Harvard University Press - HISTORY

Buccaneers of the Caribbean

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jon Latimer
During the seventeenth century, sea raiders known as buccaneers controlled the Caribbean. Buccaneers were not pirates but privateers, licensed to attack the Spanish by the governments of England, France, and Holland. Jon Latimer charts the exploits of these men who followed few rules as they forged new empires. From the crash of gunfire to the billowing sail on the horizon, Latimer brilliantly evokes the dramatic age of the buccaneers.
Hardcover June 2009

Christiad

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Marco Girolamo Vida
Translated by James Gardner
Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566), humanist and bishop, came to prominence as a Latin poet in the Rome of Leo X and Clement VII. It was Leo who commissioned his famous epic, the Christiad, a retelling of the life of Christ in the style of Vergil, which was eventually published in 1535. This translation, accompanied by extensive notes, is based on a new edition of the Latin text.
Hardcover May 2009

Latin Poetry

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jacopo Sannazaro
Translated by Michael C. J. Putnam
Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530) is most famous for having written, in Italian, the first pastoral romance in European literature, the Arcadia (1504). But after this early work, Sannazaro devoted himself entirely to Latin poetry modeled on his beloved Vergil. In addition to his epic The Virgin Birth (1526), which earned him the title of “the Christian Vergil,” he also composed Piscatory Eclogues, an innovative adaption of the eclogue form. This volume contains the first complete English translation of all of Sannazaro’s poetry in Latin, accompanied by extensive notes.
Hardcover May 2009

The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Peter Funke
Edited by Nino Luraghi
The crisis of Spartan power in the first half of the fourth century has been connected to Spartan inability to manage the hegemony built on the ruins of the Athenian Empire. The present book offers a new perspective, suggesting that the crisis that finally brought down Sparta was in important ways a result of centrifugal impulses within the Peloponnesian League.
Paperback May 2009

Republics and Kingdoms Compared

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Aurelio Lippo Brandolini
Edited and translated by James Hankins
A Socratic dialogue set in the court of King Mattias Corvinus of Hungary (ca. 1490), Aurelio Lippo Brandolini’s Republics and Kingdoms Compared depicts a debate between the king himself and a Florentine merchant at his court on the relative merits of republics and kingdoms. This is the first critical edition and the first translation into any language.
Hardcover May 2009

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Matthew Avery Sutton
Aimee Semple McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the United States between the world wars, building a successful megachurch, a mass media empire, and eventually a political career to resurrect what she believed was America's Christian heritage. Sutton's definitive study reveals the woman as a trail-blazing pioneer, her life marking the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance to the mainstream of American culture.
Paperback May 2009

For Prophet and Tsar

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Robert D. Crews
In stark contrast to the popular "clash of civilizations" theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. For Prophet and Tsar unearths the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.
Paperback May 2009

The Learned Banqueters, V, Books 10.420e-11

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Athenaeus
Edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson
In The Learned Banqueters, Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. Athenaeus also preserves a wide range of information about different cuisines and foodstuffs; the music and entertainments that ornamented banquets; and the intellectual talk that was the heart of Greek conviviality. S. Douglas Olson has produced a complete new edition of the work, replacing the previous Loeb Athenaeus (published under the title Deipnosophists).
Hardcover May 2009

Lincoln and the Court

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Brian McGinty
In a meticulously researched and engagingly written narrative, McGinty rescues the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court from long and undeserved neglect, recounting the compelling history of the Civil War president's relations with the nation's highest tribunal and the role it played in resolving the agonizing issues raised by the conflict.
Paperback May 2009

No Place to Hide

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Spring Miller
James L. Cavallaro
Seventeen years after the civil war in El Salvador came to an end, violence and insecurity continue to shape the daily lives of many Salvadorans. This book examines the phenomenon of youth gangs, as well as related police abuse, clandestine violence, and their collective impact on the rule of law. The book’s findings are based on primary research conducted in El Salvador between 2006 and 2008.
Paperback May 2009

Prosecuting Apartheid-Era Crimes?

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Tyler Giannini
Susan Farbstein
Samantha Bent
Miles Jackson
Foreword by John Kani
This book presents a diverse collection of perspectives on prosecutions in South Africa, including a foreword by playwright and actor John Kani. Throughout, it highlights the important themes related to any post-conflict prosecution scheme including rule-of-law concerns, questions of evenhandedness and moral relativism, competing priorities and resource allocation, the limits of a court-centered approach to justice, and the potential transformative power of prosecutions.
Paperback May 2009

The Roman Triumph

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mary Beard
A radical reexamination of the most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman Triumph--but also its darker side. The Triumph, Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory. Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture--and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since.
Paperback May 2009

The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Robert D. Crews
Edited by Amin Tarzi
The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan explores the paradox at the center of a challenging phenomenon: how has a seemingly anachronistic band of religious zealots managed to retain a tenacious foothold in the struggle for Afghanistan's future? Grounding their analysis in a deep understanding of the country's past, leading scholars of Afghan history, politics, society, and culture show how the Taliban was less an attempt to revive a medieval theocracy than a dynamic, complex, and adaptive force rooted in the history of Afghanistan and shaped by modern international politics.
Paperback May 2009

To Serve God and Wal-Mart

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Bethany Moreton
In the decades after World War II, evangelical Christianity nourished America’s devotion to free markets, free trade, and free enterprise. The history of Wal-Mart uncovers a complex network that united Sun Belt entrepreneurs, evangelical employees, Christian business students, overseas missionaries, and free-market activists. Through the stories of people linked by the world’s largest corporation, Bethany Moreton shows how a Christian service ethos powered capitalism at home and abroad.
Hardcover May 2009

Twice a Stranger

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Bruce Clark
In the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, nearly two million citizens in Turkey and Greece were expelled from homelands. In this evocative book, Bruce Clark draws on new archival research in Turkey and Greece as well as interviews with surviving participants to examine this unprecedented exercise in ethnic engineering.
Paperback May 2009

Voice and Vision

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen J. Pyne
It has become commonplace these days to speak of “unpacking” texts. Voice and Vision is a book about packing that prose in the first place. This book is for those who wish to understand the ways in which literary considerations can enhance nonfiction writing. Stephen Pyne, an experienced and skilled writer himself, explores the many ways to understand what makes good nonfiction, and explains how to achieve it. His counsel and guidance will be invaluable to experts as well as novices in the art of writing serious and scholarly nonfiction.
Hardcover May 2009

