New & noteworthy

After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness

David J. Leonard

SUNY Press, 2012

After a brawl at a Pistons-Pacers game in 2004, the NBA adopted policies to govern black players and prevent them from embracing styles and personas associated with blackness. This book by Leonard, associate professor of critical culture, gender, and race studies at Washington State University, discloses connections between the NBA’s discourse and the broader discourse of anti-black racism.

Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages

Timothy A. Kohler (editor), Mark D. Varien (editor)

University of California Press, 2012

This book examines how climate change, population size, interpersonal conflict, resource depression, and changing social organization contributed to the rise and collapse of large ancestral Pueblo farmers’ villages in the central Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado between A.D. 600 and 1280. Co-editor Kohler is a Regents Professor in anthropology at Washington State University.

Another Autumn

Yvonne Higgins Leach ’83

2014

Leach’s first collection of poems covers family, love, loss, community, work, separation, and connection through images of seasons.