Following the Civil War in 1865, Zac Trimbell fights the internal demons brought on from his experiences in the violent and inhuman conditions of war. Zac knows he is not the same man that went to war but has never heard of PTSD.

In his research, Sören Köcher provides valuable insights on the paradoxical effects of the magnitude of a loyalty program medium—i.e. the sheer number of points, miles, or stamps credited for every purchase and required for reward redemption—on the central consumer decisions in loyalty program memberships. In sum, the results of twelve empirical studies reveal that high magnitude currencies improve the attractiveness of medium collection but entail reluctant medium spending behavior. These findings provide important implications for a more efficient usage of loyalty programs in business practices. In addition, this dissertation discovers a violation of one of the most fundamental assumptions of rational choice theory and thus contributes to a better understanding of when and why people deviate from rational decision-making.

The journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer is best remembered today for his investigations of film and other popular media, and for his seminal influence on Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno. Less well known is his earlier work, which offered a seismographic reading of cultural fault lines in Weimar-era Germany, with an eye to the confrontation between religious revival and secular modernity. In this discerning study, historian Harry T. Craver reconstructs and richly contextualizes Kracauer’s early output, showing how he embodied the contradictions of modernity and identified the quasi-theological impulses underlying the cultural ferment of the 1920s.

A teenage Elvis impersonator navigates the Lagos ghetto in this “searing chronicle of a young man’s coming of age in Nigeria during the late 1970s” (Publishers Weekly). Elvis Oke dreams of escaping the sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria. Beset by poverty, floods, and beatings by his alcoholic father, he ekes out a living by impersonating his famous namesake. But soon he is tempted by a life of crime. Thus begins his odyssey into the dangerous underworld of Lagos, guided by his friend Redemption and accompanied by a restless hybrid of voices including The King of Beggars, Sunday, Innocent and Comfort. Ultimately, young Elvis, drenched in reggae and jazz, and besotted with American film heroes and images, must find his way to a GraceLand of his own. In this lyrical and nuanced debut novel, Nigerian poet Chris Abani shares a remarkable story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria where the trappings of American culture reign supreme. “A richly detailed, poignant, and utterly fascinating look into another culture and how it is cross-pollinated by our own. It brings to mind the work of Ha Jin in its power and revelation of the new.” —T. Coraghessan Boyle