An original and engaging account of the Obama years from a group of leading political historiansBarack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he too
A major new history of the century-long debate over what a Jewish state should beMany Zionists who advocated the creation of a Jewish state envisioned a nation like any other. Yet for Israel's founde
Over the past decade, an audacious program called Football Dreams has held tryouts for millions of 13-year-old boys across Africa looking for soccer’s next superstars. Led by the Spanish scout who hel
A sweeping history of Latin American republicanism in the nineteenth centuryBy the 1820s, after three centuries under imperial rule, the former Spanish territories of Latin America had shaken off thei
A new look at the ways van Gogh represented the seasons and the natural world throughout his careerThe changing seasons captivated Vincent van Gogh (1853–90), who saw in their unending cycle the majes
Every square inch of soil is rich with energy and life, and nowhere is this more evident than in the garden. At the tips of our trowels, a sun-driven world of microbes, insects, roots, and stems await
First collected nearly a millennium ago, these folktales are presented as stories that the beautiful Scheherazade tells her husband, King Shahryar, over 1001 consecutive nights. They include some of t
In a groundbreaking history as game-changing as Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, We the Corporations reveals how American business won equal rights
Giant factories, with their ingenious machinery and miraculous productivity, have long been celebrated as modern wonders of the world. Yet from their very beginnings, when William Blake called them “d
The United States incarcerates more people per capital than any other industrialized nation in the world—about 1 in 100 adults, or more than 2 million people—while national spending on pri
The eighteenth annual volume of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Innovation Policy and the Economy focuses on research that explores the interplay between new technologies and organiza
A new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its headAmerican Empire is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the Un
In a book that is part memoir and part history, David Roberts looks back at his personal relationship to extreme risk, and tries to make sense of why so many have committed their lives to the desperat
How kibbutzim thrived for much of the twentieth century despite their inherent economic contradictionsThe kibbutz is a social experiment in collective living that challenges traditional economic theor
We have grown accustomed to the idea that scientific theories are embedded in their place and time. But in the case of the development of mathematical physics in eighteenth-century France, the relatio
In September 2015, Junípero Serra was canonized by Pope Francis in Washington DC against the protest of many Californian Native Americans who criticized his brutal treatment of their ancestors
From the 1920s through the 1950s, Bertolt Brecht wrote a number of short, fictionalized comments on contemporary life, politics, and thought. Through the dramatic events of the first half of the twent
The Communist regimes of Europe collapsed more than a quarter century ago, and the Third Reich fell in World War II. But today’s rising global tide of far-right extremism makes totalitarian regi
Paradoxically, Swiss art historian and architecture critic Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968) would only consolidate his reputation as one of the most influential architectural historians of the twent
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and formerly part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, is the original oil city, with oil and urbanism thoroughly intertwined—economically, politically, and ph
Market globalization, technology, climate change, and postcolonial political forces are together forging a new, more modern world. However, caught up in the mix are some powerful religious narratives
Before the time of Napoleon, the most ambitious effort to explore and map the Nile was undertaken by the Ottomans, as attested by two monumental documents: an elaborate map, with 450 rubrics, and a le
The United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, and raucous commodities trade to its world-spanning multinationals, its m
Sixty percent of humanity—some 4.3 billion people—live in debilitating poverty. The standard development narrative suggests that alleviating poverty in poor countries is a matter of getting the intern
On March 28, 1979, the worst nuclear reactor accident in U.S. history occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in Central Pennsylvania. Radiation Nation tells the story of what happened that day
The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century--the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indon
What can a pesticide pump, a jar full of sand, or an old calico print tell us about the Anthropocene—the age of humans? Just as paleontologists look to fossil remains to infer past conditio
These controversial-at-the-time war stories were produced by some of the top comics talents ofthe 20th century—written by Goodwin and drawn by John Severin, Alex Toth, Russ Heath, ReedCrandall, and ma
In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle exploreshow rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of theAmerican experiment—over federalism, taxation, regu
Why a strong mission and inspired leadership are vital to the success of America’s colleges and universitiesIn 1998, soon after assuming the presidency of Tulane University, Scott Cowen was confronte
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the agesBlue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and b
The Ben cao gang mu, compiled in the second half of the sixteenth century by a team led by the physician Li Shizhen (1518–1593) on the basis of previously published books and contemporary knowle
The vast, and vastly influential, American military machine has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The US military realized very quickly that film could be used in
The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonst
Since its publication in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring has often been celebrated as the catalyst that sparked an American environmental movement. Yet environmental consciousness and e
In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule, these
This title is part of American Studies Now and available as an e-book first. Visit ucpress.edu/go/americanstudiesnow to learn more. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) has
American students vary in educational achievement, but white students in general typically have better test scores and grades than black students. Why is this the case, and what can school leaders do
This title is part of American Studies Now and available as an e-book first. Visit ucpress.edu/go/americanstudiesnow to learn more. From the 1960s to the present, activists, artists, and sci
Los Angeles Documentary and the Production of Public History, 1958–1977 explores how documentarians working between the election of John F. Kennedy and the Bicentennial created conflicting
