As the winter chill beings to thaw and spring weather moves in, what could be better than a new book about American history, Medieval literature, or art? For titles like these and many more, peruse our latest selection of new releases below. You're sure to find something to pique your interest!
Jump to: Featured Titles | American History | Early American Studies | Literature | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Political Science and Human Rights | University of Pennsylvania Museum Titles
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FEATURED TITLES
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Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form explores how Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), a pioneering American modernist, further developed his signature Precisionist style during his years working as a fashion photographer at Condé Nast. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 10 x 12 | 207 color illus. |
Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural FormAMERICAN HISTORY
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"Beyond Rust nails it: From building the all-consuming steel industry to its rebirth after decades of economic and environmental disintegration, Pittsburgh has always been in a cycle of transformation. Allen Dieterich-Ward's important book tracks the innovative methods—as well as the tragic missteps—of leaders who developed a mix of public-private partnerships, historic preservation, and collaboration with universities and foundations to create a model twenty-first-century city, which is still evolving."—Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto Beyond Rust is among the first books of its kind to continue past the collapse of American manufacturing in the 1980s by exploring the diverse ways residents of an iconic industrial region sought places for themselves within a new economic order. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 360 pages | 6 x 9 | 17 illus. |
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"The Moynihan Report is well-trodden historical ground, but Geary offers the most extensive and nuanced discussion to date of its intellectual, social, and political context and of its significant historical impact."—American Historical Review The definitive history of the Moynihan Report controversy, Beyond Civil Rights examines the cultural assumptions embedded in the report's analysis of "the Negro family" and demonstrates its significance for liberals, conservatives, neoconservatives, civil rights leaders, Black Power activists, and feminists. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"A completely captivating read. Margaret O'Mara draws an irresistibly vivid portrait of modern politics, one that takes readers on a delightful tour of the recent past—and puts our own modern-day battles into terrific context. Just a delicious book, written by an authoritative historian and brilliant narrator."—Anne Kornblut, Washington Post From the era of the industrial factory to the age of the microchip, Pivotal Tuesdays explores four twentieth-century elections—1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992—using the election of the American president as a lens through which to explore the broader sweep of the nation's social, economic, and political history. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 6 x 9 | 30 illus. |
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
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"Contested Spaces of Early America offers readers a cross section of thoughtful new approaches to American history, which is finally beginning to fulfill its promise as a history of all Americans."—Journal of Historical Geography Contested Spaces of Early America is a wide-ranging, eclectic volume that seeks to reconcile the parallel histories and historiographies of European and Indian spaces created throughout the hemisphere during the colonial era. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 444 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 b/w illus. |
LITERATURE
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"Deftly situated at the crossroads of cultural, political, and aesthetic history, A Theater of Diplomacy bridges the thriving fields of performance studies and the history and theory of international relations. No single book in this arena of early modern Europe has undertaken the kind of ambitiously comprehensive synthesis, stretching across two centuries, that Welch has created here."—Larry F. Norman, author of The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France In A Theater of Diplomacy, Ellen R. Welch argues that theater served not merely as a decorative accompaniment to negotiations, but rather underpinned the practices of embodied representation, performance, and spectatorship that constituted the culture of diplomacy in this period. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
A Theater of Diplomacy: International Relations and the Performing Arts in Early Modern FranceMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"The Christ Child, like the Man of Sorrows, was a regular presence in later medieval religion, but a complex and seemingly contradictory figure. He could be the subject of tender affective piety, but he could also be the mischievous child of apocryphal infancy narratives, lowly and vulnerable or lordly and powerful, the subject of imaginative narratives or the focus of meditation and prayer. With deeply impressive learning and clarity, Mary Dzon unfolds the complexities of the Christ Child in medieval culture. She gives the subject the careful and captivating attention it has long needed."—Richard Kieckhefer, Northwestern University In The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages, Mary Dzon explores the continued transmission and appeal of apocryphal legends throughout the Middle Ages and demonstrates the significant impact that the Christ Child had in shaping the medieval religious imagination. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 424 pages | 6 x 9 | 24 illus. |
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"Kellie Robertson's book is an indispensable study of the idea of nature in the writings of Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Lydgate. Revising the foundational work on nature and Platonism undertaken several generations ago, it offers an entirely new way of understanding the significance of nature in vernacular writing."—D. Vance Smith, Princeton University Nature Speaks recovers the common ground shared between physics—what used to be known as "natural philosophy"—and fiction-writing as ways of representing the natural world. In doing so, it traces how nature gained an authoritative voice in the late medieval period only to lose it at the outset of modernity. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 456 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. |
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"Stefan Vander Elst offers valuable insights into how Crusade narratives were composed and how they may have been received by medieval audiences. His discussion of the influence of imaginative literature on what is now regarded as factual literature is illuminating."—Helen J. Nicholson, Cardiff University Examining English, Latin, French, and German texts, The Knight, the Cross, and the Song traces the role of secular chivalric literature in shaping Crusade propaganda across three centuries. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 |
The Quest for the Christ Child in the Later Middle Ages
Nature Speaks: Medieval Literature and Aristotelian Philosophy
The Knight, the Cross, and the Song: Crusade Propaganda and Chivalric Literature, 1100-1400POLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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"Roma history includes accounts of terrible discrimination but must also pay attention to the development of an admirably courageous global community—beautifully combining resistance to imposed disadvantage with instinctive tolerance of different ways of life of others. This splendid collection of essays brings out the richness of the Roma story—what the world owes to this massively disadvantaged group, and, no less important, what the world has to learn from the global culture of this locally defiant community spread across the world."—Amartya Sen, Harvard University Realizing Roma Rights investigates the ongoing stigma and anti-Roma racism and documents a growing, vibrant Roma led political movement engaged in building a more inclusive and just Europe. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus. |
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"This diverse collection illuminates the innovative thinking of national, regional, and international court decisions on the appropriateness of abortion regulation. It will serve as an important reference for policy makers, advocates, and adjudicators from around the world for years to come."—Louise Arbour, Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Abortion Law in Transnational Perspective offers a fresh look at significant transnational legal developments in recent years, examining key judicial decisions, constitutional texts, and regulatory reforms of abortion law in order to envision ways ahead. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 480 pages | 6 x 9 |
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"Readers will be rewarded with subtle remarks, a vast knowledge of historical trends helping to better grasp the current situations, and a stimulating ethnographic work."—Ethnic and Racial Studies Cathy Lisa Schneider looks at the relationship between racialized police violence and urban upheaval in impoverished neighborhoods of New York and greater Paris, and considers some of the changes that have made American cities less riot-prone today. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus. |
Realizing Roma Rights
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
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Bernard Wailes was a strong advocate for the importance of later prehistoric and early medieval Europe as an alternative model of sociopolitical evolution and trained generations of American archaeologists now active in European research from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. The essays in this volume celebrate the legacy of Bernard Wailes by highlighting the contribution of the European archaeological record to our understanding of the emergence of social complexity. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 45 illus. |
European Archaeology as Anthropology: Essays in Memory of Bernard WailesBook 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.
