College of Arts & Letters Bookshelf

A gallery of books by faculty from the Batten College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University. Faculty books are also listed under specific departments.

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The Sweet In-Between: A Novel
2008
Sheri Reynolds

Kenny Lugo has grown up in a family that’s not really hers. Her mother died of cancer when Kenny was very young, and Aunt Glo–who is, in fact, her daddy’s girlfriend–took her in when her father was sent to jail for drug trafficking. Now, as Kenny approaches her eighteenth birthday and the end of the government checks Glo has been receiving looms, she is desperate to prove that this house and these people really do belong to her. But when a senseless murder occurs next door in their small coastal town, Kenny can’t get it out of her mind. She has always been consumed by the ways in which she is different–and inherently unworthy–so the unjust death of a young woman with everything to live for becomes an obsession. In the end, hers is a story of an unforgettable young woman whose redemption comes from a source she never would have imagined. {Amazon.com]
Trading Away Our Future: How to Fix Our Government-Driven Trade Deficits and Faulty Tax System Before it's Too Late
2008
Raymond L. Richman, Howard B. Richman, and Jesse T. Richman

We are Trading Away Our Future and most economists have been caught with their heads in the sand. They think that the trade deficits are the result of free market forces. But the trade deficits are caused by foreign government currency manipulations and the foolish subsidies that the US tax system gives to foreign savings.
The American People know that something is wrong. They know that the Chinese and Japanese governments manipulate their currencies to steal American industries. They are intrigued by Governor Huckabee's endorsement of the Fair Tax, a proposal that would abolish the IRS, renew American investment, Strengthen the dollar, and help solve the trade deficits.
If nothing is done, then resolutely nondemocratic China will replace the United States as the world's premier power. In this book the Richmans explain solutions that are within our grasp. [Amazon.com]
Architects of Delusion: Europe, America, and the Iraq War
2008
Simon Serfaty

The commencement of war in Iraq in 2003 was met with a variety of reactions around the globe. In Architects of Delusion, Simon Serfaty presents a historical analysis of how and why the decision to wage war was endorsed by some of America's main European allies, especially Britain, and opposed by others, especially France and Germany… [From Amazon.com]
A Recast Partnership?: institutional Dimensions of Transatlantic Relations
2008
Simon Serfaty (Editor)

Forty years ago, at the peak of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger noted the "troubled" state of the transatlantic partnership, which he called "the most constructive American foreign policy since the end of World War II." A few years later, Kissinger called for new initiatives--"a fresh act of creation"--that would respond to "new problems and new opportunities" in ways equal to those undertaken by the postwar generation of leaders of Europe and America after 1945. The essays in this new CSIS volume do just that. Each of the authors--leading authorities on the Euro-Atlantic community--assesses the current state of transatlantic relations, questions where we are heading, and reflects on how best to proceed… [From Amazon.com]
Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance: The Diary of David J. Mays, 1954-1959
2008
James R. Sweeney (Editor)

This book is an edited version of the diary of David J. Mays, a prominent Richmond, Virginia attorney, from the spring of 1954 through the spring of 1959. Mays served as counsel to a legislative commission appointed by Governor Thomas Stanley to devise a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Mays provides an insider's view of the so-called Gray Commission which devised a plan that tacitly permitted token integration. He also comments on the rejection of that approach by the governor and others loyal to the state's dominant political leader, U. S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, who favored a policy of massive resistance to school desegregation. Mays correctly assesses the legal deficiencies of the massive resistance program which resulted in the closing of schools in three communities before it was declared unconstitutional by both state and federal courts.
Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare
2008
Terry Terriff (Editor), Aaron Karp (Editor), and Reginia Karp (Editor)

This volume covers a timely debate in contemporary security studies: can armed forces adjust to the rising challenge of insurgency and terrorism, the greatest transformation in warfare since the birth of the international system? Containing essays by leading international security scholars and military professionals, it explores the Fourth-Generation Warfare thesis and its implications for security planning in the twenty-first century. No longer confined to the fringes of armed conflict, guerrilla warfare and terrorism increasingly dominate world-wide military planning. For the first time since the Vietnam War ended, the problems of insurgency have leapt to the top of the international security agenda and virtually all countries are struggling to protect themselves against terrorist threats. Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are bogged down by an insurgency, and are being forced to rely on old warfare tactics rather than modern technologies to destroy their adversaries. These theorists argue that irregular warfare―insurgencies and terrorism―has evolved over time and become progressively more sophisticated and difficult to defeat as it is not centered on high technology and state of the art weaponry. [From Amazon.com]
iPod and Philosophy: iCon of an ePoch
2008
Dylan E. Wittkower (Editor)

