the Poor”: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s, Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservativism, and Producer of Controversy: Stanley Kramer, Hollywood Liberalism, and the Cold War.
Youth Voting Rights and the 26th Amendment JENNIFER FROST
The fascinating tale of how a bipartisan coalition worked successfully to lower the voting age
“Let Us Vote!” tells the story of the multifaceted endeavor to achieve youth voting rights in the United States. Over a thirty-year period starting during World War II, Americans, old and young, Democrat and Republican, in politics and culture, built a movement for the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution, which lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen in 1971. This was the last time that the United States significantly expanded voting rights. Jennifer Frost deftly illustrates how the political and social movements of the time brought together bipartisan groups to work tirelessly in pursuit of a lower voting age. In turn, she illuminates the process of achieving political change, with the convergence of “top-down” initiatives and “bottom-up” mobilization, coalition-building, and strategic flexibility. As she traces the progress toward achieving youth suffrage throughout the ’60s, Frost reveals how this movement built upon the social justice initiatives of the decade and was deeply indebted to the fight for African American civil and voting rights. 2021 marks the fiftieth anniversary of this important constitutional amendment and comes at a time when scrutiny of both voting age and voting rights has been renewed. As the national conversation around climate crisis, gun violence, and police brutality creates a new call for a lower voting age, “Let Us Vote!” provides an essential investigation of how this massive political change occurred, and how it could be brought about again.
December 2021 384 pages • 6 x 9 23 black & white illustrations Cloth • 9781479811328 • $39.00S(£31.00)
History
THE NEW SEX WARS
Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era BRENDA COSSMAN
Revisits the sex wars of the 1970s and ’80s and examines their influence on how we think about sexual harm in the #MeToo era
#MeToo’s stunning explosion on social media in October 2017 radically changed—and amplified—conversations about sexual violence as it revealed how widespread the issue is and toppled prominent celebrities and politicians. But, as the movement spread, a conflict emerged among feminist supporters and detractors about how punishment should be doled out and how justice should be served. The New Sex Wars reveals that these clashes are nothing new. Delving into the contentious debates from the ’70s and ‘80s, Brenda Cossman traces the striking echoes in the feminist divisions of this earlier period. In exploring the history of past conflicts—the resistance to finding common ground, the media’s pleasure in portraying the debates as polarized cat fights, the simplification of viewpoints as pro- and anti-sex—she shows how they have come to shape the #MeToo era. From the ’70s to today, Cossman examines tensions between the need for recognition and protection under the law, and the colossal and ongoing failure of that law to redress historic injustice. By circumventing law altogether, #MeToo has led us to question whether justice can be served outside of the courtroom. Cossman argues for a different way forward—one based on reparative models that focus on shared desired outcomes and the willingness to understand the other side. Thoughtful and compelling, The New Sex Wars explores what can been learned from these stories, what traps we repeatedly fall into, how we have been denied our anger, and where to begin to make law work.
Brenda Cossman is the Goodman-Schipper Chair and Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Sexual Citizens: The Legal and Cultural Regulation of Sex and Belonging.
October 2021 288 pages • 6 x 9 Cloth • 9781479802708 • $30.00A(£22.99)
