I’m starting to compile a list of new books to recommend as summer must reads.  I’ll add to this list as I think of them but herewith, recommendation number 1:

1. I was delighted to see that Anne Porter’s book on mobile pastoralism in the ancient Near East has been published by Cambridge University Press.  I first read the book over a year ago in manuscript form and was impressed by the lucid prose and cogent thinking on issues of mobility (social theory writ generally large does a lousy job of thinking about moving communities–nomadology is little help in this regard).  The work is a subtle study that breaks important new ground in thinking about how mobile communities were critical to an array of practices and processes at the heart of the formation of complex polities.  Find it here:

Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations – Academic and Professional Books – Cambridge University Press.