University of Chicago Press Books: New books

University of Chicago Press Books: New books http://www.press.uchicago.edu/rss/newbooks.xml The latest scholarly and general books from the University of Chicago Press. en-us erg@press.uchicago.edu Aesthetic Journalism http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364220 Alfredo Cramerotti <br><br><DIV><P>Addressing a growing area of focus in contemporary art, <I>Aesthetic Journalism</I> investigates why contemporary art exhibitions often consist of interviews, documentaries, and reportage. Art theorist and critic Alfredo Cramerotti traces the shift in the production of truth from the domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism—a change that questions the very foundations of journalism and the nature of art. This volume challenges the way we understand art and journalism in contemporary culture and suggests future developments of this new relationship.</P></DIV><br></div> Alaska at 50 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364722 Edited by Gregory W. Kimura <br><br><DIV><P>In 2009 Alaska celebrates its fiftieth anniversary of U.S. statehood. To commemorate that milestone, <I>Alaska</I><I> at 50</I> brings together some of today’s most noteworthy and recognizable writers and researchers to address the past, present, and future of Alaska. Divided into three overarching sections—art, culture, and humanities; law, economy, and politics; and environment, people, and place—<I>Alaska</I><I> at 50</I> is written in highly accessible prose. Illustrations and photographs of significant artefacts of Alaska history enliven the text. Each contributor brings a strong voice and prescription for the next fifty years, and the resulting work presents Alaskans and the nation with an overview of Alaska statehood and ideas for future development. </P></DIV><br></div> Algebra http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6733316 Don Bogen <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>from <I>Bagatelles</I></P><P><B></B> </P><P>Bagatelles, </P><P>mere gestures </P><P>                        in dry air, </P><P>each pluck a dot, </P><P>strokes marked on silence </P><P>reaching into the dark.  </P><P> </P><P>Beauty is strict, </P><P>                          it passes:  </P><P> </P><P>an echo, a wedge </P><P>of harmony, sudden, </P><P>broken—<I>Who goes there?</I></P><P> </P><P><I>An Algebra</I> is an interwoven collection of eight sequences and sixteen individual poems, where images and phrases recur in new contexts, connecting and suspending thoughts,   emotions and insights. By turns, the poems leap from the public realm of urban decay and outsourcing to the intimacies of family life, from a street mime to a haunting dream, from elegy to lyric evocation. Wholeness and brokenness intertwine in the book; glimpsed patterns and startling disjunctions drive its explorations.</P><P> </P><P><I>An Algebra</I> is a work of changing equivalents, a search for balance in a world of transformation and loss. It is a brilliantly constructed, moving book by a poet who has achieved a new level of imaginative expression and skill. </P><P> </P><P>Praise for <I>After the Splendid Display</I></P><P>“In his best work . . . conscience and craft fuse seamlessly, and the result is original and arresting."—<I>The Nation </I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> American Travel and Empire http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6925338 Edited by David Seed and Susan Castillo <br><br><DIV><P>In this volume, leading scholars examine the interfaces between narratives of travel and empire. Including both writing about America by visitors and the travel writing of Americans abroad, this collection explores the ways in which descriptions of the landscapes and peoples of colonized areas shaped our perceptions, as well as other issues related to the American empire, such as the transmission of images and metaphor between colony and metropolis, the portrayal of cultures as primitive or wild, the cultural and economic hegemony underlying American and European travel writing, and the deployment of cultural encounters to reinforce sovereign cultural practices.</P></DIV><br></div> Analysis of the Self http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324792 Heinz Kohut <br><br><DIV><DIV>Psychoanalyst, teacher, and scholar, Heinz Kohut was one of the twentieth century's most important intellectuals. A rebel according to many mainstream psychoanalysts, Kohut challenged Freudian orthodoxy and the medical control of psychoanalysis in America. In his highly influential book <I>The Analysis of the Self</I>, Kohut established the industry standard of the treatment of personality disorders for a generation of analysts. This volume, best known for its groundbreaking analysis of narcissism, is essential reading for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand human personality in its many incarnations.</DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV><P>“Kohut has done for narcissism what the novelist Charles Dickens did for poverty in the nineteenth century. Everyone always knew that both existed and were a problem. . . . The undoubted originality is to have put it together in a form which carries appeal to action.”—<I>International Journal of Psychoanalysis</I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Ancient Rome at the Cinema http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6914273 Elena Theodorakopoulos <br><br><DIV><P>Filmgoers have long embraced the storied performances, elaborate sets, and epic productions behind film recreations of ancient Rome. Using this fascination with the trappings of realism that fuels our love for historical films, <I>Ancient Rome at the Cinema</I> offers an engaging and lucid portrait of the worlds created in such Roman historical epics as <I>Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator, </I>and Fellini’s <I>Satyricon. </I>Covering both the commercial and the avant-garde, this volume demonstrates how cinematic versions of Ancient Rome have been able to captivate us, inscribing their versions of the city and its history onto our imagination. Though particular emphasis is placed on the tension between narrative and spectacle in these films, the author uses both film theory and criticism in order to examine the ways in which historical drama creates the past through storytelling and visual effects, culminating in an engaging historical analysis of the art form. </P></DIV><br></div> Ape http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6899776 John Sorenson <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Apes—to look at them is to see a mirror of ourselves. Our close genetic relatives fascinate and unnerve us with their similar behavior and social personality. Here, John Sorenson delves into our conflicted relationship to the great apes, which often reveals as much about us as humans as it does about the apes themselves.</P><P>            From bonobos and chimpanzees to gibbons, gorillas, and orangutans, <I>Ape</I> examines the many ways these remarkable animals often serve as models for humans. Anthropologists use their behavior to help explain our fundamental human nature; scientists utilize them as subjects in biomedical research; and behavioral researchers experiment with ways apes emulate us. Sorenson explores the challenges to the complex division between apes and ourselves, describing language experiments, efforts to cross-foster apes by raising them as human children, and the ethical challenges posed by the Great Ape Project. As well, <I>Ape </I>investigates representations of apes in popular culture, particularly films and advertising in which apes are often portrayed as human caricatures, monsters, and clowns. </P><P>Containing nearly one hundred illustrations of apes in nature and culture, <I>Ape </I>will appeal to readers interested in animal-human relationships and anyone curious to know more about our closest animal cousins, many of whom teeter on the brink of extinction.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Breeding Bio Insecurity http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8273991 Lynn C. Klotz and Edward J. Sylvester <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>In the years since the 9/11 attacks—and the subsequent lethal anthrax letters—the United States has spent billions of dollars on measures to defend the population against the threat of biological weapons. But as Lynn C. Klotz and Edward J. Sylvester argue forcefully in <I>Breeding Bio Insecurity</I>, all that money and effort hasn’t made us any safer—in fact, it has made us more vulnerable.</P><P> </P><P><I>Breeding Bio Insecurity </I>reveals the mistakes made to this point and lays out the necessary steps to set us on the path toward true biosecurity. The fundamental problem with the current approach, according to the authors, is the danger caused by the sheer size and secrecy of our biodefense effort. Thousands of scientists spread throughout hundreds of locations are now working with lethal bioweapons agents—but their inability to make their work public causes suspicion among our enemies and allies alike, even as the enormous number of laboratories greatly multiplies the inherent risk of deadly accidents or theft. Meanwhile, vital public health needs go unmet because of this new biodefense focus. True biosecurity, the authors argue, will require a multipronged effort based in an understanding of the complexity of the issue, guided by scientific ethics, and watched over by a vigilant citizenry attentive to the difference between fear mongering and true analysis of risk. </P><P> </P><P>An impassioned warning that never loses sight of political and scientific reality, <I>Breeding Bio Insecurity</I> is a crucial first step toward meeting the evolving threats of the twenty-first century.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Camus http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324774 Stephen Eric Bronner <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Decades after his death, Albert Camus (1913–1960) is still regarded as one of the most influential and fascinating intellectuals of the twentieth century. This biography by Stephen Eric Bronner explores the connections between his literary work, his philosophical writings, and his politics.</P><P> </P><P><I>Camus</I> illuminates his impoverished childhood, his existential concerns, his activities in the antifascist resistance, and the controversies in which he was engaged. Beautifully written and incisively argued, this study offers new insights—and above all—highlights the contemporary relevance of an extraordinary man.</P><P> </P><P>“A model of a kind of intelligent writing that should be in greater supply. Bronner manages judiciously to combine an appreciation for the strengths of Camus and nonrancorous criticism of his weaknesses. . . . As a personal and opinionated book, it invites the reader into an engaging and informative dialogue.”—<I>American Political Science Review</I></P><P><I></I> </P><P>“This concise, lively, and remarkably evenhanded treatment of the life and work of Albert Camus weaves together biography, philosophical analysis, and political commentary.”—<I>Science & Society</I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Chicago http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=7877998 Dominic A. Pacyga <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Chicago has been called by many names. Nelson Algren declared it “A City on the Make.” Carl Sandburg dubbed it the “City of Big Shoulders.” Upton Sinclair christened it “The Jungle,” while New Yorkers, naturally, pronounced it “the Second City.”