Search results for ""yale university press""

A fresh translation of The New Science, with detailed footnotes that will help both the scholar and the new reader navigate Vico’s masterpieceThe New Science is the major work of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico. First published in 1725 and revised in 1730 and 1744, it calls for a reinterpretation of human civilization by tracing the stages of historical development shared by all societies. Almost unknown during his lifetime, the work had a profound influence on later thinkers, from Montesquieu and Marx to Joyce and Gadamer. This edition offers a fresh translation and detailed annotations which enable the reader to track Vico’s multiple allusions to other texts. The introduction situates the work firmly within a contemporary context and newly establishes Vico as a thinker of modernity.

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“Greenberg has accomplished a magnificent literary feat. He has taken a great German work, until now all but inaccessible to English readers, and made it into a sparkling English poem, full of verve and wit. Greenberg's translation lives; it is done in a modern idiom but with respect for the original text; I found it a joy to read.”—Irving Howe (on the earlier edition) A classic of world literature, Goethe’s Faust is a philosophical and poetic drama full of satire, irony, humor, and tragedy. Martin Greenberg re-creates not only the text’s varied meter and rhyme but also its diverse tones and styles—dramatic and lyrical, reflective and farcical, pathetic and coarse, colloquial and soaring. His rendition of Faust is the first faithful, readable, and elegantly written translation of Goethe’s masterpiece available in English. At last, the Greenberg Faust is available in a single volume, together with a thoroughly updated translation, preface, and notes.

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A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice: A vivid account of the generations-long dispute over Bayes' rule, one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of applied mathematics and statistics"An intellectual romp touching on, among other topics, military ingenuity, the origins of modern epidemiology, and the theological foundation of modern mathematics."—Michael Washburn, Boston Globe"To have crafted a page-turner out of the history of statistics is an impressive feat. If only lectures at university had been this racy."—David Robson, New Scientist Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok.In the first-ever account of Bayes' rule for general readers, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it. She traces its discovery by an amateur mathematician in the 1740s through its development into roughly its modern form by French scientist Pierre Simon Laplace. She reveals why respected statisticians rendered it professionally taboo for 150 years—at the same time that practitioners relied on it to solve crises involving great uncertainty and scanty information (Alan Turing's role in breaking Germany's Enigma code during World War II), and explains how the advent of off-the-shelf computer technology in the 1980s proved to be a game-changer. Today, Bayes' rule is used everywhere from DNA de-coding to Homeland Security.Drawing on primary source material and interviews with statisticians and other scientists, The Theory That Would Not Die is the riveting account of how a seemingly simple theorem ignited one of the greatest controversies of all time.

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A vivid reappraisal of the legendary Captain Cook, from bestselling biographer Frank McLynn The age of discovery was at its peak in the eighteenth century, with heroic adventurers charting the furthest reaches of the globe. Foremost among these explorers was navigator and cartographer Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy.Recent writers have viewed Cook largely through the lens of colonial exploitation, regarding him as a villain and overlooking an important aspect of his identity: his nautical skills. In this authentic, engrossing biography, Frank McLynn reveals Cook's place in history as a brave and brilliant seaman. He shows how the Captain's life was one of struggle--with himself, with institutions, with the environment, with the desire to be remembered--and also one of great success.In Captain Cook, McLynn re-creates the voyages that took the famous navigator from his native England to the outer reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, Cook, who began his career as a deckhand, transcended his humble beginnings and triumphed through good fortune, courage, and talent. Although Cook died in a senseless, avoidable conflict with the people of Hawaii, McLynn illustrates that to the men with whom he served, Cook was master of the seas and nothing less than a titan.

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Since it was first published, French in Action: A Beginning Course in Language and Culture—The Capretz Method has been widely recognized in the field as a model for video-based foreign-language instructional materials. The third edition has been revised by Pierre Capretz and Barry Lydgate and includes new, contemporary illustrations throughout and more-relevant information for today's students in the Documents sections of each lesson. A completely new feature is a journal by the popular character Marie-Laure, who observes and humorously comments on the political, cultural, and technological changes in the world between 1985 and today. The new edition also incorporates more content about the entire Francophone world. In use by hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools, French in Action remains a powerful educational resource, and the third edition updates the course for a new generation of learners.

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An impassioned argument for the existence of evil from one of the most respected and influential critics of our day In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defense of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artifact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world.In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all?

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In recent years, Iran has gained attention mostly for negative reasons—its authoritarian religious government, disputed nuclear program, and controversial role in the Middle East—but there is much more to the story of this ancient land than can be gleaned from the news. This authoritative and comprehensive history of Iran, written by Homa Katouzian, an acclaimed expert, covers the entire history of the area from the ancient Persian Empire to today’s Iranian state. Writing from an Iranian rather than a European perspective, Katouzian integrates the significant cultural and literary history of Iran with its political and social history. Some of the greatest poets of human history wrote in Persian—among them Rumi, Omar Khayyam, and Saadi—and Katouzian discusses and occasionally quotes their work. In his thoughtful analysis of Iranian society, Katouzian argues that the absolute and arbitrary power traditionally enjoyed by Persian/Iranian rulers has resulted in an unstable society where fear and short-term thinking dominate. A magisterial history, this book also serves as an excellent background to the role of Iran in the contemporary world.

