John Riutta, of the Well-Read Naturalist blog, has written a terrific article about the history and future of bird book publishing. We are proud to see many of our recent bird guides mentioned in the article at Bird Watcher’s Digest: http://www.birdwatchersdigest-digital.com/birdwatchersdigest/20110910?folio=52.

I know there will always be debates about digital vs. painted, but it does seem as though technology has finally caught up with imagination. All three of the PUP books featured use digital photographs to present birds in realistic poses and activities. To borrow a very early Crossley tag line, PUP seems to be inaugurating a new wave of reality birding (or at least reality birding books!).

Check out The Crossley ID Guide, Hawks at a Distance, and Birds of Eastern (or Western depending on your area of interest) North America.

Albemarle County School Board in Virgina voted to remove Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet from sixth-grade reading lists because of its objectionable portrayal of Mormonism. Parents cited that the book would be an inaccurate introduction to American religions. This article from USA Today even attempts to pick out some of the offending passages of the novel.

A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887. It was not until 1923 that Sir Arthur actually visited Utah (and was presumably able to eat some humble pie during his audience with church leaders.)

Want to learn more about A Study in Scarlet and see how the rest of the Holmes and Conan Doyle canon have stood the test of time? Acclaimed critic and Washington Post writer Michael Dirda tackles the frequently misled, often misunderstood Conan Doyle in his forthcoming book, On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling coming this November. On Conan Doyle is the third entry in Princeton’s Writers on Writers Series.

Mormons and Sherlock Holmes are – independently – making a splash this year in pop culture. “The Book of Mormon” took home nine Tony awards in 2011, including Best Musical. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return in the film “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” December 16 and the first sanctioned Holmes sequel, House of Silk, is forthcoming from mystery writer Anthony Horowitz.

Thanks to our friends at New York Magazine and The Atlantic for posting the story.

This week’s book giveaway is Nightjars, Potoos, Frogmouths, Oilbird, and Owlet-nightjars of the World by Nigel Cleere.

This is the ultimate identification guide to the nightjars, potoos, frogmouths, Oilbird, and owlet-nightjars of the world. Covering all 135 known species of these elusive and cryptically plumaged birds, this illustrated guide features more than 580 superb color photographs depicting every species and many subspecies, including numerous images never before published. Photos of museum specimens are provided for birds for which no images in the wild exist, including species not seen since their original discovery. Detailed species accounts describe key identification features, confusion species, vocalizations, distribution, habitat and altitudinal range, breeding season and sites, egg type and clutch size, downy chick, status, and Red List category. This easy-to-use photographic guide also includes a color distribution map for every species as well as sections on plumage, taxonomy, and more.

- The ultimate identification guide to these elusive birds

- Covers all 135 known species

- Features more than 580 color photos

- Provides detailed species accounts and a color distribution map for every species

- Includes sections on plumage, taxonomy, and more

“This is a sumptuous volume which has brought together the best-ever collection of photographs of nightjars and their allies. Some of the images have to be seen to be believed, they are so brilliant. . . . In conclusion, this is a wonderful book, principally for the array of excellent images which it includes—for many of the species, there are no previous published photographs at all. It contains the latest thinking on the taxonomy of the Caprimulgiformes.”—John Clark, Birding World

The random draw for this book with be Friday 8/12 at 11 am EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

The Bard Music Festival is featuring composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) this year. Perhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius. Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely disparaged by critics more receptive to newer trends in music.

The concerts, lectures, and panel discussions of the festival are complemented by a book of related articles, essays, and letters edited by a prominent music scholar. Princeton University Press is pleased to announce:

Jean Sibelius and His World
Edited by Daniel M. Grimley
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9592.html

You can find more information about the Bard Music Festival and activities this weekend at:
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2011/

According to this web site, Jung and Freud are tops when it comes to academic fist-fights:

Probably one of the most famous rivalries in all of “Western” philosophy and science, Sigmund Freud started out as one of Carl Jung’s most beloved mentors before their close relationship soured. Now considered psychoanalysis’ two daddies, the intellectual juggernauts split mainly because of one massive disagreement — specifically, regarding the human unconscious. Jung didn’t believe his veritable Mr. Miyagi of all things psychological took it seriously enough. Their theories about suppressed and repressed thoughts and emotions lurking in the unconscious existed in harmony, but once Jung proposed the collective unconscious, everything began unraveling. His mentor proposed a structure involving some degree of collectivism, of course, though Jung considered it far bigger and more significant. Freud, on the other hand, saw the unconscious as a supplement to the overall psyche rather than its own unique, influential entity.

