University presses just keep on rollin': a roundup of fall and winter releases from the halls of academia.

This year, in what can be described as a return to their calling, university presses are releasing books with unique and stimulating perspectives on culture, history and literature in record numbers. R.R. Bowker, the leading provider in North America of bibliographic information, reports that last year 14,484 titles were published by academic presses, representing a 6.3 percent increase recovery from years of decline.

Encouraged by the post-9/11 demand for quality writing and scholarship in such niche markets as Islam, Afghanistan and terrorism, university scholarship is reexamining history, biography and law subjects. Among this season's university press offerings, readers with African and African American interests will find books on subjects both local and global.

Forthcoming rifles for fall/winter 2005-2006 represent such varied subjects as the impact of the African Diaspora on cross-cultural religion to covert CIA operations in the Americas.

AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY/ STUDIES

Belabored Professions: Narratives of African American Working Womanhood by Xiomara Santamarina, University of North Carolina Press, November 2005 $45, ISBN 0-807-82981-1

The autobiographies of four 19th-century women, Sojourner Truth, Eliza Potter, Harriet Wilson and Elizabeth Keckley, reveal their shared pride and value for themselves as self-reliant wage laborers.

Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History by Paul D. Moreno, Louisiana State University Press, December 2005 $49.95, ISBN 0-807-13094-X

After critical study of antebellum history, relevant biography and American labor movement philosophy, Moreno reasons that the "economics of discrimination" explains historic black absence and under-representation in unions.

Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston's Urban Slave Society by Cynthia M. Kennedy, Indiana University Press, November 2005 $49.95, ISBN 0-253-34615-0

During antebellum Charleston, South Carolina, the women in an urban slave society must learn to negotiate a web of social and cultural entanglements.

Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present by Nell Irvin Painter, Oxford University Press November 2005 $30, ISBN 0-195-13755-8

Painter, a historian and the Edward Professor of American History at Princeton, uses narrative and forceful images by black artists to explore and describe pivotal moments in African American history that span more than 300 years.

The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America by Walter C. Rucker, Louisiana University Press, December 2005 $49.95, ISBN 0-807-13109-1

African cultural and sociopolitical influences on slave resistance in America are studied and analyzed from major rebellions to everyday acts of disobedience. Key revolts such as the Stono Rebellion, Gabriel Prosser's Slave Plot, and Nat Turner's revolt are bridged with archaeological, anthropological and religious evidence that have shaped a unique "African American" identity

A Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi by Emilye Crosby, University of North Carolina Press, November 2005 $55, ISBN 0-807-82965-X

From the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture comes an analysis of local political and economic actions in the post-freedom movement period, including the Claiborne County 1982 Supreme Court victory asserting the legality of political economic boycotts for political protest.

We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundation of Black Solidarity by Tommie Shelby, Harvard University Press November 2005 $27.95, ISBN 0-674-01936-9

A philosophical defense of black political solidarity as a tool for defeating racism, eliminating racial inequality and improving opportunities for those racialized as "black."

AFRICAN DIASPORA

Night Vision: Poems by Kendel Hippolyte, Northwestern University Press, October 2005 $39.95, ISBN 0-810-15163-4

Hippolyte, an award-winning poet and native of St. Lucia, uses verse to describe the transformation of Caribbean society.

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico by Luis A. Figueroa, University of North Carolina Press, December 2005 $55, ISBN 0-807-85610-X

After the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico, new scholarship explores how the scarcity of land, class, gender and race impacted the Afro-Puerto Rican Emancipation process.

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story by Stephen G. Rabe, University of North Carolina Press, October 2005 $45, ISBN 0-807-82979-X

The first published account of how the United States CIA's covert fomenting of labor unrest and race riots in British Guiana from 1953 to 1969 was engineered to unseat the nation's Marxist leader.

AFRICAN STUDIES, HEALTH

AIDS in Nigeria: A Nation on the Threshold by Olusoji Adeyi, John Idoko, Phyllis J. Kanki and Oluwole Odutolu (editors) Harvard University Press, December 2005 $30, ISBN 0-674-01666-0

An effective response to Nigeria's AIDS epidemic, with analysis of prevention efforts and strategies for controlling the disease, is presented by some of the country's leading health experts. Their scholarship is complemented with courageous stories of people whose lives have been transformed by AIDS.

Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority by Shireen Hassim, University of Wisconsin Press, November 2005 $24.95, ISBN 0-299-21384-6

An examination of the issues, challenges and stronghold held by South Africa's women's organizations and feminist activists during the nation's past 25 years and its transition to democracy.

BIOGRAPHY

Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man by Vincent Carretta, University of Georgia Press, October 2005 $29.95, ISBN 0-820-32571-6

Former slave Olaudah Equiano, born in the mid-1740s, wrote his classic autobiography in 1789, and it includes the earliest firsthand description of the Middle Passage, which became a key document in the early movement to ban the slave trade.

The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar Edited by Gone Andrew Jarrett and Thomas Lewis Morgan, Ohio University Press October 2005, $59.95, ISBN 0-821-41644-8

Paul Laurence Dunbar created a vast collection of literary works before his death at the age of 33. This comprehensive work provides insight into the life and legacy of this gifted and celebrated literary figure.

Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean by Colin A. Palmer, University of North Carolina Press, November 2005 $34.95, ISBN 0-807-82987-0

This book chronicles the political rise and revolutionary struggle of Trinidad and Tobago's first prime minister for his country's political independence and economic equality.

Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist, Cold Warrior by David H. Anthony III, New York University Press, January 2006 $49, ISBN 0-814-70704-1

Anthony draws from archival research and personal interviews to offer a portrait of the activist and intellect who became one of the first black YMCA missionaries in South Africa.

CULTURAL AND LITERARY HISTORY, CRITICISM, STUDIES

Art in Crisis: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Art of The Crisis Magazine by Amy Kirschke, Indiana University Press January 2006, $65, ISBN 0-253-21813-6

Visual imagery proves as integral as was the written word to Du Bois's political program to combat racism in America.

Conjure in African American Society by Jeffrey E. Anderson, Louisiana State University Press, December 2005 $39.95, ISBN 0-807-13092-3

Tracing the origins of black America's spiritual beliefs from the colonial era to the present, Professor Anderson explores the complex and controversial personae of the conjurer.

Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction by James W. Coleman, Louisiana State University Press, January 2006 $42.95, ISBN 0-807-13091-5

Coleman, an author and professor, demonstrates how religious faith is as central to African American novels as it is to black culture in general.

From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism by Patricia Hill Collins, Temple University Press, February 2006 $59.50, ISBN 1-592-13091-7

Hill Collins, a professor of sociology, offers an interpretation of how the relationship between black nationalism and feminism interplays in the context of today's society.

Sandra L. Jamison is a freelance researcher and writer, and a proud native New Yorker. Log on to www.bibookreview.com for additional titles.