August 21, 2020

Book Excerpt! Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community, edited by Ansley T. Erickson and Ernest Morrell

 “An outstanding collection of cutting-edge essays, Educating Harlem rewrites the narrative of twentieth-century urban education. Eschewing a single thesis or grand narrative, this groundbreaking volume shows the creativity, debate, fierce love, and impassioned determination of a community to make...

August 21, 2020

NonVerbal Precursors of Language: Intersubjective Relations Provide an Emotional Foundation of Language

By Herbert S. Terrace

Today, we are sharing the the next edition in this blog post series on The Origins of Language, by Herbert S. Terrace, author of Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can. In this post, Terrace discusses how intersubjective relations...

August 20, 2020

Video: Bruce D. Haynes on “What Makes Harlem Special?”

 “Bruce D. Haynes’s story is a classic American tale—which combines the big themes of history with the gritty reality of a single family’s extraordinary story.” ~Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNN...

August 20, 2020

Book Excerpt! “Out of the Laughing Woods,” by Vo Thi Hao

“Long awaited in English, these stories are beautiful, nuanced translations from the Vietnamese side of the America-Vietnam War. One of the best collections I have read from postwar Vietnam, the stories illuminate the country’s darkest period with humor, shock, and...

August 19, 2020

Book Excerpt! Le Boogie Woogie: Inside an After-Hours Club, by Terry Williams (introduction)

“Terry Williams has already established himself as a master of gaining access to hard-to-reach, hidden, and vulnerable populations. He has done so again here, giving an in-depth look at a place with which most people will be totally unfamiliar in...

August 19, 2020

New from Our Distributed Presses! Science with Street Value, Creative Industries in Syria, How to Use Exploratory Scenario Planning (XSP) and More!

Our weekly list of new books is now available! ibidem Press Science with Street Value A Physicist’s Wanderings off the Beaten Track Theodore Modis In his groundbreaking book, Predictions: Society’s Telltale Signature Reveals the Past and Forecasts the Future, Theodore...

August 18, 2020

Video: Lance Freeman on “What makes Harlem Special?”

 “In A Haven and a Hell, Lance Freeman seeks to amplify the relationship between ‘the ghetto’ as a place, policy, and idea and as a black experience, source of resistance, and community. Using multiple places and narratives, this book...

August 18, 2020

New Book Tuesday! Human Relations Commissions and Global Entanglements of a Man

Our weekly list of new books is now available! Human Relations Commissions Relieving Racial Tensions in the American City Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers examine the history and current efforts of human relations commissions in...

August 18, 2020

Quan Manh Ha on Other Moons

“Unlike much of the large body of fiction from American writers that deals with what the Vietnamese call the “American War,” these stories, most of which are set in rural areas of the country and feature humble characters, focus less...

August 17, 2020

Putting Harlem in its Place

By Andrew M. Fearnley and Daniel Matlin

“Harlem: race capital, center of black culture, seat of black militancy—or dreamscape? These rigorous, innovative, and bold essays by contemporary scholars confront the myriad ways Harlem signifies and offer fresh, new ways of understanding the aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings...

August 16, 2020

Hubert Harrison: “The Father of Harlem Radicalism”

By Jeffrey B. Perry

“This is a superb study of a neglected but powerfully influential figure in African American history. Jeffrey B. Perry’s scholarship is formidable; his documentation, impeccable; his writing, lucid and graceful. If his promised second volume is as admirable and compelling...

August 13, 2020

Book Excerpt! Social Appearances: A Philosophy of Display and Prestige, by Barbara Carnevali

“Barbara Carnevali’s concept of ‘social aesthetics’ is tremendously powerful, and explains a lot of otherwise baffling phenomena. Carnevali makes me think that the rise of Orban and Trump and the Brexit movement is better understood as a matter of social...