The following books were authored or edited by William & Mary faculty members and published in 2025. Books are listed in alphabetical order within the following categories: arts & sciences; computing, data sciences & physics; fiction and law. Additional categories may be added as more books are included.
The information contained herein was submitted by the authors. Additional books may be submitted via this online form. Read the 2024 faculty book listing here and the winter 2025 alumni book roundup here. – Ed.
Arts & Sciences
The Challenge of Democracy: American Government in Global Politics, 16th Edition
Co-authored by Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey M. Berry, Jerry Goldman, Deborah Schildkraut and Paul Manna, the Isabelle and Jerome E. Hyman Distinguished University Professor of Government and faculty affiliate in the W&M Public Policy Program.
“The Challenge of Democracy” is an American government textbook organized around the key values of freedom, order and equality, as well as major models of democratic decision-making embodied in majoritarianism and pluralism. The book puts the U.S. in a global context by juxtaposing American governing institutions and political processes with examples from around the world.
Published by Cengage | More information
Evidence, Crime, and Forensics in the Early Modern Mediterranean
By Lu Ann Homza, Professor of History, with Amanda L. Scott M.A. ’10 as co-editor
This volume of 13 essays explores the ways in which a wide range of historical actors — including the illiterate, women and children — deployed the multiple legal systems at their disposal in Spain, Italy and the Balkans.
Published by Routledge | More information
Literary Form in Early Medieval England
By Jennifer A. Lorden, Associate Professor of English
The earliest English writers left little comment on their literary forms. In contrast to the grammatical treatises of late antiquity or critical studies of contemporary and modern literature, early medieval English writing offers only sparse contemporaneous self-commentary, often in brief or conventional notes along the way to other things. But Old English and Latin literature had lively and evolving practices of literary form and formal innovation. Literary Form in Early Medieval England examines both more and lesser known forms, considering the multilingual landscape of early medieval England and showing that Old English literary forms do not simply end with the rupture of the Norman Conquest but continue in surprising ways. Literary Form in Early Medieval England offers a concise tour of what we do know of literary forms, both those that have received more attention and those that have been relatively overlooked, across the first six centuries of English literature.
Published by Cambridge University Press | More information
Making Decisions: Analytics, Cognition, and Application
By Harvey Langholtz, Professor of Psychological Sciences
In today’s data-driven world, this book offers clear, accessible guidance on the logical foundations of optimal decision making. It introduces essential tools for decision analysis and explores psychological theories that explain how people make decisions in both professional and personal contexts. Using real-world examples, the book covers topics such as decision making under uncertainty, decision trees, strategies of risk management, decisions that are gambles, heuristics, trade-offs, decision making under stress, game theory, decision making in a dispute or conflict and multi-attribute decision analysis.
Published by Cambridge University Press | More information
The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease
By Brent Z. Kaup, W&M Professor of Sociology, and Kelly F. Austin
“The Pathogens of Finance” is an exploration of how the rising power and profits of Wall Street underpin the contemporary increases in and inadequate responses to vector-borne disease. To examine this phenomenon, Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin take readers to the exurban homes of northern Virginia; the burgeoning agricultural outposts of Mato Grosso, Brazil; and the smallholder coffee farms of the Bududa District of eastern Uganda. Through these case studies, the authors illuminate how the broader financialization of society is intimately intertwined with both the creation of landscapes more conducive to vector-borne disease and the failure to prevent and cure such diseases throughout the world.
Published by University of California Press | More information
The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography
By Hilary Holladay M.A. ’87, Sharp Writer in Residence (Fall 2025)
This is the first comprehensive biography of Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), the most prominent American poet and essayist of second-wave feminism. Charting a life of high achievement, public controversy, and crushing grief, Hilary Holladay’s The Power of Adrienne Rich reads like a well-paced novel.