</P><P> </P><P>At last there is a book for all of us, whatever we choose to call Chicago. Here, historian Dominic Pacyga gives his hometown the magisterial biography it has long deserved. <I>Chicago</I><I> </I>traces the city’s storied past, from the explorations of Joliet and Marquette in 1673 to the new wave of urban pioneers today. The city’s great industrialists, reformers, and politicians—and, indeed, the many not-so-great and downright notorious—animate this book, from Al Capone and Jane Addams to Mayor Richard J. Daley and President Barack Obama.</P><P> </P><P>But what distinguishes this book from the many others on the subject is its author’s uncommon ability to illuminate the lives of Chicago’s ordinary people. Born and raised in Back of the Yards on Chicago’s southwest side, Pacyga spent his college years working at the Union Stock Yards. <I>Chicago</I>, therefore, gives voice to the city’s steelyard workers and kill floor operators, mapping the neighborhoods distinguished not by Louis Sullivan masterworks, but by bungalows and corner taverns. And their stories come alive through an extensive selection of evocative illustrations culled from major institutional archives, local historical societies, and the author’s personal collection.</P><P> </P><P>Filled with the city’s one-of-a-kind characters and all of its defining moments, <I>Chicago: A Biography</I> is as big and boisterous as its namesake—and as ambitious as the men and women who built it.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Citizenship in the Arab World http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6927714 Gianluca P. Parolin <br><br><DIV><P>The result of five years of intensive research on citizenship in the Arab world, this volume uses the multidisciplinary approach of comparative legal studies in order to consider the multifaceted reality of nationality and citizenship. Gianluca P. Parolin brings together methodologies from fields as diverse as anthropology, linguistics, sociology, and political science, while exploring a broad range of Western and Arab references accessed in their original languages and sources, making in-text references and contemporary Arab legislation accessible for the general reader.</P></DIV><br></div> Classrooms All Young Children Need http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=7994597 Patricia M. Cooper <br><br><DIV><P>Teacher and author Vivian Paley is highly regarded by parents, educators, and other professionals for her original insights into such seemingly everyday issues as play, story, gender, and how young children think. She is also recognized for exposing racism and exclusion in the early childhood classroom. Surprisingly, until now no one has attempted a comprehensive analysis of Paley’s work. In <I>The Classrooms All Young Children Need</I>, Patricia M. Cooper takes a synoptic view of Paley’s many books and articles, charting the evolution of Paley’s thinking while revealing the seminal characteristics of her teaching philosophy. This careful analysis leads Cooper to identify a pedagogical model organized around two complementary principles: a curriculum that promotes play and imagination, and the idea of classrooms as fair places where young children of every color, ability, and disposition are welcome. With timely attention paid to debates about the reduction in time for play in the early childhood classroom, the role of race in education, and No Child Left Behind, <I>The Classrooms All Young Children Need</I> will be embraced by anyone tasked with teaching our youngest pupils.</P></DIV><br></div> Collections of Nothing http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5820687 William Davies King <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Nearly everyone collects something, even those who don’t think of themselves as collectors. William Davies King, on the other hand, has devoted decades to collecting nothing—and a lot of it. With <I>Collections of Nothing</I>, he takes a hard look at this habitual hoarding to see what truths it can reveal about the impulse to accumulate.</P><P> </P><P>Part memoir, part reflection on the mania of acquisition, <I>Collections of Nothing</I> begins with the stamp collection that King was given as a boy. In the following years, rather than rarity or pedigree, he found himself searching out the lowly and the lost, the cast-off and the undesired: objects that, merely by gathering and retaining them, he could imbue with meaning, even value. As he relates the story of his burgeoning collections, King also offers a fascinating meditation on the human urge to collect. This wry, funny, even touching appreciation and dissection of the collector’s art as seen through the life of a most unusual specimen will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the unappeasable power of that acquisitive fever.</P><P> </P><P>"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. . . . His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."—<I>New Yorker</I></P><P> </P><P>"King's extraordinary book is a memoir served up on the backs of all things he collects. . . . His story starts out sounding odd and singular—who <I>is</I> this guy?—but by the end, you recognize yourself in a lot of what he does."—Julia Keller, <I>Chicago</I><I> Tribune</I></P><P> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6853055 Edited by Michael Dietler and Carolina López-Ruiz <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>During the first millennium BCE, complex encounters of Phoenician and Greek colonists with natives of the Iberian Peninsula transformed the region and influenced the entire history of the Mediterranean. </P><P> </P><P>One of the first books on these encounters to appear in English, this volume brings together a multinational group of contributors to explore ancient Iberia’s colonies and indigenous societies, as well as the comparative study of colonialism. These scholars—from a range of disciplines including classics, history, anthropology, and archaeology—address such topics as trade and consumption, changing urban landscapes, cultural transformations, and the ways in which these issues played out in the Greek and Phoenician imaginations. Situating ancient Iberia within Mediterranean colonial history and establishing a theoretical framework for approaching encounters between colonists and natives, these studies exemplify the new intellectual vistas opened by the engagement of colonial studies with Iberian history.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6925356 Lesley Wylie <br><br><DIV><P>This volume offers a new reading of the Spanish-American <I>novela de la selva </I>genre, often interpreted as a belated imitation of European travel literature. Arguing against the commonly held opinion of the genre’s derivative nature, <I>Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks<B> </B></I>examines how <I>novela de la selva<B> </B></I>fiction reimagined the tropics from a Latin American perspective and redefined tropical landscape aesthetics and ethnography through parodic rewritings of European perspectives. Analyzing four emblematic novels of the genre, this book considers the crucial place of the jungle as a locus for the contestation of national and literary identity by post-independence Latin American writers.</P></DIV><br></div> Cracking the Einstein Code http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6817175 Fulvio Melia <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time. But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it seemed, Einstein’s mathematical code—represented by six interlocking equations—was one of the most difficult to crack in all of science. That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr’s solution emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile testing ground—at long last—for general relativity. Today, scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but even among specialists, few know the story of how Kerr cracked Einstein’s code.</P><P> </P><P>Fulvio Melia here offers an eyewitness account of the events leading up to Kerr’s great discovery. <I>Cracking the Einstein Code </I>vividly describes how luminaries such as Karl Schwarzschild, David Hilbert, and Emmy Noether set the stage for the Kerr solution; how Kerr came to make his breakthrough; and how scientists such as Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking used the accomplishment to refine and expand modern astronomy and physics. Today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe much of their behavior. </P><P> </P><P>By unmasking the history behind the search for a real world solution to Einstein’s field equations, Melia offers a first-hand account of an important but untold story. Sometimes dramatic, often exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, <I>Cracking the Einstein Code</I> is ultimately a showcase of how important science gets done. </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Dawn of Green http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5764147 Harriet Ritvo <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Located in the heart of England’s Lake District, Thirlmere, with its placid sheen, surrounding evergreens, and apparent lack of pollution or development, seems to epitomize the unadulterated bucolic ideal. But under its calm surface lurks the enduring legacy of a nineteenth-century conflict that pitted industrial progress against natural conservation—and helped launch the environmental movement as we know it.</P><P> </P><P>Purchased by the city of Manchester in the 1870s, Thirlmere was dammed and converted into a reservoir, its water piped 100 miles south to the burgeoning industrial city and its workforce. This feat of civil engineering—and of natural resource diversion—inspired one of the first environmental struggle<B>s</B> of modern times. <I>The Dawn of Green </I>recreates the battle for Thirlmere and the clashes between conservationists who wished to preserve the lake and developers eager to supply the needs of industry and a growing urban population. Bringing to vivid life the colorful and strong-minded characters who populated both sides of the debate, noted historian Harriet Ritvo revisits notions of the natural promulgated by Romantic poets, recreationists, resource managers, and industrial developers to establish Thirlmere as the template for subsequent—and continuing—environmental struggles. </P><P> </P><P>A century after Thirlmere, the demand for water and the control of water rights are among the most pressing political<B>,</B> humanitarian<B>,</B> and environmental concerns of our time. By investigating Victorian ideas about industry, development, and technology, Ritvo shows how the lessons learned in the Lake District can inform and guide modern environmental and conservation campaigns. </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Democracy at Risk http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=7989509 Jennifer L. Merolla and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>How do threats of terrorism affect the opinions of citizens? Speculation abounds, but until now no one had marshaled hard evidence to explain the complexities of this relationship. Drawing on data from surveys and original experiments they conducted in the United States and Mexico, Jennifer Merolla and Elizabeth Zechmeister demonstrate how our strategies for coping with terrorist threats significantly influence our attitudes toward fellow citizens, political leaders, and foreign nations. </P><P> </P><P>The authors reveal, for example, that some people try to restore a sense of order and control through increased wariness of others—especially of those who exist outside the societal mainstream. Additionally, voters under threat tend to prize “strong leadership” more highly than partisan affiliation, making some politicians seem more charismatic than they otherwise would. The authors show that a wary public will sometimes continue to empower such leaders after they have been elected, giving them greater authority even at the expense of institutional checks and balances. Having demonstrated that a climate of terrorist threat also increases support for restrictive laws at home and engagement against terrorists abroad, Merolla and Zechmeister conclude that our responses to such threats can put democracy at risk.