Zhivago's Children

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Vladislav Zubok
Among the least-chronicled aspects of post–World War II European intellectual and cultural history is the story of the Russian intelligentsia after Stalin. Vladislav Zubok turns a compelling subject into a portrait as intimate as it is provocative. Zhivago’s children, the spiritual heirs of Boris Pasternak’s noble doctor, were the last of their kind—an intellectual and artistic community committed to a civic, cultural, and moral mission.
Hardcover May 2009

Henry Kissinger and the American Century

Fri, 1 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeremi Suri
What made Henry Kissinger the kind of diplomat he was? What experiences and influences shaped his worldview and provided the framework for his approach to international relations? Suri offers a thought-provoking, interpretive study of one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the twentieth century.
Paperback May 2009

The Mighty Wurlitzer

Fri, 1 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Hugh Wilford
Wilford provides the first comprehensive account of the clandestine relationship between the CIA and its front organizations. Using an unprecedented wealth of sources, he traces the rise and fall of America's Cold War front network from its origins in the 1940s to its Third World expansion during the 1950s and ultimate collapse in the 1960s.
Paperback May 2009

A Nation of Counterfeiters

Fri, 1 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen Mihm
Prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by freewheeling capitalism and little government control. Mihm shows how eventually the older monetary system was dismantled, along with the counterfeit economy it sustained.
Paperback May 2009

Borderline Americans

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Katherine Benton-Cohen
“Are you an American, or are you not?” This is the question at the heart of Katherine Benton-Cohen’s provocative history, which ties that seemingly remote corner of the country to one of America’s central concerns: the historical creation of racial boundaries. By showing the multiple possibilities for racial meanings in America, Benton-Cohen’s insightful and informative work challenges our assumptions about race and national identity.
Hardcover April 2009

Criminal Justice in China

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Klaus Mühlhahn
In a groundbreaking work, Klaus Mühlhahn offers a comprehensive examination of the criminal justice system in modern China, an institution deeply rooted in politics, society, and culture. Based on unprecedented research in Chinese archives and incorporating prisoner testimonies, witness reports, and interviews, this book is essential reading for understanding modern China.
Hardcover April 2009

Two Faiths, One Banner

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Ian Almond
When, in our turbulent day, we hear of a “clash of civilizations,” it’s easy to imagine an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom stretching back through time. Two Faiths, One Banner shows how in Europe, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. This bold book reveals how the idea of a “Christian Europe” long opposed by a “Muslim non-Europe” grossly misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex, and—above all—shared history.
Hardcover April 2009

Indian Work

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Daniel H. Usner
Representations of Indian economic life have played an integral role in discourses about poverty, social policy, and cultural difference but have received surprisingly little attention. Daniel Usner dismantles ideological characterizations of Indian livelihood to reveal the intricacy of economic adaptations in American Indian history.
Hardcover April 2009

A Cultural History of Modern Science in China

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Benjamin A. Elman
In A Cultural History of Modern Science in China, Elman has retold the story of the Jesuit impact on late imperial China, circa 1600-1800, and the Protestant era in early modern China from the 1840s to 1900 in a concise and accessible form ideal for the classroom.
Paperback April 2009

Paris from the Ground Up

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

James H. S. McGregor
Paris is the most personal of cities. There is a Paris for the medievalist, and another for the modernist—a Paris for expatriates, philosophers, artists, romantics, and revolutionaries of every stripe. James H. S. McGregor brings these multiple perspectives into focus throughout this concise, unique history of the City of Light. Color maps, along with identifying illustrations, make the city accessible to visitors by foot, Metro, or riverboat.
Hardcover April 2009

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lucas A. Powe
In this engaging—and disturbing—book, a leading historian of the Court reveals the close fit between its decisions and the nation’s politics. Drawing on more than four decades of thinking about the Supreme Court and its role in the American political system, this book offers a new, clear, and troubling perspective on American jurisprudence, politics, and history.
Hardcover April 2009

Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John Nesbitt
Assisted by Cecile Morrisson
The combined Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg collection of Byzantine seals is one of the largest in the world, containing 17,000 specimens. Volume 6 in the catalogue presents the seals of emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople. More than 250 seals are illustrated and accompanied—where appropriate—by a full commentary regarding each specimen’s date, biographical information on its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and iconographic features.
Hardcover April 2009

Cleopatra and Rome

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Diana E. E. Kleiner
In this beautifully illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra's and Rome's defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture. This culture best chronicles Cleopatra's legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
Paperback April 2009

The Common Law

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Oliver Wendell Holmes
Introduction by G. Edward White
Much more than an historical examination of liability, criminal law, torts, bail, possession and ownership, and contracts, The Common Law articulates the ideas and judicial theory of one of the greatest justices of the Supreme Court. The John Harvard Library presents a text that is, with occasional corrections of typographical errors, identical to that found in the first and all subsequent printings by Little, Brown.
Paperback April 2009

Dominance by Design

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Adas
Long before the United States became a major force in global affairs, Americans believed in their superiority over others because of their inventiveness, productivity, and economic and social well-being. U.S. expansionists assumed a mandate to "civilize" non-Western peoples by demanding submission to American technological prowess and design. Michael Adas brilliantly pursues the history of this mission through America's foreign relations over nearly four centuries from North America to the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf.
Paperback April 2009

A Fire in Their Hearts

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Tony Michels
The Yiddish socialist movement shaped Jewish communities across the United States well into the twentieth century and left an important political legacy that extends to the rise of neoconservatism. A story of hopeful successes and bitter disappointments, A Fire in Their Hearts brings to vivid life this formative period for American Jews and the American left.
Paperback April 2009

The Generalissimo

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jay Taylor
One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China’s rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States. Chiang Kai-shek, an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, dominates this story. Drawing heavily on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, The Generalissimo provides the most lively, sweeping, and objective biography yet of a man whose length of uninterrupted, active engagement at the highest levels in the march of history is excelled by few, if any, in modern history.
Hardcover April 2009

