This month brings a variety of books in the social sciences and humanities. Read about archaeological excavations, African America literature, counterterrorism in the West, and more.
Jump to: Anthropology | Archaeology | Art | Jewish Studies | Literature | Medieval Studies | Politics and Human Rights
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ANTHROPOLOGY
NOW IN PAPERBACK
The Birth of Orientalism
Urs App
"A genuinely important book. It has the potential to change the way that we think about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European encounters with the East, and about how Eastern ideas deeply influenced the thought of formative Western thinkers."—Jonathan Silk, University of Leiden
"A great work. It establishes the ground on which all future studies of European orientalism will have to build, it rewrites the stories that scholars of religious history have been telling about the Western discovery (invention?) of Hinduism and Buddhism, it offers indispensable analyses of influential writers both famous (Bayle, Diderot, Voltaire) and now obscure, and it is a model of a truly global study of intellectual history."—Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Modern Orientalism was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology. The Birth of Orientalism presents a completely new picture of the Western encounter with Asia, its underlying dynamics, and the discovery of Buddhism and Hinduism.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
568 pages | 6 x 9 | 20 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4261-4 | $79.95s | £52.00
Paperback | ISBN 978-0-8122-2346-0 | $29.95t | £19.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0005-8 | $29.95t | £19.50
A volume in the Encounters with Asia series
Migrant Encounters: Intimate Labor, the State, and Mobility Across Asia
Sara L. Friedman and Pardis Mahdavi, Editors
Migrant Encounters examines what happens when migrants across Asia encounter the restrictions and opportunities presented by state actors and policies. Contributions draw on original ethnographic work foregrounding migrants' intimate lives to argue that such encounters unpredictably transform migrants and the states between which they move.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
256 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4754-1 | $55.00s | £36.00
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-9184-1 | $55.00s | £36.00
ARCHAEOLOGY
Excavations in Residential Areas of Tikal—Group 7F-1: Tikal Report 22
William A. Haviland
Tikal Report 22 presents the results of excavations carried out in residential group 7F-1 at Tikal in Guatemala during the 1957, 1963, and 1965 seasons. As with similar Tikal Reports (TR 19, TR 20A/20B, and TR 21), TR 22 is devoted to the presentation of detailed excavation data and analysis. In this case, the residential group presented may have been home to descendants of a ruler who died in the sixth century C.E.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
232 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 43 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-1-934536-81-0 | $65.00s | £42.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-1-934536-82-7 | $65.00s | £42.50
Distributed for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
ART
The Potter's Dictionary of Materials and Techniques
Frank Hamer and Janet Hamer
Now available in its sixth edition, The Potter's Dictionary of Materials and Techniques presents a comprehensive survey of all aspects of making ceramics for craft potters and ceramic artists. With its sound, practical explanations of ceramic processes, this indispensable reference book has gained a reputation as "the potter's bible." Professional potters, beginners, students, and collectors will find authoritative information clearly and logically presented.
This new edition features over 500 full-color photographs and illustrations. With more than 300 diagrams to clarify everything in the ceramic world, in its sixth edition The Potter's Dictionary of Materials and Techniques will continue to serve as the authority on all things ceramic.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
Sixth Edition
496 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | color
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4792-3 | $59.95t | £39.00
JEWISH STUDIES
Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History
Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller, Editors
"Long neglected or politicized, the study of Jewish economic life at the onset of modernity has now emerged as a growing field of interest. This rich collection of essays offers a valuable addition to the existing literature and will stimulate further debates."—Francesca Trivellato, Yale University
"This is a volume that historians of early modern and late modern Jewry, as well as those with an interest in the history of commerce and of transnational political and philanthropic networks, will want to consult."—Jerry Z. Muller, The Catholic University of America
Purchasing Power repositions economics in our understanding of the Jewish experience from early modern Rome to contemporary America and traces how economic circumstances have formed the context for, and even underpinned, Jewish intellectual, culture, and political development.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
368 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus.
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4730-5 | $65.00s | £42.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-9165-0 | $65.00s | £42.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series
LITERATURE
The Strangers Book: The Human of African American Literature
Lloyd Pratt
"The alternative humanism claimed by former slaves yields many corrective lessons for the present. Lloyd Pratt transforms our understanding of that archive by inserting the figure of the stranger into the interpretative frame. Energized by a host of newly unearthed discoveries, his innovative, absorbing book initiates a novel and urgent enquiry: the entanglement of race with various kinds of xenology. Ambitious and learned, this book will reshape the field of U.S. literary history."—Paul Gilroy, King's College London
"Lloyd Pratt's work addresses and rearticulates, in an exquisite way, current discussions of the status of the human in antebellum African American literature."—Branka Arsić, Columbia University
The Strangers Book explores how a constellation of nineteenth-century African American writers radically reframed the terms of humanism by redefining what it meant to be a stranger.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
200 pages | 6 x 9
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4768-8 | $49.95s | £32.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-9199-5 | $49.95s | £32.50
A volume in the Haney Foundation Series
MEDIEVAL STUDIES
NOW IN PAPERBACK
The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam
Stephen J. Shoemaker
"…[Shoemaker] develops [previous ideas] substantially, discusses them in the light of recent publications, and also offers highly instructive parallels with the situation in (and scholarship on) early Christianity. … [he] has done a very good job of highlighting the issues and giving them sophisticated and thorough discussion, and [The Death of a Prophet] is a worthwhile addition to the fast-expanding body of material on Islamic origins."—Journal of the American Oriental Society
"A work of utmost importance, and one that has profound implications for our understanding of how Islam began."—Fred Donner, University of Chicago
Stephen J. Shoemaker investigates contradictory traditions about the end of Muhammad's life in the Islamic and non-Islamic sources of the seventh and eighth centuries.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
416 pages | 6 x 9
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4356-7 | $75.00s | £49.00
Paperback | ISBN 978-0-8122-2342-2 | $24.95t | £16.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0513-8 | $24.95t | £16.50
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series
POLITICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Counterterrorism and the State: Western Responses to 9/11
Dorle Hellmuth
"This excellent and well-written study is the first that analyzes and compares structural restraints on counterterrorism responses in the U.S., Germany, Great Britain and France. For students of national security, comparative politics and public policy this is a must read on how different governmental structures set the parameters for the political debate on counterterrorism."—Harvey Rishikof, chair of the Advisory Committee for the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security
"Counterterrorism and the State is original in its focus on domestic governmental structures, presenting an impressive and comprehensively researched comparative account of the development of national counterterrorism policies after the attacks of 11 September 2001. It is needed and will be a welcome contribution to the literature on comparative government."—Audrey Kurth Cronin, author of How Terrorism Ends
Dorle Hellmuth measures and compares how different parliamentary and presidential government structures affect counterterrorism decision-making and domestic counterterrorism responses in the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France after 9/11.
Full Description, Table of Contents, and More
392 pages | 6 x 9
Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4743-5 | $69.95s | £45.50
Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-9183-4 | $69.95s | £45.50
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