ISSUE: Summer 1998
Winner of the 1970 Bancroft Prize, as well as the 1970 John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, Gordon S. Wood’s The Creation of the American Public, 1776—1787 was called “one of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution” by The New York Times Book Review. Chapel Hill is now offering a paper edition of Creation with a new preface by the author [$16.95]. Johns Hopkins has published a paper edition of Paul R. Gross and Norman Leavitt’s Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. The expanded paperback edition includes a new preface and supplementary notes by the authors [$16.95]. Ivan R. Dee is out with a new edition of John Prados’ The Hidden History of the Vietnam War in which Prados draws from a broad range of evidence to illuminate the high points of the war and puncture its popular and enduring mythologies [$16.95 paper]. Princeton has reprinted G. Edward White’s Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903—1953 in which White discusses the growth, the personalities, and the progress of America’s onetime favorite sport [$14.95 paper]. Transaction Books has a paper edition of Lionel S. Lewis’ Scaling the Ivory Tower: Merit and Its Limits in Academic Careers with a new introduction by the author [$24.95 paper]. In Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region, Richard Gray examines how generations of Southerners have been engaged in reinventing their home region even as they describe it. The writers Gray discusses range from William Gilmore Simms and John Esten Cooke to William Faulkner and Walker Percy. Louisiana recently published a new edition of Writing the South with a new afterword by the author [$14.95 paper]. Wesleyan is offering a paper edition of William W. Savage, Jr.’s Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens: Comic Books in America, 1945—1954 in which Savage examines how comic book content reflected American middle-class values, stereotypes, and culture [$14.95 paper]. A recent Illinois reprint is Stephen Fox’s The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators [$18.95 paper]. Among recent Tennessee reprints is Gordon B. McKinney’s Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865—1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community, a work first published in 1978 [$19 paper],
Johns Hopkins has published the first unabridged three-volume paperback edition of Robert V. Remini’s National Book Award winning biography of Andrew Jackson. Called “the foremost Jacksonian scholar of our time,” Remini offers a richly detailed portrait of Jackson and his age. The three volumes are respectively: Andrew Jackson, Volume One, The Course of American Empire, 1767—1821; Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, The Course of American Freedom, 1822—1832; and Andrew Jackson, Volume Three, The Course of American Democracy, 1833—1845 [$17.95 each volume]. For 30 years, Yale’s English Monarchs series has been acclaimed for the high standards of historical scholarship. In the series, leading historians scrutinize the lives of the kings and queens of England and explore the impact of the longest permanent governing institution in Europe. Two recent additions to the English Monarch series are W.L. Warren’s King John, an account of the ruler whose failings lead to Magna Charta and Charles Ross’ Edward IV [$40 cloth, $18 paper]. Yale has also republished Bruce Seymour’s Lola Montez: A Life, a biography of one of the best known women of the Victorian era—a dancer and actress, a power behind thrones, and a mistress across four continents [$37.50 cloth, $16 paper]. Two other recent Yale reprints are respectively Anthony A. Barrett’s Caligula: The Corruption of Power [$15 paper] and Sally Peters’ Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman [$35 cloth, $18 paper]. Yale is also offering a third edition of Howard Colvin’s A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600—1840, an authoritative and now classic work of reference containing biographical information on some 2,000 architects who practiced in England, Scotland, and Wales from the time of Indigo Jones to that of William Burn and Sir Charles Barry. This is the third edition of what began in 1954 as A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1600—1840, and it includes 150 new entries [$85 cloth, $45 paper]. Transaction Books has a new edition of Benjamin Disraeli’s Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography with a new introduction by Robert W. Kamphuis, Jr. The biography is an account of Disraeli’s relation with his parliamentary colleague and friend and is still extremely readable [$24.95 paper]. Louisiana is offering a paper edition of Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, Kate being Kate Cumming whose detailed journal was first published in 1866 providing a riveting look behind the lines of Civil War action. The new edition is edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell, author or editor of more than 20 books on the Civil War [$16.95 paper]. Cambridge is offering a paper edition of Peter Conn’s Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, an account of the life of an American who spent much of her life in China [$17.95 paper]. Hill & Wang has published a revised edition of Julie Roy Jeffrey’s Frontier Women: “Civilizing” the West? 1840—1880. Frontier Women is considered the classic history of the women on America’s frontiers and the new edition has been updated and thoroughly revised [$12 paper]. Vintage Books is offering a 30th anniversary edition of Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets, an account of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem in the 1960’s [$12]. Toronto has republished in one volume Canadian biographer Donald Creighton’s two volume account of John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, the two volumes being The Young Politician and The Old Chieftain respectively [$45 paper],
