Spring Books from Duke Authors from Wittgenstein to Capoeira

book covers for Gas Mask Nation, Churchill in Punch, Dark Testament, Becoming Human, The Battle for your Brain, The Lives We Actually Have, Capoeira, and Image of the Invisible God

Celebrate the renewal of spring with a book from a Duke author. This season of new and upcoming books that cover a variety of times, places and subjects from the arts to computer science. The writings include studies of body shaming in the theater, civil defense in Japan, intellectual conformity in higher education and a cautionary look at the future of brain hacking.

Many of the books, including new editions of previous titles, can be found on the “Duke Authors” display shelves near the circulation desk in Perkins Library. Some are available as e-books for quick download. Most can also be purchased through the Gothic Bookshop.

[If you are a member of the Duke faculty or staff who will be publishing a book of interest to a general audience, send us a message at dukenews@duke.edu along with your publisher's brief description.]

Anne Allison: Being Dead Otherwise (Duke University Press) March 2023

Allison, a professor of cultural anthropology, examines the emergence of new death practices in Japan as the old customs of mortuary care are coming undone as the population ages and more Japanese are living and dying alone.

Sarah Beckwith and Toril Moi:  Wittgenstein and Literary Studies (Cambridge University Press) March 2023

The book contains chapters written by Beckwith, an English professor and Moi, professor of literature and romance studies and professor of English, philosophy and theater studies. The book examines the work of one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century covering a wide range of topics.

Adrian Bejan: Constructal Law Trilogy in Japanese

A trilogy of books by the distinguished professor of mechanical engineering – Design in Nature, Physics of Life; and Freedom and Evolution – are now available in Japanese. His books focus on constructal law, which he named in 1996 and which states that any system tries to maximize flow, meaning the transportation of important things, such as water, from one place to another.

Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie: The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (Convergent), February 2023

Bowler, Divinity School associate professor of American religious history, is co-author of a book of warm and witty faith-based blessings that focus on the full range of human moments from garbage days, to grief-stricken days, and even especially completely ordinary days.

Anthony A. Braga and Philip J. Cook: Policing Gun Violence: Strategic Reforms for Controlling Our Most Pressing Crime Problem (Oxford University Press), January 2023

Cook, a retired professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy and expert on gun policy, makes the case that social justice is not an alternative to the pursuit of public safety. The book serves as a guide to how the police can better use their considerable resources to make cities safer.

Nicolette Cagle: Saving Snakes (University of Virginia Press), January 2023

Cagle, a senior lecturer in the Nicholas School of the Environment, has traveled the world in search of snakes. Her book offers a firsthand account of snakes' strange and secretive lives, revealing their devastating losses. It also is the story of one woman's pursuit of her passion as she searches for, studies, and advocates for these enigmatic creatures.

book covers: Dark Testament, Churchill in Punch, Capoeira Connections, The Battle for Your Brain and Becoming Human: the Holy spirit and the Rhetoric of Race

Peter Casarella: Chipul dumnezeului nevāzut (“Image of the Invisible God”) (Galaxia Gutenberg) 2023.

A professor of theology at Duke Divinity, Casarella has collected essays on God and God’s beauty as encountered by Catholics around the globe through the icons of everyday life as well as in liturgy and ritual. He conceives of the “icon” not as a painting that represents a particular known thing but as a window to an unseen reality whose presence in one’s interiority as well as in one’s hunger for social justice can be transformative.

Ryan Donovan: Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford University Press), February 2023

An assistant professor of theater studies, Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance, and he answers questions about whose bodies does Broadway cast and whose does it cast aside?

Nita A. Farahany: The Battle for Your Brain (Macmillan Publishers) March 2023

Farahany, the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, suggests a new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared? The book offers a path forward to navigate the complex legal and ethical dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.

Polly Ha: Remapping British Protestant Thought in the Long Reformation, Special Issue Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies  (Duke University Press) January 2023

Ha, associate professor of the history of Christianity, is the editor of the journal’s special issue and contributed two articles: Reorienting English Protestantism and Who Owns the Hebrew Doctors? Oriental Scholarship, Historical Proportionality, and the Puritan “Invention” of Avant-Garde Conformity.

Rob Mitchell: The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press) January 2023

Mitchell, a professor of English, co-wrote this book, which suggests that "smartness" is not just about technology, but rather a theory of knowledge. Through this lens, he offers a critical exploration of the practices, technologies and subjects that such an understanding relies upon artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Jennifer Nash: The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities (Routledge) February 2023

The professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies co-edited this reference source to the key contemporary analytic in feminist thought.

Jian Pei: Data Mining Concepts and Techniques (Elsevier) 2022

Pei, a research professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-wrote the book that delves into the processes for uncovering patterns and knowledge from massive collections of data. It focuses on the feasibility, usefulness, effectiveness and scalability of data mining techniques for large data sets.

book coveres: Science in an age of unreason; Wittgenstein and Literary Studies: Gobernanza ambiental, Gas Mask Nation, and Data Mining, Concepts and Techniques

Luke Powery: Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race (Westminster John Knox Press) 2022

In his new book, the dean of Duke Chapel and associate professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School urges the church to live up to the inclusive story of Pentecost in its life of worship and ministry.

Crystal Simone Smith: Dark Testament (Henry Holt & Company) January 2023

Written in response to the murder of George Floyd, Smith, an instructor of Thompson Writing Program presents a collection of poems that give voice to the mournful dead, their lives unjustly lost to violence, and to the grieving chorus of protestors in today’s Black Lives Matter movement. The book includes an introduction by the author, a Q&A with author George Saunders, and a full-color photo-insert that commemorates victims of unlawful killings with photographs of memorials that have been created in their honor.

John Staddon: Science in an Age of Unreason (Regnery Gateway), 2022

A professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience, Staddon tells readers that science is undergoing an identity crisis. There are real questions surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to ‘health and safety’ that are swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. He also provides a path to recovery.

Gary L. Stiles: Churchill in Punch (Unicorn Publishing Group), 2022

Stiles, a retired Ursula Geller Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Research and chief medical officer of Duke Health System, catalogues the more than 600 cartoons published in Punch featuring Winston Churchill and provides context of the events and people being satirized and places them in historical perspective.

Erika Weinthal: Gobernanza ambiental para la paz en Colombia/Environmental Governance for Peace in Colombia (Universidad Externado de Columbia Departamento de Publications)

Weinthal, professor of environmental policy and public policy, co-edited the book, which examines the application of the peace accords in Colombia from the viewpoint of building environmental peace, addressing deforestation in the Amazon region, the role of illicit crops, mining, and indigenous and community rights. nature, as well as the tools of policy, legislation and governance.

Gennifer Weisenfeld: Gas Mask Nation (University of Chicago Press) March 2023

Weisenfeld, a professor in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, explores the multilayered construction of Japanese civil air defense—or bōkū—through a diverse range of artworks, photographs, films and newsreels, magazine illustrations, postcards, cartoons, advertising, fashion, everyday goods, government posters, and state propaganda.

Katya Wesolowski: Capoeira Connections: A Memoir in Motion (University of Florida Press) January 2023

Wesolowski, a lecturing fellow of cultural anthropology, explores this Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality and the ways in which it choreographs relationships across differences of race, class, gender, nation and more.

David B. Wong: Moral Relativism and Pluralism (Cambridge Elements), January 2023

The philosophy professor explores meta-ethical relativism, which holds that moral judgments are not true or false in any absolute sense, with a specific focus on female genital cutting and abortion.