FACT: “Nearly a century after the first English settlement at Jamestown, and eighty years after the ‘pilgrims’ landed at Plymouth, there were still only two colleges in the American colonies, Harvard (founded in 1636) in the north, and William and Mary (1693) in the upper south.”

College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be
by Andrew Delbanco, Winner of the 2011 National Humanities Medal

As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past.

In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In arguing for what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America’s democratic promise.

This year, Princeton University Press won two awards in the AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show. One of the award-winning covers belonged to The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha by Hal Foster. Maria Lindenfeldar, an Art Director here at the press and designer of the cover, answered some questions about the design process.

Maria learned book design “on the job” — she majored in Government and has a graduate degree in Architectural History. Her only formal graphic design training was one semester in the post-baccalaureate program at Moore College of Art and Design. Her experiences have taught her that you can turn a hobby into a career if you work hard enough and find someone willing to take a chance on you.

Stay tuned for another Q&A post with Jason Alejandro, the designer of the second winning cover: Whatever Gets You Through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments by Andrei Codrescu.

Q: What is the most important thing that you personally keep in mind when coming up with a cover?

A: I love this question and really appreciate your asking it.

When coming up with a cover, I always try to have the image and/or type make sense. On a very basic level, this can mean choosing a typeface for a history book from the period discussed in its pages. Stepping back a bit further, a collection of Victorian letters can be enhanced by decorative ornaments that suggest their author’s milieu. On an even more conceptual level, “making sense” can involve searching for a symbolic or metaphorical image: intertwined green and red/white/blue rings for a book about the United States diplomacy in the Muslim world; a forest of frozen trees for an account of people deserted in Siberia; a child’s outstretched hand for a book about Europe’s rise from poverty. There is a 19th-century concept of “propriety” (often invoked by architects from that era) that I always keep in mind when designing. It makes me feel very connected to the Press’s history. Very nerdy, I know, but something that is constantly with me. When I think about the Press’s building, modeled after a printing museum in Belgium, I know that the same spirit was at work.

After meeting that most fundamental criterion, I turn to style. I try to make each jacket look current as well as timeless. This is harder than it seems—I want the jacket to reflect my own taste, what is fashionable, and what is appropriate for the material. My own preferences toggle between the decorative and the minimal (and sometimes combine the two), and I prefer a constrained dignity to a “push the limits” aesthetic. Having said that, I admire (and sometimes attempt) more aggressive design, particularly if it suits the project.

Finally, I work with the details until the whole design clicks into place, and I know it is finished. It’s the most magical moment, something that any creative person experiences and that keeps him/her coming back for more.

We’re back with a great giveaway! This week we’re giving you the chance to win a print of “Cycles of Financial Crises 1810 to 2010”, a poster based on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff.

The poster, created in partnership with HistoryShots, measures 36” x 18” and is printed on high-quality, fine-art paper.
Full details can be found here—http://www.historyshots.com/FinancialCrisis/index.cfm

We have two copies to give away, and a few ways for you to win:

Robert Frank, the author of PUP smash hit The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, will be delivering the 2012 Paul V. McNutt Lecture at Indiana University. This annual lecture honors Paul V. McNutt, who was dean of the IU law school, governor of Indiana, U.S. high commissioner to the Philippines, director of the Federal Security Agency and chairman of the War Manpower Commission during World War II. Previous McNutt lectures have been delivered by Bruce J. Schulman, and Andrew J. Bacevich.

A brief summary of Frank’s book can be found in the IU press release:

In “The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good,” published in 2011 by Princeton University Press, Frank argues that Darwin’s insights about evolution help explain the workings of modern economies and why the market doesn’t always provide efficiency and serve the public good.

His case rests on Darwin’s insight that individual and group interests often diverge. For example, bull elk evolved massive antlers as effective weaponry in the competition for access to females; but the resulting antlers, which are 4 feet across and weigh 40 pounds, made the species vulnerable to predators in wooded areas. In the modern marketplace, similarly, a parent might accept a riskier job at higher pay to buy a house in a better school district. But because school quality is a relative concept, when other parents make the same choice, they succeed only in bidding up house prices.

What: 2012 Paul V. McNutt Lecture at Indiana University
Who: Robert Frank, economist at Cornell University
Topic: “The Darwin Economy”
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Where: University Club Presidents’ Room, Indiana Memorial Union

Click here for more information about the event.

David Scheffer, author of the recently published ‘All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals’ will be touring Europe from 12 – 24 March, speaking in London, The Hague, Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, Budapest, Sarajevo and Brussels. While in London he will be talking at the Society for Oriental and African Studies on 12th March and at Chatham House on 13 March. Both these events are free and open to the public so please follow the links if you would like to sign up. For more detailed information on any of the other events in Europe please contact Caroline Priday cpriday@pupress.co.uk or @crpriday

This time around, Richard’s provided a Black-tailed Godwit plate. It’s worth comparing this with the earlier sneak peek at the Bar-tailed Godwit.

Become a fan of The Crossley ID Guide series on facebook to stay in the loop on when this book will publish!

Has to be “When is the (fill in UK or Western) version of The Crossley ID Guide coming out?” Well, I don’t have the answer yet, but I do have a sneak peek at one of the plates for the Bar-tailed Godwit from the UK edition. More to come next week too, so check back.

You can click the image to make it a bit bigger.

