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FEATURED TITLES
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"Michael Flamm has written a searing account of the 1964 New York City riots, the first of the many violent uprisings that galvanized the United States in the 1960s. Flamm's riveting history of black anger, police misconduct, and the politics of law and order sets the stage for today's debates over incarceration, police-community relations, and the struggle for racial justice in the United States."—David Farber, University of Kansas In Central Harlem, the symbolic and historic heart of black America, the violent unrest of July 1964 highlighted a new dynamic in the racial politics of the nation. The first "long, hot summer" of the Sixties had arrived. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 x 9 | 21 illus. |
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Misunderstanding Terrorism provides a striking reassessment of the scope and nature of the global neo-jihadi threat to the West. The post-9/11 decade experienced the emergence of new forms of political violence and new terrorist actors. More recently, Marc Sageman's understanding of how and why people have adopted fundamentalist ideologies and terrorist methods has evolved. Author of the classic Understanding Terror Networks, Sageman has become only more critical of the U.S. government's approach to the problem. He argues that U.S. society has been transformed for the worse by an extreme overreaction to a limited threat—limited, he insists, despite spectacular recent incidents, which he takes fully into account. Indeed, his discussion of just how limited the threat is marks a major contribution to the discussion and debate over the best way to a measured and much more effective response. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 224 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 5 illus. |
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"In addition to providing just the right mix of in-depth coverage and artful analysis, Brian Glyn Williams skillfully leverages his first-hand experiences in the region to breathe life into combatants from all sides as well as ordinary civilians caught up in the Iraq, Syrian, and Afghan conflicts. A must read for those seeking a balanced, behind-the-scenes explanation of the events dominating the news cycle since 9/11."—Lieutenant Colonel Mark J. Reardon (U.S. Army Retired), Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army, Operation Enduring Freedom Study Group 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. |
In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime
Misunderstanding Terrorism
Counter Jihad: America's Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and SyriaAMERICAN HISTORY
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"Deeply researched and engagingly written, Tea Sets and Tyranny explores the relationship between ideas about power and politeness, a social value that celebrated restraint and refinement. Ranging from Indian agents to colonial governors to plantation mistresses, Steven Bullock's fascinating cast of characters takes us into a world in which unfettered personal and political power yields to the practices of civility. A provocative and persuasive reinterpretation of British subjects as they became American citizens through the pursuit of politeness."—Mary Kelley, University of Michigan Tea Sets and Tyranny offers a political history of politeness in early America, from its origins in the late seventeenth century to its remaking in the age of the Revolution. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 19 illus. |
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"This is the most ambitious state-of-the-field collection published since the American Revolution's bicentennial. Let's hope it is successful in charting new directions and arousing fruitful debates."—Thomas P. Slaughter, author of Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution The American Revolution Reborn parts company with the American Revolution of our popular imagination and renders it as a time of intense ambiguity and frightening contingency. With an introduction by Spero and a conclusion by Zuckerman, this volume heralds a substantial and revelatory rebirth in the study of the American Revolution. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 424 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. |
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"Invoking an impressively wide and rich set of sources, Michiel van Groesen provides a sharply focused history of the rise and fall of the Dutch West India Company's largest and most important colony in South America."—Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington Amsterdam's Atlantic puts Dutch Brazil back on the front pages and argues that the way the Amsterdam media constructed Atlantic events was a key element in the transformation of public opinion in Europe. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 | 51 illus. |
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Winner of the 2012 Hendricks Award from the New Netherland Institute "New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty does nothing less than expand and transform our understanding of religious diversity and toleration in colonial Dutch North America. It will become required reading for anyone seriously interested in the early history of the mid-Atlantic colonies, the genesis of religious pluralism in America, or the history of religious toleration in the Dutch world."—Reviews in History Evan Haefeli demonstrates how convoluted and uncertain were the beginnings of religious tolerance in America, by giving them an international context. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 376 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
