Nazli Kibria, Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity in the Bangladeshi Diaspora . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011. $24.95. 208pp.

Kibria, professor of sociology at Boston University, compares the experiences of Bangladeshi Muslims in different global contexts, including the U.S., Middle East, Malaysia, and United Kingdom. Based on 200 in-depth interviews, she explores the distinctive roles of Islam, national identity, class, and gender in these migrant Muslims’ lives.

Justin Buchler, Hiring and Firing Public Officials : Rethinking the Purpose of Elections. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. $27.95. 272pp.

Buchler, assistant professor of political science at Case Western Reserve, argues against a long tradition of conventional theory about elections. Widespread dissatisfaction with electoral politics is based on a misunderstanding on the purposes of elections, which he contends is to hold elected officials accountable. It is an employment decision not a choice of one product versus another.

Peter Moskos, In Defense of Flogging. New York: Basic Books, 2011. $20.00. 192pp.

Peter Moskos, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, emulates the incisiveness and wit of Jonathan Swift in proposing that the American penal system might be radically reformed if convicts were given the choice of a Singapore-style caning instead of serving time in prison. His assessment is intended to be provocative, perhaps politically untenable, but like all important ideas, the basis for real debate.

Omri Elisha, Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011. $ 24.95. 276pp.

Elisha, assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York, offers a compelling ethnography of evangelical Protestants, their hopes, frustrations, and activist strategies. His sympathetic account addresses less the hot-button political issues and delves into the ways in which personal virtue and public responsibility are expressed in contemporary evangelicalism.

Amy M. Donley and James D. Wright, Poor and Homeless in the Sunshine State: Down and Out in Theme Park Nation. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011. $39.95. 335pp.

Donley and Wright, both affiliated with the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences, address the presence of what they describe as the poor, near-poor, homeless, and dispossessed who live amidst the theme parks of Florida and who represent a population unique in America today. Their book is a bracing account of new dimensions of poverty and its consequences.