David Scheffer also has a provocative op-ed in the International Herald Tribune today which you can read on the mirrored NY Times site: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/defuse-the-lexicon-of-slaughter.html?_r=1

In it he writes:

Using the word “genocide” loosely can be tragically ineffective or self-defeating. It can intimidate powerful nations from reacting quickly enough to prevent further atrocities….By forgoing “genocide,” politicians would no doubt disappoint interest groups determined to use the label to describe the suffering inflicted on their ancestors. The Armenians, in particular, would find this compromise hard to accept. But their strongest case rests with the historians and the jurists now — not with the politicians whose loose indictments trigger the very tensions that can ignite prejudice among peoples and nations. Shifting to “atrocity crimes” in government speech, meanwhile, would focus the efforts of officials on getting more unified international responses to ongoing massacres.

We were pleased to see in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review a nod to our classic bestseller THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly as an influential book on Capitol Hill. The back page Essay, by Emily Parker, was a fascinating look at the books being read and influencing policy in Washington. There are some other goodies here that have just made my reading list!

It’s always nice to discover a review like this on a Monday morning: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/tale-two-bishops-and-brilliant-saint/

In a round-up review of several books about Augustine and The Confessions, Peter Brown has very nice things to say for the inaugural book in our Lives of Great Religious Books series. Brown says the biography is “another gem of a little book by Garry Wills.”

He continues, writing that “Wills describes brilliantly the manner in which this strange work seeped slowly through literary circles…His book is a passionate plea that we should read Augustine’s strange book as it was first heard, and in the light of the purposes for which it was first written.”

Happily his review dovetails nicely with the purpose of the series which is to examine the history and “life” of major religious texts — tracing generation, interpretation, uses, and misuses over time. We are gearing up for the launch of the next two books in the series — biographies of The Book of Mormon and The I Ching — in April.

Here in the UK we’ve been treated to a number of radio appearances from PUP authors in recent weeks:

Persi Diaconis, Stanford Professor of Statistics and Mathematics and co-author of the hugely entertaining Magical Mathematics, provided BBC Radio 4’s More or Less listeners with a special Christmas treat when he dropped in on Tim Harford to discuss the maths behind the magic. Listen again to the interview via the BBC iPlayer.

Welcoming in the new year, we tuned in to an episode of BBC Radio 4′s Analysis to hear Raghuram Rajan take part in the debate over society’s increasing moral aversion to the exploits of the ‘super-rich’. Catch up on-line here to listen to the Chicaco Booth Professor of Economics, and author of Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, share his thoughts on bonuses and bail-outs.

At the end of last month, David Scheffer was interviewed by Matthew Sweet for BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves. Scheffer was appointed by President Clinton as the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, and led American initiatives on war crimes tribunals during the 1990s. His new book, All the Missing Souls, provides a detailed personal account of investigations into such attrocities as the killing fields of Sierra Leone and the Rwandan genocide. To hear his account of all that led to bringing those responsible to justice, listen on-line here:

We’ve also tuned in to hear European Advisory Board members Rana Mitter and Margaret MacMillan take to the airwaves. Last week saw two important anniversaries of events in world history: the 70th aniversary of the fall of Singapore (15th February 1942) and the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s visit to meet Mao in China (17th February 1972). On Wednesday, Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China (Oxford), was welcomed on to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme to discuss the lasting impact of the event described by Winston Churchill as the “largest capitulation in British history”.  On Friday morning, Margaret MacMillan, Professor of International History (Oxford), joined Lord Charles Powell, also on Today, to reflect on Nixon’s visit to China and discuss its influence upon the United States’ relationship with China today.

A few more announcements from the European Advisory Board: our congratulations go out to Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford, who received a knighthood from Her Majesty, the Queen, for his services to scholarship in the 2012 New Year Honours list.  Secondly, we send our warmest regards to Ann Mroz, former Editor in Chief of the Times Higher Education, who is now stepping up to the role of Digital Publishing Director of the TSL Group.

Now as a special treat, some Valentine’s wishes from Philosophy and Classics Editor Rob Tempio:

What better way to spend Valentine’s Day than reading some philosophy with your sweetheart, beau, or paramour, right? Okay, maybe not, but if it’s depth you’re after in your love life and not just superficial passion or infatuation, then do we have the books for you.

First stop, the origins of romantic love. In this classic work, Love in the Western World, Dennis de Rougemont explores the psychology of love from the legend of Tristan and Isolde to Hollywood. At the heart of his exploration is the inescapable conflict in the West between marriage and passion. Mais oui!

The French may consider themselves the world’s greatest lovers, but are they also the greatest philosophers of love? Judge for yourself in French provocateur Pascal Bruckner’s new book, The Paradox of Love.

Today may not be the best day to wonder why we love what we love, but in his book, The Reasons of Love philosopher Harry Frankfurt says that self-love is at the heart of all else that we love. Try using that to explain why you got yourself chocolates and flowers. Also, if your significant other gives you a copy of Harry Frankfurt’s best-selling book Harry Frankfurt’s best-selling book On Bullshit today, things may be on the rocks. Just saying.

Love is irrational and blind, guided by passion not reason. Not exactly says philosopher and poet Troy Jollimore in his book, Love’s Vision. In this beautifully written book chock full of wonderful examples from poetry, literature, and music, Troy Jollimore show that love is a “vision” which combines the irrational and the rational, reason and passion, and guides us away from an excessive self-concern. And what says Valentine’s Day more than poetry, so why not read some of Jollimore’s poetry to your beloved as well: At Lake Scugogg.

Last but not least, no discussion of the philosophy of love would be complete without the Great Dane himself, Soren Kierkegaard. Yes, the man gave up the one great love of his life to devote himself to philosophy, but nevertheless it freed him up to write the many beautiful works on love that he did, including the aptly named Works of Love.

BBut, for those unattached and looking for love… at least for Valentine’s Day, pick up a copy of The Seducer’s Diary for all the tips sure to win you the favor of someone special. Satisfaction guaranteed…we hope.

Happy Valentine’s Day from Princeton University Press.

The Paradox of Love is now available in cloth and electronic form!