Today marks the first day of summer, and to celebrate, we're giving our customers a bigtime discount. With Penn Press's SUMMER READING SALE, U.S. customers receive 50% off all titles from pennpress.org using discount code SUMMER19! Check out our latest slate of new titles below.
Jump to: Featured Titles | American History | Anthropology | Intellectual History | Literature and Cultural Studies | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Political Science and Human Rights
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FEATURED TITLES
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"Brenna Wynn Greer reveals how corporations and professional image-makers gave us some of our earliest photographic visions of freedom, showing how they captured, in the process, our most iconic snapshots of the black freedom struggle. Black capitalism and black activism have long been part of a single history. Represented now gifts us that history—timely and transformative—in a single, important book."—N. D. B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida Focusing on advertising and public relations guru Moss Kendrix, Ebony publisher John H. Johnson, and Life photographer Gordon Parks, Brenna Wynn Greer chronicles how black capitalists made the market work for racial progress on their way to making money. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 336 pages | 6 x 9 | 61 illus. Order Represented and save 50%! |
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"Informative and provocative, Religion in the Public Square is original in its interpretations and judicious in its assessments. James M. Patterson makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the role of preachers and public religion in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century"—Robert Kraynak, Colgate University Religion in the Public Square examines how three very different members of clergy—Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rev. Jerry Falwell—each persuaded politicians and ordinary people that his theological ideas formed the foundation of American politics. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 Order Religion in the Public Square and save 50%! |
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"An important and influential book. Integrating North and South Atlantic dynamics and Anglo and Iberian Atlantic worlds, Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots provides an original and insightful contribution to debates on sovereignty, free trade, mercantilism, independence movements, regional identities, and U.S. state formation."—Fabricio Prado, College of William and Mary Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult, revealing how merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates influenced contentious paths of independence in the United States and Brazil. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. Order Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots and save 50%! |
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"Uncovering truths about the meaning of the body that are not as self-evident as its unadorned form would claim, Sarah Schrank's Free and Natural is a lively, enlightening book authored by an accomplished historian at the height of her powers."—Whitney Strub, Rutgers University-Newark Free and Natural is a cultural history of nudity offering an in-depth account of how the naked body came to be closely tied to modern ideas about nature and authenticity. Sarah Schrank explores how the "free and natural" lifestyle emerged from the history of the nudist movement, sexual and environmental politics, and consumer capitalism. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 48 illus. Order Free and Natural and save 50%! |
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Liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic find themselves approaching a state of emergency, beset by potent populist challenges of the right and left. But what exactly lies at the core of widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo? In Democracy in Crisis, Christian Lammert and Boris Vormann argue that the rise of populism in North Atlantic states is not the cause of a crisis of governance but its result. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 144 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 Order Democracy in Crisis and save 50%! |
AMERICAN HISTORY
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"In A Brotherhood of Liberty, Halpin describes how the African American community of Baltimore used activism to define citizenship and freedom after the Civil War. The book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of African American politics from the age of Emancipation through the hardening of Jim Crow to the law-and-order policies of the so-called Progressive Era."—Shawn Alexander, University of Kansas Dennis Patrick Halpin argues that Baltimore is key to understanding the trajectory of civil rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A Brotherhood of Liberty traces the civil rights victories scored by black Baltimoreans that inspired activists throughout the nation and subsequent generations. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 14 illus. Order A Brotherhood of Liberty and save 50%! |
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"Engagingly written and persuasively argued, Covenant Brothers is based on extraordinary primary research that amply demonstrates that we cannot understand U.S.-Israel relations without examining the impact Israel had on American opinion."—Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge Weaving together the stories of activists, American Jewish leaders, and Israeli officials in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Covenant Brothers portrays the dramatic rise of evangelical Christian Zionism as it gained prominence in American politics and international relations after World War II. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 Order Covenant Brothers and save 50%! |
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"Featuring impressive research in multiple languages, important historical recovery from the archives, theological nuance, and attention to context, A Gospel for the Poor captures perfectly the complexities of far-flung global evangelical relationships in the Cold War era."—David R. Swartz, author of Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism A Gospel for the Poor adopts a transnational perspective to tell the story of how a Cold War generation of progressive Latin Americans, including seminal figures such as Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar, developed, named, and exported their version of social Christianity to an evolving coalition of global evangelicals. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. Order A Gospel for the Poor and save 50%! |
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"A fine contribution to the resurgent field of early American environmental history. Strother E. Roberts deftly integrates Atlantic and continental approaches, and his materialist emphasis nicely complements recent works on early New England's environmental history that focus on cultural representations."—James Rice, Tufts University Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy focuses on New England's largest watershed to explore how the participation of Native nations and English settlers in local, regional, and transatlantic markets for colonial commodities transformed the physical environment in one corner of the rapidly globalizing early modern world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus. Order Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy and save 50%! |
ANTHROPOLOGY
