New Books in World Affairs

Clifford Bob is the author of the new book The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge University Press 2012). Bob is an associate professor of political science at Duquesne University. This new book draws on the rich literature on the politics of public policy making, but adapts them to the international arena. Bob argues that too little focus has been placed on right wing groups and their causes in favor of progressive movements. Part international relations, part comparative politics the book traces the competing policy networks in several countries in the areas of gay rights and gun rights. The book is provocative, readable, and a real contribution to a variety of subfields of political science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Minkah Makalani is the author of a new intellectual history on the efforts of early twentieth century black radicals to organize an international movement, one that would address both racial and class oppression around the globe. The book is called In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2011). As the title suggests, the focus of the study is on two black radical groups: One in Harlem, the African Blood Brotherhood; and the other in London, the International African Service Bureau. The book examines among other things, “how they communicated across continents.” This is important not only because it illustrates that race was a concern outside of the U.S., but to show just how intricately race and class are linked; so much so that the two cannot be separated. This new study explores provocative questions, and also definitively adds to ongoing debates regarding: * African Americans and communism * Tensions about which is more important, race or class? * Definitions of black radicalism * International black figures of the Harlem Renaissance * The relationship among artists, the arts and politics during the Harlem Renaissance * How the Communist Party perceived race in relation to class oppression These and other insightful topics are addressed at length in this wonderful history. But you can find an appetizing introduction to them in this lively interview. Please, listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The 2012 London Olympics are here.  To mark the event, New Books in Sports offers another of its occasional seminar episodes.  And as with any great seminar, you’ll be eager to tell people what you’ve learned.  Our slate of Olympic experts don’t offer any medal predictions.  But you will find out about Coca-Cola’s first Olympic promotion.  You’ll learn how traditional Chinese medicine can cure the snarled hamstring of a hurdler.  And you’ll discover the truth about Kerri Strug’s gold medal-winning vault in 1996. The double-length episode features a full roster of scholars and journalists.  Historians Martin Polley and Jean Williams tell us about Britain’s long connection with the Olympics, while Barbara Keys explains why the Thirties were a pivotal decade in the history of international athletics.  We hear from Mark Dyreson and Andrew Billings about Americans’ nationalist view of the Olympics, both with the early games and today.  Steve Menary talks about nationalism within the UK and how that has stoked controversy over the British men’s football team that will compete in the London games.  We learn about the gains and losses that come with hosting an Olympics from economist Victor Matheson.  Looking back four years after the Beijing games, anthropologist Susan Brownell tells us about sport in China.  And Sports Illustrated photographer Bill Frakes talks about his experiences covering the games over the last three decades.  You’ll hear Bill describe the moment that most stands out for him in career of covering the games, and our other guests will likewise share the reasons they enjoy the Olympics as fans as well as researchers.  And if you’re looking for the right book on the Olympics, for that last summer weekend, they’ll have plenty of suggestions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch, at Munich’s Olympic Stadium, in the final match of the Women’s Champions League. In a pairing of the defending champion, Olympique Lyon, and the club that has won the most titles in the tournament’s 11-year history, FFC Frankfurt, the French side took the cup with a 2-0 victory. The game drew just over 50,000 spectators, by far the most people ever to attend a Women’s Champions League final. UEFA officials and organizers in Munich had worked deliberately to ensure a record-breaking turnout. Match time was moved to the early evening, and special family-priced tickets were available to ensure that mothers could attend with their children. Men’s clubs in the Bundesliga have adopted similar family pricing along with other measures aimed at bringing women to the grounds. As a result, matches in the German first division draw a higher percentage of female spectators than any other European league. Add to that the large number of girls and women who play football in Germany, along with the seven European championships and three Olympic bronze medals, and the country presents an impressive picture of female involvement with the sport. This is striking, as it was only in 1970 that the German Football Association lifted its ban on women playing. Women’s soccer in the United States has had a similarly remarkable rise in the last four decades. Women weren’t banned from the game. They simply didn’t play. But with the expansion of athletics for women and girls in the Title IX era, soccer has boomed.The U.S. has become the center of the women’s soccer world, with players coming from other countries to play for American university