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Digital Material http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364650 Edited by Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Rae <br><br><DIV><DIV>Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media have yielded a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions are emerging now that new media are being taken for granted, and which riddles are still unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', the participating user, or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how this constitutes us as 'you'? The contributors to the present book, all employed in teaching and researching new media and digital culture, assembled their 'digital material' into an anthology, covering issues ranging from desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging and e-learning, from role-playing games and cybergothic music to wireless dreams. Together the contributions provide a showcase of current research in the field, from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective. </DIV></DIV><br></div> Edge of Faith http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364350 Prabuddha Dasgupta and William Dalrymple <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Located on the west coast of India along the Arabian Sea, Goa officially became an Indian state in 1987 after nearly 500 years of Portuguese rule. This conflict of cultures is captured by Indian photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta in <I>The Edge of Faith.</I> The book’s 70 striking photographs create an intimate portrait of the Catholic community in Goa rarely seen before—a portrait of people torn between their fidelity to a history of Portuguese faith and culture and their post-Independence Indian identity. In addition, acclaimed travel-writer William Dalrymple provides an accompanying text that explores both the history of Goa’s Catholic past and its struggle to deal with its multi-cultural, multi-religious present. <I>The Edge of Faith</I> captures Catholic Goa in a haunting, but beautiful impasse—caught in a time warp between comforting nostalgia and a doubt-ridden, insecure future.</P><P> </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Films that Work http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8922770 Edited by Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau <br><br><DIV><P>The history of industrial films - an orphan genre of twentieth-century cinema composed of government-produced and industrially sponsored movies that sought to achieve the goals of their sponsors, rather than the creative artists involved - seems to have left no trace in filmic cultural discourse. At its height the industrial film industry employed thousands, produced several trade journals and festival circuits, engaged with giants of twentieth-century industry like Shell and AT & T, and featured the talents of iconic actors and directors such as Buster Keaton, John Grierson and Alain Resnais. This is the first full-length book, anthology, and annotated bibliography to analyze the industrial film and its remarkable history.</P><P>Exploring the potential of the industrial film to uncover renewed and unexplored areas of media studies, this remarkable volume brings together renowned scholars such as Rick Prelinger and Thomas Elsaesser in a discussion of the radical potential and new possibilities in considering the history of this unexplored corporate medium.</P></DIV><br></div> Great Plains http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324795 Michael Forsberg <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>The Great Plains were once among the greatest grasslands on the planet. But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole.</P><P> </P><P>Three broad geographic regions in <I>Great Plains</I> are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses.</P><P> </P><P>The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Hybrid http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5387732 Noel Kingsbury <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-packed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succulent red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange carrots pulled from loamy brown soil, swirling heads of green lettuce basking in the sun. </P><P> </P><P>With <I>Hybrid</I>, Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, Kingsbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more reliable, productive, and nutritious—a story that owes as much to accident and error as to innovation and experiment. Drawing on historical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs—and thus led us from sparse wild grasses to succulent corn cobs, and from mealy, white wild carrots to the juicy vegetables we enjoy today. At the same time, Kingsbury reminds us that contemporary controversies over the Green Revolution and genetically modified crops are not new; plant breeding has always had a political dimension.</P><P> </P><P>A powerful reminder of the complicated and ever-evolving relationship between humans and the natural world, <I>Hybrid</I> will give readers a thoughtful new perspective on—and a renewed appreciation of—the cereal crops, vegetables, fruits, and flowers that are central to our way of life.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Imperial City http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324786 Susan Vandiver Nicassio <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>In 1798, the armies of the French Revolution tried to transform Rome from the capital of the Papal States to a Jacobin Republic. For the next two decades, Rome was the subject of power struggles between the forces of the Empire and the Papacy, while Romans endured the unsuccessful efforts of Napoleon’s best and brightest to pull the ancient city into the modern world. Against this historical backdrop, Nicassio weaves together an absorbing social, cultural, and political history of Rome and its people. Based on primary sources and incorporating two centuries of Italian, French, and international research, her work reveals what life was like for Romans in the age of Napoleon.</P><P> </P><P>“A remarkable book that wonderfully vivifies an understudied era in the history of Rome. . . . This book will engage anyone interested in early modern cities, the relationship between religion and daily life, and the history of the city of Rome.”—<I>Journal of Modern History</I></P><P> </P><P>“An engaging account of Tosca’s Rome. . . . Nicassio provides a fluent introduction to her subject.”—<I>History Today</I></P><P> </P><P>“Meticulously researched, drawing on a host of original manuscripts, memoirs, personal letters, and secondary sources, enabling [Nicassio] to bring her story to life.”—<I>History</I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> In Time of War http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5514391 Adam J. Berinsky <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history—but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this groundbreaking revelation, <I>In Time of War</I> explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics—such as what they cost in lives and resources—than by the same political interests and group affiliations that influence our ideas about domestic issues.</P><P> </P><P>With the help of World War II–era survey data that had gone virtually untouched for the past sixty years, Berinsky begins by disproving the myth of “the good war” that Americans all fell in line to support after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack, he reveals, did not significantly alter public opinion but merely punctuated interventionist sentiment that had already risen in response to the ways that political leaders at home had framed the fighting abroad. Weaving his findings into the first general theory of the factors that shape American wartime opinion, Berinsky also sheds new light on our reactions to other crises. He shows, for example, that our attitudes toward restricted civil liberties during Vietnam and after 9/11 stemmed from the same kinds of judgments we make during times of peace.</P><P> </P><P>With Iraq and Afghanistan now competing for attention with urgent issues within the United States, <I>In Time of War </I>offers a timely reminder of the full extent to which foreign and domestic politics profoundly influence—and ultimately illuminate—each other.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Infidel Poetics http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=7878012 Daniel Tiffany <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Poetry has long been regarded as the least accessible of literary genres. But how much does the obscurity that confounds readers of a poem differ from, say, the slang that seduces listeners of hip-hop?  <I>Infidel Poetics</I> examines not only the shared incomprensibilities of poetry and slang, but poetry's genetic relation to the spectacle of underground culture.       </P><P> </P><P>Charting connections between vernacular poetry, lyric obscurity, and types of social relations—networks of darkened streets in preindustrial cities, the historical underworld of taverns and clubs, the subcultures of the avant-garde—Daniel Tiffany shows that obscurity in poetry has functioned for hundreds of years as a medium of alternative societies.  For example, he discovers in the submerged tradition of canting poetry and its eccentric genres—thieves’ carols, drinking songs, beggars’ chants—a genealogy of modern nightlife, but also a visible underworld of social and verbal <I>substance</I>, a demimonde for sale. </P><P> </P><P>Ranging from Anglo-Saxon riddles to Emily Dickinson, from the icy <I>logos</I> of Parmenides to the monadology of Leibniz, from Mother Goose to Mallarmé, <I>Infidel Poetics</I> offers an exhilarating account of the subversive power of obscurity in word, substance, and deed.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6963852 Edited by Richard B. Freeman and Kathryn L. Shaw <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>In recent years, globalization and the expansion of information technologies have reshaped managerial practices, forcing multinational firms to adjust business practices to different environments and domestic companies to adjust to their foreign competitors. In <I>International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms</I>, a distinguished group of contributors examines the phenomenon of widespread differences in managerial practices across firms, establishments within firms, and countries.</P><P> </P><P>This volume brings together eight studies that combine qualitative and quantitative insider analysis of business practices such as the use of teams, incentive pay, lean manufacturing, and quality control, revealing the elements that determine which practices are adopted and why. <I>International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms</I> offers a much-needed model for measuring the productivity and performance of international firms in a fast-paced global economy.