May 2, 2012

Aaron Belkin – "This Is Not Who We Are": Contradictory Expectations in the US Military

“While the military does not avowedly embrace cruelty, and while most service members follow the rules most of the time, a more plausible, if radioactive, explanation for the consistency of stories about misconduct is that U.S. troops sometimes engage in brutal, sadistic behavior because of how they are trained.” — Aaron Belkin

May 2, 2012

Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel, the Roxy Theatre, and the Roxyettes

In the following excerpt from American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, Ross Melnick explains the explosive growth of the Roxy Theatre, the birth of the “Roxyettes,” and the reaction against it as a symbol...

May 2, 2012

New Book Tuesday (Wednesday Edition)

Our weekly list of new titles. You can save 50% on all these books by using the sales code SALE in your shopping cart: Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Now available in paper) Paul W....

May 1, 2012

Michael Marder on the Ethical Implications of Plant Communication

“Is it morally permissible to submit to total instrumentalization living beings that, though they do not have a central nervous system, are capable of basic learning and communication?” — Michael Marder

May 1, 2012

Ross Melnick — How Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel Changed Movies

We continue our week-long focus on American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, with an excerpt from the book’s opening pages: Film historiography has often focused on production, stardom, and/or the intricate operations of the...

April 27, 2012

University Press Roundup

Our weekly roundup of recent blog posts and features from other academic presses. This week: Levon Helm, Shakespeare, World Book Night, Derrida, and robot dogs!

April 27, 2012

Sex and World Peace: Mapping the Places Where the War on Women Is Still Being Fought

In conjunction with her recent article in Foreign Policy, Valerie Hudson, author of Sex and World Peace, posted maps that dramatically depict the difficult conditions suffered by women in certain parts of the world. The maps focus on discrepancy in...

April 27, 2012

Carl Hobbs: Earth Day and Mother's Day

April 22 was Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, we will be running a series of posts over the course of this week by authors of our environmental studies titles. This post, written by Stuart Sim, addresses how economic concerns drive us to harm the environment.

April 26, 2012

National Poetry Month: New York in Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and throughout April we have been posting poems from our poetry titles and from those of our distributed presses. This is our final NaPoMo post.

April 26, 2012

Valerie M. Hudson: What Sex Means for World Peace

In a recent article in Foreign Policy, Valerie M. Hudson, coauthor of Sex and World Peace, argues that the very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity;...

April 26, 2012

Stuart Sim: The Earth and Profit

April 22 was Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, we will be running a series of posts over the course of this week by authors of our environmental studies titles. This post, written by Stuart Sim, addresses how economic concerns drive us to harm the environment.

April 25, 2012

James Rodger Fleming: Geoengineering's Checkered Past

April 22 was Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, we will be running a series of posts over the course of this week by authors of our environmental studies titles. This post concerns the history of climate manipulation, or geoengineering, and is written by James Rodger Fleming.