Sara Brady's new book, Performance, Politics and the War on Terror: 'Whatever It Takes' is out from Palgrave Macmillan. The book uses a performance studies lens to analyze a variety of events in order to tease out the ways in which meaning has been made in the contemporary global sociopolitical environment. By discussing events in such diverse contexts as conventional theatre, political protest, popular entertainments, military training exercises, performance art, and other sites of performance, the book offers a unique, interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture and politics. It argues that the reliance on performance by governments and media alike in post-9/11 United States and abroad - particularly in the context of the war on terror - led not only to a culture of fear, but also to a troubling blurring of fiction and reality. See http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=368847.

Victor Emeljanow and Gillian Arrighi's article, “Entertaining children: an exploration of the business and politics of childhood,” has appeared in New Theatre Quarterly 28, no. 1 (February 2012): 41-55. Their edition of A World of Popular Entertainments containing 17 essays by prominent scholars worldwide will be published by Cambridge Scholars Press in April 2012.

Iris Smith Fischer's book Mabou Mines: Making Avant-Garde Theatre in the 1970s appeared in March 2011 from the University of Michigan Press. This is the first book on the pathbreaking theatre company founded by JoAnne Akalaitis, Lee Breuer, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow in 1970. Like much avant-garde performance of the 1970s, Mabou Mines' early pieces were seldom recorded or documented, a missing history that this book sets out to capture. A paperback edition of the book is planned for Fall 2012.