Well, we've reached the final day of New Books week, and capping things off is a bit of a potpourri. We have titles in Art and Architecture, Literature and Culture, and Urban Studies.
Can't get enough new books? Take heart! The new titles haven't stopped coming out while we've been looking back to the new year, so be on the lookout for all of April's new releases in the coming weeks.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Fashion, Circus, Spectacle: Photographs by Scott Heiser
Heather Campbell Coyle, Editor
Fashion, Circus, Spectacle is the first book-length study dedicated to the brilliant photographer Scott Heiser, whose interests and talent placed him at the exciting confluence of art, fashion, and celebrity in downtown New York at the end of the twentieth century.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
136 pages | 11 x 10 | 20 color, 81 b/w illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-9771644-9-3 | $47.50s | £31.00
NOW IN PAPERBACK:
Do Museums Still Need Objects?
Steven Conn
"Conn's well-written essays centralize objects as the defining feature of museums as they shifted (albeit incompletely) from being places of public instruction to being places of private consumption, from taxonomic exhibits to narrative ones, influenced by the development of the academic disciplines of science, anthropology, and art history. . . . An interesting and significant contribution to the literatures of museum studies and public history." —American Historical Review
"Steven Conn provides an eclectic, provocative, and extremely readable tour of the history of museums in the twentieth-century United States. . . . The easy erudition and wit of Do Museums Still Need Objects? Will appeal to lay readers and museum practitioners, and its hardheaded historical approach and bold opinions will raise debate among scholars in the field of museum studies and cultural history." —Journal of American History
"Steven Conn offers a refreshing look at museums and many of the debates surrounding their development and practices over the past forty years. He is right to frame his inquiry by asking if museums still need objects. Too often these debates have ignored the very characteristic that defines museums and distinguishes them from all other cultural institutions: they collect, preserve, and present things. This is an important, timely book." —James Cuno, President and Director, Art Institute of Chicago
"In this provocative and engaging book, Steven Conn considers the continuing role museums play in contemporary American society. Despite recent shifts in their priorities, Conn argues that museums and their collections possess tremendous potential as sites of learning and places where civic identity is shaped and sustained. Do Museums Still Need Objects? is a must-read for anyone thinking about the social and cultural significance of museums at the beginning of the twenty-first century." —Raymond Silverman, University of Michigan
In this broadly conceived study Steven Conn examines the development of American museums across the twentieth century with a historian's attention and a critic's eye. He focuses on an array of museum types and asks illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life.
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272 pages | 6 x 9 | 34 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4190-7 | $55.00s | £36.00
Paperback | ISBN 978-0-8122-2155-8 | $24.95s | £16.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0165-9 | $24.95s | £16.50
A volume in the Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Goethe's Allegories of Identity
Jane K. Brown
"A marvel of a book. Rich and forcefully argued, Goethe's Allegories of Identity gives us a remarkably illuminating view of Goethe's oeuvre that is drawn in clear, sharp lines." —David E. Wellbery, University of Chicago
Goethe's Allegories of Identity shows how Goethe's literary works, as the essential middle steps between Rousseau and Freud, lay the basis for modern depth psychology. Its illuminating scholarly yet accessible readings of five major works may also serve as an introduction to readers coming to Goethe for the first time.
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240 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4582-0 | $59.95s | £39.00
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0938-9 | $59.95s | £39.00
A volume in the Haney Foundation Series
URBAN STUDIES
Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California
Emily E. Straus
"Compton is a remarkable American story. A suburb that started white and modest, it convulsed its way toward racial diversity and now represents a new norm of American suburban life–fiscally strained, majority minority, struggling for survival. In this extraordinary journey through Compton's history, Emily E. Straus interweaves the structural and the local, showing how Compton and its schools fell victim to a vicious cycle of debt and despair. Anyone who cares about why our public schools are faltering should pay attention to this story." —Becky Nicolaides, University of California, Los Angeles
"Death of a Suburban Dream is a unique contribution to our understanding of the interplay of place and education with community and politics in the United States. Straus embeds the history of Compton schools and of educational reform firmly within a spatial analysis of suburban Los Angeles. She shows how past decisions, not only about schools but also about what kind of community Compton residents wanted, now limit the possibilities of reform by residents, politicians, and educators as they confront a dysfunctional system. The book will be of interest not only to metropolitan historians and historians of education, but to anyone interested in civil rights and the history of African Americans and Latinos in the American West." —Eric Schneider, author of Smack: Heroin and the American City
"Death of a Suburban Dream explains how Compton transformed from a blue-collar suburb into an emblem of African American poverty and violence. With meticulous research and engaging prose, Emily E. Straus offers a sweeping account of this singular suburb's rise and fall, as well as the educational system that contributed to both." —John Rury, University of Kansas
This sophisticated history of Compton shows how increasing poverty, violence, and public education controversies made an inner-ring suburb resemble a troubled urban center over the course of the twentieth century and into the present.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
328 pages | 6 x 9 | 17 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4598-1 | $55.00s | £36.00
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0958-7 | $55.00s | £36.00
A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series
