Thomas W. Hazlett

The Political Spectrum

(Yale University Press)

Tom Hazlett, former chief economist of the Federal Communications Commission, holds a magnifying glass to the oftentimes abrasive relationship between the radio spectrum and the U.S. government. In this comprehensive history, Hazlett seeks to prove that the government has held the radio spectrum back for political purposes in an ongoing conflict that has far-reaching ramifications.

Amalia Leifeste

Sustainable Heritage: Merging Environmental Conservation and Historic Preservation

(Routledge)

“Unification” is the key word in Amalia Leifeste and Barry L. Stiefel’s treatise on ecological conservation and heritage preservation. While exposing the many overlapping links between these two movements, Leifeste also reveals newfound connections across disciplines that will enable a brighter and more permanent future for environments both natural and artificial.

Leslie Hossfeld

Food and Poverty: Food Insecurity and Food Sovereignty among America’s Poor

(Vanderbilt University Press)

Leslie Hossfeld studies food insecurity — the measure of areas where hunger is most prevalent — and its steady presence in the United States. Food insecurity has persisted in recent years, and America’s poor are struggling to survive. Hossfeld addresses the origin of these issues in this socially and politically cognizant work.

Paul Dawson

Did You Just Eat That? Two Scientists Explore Double-Dipping, the Five-Second Rule, and other Food Myths in the Lab

(W.W. Norton & Co.)

Germs are everywhere, and food scientists Paul Dawson and Ben Sheldon aim to bust age-old microbe myths with some definitive answers of their own. Did You Just Eat That? is a humorous and cerebral look at the world of microbiology with enough illuminating explanations and replicable results to keep anyone interested.

D. Travers Scott

Pathology and Technology: Killer Apps and Sick Users

(Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers)

Users of technology have been consistently demonized in mass media with imaginative disease-based rhetoric. Travers Scott calls upon historical cases and skillful discourse analysis to tackle these “technopathologies” that supposedly plague mankind … and may inadvertently reveal what we value the most.

Mike Coggeshall

Liberia, South Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community

(University of North Carolina Press)

Mike Coggeshall’s candid anthropological work offers a detailed ethnographical history of the Owens family living in the Blue Ridge Foothills. Explore the past of this African-American community from when they first acquired their land after the Civil War, through the eras of Jim Crow and Reconstruction, to the present day.

Gary E. Machlis

The Future of Conservation in America: A Chart for Rough Water

(University of Chicago Press)

President Jimmy Carter has described this plan for American conservation as a “call for an enlightened vision of the future” — with good reason. Calling on both personal experience and research, Gary E. Machlis and co-author Jonathan B. Jarvis provide inspiration as they grapple with existential threats to the conservation effort. Foreword by Terry Tempest Williams.