May 14, 2020

Richard Hughes Seager on Buddhism in America

“This well-informed book provides a comprehensive survey of a variety of Buddhist traditions in the contemporary U.S. . . . [Its] strength, apart from being a mine of information, is Seager’s insistence on taking a historically informed and comparative perspective.”...

May 14, 2020

Q&A: Robert Goodspeed on Scenario Planning for Cities and Regions

COVID-19 has introduced countless uncertainties into our lives. To prepare for the future, organizations ranging from hospitals to school districts to transit agencies, are using scenario planning, a framework for creating and analyzing multiple plausible versions of the future. In this interview with scenario planning expert Robert Goodspeed, he...

May 14, 2020

Book Excerpt! Meals Matter, By Michael Symons (prologue)

“Michael Symons succeeds brilliantly in a radical project: convincing readers to rethink a singular ‘economics’ as multiple ‘economies’: bodily, household, market, political, and natural. His book draws on intellectual history, economic and social theories, and gastronomy, and it is richly...

May 13, 2020

Q&A: Raya Morag on the Connection Between Post-Holocaust Studies and Cambodian Perpetrator Cinema

“The book offers front-row seats to a new genre of post-Holocaust global documentary film, with innovative approaches to the study of genocide, trauma, and gender.” ~Ben Kiernan, author of The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia Under...

May 13, 2020

Book Giveaway! Buddhism in America, by Richard Hughes Seager

Over the past half century in America, Buddhism has grown from a transplanted philosophy to a full-fledged religious movement, rich in its own practices, leaders, adherents, and institutions. This week, in observation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’ll explore...

May 13, 2020

Columbia University Press Announces the 2020 Student Poetry Contest Winners!

April was National Poetry Month, and this year, it marked the fourth annual high school poetry contest, in which high school students are invited to submit an original poem inspired by one from the Granger’s database. The contest has grown...

May 13, 2020

New From Our Distributed Presses! Film Curatorship, 2nd edition

Our weekly list of new books from our distributed presses is now available! Austrian Film Museum Film Curatorship Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace, second edition Paolo Cherchi Usai, David Francis, Alexander Horwath, and Michael Loebenstein Film Curatorship is an experiment:...

May 13, 2020

Postpandemic Hopes

By Michael Symons

“As an academic economist and former chef, this is a book I wish I had written. Symons’s work provides a unique contribution through its fusion of philosophy, economics, and food, arguing for the need to reject the acquisitive self-interest ethos...

May 12, 2020

New Book Tuesday! Narrative Change, The Perilous Public Square, and Duchamp Is My Lawyer

Our weekly list of new books is now available! The Perilous Public Square Structural Threats to Free Expression Today Edited by David E. Pozen The Perilous Public Square brings together leading thinkers to identify and investigate today’s multifaceted threats to...

May 12, 2020

Announcing the Columbia University Press Fall 2020 Catalog

Dear Readers, As we face a pandemic that has disrupted education, research, publishing, and society worldwide, we find that the mission of the university press is more crucial than ever. This season’s titles remind us of the importance of deep...

May 8, 2020

Exploring The Chile Pepper in China with Brian R. Dott

 “Extensive source materials in both Chinese and English form the bedrock for this impressive study into how a relatively unassuming American import so radically changed one country’s cuisines and traditional pharmacopoeia. The history of the humble chile in China...

May 7, 2020

Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food

By Brian R. Dott

“A learned as well as lively book with many surprises. How chile peppers came to China from the New World just starts a story involving taste, regionalism, adaptation, and folklore. Chiles were key to Chinese cuisine’s subtlety and variety, and...