A Hundred Horizons

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Sugata Bose
A Hundred Horizons takes us to the shores of the Indian Ocean, in a brilliant reinterpretation of how culture developed and history was made at the height of the British raj. Sugata Bose explores the intricate social and economic webs of these shores from 1850 to 1950, finding evidence of the interdependence of the peoples of the lands beyond the horizon, from the Middle East to East Africa to Southeast Asia. This book reconstructs how a region's culture, economy, politics, and imagination are woven together in time and place.
Paperback April 2009

Manifest Destinies and Indigenous Peoples

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by David Maybury-Lewis
Edited by Theodore Macdonald
Edited by Biorn Maybury-Lewis
The renowned anthropologist and human rights advocate David Maybury-Lewis saw the Latin American frontiers as relatively unknown physical spaces as well as unexplored academic “territory.” The authors examine the narrative forms that stirred or rationalized expansion, and emphasize their impact on the native residents. The essays suggest a view of nationalism as a theoretical concept and of frontier expansion as a historical phenomenon.
Paperback April 2009

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Frederick Douglass
Introduction by Robert B. Stepto
No book more vividly explains the horror of American slavery and the emotional impetus behind the antislavery movement than Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. In an introductory essay, Robert Stepto re-examines the extraordinary life and achievement of a man who escaped from slavery to become a leading abolitionist and one of America's most important writers. The John Harvard Library text reproduces the first edition, published in Boston in 1845.
Paperback April 2009

Republic of Debtors

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Bruce H. Mann
Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, its sinfulness was preached by ministers and the right to imprison debtors was unquestioned. By 1800, imprisonment for debt was under attack and insolvency was no longer seen as a moral failure, merely an economic setback. In Republic of Debtors, Bruce H. Mann illuminates this crucial transformation in early American society.
Paperback April 2009

Revolution on My Mind

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jochen Hellbeck
Revolution on My Mind is a stunning revelation of the inner world of Stalin's Russia, showing us the minds and hearts of Soviet citizens who recorded their lives in diaries during an extraordinary period of revolutionary fervor and state terror. Jochen Hellbeck brings us face to face with gripping and unforgettably poignant life stories. This book brilliantly explores the forging of the revolutionary self in a study that speaks to the evolution of the individual in mass movements of our own time.
Paperback April 2009

Shaping the Industrial Century

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Alfred D. Chandler
The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century. He argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed.
Paperback April 2009

The Tokyo War Crimes Trial

Wed, 1 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Yuma Totani
This book assesses the historical significance of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE)—commonly called the Tokyo trial—established as the eastern counterpart of the Nuremberg trial in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
Paperback April 2009

Articulating the Sinosphere

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Joshua A. Fogel
Joshua Fogel offers an incisive historical look at Sino-Japanese relations from three different perspectives. Introducing the concept of “Sinosphere” to capture the nature of Sino-foreign relations both spatially and temporally, Fogel presents an original and thought-provoking study on the long, complex relationship between China and Japan.
Hardcover March 2009

Becoming African Americans

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Clare Corbould
Africa has always played a role in black identity, but it was in the tumultuous period between the two world wars that black Americans first began to embrace a modern African American identity. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa. Their consciousness of a dual identity anticipated the hyphenated identities of new immigrants in the years after World War II, and an emerging sense of what it means to be a modern American.
Hardcover March 2009

Byzantine Magic

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Henry Maguire
The authors reveal the scope, the forms, and the functioning of magic in Byzantine society, throwing light on a hitherto relatively little-known aspect of Byzantine culture, and, at the same time, expanding upon the contemporary debates concerning magic and its roles in pre-modern societies.
Paperback March 2009

The Conservative Turn

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Kimmage
The Conservative Turn tells the story of postwar America’s political evolution through two fascinating figures: Lionel Trilling and Whittaker Chambers, who went on to intellectual prominence, sharing the questions, crises, and challenges of their generation. Kimmage argues that the divergent careers of these two men exemplify important developments in postwar American politics: the emergence of modern conservatism and the rise of moderate liberalism.
Hardcover March 2009

Constantine Porphyrogenitus

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Gyula Moravcsik
Translated by Romilly J. H. Jenkins
Constantine Porphyrogenitus
This is a reprint of the second revised edition of the text and translation of the De Administrando Imperio written and compiled by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the tenth century. The edition includes general and critical introductions, an index of proper names, and an extensive glossary, as well as grammatical notes and an index of sources and parallel passages.
Paperback March 2009

Down a Narrow Road

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jay Dautcher
The Uyghurs, a Turkic group, account for half the population of the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. The narrative is framed around the terms identity, community, and masculinity. As the author shows, Yining’s Uyghurs express a set of individual and collective identities organized around place, gender, family relations, friendships, occupation, and religious practice.
Hardcover March 2009

Dry Spells

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke
Chinese officials put considerable effort into managing the fiscal and legal affairs of their jurisdictions, but they also devoted significant time and energy to performing religious rituals on behalf of the state. This groundbreaking study explores this underappreciated aspect of Chinese political life by investigating rainmaking activities organized or conducted by local officials in the Qing dynasty.
Hardcover March 2009

East & West

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by T. Corey Brennan
Edited by Harriet I. Flower
The papers in this volume are based on a 2006 Princeton University symposium in honor of Glen W. Bowersock on the occasion of his retirement from the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study. The topics offered in East and West range throughout the ancient world from the second century bce to late antiquity, from Hellenistic Greece and Republican Rome to Egypt and Arabia, from the Second Sophistic to Roman imperial discourse, from Sulla’s self-presentation in his memoirs to charitable giving among the Manichaeans in Egypt.
Hardcover March 2009

Greetings in the Lord

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

AnneMarie Luijendijk
This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
Paperback March 2009

Hunger by Design

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Halyna Hryn
The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the man-made famine inflicted on Ukraine and surrounding areas with a symposium in October 2003 titled “The Ukrainian Terror-Famine of 1932–1933: Revisiting the Issues and the Scholarship Twenty Years after the HURI Famine Project.” This volume contains some of the papers presented at the symposium (previously published in Harvard Ukrainian Studies volume 25, no. 3/4), including Sergei Maksudov’s large-scale demographic study drawing on available documents of the era; and Gijs Kessler’s study of events in the Urals region from the same period.
Paperback March 2009