The iPod is transforming the lives of millions, changing their relationship to music and to each other. IniPod and Philosophy, 18 philosophers with diverse specialties and points of view bring their expertise to bear on this international cultural phenomenon. They explore such questions as how individuals become defined by their iPods, what the shuffle feature says about the role of randomness in people's lives, and much more.
The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972-2005
2008
Steve A. Yetiv

Analyzing the evolution of the United States' foreign policy in the Persian Gulf from 1972 to 2005, Yetiv offers a provocative and panoramic view of American strategies in a region critical to the functioning of the entire global economy. Ten cases―from the policies of the Nixon administration to George W. Bush's war in Iraq―reveal shifting, improvised, and reactive policies that were responses to unanticipated and unpredictable events and threats. In fact, the distinguishing feature of the U.S. experience in the Gulf has been the absence of grand strategy… [From Amazon.com]
Adamah: Poeme
2008
Céline Zins (Author) and Peter Schulman (Translator)

Adamah is by prominent French poet and writer Céline Zins; this premiere edition includes the English translation by Peter Schulman, ODU Professor of French and International Studies.
Jack Sheppard
2007
William Harrison Ainsworth, Edward H. Jacobs (Editor), and Manuela Mourão (Editor)

In London Labour and the London Poor (1861) Henry Mayhew wrote, “Of all books, perhaps none has ever had so baneful effect upon the young mind, taste, and principles” as Jack Sheppard. An historical novel based on the exploits of John Sheppard, a thief who was executed in 1724, Jack Sheppard was blamed for inciting working-class crime and vagrancy for decades after its 1839 publication. ... This Broadview edition includes the original George Cruikshank illustrations, as well as a rich selection of contemporary reviews of the novel and material on the historical Jack Sheppard, Victorian urban street culture, and the novel’s popular theatrical adaptations.
Conversion: Poems
2007
Remica Bingham-Risher

The first of three sections in this book concern real or imagined relatives and acquaintances and events such as a fish fry and a visit to a grandmother in a nursing home. The second part deals with such topics as the Civil Rights Movement, abused prisoners of war, and the black artist who painted Bill Clinton's portrait. Many of the poems in the final part are based on events in the Bible. This is the first book by this author and winner of the 2007 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.
The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany
2007
Michael C. Carhart

In the late 1770s, as a wave of revolution and republican unrest swept across Europe, scholars looked with urgency on the progress of European civilization. The question of social development was addressed from Edinburgh to St. Petersburg, with German scholars, including C. G. Heyne, Christoph Meiners, and J. G. Eichhorn, at the center of the discussion.

Michael Carhart examines their approaches to understanding human development by investigating the invention of a new analytic category, "culture." In an effort to define human nature and culture, scholars analyzed ancient texts for insights into language and the human mind in its early stages, together with writings from modern travelers, who provided data about various primitive societies. Some scholars began to doubt the existence of any essential human nature, arguing instead for human culture. If language was the vehicle of reason, what did it mean that all languages were different? Were rationality and virtue universal or unique to a given nation? [From Amazon.com]
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge: The Book of Mnemonic Devices
2007
Rod L. Evans

When is a "tulip"* not a flower? When it's one of hundreds of mnemonic devices in this comprehensive sourcebook. From remembering the notes on a scale (Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge) to correctly performing geometric equations (Soh-Cah-Toa) to using "HOMES" for conjuring up the Great Lakes (Huron Ontario Michigan Erie Superior), mnemonic devices have helped countless students, teachers, and trivia buffs recall key information in a snap-using anagrams, clever rhymes, and word games. … [Amazon.com]
Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled
2007
Dana Heller (Editor)

