Penn Press Log

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance--Now Available

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance
Dana E. Katz
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 70 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4085-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Dana E. Katz reveals how Italian Renaissance painting became part of a policy of tolerance that deflected violence from the real world onto a symbolic world. While the rulers upheld toleration legislation governing Christian-Jewish relations, they simultaneously supported artistic commissions that perpetuated violence against Jews.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

Marriage and Violence--Now Available

Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy
Frances E. Dolan
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4075-7 | $47.50 | £31.00

Marriage is often described as a melding of two people into one. But what--or who--must be lost, fragmented, or buried in that process? Dolan reveals the contradiction that lies at the very heart of modern marriage. We have inherited from early modern England a model of marriage, she contends, so flawed that its logical consequence is conflict.

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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.

Robin Chapman Stacey wins ACIS Prize

The American Conference for Irish Studies presented Robin Chapman Stacey with the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences for his Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland. Stacey accepted the prize at this year's ACIS national conference held at  St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.

Thomas M. Nichols on History News Network

Welcome to the new age of preventive war, in which states and their leaders will no longer be content to wait for signs of imminent attack in order to strike first, and will choose instead to eradicate even potential threats long before they can fully ripen into major terrorist attacks or mature into working weapons of mass destruction.

The quote above is from Thomas M. Nichol's new History News Network essay, "The Coming Age of Preventative War". In this piece, Nichols, Professor of Strategy and Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy at the United States Naval War College and author of Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventive War, outlines the concepts that will shape future geopolitical violence and calls for truly international governance over the use of preventive force.

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe--Now Availability

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe
Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter, Editors
328 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4080-1 | $59.95 | £39.00
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.

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe--Now Available

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives
Edited by Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz
168 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4069-6 | $39.95 | £26.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe seeks to explain the convergence of religion and gender in medieval Christendom. Essays in the volume examine how Europeans identified themselves as women, men, and Christians, and how these identities influenced religious belief and practice in everyday life.

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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 Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews--Now Available

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews
Edited by Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn
336 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4064-1 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

In this multidisciplinary volume, leading historians provide new understanding of a time that sent shockwaves through Jewish communities in and beyond the Russian Empire and transformed the way Jews thought about the politics of ethnic and national identity.

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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.