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ART AND DESIGN

Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro.

By Robert Kirkbride, director of studio 'patafisico and associate professor, Parsons The New School for Design. Columbia University Press, £42.95. ISBN 9780231142489

Drawing on the densely layered imagery in the studioli and text sources available to the Urbino court, Kirkbride examines the position of the studioli in the Western tradition of the memory arts, considering how architecture bridged the mathematical arts and the art of rhetoric.

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Theory of the Firm for Strategic Management

By Manuel Becerra, professor and Accenture chair in strategic management, IE Business School, Madrid. Cambridge University Press, £65.00 and £25.99. ISBN 9780521863346 and 1681940

Becerra integrates and expands existing theories to develop a value-based theory of the firm, providing a framework to show how firms can create value for customers and capture economic profits for their owners through business, corporate, international and social strategies.

Global Unions, Global Business: Global Union Federations and International Business

By Richard Croucher, associate dean of research, Middlesex University Business School, and Elizabeth Cotton, lecturer in international development, Middlesex University Business School. Middlesex University Press, £19.95. ISBN 9781904750628

Croucher and Cotton outline the way that trade unions at the international level relate to multinational companies using detailed and up-to-date illustrations of their activities. The text includes an in-depth case study of dealings with a major multinational.

ECONOMICS

The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy

Edited by Kenneth A. Reinert, professor of public policy, George Mason University, and Ramkishen S. Rajan, associate professor of public policy, George Mason University. Princeton University Press, £150.00. ISBN 9780691128122

From trade agreements and offshore outsourcing to foreign aid, this two-volume encyclopaedia explains the key elements of the world economy and provides a first step to further research for students and scholars as well as for economic-policy professionals.

Rational Decisions

By Ken Binmore, emeritus professor of economics, University College London, visiting emeritus professor of economics, University of Bristol and visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics. Princeton University Press, £23.95. ISBN 9780691130743

Using a minimum of mathematics, this book explains clearly the foundations of Bayesian decision theory and shows why its inventor restricted the theory's application to small worlds.

Indifference Pricing: Theory and Applications

By Rene Carmona, Paul Wythes '55 professor of engineering and finance, Princeton University. Princeton University Press, £44.95. ISBN 9780691138831

This is the first book about the emerging field of utility indifference pricing for valuing derivatives in incomplete markets, featuring original mathematical results, an extensive bibliography and indexes.

FILM STUDIES

Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era

Edited by Noah Isenberg, associate professor of literary studies, The New School for Liberal Arts. Columbia University Press, £56.95 and £19.95. ISBN 9780231130547 and 0554

This anthology trains a keen eye on Weimar cinema's richness and formal innovation to provide a guide to its revolutionary styles, genres and aesthetics that still fascinate.

Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood

By Jennifer Langdon, associate director of the Humanities Institute, University of California, Davis. Columbia University Press, £42.95. ISBN 9780231142502

Langdon reconstructs the production and reception of Scott's major films, exploring the political and creative challenges faced by Hollywood radicals in the studio system and reassessing the relationship among film noir, antifascism, anticommunism and the politics of Americanism.

HISTORY

The Cambridge History of Latin America

Edited by Leslie Bethell, fellow in history, St Antony's College, Oxford. Cambridge University Press, £1,450.00. ISBN 9780521515962

This 12-volume set is the first large-scale authoritative survey of Latin American history from 1500 to the present day. Written by a collaboration of international scholars, it aims to provide a high-level synthesis of existing knowledge in chapters written by leading scholars.

Advocating the Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Household in New York, 1800-1840

By Joshua R. Greenberg, professor of history, Bridgewater State College. Columbia University Press, £42.95. ISBN 9780231135429

In his exploration of the relationship between masculinity and the young labour movement in the Jacksonian era, Greenberg examines diverse sources, such as plays, debates about birth control and comic valentines. He argues that domestic issues and concerns guided workplace and political reactions to the new industrial economy.

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

By Maria Rentetzi, assistant professor in the sociology of science, National Technical University of Athens. Columbia University Press, £42.95. ISBN 9780231135580

This study of women working as independent researchers in Vienna uses documentary research, material culture and built- environment analysis, and oral histories to examine the culture of women in the rare position of radioactivity researchers during the early 20th century.

Ethnic Americans: Immigration and American Society

By Leonard Dinnerstein, professor of history, University of Arizona, and David M. Reimers, professor emeritus of history, New York University. Columbia University Press, £56.95 and £18.95. ISBN 9780231143363 and 3370

Taking the past 15 years into account, the fifth edition of this book considers recent influxes to the US of Asians and Hispanics, especially the surge in the Mexican population, and includes expanded coverage of nativist sentiment in American politics and thought.

FDR's World: War, Peace and Legacies

By David Woolner, associate professor of history, Marist College, Warren Kimball, Robert Treat professor emeritus of history, Rutgers University, and David Reynolds, professor of international history, Christ's College, Cambridge. Palgrave Macmillan, £45.00. ISBN 9780230609389

This volume looks at different aspects of the foreign policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to assess his role as war leader from the vantage point of the 21st century.

LITERATURE

Hungarian Illusionism

By Andras Ger, professor of history and chairman of the Department of History, Budapest University. Columbia University Press, £28.95. ISBN 9780880336291

Ger examines how illusionism was used by Hungarian nationalists and communists and examines its impact on Hungarian literature, politics and culture, finding that illusionism has roots in both realism and utopianism.

The Body and the Arts

Edited by Corinne Saunders, professor of English literature, Durham University, Ulrika Maude, lecturer in English literature, Durham University, and Jane Macnaughton, senior lecturer in medical education, Durham University. Palgrave Macmillan, £50.00. ISBN 9780230552043

The contributors to this book focus on the dynamic relation between the body and the arts: the body as inspiration, subject, symbol and medium across a range of periods, literatures and other art forms.

Trauma, Postmodernism and the Aftermath of World War II

By Paul Crosthwaite, lecturer in English, Durham University. Palgrave Macmillan, £45.00. ISBN 9780230202955

Crosthwaite stages a revealing confrontation between influential theories of trauma and postmodernism and offers close readings of key texts by Virginia Woolf, Thomas Pynchon, Michael Moorcock, J.G. Ballard, Richard Powers and Ian McEwan.

Philosophy and theology

Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's Meditations

By John Carriero, professor of philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles. Princeton University Press, £50.00 and £15.95. ISBN 9780691135601 and 55618

This book is a commentary on, and reinterpretation of, the founding work of modern philosophy, Descartes' Meditations. Carriero reveals anew the unity, meaning and originality of Descartes' text.

Politics

Election Campaigning Japanese Style

By Gerald L. Curtis, Burgess professor of political science, Columbia University. Columbia University Press, £21.95. ISBN 9780231147453

Curtis provides a case study of Sato Bunsei, who in 1967 ran for the Lower House of Japan's Parliament as a non-incumbent candidate of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The book features an introduction in which the author reflects on the changes in Japan's election process since its publication.

Psychology and psychiatry

Chaos and Complexity in Psychology: The Theory of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Edited by Stephen J. Guastello, professor of psychology, Marquette University, and David Pincus, assistant professor of psychology, Chapman University. Cambridge University Press, £65.00. ISBN 9780521887267

The contributors to this volume devote attention to methods used to produce substantive results without mathematical skill and offer clearly defined vocabulary of the terminology of nonlinear dynamical systems and examples of how they can be used.