With the explosion of reality television onto screens and schedules worldwide, this timely and original book explores makeover tv, the ubiquitous reality format that has received little critical attention to date. Top writers and scholars take discussion of reality tv to the next level with lively examination of a wide range of contemporary makeover shows, such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, Faking It, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and The Apprentice, that ultimately speak to television's own enduring ability to reinvent itself. The book is organized around the overarching argument that contemporary makeover programming provides the paradigmatic example of reality television's far-reaching prominence and mass appeal, an appeal that lies in ""powers of transformation"" or televisual performance that tries not only to capture reality but to intervene in it, with the ultimate aim of remodelling reality. They examine how makeover programming annexes the private space of the home, transforms the body through surgery and rigorous discipline, recreates aspects of social identity and consumer lifestyle, and changes ordinary persons into celebrities and celebrities into ordinary persons. [From Amazon.com]
Yugoslav-Americans and National Security During World War II
2007
Lorraine M. Lees

Lorraine M. Lees explores the persistent tension between ethnicity and national security by focusing on the Yugoslav-American community during World War II. Identified by the Roosevelt administration as the most representative example of the ethnic conflict they sought to address, the Yugoslav-American community suffered from a severe political split, as right-wing monarchists loyal to Mihajlovi´c and the Chetniks battled left-wing supporters of Tito's partisans… [From Amazon.com]
What the Thunder Said
2007
Janet Peery

In the Dust Bowl of 1930s Oklahoma, a family comes apart, as sisters Mackie and Etta Spoon keep secrets from their father, and from each other. Etta, the dangerously impulsive favorite of her father, longs for adventure someplace far away from the bleak and near-barren plains, and she doesn’t care how she gets there; watchful Mackie keeps house and obeys the letter of her father’s law, while harboring her own dreams. After the massive 1935 Black Sunday dust storm brings ruin to the family, the sisters’ conflict threatens further damage. Seeking escape, and wagering their futures on an Indian boarding school runaway named Audie Kipp, the two leave home to forge their own separate paths, each setting off in search of a new life, each finding a fate different than she expected. Slow-gathering, powerful, with passages of haunting beauty, What the Thunder Said is the long-awaited third work of fiction by one of our most acclaimed storytellers. [Amazon.com]
Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s
2007
Robert Wojitowicz (Editor)

Although Lewis Mumford is widely acknowledged as the seminal American critic of architecture and urbanism in the twentieth century, he is less known for his art criticism. He began contributing to this field in the early 1920s, and his influence peaked between 1932 and 1937, when he was art critic for the New Yorker. This book, for the first time, assembles Mumford's important art criticism in a single volume. His columns bring wit and insight to bear on a range of artists, from establishment figures like Matisse and Brancusi to relatively new arrivals like Reginald Marsh and Georgia O'Keeffe. These articles provide an unusual window onto the New York art scene just as it was casting off provincialism in favor of a more international outlook. On a deeper level, the columns probe beneath the surface of modern art, revealing an alienation that Mumford believed symptomatic of a larger cultural disintegration… [From Amazon.com]
Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording
2006
Tim J. Anderson

The period between the Second World War and the mid-1960s saw the American music industry engaged in a fundamental transformation in how music was produced and experienced. Tim Anderson analyzes three sites of this music revolution: the change from a business centered around live performances to one based on selling records, the custom of simultaneously bringing out multiple versions of the same song, and the arrival of in-home high-fidelity stereo systems. Making Easy Listening presents a social and cultural history of the contentious, diverse, and experimental culture of musical production and enjoyment that aims to understand how recording technologies fit into and influence musicians’, as well as listeners’, lives. With attention to the details of what it means to play a particular record in a distinct cultural context, Anderson connects neglected genres of the musical canon—classical and easy listening music, Broadway musicals, and sound effects records—with the development of sound aesthetics and technical music practices that leave an indelible imprint on individuals. Tracing the countless impacts that this period of innovation exacted on the mass media, Anderson reveals how an examination of this historical era—and recorded music as an object—furthers a deeper understanding of the present-day American music industry. [Amazon.com]
From Surrealism to Less-Exquisite Cadavers: Léo Malet and the Evolution of the French Roman Noir
2006
Michelle Emanuel (Author) and Peter Schulman (Forward)