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"In the culmination of over three decades worth of scholarship, Daniel K. Richter offers an insightful and . . . innovative look at the history of Native and Euro-American interactions from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. For a historian who could easily rest on his laurels, Richter continues to challenge scholars of early and Native America to widen their thematic and chronological gaze, or as Richter demonstrates in this book, to recognize the history of colonial and indigenous North America as inevitably and intimately intertwined."—Southern Historian In this sweeping collection of essays, one of America's leading colonial historians reexamines struggles between Native peoples and Europeans in early America in terms of how each understood the material basis of power. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 328 pages | 6 x 9 | 35 illus. |
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"Sound Business is the absorbing account of the conversion of America's post-World War I newspaper business into the early multimedia conglomerates that form today's media giants. . . . Scholars and students alike will regard this exceptional history as a great addition to the literature on how new media intertwine with old to shape the current media landscape."—Journal of American History Sound Business tunes in on a neglected aspect of U.S. media history, the role newspaper owners played in the development of radio. This rigorously researched and balanced history of the news business and government regulation expands our understanding of mid-twentieth-century America and offers lessons for the digital age. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 264 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus. |
Tea Sets and Tyranny: The Politics of Politeness in Early America
The American Revolution Reborn
Amsterdam's Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil
LITERATURE
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"Heather Keenleyside makes a significant contribution to ongoing discussions of the challenges involved in understanding the relationship between actual individual animals and the aesthetic, generic, rhetorical, and formal uses of animals in literature. With subtle, extended, and insightful critiques of well-chosen literary texts, her book provides a persuasive perspective on its key contribution, that 'rhetorical conventions make real world claims'—in other words, that real animals provide a direct point of reference for their literary representation."—Laura Brown, Cornell University Demonstrating the centrality of animals to an eighteenth-century literary and philosophical tradition, Animals and Other People argues for the importance of this tradition to current discussions of what life is and how we might live together. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Vivian R. Pollak provides an entirely original, subtle, and insightful reading of the gender anxieties of women poets as revealed through their responses to reading Dickinson and each other, or sometimes through their sense of Dickinson as the inevitable point of comparison. Pollak contributes a plethora of information previously unknown or not widely known about the relationships between the later poets she studies and between those women and Dickinson, and she offers astute readings of their often nuanced comments on Dickinson (and each other) in reviews, letters, diaries, or published prose. There is no other book like it!"—Cristanne Miller, University of Buffalo Our Emily Dickinsons situates Dickinson's life and work within larger debates about gender, sexuality, and literary authority in America. Examining Dickinson's influence on Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and others, Vivian R. Pollak complicates the connection between authorial biography and poetry that endures. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 x 9 | 31 illus. |
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"With its resonant social commentary, The Killers has assumed significance in recent American studies. But this engaging novel stands on its own as a portrait of city life, with special emphasis on the street gangs of Philadelphia's underworld."—David S. Reynolds, CUNY Graduate Center The Killers is a tale of gang violence, revenge, kidnapping, racial and ethnic conflict, international intrigue, and working-class triumph. Based on the real-life events of a Philadelphia race riot, this long-out-of-print sensational novella showcases the political and literary interests of its author, bestselling novelist George Lippard. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 11 illus. |
Animals and Other People: Literary Forms and Living Beings in the Long Eighteenth Century
Our Emily Dickinsons: American Women Poets and the Intimacies of Difference
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"In The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris we have, for the first time, a coherent discussion of silk and accessories production that accounts for the unusual presence of female guilds in Paris. Sharon Farmer also reveals the basis of the appearance of luxury fabrics made in Paris in aristocratic and royal account books. This is an invaluable contribution to the history of women, gender, and medieval industry."—Kathryn Reyerson, University of Minnesota Sharon Farmer analyzes the evidence concerning the medieval silk industry, adding new perspectives to our understanding of medieval French history, luxury trade, labor migration, intercultural exchange, and gendered work. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 x 9 | 28 illus. |
