LSU Faculty Published Books

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The Mysterious Sofia: One Woman's Mission to Save Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Mexico

2019
Stephen J. Andes

Who was the "Mysterious Sofía," whose letter in November 1934 was sent from Washington DC to Mexico City and intercepted by the Mexican Secret Service? In The Mysterious Sofía Stephen J. C. Andes uses the remarkable story of Sofía del Valle to tell the history of Catholicism's global shift from north to south and the importance of women to Catholic survival and change over the course of the twentieth century. As a devout Catholic single woman, neither nun nor mother, del Valle resisted religious persecution in an era of Mexican revolutionary upheaval, became a labor activist in a time of class conflict, founded an educational movement, toured the United States as a public lecturer, and raised money for Catholic ministries--all in an age dominated by economic depression, gender prejudice, and racial discrimination. The rise of the Global South marked a new power dynamic within the Church as Latin America moved from the margins of activism to the vanguard.

Del Valle's life and the stories of those she met along the way illustrate the shared pious practices, gender norms, and organizational networks that linked activists across national borders. Told through the eyes of a little-known laywoman from Mexico, Andes shows how women journeyed from the pews into the heart of the modern world.
Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra

2019
Paula Kane Robinson Arai

Little known during his lifetime, the Japanese biologist and artist Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002) created a strikingly original and exquisitely intricate body of modern Buddhist artwork. His paintings depict themes ranging from classical Buddhist iconography to majestic views of our universe as revealed by science--all created with the use of painstakingly rendered miniature calligraphies of the
Heart Sutra , one of the most important scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism. In this groundbreaking book, Paula Arai presents over fifty of Iwasaki's paintings, elucidating their Buddhist contexts and meanings as well as their intimate connections to Iwasaki's life as a war survivor, teacher, scientist, and devout Buddhist practitioner. Having been posthumously recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Iwasaki's paintings are sure to be regarded as an innovative and heartfelt contribution to the artistic legacy of twentieth-century Buddhism.
Triple Oxygen Isotopes

2019
Huiming Bao

The 'detective' power of stable isotopes for processes that occurred in the past, and for elucidating mechanisms at the molecular level, has impressed researchers over the past 100 years, since the time when isotopes of elements were first discovered. While most are interested in the normalized abundance ratios of two isotopes of an element, further power was unleashed when researchers investigated the relationship of three or more isotopes of the same element, e.g. 16O, 17O, and 18O for oxygen. This Element focuses on the history of discovery of triple isotope effects, the conceptual framework behind these effects, and major lines of development in the past few years of triple oxygen isotope research.
Participatory Archives: Theory and Practice

2019
Edward Benoit III

The rise of digitisation and social media over the past decade has fostered the rise of participatory and DIY digital culture. Likewise, the archival community leveraged these new technologies, aiming to engage users and expand access to collections. This book examines the creation and development of participatory archives, its impact on archival theory, and present case studies of its real world application.
Participatory Archives: Theory and practice is divided into four sections with each focused on a particular aspect of participatory archives: social tagging and commenting; transcription; crowdfunding; and outreach & activist communities. Each section includes chapters summarizing the existing literature, a discussion of theoretical challenges and benefits, and a series of case studies. The case studies are written by a range of international practitioners and provide a wide range of examples in practice, whilst the remaining chapters are supplied by leading scholars from Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This book will be useful for students on archival studies programs, scholarly researchers in archival studies who could use the book to frame their own research projects, and practitioners who might be most interested in the case studies to see how participatory archives function in practice. The book may also be of interest to other library and information science students, and similar audiences within the broader cultural heritage institution fields of museums, libraries, and galleries.
An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity

2019
Delbert Royce Burkett

First published in 2002, this book offers an authoritative and accessible introduction to the New Testament and early Christian literature for all students of the Bible and the origins of Christianity. Delbert Burkett focuses on the New Testament, but also looks at a wealth of non-biblical writing to examine the history, religion and literature of Christianity in the years from 30 CE to 150 CE. The book is organized systematically with questions for in-class discussion and written assignments, step-by-step reading guides on individual works, special box features, charts, maps and numerous illustrations designed to facilitate student use. An appendix containing translations of primary texts allows instant access to the writings outside the canon. For this new edition, Burkett has reorganized and rewritten many chapters, and has also incorporated revisions throughout the text, bringing it up to date with current scholarship. This volume is designed for use as the primary textbook for one and two-semester courses on the New Testament and Early Christianity.
Absence Like Sun