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"Making Peace with Your Enemy is a breakthrough book. Laetitia Bucaille focuses on how former combatants experienced the cessation of hostilities and the ways in which they represent their past. She builds incisively on the narratives—and silences—of torturers and tortured, hunters and hunted, and the intertwined official and personal remembering and forgetting on all sides in France, Algeria, and South Africa. Fresh and compelling, this book is a must-read."—Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College In its comparative analysis of postcolonial South Africa and Algeria and its examination of narratives of ex-combatants, Making Peace with Your Enemy demonstrates how former adversaries face a similar challenge: how to extricate oneself from colonial domination and the violence of war in order to build relationships based on trust. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 376 pages | 6 x 9 Order Making Peace with Your Enemy and save 50%! |
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
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"Yael Almog explores the centrality of Biblical interpretation, in the critical period 1750-1850, to the shifting configuration of secularization, hermeneutics and politics. She convincingly shows through original and detailed studies of such figures as Herder, Mendelssohn, Heine, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, that the emergence of a new aesthetics derived from changing interpretations of the Old Testament and that, in turn, the advent of a new 'reader' was constitutive for the appearance of a new citizen."—David Sorkin, Yale University Yael Almog examines the works of thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder, Moses Mendelssohn, and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and reveals the tension between textual exegesis and confessional belonging. Secularism and Hermeneutics challenges the modern presumption that interpretation is indifferent to religious concerns. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 216 pages | 6 x 9 Order Secularism and Hermeneutics and save 50%! |
LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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"Samuel Fallon is a skilled and often revelatory close reader of literature who displays a remarkable familiarity with minor writers and publishers of late Elizabethan England. Capacious and ambitious in its scope, Paper Monsters is a distinctive and highly accomplished piece of literary criticism."—Alan Stewart, Columbia University In Paper Monsters, Samuel Fallon charts the striking rise in the 1590's of a new species of textual being: the serial, semifictional persona. He argues that their status as collective fictions, passed among writers, publishers, and readers, positioned personae as the animating figures of what we have come to call "print culture." Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus. Order Paper Monsters and save 50%! |
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"Fiction Without Humanity is a profound book that tenders as many pleasures as Pope or Swift as it dances between empirical minima (fleas, flies, personal pronouns, unmatched shoes) and concepts and questions that remain urgent today: Just what makes a thing count as human? How does literary form participate in this accounting? What, specifically, does literature do to, with, for us humans? Lynn Festa has written a posthumanist classic—albeit one that returns us to a new and more demanding humanity."—Jayne Lewis, author of Air's Appearance: Literary Atmosphere in British Fiction, 1660-1794 Drawing on the estranging perspectives of nonhuman creatures and inanimate things in riddles, fables, novels, scientific treatises, and trompe l'oeil and still-life painting, Fiction Without Humanity offers a literary history of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century efforts to define the human. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 364 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 color, 11 b/w illus. Order Fiction Without Humanity and save 50%! |
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"The Two Powers offers a new and convincing statement on the relations between papacy and empire in the first half of the thirteenth century and demolishes the current rather simplistic assessments of papal attitudes to Frederick II."—R. N. Swanson, University of Birmingham Covering decades that included the last major crusades, the birth of the Inquisition, and the unexpected invasion of the Mongols, The Two Powers shows how Popes Gregory and Innocent's battles with Emperor Frederick shaped the political circumstances of the thirteenth-century papacy and its role in the public life of medieval Christendom. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 328 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 8 illus. Order The Two Powers and save 50%! |
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"Including letters, dramatic works, and other texts that do not often come first to readers' minds when thinking of Machiavelli, Mark Jurdjevic and Meredith K. Ray have provided a selection of his work that paints a new and interesting portrait of the political theorist. Arranged chronologically, these lesser-known texts frame excerpts from The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and The Art of War, resulting in a finely grained intellectual autobiography. The volume is perfect for the classroom and for readers interested in gaining a fuller understanding of Machiavelli's thought."— Christopher S. Celenza, Georgetown University Throughout his life, Niccolò Machiavelli's overriding central concerns were the present and future strength and independence of Florence. Presenting a wide sample of the many genres in which he wrote, this volume highlights and explores this underappreciated aspect of Machiavelli's intellectual preoccupations. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Order Machiavelli and save 50%! |
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"Matthew W. Maguire's mastery of Charles Péguy's voluminous writings is impressive. His book will bring certain contemporary questions into sharp relief, not least the new forms of totalization and control whose early versions Péguy detected at the turn of the twentieth century."—Annette Aronowicz, author of Jews and Christians on Time and Eternity: Charles Péguy's Portrait of Bernard-Lazare Carnal Spirit expertly delineates the historical origins of Charles Péguy's thinking, its unique trajectory, and its unusual position in his own time, and shows the ways in which Péguy anticipated the divisions that continue to trouble our contemporary moment. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 296 pages | 6 x 9 Order Carnal Spirit and save 50%! |
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"A well designed and executed volume,The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights offers a balanced and wide-ranging overview of both important rights issues—such as freedom of expression and the rights of the child—and the varied domains of the OIC's activities, from its participation in the United Nations to its role in resolving conflicts and facilitating foreign aid."—Jack Donnelly, University of Denver Founded in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an intergovernmental organization whose purpose is the strengthening of solidarity among Muslims. With expectations as to the OIC's role in global human rights that are, to date, unfulfilled, this volume demonstrates the potential, obstacles, and shortcomings of the OIC. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 344 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. Order The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights and save 50%! |
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