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Is It Good for the Jews? http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5186426 Adam Biro <br><br><DIV><P>“Jewish stories,” writes Adam Biro, “resemble every people’s stories.” Yet at the same time there is no better way to understand the soul, history, millennial suffering, or, crucially, the <I>joys</I> of the Jewish people than through such tales—“There’s nothing,” writes Biro, “more revelatory of the Jewish being.”</P><P> </P><P>With <I>Is It Good for the Jews?</I> Biro offers a sequel to his acclaimed collection of stories <I>Two Jews on a Train</I>. Through twenty-nine tales—some new, some old, but all finely wrought and rich in humor—Biro spins stories of characters coping with the vicissitudes and reverses of daily life, while simultaneously painting a poignant portrait of a world of unassimilated Jewish life that has largely been lost to the years. From rabbis competing to see who is the most humble, to the father who uses suicide threats to pressure his children into visiting, to three men berated by the Almighty himself for playing poker, Biro populates his stories with memorable characters and absurd—yet familiar—situations, all related with a dry wit and spry prose style redolent of the long tradition of Jewish storytelling.</P><P> </P><P>A collection simultaneously of foibles and fables, adversity and affection, <I>Is It Good for the Jews? </I>reminds us that if in the beginning was the word, then we can surely be forgiven for expecting a punch line to follow one of these days.</P><P> </P></DIV><br></div> Isaac Israeli http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324769 Isaac Israeli <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Recognized as one of the earliest Jewish neo-Platonist writers, Isaac ben Solomon Israeli (ca. 855–955) influenced Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars through the Middle Ages. A native of Egypt who wrote in Arabic, Israeli explored definitions of such terms as imagination, sense-perception, desire, love, creation, and “coming-to-be” in his writings. </P><P> </P><P>This classic volume contains English translations of Israeli’s philosophical writings, including the <I>Book of Definitions</I>, the <I>Book of Substances,</I> and the <I>Book on Spirit and Soul</I>. Additionally, <I>Isaac Israeli</I> features a biographical sketch of the philosopher and extensive notes and comments on the texts, as well as a survey and appraisal of his philosophy. Restored to print for the first time in decades, <I>Isaac Israeli </I>will be essential reading for students and scholars of medieval philosophy and Jewish studies.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 17 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6930892 Edited by Shoishi Iwasaki, Haejime Hoji, Patricia M. Clancy, and Sung-Ock Sohn <br><br><DIV><P>The papers in this volume are from the seventeenth Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, which was held at the University of California, Los Angeles in November of 2007. The articles cover a broad range of topics in Japanese and Korean linguistics, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, prosody, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, acquisition, and grammaticalization. </P></DIV><br></div> John Keats http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364898 Stephen Hebron <br><br><DIV><P>In his brief lifetime, John Keats (1795–1821) published just three volumes of poetry: a collection of early verse in 1817; <I>Endymion</I>, a long and fairly unsuccessful poem in 1819; and a final collection in 1820, which included most of the poems for which he is now famous. For many years these anthologies contained all that the public knew of Keats, but over time it has become readily apparent that an extraordinary wealth of manuscripts lay behind these few volumes.</P><P> </P><P><I>John Keats: A Poet and His Manuscripts</I> presents, in chronological order, the surviving manuscripts of his finest poems and letters—often illustrated at actual size and in their entirety—providing a record of the poet’s visual processes of composition and offering a vivid portrait of his rich imagination and swift progress as a writer and thinker. Stephen Hebron, in his masterly introduction, offers the intriguing story of how Keats’s manuscripts were jealously guarded after his death, before they were finally bequeathed to public and private collections, revealing as much about the fame of the poet as the social and literary fashions of the past two-hundred years.</P></DIV><br></div> Lectures on Buildings http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6051542 Mark Ronan <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>In mathematics, “buildings” are geometric structures that represent groups of Lie type over an arbitrary field. This concept is critical to physicists and mathematicians working in discrete mathematics, simple groups, and algebraic group theory, to name just a few areas. </P><P>            Almost twenty years after its original publication, Mark Ronan’s <I>Lectures on Buildings </I>remains one of the best introductory texts on the subject. A thorough, concise introduction to mathematical buildings, it contains problem sets and an excellent bibliography that will prove invaluable to students new to the field. <I>Lectures on Buildings </I>will find a grateful audience among those doing research or teaching courses on Lie-type groups, on finite groups, or on discrete groups.</P><P>            “Ronan’s account of the classification of affine buildings [is] both interesting and stimulating, and his book is highly recommended to those who already have some knowledge and enthusiasm for the theory of buildings.”—<I>Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society</I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Likeness of the King http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6966957 Stephen Perkinson <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Anyone who has strolled through the halls of a museum knows that portraits occupy a central place in the history of art. But did portraits, as such, exist in the medieval era? Stephen Perkinson’s <I>The Likeness of the King</I> challenges the canonical account of the invention of modern portrait practices, offering a case against the tendency of recent scholarship to identify likenesses of historical personages as “the first modern portraits.”</P><P> </P><P>Unwilling to accept the anachronistic nature of these claims, Perkinson both resists and complicates grand narratives of portraiture art that ignore historical context. Focusing on the Valois court of France, he argues that local practice prompted shifts in the late medieval understanding of how images could represent individuals and prompted artists and patrons to deploy likeness in a variety of ways. Through an examination of well-known images of the fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century kings of France, as well as largely overlooked objects such as wax votive figures and royal seals, Perkinson demonstrates that the changes evident in these images do not constitute a revolutionary break with the past, but instead were continuous with late medieval representational traditions.</P><P> </P><DIV>“A lively, well-researched, and insightful work of scholarship on late-medieval portraiture and its cultural and intellectual context. <I>The Likeness of the King</I> provides a strong account of late-medieval aesthetics and specific, concrete examples of image-making and the often political needs it served. It offers smart handling of literary, philosophical, and archival sources; close and insightful reading of images; and a willingness to counter received ideas.”—Rebecca Zorach, University of Chicago </DIV><P> </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Madwomen http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5630249 Gabriela Mistral <br><br><DIV><DIV>A schoolteacher whose poetry catapulted her to early fame in her native Chile and an international diplomat whose boundary-defying sexuality still challenges scholars, Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) is one of the most important and enigmatic figures in Latin American literature of the last century. The <I>Locas mujeres</I> poems collected here are among Mistral’s most complex and compelling, exploring facets of the self <I>in extremis</I>—poems marked by the wound of blazing catastrophe and its aftermath of mourning.<BR />            From disquieting humor to balladlike lyricism to folkloric wisdom, these pieces enact a tragic sense of life, depicting “madwomen” who are anything but mad. Strong and intensely human, Mistral’s poetic women confront impossible situations to which no sane response exists. This groundbreaking collection presents poems from Mistral’s final published volume as well as new editions of posthumous work, featuring the first English-language appearance of many essential poems. <I>Madwomen</I> promises to reveal a profound poet to a new generation of Anglophone readers while reacquainting Spanish readers with a stranger, more complicated “madwoman” than most have ever known.</DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV> </DIV></DIV><br></div> Marine Macroecology http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6740796 Edited by Jon D. Witman and Kaustuv Roy <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Pioneered in the late 1980s, the concept of macroecology—a framework for studying ecological communities with a focus on patterns and processes—revolutionized the field. Although this approach has been applied mainly to terrestrial ecosystems, there is increasing interest in quantifying macroecological patterns in the sea and understanding the processes that generate them. Taking stock of the current work in the field and advocating a research agenda for the decades ahead, <I>Marine Macroecology</I> draws together insights and approaches from a diverse group of scientists to show how marine ecology can benefit from the adoption of macroecological approaches.</P><P> </P><P>Divided into three parts, <I>Marine Macroecology </I>first provides an overview of marine diversity patterns and offers case studies of specific habitats and taxonomic groups. In the second part, contributors focus on process-based explanations for marine ecological patterns. The third part presents new approaches to understanding processes driving the macroecolgical patterns in the sea. Uniting unique insights from different perspectives with the common goal of identifying and understanding large-scale biodiversity patterns, <I>Marine Macroecology </I>will inspire the next wave of marine ecologists to approach their research from a macroecological perspective.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Nature's Ghosts http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6043479 Mark V. Barrow, Jr. <br><br><DIV><P>The rapid growth of the American environmental movement in recent decades obscures the fact that long before the first Earth Day and the passage of the Endangered Species Act, naturalists and concerned citizens recognized—and worried about—the problem of human-caused extinction.</P><P> </P><P>As Mark V. Barrow reveals in <I>Nature’s Ghosts</I>, the threat of species loss has haunted Americans since the early days of the republic. From Thomas Jefferson’s day—when the fossil remains of such fantastic lost animals as the mastodon and the woolly mammoth were first reconstructed—through the pioneering conservation efforts of early naturalists like John James Audubon and John Muir, Barrow shows how Americans came to understand that it was not only <I>possible</I> for entire species to die out, but that humans themselves could be responsible for their extinction. With the destruction of the passenger pigeon and the precipitous decline of the bison, professional scientists and wildlife enthusiasts alike began to understand that even very common species were not safe from the juggernaut of modern, industrial society. That realization spawned public education and legislative campaigns that laid the foundation for the modern environmental movement and the preservation of such iconic creatures as the bald eagle, the California condor, and the whooping crane.