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.

Anti-slavery Day Reading

Today, October 18, is anti-slavery day in the United Kingdom and anti-trafficking day in the European Union. To mark the event, here are some recent books that take an in-depth look at forced human labor and efforts to end it.

From Human Trafficking to Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery Edited by Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series In this volume a cast of experts demonstrates that it is time to recognize human trafficking as an issue of human rights and social justice, rooted in larger structural issues relating to the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations

Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism Maurice Jackson In the first intellectual biography of the man universally recognized in his own time as the founder of the Atlantic antislavery movement, Jackson demonstrates how Anthony Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, African travel narratives, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique.

The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking Joel Quirk A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series Historian and human rights scholar Joel Quirk examines the evolution of political opposition to slavery from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. He offers an original diagnosis of the underlying causes driving one of the most pressing human rights problems in the world today.

Global Corruption Fighters: Robert F. Kennedy

The new book Global Corruption: Money, Power, and Ethics in the Modern World suggests ways in which the problems caused by corruption can be addressed and ultimately prevented. Written by Laurence Cockcroft, a development economist and a founding member of Transparency International, the book not only exposes corruption and the toll it takes on the world's poor. It also highlights women and men who stood up to dishonest practices, often at the cost of their lives.

In the coming weeks, we'll feature some of the prominent corruption fighters in Cockcroft's book, beginning close to home with a familiar American politcial figure, Robert F. Kennedy.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy testifying before a Senate subcommittee hearing on crime. U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

Robert Kennedy serveed on the United States Senate's McClellan Committee from 1957 to 1959. As Attorney General, Kennedy "continued to believe that organized crime as a bigger threat to the US political system than communism," says Crockcroft, who sees the late senator as an example of "the effect that one catalyst can have in seeing that a judical systems is effective--a true alignment of standards with ethics."

Cockcroft writes:

Bobby Kennedy made his name as a young advocate who successfully identified, through Senate hearings, the mafia links of two of the most powerful union bosses in American history: Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters' Union, which in the 1950s had a membership of 1.5 million and dominated the trucking and related industries. . . . As a believer in the American system, Kennedy despised Hoffa for his conviction that American society was irredeemably corrupt. He feared that organized crime was spreading its tentacles from the underworld into labour relations, business and politics and that this reflected the "moral sickness of a greedy society."

 

New This Week: Global Corruption: Money, Power, and Ethics in the Modern World

Global Corruption: Money, Power, and Ethics in the Modern World Laurence Cockcroft 320 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 12 illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4502-8 | $39.95 | £26.00 Not for sale outside North America and the Philippines By identifying the main drivers of corruption worldwide and analyzing current attempts to control them, this book suggests ways in which the problems caused by corruption can be addressed and ultimately prevented.

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.

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.

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.

This Week's New Books: Building Fortress Europe and American Marriage

Building Fortress Europe: The Polish-Ukrainian Frontier
Karolina S. Follis
288 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus.
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4428-1 | $69.95 | £45.50
A volume in the Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism series

Building Fortress Europe is an ethnographic examination of the human, social, and political consequences of developing a specialized, targeted, and legally advanced border regime in the enlarged European Union, exploring the intersection between border policing and the lives of migrants, framed by the contradictions of European integration.

Read more . . .

 

American Marriage: A Political Institution
Priscilla Yamin
224 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4424-3 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law series

"A splendid contribution to the scholarship of politics and marriage. . . . An exemplary work in a neglected field."--Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania

In American Marriage, Priscilla Yamin argues that marriage is a political institution to which actors turn either to stave off or to promote change over issues of race, gender, class, or sexuality. In the political struggle, certain marriages are pushed as necessary for the good of society, while others are contested or prevented.

Read more . . .

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