Books published by Lexington Books

Opération Crevette is a meticulously researched account of the political instability leading to private mercenary action in Benin during the mid-twentieth century. This book brings together the voices of the involved mercenaries, political rulers, and local witnesses to reveal a struggle for power in the former French colony.

Automated Journalism at the Intersection of Politics and Black Culture: The Battle Against Digital Hegemony explores the unintentional inequities that erupt when AI assistance meets news media. Colin Campbell argues that while AI newswriting can streamline news production, it can also exacerbate racist discrimination and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Combining empirical research and personal experience, Campbell urgently argues for the necessity of ensuring that AI-produced media is mindful of Black, Brown, and minority experiences-as well as traditional journalistic concerns such as bias and accuracy. Media scholars will find this book especially salient.

The Women Who Made Early Disneyland tells the story of the many women who designed, built, and operated early Disneyland from their various positions and departments and highlights how their work contributed to Disneyland's early success.

This book provides a thorough overview of two decades of election law cases and sheds light on the impact these decisions have had on remaking Americäs electoral institutions.

Fictions of Proximity explores the nexus of writers around David Foster Wallace who shaped a trend in literature the study calls the 'post-positivist novel.' It provides new readings of these writers, both of their canonical and lesser-known works, and situates them with respect to prominent figures in contemporary post-positivist philosophy.

Right to Development and Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Dynamics, Perspectives, and Prospects discusses illicit financial flows and the right to development in Africa. The contributors examine recent examples of illicit financial flows and the impact that these have had on the African continent.

The chapters in this collection examine the impact of Soviet-era folklore studies and ethnology on past and present Europe and the world.

This book unveils the vibrant and thriving world of Peruvian metal. It brings together a collection of Peruvian scholars, providing a long-overdue spotlight on a musical realm often overlooked in the international conversation.

Reconstructing Resilient Communities after the Wenchuan Earthquake: Disaster Recovery in China looks at the changes in Chinese society following the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan from various perspectives ranging from reconstruction policy, mental care for disaster victims, tourism in disaster areas, ethnic minorities, and disaster prevention education. The Wenchuan Earthquake, which occurred three months prior to the Beijing Olympics, attracted worldwide attention in May of 2008. Following this natural disaster, the government in China conducted a delicate bargaining between government top-drown control and openness to its people and the international society in its effort to steer the reconstruction. This book examines the globalization of modern society through examination of these events and considers what we have learned from this disaster, subsequent reconstruction, and issues that may arise in the future.

This book explores the influence of Hellenistic culture in the Gospel of Mark with a focus upon Jesus¿ twin disciples James and John. Jesus gives them the name Boanerges, ¿Sons of Zeus¿ referring to the Dioscuri, mythological figures known for their saving action in times of danger and distress.

This is the first book that combines intermedial studies with ecocriticism in order to critically reflect upon the risks and possibilities of representing the climate crisis in several different media and art forms.

The book presents a long-term ethnographic study of arguably the largest environmental protest action in Australian history. Carsten Wergin offers a timely discussion of the sociocultural and political relevance of heritage and tourism for ecological preservation and the wider decolonial project in Australia and beyond.

Gautam, Pinheiro, and Wilson analyze the spread of financialization in Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting the ideational origins of financialization outside the region, its effects on government budgeting and social inclusion, and options for increased inclusivity.

This book examines how Generation Z, defined by their orientation as ¿social media natives,¿ grew up in a media system centered around social media. D. Jasun Carr and Mitchell T. Bard explore how Gen Z consumes news media differently than other cohorts, and how this shift in consumption affects both the members of Gen Z, the media, and media scholarship. The authors take a media ecology approach to laying out the new media landscape in which Gen Z was raised, before looking at how this new ecology affects many of the traditional theories and underpinnings of media effects, media psychology, and journalism. Through the use of original experimental research and the compilation of extant theory and survey data, Carr and Bard argue that while members of Gen Z eschew the more traditional structures of the media ecosystem in favor of those that incorporate a social element, they nevertheless behave, in many ways, similarly to those who came before. Scholars of communication, media studies, social media, and journalism will find this book of particular interest.

This book explores how Disney¿s Star Wars films leverage popular discussions about the representations of marginalized communities in U.S. media to gain political and economic profit. Abigail Reed argues that Disney uses these narratives to support a model of resistance that benefits their position as a global media conglomerate.

This book analyzes popular American films that point to the need for father atonement, ego-decentering, and the resurrection of the lost feminine to heal gendered cultural wounds, while affirming the role of meaningful suffering, compassion, self-sacrifice and transcendence as an antidote to the inevitable woundedness of the human condition.