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The first full-length novel by Chinese author Can Xue to appear in English “There’s no other writer in China like Can Xue . . . strange, surreal, and very compelling . . . [and] this novel is probably the best place to start.”—Chad Post, Publishers Weekly Five Spice Street tells the story of a street in an unnamed city whose inhabitants speculate on the life of a mysterious Madam X. The novel interweaves their endless suppositions into a work that is at once political parable and surreal fantasia. Some think X is 50 years old, others that she is 22. Some believe she has occult powers and has thereby enslaved the young men of the street; others think she is a clever trickster playing mind games with the common people. Who is Madam X? How has she brought the good people of Five Spice Street to their knees either in worship or in exasperation? The unknown narrator takes no sides in the endless interplay of visions, arguments, and opinions. The investigation rages, as the street becomes a Walpurgisnacht of speculations, fantasies, and prejudices. Madam X is a vehicle whereby the people bare their souls, through whom they reveal themselves even as they try to penetrate the mystery of her extraordinary powers. Exploring the collective consciousness of this little street of ordinary people, Can Xue penetrates the deepest existential anxieties of the present day—whether in China or in the West—where the inevitable impermanence of identity struggles with the narrative within which identity must compose itself.

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The first authoritative account of the Hell-Fire Clubs, who joined them, and which notorious legends about them are true The Hell-Fire Clubs scandalized eighteenth-century English society. Rumors of their orgies, recruitment of prostitutes, extensive libraries of erotica, extreme rituals, and initiation ceremonies circulated widely at the time, only to become more sensational as generations passed. This thoroughly researched book sets aside the exaggerated gossip about the secret Hell-Fire Clubs and brings to light the first accurate portrait of their membership (including John Wilkes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Prince of Wales), beliefs, activities, and the reasons for their proliferation, first in the British Isles and later in America, possibly under the auspices of Benjamin Franklin.Hell-Fire Clubs operated under a variety of titles, but all attracted similar members—mainly upper-class men with abundant leisure and the desire to shock society. The book explores the social and economic context in which the clubs emerged and flourished; their various phases, which first involved violence as an assertion of masculinity, then religious blasphemy, and later sexual indulgence; and the countermovement that eventually suppressed them. Uncovering the facts behind the Hell-Fire legends, this book also opens a window on the rich contradictions of the Enlightenment period.

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“An impressive fusion of the inner histories of immigrant social and religious life.” —John W. Briggs, American Historical Review “An in-depth historical study of the Italian-American community and its religion, without sentimentalizing values and perceptions.”—Kirkus Reviews In a masterful evocation of Italian Harlem and the men and women who lived there, Robert Orsi examines how the annual festa of the Madonna of 115th Street both influenced and reflected the lives of the celebrants. His prize-winning book offers a new perspective on lived religion, the place of religion in the everyday lives of men, women, and children, the experiences of immigration and community formation, and American Catholicism. This edition includes a new introduction by the author that outlines both the changes that Italian Harlem has undergone in recent years and significant shifts in the field of religious history.

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A comprehensive look at the life and work of one of the 20th century’s most influential architects Aldo van Eyck (1918–1999) was a Dutch architect, writer, and teacher who helped redefine Modern architecture in the second half of the 20th century. As an advocate for architecture’s engagement with history, culture, climate, and the lived human experience of buildings and urban spaces, he created designs that privileged place and the daily rituals in the lives of its inhabitants over universal ideals. In this volume, enlivened by 300 illustrations from the Aldo van Eyck archive, Robert McCarter provides the first comprehensive study of van Eyck’s 50-year career since his death, guiding readers through the architect’s buildings and unrealized projects, with a focus on the interior spatial experience and on the design and construction processes. Highlighted projects include the Amsterdam Orphanage, the Roman Catholic Church in The Hague, and some of the hundreds of playgrounds he famously designed over the course of his career. McCarter also investigates how van Eyck’s writings and lectures convey the importance of architecture in the everyday lives of people around the world and throughout history. By presenting his design work together with the principles on which it was founded, McCarter illuminates van Eyck’s ethical interpretation of architecture’s place in the world.

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This edition of Ben Kiernan’s definitive account of the Cambodian revolution and genocide includes a new preface that takes the story up to 2008 and the UN-sponsored Khmer Rouge tribunal. “Deeply detailed, meticulously reported. . . . Important [and] valuable.” —Nation "In this authoritative work, Ben Kiernan . . . explores the reasons why Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge revolution became a Cambodian nightmare." —Richard Gough, Times Higher Education Supplement “Perhaps the most complete [account of Pol Pot’s terror] and the closest to Cambodian sources.” —Economist “One of the most important contributions to the subject so far.” —R. B. Smith, Asian Affairs "Kiernan, the leading authority on modern Cambodia, meticulously examines Pol Pot's killing machine and clears up many misconceptions found in earlier studies. . . . An important book for students of genocide as well as scholars of Southeast Asia." —Library Journal "[A] detailed and chilling history." —Asiaweek "The most detailed history to date of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. . . . This book . . . will certainly be the benchmark against which all future research on the Khmer Rouge must be measured. Very highly recommended." —Choice

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As well as a translation of the text of Paul's Letter to the Romans, this volume also contains a thorough commentary.

