Penn Press Log

This Week's New Books: Public Capitalism and Changing is Not Vanishing

Public Capitalism: The Political Authority of Corporate Executives Christopher McMahon 208 pages | 6 x 9 Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4444-1 | $39.95 | £26.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0726-2| $39.95 | £26.00 A volume in the Haney Foundation Series Political philosopher Christopher McMahon argues that the social authority of corporate executives is best understood as a form of political authority. Public Capitalism explores the implications of that claim and sketches a new theoretical framework for discussion of the moral and political issues faced by corporate executives. Read more . . .

Now in Paperback Changing Is Not Vanishing: A Collection of American Indian Poetry to 1930 Edited by Robert Dale Parker 456 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 10 illus. Paper | ISBN 978-0-8122-2218-0 | $26.50 | £17.50 Changing Is Not Vanishing simultaneously reinvents the history of American Indian literature and American poetry by uncovering a vast but forgotten archive of early American Indian poems. The book includes work by 82 writers and a full bibliography of poems by more than 140 Indian writers who wrote before 1930. Read more . . .

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

There's More to Publicity than Free Books

Chloe Bollentin has a passion for proofreading, but she put down the red pen and picked up a few lessons about book publicity during her summer internship in the Press marketing department. In the final post in our summer intern series, Bollentin shares what she learned.

The summer I worked at my mom’s one-person publishing company, I spent hours at a time editing. From tweaking the grammar in the annual report to proofing a cookbook manuscript, I loved every minute of it. That experience and my passion for proofreading led me to apply for an internship with Penn Press. I was surprised when I was offered the opportunity to work in the Press marketing department. But I decided to take a step out of my comfort zone and accept.

Publicity was never a field I’d considered, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d always imagined that if I were going to work in publishing, I’d want to be an editor, working closely with the manuscript and ultimately feeling a sense of pride and responsibility for the final product, the same kind of pride I’d felt when the cookbook I’d spent so many hours editing hit the shelves. Could I really get the same sense of satisfaction from working in a field where the books are, for the most part, already in their final stages of production by the time they reached my desk?

At first I wasn’t so sure. One of the first things I learned during my internship was that the Press Publicity Manager, Saunders Robinson, is personally responsible for soliciting publicity and reviews for every book the Press publishes. At first, this arrangement didn’t seem to leave much room for serious involvement with the books. At the beginning of the summer I worked on a series of clerical tasks, such as assigning each forthcoming book to a list of review outlets in our database. I knew that it was important to carefully decide where we would send the precious free copies we give away to possible reviewers. But since the Press asks the authors to give us a list of publications where they think their book could be reviewed, much of the time I felt as though the interesting workthe work that involves really knowing the book--had already been done. My main job, it seemed, was data entry. Was this all there was to publicity--making lists of where to send free books?

As it turned out, tasks like this only scratched the surface of the publicity world. Soon I learned that the Penn Press publicist does work closely with books. Sometimes she picks out books that she thinks could be popular, even if they aren’t expected to be, and makes a project out of soliciting reviews for them. From how she spoke about the satisfaction she gets from making an underdog book a publicity success, I recognized that this was similar to the kind of satisfaction I’d gotten from editing a manuscript. I started to wonder if maybe editing and publicity were, in some ways, just different means to a similar end. Maybe publicity was something I could enjoy.

As the weeks went by, my tasks got more interesting, and my positive feelings towards publicity grew. I started to learn that to publicize a book well, you need to know the book well, even if you can’t sit down and read every word. In fact, publicizing a book requires knowing it in a certain way, the kind of knowledge you can’t get just from editing the manuscript. It’s not enough to know what the book is about; you have to know who would want to read it. The audience for a book on the history of stewardesses is vastly different from the audience for a book on the history of the Pennsylvania railroad. Publicity, I discovered, isn’t just about reaching as many people as possible; it’s about reaching the right people. Before this summer, I might have thought that the best possible place to have a book reviewed--any book--would be the New York Times Book Review or the New York Review of Books. But since working at Penn Press, I’ve learned that publicizing a book, especially the highly specialized books the Press publishes, takes more creativity than that. Rather than targeting only the most popular publications--where the chances of having a review published are slim to none anyway--I’m better off spending time researching what niche TV and radio programs might be interested in, for example, a medieval Arab cookbook. A review on one of those shows might not reach as many people as a review in the New York Times, but the people who hear it are more likely to buy the book. And when they do, I know I’ll feel as satisfied as if I’d edited the manuscript myself.

Working as Penn Press’s publicity intern has given me the opportunity to appreciate a different aspect of publishing, one whose effects you see only after the book has hit the shelves: namely, who takes it off the shelves and why. Sometimes I still miss those long hours hunched over a stack of papers with a red pen in hand, and who knows, maybe editing is still where I’ll end up. But now every time I pick up my favorite magazine and read a review of a book that sounds perfect for me, I’ll understand the effort that went into bringing that book to my attention.