Charles Wright’s highly acclaimed Black Zodiac, winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award was praised by Harold Bloom for “its new poignance which has to be termed religious.” Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Noonday Press issued a paper edition this spring [$12]. Other Noonday Press poetry publications include John Ashbery’s A Wave [$12]; C.K. Williams’ The Vigil [$12]; Robert Pinsky’s History of My Heart [$12]; Les Murray’s Subhuman Redneck Poems [$12]; Joseph Brodsky’s So Forth [$12]; and Derek Walcott’s The Bounty, a work for which Walcott received a Nobel Prize in Literature [$12], Louisiana is offering a paperback reprint of Pulitzer Prize winner Lisel Mueller’s Dependencies: Poems [$11.95]. Henry Holt’s Owl Books paperback series recently added Jay Parini’s House of Days, his fourth collection of poems [$13]. A recent HarperFlamingo paperback is Robert Bly’s Morning Poems, a collection by the author of the bestseller Iron John which launched the men’s movement to national fame as well as 10 other collections of poetry [$12]. Penguin Classics has reprinted Lewis Carroll’s nonsense epic The Hunting of the Snark orginally published in 1876 [$9.95]. Also available as a Penguin paperback is Floricanto Si: A Collection of Latina Poetry edited by Bryce Milligan, Mary Guerrero Milligan, and Angela de Hoyos [$14.95]. Penguin is also offering an original edition of Barbara Jordan’s Trace Elements [$14.95],
A recent addition to Random House’s Modern Library is William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows with an introduction by the author. This was the famous New Yorker editor’s second novel and appeared in 1937. Critic Howard Moss described it as “the definitive American novel about a child’s relationship to his mother, a subject so obvious and crucial that it is rarely handled” [$15.50 cloth], Syracuse recently made three additions to its Library of Modern Jewish Literature, the additions being respectively Melvin Jules Bukiet’s While the Messiah Tarries, a collection of short stories [$16.95]; Ludwig Lewisohn’s The Island Within, first published in the late 1920’s [$17.95]; and Daniel Stern’s The Suicide Academy [$16.95], Riverhead Paperbacks has reprinted Angeles Mastretta’s international bestseller Lovesick, described as “a story of passion interwoven with the history of a nation, a war, a family, and a vocation.” Lovesick sold 25,000 copies in its first week on sale in Mexico [$13]. Owl Books is out with a paper edition of David Carkeet’s The Error of Our Ways, a novel about a modern day suburban Job [$13], Mark Steadman’s McAfee County: A Chronicle is a novel described as a blend of Yoknapatawpha and Lake Wobegon. It is now available for the first time in paperback from Georgia [$16.95].
Princeton recently published a paper edition of William Chester Jordan’s The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century in which Jordan recounts the horrors of the great famine (1315—1322) one of the severest catastrophes to ever strike northern Europe [$16.95]. Princeton is also offering a paper edition of Douglas A. Irwin’s Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade [$16.95]. A third Princeton paperback reprint is The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology by Ernest A. Kantorowicz, a book published in 1957 that became the guide for generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology [$19.95]. Yale has issued a new edition of Anthony Pagden’s Lords of All the World: Ideaologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500—c.1800, a discussion of the rise and fall of modern colonial empires [$40 cloth, $18 paper]. Another recent Yale reprint is Ben Kiernan’s The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975—79 [$42.50 cloth, $18 paper]. A third Yale reprint is William Brustein’s The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925—1933 [$35 cloth, $16 paper], A recent addition to Ivan R. Dee Elephant paperback series is Lee Feigon’s Demistifying Tibet: Unlocking the Secrets of the Land of the Snows [$14.95]. North Carolina has republished Ralph E. Luker’s The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885—1912 [$18.95 paper]. North Carolina is also out with a paperback edition of Hans Mommsen’s The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy [$24.95]. A third recent North Carolina paperback is Peter Ward Fay’s The Opium War, 1840—1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteeth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar [$16.95]. Chicago has a paper edition of John W. Boyer’s Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897—1918 [$24.95]. Norton has reprinted James Oakes’ The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders [$14.95 paper].
Princeton has republished Amy Knight’s Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors described as “a compelling and comprehensive account of what happened to the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed and the world’s most powerful and dangerous secret police organization was uncloaked [$14.95 paper]. Princeton is also offering a paperback edition of Catherine Wilson’s The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope as part of its Studies in Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy series [$18.95], A third recent Princeton paperback is Gananath Obeyesekere’s The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, winner of the 1992 Louis Gottschalk Prize sponsored by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies [$17.95]. Yale takes a look at Tomorrow’s Hospital: A Look to the Twenty-first Century, reissuing Eli Ginzberg’s study of the next century’s care place [$32.50 cloth, $12 paper]. Yale is also offering a new edition of Bernard Knox’s Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time [$16 paper]. Available in a paperback edition from Johns Hopkins is Thomas Bender’s Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States [$14.95]. Nebraska has added Richard Rhodes’ Farm: A Year in the Life of An American Farmer to its Bison Books series [$16.95 paper].