In Defense of Common Sense

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lodi Nauta
One of the leading humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457) has been praised as a brilliant debunker of medieval scholastic philosophy. In this book Lodi Nauta seeks a more balanced assessment, presenting us with the first comprehensive analysis of the humanist’s attempt at radical reform of Aristotelian scholasticism.
Hardcover March 2009

Licentious Gotham

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Donna Dennis
Licentious Gotham, set in the streets, news depots, publishing houses, grand jury chambers, and courtrooms of the nation’s great metropolis, delves into the stories of the enterprising men and women who created a thriving transcontinental market for sexually arousing books and pictures. Donna Dennis offers a colorful, groundbreaking account of the birth of an indecent print trade and the origins of obscenity regulation in the United States.
Hardcover March 2009

A Line Drawn in the Sand

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Phyllis J. Kanki
Richard G. Marlink
A Line Drawn in the Sand captures the determination of several African nations, including Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania, in providing lifesaving antiretroviral therapies to their citizens. By emphasizing the dramatic results that investments in AIDS treatments in Africa can bring, the book provides lessons to nations about scaling up their own treatment responses, hope to individuals and communities confronted with the often devastating impact of AIDS, and inspiration to the international HIV/AIDS community.
Paperback March 2009

Naming Infinity

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Loren Graham
Jean-Michel Kantor
In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.
Hardcover March 2009

Orphans of the Republic

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Olivier Wieviorka
Translated by George Holoch
On July 10, 1940, by a 570 to 80 margin, the representatives in the French parliament voted full powers to Philippe Pétain, ending the Third Republic and paving the way for the collaborationist Vichy regime. Recreating the tense atmosphere of summer 1940, Olivier Wieviorka shows how pressures brought on by defeat could affect even the most hardened republicans. He illuminates the complex moral issues inherent in accommodation and collaboration in a time of crisis.
Hardcover March 2009

The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Steven Hahn
Pulitzer Prize–winner Steven Hahn’s provocative new book challenges deep-rooted views in the writing of American and African-American history. Moving from slave emancipations of the eighteenth century through slave activity during the Civil War and on to the black power movements of the twentieth century, he asks us to rethink African-American history and politics in bolder, more dynamic terms. Throughout, Hahn presents African Americans as central actors in the arenas of American politics, while emphasizing traditions of self-determination, self-governance, and self-defense.
Hardcover March 2009

The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Sachiko Murata
William C. Chittick
Weiming Tu
Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Liu Zhi (ca. 1670–1724) was one of the most important scholars of Islam in traditional China. His Tianfang xingli (Nature and Principle in Islam), the Chinese-language text translated here, focuses on the roots or principles of Islam. The copious annotations to the translation explain Liu’s text and draw attention to parallels in Chinese-, Arabic-, and Persian-language works as well as differences.
Hardcover March 2009

Three Byzantine Military Treatises

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited and translated by George T. Dennis
Threatened on all sides by relentless enemies for a thousand years, the Byzantines needed ready armies and secure borders. To this end, experienced commanders compiled practical handbooks of military strategy. Three such manuals are presented here. These treatises provide information not only on tactics and weaponry but also on the motivations of the men who risked their lives to defend the empire.
Paperback March 2009

Twentieth-Century New England Land Conservation

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Charles H. W. Foster
Written by and about New Englanders, this book is relevant to those attempting to address conservation problems on a regional basis. The stories told here are of people using what they had, setting to work to remedy these conditions, and doing so successfully. At a time of growing concern for the environment both locally and globally, theirs is a story certain to inform and inspire the next generation of conservation leaders.
Hardcover March 2009

Unclogging the Arteries

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mauricio Mesquita Moreira
Christian Volpe
Juan Blyde
This book explores the impact of transport costs on trade in Latin America and the Caribbean, and argues that transport costs have assumed an unprecedented strategic importance to the region. It concludes that a broader and more balanced trade agenda would bring the long-neglected issue of transport costs to the center of the policy debate.
Paperback March 2009

Worlds Made by Words

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Anthony Grafton
Grafton reveals the microdynamics of the scholarly life through a series of essays on institutions and on scholars ranging from early modern polymaths to modern intellectual historians to American thinkers and writers. When many of our fellow citizens seem to have forgotten why we collect books in the buildings we call libraries, Grafton’s engaging, erudite essays could be a rallying cry for the revival of the liberal arts.
Hardcover March 2009

The Golden Age of the Classics in America

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Carl J. Richard
In a masterful study Carl Richard explores how the Greek and Roman classics became enshrined in American antebellum culture. For the first time, knowledge of the classics extended beyond aristocratic males to the middle class, women, African Americans, and frontier settlers. The Civil War led to a radical alteration of the educational system in a way that steadily eroded the preeminence of the classics.
Hardcover March 2009

The Age of Confucian Rule

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Dieter Kuhn
Timothy Brook, General Editor
Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. This book is an essential introduction to this transformative era.
Hardcover March 2009

Lighting in Early Byzantium

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Laskarina Bouras
Maria Parani
Foreword by Susan A. Boyd
This book is the first general survey of lighting in Byzantium. The first part of the book discusses the technology and types of lighting devices and explains their decorative symbolism and social function. The second half illustrates this narrative by drawing on a Dumbarton Oaks exhibition.
Paperback March 2009

Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts II

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited and translated by Gregory G. Maskarinec
This volume is a bilingual collection of shaman oral texts from the Bhuji Valley of Western Nepal, in the original Nepali and with line-by-line English translation. Accompanying the book is a DVD of audio recordings of the shaman oral texts, supplementary texts not included in the published volume, videos of shaman performances, and additional video and photographic documentation of the social context in which these shamans are found.
Hardcover March 2009

Palaces of the Ancient New World

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Susan Toby Evans
Edited by Joanne Pillsbury
As in the Old World, kings and nobles of ancient Mexico and Peru had luxurious administrative quarters in cities, and exquisite pleasure palaces in the countryside. This volume explores the great houses of the ancient New World, from palaces of the Aztecs and Incas, looted by the Spanish conquistadors, to those lost high in the Andes and deep in the jungle.
Paperback March 2009

