Welcome to summer! Don’t miss our latest round-up of new titles, including a history of Washington, D.C.-area environmental activism, an exploration of medieval Jewish responses to the plague, an ethnographic look at military-run peacekeeping missions, and more.
Jump to: American History | Anthropology | Jewish Studies | Literature and Cultural Studies | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Political Science and Human Rights
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AMERICAN HISTORY
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Smarter Growth offers a fresh understanding of environmental politics in metropolitan America, using the Washington, D.C. area as a case study to demonstrate how public officials and their constituents engaged in an ongoing dialogue that positioned environmental protection as an increasingly important facet of planning and development. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. |
Smarter Growth: Activism and Environmental Policy in Metropolitan WashingtonANTHROPOLOGY
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“Mohan Ambikaipaker’s book is a perceptive, moving, and captivating ethnography of an antiracist organization that monitors police abuse in London, an astute analysis of the ways in which the War on Terror proceeds from distinctly racialized assumptions and presumptions, and a profound rumination on the contradictions that make racial identities both fixed and fugitive, both foregrounded and furtive. Its imagination, insight, and eloquence make Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain a most memorable and meaningful book.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain shows how the deep processes of everyday political whiteness shape the state’s failure to provide effective remedies for ethnic, racial, and religious minorities who continue to face violence and institutional racism. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 | 23 illus. |
Political Blackness in Multiracial BritainJEWISH STUDIES
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“Ivan G. Marcus lays out in a new way how Sefer Hasidim develops and functions as an Ashkenazic book. The summary, assessment, and synthesis of prior research he presents is enlightening and helpful.”—Ephraim Kanarfogel, Yeshiva University In “Sefer Hasidim” and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how Sefer Hasidim, or “Book of the Pietists,” was composed and how it extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 216 pages | 6 x 9 |
“Sefer Hasidim” and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval EuropeLITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
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“Open Houses is a stimulating, provocative book convincingly underpinned by extensive research, sharp critical readings, and a confident familiarity with current theory. Barbara Leckie is an excellent critic of nineteenth-century fiction, but her conspicuous achievement is to bring fictional and nonfictional writings in dialogue with one another in a way that sheds light on both.”—Kate Flint, University of Southern California Barbara Leckie’s Open Houses addresses nineteenth-century documentary and print culture dedicated to convincing the reader of the wretchedness of housing of the poor and its urgent need for reform. It illustrates the ways in which “looking into” these houses animated new models for social critique in tandem with new forms for the novel. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 28 illus. |
Open Houses: Poverty, the Novel, and the Architectural Idea in Nineteenth-Century BritainMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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In After the Black Death, Susan L. Einbinder uncovers Jewish responses to plague and violence in fourteenth-century Provence and Iberia, discovering a fundamental continuity in Jewish worldview and means of expression. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 240 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus. |
After the Black Death: Plague and Commemoration Among Iberian JewsPOLITICAL SCIENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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“Riveting, powerful, and path-breaking. Gwendoline Alphonso develops a new way to understand parties, politics, and American political development. Polarized Families, Polarized Parties explores how family—as ideal, idyll, value system, rhetorical frame, and trope—came to play a central role in national party conflict. As Alphonso shows, different views of the good family lead to differences that define partisan conflict on everything from social values to economics. Fascinating, creative, thought provoking, meticulously researched and highly recommended.”—James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation Polarized Families, Polarized Parties demonstrates that differing regional ideals of family have shaped party policy and ideological positions throughout the twentieth century. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 256 pages | 6 x 9 | 24 illus. |
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“Tricia Bacon was one of the State Department’s finest terrorism analysts—deeply knowledgeable and sensitive to the myriad factors that condition extremist groups’ behavior. She has now written a scholarly study of the relationships between terrorist organizations that is nothing short of superb. Because of her time in government, she has an empirical knowledge of her subject that few can match, and she has now crafted a theoretical framework to explain the phenomenon of terrorist alliances that is tremendously useful. A great contribution to the literature on terrorism.”—Ambassador Daniel Benjamin (ret.), Coordinator for Counterrorism, Department of State, 2009-2013 Tricia Bacon examines partnerships formed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Al-Qaida, and Egyptian jihadist groups, among others, in a series of case studies and offers insights useful to counterterrorism efforts to disrupt these relationships. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. |
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“Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations provides the most in-depth research ever conducted on peacekeeping forces and a pioneering analysis of how military culture dynamically influences military behavior and effectiveness. Anyone interested in the connection between military sociology and security studies should read this book.”—Yagil Levy, The Open University of Israel Chiara Ruffa argues that civil-military relations and societal beliefs about the use of force shape the military culture of an army in its home country and has an impact on soldiers’ behavior overseas and their ability to keep the peace. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 204 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. |
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“Using deep case studies of the compliance by Germany and the United Kingdom with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, Andreas von Staden merges theories of rationalism and constructivism in innovative and sensible ways.”—Laurence R. Helfer, Duke University In Strategies of Compliance with the European Court of Human Rights, Andreas von Staden traces the impact of human rights violations in Germany and the United Kingdom and details how governments, legislators, and domestic judges responded to the court’s demands for either financial compensation or changes to laws, policies, and practices. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus. |
Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics
Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances
Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations: Afghanistan and Lebanon
Strategies of Compliance with the European Court of Human Rights: Rational Choice Within Normative ConstraintsBook 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.
