Welcome to Books of the Month, where once a month, L&S staff select works from our Bookshelf of authors within the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. This month, in honor of the Taproot New Music Festival, we explore music from around the world. Through ethnographies, essays and analyses, our scholars demonstrate how music, culture and politics influence one another.

This month’s "Books of the Month" features works authored or edited by L&S faculty from the arts, humanities and social sciences and have been selected in honor of Asian American Pacific islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. From the poetic to the analytical, L&S scholars unearth untold stories from the U.S., China, Japan, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and beyond.