Here at Penn Press, we've had a slew of new books publish in just the last month, spanning from the history of black nationalist women to the written record of English saints and beyond! Browse through the list below.
Jump to: Featured Titles | American History | Ancient Studies | Literature and Cultural Studies | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Political Science and Human Rights
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FEATURED TITLES
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"Blain illuminates an oft-ignored period of black nationalist and internationalist activism in the U.S.: the Great Depression, World War II, and early Cold War. Her engrossing study shows that much of this activism was led by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women. . . . Adding essential chapters to the story of this movement, Blain expands current understanding of the central roles played by female activists at home and overseas."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Set the World on Fire highlights the black nationalist women who fought for national and transnational black liberation from the early to mid-twentieth century. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 264 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. |
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"[S]ignificant and surprising . . . [God's Country] not only traces the 200 years of scriptural interpretation and evangelical exhortation connecting Adams and Pence, but also delves into 200 years of prior British Protestantism that shaped the outlook of the Revolutionary generation."—Commentary. God's Country tells the complete story of Christian Zionism in American political and religious thought from the Puritans to 9/11. Combining original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion, Samuel Goldman provides an accessible yet provocative introduction to Americans' attachment to the State of Israel. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Kevin Dawson offers the remarkable untold history of the significance of aquatic culture in the African diaspora. Undercurrents of Power opens up a new and exciting aspect of slaves' experience, providing a crucially important piece of the history of slave life and labor in the Americas."—James Sidbury, Rice University Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills—swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing—to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 illus. |
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"Well-conceived, deftly argued, and based on an impressive range of primary materials, oral interviews, and a good command of the secondary literature, Before AIDS brings fresh light and perspective to the wider field of the history of sexuality in the United States."—Jonathan Bell, University College London Before AIDS chronicles the development of gay health services in the 1970s as gay men faced public health challenges stemming from both their political marginalization and disease. Activists using tools and tactics from across their era's political landscape built a nationwide gay medical system, changing ideas about sexuality and health. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 192 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. |
Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom
God's Country: Christian Zionism in America
Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora
Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970sAMERICAN HISTORY
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Entangled Empires emphasizes the connections between the English and Iberian imperial projects. The colonial history of the United States ought to be considered part of the history of colonial Latino-America just as Latin American history should be understood as fundamental to the constitution of the United States. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 344 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. |
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"Slavery's Capitalism is a time capsule, neatly containing one of the most important developments in American scholarly and public life that took place during the Obama presidency. . . . The publication of Slavery's Capitalism at the tail end of the Obama era thus provides the perfect opportunity to take stock of what was accomplished in the last round of historicization: to see what is valuable in the paradigm of 'slavery's capitalism,' what is new about the 'new' history of capitalism in the United States, and what, if any, dangers of presentism its practitioners succumbed to. The book both incorporates and builds on a wave of recent scholarship on slavery and capitalism in the United States."—Times Literary Supplement Slavery's Capitalism explores the role of slavery in the development of the U.S. economy during the first decades of the nineteenth century. It tells the history of slavery as a story of national, even global, economic importance and investigates the role of enslaved Americans in the building of the modern world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 416 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. |
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"[The Long Gilded Age] reflects the author's long consideration and detailed knowledge of foundational developments in United States capitalism and culture during the final decades of the nineteenth century."—Enterprise & Society Presenting a new twist on classic themes of American economic and working-class history, The Long Gilded Age considers the interlocking roles of politics, labor, and internationalism in the ideologies and institutions that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 216 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Elegantly crafted. . . . Backroads Pragmatists is an outstanding work that has broad application and relevance well beyond its Mexican-U.S. context to scholars of studies of social reform, struggles over national membership, and political formation the world round as well as of borderlands and transnational history. . . . A welcome contribution."—Hispanic American Historical Review Backroads Pragmatists is the first examination of the influence of Mexican social reform on the United States. Flores illustrates how postrevolutionary Mexico's experiments in government and education shaped American race relations from the New Deal through the destruction of Jim Crow. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 x 9 | 26 illus. |
Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830
ANCIENT STUDIES
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"Plato's Persona is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Ficino and his complex engagement both with Plato and the Pythagoreans and with Augustine and the later Neoplatonists."—Michael J. B. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Plato's Persona is the first book to undertake a synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
Plato's Persona: Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance Humanism, and Platonic TraditionsLITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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"The Medical Imagination is an extraordinary intervention in the fields of the medical humanities, American literary studies, and American social and cultural history. Sari Altschuler has mastered and synthesized a large body of research, which she delivers with panache and passion. This multidisciplinary book puts her on the front lines of current scholarly discourse, teaching us the lesson that both medical history and literary history are the poorer for ignoring each other."—Laura Dassow Walls, University of Notre Dame The Medical Imagination traces the practice of using imagination and literature to craft, test, and implement theories of health in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. This history of imaginative experimentation provides a usable past for conversations about the role of the humanities in health research and practice today. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus. |
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"Anne C. Vila's book is a model of concise and well-articulated rigor on a fascinating topic that has been neglected and overlooked—the medical literature devoted to the sicknesses of men of letters. She shows how these texts provide an excellent vantage point from which to survey significant aspects of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature and medicine. A striking achievement."—Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London Suffering Scholars focuses on the medical and literary dimensions of the cult of celebrity that developed around intellectuals during the French Enlightenment. Anne C. Vila shows how the "suffering scholar" syndrome deeply influenced debates about the consequences of book-learning on both the individual body and the body politic. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 |
The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States
Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment FranceMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"The reform era was obsessed with clerical celibacy, yet it also witnessed a great expansion of women's religious life—and all those newly founded nunneries required priests to provide pastoral care. In an age known for its shrill misogyny, how did such priests justify their service to women, and what positive roles did nuns play in male spirituality? In her urgently needed book, Nuns' Priests' Tales, Fiona Griffiths teases out some fascinating answers."—Barbara Newman, Northwestern University Nuns' Priests Tales explores the spiritual ideas that motivated priestly service to nuns across Europe and throughout the medieval period, revealing the central role that women played in male spiritual life, and thus moving beyond the reductionist assumption that celibacy defined male spirituality in the age of reform. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 illus. |
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"Rebecca Lemon presents a compelling, richly substantiated treatment of early modern cultures of addiction that offers genuinely new perspectives. Charting the development of the modern sense of addiction while at the same time attending to its early modern senses as something laudable, even heroic, Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England is an important intervention."—Adam Smyth, University of Oxford Rebecca Lemon shows how sixteenth-century writers, such as Marlowe and Shakespeare, depict addiction in many forms, including to God, study, love, friendship, and drinking. Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England explores the fine line between devotion and pathology, revealing addiction's laudable as well as pejorative meanings. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus. |
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"Impressive in scope and consequence, New Legends of England is a crucial contribution to the study of medieval and early modern literature. I know of no other work that thinks so hard and so productively about the capacities of the legendary or makes hagiography so much a part of the common intellectual landscape of the late Middle Ages."—Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University New Legends of England examines a previously unrecognized phenomenon of fifteenth-century English literary culture: the proliferation of vernacular Lives of British, Anglo-Saxon, and other native saints. Catherine Sanok argues these texts use literary experimentation to explore overlapping forms of secular and religious community. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus. |
Nuns' Priests' Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life
Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England
New Legends of England: Forms of Community in Late Medieval Saints' LivesPOLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"Superb and timely."—Peter Wehner, New York Times "I've been inspired by Aurelian Craiutu's great book Faces of Moderation."—David Brooks, New York Times Examining the writings of twentieth-century thinkers such as Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, Michael Oakeshott, and Adam Michnik, Faces of Moderation argues that moderation remains crucial for today's encounters with new forms of extremism. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"A superb chronicle of the campaigns to counter Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their affiliates—by a student of, and participant in, those campaigns."—General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA and Commander of U.S. Central Command and NATO forces in Afghanistan Counter Jihad provides a sweeping account of America's military campaigns in the Islamic world and fills a gaping void in our understanding of the War on Terror. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 400 pages | 6 x 9 | 24 illus. |
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