July, 2014 - Columbia University Press Blog

July 31, 2014

Thursday Fiction Corner, the Poetry Edition: The Poems of Tomaž Šalamun

“But just being what you are, to be free within your writing, this is also the center of the real responsibility of the world. Therefore, your freedom is a political act.”—Tomaž Šalamun We normally reserve Thursday’s to feature a work...

July 30, 2014

Joel Migdal on the Historical Contexts of The Present-Day Middle East

Joel Migdal, author of Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East, recently appeared on the podcast This is Hell!, to provide some historical context to recent events in the Middle East. In this wide-ranging conversation that starts in...

July 29, 2014

New Book Tuesday: Kant, Academic Style, Male Sex Work, and More New Books

Our weekly list of new titles: Kant and the Meaning of Religion Terry Godlove The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities Eric Hayot Aristotle’s Ladder, Darwin’s Tree: The Evolution of Visual Metaphors for Biological Order J. David Archibald...

July 28, 2014

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July 25, 2014

"The mind–body dualism has long overstayed its visit" — Concluding Thoughts from Shadow Medicine

“The mind–body dualism has long overstayed its visit. Western science needs to advance beyond the current reductionist model to some blending of the subjective and social aspects of healing.”—John S. Haller Jr. We conclude our week-long feature on Shadow Medicine:...

July 25, 2014

Theodore de Bary Wins a National Humanities Medal

Congratulations to Wm. Theodore De Bary, on winning a National Humanities Medal. De Bary is an esteemed professor of Asian Studies at Columbia University and a longtime Columbia University Press author and editor of our various Sources of Asian civilization...

July 24, 2014

Thursday Fiction Corner: An Interview with Paul Emond, author of The Dance of a Sham

Read an interview with Paul Emond, the author of THE DANCE OF A SHAM, and Becky McMullan.

July 24, 2014

Conventional vs Alternative Medicine — An Excerpt from Shadow Medicine by John Haller

“In addressing the standoff between the dueling protagonists of conventional and unconventional medicine, the placebo has served as both mediator and judge….” —John S. Haller Jr. We continue our week-long feature on Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative...

July 23, 2014

An Interview with John Haller, author of Shadow Medicine

“The question at hand is not only whether conventional and unconventional therapies can stand on their own self-authenticating authority, but whether it is possible to modify the context of these two opposing camps into something both can benefit from sharing....

July 23, 2014

Pierre Bourdieu's Photographs of Algeria

In today’s post, we are re-posting some of the photographs from Picturing Algeria (now available in paper). The extraordinary photographs were taken during the years of 1957-1960 when Bourdieu was working there as a university lecturer. Taken during the Algerian...

July 22, 2014

The Medical Challenge — A Post by John S. Haller Jr.

The following post is by John S. Haller Jr., author of Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative Therapies: “The placebo has undermined the positivist model of biomedicine by interjecting subjectivity, uncertainty, and ambiguity into the clinical encounter. It...