'Les nouveaux mystères de Paris' (1954-1959), Léo Malet's fifteen-novel detective series inspired by Eugène Sue's nineteenth-century 'feuilleton', almost achieved the goal of setting a mystery in each of the twenty Parisian arrondissements, with Nestor Burma at the center of the action. In Burma, the détective de choc first introduced in 1943 s 120 'rue de la gare', Malet, considered the father of the French 'roman noir', creates a cultural hybrid, bringing literary references and surrealist techniques to a criminal milieu. Michelle Emanuel s groundbreaking study is particularly insightful in its treatment of Malet as a pioneer within the literary genre of the French 'roman noir' while making sure to also focus on his surrealist roots. Against the archetypes of Simenon’s Maigret and Christie’s Poirot, Burma is brash and streetwise, peppering his speech with colorful and evocative slang. As the reader’s tour guide, Burma highlights Paris’s forgotten past while providing insight to the Paris of (his) present, referencing both popular culture and contemporary issue. [Amazon.com]
The Gilded Tongue: Overly Eloquent Words for Everyday Things
2006
Rod L. Evans

There are certain qualities that can set you apart from the crowd–like wearing the right clothing, jewelry, or shoes. But nothing draws attention or sets you apart like knowing and using a superior and aggrandizing vocabulary. You'll ascend to the uppermost ranks of literary intelligentsia once you acquire the grandiloquent terms in this lush volume. More than 500 entries help you replace common, everyday language with meretricious words guaranteed to make an indelible impression on your friends, co-workers, and family. With The Gilded Tongue, you'll never have to settle for plain, simple expression again. [Amazon.com]
Domestic Democracy: At Home in South Africa
2006
Jennifer N. Fish

Domestic Democracy chronicles the struggle to achieve labor rights for this largest sector of women workers during South Africa’s early transition from apartheid to democracy. Based on an extensive ethnography with the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union, this book shows how women’s activism assured that the building of democracy included the establishment of rights and protections for the women who worked in isolation in private households. Through the voices of domestic workers, parliamentarians, activists, and employers, this book captures the struggle to realize rights ‘at home,’ the larger tensions of social and political transition, and the wider potential for human rights to prevail through the collective organization of women. [From the publisher]
The Great American Makeover: Television, History, Nation
2006
Dana Heller (Editor)

The Great American Makeover is a collection of essays that explore the American makeover mythos that has been recently repackaged in the form of popular makeover television programs such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, Supernanny, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. [Amazon.com]
Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821-1960
2006
Robert H. Holden

Public violence, a persistent feature of Latin American life since the collapse of Iberian rule in the 1820s, has been especially prominent in Central America. Robert H. Holden shows how public violence shaped the states that have governed Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Linking public violence and patrimonial political cultures, he shows how the early states improvised their authority by bargaining with armed bands or montoneras. Improvisation continued into the twentieth century as the bands were gradually superseded by semi-autonomous national armies, and as new agents of public violence emerged in the form of armed insurgencies and death squads. World War II, Holden argues, set into motion the globalization of public violence. Its most dramatic manifestation in Central America was the surge in U.S. military and police collaboration with the governments of the region, beginning with the Lend-Lease program of the 1940s and continuing through the Cold War. Although the scope of public violence had already been established by the people of the Central American countries, globalization intensified the violence and inhibited attempts to shrink its scope. Drawing on archival research in all five countries as well as in the United States, Holden elaborates the connections among the national, regional, and international dimensions of public violence. Armies Without Nations crosses the borders of Central American, Latin American, and North American history, providing a model for the study of global history and politics. [Amazon.com]
Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages
2006
Erin L. Jordan

By examining a significant corpus of secular and monastic charters, this study provides a more complex understanding of the role of religious patronage in medieval society, specifically offering a glimpse of the experience of female rulers in a period when actions were often constrained and obscured by gender bias. [From the publisher]
Firefly Cloak: A Novel
2006
Sheri Reynolds

Firefly Cloak is the powerfully vivid coming-of-age story of Tessa Lee, who, after being abandoned by her mother, sets off on a risky journey to discover what she has lost. When eight-year-old Tessa Lee and her brother, Travis, are abandoned in a campground by their desperate mother and her boyfriend of the moment, they are left with only two things: a phone number written in Magic Marker on Travis’s back and their mother’s favorite housecoat, which she leaves wrapped around her sleeping children. This housecoat, painted with tiny fireflies, becomes totemic for Tessa Lee, providing a connection to her past and to the beautiful mother she lost. Seven years later, when word arrives that her mother has been spotted working at a tourist trap on a seaside boardwalk not far from where Tessa Lee lives, she sets off on a dangerous journey to try to recover what has been taken from her. [Amazon.com]