The Holiday season is upon us, and if you're looking for last-minute gifts, or just trying to sort out your own vacation reading, Penn Press has a host of new titles to pique your interest. Below you can browse through our selections, with topics spanning from presidential biography to the role of women's rights in U.S. foreign policy to a saga of 14th-century hallucinations. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!
Jump to: Featured Titles | Anthropology | Early American Studies | Literature and Cultural Studies | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Political Science and Human Rights | Urban Studies
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FEATURED TITLES
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"[Donald T.] Critchlow maintains that individual virtue and ‘principled pragmatism’ are essential ingredients in presidential success. . . . [T]his readable history offers shrewd insights into the disposition of national leaders then and now."—Publishers Weekly Republican Character examines the role of temperament, personality, character, and leadership ability in political success. Donald T. Critchlow compares the strengths and weaknesses of four key Republicans—Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan—as well as the uneasy alliances that arose between them. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 192 pages | 6 x 9 |
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In 2007, after serving almost fifteen years on the Philadelphia City Council, Michael A. Nutter became the ninety-eighth mayor of his hometown of Philadelphia. From the time he was sworn in until he left office in 2016, there were triumphs and challenges, from the mundane to the unexpected, from snow removal, trash collection, and drinkable water, to the Phillies' World Series win, Hurricane Irene, Occupy Philadelphia, and the Papal visit. In Mayor, Nutter tells the compelling story of a dedicated staff working together to affect positively the lives of the people of Philadelphia every day. His anecdotes, advice, and insights will excite and interest anyone with a desire to understand municipal government. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 200 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 16 illus. |
Republican Character: From Nixon to Reagan
Mayor: The Best Job in PoliticsANTHROPOLOGY
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"Arguing that the anthropology of kinship and political anthropology have become two distinct sub-disciplines, mirroring the assumed dichotomy of traditional versus modern societies, this edited volume sets out to demonstrate the theoretical weakness that arises of such positions. Through excellent chapters by experienced anthropologists, we are shown the fallacy of the separation. Kinship and politics emerge as mutually constitutive enriching our understanding of both."—Signe Howell, University of Oslo Reconnecting State and Kinship seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between state and kinship, asking whether concepts associated with one sphere surface in the other, tracking the evolution of these concepts through time and space, and exploring how this binary is reinforced within the social sciences. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 6 x 9 |
Reconnecting State and KinshipEARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
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"Brilliantly illustrated and written with flashes of wit and humor, Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic traces the shift in people's thinking about nature from the medieval to the modern period. Peter C. Mancall brings his encyclopedic knowledge of the primary and secondary sources to bear on monsters, insects, tropical forests, and indigenous peoples and shows that a new fascination with the material spectacle of the New World contributed to secular explanations of natural phenomena."—Donald Worster, author of Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic reveals how Europeans and Native Americans devised ways to understand the environment. Drawing on paintings, oral history, early printed books, and other cultural artifacts, Peter C. Mancall argues that human understanding of nature played a central role in the emergence of the modern world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 212 pages | 7 x 10 | 12 color, 51 b/w illus. |
Nature and Culture in the Early Modern AtlanticLITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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"This is in every respect a brilliant and path-breaking book. Katherine Ibbett is ferociously smart, wonderfully humane, a gloriously playful and lucid writer, and a genuinely gifted close reader. Compassion's Edge will provoke a great deal of discussion and debate, opening new avenues of reflection and research."—Christopher Braider, University of Colorado at Boulder Compassion's Edge traces the relation between compassion and toleration after France's Wars of Religion. This is not, however, a story about compassion overcoming difference but one of compassion reinforcing division. It provides a robust corrective to today's hope that fellow-feeling draws us inexorably and usefully together. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. |
Compassion's Edge: Fellow-Feeling and Its Limits in Early Modern FranceMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"Late-medieval accounts of illiterate peasants are few and far between, making this in-depth study of Ermine de Reims (c. 1347-96) and her otherworldly encounters a welcome addition to medieval studies . . . Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski explores the world of Ermine in broad strokes, telling Ermine's intriguing story and filling in the corners with context."—The Catholic Historical Review In 1395, a poor and illiterate French woman began to experience nightly visions of devils and angels. Was she a saint, a witch, an impostor, or a madwoman? Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski looks for answers in the historical and theological context of this troubled woman's life and times. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"Laura Ephraim brilliantly unsettles and constructively reorganizes the terms of political theory's approach to the intersection of science and politics. Who Speaks for Nature? is an outstanding book, deeply informed by the history of modern political and scientific thought yet engaged with the immediate political stakes of controversies about scientific authority, in the social and natural sciences alike."—Patchen Markell, University of Chicago Laura Ephraim reveals the origins and limits of scientists' remarkably resilient yet controversial authority to speak for nature. Through innovative readings of Descartes, Hobbes, Arendt, and others, she uncovers fresh insights into contemporary dilemmas surrounding the place of scientists in public life and environmental politics. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 200 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Latin America Since the Left Turn is an excellent collection of essays. It provides a unique contribution to the understanding of post-neoliberalism and brings together a wide array of research approaches, epistemologies, and perspectives."—Maria Victoria Murillo, Columbia University Latin America Since the Left Turn frames the tensions and contradictions that currently characterize Latin American societies and politics in the early decades of the twenty-first century, when many countries elected left-wing governments in an attempt to reverse the neoliberal agenda while others continued and even extended it. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 384 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus. |
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Islamist political parties and groups are on the rise throughout the Muslim world, constituting a new political Islam that is global in scope and yet local in action. Emmanuel Karagiannis explains how various Islamists have endorsed human rights, democracy, and justice to gain influence and mobilize supporters. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus. |
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"This book is excellent: cautious but cogent in its arguments, comprehensive in its research, and balanced, but not bland, in its conclusions. Kelly Shannon demonstrates that issues of women and gender have infiltrated U.S. policymaking circles concerned with the Muslim Middle East since 1979, and, while she is not the first to suggest this, she is emphatically the first to trace these issues systematically through recent history and to elucidate them so fully."—Andrew J. Rotter, Colgate University U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights explores the integration of American concerns about women's human rights into U.S. policy toward Islamic countries since 1979, reframing U.S.-Islamic relations and challenging assumptions about the drivers of American foreign policy. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"A Road to Nowhere is a wonderfully suggestive and gracefully written, succinct but never superficial, exploration of a remarkable group of thinkers and critics who have in common one thing and one thing alone: a rejection of the modern ideology of progress."—Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College Matthew W. Slaboch examines the work of German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Oswald Spengler, Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and American historians Henry Adams and Christopher Lasch—rare skeptics of the idea of progress who have much to offer political theory, a field dominated by historical optimists. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 208 pages | 6 x 9 |
Who Speaks for Nature?: On the Politics of Science
Latin America Since the Left Turn
The New Political Islam: Human Rights, Democracy, and Justice
U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights
A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its CriticsURBAN STUDIES
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"Salzmann's study of the Chicago waterfront is informative and insightful. His use of detailed archival and published sources to argue for the importance of the state in promoting economic development and creating space for recreation and tourism illuminates the various interests and forces that influence policy."—Joel Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University In the nineteenth century, politicians transformed a disease-infested bog on the shore of Lake Michigan into an intensely managed waterscape supporting the life and economy of Chicago. Liquid Capital shows how Chicago's waterfront became both an economic hub and the site of many precedent-setting decisions about public land use. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 240 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
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"Peter Brown interviewed more than 100 people involved in real estate development. He understands how the key players—developers, architects, engineers and government officials—interact to develop new or repurposed buildings and landscapes. Using real situations as examples, he clearly and expertly portrays essential personalities, and the differing motivations, risks, and rewards of the players in the process. This book is important, well written, clear, and easy to understand. If you are an architect or engineer working with developers, a municipal official responsible for reviewing and approving building proposals, a resident in a community with sites being considered for development, a member of a neighborhood or city zoning committee, a public-spirited citizen, or simply a person interested in expanding your understanding of how projects get built, you should read this book."—Peter Piven, FAIA, principal consultant of Peter Piven Management Consultants and author of Architect's Essentials of Starting, Assessing and Transitioning a Design Firm Based on interviews in Portland, Chicago, Miami, and Minneapolis/Saint Paul, How Real Estate Developers Think depicts the entrepreneurial personality of the developer, explores the meaning of "good design," and examines the economic risks and rewards of development. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 336 pages | 6 x 9 | 60 illus. |
Liquid Capital: Making the Chicago Waterfront
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