Published by Princeton University Press | More information
Reliability: Probabilistic Models and Statistical Methods, Third Edition
By Lawrence Leemis, Professor of Mathematics
This text provides an elementary introduction to the probabilistic models and statistical methods used by reliability engineers that are applied to a system of components. Probability models include the exponential distribution, Weibull distribution, competing risks, mixtures, accelerated life model, proportional hazards model and repairable systems models. Statistical methods emphasize determining point and interval estimates for parameters from censored data sets.
Published by Lightning Source | More information
Rethinking Self-Control
By Matthew C. Haug, Associate Professor of Philosophy
This book provides an empirically informed account of self-control as a psychological trait. It argues that the neo-Aristotelian framework for understanding self-control-related traits, which has dominated both philosophy and the sciences, is psychologically unrealistic and should be replaced. It argues for an indirect harmony hypothesis, which claims that high trait self-control consists in having an excellent ability to use indirect strategies to achieve motivational harmony that would not otherwise be possible.
Published by Routledge | More information
Roses in December: Black Life in Hanover County from Civil War to Civil Rights
By Jody Allen Ph.D. ’07, Associate Professor of History
“Roses in December” is a story of strength, courage, and beauty found in difficult times and the most challenging of circumstances. Beginning in the era of Reconstruction and ending with desegregation, Allen chronicles the lives of newly freed people and their descendants in Hanover County, Virginia, providing an unprecedented look at rural Black Virginians’ resilience after disfranchisement.
Published by UVA Press | More information
The Weight of Reasons: A Framework for Ethics
By Chris Tucker, Francis S. Haserot Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair
This book tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons, and a lot of stuff that you probably didn’t want to know, too.
Published by Oxford University Press | More information
Computing, Data Sciences and Physics
Accelerated Computing With HIP: Second Edition
By Yifan Sun, W&M Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Sabila Al Jannat, W&M Ph.D. candidate, Trinayan Baruah and David Kaeli
This book is designed for programmers who wish to use GPUs to improve application performance, and it is suitable for both AMD and NVIDIA GPU programmers, as HIP is a portable language that runs on both platforms. ROCm is open sourced, allowing other GPU developers to support this platform. This book does not require knowledge of CUDA programming, however, we highlight how HIP differs from CUDA while explaining how to port those programs to HIP, promoting interoperability such that a single application can be executed on different underlying hardware. For non-CUDA programmers, our book starts with the basics by presenting how HIP is a full-featured parallel programming language. Then, we provide coding examples that cover a wide range of relevant programming paradigms.
Published by AMD | More information | More on the Russian translation
Fiction
The Adventures of Jackson: The Mouse in the House: Surviving the Monster Cat
By Bob Stowers, Clinical Associate Professor of Business Emeritus, with illustrations by Vera Duncan ’29
Join Jackson, the mouse in the house, in one of his adventures as he needs to escape the clutches of what he calls a monster cat. Jackson’s creativity inspires and shows that big challenges can be overcome with imagination and resolve.
Published by Page Publishing | More information
Through Our Teeth
By Pamela N. Harris Ph.D. ’16, Clinical Associate Professor in the Online School Counseling Program
Hope Jackson is gone, and the town is quick to call it suicide. Liv and her friends aren’t buying it, and they’re determined to prove Hope’s jealous boyfriend is guilty. But the closer they get to the truth, the more Liv realizes — any one of them could be hiding something worth killing for.
Published by HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books | More information
Law
AI Law and Policy
By Margaret Hu, Davison M. Douglas Professor of Law
“AI Law and Policy” is a casebook-textbook that captures this fast-moving field through a series of snapshots from the frontlines of the legal battlefield: excepts from complaints and lawsuits, cases and statutes, regulations and executive orders, and other private and public sector sources. It invites faculty and students to bear witness to the birth of the field by engaging in questions such as: is this technological or legal development consistent with the rule of law; how is AI compatible with or not compatible with constitutional law; and, like the framework for our constitutional republic, what are first principles that should guide our interpretation of future developments in law and policy?
Published by Aspen Publishing | More information
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