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"Henry Ansgar Kelly broadens the debate over Middle English translations of the Bible. The issues he raises need rethinking, and it's especially useful to have these arguments, which demand space and time, in the form of a book. Few scholars are as skilled as Kelly in reading and interpreting scholastic and legal documents, and he has done a great service here in clearing up many points of confusion."—Fiona Somerset, University of Connecticut Translated shortly before 1400, the Bible became the most popular medieval book in English. Scholars call it the Wycliffite Bible, attributing it to followers of the heretic John Wyclif, and say that it was banned in 1407. Henry Ansgar Kelly disagrees, arguing that it was a nonpartisan effort, and never the object of any prohibition. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 368 pages | 6 x 9 |
The Silk Industries of Medieval Paris: Artisanal Migration, Technological Innovation, and Gendered Experience
The Middle English Bible: A ReassessmentPOLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"An excellent contribution to the literature on civil-military relations in the Arab world. The strength of the book rests in the diversity of the essays, which combined enable the volume to cover more ground, and in more depth, than a single-authored work ever could."—Jeffrey Martini, The RAND Corporation Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring explores the central problems concerning the role of the armed forces in the contemporary Arab world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. |
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"An excellent intellectual biography that advances the young burgeoning field of Lemkin (and genocide) studies in significant ways."—Dirk Moses, University of Sydney Raphaël Lemkin was one of the twentieth century's most influential human rights figures, coining the word "genocide" in 1942 and working to enshrine the idea into international law. This book sheds new light on the concept of genocide, exploring the connection between Lemkin's philosophical writings, juridical works, and politics. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 320 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Human Rights and War represents a major advance in the study of civilian devastation in modern warfare. Thomas W. Smith builds a compelling case for adopting a human rights perspective for understanding and advancing the humanitarian needs of civilian noncombatants, a case that centers on the viewing of warfare from the civilian's perspective."—Daniel Rothbart, George Mason University Human Rights and War shows how even combatants who profess to follow the laws of war often engage in appalling violence and brutality, ruining economies, rending social fabrics, and collapsing public infrastructure, making clear the limits of international humanitarian law and how it must incorporate human rights perspectives. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"E. Gary Spitko makes a unique contribution to the literature regarding equality, law and gay identity. While the public discourse regarding gay rights has mainly been preoccupied with the movement for marriage equality, Spitko helpfully illustrates that marriage equality is not tantamount to full political equality as a citizen. Specifically, discrimination and exclusion from the workplace is a critical space where gay inequality is imposed and curtails gay human rights. The book provides a strong case for how employment discrimination in role model occupations removes gay role models from public visibility with detrimental repercussions across all other equality realms."—Tanya K. Hernandez, author of Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response Combining the stories of LGBT trailblazers with analysis of historical data, anecdotal evidence, research, and literature, Antigay Bias in Role-Model Occupations is the first book to explore in a comprehensive fashion the broad effects of sexual orientation discrimination in role-model occupations well beyond its individual victims. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 |
Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring
Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide
Human Rights and War Through Civilian Eyes
Antigay Bias in Role-Model OccupationsRELIGIOUS AND JEWISH STUDIES
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"An extraordinary contribution to the field of Irano-Talmudic studies, which provides an important theoretical framework and point of reference for any future attempt to read the Babylonian Talmud in context. . . . The Iranian Talmud provides a fresh, exciting and nuanced introduction to the emerging field of Irano-Talmudic studies, which attempts to situate the Babylonian Talmud in its ambient Sasanian context."—Journal of Jewish Studies The Iranian Talmud reexamines the Babylonian Talmud—one of Judaism's most central texts—in the light of Persian literature and culture, providing an unprecedented and accessible overview to the vibrant world of pre-Islamic Iran that shaped the Bavli. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 |
URBAN STUDIES
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"I know of no other work that systematically examines different approaches to regional, public decision making on land use in the United States. This book is a much needed, path-breaking effort to assess the effectiveness of alternative institutional structures in preventing urban sprawl."—Connie P. Ozawa, Portland State University Comparing metropolitan planning processes in Boston, Denver, and Portland, Christina D. Rosan examines the impact that various metropolitan governance arrangements have on regional land use decisions and challenges us to think more critically about the political arrangements necessary to govern sustainable metropolitan regions. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. |
Governing the Fragmented Metropolis: Planning for Regional SustainabilityBook reviewers: To request a press copy of a Penn Press book, send your name, shipping address, and the title of your publication to glamm@upenn.edu.
Educators: To request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.