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In this second of two volumes on the Gospel According to Luke, beginning with chapter 10, Joseph A. Fitzmyer builds on the exhaustive introduction, definitive new translation, and extensive notes and commentary presented in his first volume. Fitzmyer brings to the task his mastery of ancient and modern languages, his encyclopedic knowledge of the sources, and his intimate acquaintance with the questions and issues raised by the third Synoptic Gospel.In “joining the spirit to the letter” and scholarship to faith, this two-volume commentary on Luke has, as the Journal of Biblical Literature predicted, “rapidly and deservedly become the standard work on Luke.” Luke’s unique literary and linguistic features, its relation to the other Gospels and the book of Acts, and its distinctive theological slant are discussed in detail by the author. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel speaks to the Greco-Roman world of first-century Christians, giving the followers of Jesus a reason for remaining faithful. Fitzmyer’s exposition of Luke helps modern-day Christians hear the Good News afresh and understand it like never before.

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Although it appears second in the New Testament, Mark is generally recognized as the first Gospel to be written. Captivating nonstop narrative characterizes this earliest account of the life and teachings of Jesus. In the first installment of his two-volume commentary on Mark, New Testament scholar Joel Marcus recaptures the power of Mark’s enigmatic narrative and capitalizes on its lively pace to lead readers through familiar and not-so-familiar episodes from the ministry of Jesus. As Marcus points out, the Gospel of Mark can be understood only against the backdrop of the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Jewish rebellions of 66-73 c.e., during which the Roman army destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem (70 c.e.). While the Jewish revolutionaries believed that the war was “the beginning of the end” and that a messianic redeemer would soon appear to lead his people to victory over their human enemies (the Romans) and cosmic foes (the demons), for Mark the redeemer had already come in the person of Jesus. Paradoxically, however, Jesus had won the decisive holy-war victory when he was rejected by his own people and executed on a Roman cross. The student of two of this generation’s most respected Bible scholars and Anchor Bible authors, Raymond E. Brown and J. Louis Martyn, Marcus helps readers understand the history, social customs, economic realities, religious movements, and spiritual and personal circumstances that made Jesus who he was. The result is a Bible commentary of the quality and originality readers have come to expect of the renowned Anchor Bible series. Challenging to scholars and enlightening to laypeople, Mark 1-8 is an invaluable tool for anyone reading the Gospel story.

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A renowned art historian confronts the specific powers of painting, and the hold of the visual image on the viewer's imagination Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? In his latest book T. J. Clark addresses these questions—and many more—in ways that steer art writing into new territory. In early 2000 two extraordinary paintings by Poussin hung in the Getty Museum in a single room, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (National Gallery, London) and the Getty's own Landscape with a Calm. Clark found himself returning to the gallery to look at these paintings morning after morning, and almost involuntarily he began to record his shifting responses in a notebook. The result is a riveting analysis of the two landscapes and their different views of life and death, but more, a chronicle of an investigation into the very nature of visual complexity. Clark’s meditations—sometimes directly personal, sometimes speaking to the wider politics of our present image-world—track the experience of viewing art through all its real-life twists and turns.

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The first collection of Mark Rothko’s writings, which range the entire span of his career While the collected writings of many major 20th-century artists, including Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Ad Reinhardt, have been published, Mark Rothko’s writings have only recently come to light, beginning with the critically acclaimed The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art. Rothko’s other written works have yet to be brought together into a major publication. Writings on Art fills this significant void; it includes some 90 documents—including short essays, letters, statements, and lectures—written by Rothko over the course of his career. The texts are fully annotated, and a chronology of the artist’s life and work is also included. This provocative compilation of both published and unpublished writings from 1934--69 reveals a number of things about Rothko: the importance of writing for an artist who many believed had renounced the written word; the meaning of transmission and transition that he experienced as an art teacher at the Brooklyn Jewish Center Academy; his deep concern for meditation and spirituality; and his private relationships with contemporary artists (including Newman, Motherwell, and Clyfford Still) as well as journalists and curators. As was revealed in Rothko’s The Artist’s Reality, what emerges from this collection is a more detailed picture of a sophisticated, deeply knowledgeable, and philosophical artist who was also a passionate and articulate writer.

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A masterful introduction to and appreciation of sociology as a window into our world The culmination of a distinguished career, this fascinating exploration into the nature of human social life describes the field of sociology as a way of looking at the world rather than as a simple gathering of facts about it. Kai Erikson notes that sociologists look out at the same human scenes as poets, historians, economists, or any other observers of the vast social landscape spread out before them, but select different aspects of that vast panorama to focus on and attend to. Erikson’s lively and accessible volume considers how sociology became a field of study, and how it has turned its attention over time to new areas of study such as race and gender and what Erikson calls “social speciation.” This book provides readers with new ways of thinking about human culture and social life—an exhilarating sense of what the world looks like when viewed with a sociologist’s eye.