This book argues for a rethinking of the role of world literature through new readings of Orhan Pamuk. Drawing on the intrinsic connection between the bridge metaphor and Pamuk¿s work, the author identifies the new metaphors that are better suited for the discipline of world literature.

The book contributes to the current debate over Islam in a globalizing world by drawing on the contemporary and historical justice discourse within the Islamic traditions, and by examining policies and practices of global powers towards Muslim populations in the global south.

African Pentecostal Theology: Modality, Disciplinarity, and Decoloniality explores research methodology, theological disciplines, and contextualization as important aspects in the process of studying Pentecostal theology in an African context. Mookgo Solomon Kgatle outlines different data collection and data analysis methods, including the skills of interpreting and presenting research findings in a responsible manner. This book illustrates that Pentecostal theology, given its pneumatological approach, goes beyond conventional theological disciplines in transdisciplinary research. The development of knowledge in African Pentecostal Theology should recognize African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), African oral and traditional cultures, and African indigenous languages to be relevant to Africans. Pentecostal theologians from different theological disciplines in Africa and globally will find this book a worthwhile read.

Populism and Professional Wrestling in the Sunbelt South: From Rasslin¿ to Sports Entertainment traces the history of professional wrestling in the South within the Trans-Mississippi Region between the 1950s¿1990s. Examining professional wrestling through the lens of kayfabe, also known as the perception of the realism and the suspension of disbelief among fans, this book discovers that the dissolution of kayfabe occurred simultaneously with significant political, social, and cultural events in Southern history, including the Civil Rights Movement and technological and economic modernity. Christopher L. Stacey determines that the same political, social, economic, and cultural forces of modernity in the Sunbelt South reflected a new form of southern and national populism embedded within the professional wrestling industry. New forms of populism were reflected within characters, storylines, gimmicks, and angles of several territories in the Trans-Mississippi region. Through autobiographies, biographical information, and shoot interviews, Stacey provides a closer look into the business of professional wrestling during the mid-twentieth century and how it connects to racial, gender, class, and national identity.

This collection examines ethics in the writings of Augustine of Hippo. By placing Augustine into conversation with contemporary fields of ethical concern, from incarceration to health care, the goal is to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Augustine¿s account of ethics across historical, cultural, and religious boundaries.

This book represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to assess the worldwide scope, effects, and the residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The People¿s Money shows how sovereign money creation through public banking, as pioneered by nineteenth century American populists, can reduce inequalities of wealth and power and help restore prosperity and democracy in America.

This book examines the destructive politics of Trump and Trumpism expressed as the amplification of pre-existing forms of hate and violence, supported by segments of middle and upper classes oriented toward a dress rehearsal for fascism.

This book proposes a paradigm shift in contemporary ecocritical scholarship, from radical green politics to post-green. It examines multicultural literature to transcend ethnic and national boundaries, thereby voicing for a multiplicity of human experiences in relation to an eco-globalist imagination.

Investigating Babyn Yar tells the story of the murder of Kyiv¿s Jews using available fragmentary evidence. The book follows the trail of discarded property to identify the killing site in the ravine. Aerial photographs, ground photographs, and eye-witness testimony are interwoven to explain what happened at history¿s largest mass shooting.

This book demonstrates the key role The Leftovers played in the development of early twenty-first-century television, while also unpacking its central themes of sacrifice, melancholy, apocalypticism, and the nature of the family and home.

New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-first Century acknowledges that the conceptual frameworks for understanding the experience of childhood in the twentieth century are no longer adequate and offers important updates to the construct of American childhood. The chapters in this collection examine contemporary children¿s literature, film, and video games to explore the ways in which everyday realities like trauma, disaster, and death impact the experience of childhood in America today. In many ways, the essays show, the narratives blur traditional lines between children¿s and adult content, taking children series as subjects while also guiding them through the processes of dealing with the particular challenges. Collectively, the essays develop a more contemporary construct of the American child and offer new insights into what that construction might mean for contemporary American society and culture.

Contributors to this collection examine issues of creativity, gender, sexuality, and adaptation by focusing on themes from Julie Taymor¿s oeuvre including martyrdom, musicality, fidelity, postmodern representations, feminism and queerness, identity, desire, trauma, revenge, hybridity, and obscenity.

With a focus on Works of Love, this book argues that for Kierkegaard the living of the life of faith and love is a kind of art, involving skillful attention to the specificity of the episodes in an individual¿s life, and the creative imagining of new ways of enacting these virtues.