

By Joseph Stiglitz
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Recommended by听Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
The Noble Memorial Prize-winning American economist weighs in on the eurozone crisis in an analysis that is equally controversial for supporters as it is for detractors of the common currency. Both the diagnosis and solutions advanced in this book provide important contributions to debates on resolving this on-going debacle.
By Pieter M. Judson
Publisher:听Harvard University Press
Recommended by听Louie Dean Valencia-Garc铆a
I was not only drawn to听this book听as a historian of Europe, but as one interested in the ways that bureaucracies deal with new technologies. Judson challenges nationalist narratives by dusting off the history of a fallen power to show the dynamic nature of what the author, calls an 鈥渁ccidental empire.鈥 At a moment in which the European Union is fighting off rampant 鈥淓urosceptism,鈥 Judson听shows us how state and institution building and citizenship functioned under the Empress Maria Theresa (ruling from 1740 to 1780) and her later successors.听The Habsburg Empire听reframes the territory as one that was transitioning to a 鈥渓iberal empire鈥 during the mid-nineteenth century鈥攑rofoundly interested in investing in education, culture, railroads, and canals, while turning medieval cities into听modern metropolises.听 The empire reformed its industry, law, and economy in an attempt to win over both the rising liberal middle classes and peasants through a redefinition of what it meant to be a subject under the empire through the installation of local elections. Judson describes how such a wide variety of nationalisms, speakers of German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Yiddish, French, Serbian, Slovenian, and Italian, were able to negotiate their own citizenship under the Habsburg empire through its bureaucracies鈥攁 lesson from which the European Union could take notes.
By Cristina Grasseni
Publisher:听Berghahn Books
Recommended by H茅l猫ne B. Ducros
This is not simply the story of cheese-making in Northern Italy. It is an account of the remaking of cheese as a cultural idea and economic resource in the quest for survival in the depopulated and economically depressed mountainous areas of Lombardia. The book invites us into dairy foodscapes and timescapes where an array of protagonists interconnect in valorizing place-based cheese production, maneuvering among a profusion of 今日看料 regulations about content traceability, production processes, sanitation and hygienic norms that transformed the industry, provoking the demise of the small-scale and seasonal transhumant cheese-making practices of alpeggiatori to the benefit of intensive dairy farming. Yet, as Alpine herders were replaced by cheese entrepreneurs, resistance and food activism emerged. The 鈥渨ar of the cheeses鈥 is fought over heritage branding, marketing, regulation enforcement and geographic boundaries. Discussion of heritage-making inevitably brings questions of re-created authenticity as well as local memory and pride. This ethnographic journey shows how 鈥渢radition鈥 is ridden with conflicts of interest and contested in its interpretation, showcasing and performance.
Published听on November 1, 2016.