Adopted for Course Use

Søren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death appeared in the Best of the Winter 2010 Course Lists from The Front Table, The Web Magazine of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores.

Check out our complete listing of Kierkegaard’s Writings

Let’s kick off the new week with a new reading list!

PUP Production Associate Erin Suydam’s list progresses nicely from historical war fiction to Shakespeare – Check it out below:

“The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Historical fiction. It’s an excellent Civil War novel centering on Gettysburg, and it’s totally gripping. I enjoyed the character development and inside perspective –from both sides–and I think it’s a great tool for deepening our understanding of the conflict. Oh and it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner.”

“The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Kay Penman. Historical fiction. This one’s about the War of the Roses and Richard III. If you’re used to the Shakespearean portrayal, read this for an opposing perspective. It’s a looong book but not one page is boring. This is well-written and very rich, and a lot of fun!”

“Will in the World, by Stephen Greenblatt (PUP author). Biography. Greenblatt attempts to piece together the sparse information we have about William Shakespeare and addresses some of the speculation surrounding his life (his background and upbringing, his faith, authorship of his plays, etc). It’s a thought-provoking book and if you like it, Hamlet in Purgatory is good stuff too.”

As always, you can comment on Erin’s list or give us your own via comments below, Facebook, and Twitter!

We invite you to be the first to check out all the new and forthcoming books in our new sociology catalog.
The sociology catalog includes titles on economic and organizational sociology, politics, religion, historical sociology, science and education. Great books by great authors. You can find the sociology catalog online at:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/soc10.pdf

You can also learn about new sociology books by joining our e-mail list at:
http://press.princeton.edu/subscribe/

We hope to see you soon at the upcoming ASA annual meeting in Atlanta, GA in August.

Seeds of Amazonian Plants
by Fernando Cornejo & John Janovec
The introduction is now online: http://bit.ly/atLc5w

Seeds of Amazonian Plants is the first field guide to treat the extraordinary diversity of seeds and diaspores of plants commonly encountered in the Amazon and other lowland moist forests of the American tropics. This stunningly illustrated guide features an easy-to-use whole-plant approach to seed identification that provides detailed descriptions not only of the seeds but also of the habit, trunk, bark, leaves, infructescence, and fruit of Amazonian plants, as well as information about the known uses and distribution of each genus. Presenting these descriptions together with 750 full-color photos and a unique identification key, this premier field guide enables users to identify seeds of 544 genera and 131 families of plants.

Fernando Cornejo is research associate and field research botanist at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. John Janovec is research botanist and founding director of the Andes to Amazon Biodiversity Program at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.

Myth: The rich vote based on economics, the poor vote “God, guns, and gays.”
Fact: Church attendance predicts Republican voting much more among rich than poor.

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State:
Why Americans Vote the Way They Do (Expanded Edition)
Andrew Gelman

Read chapter one online:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9030.html

On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans watched on television as polling results divided the nation’s map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become symbolic of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes–pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist blue-state Democrats woefully out of touch with heartland values. With wit and prodigious number crunching, Andrew Gelman debunks these and other political myths.

This expanded edition includes new data and easy-to-read graphics explaining the 2008 election. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is a must-read for anyone seeking to make sense of today’s fractured political landscape.

Check out economist and author Paul Seabright discussing his popular and entertaining book THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS: A Natural History of Economic Life at London’s The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).

Home and product design website Design*Sponge ran a post yesterday featuring homemade furniture with a small quirk—it’s made of books!

The article features a pair of end tables (pictured above) and a coffee table, but I’m thinking this idea could go even further. Book couches! Book dining sets! How about a bookshelf made of books?

I love the look of these tables, but I can’t help feeling sad for the books involved. Selecting the right ones must be a complicated process.

Should it be books you never want to read again? Or should you pick book titles that will impress your friends? (“Why yes, that armoire is composed entirely of different versions of James Joyce’s Ulysses. How kind of you to notice!”) The books featured in these photos appear to be dated and of the sort that the artist didn’t necessarily intend to read, if that old-looking cookbook on top is any indication.

Are these creations a bibliophile’s dream, or should these books be rescued and given to more appreciative readers? What books would you use in your furniture? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Click here to see the original post on Design*Sponge.com.

Amy Hungerford (Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion since 1960) recommends beautiful prose perfect for those dreamy summer days, whether you’re enjoying a day out in Mother Nature’s glory, or would prefer to curl up on the couch with the AC running and pretend you are.

1. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

Amy says, “These essays tell of Nabokov’s enchanted childhood and his family’s heartbreaking flight from Russia when he was in his teens. The chapter on his passion for butterfly hunting at their country chateau will inspire summer dreaming, even if it doesn’t send you out with net and pins.”

2. “Nature” and “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Amy says, “I can’t help wanting to read gorgeous, intelligent prose about the outdoors in the summer. Because Emerson was a genius at stringing lustrous aphorisms into an essay, you can read this even in little bits, on the beach, and immediately quote impressively to attractive persons on nearby blankets.”