2019
Vincent A. Cellucci

Poetry. ABSENCE LIKE SUN illuminates an axiomatic paradox subverting the foremost symbol of the Platonic ideal and the writer's working relationship with Louisiana regionalism. This book of lyric poetry also presents a creative, mythic worldview, which orbits the title imagery's subverted symbolism, where the sun becomes the warming image of absence. Conceptually, these poems function like heliophysics--alternating between solar flares and an axis poem in concurrent verse utilizing the left and right side of the page. Some of the predominant recurring themes of the manuscript are haunting homelessness, filiation/affiliation, post-Katrina New Orleans, Christian myth, and the paradoxical nature of the universe.
Approaching Civil War and Southern History

2019
William J. Cooper Jr.

Initially published between 1970 and 2012, the essays in Approaching Civil War and Southern History span almost the entirety of William J. Cooper?s illustrious scholarly career and range widely across a broad spectrum of subjects in Civil War and southern history. Together, they illustrate the broad scope of Cooper?s work. While many essays deal with his well-known interests, such as Jefferson Davis or the secession crisis, others are on lesser-known subjects, such as Civil War artist Edwin Forbes and the writer Daniel R. Hundley. In the new introduction to each chapter, Cooper notes the essay?s origins and purpose, explaining how it fits into his overarching interest in the nineteenth-century political history of the South. Combined and reprinted here for the first time, the ten essays in Approaching Civil War and Southern History reveal why Cooper is recognized today as one of the most influential historians of our time.
1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

2019
Kevin L. Cope

With issue twenty-four of 1650-1850, this annual enters its second quarter-century with a new publisher, a new look, a new editorial board, and a new commitment to intellectual and artistic exploration. As the diversely inventive essays in this first issue from the Bucknell University Press demonstrate, the energy and open-mindedness that made 1650-1850 a success continue to intensify. This first Bucknell issue includes a special feature that explores the use of sacred space in what was once incautiously called "the age of reason." A suite of book reviews renews the 1650-1850 legacy of full-length and unbridled evaluation of the best in contemporary Enlightenment scholarship. These lively and informative reviews celebrate the many years that book review editor Baerbel Czennia has served 1650-1850 and also make for an able handoff to Samara Anne Cahill of Nanyang Technological University, who will edit the book review section beginning with our next volume. Most important of all, this issue serves as an invitation to scholars to offer their most creative and thoughtful work for consideration for publication in 1650-1850.

About the annual journal 1650-1850

1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines--literature (both in English and other languages), philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences--between the "hard" and the "humane" disciplines. The editors encourage proposals for "special features" that bring together five to seven essays on focused themes within its historical range, from the Interregnum to the end of the first generation of Romantic writers. While also being open to more specialized or particular studies that match up with the general themes and goals of the journal, 1650-1850 is in the first instance a journal about the artful presentation of ideas that welcomes good writing from its contributors.
The Routledge Handbook of Agricultural Economics

2019
Gail L. Cramer and Krishna P. Paudel

This Handbook offers an up-to-date collection of research on agricultural economics. Drawing together scholarship from experts at the top of their profession and from around the world, this collection provides new insights into the area of agricultural economics.

The Routledge Handbook of Agricultural Economics explores a broad variety of topics including welfare economics, econometrics, agribusiness, and consumer economics. This wide range reflects the way in which agricultural economics encompasses a large sector of any economy, and the chapters present both an introduction to the subjects as well as the methodology, statistical background, and operations research techniques needed to solve practical economic problems. In addition, food economics is given a special focus in the Handbook due to the recent emphasis on health and feeding the world population a quality diet. Furthermore, through examining these diverse topics, the authors seek to provide some indication of the direction of research in these areas and where future research endeavors may be productive.

Acting as a comprehensive, up-to-date, and definitive work of reference, this Handbook will be of use to researchers, faculty, and graduate students looking to deepen their understanding of agricultural economics, agribusiness, and applied economics, and the interrelationship of those areas.
Accosting the Golden Spire: A Financial Accounting Action Adventure

2019
D. Larry Crumbley

Accosting the Golden Spire, Fourth Edition mixes financial fraud, crime, ethics, and accounting practice together to provide a better way of learning the accounting process. Featuring a sleuth who handles balance sheets and income statements the way most detectives handle guns, Lenny Cramer and his humorous sidekick put accounting and business concepts into real-life context.

