Q&A: Kenneth D. Frank in Conversation with Robyn Massey about Sex in City Plants, Animals, Fungi, and More

From the garden in the back of his downtown rowhouse, Kenneth D. Frank observed the cornucopia of organisms that interacted and mated before his eyes. These observations made him wonder: how does the city interfere with these organismal orgies? In...

November 22, 2022

Joseph Mitchell’s Human Interest in the Fulton Fish Market

Jonathan H. Rees

During lockdown, when I wasn’t teaching history online, I read old newspaper and magazine articles about the Fulton Fish Market—hundreds of them, if not several thousand. These stories form the core of my new history of that New York City...

November 19, 2022

Buddhism, Relationships, and Authenticity

Avram Alpert

A few years ago, I was driving through the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney with my wife, who is Australian. We were not yet married at the time and were still learning about each other. We had been silent for...

November 18, 2022

East Bay Booksellers Cultivates an Ecosystem of Thought

Brad Johnson

Bookselling in the late twenty-first century is, and must be, more than simply the sum of its constituent words. It isn’t a trade secret that books can be purchased for cheaper beyond my store. I can rage against that reality,...

November 15, 2022

Q&A: Reed Brody on To Catch a Dictator

What does it take to make a dictator answer for his crimes? Hissène Habré, the former despot of Chad, terrorized, tortured, and killed on a horrific scale while enjoying full American and Western support. After his overthrow, his victims and...

November 9, 2022

Announcing Our 2022-2023 Religion Catalog

Letter from the Religion Editor: Friends, colleagues, authors, scholars of religion, and beyond: Greetings, with a special hello to those attending AAR/SBL in person! It’s nice to see you here. It’s that time of the year when we introduce our...

November 4, 2022

Announcing our 2022-2023 Social Work Catalog

Letter from the editor: I am pleased to share the 2022-2023 Columbia University Press social work catalog. At what we hope is the tail end of a long pandemic, this fall semester marks a return to some kind of normality. It...

October 28, 2022

Look Away: Instinct as Deterministic Force in Jordan Peele’s Nope

Thomas M. Puhr

Note: This piece contains spoilers. In a series of one-sheets released for Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022), the horror film’s characters stare skyward, expressions of wide-eyed fear dominating their faces. They almost appear hypnotized. What, we wonder, is eliciting this response?...

October 24, 2022

How Should We Approach Black Literature and Art Now?

John Brooks

In the United States, there’s a tendency to assume that Black literature and art are valuable primarily because they’re pedagogical, as if Black creative expression exists first and foremost to educate racist whites. This approach may be well meaning, but...

October 18, 2022

Bernard Shaw, the Tiananmen Crackdown, and the CNN Effect

Mike Chinoy

Bernard Shaw, who for twenty years was CNN’s top anchor, died on September 8, his death largely overshadowed by the passing of Queen Elizabeth the same day. Shaw is best remembered for his live reporting of the start of the...

October 10, 2022

Announcing Our 2022-2023 Philosophy Catalog

Letter from the Philosophy Editor: It is with great pleasure that I present the Columbia University Press philosophy catalog for 2022. These titles, which span subjects from critical theory to political philosophy to philosophy of religion, aesthetics, environmental and animal...

September 29, 2022

The Multifaceted Advice of the Zhuangzi

Richard John Lynn

This translation is “new” in that it differs significantly from previous translations since it is based on one particular traditional Chinese commentary, the earliest complete philosophical commentary by Guo Xiang 郭象 (265–312). The translation technique is also “new” in that...