The study of music and the brain can be traced back to the work of Gall in the 18th century, continuing with John Hughlings Jackson, August Knoblauch, Richard Wallaschek, and others. These early researchers were interested in localizing musicality in the brain and learning more about how music is processed in both healthy individuals and those with dysfunctions of various kinds. Since then, the research literature has mushroomed, especially in the latter part of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain is a groundbreaking compendium of current research on music in the human brain. It brings together an international roster of 54 authors from 13 countries providing an essential guide to this rapidly growing field. The major themes include Music, the Brain, and Cultural Contexts; Music Processing in The Human Brain; Neural Responses to Music; Musicianship and Brain Function; Developmental Issues in Music and the Brain; Music, the Brain, and Health; and the Future. Each chapter offers a thorough review of the current status of research literature as well as an examination of limitations of knowledge and suggestions for future advancement and research efforts. The book is valuable for a broad readership including neuroscientists, musicians, clinicians, researchers and scholars from related fields but also readers with a general interest in the topic.

Mexico Under Seige is a readable and well-informed political history covering the period from the ruling PRI's lurch to the right in 1940 through to its eventual expulsion from office in the elections of 2000. Based on two decades of interview material and new documentary sources, this book is the first to consider the full panorama of popular resistance to the alliance between the Mexican state bureaucracy, the president and the business class. This resistance embraced emerging urban labour protest, new peasant movements, revolutionary strikes on the railways and in schools, student opposition, and the re-emergence of guerrilla struggle culminating in the celebrated indigenous peoples' resistance in Chiapas. Mexico Under Siege analyses the core parties of the resistance, including the suprisingly central role of the Mexican Communist Party, and explains why resistance achieved no more than ending the PRI's system of presidential despotism. Hodge and Gandy conclude with some provocative ideas about who now constitutes the common people's primary opponent and examine the prospects for genuine struggle in an electoral arena where neo-liberal economic ideology and the Mexican economy's closer integration with the United States dominate the political scene.