Dr. Cramer, a professor at the Wharton School, operates a small forensic accounting firm. He teaches, testifies before Congress, and appears as an expert witness in a court battle. But the real action occurs when he investigates financial fraud in a friend's jade shop. Using his forensic skills, he uncovers a plot to steal treasures from a remote Asian country and almost gets himself killed trying to stop the heist.

Golden Spire is an educational novel designed as a supplement to financial accounting courses and professional ethics seminars at either the undergraduate or graduate level. It has been used successfully near the end of principles of accounting, at the beginning of intermediate accounting, and as basis for the discussion of professional codes of conduct in an accounting ethics course. The supplement would also be ideal for an MBA program which has a light coverage of accounting, or in CPA firms' in-house training programs as an enrichment exercise.

Classroom tests of early drafts of this third edition and the previous two published editions have demonstrated repeatedly that students enjoy reading the instructional thriller and learn the accounting concepts more readily than through traditional texts.
Deadly Art Puzzle: An Advanced Accounting Action Adventure

2019
D. Larry Crumbley

Deadly Art Puzzle is a supplementary text to be used with an advanced accounting course or a financial accounting theory course. This academic novel would be ideal for an MBA program or a finance course which has a light coverage of accounting and could be used in CPA firms' in-house training programs. This novel is also suitable for a law school course on financial accounting.

This instructional novel mixes fraud, murder, art, ethics, taxation, and accounting together to help students learn advanced accounting process. Martin Burnside, an owner of an art gallery, goes to Glenn Falls to judge an art exhibit. As a retired CPA and part-time professor, he uses his forensic accounting background to solve a "who dun' it" plot. Along the way, business acquisition practices and advanced accounting concepts are elucidated in a way both students and instructors will find gripping as well as informative.
Formation Control of Multi-Agent Systems: A Graph Rigidity Approach

2019
Marcio S. de Queiroz

A comprehensive guide to formation control of multi-agent systems using rigid graph theory

This book is the first to provide a comprehensive and unified treatment of the subject of graph rigidity-based formation control of multi-agent systems. Such systems are relevant to a variety of emerging engineering applications, including unmanned robotic vehicles and mobile sensor networks. Graph theory, and rigid graphs in particular, provides a natural tool for describing the multi-agent formation shape as well as the inter-agent sensing, communication, and control topology.

Beginning with an introduction to rigid graph theory, the contents of the book are organized by the agent dynamic model (single integrator, double integrator, and mechanical dynamics) and by the type of formation problem (formation acquisition, formation manoeuvring, and target interception). The book presents the material in ascending level of difficulty and in a self-contained manner; thus, facilitating reader understanding.

Key features:

Uses the concept of graph rigidity as the basis for describing the multi-agent formation geometry and solving formation control problems. Considers different agent models and formation control problems. Control designs throughout the book progressively build upon each other. Provides a primer on rigid graph theory. Combines theory, computer simulations, and experimental results.

Formation Control of Multi-Agent Systems: A Graph Rigidity Approach is targeted at researchers and graduate students in the areas of control systems and robotics. Prerequisite knowledge includes linear algebra, matrix theory, control systems, and nonlinear systems.
Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World

2019
Richard H. Godden

This collection examines the intersection of the discourses of "disability" and "monstrosity" in a timely and necessary intervention in the scholarly fields of Disability Studies and Monster Studies. Analyzing Medieval and Early Modern art and literature replete with images of non-normative bodies, these essays consider the pernicious history of defining people with distinctly non-normative bodies or non-normative cognition as monsters. In many cases throughout Western history, a figure marked by what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has termed "the extraordinary body" is labeled a "monster." This volume explores the origins of this conflation, examines the problems and possibilities inherent in it, and casts both disability and monstrosity in light of emergent, empowering discourses of posthumanism.
How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality

2019
Josh Grimm

How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality, edited by Josh Grimm and Jaime Loke, brings together scholars of political science, sociology, and mass communication to provide an in-depth analysis of race in the United States through the lens of public policy. This vital collection outlines how issues such as profiling, wealth inequality, and housing segregation relate to race and policy decisions at both the local and national levels. Each chapter explores the inherent conflict between policy enactment, perception, and enforcement. Contributors examine topics ranging from the American justice system?s role in magnifying racial and ethnic disparities to the controversial immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration, along with pointed discussions of how the racial bias of public policy decisions historically impacts emerging concerns such as media access, health equity, and asset poverty.