</P><P> </P><P>A sweeping, beautifully illustrated historical narrative that unites the fascinating stories of endangered animals and the dedicated individuals who have studied and struggled to protect them, <I>Nature’s Ghosts</I> offers an unprecedented view of what we’ve lost—and a stark reminder of the hard work of preservation still ahead.</P><P> </P></DIV><br></div> Obsession http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5856991 Lennard J. Davis <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperately impassioned about our cars, we admire obsession in others: we demand that lovers be infatuated with one another in films, we respond to the passion of single-minded musicians, we cheer on driven athletes. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern.</P><P> </P><P>But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category—both a pathology and a goal. Behind this paradox lies a fascinating history, which Lennard J. Davis tells in <I>Obsession</I>. Beginning with the roots of the disease in demonic possession and its secular successors, Davis traces the evolution of obsessive behavior from a social and religious fact of life into a medical and psychiatric problem. From obsessive aspects of professional specialization to obsessive compulsive disorder and nymphomania, no variety of obsession eludes Davis’s graceful analysis. </P><P> </P><P>"This is an engaging book which I read with considerable—dare I say, obsessive?—enjoyment. . . . The book is laced with rich examples exemplifying obsessional people and their work."—Christine Purdon, <I>Times Higher Education</I></P><P><I></I> </P><P>"Intellectually bold and constantly insightful, this work . . . manages to link <I>Moby-Dick</I> and the TV show <I>Monk</I>."—Julia Keller, <I>Chicago Tribune </I></P><P><I></I> </P><P>"Those with a keen interest in (or perhaps an obsession with) obsession and its place in human culture will enjoy Davis’s book."<I>—</I>Melinda Wenner, <I>Scientific American Mind</I></P><P> </P><P>"If you should pick up the book expecting an obsessively thorough discourse, you won’t be disappointed. But Davis is a fine writer, and he grabs the reader at the outset by confessing his own childhood rituals."—Deanna Isaacs, <I>Chicago Reader</I></P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Online Deliberation http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5667101 Edited by Todd Davies and Seeta Peña Gangadharan <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV>Can new technology enhance local, national, and global democracy? <I>Online Deliberation</I> is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, web designers, and practitioners. <BR /></DIV><DIV>Since the most exciting innovations in deliberation have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, research conducted on this growing field has to this point neglected the full perspective of online participation. This volume, an essential read for those working at the crossroads of computer and social science, illuminates the collaborative world of deliberation by examining diverse clusters of Internet communities.</DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Pablo Neruda http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364819 Dominic Moran <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Pablo Neruda (1904–73) is one of Latin America’s best known poets, adored by readers for the passionate love lyrics written during his early years in his native Chile, and respected by critics for the dark, hypnotic verses he composed during his later, solitary years as a diplomat based in the Far East. As Dominic Moran shows in his concise biography of Neruda, rarely have the life and works of a writer been so intimately and dramatically bound up as they are in Neruda. </P><P> </P><P>In <I>Pablo Neruda</I>, Moran takes a detailed and often critical look at this relationship, focusing as much on what the poetry sometimes strategically hides about Neruda the poet, the lover, and the political proselytizer, as what it reveals. Moran describes a life that was marked by an increasingly militant communism, the seeds of which can be traced to Neruda’s experiences in Spain during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Neruda became a literary torchbearer for the International Left, and he spent his final years campaigning to bring socialism to his beloved Chile. He  lived just long enough to see his hero Salvador Allende unseated by Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup.</P><P><I></I> </P><P><I>Pablo Neruda </I>paints a fascinating picture of one of the most prodigiously gifted literary figures of the twentieth century. It will appeal to fans of Neruda’s verse who wish to learn more about the life behind it, as well as to readers interested in Latin American literature, politics, and history.</P><P> </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Performance in Place of War http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364297 James Thompson, Jenny Hughes, and Michael Balfour <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>From the Greeks and Shakespeare to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, war has often been a major theme of dramatic performances. However, many of the most extraordinary theater projects in recent years not only have been about war but also have originated in actual conflict zones themselves. <I>Performance in Place of War</I> is concerned with these initiatives, including theater in refugee camps, in war-ravaged villages, in towns under curfew, and in cities under occupation. It looks at theater and performances that often occur quite literally as bombs are falling, as well as during times of ceasefire and in the aftermath of hostilities.</P><P> </P><P><I>Performance in Place of War</I> draws on extensive original material and includes interviews with artists, short play extracts, and photographs from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, Israel, Lebanon, Sudan, and others. The authors combine critical commentary, overviews of the conflicts and first-hand accounts in order to consider such questions as: Why in times of disruption have people turned to performance? And what aesthetic, ethical, and political choices are made in these different contexts? <I>Performance in Place of War</I> is a fascinating perspective on the role of theater in unpredictable, war-torn times. </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Perspectives in Computation http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6740801 Robert Geroch <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Computation is the process of applying a procedure or algorithm to the solution of a mathematical problem. Mathematicians and physicists have been occupied for many decades pondering which problems can be solved by which procedures, and, for those that can be solved, how this can most efficiently be done. In recent years, quantum mechanics has augmented our understanding of the process of computation and of its limitations.</P><P> </P><P><I>Perspectives in Computation</I> covers three broad topics: the computation process and its limitations, the search for computational efficiency, and the role of quantum mechanics in computation. The emphasis is theoretical; Robert Geroch asks what can be done, and what, in principle, are the limitations on what can be done? Geroch guides readers through these topics by combining general discussions of broader issues with precise mathematical formulations—as well as through examples of how computation works.</P><P> </P><P>Requiring little technical knowledge of mathematics or physics, <I>Perspectives in Computation</I> will serve both advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics and physics, as well as other scientists working in adjacent fields.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Picturing Plants http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6807112 Gill Saunders <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Drawing on the rarely seen archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, <I>Picturing Plants</I> begins with some pressing questions: who drew plants, and why? And what do these images say about our relationship with the natural world? To answer, art historian Gill Saunders shares the story behind 100 gorgeous works, from exquisitely detailed scientific illustrations to the boldly colored seed packets of today. </P><P> </P><P>Starting with a printed book from the fifteenth century, Saunders explores a remarkable selection of botanic art, including masterworks by Ehret and Redouté as well as superb illustrations by anonymous artists in China, India, and Japan. Along the way, she makes insightful connections between botanical art, science, and culture. Plant illustrators, Saunders shows, found innovative ways to convey both a plant’s beauty and its use. For example, today, when we see a picture in which a plant is framed by white space, we simply assume that it is a botanical illustration. But in the seventeenth century, the same arrangement reflected contemporary gardening practices—each plant was set in its own separate bed. </P><P> </P><P><I>Picturing Plants</I> captures both the complex cultural history and the distinctive loveliness of botanical illustration. This updated second edition will be a welcome addition to the shelves of art historians and avid gardeners.</P><P> </P><P>“An excellent beginning point for those interested in botanical illustration as well as general readers interested in the art and photography of plants and professionals in the botanical and horticultural fields.”—<I>Choice </I></P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Pigeon http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364845 Barbara Allen <br><br><DIV><DIV><P> </P><P>Our frequent urban companion, cooing in the eaves of train stations or scavenging underfoot for breadcrumbs and discarded French fries, the pigeon has many detractors—and even some fans. Written out of love for and fascination with this humble yet important bird, Barbara Allen’s <I>Pigeon </I>explores its cultural significance, as well as its similarities to and differences from its close counterpart, the dove. While the dove is seen as a symbol of love, peace, and goodwill, the pigeon is commonly perceived as a filthy, ill-mannered flying rodent, a “rat with wings.”</P><P> </P><P>Readers will find in <I>Pigeon </I>an enticing exploration of the historical and contemporary bonds between humans and these two unique and closely related birds. For polluting statues and architecture, the pigeon has earned a bad reputation, but Barbara Allen offers several examples of the bird’s importance—as a source of food and fertilizer, a bearer of messages during times of war, a pollution monitor, and an aid to Charles Darwin in his pivotal research on evolutionary theory. Allen also comments on the literary love and celebration of pigeons and doves in the work of such writers and poets as Shakespeare, Dickens, Beatrix Potter, Proust, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Along the way, Allen corrects the many stereotypes about pigeons in the hope that the rich history of one of the oldest human-animal partnerships will be both admired and celebrated.