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One of the founders of existentialism, the eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers here presents for the general reader an introduction to philosophy. In doing so, he also offers a lucid summary of his own philosophical thought. In Jaspers’ view, the source of philosophy is to be found “in wonder, in doubt, in a sense of forsakenness,” and the philosophical quest is a process of continual change and self-discovery. In a new foreword to this edition, Richard M. Owsley provides a brief overview of Jaspers’ life and achievement.“An eloquent expression of a great hope that philosophy may again become an activity really relevant not only to the perennial problems of life and death but to the unusual configurations of such problems in our time.”—Julian N. Hartt, Yale Review“Original, sincere, cultivated, and stimulating.”—Philosophy

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John Wilmot, the notorious Earl of Rochester, was the darling of the polished, profligate court of Charles II. One of the finest poets of the Restoration, patron to important playwrights, model for countless witty young rakes in Restoration comedies, he lived a full but short life, dying in 1680 (with a dramatic deathbed renunciation of his atheism) at the age of thirty-three. This edition of Rochester’s poetry, brilliantly annotated and introduced by David M. Vieth, has been a classic work for decades.

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This richly illustrated book provides an unsurpassed overview of Islamic art and architecture from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, a time of the formation of a new artistic culture and its first, medieval, flowering in the vast area from the Atlantic to India. Inspired by Ettinghausen and Grabar’s original text, this book has been completely rewritten and updated to take into account recent information and methodological advances. The volume focuses special attention on the development of numerous regional centers of art in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as the western and northeastern provinces of Iran. It traces the cultural and artistic evolution of such centers in the seminal early Islamic period and examines the wealth of different ways of creating a beautiful environment. The book approaches the arts with new classifications of architecture and architectural decoration, the art of the object, and the art of the book. With many new illustrations, often in color, this volume broadens the picture of Islamic artistic production and discusses objects in a wide range of media, including textiles, ceramics, metal, and wood. The book incorporates extensive accounts of the cultural contexts of the arts and defines the originality of each period. A final chapter explores the impact of Islamic art on the creativity of non-Muslims within the Islamic realm and in areas surrounding the Muslim world.

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One of the few women Impressionists, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) had a life of paradoxes: American born, she lived and worked in France; a classically trained artist, she preferred the company of radicals; never married, she painted exquisite and beloved portraits of mothers and children. This book provides new insight into the personal life and artistic endeavors of this extraordinary woman.“Brilliant, lively life of long lived American Impressionist.”—Kirkus Reviews“Rich in historical and archeological detail, thoroughgoing in its resurrection of the contexts and conditions of Cassatt’s life as an artist.”—Carol Armstrong, New York Times Book Review“Mathews informatively and entertainingly documents Cassatt’s tumultuous relations with various members of both the American and Parisian avant-garde. . . . An impressive biography.”—Siri Huntoon, New York Newsday “A superb piece of scholarship.”—Ruth Johnstone Wales, Christian Science Monitor “In this admirable biography, art historian Mathews . . . presents a compelling portrait of this contradictory woman.”—Publishers Weekly “Authoritative, unsentimental, clear as a bell, this is a model of the new biography by and about talented women.”—Kennedy Fraser “This will probably be the definitive biography for our generation.”—John Wilmerding, Princeton University

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The dramatic life of William Tyndale, the first person to translate the Bible into English from the original Greek and Hebrew"A massive contribution to the history of the Reformation in England."—J. Enoch Powell, Times Higher Education Supplement William Tyndale (1494-1536) was the first person to translate the Bible into English from its original Greek and Hebrew and the first to print the Bible in English, which he did in exile. Giving the laity access to the word of God outraged the clerical establishment in England: he was condemned, hunted, and eventually murdered. However, his masterly translation formed the basis of all English bibles--including the "King James Bible," many of whose finest passages were taken unchanged, though unacknowledged, from Tyndale's work. This important book, published in the quincentenary year of his birth, is the first major biography of Tyndale in sixty years. It sets the story of his life in the intellectual and literary contexts of his immense achievement and explores his influence on the theology, literature, and humanism of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. David Daniell, editor of Tyndale's New Testament and Tyndale's Old Testament, eloquently describes the dramatic turns in Tyndale's life. Born in England and educated at Oxford, Tyndale was ordained as a priest. When he decided to translate the Bible into English, he realized that it was impossible to do that work in England and moved to Germany, living in exile there and in the Low Countries while he translated and printed first the New Testament and then half of the Old Testament. These were widely circulated—and denounced—in England. Yet Tyndale continued to write from abroad, publishing polemics in defense of the principles of the English reformation. He was seized in Antwerp, imprisoned in Vilvoorde Castle near Brussels, and burnt at the stake for heresy in 1536. Daniell discusses Tyndale's achievement as biblical translator and expositor, analyzes his writing, examines his stylistic influence on writers from Shakespeare to those of the twentieth century, and explores the reasons why he has not been more highly regarded. His book brings to life one of the great geniuses of the age.

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"[This] beautiful and austere book . . . [is] an important landmark of economic theory."—F.H. Hahn, Journal of Political Economy "An immortal classic of twentieth century economics. Every economist should own a copy."—Robert Lucas, University of ChicagoTheory of Value offers a rigorous, axiomatic, and formal analysis of producer behavior, consumer behavior, general equilibrium, and the optimality of the market mechanism for resource allocation.

