Penn Press Log

Russian Minority Politics--Now Available

Russian Minority Politics in Post-Soviet Latvia and Kyrgyzstan: The Transformative Power of Informal Networks
Michele E. Commercio
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 14 illus.
Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4221-8 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century series

Why do Russians choose to stay in Latvia, a state that adopts antagonistic policies that favor Latvians at the expense of Russians, yet migrate from Kyrgyzstan, a state that adopts accommodating policies to placate Kyrgyz and Russians? Michele E. Commercio suggests that the answer to this question lies in the power of informal networks.

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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.

The Nation Reviews The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon

"The Devil in the Holy Water is very ambitious," writes Ruth Scurr in the latest issue of the Nation. She goes on to praise Robert Darnton's new book for being "long, complex and important," as well as interesting to many people outside of the academy--and not just because of the saucy bits.

Scurr says, "This is a book for experts on eighteenth-century France; but it is also lucid and scurrilous enough to have much wider appeal.  The spectacle of a public figure cut down to size by revelations--true or false--about her or his private life is a literary genre that continues in rude health when more refined forms of writing--literary fiction, criticism and poetry, for example--threaten to become obsolete.  Readers will find much to titillate and shock in the slanders that brought -les grands- of eighteenth-century France to their knees.  But there is also a contemporary resonance to consider:  as our own voracious yellow press goes from strength to strength and life-writing converges on celebrity biography, the more defamatory the better selling, what can the history of slander and libel teach us?"

The complete review is available online to thenation.com subscribers and it will be on news stands April 12.

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road--Now Available

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road
Johan Elverskog
384 pages | 6 x 9 | 60 illus.
Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4237-9 | $69.95 | £45.50
A volume in the Encounters with Asia series

This groundbreaking work challenges contemporary stereotypes by revealing how both Buddhist and Muslim religious traditions were shaped by a millennium of cross-cultural exchange along the Silk Road from Iran to China.

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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.

Sealed With Blood--Now In Paperback

Sealed with Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America
Sarah J. Purcell
288 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus.
Cloth 2002 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3660-6 | $49.95 | £32.50
Paper 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2109-1 | $24.95 | £16.50
A volume in the Early American Studies series

"An exemplary study of public memory because of its wide vision, its attentiveness to context, and its careful delineation of change over time."—David Waldstreicher, author of In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820

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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.

Who's Reading Beat Cop to Top Cop, and What Does a Top Cop Read?

"Believe me, people who read Timoney’s book have a treat on their hands," says Tom Wolfe in the foreword to the forthcoming Beat Cop to Top Cop: A Tale of Three Cities. Wolfe's foreword appeared in Ireland's Independent yesterday. In it, Wolfe shares a few two-fisted tales from John F. Timoney's career as a tough Irish American cop who busts criminals along with some stereotypes. Wolfe writes:

Well, I could tell you Timoney tales from now until the sun comes up, but the book before us is not John Timoney's personal memoir. And I say, thank God for that. A memoir -- anybody's memoir -- is like Wikipedia: some of it may be true. Timoney does something far more valuable. He takes us inside the world of police work in three big cities: New York, Philadelphia, and Miami. He shows us metropolitan cops in action, their strategies, their sensitivity to public opinion, and, most fascinating of all to me, the political games they have no choice but to play.

Timoney himself recommended five police-related books to five-books.com, including Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Homo Narrans--Now in Paperback

Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature
John D. Niles
296 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus.
Paper 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2107-7 | $24.95 | £16.50

"A welcome interweaving of areas too often and too simplistically segregated: folklore and literature, oral tradition and written tradition, performance and text."--Choice

Homo Narrans explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. Author John D. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition.

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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.

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe--Now in Paperback

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe
Edited by Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter
336 pages | 6 x 9
Paper 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2106-0 | $24.95 | £16.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. However, historians have long recognized that medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law and legal procedure. This book makes the case that one cannot understand the era's cultural trends without considering the profound development of law.

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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.

A Big Wednesday on Campus: Penn Press author Panels on Poverty and Human Rights

Tomorrow two major author events will take place on the University of Pennsylvania Campus. The first deals with human rights in the United States. The second addresses America's urban poverty.

At 4:30 p.m. at the Penn Law School, Cynthia Soohoo, Catherine Albisa, and Martha F. Davis will discuss the issues raised in their book, Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States. Penn Law is located at  3400 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. For details, please contact Victoria Messina.

From 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. sociologist Elijah Anderson, historian Eric Schneider, and historian Michael Katz  join anthropologist Philippe Bourgois for a Conversation on Urban Poverty in Philadelphia and the United States. Anderson is the editor of Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male. Schneider is the author of Smack: Heroin and the American City. Katz is the author of The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. This interdisciplinary panel discussion will take place at the Penn Museum, located at 3260 South Street in Philadelphia. For more information, please contact the Penn Museum at  215-898-4045 or info@museum.upenn.edu.

Popular Ideologies--Now in Paperback

Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century
Susan Smulyan
208 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4020-7 | $35.00 | £23.00
Paper 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2111-4 | $22.50 | £15.00

Smulyan demonstrates that popular culture represented more than just "escape" during the twentieth century's formative period. Far from providing an ideology-free zone, popular products and entertainments served as an arena where producers attempt to impose notions of race, class, gender, and nationhood, and consumers react to such impositions.

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

Matthew Dennis on a New American Indian / NY Gov't Tobacco Controversy

In an essay for History News Network, historian Matthew Dennis weighs in on the controversial mail-order tobacco business run by the  Seneca Nation of Indians of western New York.

"Indians are on the warpath, and they’re trying to scalp your children!  At least, that’s what the New York Times reported, more or less, in its understated-sensationalist style, more highbrow than the National Inquirer but not much less lurid. . . . Instead, we need to peer more deeply through the smoke to see matters in historical perspective," writes Dennis.

Dennis is the author of Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic.Read his post in its entirety at HNN.us.