By presenting nuanced case studies of key topics, How Public Policy Impacts Racial Inequality offers a timely and wide-ranging collection on major social and political issues unfolding in twenty-first-century America.
Speaking American: Language Education and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

2019
Zevi Gutfreund

When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, language learning became a touchstone in the emerging culture wars. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Los Angeles, where elected officials from both political parties had supported the legislation, and where the most disruptive protests over it occurred. The city, with its diverse population of Latinos and Asian Americans, is the ideal locus for Zevi Gutfreund's study of how language instruction informed the social construction of American citizenship. Combining the history of language instruction, school desegregation, and civil rights activism as it unfolded in Japanese American and Mexican American communities in L.A., this timely book clarifies the critical and evolving role of language instruction in twentieth-century American politics.

Speaking American reveals how, for generations, language instruction offered a forum for Angelino educators to articulate their responses to policies that racialized access to citizenship--from the "national origins" immigration quotas of the Progressive Era through Congress's removal of race from these quotas in 1965. Meanwhile, immigrant communities designed language experiments to counter efforts to limit their liberties. Gutfreund's book is the first to place the experiences of Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans side by side as they navigated debates over Americanization programs, intercultural education, school desegregation, and bilingual education. In the process, the book shows, these language experiments helped Angelino immigrants introduce competing concepts of citizenship that were tied to their actions and deeds rather than to the English language itself.

Complicating the usual top-down approach to the history of racial politics in education, Speaking American recognizes the ways in which immigrant and ethnic activists, as well as white progressives and conservatives, have been deeply invested in controlling public and private aspects of language instruction in Los Angeles. The book brings compelling analytic depth and breadth to its examination of the social and political landscape in a city still at the epicenter of American immigration politics.
Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America

2019
John Maxwell Hamilton

A lost literary relic of the First World War, Common Cause tells the story of Jeremy Robson, a crusading newspaper editor in the fictional midwestern town of Fenchester. The Guardian 's muckraking has led special interests to withhold advertising in order to drive Robson out of business. But he and local plutocrats put their differences aside when war is declared in 1917 in order to attack the German-American community for its supposed fealty to their Fatherland. Common Cause provides a vivid picture of the America-first fear and hate that gripped the midwestern United States during the Great War.
The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality

2019
Nancy Isenberg

How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy, from the New York Times bestselling author of White Trash .

John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson.

When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat. Though they spent many years apart--and as their careers spanned Europe, Washington DC, and their family home south of Boston--they maintained a close bond through extensive letter writing, debating history, political philosophy, and partisan maneuvering.

The problem of democracy is an urgent problem; the father-and-son presidents grasped the perilous psychology of politics and forecast what future generations would have to contend with: citizens wanting heroes to worship and covetous elites more than willing to mislead. Rejection at the polls, each after one term, does not prove that the presidents Adams had erroneous ideas. Intellectually, they were what we today call "independents," reluctant to commit blindly to an organized political party. No historian has attempted to dissect their intertwined lives as Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein do in these pages, and there is no better time than the present to learn from the American nation's most insightful malcontents.
The Injustices of Rape: How Activists Responded to Sexual Violence, 1950-1980

2019
Catherine O. Jacquet

From 1950 to 1980, activists in the black freedom and women's liberation movements mounted significant campaigns in response to the injustices of rape. These activists challenged the dominant legal and social discourses of the day and redefined the political agenda on sexual violence for over three decades. How activists framed sexual violence--as either racial injustice, gender injustice, or both--was based in their respective frameworks of oppression. The dominant discourse of the black freedom movement constructed rape primarily as the product of racism and white supremacy, whereas the dominant discourse of women's liberation constructed rape as the result of sexism and male supremacy. In The Injustices of Rape , Catherine O. Jacquet is the first to examine these two movement responses together, explaining when and why they were in conflict, when and why they converged, and how activists both upheld and challenged them. Throughout, she uses the history of antirape activism to reveal the difficulty of challenging deeply ingrained racist and sexist ideologies, the unevenness of reform, and the necessity of an intersectional analysis to combat social injustice.
The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergence of Sexuality