Which is good news for PUP as we will publish a new paperback titled Jung Contra Freud: The 1912 New York Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis in December. These lectures, give in the autumn of 1912 are the pivotal moment that ignited this famous feud. This is where C. G. Jung set out his critique and reformulation of the theory of psychoanalysis. He challenged Freud’s understandings of sexuality, the origins of neuroses, dream interpretation, and the unconscious, and also became the first to argue that every analyst should themselves be analyzed.

While some parts of this material have previously appeared in Jung collections, the lectures in their entirety have never before been published as a separate volume. And as if that wasn’t enough, the book also features an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London, and editor of Jung’s Red Book.

Now, back to feuding academics — what other feuds make the grade? coming in at number two are Nikolas Tesla and Thomas Edison, while C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien nab the number three spot. Click over to read the complete list of these juicy academic spats.

History.com speaks with Hope Harrison about The Berlin Wall and the political and cultural scene surrounding its construction.

Her research in previously unavailable communist archives (written about in her PUP book: Driving the Soviets up the Wall) led her to discover that while:

“…most people also believed that Moscow was behind the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Once I was able to read the documents from the archives of the former Soviet and East German leaders, I found that in fact the Soviets did not want to build the wall. It was the East German leaders, particularly the prominent politician Walter Ulbricht, who pushed to close the border in Berlin in order to prevent more people from escaping.”

Read the complete Q&A here: http://www.history.com/news/2011/08/11/reflecting-on-the-berlin-wall-50-years-after-its-construction/

FACT: Tree resins were among the earliest additives to wine. Ancient humans made several intuitive leaps that lead to this development: if a tree oozed resin to heal a cut in its bark, then applying resin to a human wound should serve to cure it, and, by extension, drinking a wine laced with a tree resin could both help to treat internal maladies and prevent the dreaded “wine disease.”

Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture
Patrick E. McGovern

The history of civilization is, in many ways, the history of wine. This book is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the earliest stages of vinicultural history and prehistory, which extends back into the Neolithic period and beyond. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Ancient Wine opens up whole new chapters in the fascinating story of wine and the vine by drawing upon recent archaeological discoveries, molecular and DNA sleuthing, and the texts and art of long-forgotten peoples.

Patrick McGovern takes us on a personal odyssey back to the beginnings of this consequential beverage when early hominids probably enjoyed a wild grape wine. We follow the course of human ingenuity in domesticating the Eurasian vine and learning how to make and preserve wine some 7,000 years ago. Early winemakers must have marveled at the seemingly miraculous process of fermentation. From success to success, viniculture stretched out its tentacles and entwined itself with one culture after another (whether Egyptian, Iranian, Israelite, or Greek) and laid the foundation for civilization itself. As medicine, social lubricant, mind-altering substance, and highly valued commodity, wine became the focus of religious cults, pharmacopoeias, cuisines, economies, and society. As an evocative symbol of blood, it was used in temple ceremonies and occupies the heart of the Eucharist. Kings celebrated their victories with wine and made certain that they had plenty for the afterlife. (Among the colorful examples in the book is McGovern’s famous chemical reconstruction of the funerary feast—and mixed beverage—of “King Midas.”) Some peoples truly became “wine cultures.”

“No one is better qualified to sift through the widely scattered clues [to the origins of winemaking] than McGovern, a skilled scientific sleuth who wields the most powerful tools of modern chemistry in his search for the roots of ancient wines.”—J. Madeleine Nash, Time Magazine

“A rich treasury of lore on viticulture. . . . McGovern’s book will likely remain a standard in every serious wine-lover’s library for a long time. To that achievement–and to glorious wine itself—let us raise our glasses high.”—Laurence A. Marschall, Natural History

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7591.pdf

Are you a big fan of flying reptiles?

Here at the PUP, we certainly are. Last year we gave you a sneak peak at a book we have in development with author Mark Witton on Pterosaurs. If you are not quite sure what a Pterosaur is, here’s an image to give you an idea:

(Cool, right?)

That’s why we at the press are very pleased to announce the launch of Mark Witton’s new blog, at which you can find more of the beautiful images and information about Pterosaurs (such as this characterization by Witton himself: “Even the boring ones have natty looking teeth and preposterous bodily proportions, while more extreme variants wouldn’t look out of place in a Guillermo del Toro movie.”)