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Political Ethnography http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=7995019 Edited by Edward Schatz <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Scholars of politics have sought in recent years to make the discipline more hospitable to qualitative methods of research. Lauding the results of this effort and highlighting its potential for the future, <I>Political Ethnography</I> makes a compelling case for one such method in particular. Ethnography, the contributors amply demonstrate in a wide range of original essays, is uniquely suited for illuminating the study of politics. </P><P> </P><P>Situating these pieces within the context of developments in political science, Edward Schatz provides an overarching introduction and substantive prefaces to each of the volume’s four sections. The first of these parts addresses the central ontological and epistemological issues raised by ethnographic work, while the second grapples with the reality that all research is conducted from a first-person perspective. The third section goes on to explore how ethnographic research can provide fresh perspectives on such perennial topics as opinion, causality, and power. Concluding that political ethnography can and should play a central role in the field as a whole, the final chapters illuminate the many ways in which ethnographic approaches can enhance, improve, and, in some areas, transform the study of politics.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Postcolonial Thought in the French Speaking World http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364580 Edited by Charles Forsdick and David Murphy <br><br><DIV><P>In the late 1990s, postcolonial studies risked imploding as a credible area of academic inquiry, in part due to the emergence of repetitive anthologies and an overemphasis on English-language literatures. In the early twenty-first century, however, the postcolonial began to reveal a new openness towards its comparative dimensions, and French-language contributions to the postcolonial debate—including the work of Edouard Glissant and Abdelkebir Khatibi—have risen to greater prominence in the English-speaking world. This volume, written by scholars working with French-language materials, acknowledges this shift and provides an essential tool for students and scholars seeking a way into the study of Francophone postcolonial debates.</P></DIV><br></div> Power Stronger Than Itself http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5504497 George E. Lewis <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Founded in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is an American institution with an international reputation. George E. Lewis, who joined the collective as a teenager in 1971, establishes the full importance and vitality of the AACM with this communal history, written with a symphonic sweep that draws on a cross-generational chorus of voices and a rich collection of rare images.</P><P> </P><P>Moving from Chicago to New York to Paris, and from founding member Steve McCall’s kitchen table to Carnegie Hall, <I>A Power Stronger Than Itself</I> uncovers a vibrant, multicultural universe and brings to light a major piece of the history of avant-garde music and art.</P><P> </P><P>“An important book. . . . Mr. Lewis narrates [the AACM’s] development with exacting context and incisive analysis. . . . Because the book includes biographical portraits of so many participating musicians, it’s a swift, engrossing read.”—<I>New York Times</I></P><P> </P><P>“In bringing intellectual breadth and what Lester Bowie calls ‘good old country ass-kicking’ to bear on past and present indignities, Lewis has produced a fitting companion to the music he celebrates.”—<I>Nation</I></P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Requirements for Certification of Teachers, Counselors, Librarians, Administrators for Elementary and Secondary Schools, Seventy-fourth edition, 2009-2010 http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6817189 Edited by Elizabeth A. Kaye and Jeffrey J. Makos <br><br><DIV><P>This annual volume offers the most complete and current listings of the requirements for certification of a wide range of educational professionals at the elementary and secondary levels. <I>Requirements for Certification</I> is a valuable resource, making much-needed knowledge available in one straightforward volume.</P></DIV><br></div> Restoration of the Self http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8324789 Heinz Kohut <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>In his foundational work <I>The Restoration of the Self</I>, noted psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut boldly challenges what he called “the limits of classical analytic theory” and the Freudian orthodoxy. Here Kohut proposes a “psychology of the self” as a theory in its own right—one that can stand beside the teachings of Freud and Jung. </P><P> </P><P>Using clinical data, Kohut explores issues such as the role of narcissism in personality, when a patient can be considered cured, and the oversimplifications and social biases that unduly influenced Freudian thought. This volume puts forth some of Kohut’s most influential ideas on achieving emotional health through a balanced, creative, and joyful sense of self.</P><P> </P><P>"Kohut speaks clearly from his identity as a psychoanalyst-healer, showing that he is more of a psychoanalyst than most, and yet calling for major theoretical revisions including a redefinition of the essence of psychoanalysis.”—<I>American Journal of Psychotherapy</I></P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Rhys Davies http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8388070 Huw Osborne <br><br><DIV><DIV><P> </P><P>Rhys Davies (1901–78) was a highly prolific writer and one of the first novelists to depict industrial Wales, making his sixty-year career a seminal influence of Welsh literary culture. Davies was a complicated figure himself: a gay man who grew up as a shopkeeper’s son in the Rhondda, he ultimately left Wales to write about his homeland in England. This volume unravels his national experience and its deep ties to complex issues of class, sexuality, and gender, as it follows a career considered to be that of “the representative Welshman.”</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Saving Alma Mater http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6963834 James C. Garland <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>America’s public universities educate 80% of our nation’s college students. But in the wake of rising demands on state treasuries, changing demographics, growing income inequality, and legislative indifference, many of these institutions have fallen into decline. Tuition costs have skyrocketed, class sizes have gone up, the number of courses offered has gone down, and the overall quality of education has decreased significantly. </P><P> </P><P>Here James C. Garland draws on more than thirty years of experience as a professor, administrator, and university president to argue that a new compact between state government and public universities is needed to make these schools more affordable and financially secure. <I>Saving Alma Mater</I> challenges a change-resistant culture in academia that places too low a premium on efficiency and productivity. Seeing a crisis of campus leadership, Garland takes state legislators to task for perpetuating the decay of their public university systems and calls for reforms in the way university presidents and governing boards are selected. He concludes that the era is long past when state appropriations can enable public universities to keep their fees low and affordable. <I>Saving Alma Mater</I> thus calls for the partial deregulation of public universities and a phase-out of their state appropriations. Garland’s plan would tie university revenues to their performance and exploit the competitive pressures of the academic marketplace to control costs, rein in tuition, and make schools more responsive to student needs.</P><P> </P><P>A much-needed blueprint for reform based on Garland’s real-life successes as the head of Miami University of Ohio, <I>Saving Alma Mater</I> will be essential for anyone concerned with the costs and quality of higher education in America today.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Science for All http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6885673 Peter J. Bowler <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Recent scholarship has revealed that pioneering Victorian scientists endeavored through voluminous writing to raise public interest in science and its implications. But it has generally been assumed that once science became a profession around the turn of the century, this new generation of scientists turned its collective back on public outreach. <I>Science for All</I> debunks this apocryphal notion.</P><P>Peter J. Bowler surveys the books, serial works, magazines, and newspapers published between 1900 and the outbreak of World War II to show that practicing scientists were very active in writing about their work for a general readership. <I>Science for All</I> argues that the social environment of early twentieth-century Britain created a substantial market for science books and magazines aimed at those who had benefited from better secondary education but could not access higher learning. Scientists found it easy and profitable to write for this audience, Bowler reveals, and because their work was seen as educational, they faced no hostility from their peers. But when admission to colleges and universities became more accessible in the 1960s, this market diminished and professional scientists began to lose interest in writing at the nonspecialist level. </P><P>Eagerly anticipated by scholars of scientific engagement throughout the ages, <I>Science for All </I>sheds light on our own era and the continuing tension between science and public understanding. </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Seasick http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5472297 Alanna Mitchell <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>We have long lorded over the ocean. But only recently have we become aware of the myriad life-forms beneath its waves. We now know that this delicate ecosystem is our life-support system; it regulates the earth’s temperatures and climate and comprises 99 percent of living space on earth. So when we change the chemistry of the whole ocean system, as we are now, life as we know it is threatened.</P><P> </P><P>In <I>Seasick, </I>veteran science journalist Alanna Mitchell dives beneath the surface of the world’s oceans to give readers a sense of how this watery realm can be managed and preserved, and with it life on earth. Each chapter features a different group of researchers who introduce readers to the importance of ocean currents, the building of coral structures, or the effects of acidification. With Mitchell at the helm, readers submerge 3,000 feet to gather sea sponges that may contribute to cancer care, see firsthand the lava lamp–like dead zone covering 17,000 square kilometers in the Gulf of Mexico, and witness the simultaneous spawning of corals under a full moon in Panama.