Penn Press Log

Affective Meditation--Now Available

Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion
Sarah McNamer
304 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Cloth Dec 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4211-9 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

This book offers a new history of a major medieval genre, affective meditations on the Passion. It argues that women were instrumental in the creation of this genre, and it illuminates how these scripts for the performance of prayer served to construct compassion itself as an intimate and feminine emotion.

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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 Devil in the Holy Water--Now Available

The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon
Robert Darnton
552 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 47 illus.
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4183-9 | $34.95 | £23.00
A volume in the Material Texts series
Not for sale in the British Commonwealth, except Canada, or in Europe

Robert Darnton explores the scandalous literature of libel and the colorful lives of libelers in eighteenth-century France. By doing so he shows how an ideological current eroded authority under the Old Regime and became absorbed in a new, more radical, political culture under Robespierre.

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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

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma--Now Available

Augustine's Manichaean Dilemma, 1: Conversion and Apostasy, 373-388 C.E.
Jason David BeDuhn
408 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4210-2 | $69.95 | £45.50
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series

Jason David BeDuhn reconstructs Augustine's decade-long adherence to Manichaeism, apostasy from it, and subsequent conversion to Nicene Christianity.

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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 First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading--Now Available

The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading
Jonathan Riley-Smith
232 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 4 maps
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2076-6 | $24.95 | £16.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series
Not for sale outside North America and the Philippines

In this classic work, presented here with a new introduction, one of the world's most renowned crusade historians approaches this central topic of medieval history with freshness and impeccable research.

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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 King's Other Body--Now Available

The King's Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon
Theresa Earenfight
240 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 maps
Cloth Nov 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4185-3 | $49.95 | £32.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

The King's Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon is both a biography of Alfonso V's queen and Lieutenant General of Catalunya and an analysis of her political partnership with Alfonso.

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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

Tabula Picta: Painting and Writing in Medieval Law--Now Available

Tabula Picta: Painting and Writing in Medieval Law
Marta Madero. Translated by Monique Dascha Inciarte and Roland David Valayre. Foreword by Roger Chartier
160 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4186-0 | $45.00 | £29.50
A volume in the Material Texts series

"Madero's book is a contribution both to the history of the property rights to artistic works and to the history of ideas about material things. . . . Tabula Picta demonstrates, in effect, that the category of the materiality of the text is . . . subject to historical variations that depend not only on the availability of particular techniques or materials. Perhaps even more, it is subject to the variable and plural categories that enable us, in different registers of experience and practice, to provide names, order, and attributions to things."--from the Foreword by Roger Chartier

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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.

Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives--Now Available

Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives
Gwynn Kessler
256 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4175-4 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series

Kessler shows how the rabbis of the third through sixth centuries turned to non-Jewish writings on embryology and procreation to explicate the biblical insistence on the primacy of God's role in procreation at the expense of the biological parents.

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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.

Muslims in Global Politics--Now Available

Muslims in Global Politics: Identities, Interests, and Human Rights
Mahmood Monshipouri
368 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4181-5 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series

In Muslims in Global Politics, Mahmood Monshipouri examines the role identity plays in the political dynamics of six different Muslim nations—Egypt, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia—as well as in Muslim diaspora communities in Europe and North America.

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Listen to an interview with Mahmood Monshipouri at the Penn Press podcast website.

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

Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men--Now Available

Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet
David S. Powers
416 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus.
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4178-5 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series

David Powers claims that the need for Muhammad to be the "seal of all prophets," combined with the fact that Muhammad apparently had an adopted son, Zayd, created a situation that drove early transmitters of the Qur'an to introduce a group of interrelated deletions, additions and emendations into certain passages of the text.

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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.

A New Penn Press Podcast--Muslims in Global Politics: Identities, Interests, and Human Rights

In the August podcast Mahmood Monshipouri, author of Muslims in Global Politics: Identities, Interests, and Human Rights, talks about identity politics and human rights issues in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Indonesia, and Europe. This podcast was recorded on July 17, the day of deadly hotel bomb blasts in Jakarta. Monshipouri teaches international relations at San Francisco State University.

Visit the Penn Press podcast site to listen.