2019
Benjamin Kahan

Statue-fondlers, wanderlusters, sex magicians, and nymphomaniacs: the story of these forgotten sexualities--what Michel Foucault deemed "minor perverts"--has never before been told. In The Book of Minor Perverts , Benjamin Kahan sets out to chart the proliferation of sexual classification that arose with the advent of nineteenth-century sexology. The book narrates the shift from Foucault's "thousand aberrant sexualities" to one: homosexuality. The focus here is less on the effects of queer identity and more on the lines of causation behind a surprising array of minor perverts who refuse to fit neatly into our familiar sexual frameworks. The result stands at the intersection of history, queer studies, and the medical humanities to offer us a new way of feeling our way into the past.
Decommissioning Forecasting and Operating Cost Estimation: Gulf of Mexico Well Trends, Structure Inventory and Forecast Models

2019
Mark J. Kaiser

The US Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest and most prolific offshore hydrocarbon basins in the world with thousands of structures installed in the region and tens of thousands of wells drilled. Over the past decade, a significant number of structures in shallow water have been decommissioned, as operators can no longer "kick the decommissioning can" down the road. This has opened up new markets and additional regulatory oversight with far-reaching implications. This book describes future decommissioning trends and issues and provides guidance for operator budgeting, regulatory oversight, and service sector companies interested in participating in the field.

Decommissioning Forecasting and Operating Cost Estimation is the first of its kind textbook to develop models to forecast platform decommissioning in the Gulf of Mexico and to better understand the dynamics of offshore production cost. The book bridges the gap between modeling and technical knowledge to provide insight into the sector. Topics are presented in five parts covering fundamentals, structure inventories and well trends, decommissioning modeling, critical infrastructure issues, and operating cost estimation. Factor models and activity-based cost models in operating cost estimation conclude the discussion.

Decommissioning Forecasting and Operating Cost Estimation helps oil and gas professionals navigate through this complex and challenging field providing an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, and professionals. The book will also serve government regulators, energy and environmental engineers, offshore managers, financial analyst, and others interested in this fascinating and dynamic industry.

In-depth economic, statistical, and systems analysis on Gulf of Mexico decommissioning activity Balanced coverage of fundamental knowledge and advanced methods Delivers data and results to understand infrastructure and activity trends Numerous examples, worked-out problems, and real-world applications Engineering, science, and market perspectives
The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe

2019
J. Gerald Kennedy

No American author of the early 19th century enjoys a larger international audience than Edgar Allan Poe. Widely translated, read, and studied, he occupies an iconic place in global culture. Such acclaim would have gratified Poe, who deliberately wrote for "the world at large" and mocked theprovincialism of strictly nationalistic themes. Partly for this reason, early literary historians cast Poe as an outsider, regarding his dark fantasies as extraneous to American life and experience. Only in the 20th century did Poe finally gain a prominent place in the national canon. Changingcritical approaches have deepened our understanding of Poe's complexity and revealed an author who defies easy classification. New models of interpretation have excited fresh debates about his essential genius, his subversive imagination, his cultural insight, and his ultimate impact, urging anexpansive reconsideration of his literary achievement.Edited by leading experts J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples, this volume presents a sweeping reexamination of Poe's work. Forty-five distinguished scholars address Poe's troubled life and checkered career as a "magazinist," his poetry and prose, and his reviews, essays, opinions, and marginalia.The chapters provide fresh insights into Poe's lasting impact on subsequent literature, music, art, comics, and film and illuminate his radical conception of the universe, science, and the human mind. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, this Handbook reveals a thoroughly modern Poe, whose timelessfables of peril and loss will continue to attract new generations of readers and scholars.
Civil Vengeance: Literature, Culture, and Early Modern Revenge

2019
Emily L. King

What is revenge, and what purpose does it serve? On the early modern English stage, depictions of violence and carnage?the duel between Hamlet and Laertes that leaves nearly everyone dead or the ghastly meal of human remains served at the end of Titus Andronicus ?emphasize arresting acts of revenge that upset the social order. Yet the subsequent critical focus on a narrow selection of often bloody "revenge plays" has overshadowed subtler and less spectacular modes of vengeance present in early modern culture.