The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lawrence J. McCrea
This book examines the revolution in Sanskrit poetics initiated by the ninth-century Kashmiri Anandavardhana. Anandavardhana replaced the formalist aesthetic of earlier poeticians with one stressing the unifunctionality of literary texts, arguing that all components of a work should subserve a single purpose—the communication of a single emotional mood (rasa). Attention was redirected from formal elements toward specific poems, viewed as aesthetically integrated wholes, thereby creating new literary critical possibilities.
Hardcover March 2009

Arab-Byzantine Coins

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Clive Foss
This illustrated handbook presents a concise history of the development of the coinage of the early Arab caliphate in the seventh century. The historical introduction, which includes descriptions of all the basic types, is followed by a summary catalogue of the recently acquired collection of Arab-Byzantine coins at Dumbarton Oaks.
Paperback February 2009

Everyday Jihad

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bernard Rougier
Translated by Pascale Ghazaleh
As southern Lebanon becomes the latest battleground for Islamist warriors, Rougier plunges us into the heavily populated Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al-Helweh, which became a site for militant Sunni Islamists in the early 1990s. Rougier documents how Sunni fundamentalists, through their own interpretations of sacred texts and jihad, took root in this Palestinian milieu, and explains how radical religious allegiances overcome traditional nationalist sentiment in communities marked by poverty and despair.
Paperback February 2009

God's War

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Christopher Tyerman
The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman explores the centuries of violence committed in the name of religious devotion Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by paranoia and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, and told with great authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.
Paperback February 2009

Iron Kingdom

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Christopher Clark
Clark demonstrates how a state deemed the bane of twentieth-century Europe has played an incalculable role in Western civilization’s fortunes. Iron Kingdom is a definitive, gripping account of Prussia’s fascinating, influential, and critical role in modern times.
Paperback February 2009

The Jamestown Project

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Karen Ordahl Kupperman
Despite the original settlers' dependence on the Chesapeake Algonquians and strained relations with their London backers, they forged a colony that survived where others had failed. Reconfiguring the myth of Jamestown's failure, Kupperman shows how the settlement's messy first decade actually represented a period of ferment in which individuals were learning how to make a colony work.
Paperback February 2009

The Languages of Paradise

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Maurice Olender
Translated by Arthur Goldhammer
Maurice Olender shows that philology left an indelible mark on Western visions of history and contributed directly to some of the most horrifying ideologies of the twentieth century.
Paperback February 2009

Love for Lydia

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Nicholas D. Cahill
This generously illustrated volume, presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey.
Hardcover February 2009

Rulers and Victims

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Geoffrey Hosking
In this illuminating book, Geoffrey Hosking explores what the Soviet experience meant for Russians. Hosking analyzes how the Soviet state molded Russian identity, beginning with the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war. At the heart of this penetrating work is the fundamental question of what happens to a people who place their nationhood at the service of empire. There is no surer guide than Geoffrey Hosking to reveal the historical forces forging Russian identity in the post-communist world.
Paperback February 2009

Stealing Lincoln's Body

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Thomas J. Craughwell
On the night of the 1876 presidential election, a gang of counterfeiters attempted to steal the entombed embalmed body of Abraham Lincoln and hold it for ransom. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context. This rousing story of hapless con men, intrepid federal agents, and ordinary Springfield citizens offers an unusual glimpse into late-nineteenth-century America.
Paperback February 2009

The Two Princes of Calabar

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Randy J. Sparks
In 1767, two "princes" of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors--and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement. Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience. Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes' correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it.
Paperback February 2009

Xenophon's Retreat

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Robin Waterfield
In The Expedition of Cyrus, Xenophon told how, in 401 b.c., a band of unruly Greek mercenaries traveled east to fight for the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to wrest the throne from his brother. With this first masterpiece of Western history forming the backbone of his book, Robin Waterfield explores what remains unsaid and assumed in Xenophon's account. The result is a nuanced and dramatic perspective on a critical moment in history that may tell us as much about our present-day adventures in the Middle East.
Paperback February 2009

How Free Is Free?

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Leon F. Litwack
Despite two major efforts to reconstruct race relations, injustices remain. From the height of Jim Crow to the early twenty-first century, struggles over racism persist despite court decisions and legislation. Although a painful history to confront, Litwack’s book inspires as it probes the enduring story of racial inequality and the ongoing fight for freedom in black America.
Hardcover February 2009

China between Empires

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Mark Edward Lewis
Timothy Brook, General Editor
After the collapse of the Han dynasty in the third century CE, China divided along a north-south line. This book traces the changes that both underlay and resulted from this split in a period that saw the geographic redefinition of China, more engagement with the outside world, significant changes to family life, developments in the literary and social arenas, and the introduction of new religions.
Hardcover February 2009

Constructing the Monolith

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Marc J. Selverstone
This book not only explains the cold war mindset that determined global policy for much of the twentieth century, but reveals how the search to define a foreign threat can shape the ways in which that threat is actually met.
Hardcover February 2009

Military Culture in Imperial China

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Nicola Di Cosmo
These original essays explore the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics.
Hardcover February 2009

The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Jason Kaufman
Why do the United States and Canada have such divergent political cultures when they share one of the closest economic and cultural relationships in the world? Kaufman examines the North American political landscape to draw out the essential historical factors that underlie the countries’ differences.
Hardcover February 2009

Strait Talk

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker
Relations among the United States, Taiwan, and China challenge policymakers, international relations specialists, and a concerned public to examine their assumptions about security, sovereignty, and peace. Tucker traces the thorny relationship between the United States and Taiwan as both watch China’s power grow.
Hardcover February 2009

Exiles at Home

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Shirley Elizabeth Thompson
New Orleans has always captured our imagination as an exotic city in its racial ambiguity and pursuit of les bons temps. In tracing the experiences of creoles of color, Thompson illuminates the role ordinary Americans played in shaping an understanding of identity and belonging.
Hardcover February 2009

First Lady of the Confederacy

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Joan E. Cashin
When Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, his wife, Varina Howell Davis, reluctantly became the First Lady. Pro-slavery but also pro-Union, Varina Davis was inhibited by her role as Confederate First Lady and unable to reveal her true convictions.Cashin offers a splendid portrait of a fascinating woman who struggled with the constraints of her time and place.
Paperback February 2009

