Penn Press Log

This Week's New Books

Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291 Edited by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell 568 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4478-6 | $75.00 | £49.00 A volume in the Middle Ages Series Intended for the undergraduate yet also invaluable for teachers and scholars, this book illustrates how the crusade became crucial for defining and promoting the very concept and boundaries of Latin Christendom. It provides translations of and commentaries on key original sources and an up-to-date bibliography. Read more...

Tropical Whites: The Rise of the Tourist South in the Americas Catherine Cocks 284 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 color, 12 b/w illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4499-1 | $59.95 | £39.00 A volume in the Nature and Culture in America series Tropical Whites explains how the tropical beach resort came to symbolize the iconic vacation landscape. Catherine Cocks argues that the tourism industry romanticized and commodified tropical nature in the global South, ultimately legitimizing cultural pluralism and concepts of modern identity. Read more...

Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture Aaron Lecklider 296 pages | 6 x 9 | 21 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4486-1 | $45.00 | £29.50 Throughout the twentieth century, popular songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels alternated between representing intelligence as empowering and as threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, Aaron Lecklider cracks open this paradox by examining representations of intelligence to reveal brainpower's stalwart appeal and influence. Read more...

An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States Eric R. Schlereth 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. Cloth 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4493-9 | $55.00 | £36.00 A volume in the Early American Studies series Eric R. Schlereth places religious conflicts between deists and their opponents at the center of early American public life. This history recasts the origins of cultural politics in the United States by exploring how everyday Americans navigated questions of religious truth and difference in an age of emerging religious liberty. Read more...

This Week's New Books: The Gardens of Suzhou and Making New York Dominican

The Gardens of Suzhou Ron Henderson 224 pages | 6 x 9 | 111 illus. Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2214-2 | $29.95 | £19.50 A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series ""Henderson, a talented landscape architect and designer himself, offers a helpful representation and unique tour of this collection of some of China's most famous gardens."--Laurie Olin, University of Pennsylvania Walk with landscape architect and scholar Ron Henderson through seventeen of Suzhou's classical Chinese garden masterpieces. This insightful guide is fully illustrated with newly drawn plans, maps, and original photographs.

Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life Christian Krohn-Hansen 336 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4461-8 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the City in the Twenty-First Century series This volume presents an ethnographic study of Dominicans in New York City through their participation in small businesses. Krohn-Hansen demonstrates how Dominican enterprises work, how people find economic openings, and how Dominicans who own small commercial ventures have formed political associations to promote and defend their interests.

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

This Week's New Books: Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians plus 5 paperback releases

Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana Sophie White 384 pages | 6 x 9 | 33 color, 17 b/w Cloth Dec 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4437-3 | $45.00 | £29.50 A volume in the Early American Studies series Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians offers a distinctive and original reading of racialization in early America. Focusing on cultural cross-dressing from a wide range of sources, Sophie White shows that material culture—especially dress—was central to discourses about race, as colonization was built on encounters mediated by appearance.

Now in Paperback The Past in Pieces: Belonging in the New Cyprus Rebecca Bryant 224 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus. Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4260-7 | $45.00 | £29.50 Paper Dec 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2231-9 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Contemporary Ethnography series By examining oral history collected during two years of fieldwork, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant investigates why the 2003 opening of the ceasefire line dividing Cyprus has not led the country any closer to reunification, and how in many ways it has driven the two communities of the island farther apart.

Now in Paperback The Modern Moves West: California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century Richard Cándida Smith 264 pages | 6 x 9 | 35 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4188-4 | $39.95 | £26.00 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2221-0 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series Exploring the transformation of California into a center for contemporary art through the twentieth century, this book dramatically illustrates the paths California artists took toward a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Now in Paperback Zamumo's Gifts: Indian-European Exchange in the Colonial Southeast Joseph M. Hall, Jr. 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4179-2 | $37.50 | £24.50 Paper Dec 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2223-4 | $22.50 | £15.00 A volume in the Early American Studies series Zamumo's Gifts traces the evolution of Indian-European exchange, from gift giving as a diplomatic tool to the trade of commodities that bound colonists and Natives in commercial relations.

Now in Paperback Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India Kalyani Devaki Menon 232 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4196-9 | $49.95 | £32.50 Paper Jan 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2234-0 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Ethnography of Political Violence series This ethnography analyzes the popularity of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India through examining the everyday acts of women activists, finding that women's ability to recruit individuals from a variety of backgrounds and the movement's willingness to accommodate a multiplicity of positions are central to understanding its expansionary power.