Chloe Bollentin begins her sophomore year at Smith College this fall.

Labor Rights on Labor Day

In this guest blog post Susan L. Kang, author of Human Rights and Labor Solidarity: Trade Unions in the Global Economy, points out the value of labor rights and looks at recent opposition to collective bargaining in the United States from an international perspective.

Celebrating Labor Rights on Labor Day

As we celebrate the 188th Labor Day, commemorating the struggles of the American labor movement, through picnics, parades, or the simple enjoyment of our leisure, we should also consider the gravity of the recent coordinated attacks on union rights. Commentator Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post recently claimed that collective bargaining “as a right” is a “failing issue,” evidenced by the unsuccessful recall efforts in Wisconsin. Supposedly, citizens concerned with budgetary problems now regard public sector union rights as neither necessary nor politically feasible. Rather than a “right,” which implies a universal and fundamental protection, public sector collective bargaining is merely a “privilege.” And since privileges are legislatively provided, it is legitimate to legislatively remove them in response to political and economic conditions.

We would be better off understanding the situation in Wisconsin, and similar events in Ohio, as a demonstration of the fundamental importance of union rights, both in the United States and internationally. Both sides of this political contest recognize that workers' right to organize affects election results and public policy. Furthermore, thinking internationally about the current struggle over union rights in American can help us understand why this conflict is so intractable. It can also help us see how advocates of union rights might strategize in their struggles.

Special APSA 2012 Sale

Hurricane Isaac shut down the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, but Isaac can't stop you from saving on Penn Press political science books.

We're offering a special 35% discount on what would have been on display at APSA 2012 in New Orleans. The books listed below are just a small sample. Please visit our APSA 2012 sale page for the complete list of titles.

China Hand: An Autobiography
John Paton Davies, Jr. Foreword by Todd S. Purdum. Epilogue by Bruce Cumings
376 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 illus.
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4401-4
A volume in the Haney Foundation Series

The Color Revolutions
Lincoln A. Mitchell
256 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4417-5

Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism
David R. Swartz
376 pages | 6 x 9 | 25 illus.
Cloth Oct 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4441-0

American Marriage: A Political Institution
Priscilla Yamin
224 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4424-3

Medieval Monday: Five Myths about Medieval Women and Power

Guest blogger Janna Bianchini, Assistant Professor of history at the University of Maryland and author of The Queen's Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile, busts some common misconceptions about women in the Middle Ages.

When I mentioned to a friend that my new book was called The Queen’s Hand, his eyes got wide. “You mean like in Game of Thrones?” he said. Sadly for my hopes of record-breaking sales, no. But this is one of those cases where reality is cooler than fiction. In George R. R. Martin’s epic, the King’s (or Queen’s) Hand is an official who handles the dull administrative work of ruling so that the monarch can feast and joust and hold court. In thirteenth-century Iberia (the peninsula now occupied by Spain and Portugal), the queen’s hand was literally that—her hand, the symbol of her authority. She didn’t delegate her power to someone else; she used it herself.

The Middle Ages isn’t generally thought of as a period friendly to women at all, much less to powerful ones. Still, we’re all familiar with a handful of medieval and early modern women who had extraordinary influence: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth I of England. The subject of my book, Berenguela of Castile, is one of their lesser-known peers. But the focus on women like Berenguela as “exceptions to the rule” has the strange effect of reinforcing old myths about medieval women. Were these women exceptional? Oh, yes. But they didn’t come from nowhere, and their success depended on navigating a society that was much more complex than these myths assume.

An English Major in the Workforce

English major Sam Lawyer shares her optimistic employment outlook in the third installmemt of our summer intern blog post series.

There is one question that is the bane of every hopeful English major’s existence: What are you going to do with that degree? It is not a question at all really, but rather a warning in disguise presuming we will all waste away in a life long attempt to write the next great American novel. Some of us definitely will write the next great American novels, but if there is one thing I’ve learned this summer as an intern at the Penn Press, it’s that the rest of us need not fret about a total absence of future employment opportunities. The Press has given me exposure to the variety of important roles that its staff members play, roles that will always be necessary in the publishing industry—yes, even when today’s young adults enter into the workforce.

The Acquisitions Department carefully selects which books the Press will publish, a duty which is highly significant and subsequently demands a refined expertise in language, literature, and sometimes the subject matter of the specific manuscripts they encounter. Their selection process is based upon the quality of the proposed work, what it might add to the collection the Press has already published in its specific subject area, and finally, how the work fits into the conversation among the different authors in this collection. These judgments stem from a strong background in scholarly writing, the kind of preparation specially provided by a degree in the liberal arts. Without qualified individuals to hold these gate-keeping positions, it would be nearly impossible for publishers to develop a repertoire among scholarly circles or become a trustworthy source for the academic community. The Acquisitions Department will always be a central feature of publishing companies, and graduates passionate about the humanities are the strongest candidates for these positions.

Next, the Managing Editorial Department provides a similarly crucial function whose link to a degree in English needs little explicating. Any liberal arts student knows that while Spell Check is certainly helpful, it is no substitute for the proofreading offered by a sagacious human eye. As long as they write, authors will make typos and misplace commas, which means there will always be a need in the Press for those of us who are sticklers for grammar and detail-oriented in general. Not only are English majors qualified for such a job, it allows them to get paid to do something they enjoy: read books (in the making).

Once editing is done, there are the physical details of the books that need to be planned for. That is where the Production staff comes in. While the font, binding color, and type of paper used in the books we read is often take for granted, these design elements don’t materialize from the thin air. Various employees at publishing houses work hard to make them possible. While these roles may not require a background in English, they can certainly be performed by Enlighs majors who are visual, organized, and efficient.

Even after books have been released, there are many roles that the Press performs that provide entry-level positions for ambitious young adults. There are jobs in the Marketing Department, carrying out the valiant task of publicizing the Press’ newly published works to the journals, conferences, and news networks. These efforts help spread an otherwise undiscovered wealth of information to intellectual communities that will then use it to inform their own work and others.

There are also positions in Rights and Administration which require an analytical mind such as that effectively fostered by an English or other liberal arts degree. Rights and adminstration professionals parcel out reproduction and translation rights, which are only granted to sources that the Press feels confident will do justice by the work and promote the integrity of their organization. This ability to discern where the works of the Press belong is incredibly important, as it maintains the credibility of its content and the context in which it is used. Both the Marketing and Rights and Administration Departments are excellent employment opportunities for English majors that are effective communicators and negotiators. These abilities have become increasingly valuable in the age of Wikipedia and a host of other Internet sources with little regulation.

The plethora of work required to run a publishing house does not negate tight budgets and the surplus of candidates looking for jobs, but it is undoubtedly work that gets done by someone. English majors, like graduates in any other academic discipline, are going to have to be competitive in order to thrive in this industry and getting a job is by no means easy. What we can feel confident about is that we are equipped with an important skill set that has a place in the workforce, and that a love of literature is not necessarily a sentence to life as a starving artist. With the right combination of motivation, networking, and timing, it is certainly possible to gain employment even against what might appear to be frightening odds. Next time someone asks me what I’ll be doing with my English major, I still probably won’t be certain, but it won’t be for lack of options.

Sam Lawyer is a student at the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts & Sciences.

Feast Your Eyes: An Illustration from Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters

This photograph by Lee Russell appears in the forthcoming Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America by Victoria W. Wolcott.

Figure 5. African Americans skating at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago, 1941. CORE recruited talented young skaters from the Savoy to help desegregate white rinks. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection.

This Week's New Books: Regulatory Breakdown and Healing Secular Life

Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation Edited by Cary Coglianese Description, Table of Contents, and More "Everybody talks about regulatory failure, but no one does much about it. This book investigates claims of regulatory breakdown in the United States and provides helpful clues as to what might be done."--Jerry Mashaw, Yale Law School 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. Hardcover  2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4460-1 | $49.95 | £32.50 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0749-1 | $49.95 | £32.50

Healing Secular Life: Loss and Devotion in Modern Turkey Christopher Dole Description, Table of Contents, and More "A fine ethnography that examines the cultural politics of healing practices in contemporary Turkey. It offers a fresh and original account of the cultural discourses and modes of aesthetic representation and perception that congeal around questions of religious healing."--Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 18 illus. Hardcover 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4416-8 | $69.95 | £45.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4416-8 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the Contemporary Ethnography series

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

Bombshell: Women and Terrorism Author Mia Bloom on WPSU Tonight

Mia Bloom, author of Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, is tonight's guest on WPSU's Conversations from Penn State.

"Once a rare and shocking occurrence, the number of females engaging in terrorism in is on the rise. Who are these women and what is driving them to kill? Mia Bloom, a leading expert on suicide terrorism, answers these questions and more."

The program will air at 9:00 p.m. You can also watch it online at www.wpsu.org, or on YouTube.

A Publishing Internship Packing List

In this installment in our series of summer intern blog posts, Julie Carlson shows prospective scholarly publishing beginners how to pack light for their cubicle adventures.

Whenever summer draws to a close, I inevitably feel the urge to run off and spend a few days in some exotic, sunny locale. Unfortunately, even if such an impromptu vacation was financially feasible, I know myself well enough to know that I would inevitably find my voyage taxing, my skin burnt, and my feet blistered; basically, I would hate the trip. Nevertheless, my wanderlust persists. Foreseeing this conflict of interests, I preemptively decided to pass this summer in the relatively-relaxing environ of Philadelphia, where I’ve spent 10 weeks on an exciting safari through the world of a scholarly press. For like-minded peers who may wish to follow in my footsteps, here are a few items for your packing list.