Italy and Its Invaders

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Girolamo Arnaldi
Translated by Antony Shugaar
From the earliest times, successive waves of foreign invaders have left their mark on Italy. Beginning with Germanic invasions that undermined the Roman Empire and culminating with the establishment of the modern nation, Girolamo Arnaldi explores the dynamic exchange between outsider and “native.”
Paperback February 2009

Rural Revolutions in Southern Ukraine

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Leonard Friesen
Leonard Friesen presents a study of the transformation of New Russia--the region north of the Black and Azov seas--from its conquest by the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century to the revolutionary tumult of 1905. Friesen focuses on the multifaceted relations between the region's peasants, European colonists, and Russian estate owners.
Hardcover February 2009

The Selma of the North

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Patrick D. Jones
Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism.
Hardcover February 2009

Charisma and Compassion

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

C. Julia Huang
Tzu-Chi (Compassion Relief) began as a tiny, grassroots women's charitable group; today in Taiwan it runs three state-of-the-art hospitals, a television channel, and a university. Based on extensive fieldwork in Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and the United States, this book explores the transformation of Tzu-Chi.
Hardcover January 2009

Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Dale Kent
Kent explores the meaning of love and friendship as they were represented in the fifteenth century, particularly the relationship between heavenly and human friendship.
Hardcover January 2009

Histoires Grecques

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Maurice Sartre
Translated by Catherine Porter
Sartre spans the grand narrative of Greek culture over a thousand years and a vast expanse of land and sea. Ranging from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean world, these excursions amount to a panoramic vision of one of the most important civilizations of all time.
Hardcover January 2009

Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Sean Safford
This book compares the recent history of Allentown, Pennsylvania, with that of Youngstown, Ohio. Safford offers a probing historical explanation for the decline, fall, and unlikely rejuvenation of the Rust Belt.
Hardcover January 2009

Up from History

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Robert J. Norrell
This compelling biography reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Booker T. Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination.
Hardcover January 2009

The Clash Within

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Martha C. Nussbaum
While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history.
Paperback January 2009

The Death of Captain Cook

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Glyn Williams
In a style that is more detective story than conventional biography, Williams explores the multiple narratives of Cook’s death. In short, Williams examines the story of Cook’s progress from obscurity to fame and, eventually, to infamy—a story that, until now, has never been fully told.
Hardcover January 2009

Demons and Dancers

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Ruth Webb
Compared to the wealth of information available to us about classical tragedy and comedy, not much is known about the culture of pantomime, mime, and dance in late antiquity. Webb fills this gap in our knowledge of the ancient world and provides us with a detailed look at social life in the late antique period through an investigation of its performance culture.
Hardcover January 2009

Artistry of the Everyday

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Lisa Bernasek
Photographs by Hillel S. Burger
Photographs by Mark Craig
Foreword by Susan Gilson Miller
Imazighen! Beauty and Artisanship in Berber Life presents the Peabody Museum's collection of arts from the Berber-speaking regions of North Africa. The book gives an overview of Berber history and culture, focusing on the rich aesthetic traditions of Amazigh (Berber) craftsmen and women. The book also tells the stories of the collectors--both world-traveling Bostonians and Harvard-trained anthropologists--who brought these objects to Cambridge in the early twentieth century.
Paperback December 2008

Christianity and the Transformation of the Book

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Anthony Grafton
Megan Williams
Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.
Paperback December 2008

Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1, Phaedrus and Ion

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Marsilio Ficino
Edited and translated by Michael J. B. Allen
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. This volume contains Ficino’s extended analysis and commentary on the Phaedrus.
Hardcover December 2008

Creating a Nation of Joiners

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Johann N. Neem
Ever since Alexis de Tocqueville published his observations in Democracy in America, Americans have recognized the distinctiveness of their voluntary tradition. In a work of political, legal, social, and intellectual history, Neem traces the origins of this venerable tradition to the vexed beginnings of American democracy in Massachusetts.
Hardcover December 2008

The Declaration of Independence

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

David Armitage
Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world.
Paperback December 2008

Deliverance and Submission

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Kelly H. Chong
South Korea is home to some of the largest evangelical Protestant congregations in the world. This book investigates the meaning of—and the reasons behind—a particular aspect of contemporary South Korean evangelicalism: the intense involvement of middle-class women. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul that explores the relevance of women’s experiences to Korean evangelicalism, Kelly H. Chong not only helps provide a broader picture of the evangelical movement’s success in South Korea, but addresses the global question of contemporary women's attraction to religious traditionalism.
Hardcover December 2008

Democracy Denied, 1905-1915

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Charles Kurzman
Kurzman proposes that the collective agent most directly responsible for democratization was the emerging class of modern intellectuals, a group that had gained a global identity and a near-messianic sense of mission following the Dreyfus Affair of 1898. Each chapter of this book focuses on a single angle of this story, covering all six cases by examining newspaper accounts, memoirs, and government reports.
Hardcover December 2008

Dry Manhattan

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Michael A. Lerner
In 1919, the United States made its boldest attempt at social reform: Prohibition. This "noble experiment" was aggressively promoted, and spectacularly unsuccessful, in New York City. In the first major work on Prohibition in a quarter century, and the only full history of Prohibition in the era's most vibrant city, Lerner describes a battle between competing visions of the United States that encompassed much more than the freedom to drink.
Paperback December 2008

The Fires of Vesuvius

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Mary Beard
Although Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem, Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, she offers us the big picture of the inhabitants of the lost city.
Hardcover December 2008

Innocents Abroad

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Jonathan Zimmerman
Until the early twentieth century, teachers went abroad with assumptions of their own superiority. But by the mid-twentieth century, they became far more self-questioning about their social assumptions, their educational theories, and the complexity of their role in a foreign society. Drawing on extensive archives of teachers' letters and accounts, Zimmerman's narrative explores the teachers' shifting attitudes about their country and themselves, in a world that was more unexpected than they could have imagined.
Paperback December 2008

Journey to the East

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Liam Matthew Brockey
It was one of the great encounters of world history: highly educated European priests confronting Chinese culture for the first time in the modern era. This “journey to the East” is explored by Brockey as he retraces the path of the Jesuit missionaries who sailed from Portugal to China.
Paperback December 2008