In Civil Vengeance , Emily L. King offers a new way of understanding early modern revenge in relation to civility and community. Rather than relegating vengeance to the social periphery, she uncovers how facets of society?church, law, and education?relied on the dynamic of retribution to augment their power such that revenge emerges as an extension of civility. To revise the lineage of revenge literature in early modern England, King rereads familiar revenge tragedies (including Marston's Antonio's Revenge and Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy ) alongside a new archive that includes conduct manuals, legal and political documents, and sermons. Shifting attention from episodic revenge to quotidian forms, Civil Vengeance provides new insights into the manner by which retaliation informs identity formation, interpersonal relationships, and the construction of the social body.
Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement

2019
Isiah Lavender III

Growing out of the music scene, afrofuturism has emerged as an important aesthetic through films such as Black Panther and Get Out. While the significance of these sonic and visual avenues for afrofuturism cannot be underestimated, literature remains fundamental to understanding its full dimensions. Isiah Lavender's Afrofuturism Rising explores afrofuturism as a narrative practice that enables users to articulate the interconnection between science, technology, and race across centuries.

By engaging with authors as diverse as Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Samuel R. Delany Jr., Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, Afrofuturism Rising extends existing scholarly conversations about who creates and what is created via science fiction. Through a trans-historical rereading of texts by these authors as science fiction, Lavender highlights the ways black experience in America has always been an experience of spatial and temporal dislocation akin to science fiction. Compelling and ambitious in scope, Afrofuturism Rising redefines both science fiction and literature as a whole.
Adventure of a Louisiana Birder: 1 Year, 2 Wings, 300 Species

2019
Marybeth Lima

This candid and humorous chronicle shows how one woman goes from casual observer to obsessive bird nerd as she traverses Louisiana?s avian paradise. In Adventures of a Louisiana Birder, readers follow Marybeth Lima across her adopted state in search of 300 species of birds. Bisected by the Mississippi flyway and home to 400 miles of coast, Louisiana has a variety of habitats, which serve as a beautiful backdrop to this remarkable journey.

In birding circles, some devotees attempt what is known as a ?big year,? a bird-sighting challenge to identify as many bird species as possible in a particular geographical area over the course of one year. Lima?s initial effort amounted to 11,626 miles in sixty-one road trips to log an impressive 280 species. But on a subsequent quest to exceed her record, she endures elusive birds, embarrassing misidentifications, and hungry insects in an effort to reach her goal. In the midst of these obstacles, Lima celebrates the camaraderie and friendly competition among fellow birders, from novices to a world-renown ornithologist. Requiring both mental focus and physical agility, birdwatching becomes an active sport through Lima?s narration. She vividly conveys the elation over a rare species seen or heard and the disappointment when one is narrowly missed. An appendix provides the location and date of every species she identifies.

Lima?s personal experiences are interwoven with the excitement of tracking down one intriguing species after another. She faces a near-fatal burn accident to her spouse, end-of-life care for her mother-in-law, and Louisiana?s great flood of 2016. In the midst of these situations, her devotion to birding provides a much-needed outlet.

?Somewhere in the roiling confluence of birds, locales, and human personalities,? writes Lima, ?the center of my heart sings with utter abandon.? Adventures of a Louisiana Birder is the author?s call to a deeper passion for and awareness of Louisiana?s unique natural beauty and vulnerability.
Levees and Dams: Advances in Geophysical Monitoring and Characterization

2019
Juan Lorenzo

This book aims to inform policy-makers, engineers and earth scientists about the current and emerging role of geophysics in addressing environmental processes, assessments, and policy directions related to new and existing dams and levees. Until now geophysics has concentrated on characterization and remediation of dams and levees, but now the field is changing our understanding on the influence of natural processes (e.g., floods, dissolution) and human activities in the design, and management of these structures.
This monograph includes advances in the following fields of Dams and Levees studies: · New insights from small and mid-sized laboratory experiments · Integrated methods electromagnetic, seismic, potential methods · Inverse modeling approaches · Statistical considerations · Monitoring of processes attending aging structures · Hazard monitoring · Risk Analysis