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A groundbreaking look at the drawings of Giuseppe Penone and how the medium of drawing articulates the artist’s wide-ranging practice The youngest member of the Arte Povera movement, Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947) is well known for his sculptural works, yet he has maintained a deep engagement with drawing throughout his career. This comprehensive account of his works on paper emphasizes the foundational role that drawing plays in his multifaceted practice and provides in-depth analysis (aided by extensive conversations with the artist) of his techniques and materials, including such unorthodox media as coffee and adhesive tape. Identifying the centrality of drawing within Penone’s own exceptionally inventive body of work, and also placing it in dialogue with the work of contemporaries such as Sol LeWitt, David Hammons, and Cy Twombly, this lavishly illustrated volume provides a multidisciplinary examination of a surprisingly overlooked aspect of one of the most influential figures in international artistic circles since the late 1960s.Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Philadelphia Museum of Art (September 24, 2022–February 26, 2023)

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A presentation of eight contemporary artists whose work considers environmental questions in terms of their social and political implications Humane Ecology: Eight Positions features a group of contemporary artists who consider the intertwined natural and social dimensions of environmental questions: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Carolina Caycedo, Allison Janae Hamilton, Juan Antonio Olivares, Christine Howard Sandoval, Pallavi Sen, and Kandis Williams. These artists—through their work in sculpture, video, sound installation, and plantings—think in the relational terms implied by ecology, the study of how organisms relate to one another and their environment. They explore themes such as the extraction and exploitation of both places and people, kinships with the more-than-human world, and ancient traditions of relation to the land that take on new urgency and form. Against posthumanist tendencies to “decenter” the human, these artists center different humans, ones routinely excluded from dominant discourses of environmentalism. The publication presents entries on each artist in addition to scholarly essays on the exhibition concept, genealogies of land art, and settler colonial histories of the Berkshires. Distributed for the Clark Art Institute Exhibition Schedule: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (July 15–October 29, 2023)

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A lush and in-depth celebration of the clocks of David Rittenhouse, one of eighteenth-century America’s greatest scientists and engineers David Rittenhouse: Philosopher-Mechanick of Colonial Philadelphia and His Famous Clocks brings a completely new focus on the life and works of the American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, and inventor David Rittenhouse (1732–96). A brilliant autodidact who would become the first director of the United States Mint, Rittenhouse was a pivotal figure of the cultural scene in Colonial Philadelphia. This publication expands the body of knowledge surrounding Rittenhouse and his brother Benjamin, as well as the era in which they lived. His masterful clocks are the principal subject matter, but the book also addresses Rittenhouse’s broader works, such as orreries, telescopes, surveying compasses, and other scientific equipment. These objects are all lushly illustrated with new photography, including rarely seen pieces in private collections. Providing a more complete and accurate view of Rittenhouse’s genius, this volume highlights the breadth of his talent and importance to both science and art in early America. Distributed for the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library

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An investigation into the evolution of the seven-day week and how our attachment to its rhythms influences how we live “[Henkin] scours American literature, diaries, periodicals, menus and other ephemera from as far back as the 17th century to unearth fascinating evidence of the stickiness of the seven-day cycle.”—Melissa Holbrook Pierson, Wall Street Journal We take the seven-day week for granted, rarely asking what anchors it or what it does to us. Yet weeks are not dictated by the natural order. They are, in fact, an artificial construction of the modern world. With meticulous archival research that draws on a wide array of sources—including newspapers, restaurant menus, theater schedules, marriage records, school curricula, folklore, housekeeping guides, courtroom testimony, and diaries—David Henkin reveals how our current devotion to weekly rhythms emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. Reconstructing how weekly patterns insinuated themselves into the social practices and mental habits of Americans, Henkin argues that the week is more than just a regimen of rest days or breaks from work, but a dominant organizational principle of modern society. Ultimately, the seven-day week shapes our understanding and experience of time.

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Twenty-five years of writings by the religious thinker and activist Pauli Murray A Seminary Coop Notable Book of 2023 The religious thought and activism that shaped the late twentieth century is typically described in terms of Black men from the major Black denominations, a depiction that fails to account for the voices of those who not only challenged racism but also forced a confrontation with class and gender. Of these overlooked voices, none is more important than that of Pauli Murray (1910–1985), the nonbinary Black lawyer, activist, poet, and Episcopal priest who influenced such icons as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall. Anthony B. Pinn has collected Murray’s most important sermons, lectures, and speeches from 1960 through 1985, showcasing her religious thought and activism as well as her original and compassionate literary voice. In highlighting major themes in Murray’s writing—including the strength and rights of women, faithfulness, religious community, and suffering—Pinn’s collection reveals the evolution in Murray’s religious ideas and her sense of ministry, unpacking her role in a tumultuous period of American history, as well as her thriving legacy.

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Charlotte Ribeyrol presents a fascinating (book)case study exploring the story of an extraordinary object, William Burges’s (1827–1881) Great Bookcase. No fewer than 13 major artists, including Edward Burne-Jones, Edward Poynter, and Albert Moore, took part in the painting of this unique piece of furniture, which has now returned to the Ashmolean Museum after an absence of over 80 years. Ribeyrol throws new light on the chromophilia of the “Pre-Raphaelite” architect William Burges and his key role in shaping aesthetic debates about color in the 1860s. This crucial decade, which saw the advent of the first synthetic dyes, transformed the experience of color for many painters and poets in Burges’s circle. Interweaving art, literature, and chemistry, Ribeyrol reads the eight painted panels of the Great Bookcase in the context of this ‘color revolution’, which brought to the fore new approaches to color while simultaneously triggering a revival of the polychromy of the Pagan and Christian past. Drawing on pioneering interdisciplinary research and featuring new photography throughout, this book provides a definitive account of one of Burges’s most cherished and complex artworks.

