The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes, Dana M. Moss (Cambridge University Press). The Arab Spring uprisings began in December 2010, when a young Tunisian set himself on fire to protest police harassment — a singular act that led to anti-government uprisings in Tunisia and five other countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In many cases the revolutionaries were supported by their countrymen living abroad, writes Moss, an assistant professor of sociology. Based on 239 in-depth interviews with individuals in diaspora communities, she investigates the extent to which anti-regime activists in the United States and Great Britain mobilized to aid the 2011 revolutions in Libya, Syria and Yemen.
Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War, Robert H. Latiff ’71, ’73M.S., ’74Ph.D. (Notre Dame Press). Militaries globally are becoming more dangerously automated, with many decisions being turned over to machines. In this much-anticipated follow-up to his 2017 book, Future War, Latiff — an adjunct professor in Notre Dame’s Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values and a retired major general who served in both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force — warns that we aren’t paying enough attention to the growing influence that artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems are having on the strategy and conduct of war. In such a high-pressure, high-stakes international environment, he argues, citizens must educate themselves, get involved, demand the right to hear all sides of arguments about war — and be willing to serve.
The Story of the Death of Anne Boleyn: A Poem by Lancelot de Carle, JoAnn DellaNeva (ACMRS Press). Working in London as the secretary of the French ambassador, Carle wrote his official dispatch about the 1536 execution of England’s queen — the second of Henry VIII’s six wives — in verse form. His unique choice raised an already important historical document to the level of literature. DellaNeva, a professor of Romance languages and literatures, edited and translated the poem, adding essays that offer historical background, a biography of Carle, a future Catholic bishop, and critical analysis of the text.