Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Examines the life and achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the steamship and railroad tycoon.

Vanderbilt basketball has come a long way since the beginnings of organized team play in 1893. Vanderbilt athletic historian Bill Traughber leads the charge through Commodore history, from the Old Gym

In the Southeastern Conference arguably the most historic and competitive conference in all of college football the more blue-collar programs often get overshadowed by the dynasties (read: Alabama). S

The Law Department was one of two departments that opened for classes in the fall of 1874 in the newly-founded Vanderbilt University. The operation of the institution in the nineteenth century was go

This 200-mile line through Pennsylvania’s most challenging mountain terrain was intended to form the heart of a new trunk line from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by W

In Battleground New Jersey, historian and Boardwalk Empire author Nelson Johnson chronicles reforms to the system through the stories of Arthur T. Vanderbilt—the first chief justice of the state’s mod

A New York socialite and feminist, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was known to be domineering, temperamental, and opinionated. Her resolve to get her own way regardless of the consequences stood her in good

In this study of the hieroglyphs in 3 surviving Maya codices, the author has tabulated all character variants, worked out meanings, and has interrelated these meanings with Maya culture. Day, month, n

Thinking judgment in relation to the work of Jean-François Lyotard “How to judge—Jean-François Lyotard?” It is from this initial question that one of France’s mos

In the spring of 2004, army reservist and public affairs officer Steven J. Alvarez waited to be called up as the U.S. military stormed Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein. But soon after President Bush

After World War II, elite private universities in the South faced growing calls for desegregation. Though, unlike their peer public institutions, no federal court ordered these schools to admit black

Written by a master storyteller, Tycoon’s War is the remarkable account of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of the capitalist versus the idealist, money versus ambition, and a mo

“Snapshots of Intellectual Life in Contemporary PR China” discusses changes that have taken place in Chinese intellectual life over the past decade, the self-reflection that these changes have provoke

From the author of The Genius of the System, the classic tale of Hollywood's first golden age, comes the story of its last. Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge. Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters--Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings--an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names. Power Surge traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age-

A National Bestseller - Recommended by Financial Times as "What to Read in 2025" "The central argument of Our Dollar, Your Problem--that the greenback's pre-eminence was never guaranteed and might plausibly be overturned--could hardly be more timely."--The Economist A leading economist explores the global rise of the U.S. dollar and shows why its future stability is far from assured Our Dollar, Your Problem argues that America's currency might not have reached today's lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good luck. Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders, Kenneth Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar--how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro--and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and interest rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc. Americans cannot take for granted that the Pax Dollar era will last in

Syaman Rapongan is a chronicler of his people, the Tao, an Indigenous community who live on Orchid Island near the island of Taiwan. In Eyes of the Sky, he invites readers to learn the ways of this oceanic world--and to learn to see their own worlds anew through a Tao lens. Employing oral storytelling conventions, Eyes of the Sky opens by recounting the history of the Tao, from their mythic origins to the present day. Its first chapter is narrated by a giant trevally, a fish common to the waters around Orchid Island. It then tells the stories of three generations of a single family--father, son, and grandson--exploring the transformation of Tao society through their encounters with Han-Taiwanese modernity. Syaman Rapongan paints a vivid picture of his homeland--its mountains and seas, flora and fauna, climate and ecology--as well as local culture and customs. In describing fishing practices, canoe building, and conversations with friends from his village, he illustrates the Tao's ecolo

An Indigenous hunter laments the decline in the flying squirrel population and reflects on how animals perceive the world. In a drought-stricken cyberpunk anytown, kids revolt against the grown-ups only to face off with stray dogs over water. During late-night diving sessions, a researcher encounters a mysterious group of ocean-dwelling people with gills. In an overpopulated future, marrying an AI spouse will raise a human's credit score. A man follows the trail of an extinct leopard, seeking to unravel a metafictional mystery left behind by his late wife. This anthology showcases cutting-edge works on ecological themes by essential and emerging Taiwanese authors, revealing the vitality of their engagements with environmental crises. Taiwan is a biodiversity hotspot and geopolitical flashpoint, home to both Indigenous peoples and settlers. The pieces collected in A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader give voice to this human and more-than-human diversity, telling tales that are disturbing y

How the legacy of the Civil War--as presented by writers, poets, and artists of the time--has shaped American visions of democracy In Haunted by the Civil War, Shirley Samuels explores the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others to investigate the long cultural shadow of America's cataclysmic sundering. Juxtaposing these texts with images--ranging from paintings by Winslow Homer to newspaper and magazine illustrations of political controversies--Samuels argues that the Civil War still haunts our attitudes toward democracy. The recent toppling of Confederate monuments, the continuing protests over racial and sexual discrimination, immigration, and Indigenous land rights: each of these forms part of the war's legacy. Examining the fraught deliberations about an ideal American democracy in the early republic, Samuels turns to the language of sensation in the poetry of Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman alongside Lincol

Virginia Woolf's first fully realized work of fiction--published in its final, revised form for the first time A beguiling trio of fantastical and farcical anti-fairy tales about a giantess who builds a magical "cottage of one's own," battles a silver-scaled sea monster, and defies governesses and gravity alike In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a twenty-five-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet--a teasing tribute to Woolf's friend Mary Violet Dickinson. But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories. The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces. Published here for the first time in its final form, The Life of Violet blends fantasy, fairy tale, and satire as it transports readers into a

After the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang imposed authoritarian rule on Taiwan in the name of anticommunism. The White Terror, as martial law and state repression were known, would last for decades, casting a pall of uncertainty and fear over Taiwanese society--and its legacies still haunt Taiwan today. Kaori Lai's Portraits in White explores everyday life under the White Terror, illuminating how the violence of martial law pervades even the most mundane moments. The book is composed of three novellas, each telling the story of an ordinary person. Mr. Ch'ing-chih, a schoolteacher, keeps his head down and avoids harming others despite pressure to do intelligence work. Ms. Wen-hui, an old woman who had served as a housekeeper for elites of different backgrounds since the Japanese occupation, faces death alone in the digital age. Ms. Casey, discriminated against for not being of mainlander descent, moves to Europe and must navigate the politics of diaspora. Even if only alluded to obliq