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The 117th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, in which Mary-Alice Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worlds “Against humans creating hell on earth, Daniel draws on animistic, Islamic, and syncretic Christian traditions from her native Nigeria to unleash potent incantations, rituals and spells, electric as St. Elmo’s fire. Buckle up.”—Rae Armantrout, judge In Mass for Shut-Ins, African and Western mythic systems and modern rituals originate an ill-omened universe. Here, it is always night, grim night, under absurd moons. Venturing through dreamscapes, hellscapes, and lurid landscapes, poems map speculative fields of spiritual warfare. This collection is controlled chaos powered by nightmare fuel. It animates an utterly odd organism: a cosmology cobbled with scripture, superstition, mass media, mad science. Horrid, holy, unholy—these pages overrun with the unhinged, intrusive thoughts that obsess us all late into nighttime.

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The untold story of Shakespeare’s profound influence on Virginia Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group “A spirited dance of minds.”—Chris Vognar, Boston Globe For the men and women of the Bloomsbury Group, Shakespeare was a constant presence and a creative benchmark. Not only the works they intended for publication—the novels, biographies, economic and political writings, stage designs and reviews—but also their diaries and correspondence, their gossip and small talk turned regularly on Shakespeare. They read his plays for pleasure in the evenings, and on sunny summer afternoons in the country. They went to the theater, discussed performances, and speculated about Shakespeare’s mind. As poet, as dramatist, as model and icon, as elusive “life,” Shakespeare haunted their imaginations and made his way, through phrase, allusion, and oblique reference, into their own lives and art. This is a book about Shakespeare in Bloomsbury—about the role Shakespeare played in the lives of a charismatic and influential cast, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova Keynes, Desmond and Molly MacCarthy, and James and Alix Strachey. All are brought to sparkling life in Marjorie Garber’s intimate account of how Shakespeare provided them with a common language, a set of reference points, and a model for what they did not hesitate to call genius. Among these brilliant friends, Garber shows, Shakespeare was in effect another, if less fully acknowledged, member of the Bloomsbury Group.

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This volume in the venerable Papers of Benjamin Franklin covers March 16 through September 12, 1785, Franklin’s final days as minister to France and his voyage home This volume covers Franklin’s final months as minister to France and his voyage back to America. He received his long-awaited permission from Congress to return home; accepted the king’s parting gift of a miniature portrait surrounded by diamonds; settled his accounts; and arranged passage for himself and his two grandsons on a ship bound from England to Philadelphia. Franklin instructed the French government on the culinary uses of maize and wrote a lengthy “eye-witness” account of China that includes directions for making tofu. His last public act in France was signing the Prussian-American Treaty of Commerce, which contained three unprecedented articles: the two he wrote in 1782 guaranteeing protections during wartime for noncombatants, and a third guaranteeing humane treatment for prisoners of war. On the English coast, Franklin met with his Loyalist son William and witnessed William’s signing over his American property to his son William Temple Franklin. Aboard the London Packet, Franklin wrote three scientific papers, including the copiously illustrated “Maritime Observations.” His original line drawings are reproduced here for the first time. The volume ends with an appendix containing supplementary documents from the French mission.

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A revelatory exploration of wood’s many material, ecological, and symbolic meanings in the religious art of medieval Germany “A rewarding study that is full of new insights.”—Jeremy Warren, Art Newspaper In late medieval Germany, wood was a material laden with significance. It was an important part of the local environment and economy, as well as an object of religious devotion in and of itself. Gregory C. Bryda examines the multiple meanings of wood and greenery within religious art—as a material, as a feature of agrarian life, and as a symbol of the cross, whose wood has resonances with other iconographies in the liturgy. Bryda discusses how influential artists such as Matthias Grünewald, known for the Isenheim Altarpiece, and the renowned sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider exploited wood’s multivalent nature to connect spiritual themes to the lived environment outside church walls. Exploring the complex visual and material culture of the period, this lavishly illustrated volume features works ranging from monumental altarpieces to portable pictures and offers a fresh understanding of how wood in art functioned to unlock the mysteries of faith and the natural world in both liturgy and everyday life.

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A testament to what it means to be liberal by one of the most prominent political philosophers of our era “Walzer is perhaps our foremost pilot on these rocky shoals. In his preface, he writes that this may be his last book. One hopes not.”—James Traub, New York Times There was a time when liberalism was an ism like any other, but that time, writes Michael Walzer, is gone. “Liberal” now conveys not a specific ideology but a moral stance, so the word is best conceived not as a noun but as an adjective—one is a “liberal democrat” or a “liberal nationalist.” Walzer itemizes the characteristics described by “liberal” in an inventory of his own deepest political and moral commitments—among other things, to the principle of equality, to the rule of law, and to a pluralism that is both political and cultural. Unabashedly asserting that liberalism comprises a universal set of values (“they must be universal,” he writes, “since they are under assault around the world”), Walzer reminds us in this inspiring book why those values are worth fighting for.