</P><P> </P><P>The first book to look at the planetary environmental crisis through the lens of the global ocean, <I>Seasick </I>takes the reader on an emotional journey through a hidden realm of the planet and urges conservation and reverence for the fount from which all life on earth sprang. </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Selected Poems of Garcilaso de la Vega http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6930898 Garcilaso de la Vega <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Garcilaso de la Vega (ca. 1501–36), a Castilian nobleman and soldier at the court of Charles V, lived a short but glamorous life. As the first poet to make the Italian Renaissance lyric style at home in Spanish, he is credited with beginning the golden age of Spanish poetry. Known for his sonnets and pastorals, gracefully depicting beauty and love while soberly accepting their passing, he is shown here also as a calm student of love’s psychology and a critic of the savagery of war.</P><P> </P><P>This bilingual volume is the first in nearly two hundred years to fully represent Garcilaso for an Anglophone readership. In facing-page translations that capture the music and skill of Garcilaso’s verse, John-Dent Young presents the sonnets, songs, elegies, and eclogues that came to influence generations of poets, including San Juan de la Cruz, Luis de Leon, Cervantes, and Góngora. The <I>Selected Poems of Garcilaso de la Vega</I> will help to explain to the English-speaking public this poet’s preeminence in the pantheon of Spanish letters. </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Shakespeare Only http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5186399 Jeffrey Knapp <br><br><DIV><P></P><DIV>Three decades of controversy in Shakespeare studies can be summed up in a single question: Was Shakespeare one of a kind? On one side of the debate are the Shakespeare lovers, the bardolatrists, who insist on Shakespeare’s timeless preeminence as an author. On the other side are the theater historians who view modern claims of Shakespeare’s uniqueness as a distortion of his real professional life.  For these scholars, the bardolatrous emphasis on “Shakespeare only” blinds us to the inescapably social nature of Renaissance drama.  </DIV><DIV> </DIV><DIV>Jeffrey Knapp shows how these seemingly antithetical perspectives on Shakespeare can and should be combined. In Shakespeare Only, Knapp draws on an extraordinary array of historical evidence to reconstruct Shakespeare’s authorial identity as Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood it.  He argues that Shakespeare tried to adapt his own singular talent and ambition to the collaborative enterprise of drama by imagining himself as uniquely embodying the diverse, fractious energies of the popular theater. Rewriting our current histories of authorship as well as Renaissance drama, Shakespeare Only recaptures a sense of the creative force that mass entertainment exerted on Shakespeare and that Shakespeare exerted on mass entertainment.</DIV></DIV><br></div> Snail http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364827 Peter Williams <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>So attached was the author Patricia Highsmith to snails that they became her constant travelling companions. Often hidden in a large handbag, they provided her with comfort and companionship in what she perceived to be a hostile world. Theirs was perhaps an unusual relationship; for most of us the tentacled snail with his sticky trail might be a delicious treat served up in garlic butter but certainly not an affectionate pet. As well, for many a gardener, opinions on the snail and slug (which is a just a snail without a shell) have been shaped by the harm they inflict on vegetable plants and seedlings. With <I>Snail</I>, Peter Williams wishes to change our perspectives on this little but much-maligned creature.</P><P> </P><P>Beginning with an overview of our relationship with snails, slugs, and sea snails,</P><P>Williams moves on to examine snail evolution; snail behavior and habitat; snails as food, medicine, and the source of useful chemicals and dyes; snail shells as collectible objects; and snails in literature, art, and popular culture. Finally, in this appreciative account of the snail, Williams offers a plea for a reconsideration of the snail as a dignified, ancient creature that deserves our respect.</P><P> </P><P>Containing beautiful illustrations and written in an approachable, informal style, <I>Snail </I>will help readers get beyond the shell and slime to discover the fascinating creature inside.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Soldier Field http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=4149986 Liam T. A. Ford <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Sports fans nationwide know Soldier Field as the home of the Chicago Bears. For decades its signature columns provided an iconic backdrop for gridiron matches. But few realize that the stadium has been much more than that. <I>Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City</I> explores how this amphitheater evolved from a public war memorial into a majestic arena that helped define Chicago. </P><P> </P><P><I>Chicago Tribune</I> staff writer Liam Ford led the reporting on the stadium’s controversial 2003 renovation—and simultaneously found himself unearthing a dramatic history. As he tells it, the tale of Soldier Field truly is the story of Chicago, filled with political intrigue and civic pride. Designed by Holabird and Roche, Soldier Field arose through a serendipitous combination of local tax dollars, City Beautiful boosterism, and the machinations of Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson. The result was a stadium that stood at the center of Chicago’s political, cultural, and sporting life for nearly sixty years before the arrival of Walter Payton and William “The Refrigerator” Perry. </P><P> </P><P>Ford describes it all in the voice of a seasoned reporter: the high school football games, track and field contests, rodeos, and even NASCAR races. Photographs, including many from the Chicago Park District’s own collections, capture these remarkable scenes: the swelling crowds at ethnic festivals, Catholic masses, and political rallies. Few remember that Soldier Field hosted Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr., Judy Garland and Johnny Cash—as well as Grateful Dead’s final show.</P><P> </P><P>Now part of the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games, Chicago’s stadium on the lake continues to make dramatic history. <I>Soldier Field</I> captures this history in the making and will captivate armchair historians and sports fans alike.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Spiral Jetta http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=5806983 Erin Hogan <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. <I>Spiral Jetta </I>is a chronicle of this journey.</P><P> </P><P>A lapsed art historian and devoted urbanite, Hogan initially sought firsthand experience of the monumental earthworks of the 1970s and the 1980s—Robert Smithson’s <I>Spiral Jetty, </I>Nancy Holt’s <I>Sun Tunnels, </I>Walter De Maria’s <I>Lightning Field, </I>James Turrell’s <I>Roden Crater</I>, Michael Heizer’s <I>Double Negative</I>, and the contemporary art mecca of Marfa, Texas. Armed with spotty directions, no compass, and less-than-desert-appropriate clothing, she found most of what she was looking for and then some. </P><P> </P><P>“I was never quite sure what Hogan was looking for when she set out . . . or indeed whether she found it. But I loved the ride. In <I>Spiral Jetta</I>, an unashamedly honest, slyly uproarious, ever-probing book, art doesn’t magically have the power to change lives, but it can, perhaps no less powerfully, change ways of seeing.”—Tom Vanderbilt, <I>New York</I><I> Times Book Review</I></P><P> </P><P>“The reader emerges enlightened and even delighted. . . . Casually scrutinizing the artistic works . . . while gamely playing up her fish-out-of-water status, Hogan delivers an ingeniously engaging travelogue-cum-art history.”—<I>Atlantic </I></P><P> </P><P>“Smart and unexpectedly hilarious.”—Kevin Nance, <I>Chicago</I><I> Sun-Times</I></P><P> </P><P>“One of the funniest and most entertaining road trips to be published in quite some time.”—June Sawyers, <I>Chicago</I><I> Tribune</I></P><P> </P><P>“Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she reexamines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.”—<I>New Yorker</I></P><P> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Terror of Natural Right http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6933689 Dan Edelstein <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. But during the French Revolution, this tradition was interpreted to justify the most repressive actions of the violent period known as the Terror.</P><P>In <I>The Terror of Natural Right</I>, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities—to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. But the significance of the natural right did not end with its legal application. Edelstein argues that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls “natural republicanism,” which assumed the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he argues that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis’s trial until the fall of Robespierre.</P><P>A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, <I>The Terror of Natural Right </I>challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.</P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Theorizing Emotions http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364763 Edited by Debra Hopkins, Jochen Kleres, Helena Flam, and Helmut Kuzmics <br><br><DIV><P><I>Theorizing Emotions </I>reflects the recent turn to emotions in academia—not just in sociology but also in psychology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Drawing on the classic studies of Max Weber, Erving Goffman, and Norbert Elias, several leading European scholars present their findings on the role of emotions in various facets of society, from the laboratory to the office to the media. Among the topics discussed are the tensions between feelings and feeling rules, the conscious and unconscious emotions of scientists, emotions and social disorder, the effect of the emotional turn as an element of advancing modernity, romantic love in U.S. and Israeli codes of conduct, and the role of mass media in generating massive public emotions. </P></DIV><br></div> Theory and Evidence in Semantics http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6930879 Edited by Erhard W. Hinrichs and John Nerbonne <br><br><DIV><P>In <I>Theory and Evidence in Semantics</I>, editors Erhard W. Hinrichs and John Nerbonne present a series of state-of-the-art papers that investigate the interface of natural language semantics with other modules of grammar—such as morphology, syntax, and pragmatics—and pursue applications of semantic theory in computational linguistics. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, and strongly influenced by the seminal work of David R. Dowty in model-theoretical semantics, the papers provide novel accounts of highly complex sets of semantic phenomena, including anaphora, coordination, ellipsis, interrogatives, and negative and collective predicates, as well as tense and aspect.