Penn Press Log

Miller's History News Net Essay on Evangelicals in Politics

"Recent developments might be giving historians of the increasingly prominent subject of American evangelicalism (specifically, political evangelicalism) reason to consider whether we have reached the end of an era," says Steven P. Miller  in a new essay for History News Network. In "Evangelicalism—the End of an Era?" Miller, author of Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South, examines the vital signs and looks forward to more historical examinations of evangelical life in America.

Read Miller's new essay at hnn.us.

Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years--Now in Paperback

Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years
By N. O. Body. Translated by Deborah Simon. Preface by Sander L. Gilman. Afterword by Hermann Simon
160 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Cloth 2005 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3908-9 | $34.95 | £23.00
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2061-2 | $19.95 | £13.00

The first translation into English of a startling 1907 memoir of a writer who was born a boy, was raised as a girl, and who lived as a man. Who was the real N.O. Body, and why did he go to such lengths to hide not just his name but his Jewish identity? Read more . . .

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

Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South--Now Available

Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South
Steven P. Miller
320 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus.
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4151-8 | $29.95 | £19.50
A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series

"Steven Miller has written an engaging and original political biography of the most important American religious figure of the twentieth century."--Joseph Crespino, author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution

Read more . . .

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

The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb--Now Available

The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb
Frances Trix
240 pages | 6 x 9 | 34 illus.
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-1-934536-12-4 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology series

Baba Rexheb founded the first community of the Bektashi order in America. This ethnographic biography recounts his life through lived example and through stories collected during Frances Trix's more than twenty years of study with the dervish. Read more . . .

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

The Way of Improvement Leads Home--Now in Paperback

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America
John Fea
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4109-9 | $39.95 | £26.00
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2059-9 | $24.95 | £16.50
A volume in the Early American Studies series

In this first full biography of Philip Vickers Fithian, John Fea tells the story of how one young man sought to pursue the life of an eighteenth-century Presbyterian gentleman while continuing to yearn for the everyday passions that defined what it meant for him to be human. Read more . . .

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

Liang and Lin--Now in Paperback

Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China's Architectural Past
Wilma Fairbank. Foreword by Jonathan Spence
256 pages | 6 x 9 | 31 illus.
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2040-7 | $19.95 | £13.00

Wilma Fairbank documents, from both a historical and a uniquely personal perspective, the professional and personal achievements of the first historians of Chinese architecture.

"Liang and Lin is the story of a romance and of a heroic struggle against great odds. . . . Wilma Fairbank, who is the only person . . . who could have written this story, has created an affecting portrait of the final years of an epoch when Old China faded away and New China took its place."--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.

Blum Interview on Religion Dispatches

W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet author Edward J. Blum recently discussed the inspiration for his research with the online daily magazine Religion Dispatches. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Professionally, I felt drawn to write about religion in Du Bois’s because it filled two important historical gaps. First, he was basically ignored by American religious historians who tended to write more about Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Billy Graham, or Martin Luther King, Jr. I wondered about the religious insights of a man who refused to become a minister. I found that Du Bois’s life and insights probably tell us more about the power and place of religion in American society than any of these others. Second, American historians have written extensively about Du Bois but have basically ignored his interest in religion. I felt shocked to read book after book about The Souls of Black Folk that focused on the word “folk” in the title but not on “souls.”

LRB Reviews Deirdre David's Fanny Kemble

". . .few subjects can have had more incarnations than Kemble," writes Ruth Bernard Yeazell in the latest issue of London Review of Books. "and Deirdre David's new biography is particularly alert to this long exercise in self-fashioning, while she divides her attention more evenly over the full range of Kemble's achievements than her recent predecessors."

The complete review of Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life by Deirdre David is available to London Review of Books subscribers at www.lrb.co.uk.

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.

The Way of Improvement Leads Home--Now Available

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America
John Fea
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus.
Cloth Feb 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4109-9 | $39.95 | £26.00
A volume in the Early American Studies series

In this first full biography of Philip Vickers Fithian, John Fea tells the story of how one young man sought to pursue the life of an eighteenth-century Presbyterian gentleman while continuing to yearn for the everyday passions that defined what it meant for him to be human.

Read more . . .

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