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A handsome coffee table guide to the celebrated collection of the Kimbell Art Museum In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, this deluxe volume showcases its world-renowned collection. The book includes engaging texts by Kimbell curators accompanied by new, full-color photographs of more than 250 works from antiquity to the twentieth century. A jewel among American museums, the Kimbell possesses European masterpieces by artists such as Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Diego Velázquez, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse; important collections of Egyptian and classical antiquities; and outstanding works from Asia, Africa, and the ancient Americas. This new guide also features previously unpublished images of the museum’s architecture by Louis I. Kahn and Renzo Piano.Distributed for the Kimbell Art Museum

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A penetrating survey of contemporary art from Puerto Rico and the diaspora created since Hurricane Maria Centering on works made by nearly twenty multigenerational artists from Puerto Rico and the diaspora, this volume responds to numerous contemporary issues affecting Puerto Rico, including Hurricane Maria and its devastation, as well as austerity measures, political unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Included are works across mediums, including painting, video, installation art, performance, and poetry, made between 2017 and 2022. No existe un mundo poshuracán demonstrates ways that these artists have forged a path through adversity, searching for a collective awakening grounded in resistance that disrupts the infrastructure of the colonial design.Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American ArtExhibition Schedule:Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (November 23, 2022–April 23, 2023)

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An original and provocative exploration of the relationship between contemporary art, politics, and activism Artists Remake the World introduces readers to the political ambitions of contemporary art in the early twenty-first century and puts forward a new, wide-ranging account of art’s political potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-driven art, socially engaged art, and ecological art, the book explores how artists have attempted to offer bold solutions to the world’s problems. Vid Simoniti offers original perspectives on contemporary art and its capacity as a force for political and social change. At its best, he argues, contemporary art allows us to imagine utopias and presents us with hard truths, which mainstream political discourse cannot yet articulate. Covering subjects such as climate change, social justice, and global inequality, Simoniti introduces the reader to a host of visionary contemporary artists from across the globe, including Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson, Wangechi Mutu, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, and Hito Steyerl. Offering a philosophy of contemporary art as an experimental branch of politics, the book equips the reader with a new critical apparatus for thinking about political art today.

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The leading U.S. expert on abortion law charts the many meanings associated with Roe v. Wade during its fifty-year history “Ziegler sets a brisk pace but delivers substantial depth. . . . A must-read for those seeking to understand what comes next.”—Publishers Weekly What explains the insistent pull of Roe v. Wade? Abortion law expert Mary Ziegler argues that the U.S. Supreme Court decision, which decriminalized abortion in 1973 and was overturned in 2022, had a hold on us that was not simply the result of polarized abortion politics. Rather, Roe took on meanings far beyond its original purpose of protecting the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. It forced us to confront questions about sexual violence, judicial activism and restraint, racial justice, religious liberty, the role of science in politics, and much more. In this history of what the Supreme Court’s best-known decision has meant, Ziegler identifies the inconsistencies and unsettled issues in our abortion politics. She urges us to rediscover the nuance that has long resided where we would least expect to find it—in the meaning of Roe itself.

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A chapter-by-chapter explanation of the Book of Exodus, revealing its wisdom about nation building and people formation"Kass draws from Exodus’ record of the founding of Judaism timely—even urgent—universal lessons about twenty-first-century preconditions for human flourishing in any community. Compelling modern reflections on ancient wisdom.”—Bryce Christensen, Booklist (starred review) In this long-awaited follow-up to his 2003 book on Genesis, humanist scholar Leon Kass explores how Exodus raises and then answers the central political questions of what defines a nation and how a nation should govern itself. Considered by some the most important book in the Hebrew Bible, Exodus tells the story of the Jewish people from their enslavement in Egypt, through their liberation under Moses’s leadership, to the covenantal founding at Sinai and the building of the Tabernacle. In Kass’s analysis, these events began the slow process of learning how to stop thinking like slaves and become an independent people. The Israelites ultimately founded their nation on three elements: a shared narrative that instills empathy for the poor and the suffering, the uplifting rule of a moral law, and devotion to a higher common purpose. These elements, Kass argues, remain the essential principles for any freedom-loving nation today.

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A fascinating historical account of the American Phage Group and how its new research framework became the foundation for molecular biology This book is the first critical and analytical study of the American Phage Group—a small group of scientists who gathered around Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, and Alfred Hershey between 1940 and 1960—and how this novel research program became the foundation of the field of molecular biology. These three young, charismatic, and iconoclastic scientists were convinced of the importance of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) to the study of the gene and of heredity in general. Based on substantial archival research, numerous participant interviews collected over the past thirty years, and an intimate knowledge of the relevant scientific literature in the field, William C. Summers has written a fascinating new history of the American Phage Group. Rather than a linear narrative of progress by past heroes, this book emphasizes the diversity and historical contingencies in the group’s development.

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Now in paperback, this corrected text is based on the earliest sources and represents the most accurate and readable edition of the Book of Mormon ever published"The product of over two decades of painstaking labor by Royal Skousen . . . this Yale edition aims to take us back to the text Smith envisioned as he translated, according to the faithful, from golden plates that he unearthed in upstate New York."—Stephen Prothero, Wall Street Journal“Will forever change the way Latter-day Saints approach modern scripture. Two hundred years from now… students of the Book of Mormon will still be poring over Skousen’s work. What he has accomplished is nothing short of phenomenal.”—Grant Hardy, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies First published in 1830, the Book of Mormon is the authoritative scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the past thirty years, editor Royal Skousen has pored over Joseph Smith’s original manuscripts and earliest editions and identified about 2,250 textual errors, although many of these discrepancies stem from inadvertent errors in copying and typesetting the text. The first edition of The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, published in 2009 to critical acclaim, contained over 600 corrections that had never before appeared in any standard edition of the Book of Mormon, with about 250 of them affecting the text’s meaning. This revised, second edition, issued in paperback, includes additional corrections as well as an illuminating new introduction by Royal Skousen. It will provide a portable, accessible version of this important text.