Lust for Liberty

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Samuel K. Cohn
Lust for Liberty challenges long-standing views of popular medieval revolts. Comparing rebellions in northern and southern Europe over two centuries, Samuel Cohn analyzes their causes and forms, their leadership, the role of women, and the suppression or success of these revolts. The book offers a new interpretation of the Black Death and the increase of and change in popular revolt from the mid-1350s to the early fifteenth century.
Paperback December 2008

Men of Letters Within the Passes

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Chang Woei Ong
The main theme of this book is the interaction between two “places,” China and Guanzhong, the capital area of several dynasties. This work examines how Guanzhong literati conceptualized three sets of relations: central/regional, “official”/“unofficial,” and national/local. It further traces the formation over the last millennium of the imperial state of a critical communal self-consciousness.
Hardcover December 2008

A Nation by Design

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Aristide R. Zolberg
In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building. This is an authoritative account of American immigration history and the political and social factors that brought it about. Zolberg's book shows how America has struggled to shape the immigration process to construct the kind of population it desires.
Paperback December 2008

The Peculiar Life of Sundays

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Stephen Miller
From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath.
Hardcover December 2008

Remembering Awatovi

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Hester A. Davis
Remembering Awatovi is the engaging story of a major archaeological expedition on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Centered on the large Pueblo village of Awatovi, with its Spanish mission church and beautiful kiva murals, the excavations are renowned not only for the data they uncovered but also for the interdisciplinary nature of the investigations. In archaeological lore they are also remembered for the diverse, fun-loving, and distinguished cast of characters who participated in or visited the dig.
Hardcover / Paperback December 2008

Saltwater Slavery

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Stephanie E. Smallwood
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Saltwater Slavery is animated by deep research and gives us a graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade.
Paperback December 2008

Stonehenge

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Rosemary Hill
Hill guides the reader on a tour of Stonehenge in all its cultural contexts, as a monument to many things—to Renaissance Humanism, Romantic despair, Victorian enterprise, and English Radicalism.
Hardcover December 2008

Your Death Would Be Mine

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Martha Hanna
Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war.
Paperback December 2008

Ethnic Modernism

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Werner Sollors
In the first half of the twentieth century, the United States moved from the periphery to the center of global cultural production. How did African American, European immigrant, and other minority writers take part in these developments that also transformed the United States, giving it an increasingly multicultural self-awareness? This book attempts to address this question in a series of innovative and engaging close readings of major texts from this period.
Paperback November 2008

Horses at Work

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Ann Norton Greene
Greene argues for recognition of horses’ critical contribution to the history of American energy and the rise of American industrial power, and a new understanding of the reasons for their replacement as prime movers.
Hardcover November 2008

Hysterical Men

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Mark S. Micale
Over the course of several centuries, Western masculinity has successfully established itself as the voice of reason, knowledge, and sanity—the basis for patriarchal rule—in the face of massive testimony to the contrary. This book boldly challenges this triumphant vision of the stable and secure male by examining the central role played by modern science and medicine in constructing and sustaining it.
Hardcover November 2008

Mazarin's Quest

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Paul Sonnino
Sonnino examines the diplomatic negotiations that took place in Westphalia from 1643 to 1648, which brought an end to the agonizing civil and religious conflict of the Thirty Years’ War.
Hardcover November 2008

Migration Miracle

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Jacqueline Maria Hagan
Migration Miracle humanizes the immigration controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrants’ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertaking—the role of religion and faith in surviving the journey.
Hardcover November 2008

Neo-Confucianism in History

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Peter K. Bol
The book argues that as Neo-Confucians put their philosophy of learning into practice in local society, they justified a new social ideal in which society at the local level was led by the literati with state recognition and support.
Hardcover November 2008

Sowing the Dragon's Teeth

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Eric McGeer
The military achievements of the emperors Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and Basil II brought the Byzantine Empire to the height of its power by the early eleventh century. This volume presents new editions and translations of two military treatises–the Praecepta militaria of Nikephoros Phokas and the revised version included in the Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos.
Paperback November 2008

The Triumph of Music

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Tim Blanning
Blanning considers music in conjunction with nationalism, race, and sex. Although not always in step, music, society, and politics, he shows, march in the same direction.
Hardcover November 2008

Who Owns the Sky?

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Stuart Banner
A collection of curious tales questioning the ownership of airspace and a reconstruction of a truly novel moment in the history of American law, Banner’s book reminds us of the powerful and reciprocal relationship between technological innovation and the law.
Hardcover November 2008

Popular Protest in China

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Kevin J. O'Brien
Unrest in China, from the dramatic events of 1989 to more recent stirrings, offers a rare opportunity to consider how popular contention unfolds in places where speech and assembly are tightly controlled. The contributors to this volume argue that ideas inspired by social movements elsewhere can help explain popular protest in China.
Hardcover / Paperback November 2008

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Gilles Kepel
Kepel urges us to escape the ideological quagmire of terrorism and martyrdom and explore the terms of a new and constructive dialogue between Islam and the West. This book sounds the alarm to the West and to Islam that both of these exhausted narratives are bankrupt—neither productive of democratic change in the Middle East nor of unity in Islam.
Hardcover November 2008

Taj Mahal

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Giles Tillotson
The meaning of the Taj Mahal, the perceptions and responses it prompts, ideas about the building and the history that shape them: these form the subject of Tillotson’s book. More than a richly illustrated history, this book is an eloquent meditation on the place of the Taj Mahal in the cultural imagination of India and the wider world.
Hardcover November 2008

Killing for Coal

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Thomas G. Andrews
This book offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a story of transformation, Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century.
Hardcover October 2008

What Blood Won't Tell

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Ariela J. Gross
Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Gross’s book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society.
Hardcover October 2008

From Egypt to Babylon

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Paul Collins
For those who believe that globalization is a purely modern phenomenon, this book holds a startling and absorbing lesson. Readers are immersed in a world of exotic empires and states as they waxed and waned and interacted in a period of extraordinary internationalism—all before the rise of the Persian Empire.
Hardcover October 2008

Practitioners of the Divine

Wed, 1 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Beate Dignas
Kai Trampedach
“What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis.
Paperback October 2008

