Penn Press Log

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange--Now Available

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context
Edited by Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern
376 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4074-0 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Biblical interpretation is not simply study of the Bible's meaning. This volume focuses on signal moments in the histories of scriptural interpretation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the ancient period to the early modern, and shows how deeply intertwined these religions have always been.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Podcast Interview with Colin Gordon

Marshall Poe interviewed Colin Gordon, author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, for  the New Books in History blog. An audio file of this extensive interview is available for download at newbooksinhistory.com.

Israel Independence Day Reading

Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography
Anita Shapira
Translated by Evelyn Abel
392 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4028-3 | $49.95 | £32.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

A bestseller in Israel, Yigal Allon, Native Son is the only biography of the charismatic leader. Born in 1918 into the fabric of Arab-Jewish frontier life at the foot of Mt. Tabor, Allon rose to become commander of the Palmah, one of the founding figures of the state of Israel and an architect of its politics. The book  focuses on Allon's life up to 1950, his clash with founding father David Ben-Gurion, the end of his military career, and the watershed in culture and character between the Jewish Yishuv and Israeli statehood.

The story of Allon's life frames the history of Israel, its relationship with its Arab neighbors, its culture and spirit. This biography touches on matters--Israel's borders, refugees, military might--that remain very much alive today.

Medici Gardens--Now Available

Medici Gardens: From Making to Design
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto
328 pages | 6 x 9 | 54 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4072-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series

Medici Gardens challenges the common assumption that such gardens as Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, Careggi, and Fiesole were the products of an established design practice whereby one client commissioned one architect or artist. The book suggests that in the case of the gardens in Florence garden making preceded its theoretical articulation.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Periodization and Sovereignty--Now Available

Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time
Kathleen Davis
208 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4083-2 | $42.50 | £28.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

By examining periodization together with the two controversial categories of feudalism and secularization, Kathleen Davis exposes the relationship between the constitution of "the Middle Ages" and the history of sovereignty, slavery, and colonialism.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Negro League Baseball--Now in Paperback

Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
Neil Lanctot
512 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 31 illus.
Cloth 2004 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3807-5 | $37.95 | £25.00
Paper 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2027-8 | $19.95 | £13.00

Winner of the 2005 Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball
Research

"Prodigiously researched and thoroughly unsentimental, Neil Lanctot's history of organized black baseball from 1933 through the early 1960s provides an enormously important historical corrective to feel-good versions of baseball integration."--New York Times

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

In the Mood for Horace

As another National Poetry Month comes to an end, here's a sampling from A.M. Juster's forthcoming translation of The Satires of Horace.

From I:VI

When I am in the mood, I go explore
entirely alone and ascertain 
the prices set for vegetables and grain.
As evening falls, I often wander through 
the sketchy Circus and the Forum too. 
I stand beside astrologers, then troop 
back home to have some leek and chickpea soup. 
Three slaveboys serve my meals, and polished stone 
supports the ladle and two cups I own. 
Beside these items is some bric-a-brac 
made in Campania: a cheap knick-knack, 
an oil-flask with its dish. When supper’s done, 
I sleep unworried that I’ll need to run 
out for an early meeting or appear 
in front of Marsyas (who is quite clear 
that looking at the face of Novius 
the Lesser should be viewed as odious).