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A nuanced look at Maya mythology, from the literary record of the Popol Vuh to a broad range of artistic depictions by ancient Maya artists

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A concise history of how American law has shaped—and been shaped by—the experience of contagion, "taking us from the smallpox outbreaks of the colonies to COVID-19. . . . The conclusion [Witt] arrives at is devastating." (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times)"One wishes that, six months ago, every member of Congress and the Trump administration had been forced to read and reckon with the history Witt neatly summarizes. But now in the aftermath of a close, bitterly fought election, let’s hope that this book will help America chart its way forward."—Jill Filipovic, Washington Post From yellow fever to smallpox to polio to AIDS to COVID-19, epidemics have prompted Americans to make choices and answer questions about their basic values and their laws. In five concise chapters, historian John Fabian Witt traces the legal history of epidemics, showing how infectious disease has both shaped, and been shaped by, the law. Arguing that throughout American history legal approaches to public health have been liberal for some communities and authoritarian for others, Witt shows us how history’s answers to the major questions brought up by previous epidemics help shape our answers today: What is the relationship between individual liberty and the common good? What is the role of the federal government, and what is the role of the states? Will long-standing traditions of government and law give way to the social imperatives of an epidemic? Will we let the inequities of our mixed tradition continue?

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A reflection on Federico García Lorca’s life, his haunting death, and the fame that reinvigorated the marvelous in the modern world “A galaxy of critical insights into the cultural shock waves circling and crisscrossing Lorca’s execution and his unknown resting place, there is not a single book on Lorca like this one.”—Andrés Zamora, Vanderbilt University There is something fundamentally unfinished about the life and work of Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), and not simply because his life ended abruptly. Noël Valis reveals how this quality gives shape to the ways in which he has been continuously reimagined since his death. Lorca’s execution at the start of the Spanish Civil War was not only horrific but transformative, setting in motion many of the poet’s afterlives. He is intimately tied to both an individual and a collective identity, as the people’s poet, a gay icon, and fabled member of a dead poets’ society. The specter of his violent death continues to haunt everything connected to Lorca, fueling the desire to fill in the gaps in the poet’s biography.

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One of America’s most distinguished political theorists examines what happens when national politics enters a small New England town After the election of 2016 and, even more urgently, after the election of 2020, many citizens looked at the economic and cultural divisions that were causing deep disruptions in American politics and asked, “What is happening to us?” Paul W. Kahn explores these fundamental changes as they show themselves in a small New England town—his home of twenty-five years, Killingworth, Connecticut. His inquiry grounds a democratic theory that puts volunteering, not voting, at its center. Absent active participation, citizens lose the capacity for judgment that comes from working with others to solve real problems. Volunteering, however, is under existential threat today. Changes in civil society, commerce, employment, and public opinion formation have isolated families from each other and from their communities. Even middle-class families live under financial stress, uncertain of their children’s future, and without the support of civil society. Local media has disappeared. Residents do not have the time, information, or interest to volunteer. Under these conditions, national polarization enters local politics, which becomes yet another site for national conflict. To save our democracy, Kahn concludes, we need to find ways of matching opportunities for participation to the ways we live our lives today.

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Beginning with new evidence that cites the presence of books in Roman villas and concluding with present day vicissitudes of collecting, this generously illustrated book presents a complete survey of British and Irish country house libraries. Replete with engaging anecdotes about owners and librarians, the book features fascinating information on acquisition bordering on obsession, the process of designing library architecture, and the care (and neglect) of collections. The author also disputes the notion that these libraries were merely for show, arguing that many of them were profoundly scholarly, assembled with meticulous care, and frequently used for intellectual pursuits. For those who love books and the libraries in which they are collected and stored, The Country House Library is an essential volume to own. Published in association with the National Trust

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A major contribution to the field of comparative state formation and the scholarship on long-term political development of Latin America“Ambitious and rich. . . . A sweeping and general theory of state formation and detailed historical reconstruction of essential events in Latin American political development. It combines structural elements with a novel emphasis on the political incentives and bargaining that shaped the map we have today.”—Hillel David Soifer, Governance Latin American governments systematically fail to provide the key public goods for their societies to prosper. Sebastián Mazzuca argues that the secret of Latin America’s failure is that its states were “born weak,” in contrast to states in western Europe, North America, and Japan. State formation in post-Independence Latin America occurred in a period when capitalism, rather than war, was the key driver forging countries. In pursuing the short-term benefits of international trade, Latin American leaders created states with chronic weaknesses, notably patrimonial administrations and dysfunctional regional combinations. Mazzuca analyzes pathways leading to variations in country size and level of pacification: “port-led” state formation in Argentina and Brazil; “party-led” in Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay; and “lord-led” in Central America, Venezuela, and Peru.

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