Brian A. Hoey, Opting for Elsewhere: Lifestyle Migration in the American Middle Class. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014. $39.95. 272pp.

Hoey, a cultural anthropologist at Marshall University, follows middle class Americans responding to downsizing, economic disruptions, or just in search of less stressful living. He develops a theory of “lifestyle migration” through stories that “are part of a larger moral story about what constitutes the good life at a time of economic and social uncertainty.”

Guy F. Burnett, The Safeguard of Liberty and Property: The Supreme Court, Kelo v. New London, and the Takings Clause. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. $80.00. 167pp..

Burnett, a political scientist at Hampden-Sydney College, provides a thorough overview and account of the legal struggles leading up to and following the Supreme Court’s 2005 case, Kelo v. New London, which allowed a city to take property from one private owner and transfer it to another for economic redevelopment. The book examines the public backlash, offering its own view on what the Court got wrong and what it got right and where the law and courts should go from here..

Wilton S. Dillon, Smithsonian Stories: Chronicle of a Golden Age, 1964–1984. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015. $44.95. 370pp.

Dillon, senior scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, gives an intimate, backstage account of the transformative work of “Sun King” S. Dillon Ripley, whose two decade leadership of the Smithsonian created the “ministry of culture” it has become. As the exemplar of museum culture and innovation, the Smithsonian is recounted as a major part of American cultural history.

Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History. New York: Riverhead Books, 2014. $27.95. 390pp.

Johnson, mayor of London, celebrates the life of Winston Churchill who, Johnson fears, is being forgotten and along with him the essential and enduring contributions he made to Western civilization. As Johnson writes, “It was his ideas which were to prevail, his concepts of freedom and democracy which won.” This thoroughly engaging book entertains and enlightens together.

Ole Jacob Madsen, The Therapeutic Turn: How Psychology Altered Western Culture. New York: Routledge, 2014. $48.95. 194pp.

Madsen, a psychologist at the University of Oslo, explores the relationship between core ideas in academic and professional psychology, on the one hand, and Western consumer culture, contemporary religion, self-help, sports, and politics, on the other. He argues that the “therapeutic turn” has reshaped culture itself, away from longstanding questions of theodicy to focus exclusively on the psyche.