3. The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Amy says, “Still my favorite historical novel, about a black slave-owner in antebellum Virginia. No one is writing like Jones today though the genre of the historical novel is as popular as ever. Summer is the perfect time to plunge into an epic story like this one and enjoy its myriad characters and endlessly budding narrative style–like a great spreading tree, with small stories growing like leaves from every one of the main branches of the story.”

Considering that just reading her descriptions makes me want to go outside and sit under a tree, I’d say that Amy’s picks really capture the summer season—from its excitement to its beauty and calm.

Is there a book you think is perfect for summer? Let us know in the comments, or by Facebook or Twitter!

PUP author Anthony S. Chen and The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 are once again being honored by the American Political Science Association.

The Politics and History section named The Fifth Freedom a co-winner of the 2010 J. David Greenstone Award. This award is given to the best book in politics and history published within two previous calendar years

The Fifth Freedom previously won the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics section of the APSA’s 2010 Best Book Award and the Social Science History Association’s 2008 President’s Book Award. Way to go, Anthony!

Find out more information about the Politics and History section of the APSA here.

For a complete list of recent award-winning Princeton University Press books, please click here.

Susan Wolf, author of Meaning in Life and Why it Matters, advocates a healthy reading diet – one should not strictly adhere to pure academia, nor should one solely stick with what she calls “pure pleasure, the literary equivalent of eating candy.”

Instead, follow a plan that makes you break a mental sweat while still allowing you to indulge – see what she recommends below:

“A conference in Iceland this summer led me to Nobel-prize winning Iceland author Halldor Laxness’s Independent People, an epic of an Icelandic man and his family’s struggles with the harsh Icelandic land, and climate, the gentry and the resident demons. It is a powerful and gripping book, emotionally engaging, and utterly different form anything I have read. It also gives one a vivid sense of Icelandic history and culture. Not summer reading – it’s long and full of darkness and depression – but a masterpiece.”

“On the opposite end of at least one continuum, is Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, a 12-novel work that presents a picture of England from between the World Wars through about the 1960′s, through the eyes of an upperclass Englishman (who is in ‘public school’ in volume one), who keeps running into the additional characters throughout the entire work. Beautifully written, very funny, it is, for Anglophiles like me, pure pleasure, the literary equivalent of eating candy. (I allow myself only one novel at a time, alternating it with more demanding and probably more educational reading.) Not to be recommended for those who want much of a plot – almost nothing happens in the novels but conversation.”

So, readers, nourish yourself with a healthy reading regimen.

What do you think of Susan’s list? Comment below, find us on Facebook, or Tweet us!

A week ago, France passed a controversial law banning some forms of the Muslim veil. Here, John R. Bowen, author of Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves and Can Islam Be French? answers a key question — Is This Legal?

Can the French legally ban the burqa?

John R Bowen

France has just passed a law that its prestigious State Council said has no clear legal basis, that may soon be declared unconstitutional, and that would in any case be challenged before the European Court of Human Rights. The general ban on covering the face in public space will lead to fines and ‘education’ for Muslim women wearing what is called the burqa, the niqab or the ‘full veil.’ The measure easily passed the lower house on July 13th, and now goes to the Senate for the expected approval.

It is easy to ridicule the French law: why set the police out to track down the miniscule number of women wearing burqas, who tend to be French-born, not Afghan imports? Why not allow them their religious freedom? Does the law reflect anything more than general Islamophobia and calculated electioneering?

Well, certainly French politicians listened to polls showing strong support for the law, and voting for it may undercut support for the far-right National Front, so simple electoral politics might explain the vote. But politicians could have opted for a more narrowly-tailored ban, one limited to government offices and shops and that would have likely been judged constitutional. They argue that a broad law sends the right message, and that it is constitutional. They make three arguments for its legality, only one of these claims has a chance of being accepted—and it might seem the oddest of the three to those outside France.

More after the jump

In fact, we hope many of the people now commenting on Thomas Espenshade’s and Alexandria Radford’s book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal will take the time to read the book.

Over the last two weeks, the book has been cited (though not by always by title) in Russell K. Niehli’s column at Minding the Campus, Russ Douthat’s column at the New York Times, and Pat Buchanan’s column for Creator’s Syndicate. The story has also been picked up all over the Web: TAPPED, The Corner at NRO, First Things, Joanne Jacobs, Chronicles, Huffington Post, Matthew Yglesias. Everyone’s talking about it, and yet few are getting it quite right.

We are grateful to Monica Potts for pointing out some of the discrepancies between the reportage and the physical book. We hope more people interested in this debate will take the time to read No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal and speak with the authors about their findings.

To get a head-start, try reading this excerpt from the first chapter or this Q&A with Tom Espenshade from earlier this year.