Becoming Brazuca

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Clémence Jouët-Pastré
Edited by Leticia J. Braga
Brazilians in the United States are a relatively new wave of immigrants from South America. This volume offers a broad-ranging discussion of an understudied population and also brings insights into the core issues of immigration research: how immigration can complicate issues of social class, race, and ethnicity, how it intersects with the educational system, and how it fits into the assimilation paradigm.
Paperback September 2008

Children of the Revolution

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Robert Gildea
For those who lived in the wake of the French Revolution, from the storming of the Bastille to Napoleon’s final defeat, its aftermath left a profound wound that no subsequent king, emperor, or president could heal. This book follows the ensuing generations who repeatedly tried and failed to come up with a stable regime after the trauma of 1789.
Hardcover September 2008

The Great Wall Revisited

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

William Lindesay
A journey along the Great Wall in the past and present, this landmark volume offers an extraordinary portrait of perhaps the world’s most famous structure.
Hardcover September 2008

Humanist Educational Treatises

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Translated by Craig W. Kallendorf
This volume provides new translations, commissioned for the I Tatti Renaissance Library, of four of the most important theoretical statements that emerged from the early humanists’ efforts to reform medieval education.
Paperback September 2008

Invectives

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Francesco Petrarca
Translated by David Marsh
Petrarca, one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive ancient Roman language and literature. Petrarch’s four Invectives, written in Latin, were inspired by the eloquence of the great Roman orator Cicero. The new translations in this volume include the first English translation of three of the four invectives.
Paperback September 2008

On the Donation of Constantine

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Lorenzo Valla
Translated by G. W. Bowersock
Valla (1407–1457) was the leading theorist of the Renaissance humanist movement. In On the Donation of Constantine he uses new philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy’s claims to temporal rule, in a brilliant analysis that is often seen as marking the beginning of modern textual criticism. This volume provides a new translation with introduction and notes by Bowersock.
Paperback September 2008

The Power of the Buddhas

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Sem Vermeersch
Buddhism in medieval Korea is characterized as “State Protection Buddhism,” a religion whose primary purpose was to rally support (supernatural and popular) for and legitimate the state. This study is an attempt to specify Buddhism’s place in Koryo and to ascertain to what extent and in what areas Buddhism functioned as a state religion.
Hardcover September 2008

Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Daphna Ephrat
This book represents the first continuous history of Sufism in Palestine. Covering the period between the rise of Islam and the spread of Ottoman rule and drawing on vast biographical material and complementary evidence, the book describes the social trajectory that Sufism followed.
Paperback September 2008

Art of Ancient Egypt

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Gay Robins
From the awesome grandeur of the Great Pyramids to the delicacy of a face etched on an amulet, the power of ancient Egyptian art persists to this day. Spanning three thousand years, this illustrated history offers a thorough and delightfully readable introduction to the artwork.
Paperback September 2008

Hadrian

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Thorsten Opper
Even in the panoply of Roman history, Hadrian stands out. This book moves beyond the familiar image of Hadrian to offer a new appraisal of this Emperor’s contradictory personality, his exploits and accomplishments, his rule, and his military role, against the backdrop of his twenty-one-year reign.
Hardcover September 2008

Culture, Courtiers, and Competition

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by David M. Robinson
This collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged.
Hardcover September 2008

Dreaming Across Boundaries

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Louise Marlow
This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.
Hardcover / Paperback July 2008

American Mediterranean

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Matthew Pratt Guterl
How did slave-owning Southern planters make sense of the transformation of their world in the Civil War era Guterl shows that they looked beyond their borders for answers and examines how the Southern elite connected—by travel, print culture, even the prospect of future conquest—with the communities of New World slaveholders as they redefined their world.
Hardcover June 2008

Americans All

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Diana Selig
From the 1920s—a decade marked by racism and nativism—through World War II, hundreds of thousands of Americans took part in a vibrant campaign to overcome racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices. Progressive activists encouraged pluralism in homes, schools, and churches across the country.Selig tells the neglected story of the cultural gifts movement, which flourished between the world wars.
Hardcover June 2008

Classic-Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Philip J. Arnold
Edited by Christopher A. Pool
This book explores the diverse traditions and dynamic interactions along the Mexican Gulf lowlands at the height of their cultural florescence. Best known for their elaborate ball game rituals and precocious inscriptions with long-count dates, these cultures served as a critical nexus between the civilizations of highland Mexico and the lowland Maya, influencing developments in both regions.
Hardcover June 2008

Dumbarton Oaks

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Edited by Gudrun Bühl
Dumbarton Oaks houses the extraordinary art collection begun by Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. In this book the museum publishes the specialist collections in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art, along with examples from the Blisses’ superb European collection, for the first time.
Paperback June 2008

Emigrant Nation

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Mark I. Choate
Between 1880 and 1915, thirteen million Italians left their homeland, launching the largest emigration from any country in recorded world history. In its discussion of immigrant culture, transnational identities, and international politics, this book not only narrates the grand story of Italian emigration but also provides important background to immigration debates that continue to this day.
Hardcover June 2008

Euripides, VII, Fragments

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Euripides
Edited and translated by Christopher Collard
Edited and translated by Martin Cropp
The extant plays and the fragments together make Euripides by far the best known of the classic Greek tragedians. This edition offers the first complete English translation of the fragments together with a selection of testimonia bearing on the content of the plays. Each play is prefaced by a select bibliography and an introductory discussion of its mythical background, plot, and location of the fragments, general character, chronology, and impact on subsequent literary and artistic traditions.
Hardcover June 2008

The Learned Banqueters, IV, Books 8-10.420e

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Athenaeus
Edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson
Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. The work (which dates to the very end of the second century CE) is amusing and of extraordinary value as a treasury of quotations from works now lost.
Hardcover June 2008

Nexus

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Jonathan Reed Winkler
In an illuminating study that blends diplomatic, military, technology, and business history, Winkler shows how U.S. officials during World War I discovered the enormous value of global communications. In this absorbing history, Winkler sheds light on the early stages of the global infrastructure that helped launch the United States as the predominant power of the century.
Hardcover June 2008

Normandy

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Olivier Wieviorka
Translated by M. B. DeBevoise
The Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, have assumed legendary status in the annals of World War II. But in overly romanticizing D-day, Wieviorka argues, we have lost sight of the full picture. Normandy offers a balanced, complete account that reveals the successes and weaknesses of the titanic enterprise.
Hardcover June 2008