Now in Paperback El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty, and the Transition to Democracy Ellen Moodie 304 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4228-7 | $55.00 | £36.00 Paper Jan 2013 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2235-7 | $24.95 | £16.50 A volume in the Ethnography of Political Violence series After El Salvador's brutal civil war ended in 1992, crime rates shot up. People began to speak of the peace as "worse than the war." This study examines how narratives of post-conflict violence, told by ordinary people, offered ways of coping with uncertainty during a stunted transition to democracy.

Now in Paperback Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building Edited by Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4213-3 | $45.00 | £29.50 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2237-1 | $24.95 | £16.50 Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0589-3 | $24.95 | £16.50 This volume examines political, ethnic, and personal trust and betrayals in modern times from Mozambique to the Taiwan Straits, from the former Eastern Bloc to the West Bank, revealing that treachery is a constant and essential part of the processes through which social and political order is reproduced.

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

This Week's New Books

Negotiating the Landscape: Environment and Monastic Identity in the Medieval Ardennes Ellen F. Arnold 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 maps Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4463-2 | $65.00 | £42.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0752-1 | $65.00 | £42.50 A volume in the Middle Ages Series Ellen Arnold draws upon a rich archive of charters, property and tax records, correspondence, miracle collections and saints' lives to explore the ways in which interaction with the natural world affected the 'environmental imagination' and identity of the Benedictine monks of Stavelot-Malmedy in the medieval Ardennes.

The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island Edited by Jonathan Conlin 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 73 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4438-0 | $69.95 | £45.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0732-3 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island draws together the work of musicologists, art historians, and scholars of urban studies and landscape design to explore the attractions and interactions of the pleasure garden, from the opening of Vauxhall in the seventeenth century to the amusement parks of the early twentieth.

Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire Edited by Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund, and Adam Arenson 296 pages | 6 x 9 | 15 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4468-7 | $45.00 | £29.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0757-6 | $45.00 | £29.50 Frontier Cities recovers the history of borderland cities in a range of periods and locations—from eighteenth-century Detroit and nineteenth-century Seattle to twentieth-century Los Angeles. Frontier cities embody the earliest mode of American urban experience and testify to the intersections of colonial, urban, western, and global history.

Now in Paperback Ethnographies of Neoliberalism Edited by Carol J. Greenhouse 376 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4192-1 | $55.00 | £36.00 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2232-6 | $27.50 | £18.00 Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0001-0 | $27.50 | £18.00 What happens when citizens are refashioned as consumers? Drawing on diverse disciplines and ethnographies from five continents, this collection considers neoliberal reform from the standpoint of people's self-understandings as social and political actors.

Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 Lidwien Kapteijns 336 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 map Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4467-0 | $69.95 | £45.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0758-3 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series Clan Cleansing in Somalia deals with the transformative violence that helped cause the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. Kapteijns argues that public acknowledgment of the clan cleansing of this period is indispensable to social and moral repair, and to the critical memory work required from Somalis on all sides of this conflict.

Baroque Sovereignty: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Creole Archive of Colonial Mexico Anna More 448 pages | 6 x 9 | 25 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4469-4 | $65.00 | £42.50 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0655-5 | $65.00 | £42.50 Baroque Sovereignty examines the emergence of a creole archive of artifacts, history, and traditions of colonial Mexico, primarily curated by the polymath Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. Anna More posits the centrality of this archive for understanding how a local political imaginary emerged from the ruins of Spanish imperialism.

Now in Paperback The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai'i Christine Skwiot 296 pages | 6 x 9 | 17 illus. Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4244-7 | $39.95 | £26.00 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2228-9 | $26.50 | £17.50 Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0003-4 | $26.50 | £17.50 The Purposes of Paradise shows how travel and tourism shaped U.S. imperialism in Cuba and Hawai'i between the 1850s, when expansionists imagined them as twin possessions, and revolution and statehood in 1959. It explores the relationships between imperial fantasies and political practices in Americans' favorite tropical isles.

Now in Paperback Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building Edited by Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly 312 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus. Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4213-3 | $45.00 | £29.50 Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2237-1 | $24.95 | £16.50 Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0589-3 | $24.95 | £16.50 This volume examines political, ethnic, and personal trust and betrayals in modern times from Mozambique to the Taiwan Straits, from the former Eastern Bloc to the West Bank, revealing that treachery is a constant and essential part of the processes through which social and political order is reproduced.

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

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.

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.