New and noteworthy – 23 May 2019

Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions
Brad Glosserman
Georgetown University Press

Japan, in Brad Glosserman’s view, is currently “understudied, undervalued, and underappreciated” in international relations. This is partly because of the seemingly unstoppable rise of China, but it also reflects how “the country lost its way after the end of the Cold War” and “stumbled repeatedly”. Even 2011’s “triple catastrophe – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident”, which counts as “the worst disaster in economic terms in human history”, proved insufficient to spur radical change. Despite widespread consensus about what needs to be done, Japan seems unable to move “out of [its] comfort zone and to change direction from business as usual”. Glosserman draws out the lessons for us all.

Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War
Stephanie McCurry
Bellnap/Harvard

“Women don’t usually tell war stories,” notes Stephanie McCurry, and their deep involvement in conflict has often been “rendered invisible”. This study uses three crucial episodes to explore how women both shaped and were shaped by the American Civil War. Union soldiers invading the southern states in 1871 were startled to find women active as “saboteurs, spies, smugglers, and informants”. Fugitive female slaves who poured across Union lines discovered that emancipation policy had been forged with men firmly in mind. And as fighting came to an end and Reconstruction began, we see a former Confederate woman called Gertrude Thomas struggling to build a new form of life on the ruins of the slave South.

The Role of the Scroll: An Illustrated Introduction to Scrolls in the Middle Ages
Thomas Forest Kelly
Norton

The codex (or book) has been the standard format for long texts since the fourth century, so why did people keep producing scrolls into mediaeval times and beyond? The answer, as Thomas Forest Kelly demonstrates, is that they perform a number of functions far better than books. Scrolls are ideal for listing and record-keeping purposes where the text just keeps on growing. Scrolls can be stored, transported or worn close to the body without the need for damaging folds, or unrolled to just the right place for performers such as actors and musicians. This lavishly illustrated survey provides a superb overview of these important and often beautiful artefacts.

Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory
Carla Yanni
University of Minnesota Press

It is widely accepted that American students should reside in purpose-built dormitories. But though they have come in styles ranging from Tuscan vernacular and Gothic Revival to Brutalist (and now sometimes resemble five-star hotels), writes Carla Yanni, they have never been “mute containers for the temporary storage of youthful bodies and emergent minds”, but “constitute historical evidence of the educational ideals of the people who built them”. Analysis of how they developed over three centuries, therefore, can tell us a great deal about “the socially constructed nature of the student”, and particularly about “issues of inclusion, exclusion, class, and gender”.

Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure
John Sharp and Colleen Macklin
MIT Press

Failure is underrated. All creative activities involve elements of failure that can spur further iterative efforts to improve matters (or at least, in Samuel Beckett’s famous words, to “fail better”). Sharp and Macklin are game designers who have also worked in areas such as advertising, photography and print making. Between them, they have clocked up more than 40 years teaching on university art and design programmes. In this vivid and compelling book, they have distilled together theory and practice, while incorporating detailed case studies of 10 creative people – ranging from a chef to a comedian, from a skateboarder to a stop-motion animator.