teams and American players going overseas to play, coach, and act as advocates for girls’ sports. Tim Grainey tells the story of these women, as well as players and coaches in other world regions, in his book Beyond Bend It Like Beckham: The Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). As a longtime journalist and organizer, Tim draws upon decades of experience in the sport.The story he tells is encouraging, showing how the profile of women’s soccer has grown. However, girls and women still face resistance to their desire to play. FIFA President Sepp Blatter has said that the future of soccer is feminine. Tim’s book shows that the statement is not simply the empty phrase of a sportocrat. At the same time, though, its fulfillment is not assured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Jessica Teisch‘s new book Engineering Nature: Water Development and the Global Spread of American Environmental Expertise (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) examines the ways that Californian engineers attempted to reshape their world in the late 19th century. Engineered irrigation appealed to both private individuals and the state as a way of mediating California’s competing interests, creating prosperity and fulfilling an American agrarian ideal. Ideas about irrigation, settlement and development circulated the world and Teisch shows how California’s experts circulated to Australia, South Africa and Palestine, frequently returning with new knowledge then applied to California. Despite their aspirations, few of California’s engineers were as successful as they wished but they had a lot to contend with. Teisch’s engineers inserted themselves into the tumultuous social transformations of the turn of the twentieth century, attempting to shape capitalism, all levels of government and even the developing nation state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

There are a lot of balls in my house. Baseballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, footballs, basketballs, volleyballs. We have Wiffle balls, Nerf balls, and Super Balls. My children and I occasionally use the balls for their intended purposes. We play catch in the yard, or shoot baskets in the driveway. There is also a good amount of innovation in how balls are used. My older son smacks tennis balls across the street with his baseball bat, while my younger son dribbles a soccer ball while jumping on a trampoline in the backyard. And during the winter months, they argue over who gets possession of a worn rubber football. Whoever is the holder at any particular time tosses it to himself, squeezes it, kneads it, and runs down the hallway with it tucked under his arm, imagining himself weaving through defenses in the NFL. They never actually play football with it. Instead, it serves as something of a comfort object. In his wide-ranging book The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game (HarperCollins, 2012), John Fox offers an explanation for the varied use of balls in my house. A trained anthropologist and journalist who has written for Smithsonian and Outside, John describes the ball as a nearly universal feature of human culture. Ball games are deeply rooted in our instinct for play, something that we share with other mammals (my dog also has a collection of balls). But ball games also have uniquely human elements. John speculates that the throwing of balls is part of our evolutionary make-up, an inheritance from the Paleolithic hunters who figured out that it’s easier to whack an animal on the head with a well-thrown rock than chase it down on foot. And as we discuss in the interview, ball games throughout history have been wrapped in ritual and seen as being in some way pleasing to the gods. We see this element of the sacred even today in our ball games.  Think of how baseball fans extol the transcendent splendor of their game, or how soccer fans anticipate the World Cup as a quadrennial festival of global harmony. For anyone who enjoys the crack, swoosh, or bounce of a ball, John’s book is a pleasure. He presents a history of ball games around the world, as well as colorful accounts of traditional games that survive to today. We learn how balls of different sizes and shapes have been made through the centuries, and we meet players of all ages who see the ball as much more than a simple plaything. As regular listeners of the podcast know, we often raise the question: Why do we watch sports? John Fox’s book offers the possibility that maybe there is something deeper than aesthetic appreciation or team loyalty to our interest in sports, something found in an instinctual attraction to these objects that we kick, throw, and swat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It is not uncommon for many Americans to believe that morality and order comes from God and religion. A society without these elements would consequently be immoral and chaotic. When Phil Zuckerman traveled to Scandinavia, however, where he would spend the next fourteen months, he found a stable and content nonbelieving population, who often have high scores on the “happiness index”, low crime and corruption rates, and efficient educational systems. His book Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment (New York University Press, 2010)summarizes his qualitative research – mainly in the form of interviews – on the people of Scandinavia, and on their relationship to religion and society. He found that many people he interviewed for example, consider themselves Christian in a cultural historic sense, but do not at all believe in the notion of God – a position that would baffle many Americans. In addition, though many reject the notion