</P></DIV><br></div> Transforming the Personal, Political, Historical and Sacred in Theory and Practice http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6166713 Manfred Halpern <br><br><DIV><DIV>The eminent political scientist Manfred Halpern (1924–2001) viewed politics as belonging to each of us, as part of the nature of being human. In <I>A Comprehensive Philosophy of Transformation</I>, his magnum opus, Halpern elucidates the interconnected “four faces of our being”: the political, personal, historical, and sacred. This momentous volume identifies several modes of political activity, warns against the dangers of leaving politics to professional politicians, and urges us to build networks of compassion that include everyone in a just society. Overall, Halpern calls for a transformative politics achieved through enhanced participation and understanding. </DIV></DIV><br></div> Transnational Political Spaces http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364770 Edited by Mathias Albert, Gesa Bluhm, Jan Helmig, Andreas Leutzsch, and Jochen W <br><br><DIV><P>From a decidedly multidisciplinary perspective, the articles in <I>Transnational Political Spaces</I> address the notion that political space is no longer fully congruent with national borders. Instead there are areas called transnational political spaces—caused by factors such as migration and social transformation—where policy occurs oblivious to national pressure. Organized into three sections—transnational actors, transnational spaces, and critical encounters—this volume explains how these spaces are formed and defined and how they can be traced and conceptualized. </P></DIV><br></div> Walking, Writing and Performance http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364217 Edited by Roberta Mock <br><br><DIV><P>This collection charts three projects by performers who generate autobiographical writing by walking through inspirational landscapes. Included in the book are the full texts of <I>The Crab Walks</I> and <I>Crab Steps Aside</I> by Phil Smith, <I>Mourning Walk</I> by Carl Lavery, and <I>Tree</I> by Deirdre Heddon, each accompanied by photographs and contextual essays. Taken together or separately, the work of all three artist-scholars raises important issues about memory, the ethics of autobiographical performance, ritual, life writing, and site-specific performance. </P></DIV><br></div> Wannabe U http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6130399 Gaye Tuchman <br><br><DIV><DIV><DIV><P>In most debates over its future, the university is represented—by both its critics and its champions—as a secular temple for learning, a sacred space freed from the more mundane concerns that trouble other institutions. But lately this lofty image looks increasingly tarnished, especially with regard to public research universities. There, a new class of administrative professionals has been busy working to make colleges as much like businesses as possible. In this eye-opening exposé of the modern university, Gaye Tuchman paints a candid portrait of these wannabe corporate managers and the new regime of revenue streams, mission statements, and five-year plans they’ve ushered in.</P><P> </P><P>Based on years of observation at a state school, <I>Wannabe U</I> tracks the dispiriting consequences of trading in traditional educational values for loyalty to the market. Aping their boardroom idols, the new corporate administrators wander from job to job and reductively view the students as future workers in need of training. Obsessed with measurable successes, they stress auditing and accountability, which leads, Tuchman reveals, to policies of surveillance and control dubiously cloaked in the guise of scientific administration. Following the big money to be made from the discoveries of Wannabe U’s researchers, Tuchman probes the cozy relationships that the administration forms with industry and the government.</P><P> </P><P>Like the best campus novelists, Tuchman entertains with her acidly witty observations of backstage power dynamics and faculty politics, but ultimately <I>Wannabe U</I> is a hard-hitting account of how higher education’s misguided pursuit of success fails us all.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV><br></div> Watch http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6963860 Greg Miller <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>                            Strasbourg</P><P> The yellow and green rose, and the pink rock,</P><P>The chestnuts blooming, the cobblestone square,</P><P>Our Lady’s tower rising everywhere,</P><P>Dark timbered fronts; the mechanical clock</P><P>Whose rooster crows three times for Peter’s flock,</P><P>The Apostles, the old man’s and the child’s share</P><P>Of time—aspire I’d say to make me stare</P><P>And stop. I praise what I might otherwise mock,</P><P>The locked contingencies, the stock of losses,</P><P>Bright liquidity everywhere channeled,</P><P>A storied cityscape of destinies</P><P>Averted as when, turning, a young Turk tosses</P><P>His hands in the air and my chest’s pummeled,</P><P>“My brother, forgive me!” and my thoughts freeze.</P><P>                                                                                                 </P><P>In <I>Watch</I>, Greg Miller describes a fresh purposefulness in his life and achieves a new level of poetic thinking and composition in his writing. Artfully combining the religious and secular worldviews in his own sense of human culture, Miller complicates our understanding of all three. The poems in <I>Watch </I>sift layers of natural and human history across several continents, observing paintings, archeological digs, cityscapes, seascapes, landscapes—all in an attempt to envision a clear, grounded spiritual life. Employing an impressive array of traditional meters and various kinds of free verse, Miller’s poems celebrate communities both invented and real.</P><P> </P><P>Praise for <I>Iron Wheel</I></P><P>“Miller demonstrates that what Eliot said about reading a poem may be equally true of writing them: the best thing ‘is to be very, very intelligent’ and intelligence is not the same as erudition. Whether the world is made, found, or named, Miller offers an engaging portrait of things as they are.’’—David Orr, <I>Poetry</I></P><P><EM></EM> </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> Welsh in Iowa http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8388066 Cherilyn Walley <br><br><DIV><P><I>The Welsh in Iowa</I> is a history of the little-known Welsh immigrant communities that dot the Iowa countryside. Identifying the qualities that made the Welsh unique as immigrants, migrants, and settlers to North America, Cherilyn Walley analyzes documentary evidence, as well as community and oral histories, in order to examine Welsh culture as it was expressed in middle America by the farmers and coal miners who passed through the prairie state as it grew to maturity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. </P></DIV><br></div> West and West http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=8364803 Joe Deal <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 officially opened the Great Plains to westward settlement, and the public survey of 1855 by Charles A. Manners and Joseph Ledlie along the Sixth Principal Meridian established the grid by which the uncharted expanse of the Great Plains was brought into scale. The mechanical act performed by land surveyors is believed by photographer Joe Deal to be powerfully similar to the artistic act of making a photograph.To Deal, both acts are about establishing a frame around a vast scene that suggests no definite boundaries of its own.  Thus, when approaching his own photographs of the Great Plains, Deal viewed his photography as a form of reenactment, a method of understanding how it felt to contain the Great Plains in smaller, more measurable units.</P><P> </P><P>In <I>West and West</I>, Deal, who was born and raised in Kansas, revisited the Kansas-Nebraska territory and applied his photographic understanding of the landscape grid and horizon line to illuminate the sense of infinite space that transcends the reality of the survey. As Deal writes in his concluding essay: “If the square, as employed in the surveys of public lands, could function like a telescope, framing smaller and smaller sections of the plains down to a transect, it can also be used as a window, equilaterally divided by the horizon, that begins with a finite section of the earth and sky and restores them in the imagination to the vastness that now exists as an idea: the landscape that is contained within the perfect symmetry of the square implies infinity.”</P><P> </P><P>The stunning photographs in <I>West and West</I> present the Great Plains from a rare perspective. From this vantage point, Deal is able to distill and contemplate its expanse. </P><P> </P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> What Is Contemporary Art? http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6823475 Terry Smith <br><br><DIV><DIV><P>Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public? Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today’s multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that an historical approach offers the best answer to the question: <I>What is Contemporary Art?</I></P><P> </P><P>Smith argues that the most recognizable kind is characterized by a return to mainstream modernism in the work of such artists as Richard Serra and Gerhard Richter, as well as the retro-sensationalism of figures like Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. At the same time, Smith reveals, postcolonial artists are engaged in a different kind of practice: one that builds on local concerns and tackles questions of identity, history, and globalization. A younger generation embodies yet a third approach to contemporaneity by investigating time, place, mediation, and ethics through small-scale, closely connective art making. Inviting readers into these diverse yet overlapping art worlds, Smith offers a behind-the-scenes introduction to the institutions, the personalities, the biennials, and of course the works that together are defining the contemporary. The resulting map of where art is now illuminates not only where it has been but also where it is going.</P><P> </P></DIV></DIV><br></div> When the Laughing Stopped http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6166349 John Evangelist Walsh <br><br><DIV><DIV>The sudden death of renowned American entertainer Will Rogers inspired a national mourning not seen since Lincoln’s death, and it still resonates today. In this intimate and informed recounting, John Walsh recalls the events of that day and the plane crash that ended it all.<BR /></DIV><DIV>The plane carrying Rogers and aviator Wiley Post fatally crashed in a lagoon just outside of Barrow, Alaska on August 15, 1935. Walsh retells the tragic tale from various angles, primarily alternating between Rogers and Post’s journey and the actions of the two men’s families on that fateful day. In particular, Walsh reveals moving details about the families and their struggle with grief, such as the fact that Post’s daughter was in a stage play about plane crashes at the time of the crash, or how Will Rogers’s daughter Mary never fully recovered from her father’s death and subsequently abandoned her promising acting career.<BR /></DIV><I></I><DIV><I>When the Laughing Stopped</I> is a gripping and poignant retelling of the death of a beloved American legend, and it shines a humanizing light upon a pivotal moment in American history and culture.</DIV><DIV> </DIV></DIV><br></div> Zapolska's Women http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/rssresolve.cgi?id=6914380 Gabriela Zapolska <br><br><DIV><P>Gabriela Zapolska (1857–1921) was one of the foremost modernist Polish playwrights. <I>Zapolska’s Women</I> features three of her performance texts that focus on the economic and social pressures faced by women in partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. In addition to the plays, <I>Zapolska’s Women</I> provides a detailed biography of Zapolska, relating her life story to the themes of each play; an analysis of her significance within Polish and European literary and theatrical traditions; and background on the social and historical conditions within Poland during the time the plays were written and originally performed. This informative collection of groundbreaking plays will introduce an English-speaking audience to Zapolska’s important work.</P></DIV><br></div>