The site also features a new excerpt from the upcoming book.

Check it out, and stay on the lookout for more news about the Pterosaurs release!

This weekend, Scheherazade, a film by Yousry Nasrallah, will open at the Riverside Theater in New York. Though this film is set in modern Egypt, it relies on the very old art of storytelling and conjures the persona of the queen of this art form — Scheherazade. According to this review in Variety, the film uses the narrated stories of several women to probe larger questions about women’s oppression and sexuality in politically repressive states.

This film will be shown in limited release which means only a lucky few in NY and LA get to see it for now. So, for those of you interested in the culture of story-telling and Scheherazade, we recommend picking up a copy of Whatever Gets You through the Night by Andrei Codrescu. Hailed by critics as an imaginative re-telling of portions of the original Arabian Nights, it also probes the culture of story-telling in ancient and contemporary times. Read a sample chapter here.

PUP author Max Bazerman recently posted a video on the website Big Think in which he addresses the problem of recognizing ethical dilemmas.

In the video he considers the case of Bernie Madoff. How did the very intelligent people working with Madoff fail to see that his returns were too good to be true? Bazerman argues that “we often behave contrary to our best ethical intentions without knowing it.”

This concept is the basis for Blind Spots, the book he co-wrote with Ann Tenbrunsel. In it they explore cases where groups of people either willingly participate in–or seem to willingly ignore–actions that they should easily recognize as unethical.

The video presents a fascinating new way to understand the Madoff scandal, and cases like it. Check it out, and pick up a copy of Blind Spots to learn more about “how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be.”

This week’s book giveaway is The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875 by Rebecca Bedell. This beautifully illustrated book has won several awards, including the 2002 New York Book Show Award.

Geology was in vogue in nineteenth-century America. People crowded lecture halls to hear geologists speak, and parlor mineral cabinets signaled social respectability and intellectual engagement. This was also the heyday of the Hudson River School, and many prominent landscape painters avidly studied geology. Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederic Church, John F. Kensett, William Stanley Haseltine, Thomas Moran, and other artists read scientific texts, participated in geological surveys, and carried rock hammers into the field to collect fossils and mineral specimens. As they crafted their paintings, these artists drew on their geological knowledge to shape new vocabularies of landscape elements resonant with moral, spiritual, and intellectual ideas.

Rebecca Bedell contributes to current debates about the relationship among art, science, and religion by exploring this phenomenon. She shows that at a time when many geologists sought to disentangle their science from religion, American artists generally sidestepped the era’s more materialist science, particularly Darwinism. They favored a conservative, Christianized geology that promoted scientific study as a way to understand God. Their art was both shaped by and sought to preserve this threatened version of the science. And, through their art, they advanced consequential social developments, including westward expansion, scenic tourism, the emergence of a therapeutic culture, and the creation of a coherent and cohesive national identity.

This major study of the Hudson River School offers an unprecedented account of the role of geology in nineteenth-century landscape painting. It yields fresh insights into some of the most influential works of American art and enriches our understanding of the relationship between art and nature, and between science and religion, in the nineteenth century.

“In this wide ranging book, Rebecca Bedell looks beyond the usual labels . . . to find an unexpected continuity in 19th century American landscape painting: its obsession with the once fashionable science of geology. In lucid prose free of academic jargon, Bedell surveys the intersection of art, tourism and geology in the work of such painters as Thomas Cole, John Kensett and Thomas Moran.”—New York Times Book Review

“[A] gracefully written and handsomely crafted book.”—Choice

The random draw for this book with be Friday 8/12 at 11 am EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

After the discouraging developments in the stock market last week, you may be wondering how exactly the global economy ended up where it is now. PUP author Amar Bhidé recently wrote an op-ed piece for Project Syndicate that should answer some of your questions.

Bhidé explains why “lending to foreign governments is in many ways inherently riskier than unsecured private debt or junk bonds”: governments, unlike private borrowers, are not required to offer any collateral to lenders.

On top of this, the practice of sovereign lending has evolved from “a job for a few intrepid financiers” to an institutionalized practice for large banks. What was once a risky venture for individuals is now a risk taken by the same banks in which we invest our money–Citibank, to name one–bringing the global problem very close to home.

The article has a lot to say about the lessons we should take from the current sovereign lending crisis. Click here to read more, then pick up a copy of Amar Bhidé’s The Venturesome Economy to learn more about global economics in today’s world.