Check out our latest slate of new titles below, spanning topics from Ancient Egypt to San Francisco's contemporary Latino art scene and beyond.
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FEATURED TITLES
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"Few people question the conventional wisdom like Ivan Krastev."—George Soros In this provocative book, renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union—and its potential lack of a future. In a new afterword written in the wake of the 2019 EU parliamentary elections, Krastev concludes that although the union is as fragile as ever, its chances of enduring are much better than they were just a few years ago. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More Updated Edition |
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"Cat lovers' . . . horizons will surely be expanded by Jaromir Malek's fascinating book."—Financial Times True aristocrat of domestic animals, the cat has a distinguished ancestry. Most modern cats are thought to be descended from the cats of ancient Egypt, so these beautiful and engaging creatures represent a living link between ancient Egyptian civilization and our own times. Revised and updated edition, with 90 color and 21 black and white illustrations. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More Second Edition |
AMERICAN HISTORY
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"Capitalism's Hidden Worlds is a welcome contribution to the study of the history of capitalism. Capturing a wide range of topics—many illustrating the interpenetration of social, political, and regulatory regimes—and geography, the collection pushes the history of capitalism beyond its U.S.-centered focus."—Josh Lauer, University of New Hampshire Capitalism's Hidden Worlds examines economic activities that occur in the concealed corners of the formal economy. Challenging common conceptions of capitalism as a system of transparent, open markets, essays reveal how capitalism depends upon, adapts to, and gains legitimacy from activities that occur outside the measured and the seen. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 illus. |
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"At the core of Bennett's book is the argument that the fierce competition between Portugal and Spain over the African Atlantic, which was significantly mediated by the Church, was crucial to the creation of the modern nation-state and of what became modern European nationalism. Early national identities in Europe were forged, to a substantial extent, on the basis of competition over trade and influence in Africa. And this, Bennett says, gets completely lost in Western histories that fast-forward from the conquest of the Canary Islands to Columbus's arrival in the Americas."—New York Review of Books Through an examination of early modern African-European encounters, African Kings and Black Slaves offers a reappraisal of the dominant depiction of these exchanges as simple economic transactions: rather, according to Herman L. Bennett, they involved clashing understandings of diplomacy, sovereignty, and politics. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 240 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Cary Cordova's The Heart of the Mission is a complex, necessary book . . . Cordova's impressive research, which includes extensive archival excavation, artist interviews, and urban fieldwork, reveals an important and previously unexplored history of local activism practiced through Latino poster art, which spread word of the struggles of insurgent movements such as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas; Salvadoran diasporic art; the cultural politics of Día de los Muertos; and the founding of galleries and community art centers."—Journal of American History The Heart of the Mission is the first in-depth examination of the Latino arts renaissance in San Francisco's Mission District in the latter twentieth century. Using evocative oral histories and archival research, Cordova highlights the rise of a vibrant intellectual community grounded in avant-garde aesthetics and radical politics. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 336 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 14 color, 65 b/w illus. |
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"The Employee is a welcome and much appreciated addition to the historical literature on work, workers, and the law. It boldly underscores the need to reform labor laws in the interest of the American people."—American Historical Review The Employee examines how American businesses dominated and influenced labor law as they pushed for an ever-narrower definition of "employee" and maneuvered to exclude workers from the right to organize. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 |
ANTHROPOLOGY
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"In the Western imaginary Tangier appears as exotic and romantic. The reality is far more complex. In this heartfelt and beautifully written account, Abdelmajid Hannoum brings us face to face with protests against the indignities of daily life and the crisscrossed paths of African and Arab migrants seeking a new life in Europe and Europeans seeking a new life in North Africa. From the local response to the Arab Spring to the realities of children's street life, Hannoum's deeply researched and personally involved account adds immeasurably to our understanding of the pain and promise of migration."—Lawrence Rosen, Princeton University Living Tangier examines African migration to Europe and European migration to Africa, focusing on the dynamics of migration in terms of race and legal standing in Tangier, a Moroccan city at the intersection of Africa and Europe. Based on extensive ethnographic work, it explores how migrants experience and affect the city. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 14 illus. |
ARCHAEOLOGY
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"In his deep and valuable analysis of the destruction of Murujuga petroglyphs and landscapes, José Antonio González Zarandona helps us better understand a cultural catastrophe and, hopefully, prevent future landscape iconoclasm."—Jean Clottes, author of World Rock Art Located in Western Australia, the massive archaeological site of Murujuga has been subject to decades of abuse from regional mining interests. José Antonio González Zarandona traces Murujuga's destruction from the seventeenth century until today, arguing that colonial interference in the region has resulted in landscape iconoclasm. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 344 pages | 6 x 9 | 66 illus. |
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This third volume in the series is devoted to presenting and interpreting the metallurgical evidence from Ban Chiang, northeast Thailand, in the broader regional context. This is the first book to compile, summarize, and synthesize the English-language copper production and exchange evidence available so far from Thailand and Laos in a thorough and systematic manner. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 240 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 15 color, 29 b/w illus. |
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
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"Clever and truly interesting, The Nature of the Page admirably draws our attention down to earth and to the plants and animals that live there. It will be welcomed by scholars in both ecocriticism and the material history of the book."—Ken Hiltner, University of California, Santa Barbara Exploring the poetic interplay between human ideas and the plant, animal, and mineral forms through which they are mediated, The Nature of the Page tells the story of handmade paper in Renaissance England and prompts readers to reconsider the role of the natural world in everything from old books to new smartphones. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 7 x 10 | 30 illus. |
MEDIEVAL STUDIES
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"Offering fresh insights and deftly incorporating a wide selection of apt modern scholarship and theory, History and the Written Word leads us to talk about the deep issues of collective identity and state formation."—Nancy Partner, McGill University Drawing on the perspectives of modern and medieval narratology, medieval multilingualism, and cultural memory, History and the Written Word argues that members of an administrative elite demonstrated their mastery of the rules of literate political behavior by producing and consuming history-writing and its documents. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. |
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"Offering a measured, deliberative, and erudite engagement with a range of critiques leveled against human rights discourses in general, and with regard to religious freedom in particular, Religious Freedom Under Scrutiny represents an informed perspective on a contentious set of debates. Scholars and practitioners alike will find the volume important reading."—Christopher Dole, Amherst College Religious Freedom Under Scrutiny argues that without freedom of religion or belief, human rights cannot fully address the needs, yearnings, and vulnerabilities of human beings and that marginalizing freedom of religion or belief would weaken the plausibility and legitimacy of the entire system of human rights. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus |
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"William H. Meyer offers a compelling and persuasive account of the relationship between global governance and international human rights in a work of excellent scholarship and rare insights."—Mahmood Monshipouri, San Francisco State University William H. Meyer defines global governance as the management of global issues within a political space that has no single centralized authority. Employing a combination of historical, quantitative, normative, and policy analyses, he presents a series of case studies at the intersection of power politics and international justice. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. |
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"Sustaining Life provides an ethnographic and historically grounded rendering of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa that successfully led to near universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment. It is a tremendous contribution to the literature on the HIV/ AIDS crisis in Africa and it is a story that needs to be told."—James Pfeiffer, University of Washington Through participant observation and in-depth interviews, Sustaining Life explores how the South African AIDS movement transformed public health institutions, changed policy norms, and enabled near-universal access to treatment to sustain the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"U.S. Foreign Policy and Muslim Women's Human Rights represents a welcome addition to an important historiography . . . Shannon breaks new ground, not only because she covers the late twentieth century—when women wielded real policymaking power—but also because she 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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