of God, atheists in Scandinavia seem to be marked by indifference to religion overall – an indifference that would be unheard of in America, where religion is still significantly powerful enough to have protesters. In this fascinating book, Zuckerman explores possible historical and cultural reasons why Scandinavia came to be the irreligious niche that it is today, and why it so differs from other countries who seem to be becoming more and more religious. Most of all,  he uses his research to dispel the belief that a society needs to believe in God to thrive and prosper. The secular nonbelievers in Scandinavia, it seems, are doing just fine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It is not every historian who would offer readers an attempt to explain human nature. In A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Marshall Poe does just that. At the same time, Poe guides readers through the history of communications media from the origin of speech through the culture of the Internet, and provides us with a carefully-articulated theoretical framework for explaining why successive media arose when and where they did, and how they have shaped the way people understand and organize themselves. The book is structured with extraordinary care, but doesn’t let that structure overwhelm the vibrant collection of examples, tales, and (occasionally quite funny) anecdotes along the way. Poe’s writerly voice is wonderfully engaging and colloquial, and he has given us a volume that is full of opportunities for critical reflection on the possibilities of interdisciplinary scholarship across the arts and sciences. Give the interview a listen. In addition to being an account of an ambitious project with potentially wide-ranging implications for many fields, it’s also a rare opportunity to hear the interviewer interviewed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

It’s the English Premier League’s birthday! On this day twenty years ago, all twenty-two clubs of the First Division resigned from the 104-year-old Football League and declared their plans to create a new, breakaway league.A lucrative television deal with Sky Sports followed soon after, bringing plenty of seed money to the new league.At the time, however, English football was not a certain investment.Attendance had been declining for decades, and in the EPL’s first season stadiums were filled to less than 70 per cent of capacity. In terms of revenue and star players, the top European leagues were in Spain and Italy.In fact, the EPL couldn’t even boast the biggest money-making club in Britain.That team was Rangers, playing in the Scottish league. What a difference two decades make.The EPL today is the biggest revenue-generating league in Europe, and its top clubs are among the valuable sports properties in the world.The league draws international investors, and its matches are televised in more than 200 countries.In a recent interview, EPL chief Richard Scudamore remarked on the league’s worldwide popularity.The parity in American professional sports was enviable, Scudamore admitted, but “theirs is an incestuous, contained, domestic world. . . . I wouldn’t swap our global appeal.” But as sociologist Peter Millward points out, the Premier League’s global success has had its discontents.In his book The Global Football League (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Pete looks at supporters of the league’s most successful clubs, Manchester United and Liverpool, examining how they responded to the arrival of new, affluent fans and new, American owners.For many of these fans, the on-field results that this money brought was not worth the loss, as they saw it, of the clubs’ traditions.In looking at these supporters and their protests, Pete’s book deals with questions that go well beyond English football.This is a study of how sports fans find meaning and identity–and how the yearning for local connections can outweigh success and riches in the global market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Today, you can open your newspaper and find stories about mass rape in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, death sentences for adulterous women in Iran, or Central American women smuggled into the US for the purposes of sexual slavery. A few decades ago, such matters wouldn’t have ranked as “news”: they were just business as usual. As Pulitzer-prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sharon WuDunn put it in their book, Half the Sky, “When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn’t even consider it news.” How to account for the sea change in awareness? A good place to start is by looking at the global movement for women’s human rights. That’s what Niamh Reilly does in her new book, Women’s Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalizing Age (Polity Press, 2009). It’s a great introduction to the subject, and it’s full of smart analysis for people who are already familiar with the movement. If you want a guide through the alphabet soup of UN treaties, international conferences, and NGOs relating to women, this is a good place to look. But more importantly, it’s also a succinct overview of the big issues: violence against women, reproductive health, armed conflict, development, and the impact of religious fundamentalisms. One of my students told me that this book had become her standard quick reference on women and human rights, and I can understand why. Niamh Reilly is Senior Lecturer in Women’s Studies at the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland in Galway, and she’s written an enormously useful book. I recommend it highly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs