Penn Press Log

This Week's New Books--Locked In, Locked Out, Take Up Your Pen, and More

Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores 232 pages | 6 x 9 | 19 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4513-4 | $65.00 | £42.50 A volume in the City in the Twenty-First Century series In Locked In, Locked Out, Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores examines four communities in Ponce, Puerto Rico, showing how gates—in both physical and symbolic ways—distribute power, reroute movement, sustain social inequalities, and cement boundary lines of class and race. Read more . . .

Take Up Your Pen: Unilateral Presidential Directives in American Politics Graham G. Dodds 304 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4511-0 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism series Graham G. Dodds explores the constitutional and historical development of unilateral presidential directives—the ability of presidents to bypass the legislative process and set public policy via their own executive orders—and how such a practice fits Americans' conception of democracy. Read more . . .

Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria Fabian Klose. Translated by Dona Geyer 448 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4495-3 | $89.95 | £58.50 A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series Based on previously inaccessible material from international archives, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence examines the relationship between emerging human rights concepts after 1945 and repressive British and French actions against anticolonial movements in Africa. Read more . . .

Bound to Read: Compilations, Collections, and the Making of Renaissance Literature Jeffrey Todd Knight 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 33 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4507-3 | $59.95 | £39.00 A volume in the Material Texts series Jeffrey Todd Knight excavates the culture of book collecting and compiling in early modern England, examining how the pervasive practice of mixing texts, authors, and genres into single bindings defined Renaissance ways of thinking and writing. Read more . . .

Multilevel Citizenship Edited by Willem Maas 288 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4515-8 | $65.00 | £42.50 A volume in the Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism series Multilevel Citizenship challenges the dominant conception of citizenship as legal and political equality within a sovereign state, demonstrates how citizenship is constructed by political and legal practices, and explores alternative forms of membership in substate, suprastate, and nonstate political communities. Read more . . .

Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places Edited by Joanne McEvoy and Brendan O'Leary 432 pages | 6 x 9 | 25 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4501-1 | $85.00 | £55.50 A volume in the National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century series This volume considers an array of power-sharing systems in divided cities and states, with critical evaluations of their merits and defects as well as explanations of their emergence, maintenance, and failings. Read more . . .

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

Sister Carrie, the Pennsylvania Edition Publishing Anniversary

"On this day in 1981 the University of Pennsylvania Press issued their edition of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, in which some 40,000 words are restored to the text and various changes to the original manuscript are reversed. Far from settling the issue, the Pennsylvania edition provided yet another chapter to one of the most famous and controversial stories in American book publishing."--Today in Literature, April 17, 2013

Win a Free Copy of Ellis Island Nation

Ellis Island Nation: Immigration Policy and American Identity in the Twentieth Century, a new book by University of Mississippi historian Robert L. Fleegler, traces the emergence of "contributionism," the belief that the newcomers from eastern and southern Europe contributed important cultural and economic benefits to American society.

Early twentieth-century immigrants from southern and eastern Europe often found themselves criticized for language and customs at odds with their new culture, but initially found greater acceptance through an emphasis on their similarities to "native stock" Americans. Drawing on sources as diverse as World War II films, records of Senate subcommittee hearings, and anti-Communist propaganda, Ellis Island Nation describes how contributionism eventually shifted the focus of the immigration debate from assimilation to a Cold War celebration of ethnic diversity and its benefits--helping to ease the passage of 1960s immigration laws that expanded the pool of legal immigrants and setting the stage for the identity politics of the 1970s and 1980s. Ellis Island Nation provides a historical perspective on recent discussions of multiculturalism and the exclusion of groups that have arrived since the liberalization of immigrant laws.

If you'd like the chance to receive a free copy of Ellis Island Nation, send an email to pressmkt at pobox dot upenn dot edu with your first name, last name, and your preferred email address by Friday, April 19  at noon Eastern Standard Time. One person will be selected at random to receive a hardcover or ebook copy of Ellis Island Nation.

Penn Museum Books Archaeological Data Sets Now Available Online

The digital supplementary material from 18 books in our Penn Museum series is now available online through University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (PennMuseum) collection in tDAR.

These incredible materials include rich data sets, images, and reports, all available for download by registered tDAR users. tDAR is the digital repository of Digital Antiquity, a collaborative organization dedicated to enhancing preservation and access to the digital records of archaeological investigations.

A New Year, a New Season of Great Penn Press Titles

Happy 2013 to all!

It may not feel like spring outside, but our new and forthcoming Spring 2013 books are all available for browsing and preorder at www.pennpress.org.

You can also check out the spring season offerings in our catalog. Click here to download a PDF. The image on the cover is from Tropical Whites: The Rise of the Tourist South in the Americas by Catherine Cocks, which is one of 85 new books scheduled for release between now and June.

This Week's New Books: Between North and South, The Sovereign Citizen, and Capricious Fancy

Between North and South: Delaware, Desegregation, and the Myth of American Sectionalism Brett Gadsden 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 13 illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4443-4 | $45.00 | £29.50 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0797-2 | $45.00 | £29.50 A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series Between North and South chronicles the three-decades-long struggle over segregated schooling in Delaware, a key border state and important site of civil rights activism and white reaction, that despite concerted white opposition to reforms produced one of the most progressive desegregation remedies in the nation.

The Sovereign Citizen: Denaturalization and the Origins of the American Republic Patrick Weil 224 pages | 6 x 9 Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-2212-8 | $34.95 | £23.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0621-0 | $34.95 | £23.00 A volume in the Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism series Present-day Americans may feel secure in their citizenship, but there was a time when citizens could be denationalized. Patrick Weil examines the twentieth-century legal procedures, causes, and enforcement of denaturalization to illuminate an important and neglected dimension of American citizenship, sovereignty, and federal authority.

Capricious Fancy: Draping and Curtaining the Historic Interior, 1800-1930 Gail Caskey Winkler. Foreword by Roger Moss 408 pages | 9 1/2 x 11 | 293 color illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4322-2 | $85.00 | £55.50 Capricious Fancy chronicles the changes in American and European curtain and drapery styles from 1800 to 1930 resulting from the Industrial Revolution. This lavishly illustrated book contains 325 rare archival images and historical commentary from a leading historic preservation educator and practitioner.

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

Around the World with Penn Press

You may not need a map to see that scholarly publishers like Penn Press contribute to the world's knowledge and understanding, but it does provide an interesting perspective.

As part of the Univeristy Press Week celebration, Penn Press has created a special Google map to show the reach of our authors and publications. In the Fall 2012 season alone, we touched every continent except Antarctica. (Oh, well. Maybe next season.)

View University of Pennsylvania Press Influence Map in a larger map

For links to other university press maps and details on University Press Week events, visit www.universitypressweek.org.

This Week's New Books: Matching Organs with Donors, Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Not in This Family, Sweet Liberty

Matching Organs with Donors: Legality and Kinship in Transplants Marie-Andrée Jacob 248 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth | ISBN 978-0-8122-4432-8 | $65.00 | £42.50 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0650-0 | $65.00 | £42.50 A volume in the Contemporary Ethnography series This sensitive ethnography reveals the methods and mindsets of doctors, patients, donors, and sellers in Israel's living kidney transplant bureaus. Matching Organs with Donors describes how these actors identify and adjudicate suitable matches between donor and recipient using terms borrowed from definitions of kinship.

Now in Paperback Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending Elizabeth L. Eisenstein 384 pages | 6 x 9 | 24 illus. Cloth  | ISBN 978-0-8122-4280-5 | $45.00 | £29.50 Paper | ISBN 978-0-8122-2216-6 | $26.50 | £17.50 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0467-4 | $26.50 | £17.50 A volume in the Material Texts series The author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change offers a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related.

Now in Paperback Not in This Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America Heather Murray 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 25 illus. Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4268-3 | $45.00 | £29.50 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2224-1 | $24.95 | £16.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0740-8 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series Not in This Family shows how gays and their heterosexual parents both have animated each other's sensibilities, consciousness, and even culture and politics. Author Heather Murray suggests a reciprocal family life and complicates the notion of gay banishment.

Now in Paperback Sweet Liberty: The Final Days of Slavery in Martinique Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4172-3 | $39.95 | £26.00 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2227-2 | $24.95 | £16.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0356-1 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Early American Studies series Sweet Liberty offers a history of Martinique and its relationship to metropolitan France during the final years of slavery in the French empire. It argues that an Atlantic-world approach reveals how race, slavery, class, and gender shaped what it meant to be French on both sides of the ocean.

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

I’d Like to Thank the Academy—and the Copyeditor

I’d Like to Thank the Academy—and the Copyeditor
A Guest Post by Caroline Winschel

After I had been working at the Press for about six months, I was visiting my mother and noticed a familiar spine on her bookshelf: it was a copy of Kirsten A. Fudeman’s Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities. Because my mother is neither a medievalist nor a reader of monographs, I asked her why she had the book.

“Because it has your name in it!”
Of course. Thanks, Mom.

When a book is first published, the advance copies that arrive in our office are carefully inspected by our production manager before they are deemed suitable for distribution and sale. By the time I get a copy, it’s already received her seal of approval, and there’s nothing left for me to check. I like to think that this justifies what I do check: the acknowledgments. Following the model presented by many of my senior colleagues, I flip to the back matter and scan the assembled thank-yous for my name.

Even when I’m not skimming for the sake of my ego, I like reading an author’s acknowledgments. There’s something very satisfyingly voyeuristic about seeing to whom—and how—an author offers her thanks. One of the very first books I worked on at the Press referenced a number of my college professors in the acknowledgments; although the author’s experience at our shared alma mater had been decades before mine, I was heartened to learn that she’d faced some of the same withering stares during her honors seminars. Another author, fresh out of grad school, had hidden jokes throughout his acknowledgments, and I still wonder if he invented the person who was identified only by his or her initials—and I wonder what foul thing the initials stood for!

This Week's New Books: Death by Effigy, Exquisite Mixture, and Textual Mirrors

Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition Luis R. Corteguera 240 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4439-7 | $39.95 | £26.00 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0705-7 | $39.95 | £26.00 A volume in the Early Modern Americas series On July 21, 1578, a small Mexican town awoke to the news of a scandal. Nailed to the door of its church was a double-faced effigy denouncing a neighbor as a Jew who should burn at the stake. Nine trials over the course of four years revealed a story of dishonor, revenge, and the Inquisition's relentless determination to defend its symbols.

Exquisite Mixture: The Virtues of Impurity in Early Modern England Wolfram Schmidgen 280 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4442-7 | $59.95 | £39.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0718-7 | $59.95 | £39.00 A volume in the Haney Foundation Series Exquisite Mixture examines the writing of Robert Boyle, John Locke, Daniel Defoe, and others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain who advocated mixture as a critical element of this belief in English superiority: mixture could produce superior languages, new species, flawless ideas, and resilient civil societies.

Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self Dina Stein 248 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4436-6 | $79.95 | £52.00 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0694-4 | $79.95 | £52.00 A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series In Textual Mirrors, Dina Stein draws on literary theory, folklore studies, and semiotics to closely examine midrashic tales in which self-reflexivity operates as a central element. Within these texts, rabbinic discourse itself becomes the object of reflection, both complicating and confirming its religious and ideological principles.

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