Bambi: The lonely destiny of outsiders January 14, 2022 Today, almost all the animals in the world do not and cannot determine their destinies. It was not always like this. Before the emergence of human beings thousands of years ago, animals were free to roam the planet as they wished. Read More
Meir M. Bar-Asher on Jews and the Qur’an January 12, 2022 In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Meir Bar-Asher examines how Jews and Judaism are depicted in the Qur’an and later Islamic literature, providing needed context to those passages critical of Jews that are most often invoked to divide Muslims and Jews or to promote Islamophobia. Read More
Ideas and inspiration from Princeton University Press’s inaugural fellows January 06, 2022 In 2021, Princeton University Press welcomed its inaugural Publishing Fellows. The Publishing Fellowship was created to address a lack of diverse representation across the publishing industry, as part of a Press-wide Equity and Inclusion strategic initiative launched in 2018. Read More
Why are habits so sticky? December 23, 2021 Nearly all of us have habits that we would like to get rid of. It might be as innocuous as saying “um” too often when we speak, or as serious as a pack-a-day smoking habit. Either way, we know that changing our behavior is really difficult, even when the stakes are high. Read More
How does one communicate with colors? December 20, 2021 Architecture is represented not only with lines, figures, and words, but also with colors. What sounds like a truism today—when colorful, computer-generated renderings of building projects dominate architectural media—is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon. Read More
Jane Austen’s beginnings December 10, 2021 There is an excellent cartoon, first published in Punch magazine, that depicts Jane Austen sitting in her publisher’s office and getting what we might call some mixed feedback on her latest submission: ‘We like the plot, Miss Austen, but all this effing and blinding will have to go’. Read More
By Design | Book cover highlights of 2021 December 09, 2021 Adjusting to pandemic life in the past two years, we’ve learned new ways to live, work, innovate, and flourish. Despite uncertainty, we’ve done great things, shown abounding resilience and creativity. Read More
How did we get to here? Dinopedia and the dinosaur renaissance December 01, 2021 Dinosaurs are among the most exciting and remarkable animals ever. Animals like the giant predator Tyrannosaurus, the elephant-sized, mega-horned Triceratops and the whale-sized, long-necked sauropods Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus and the like are not just large and unusual, they’re off the charts when it comes to anatomy, physiology and behaviour. Read More
Shock value: The life and death story of electricity November 22, 2021 It is an irony of our age that while electricity increasingly drives nearly every aspect of our daily lives, we continue to view it as some kind of mysterious external physical force that powers our appliances rather than an internal and vital biological force that animates our bodies. Read More
Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” and National Memory November 22, 2021 This week marks the 58th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Last year’s anniversary went nearly unnoticed in the press. Read More
Rediscovering friendship November 12, 2021 Plagues and pandemics are nothing new in history with the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome certainly having their share. Read More
Educating citizens November 11, 2021 The presidential election of 2016 prompted many academic leaders and faculty members to ponder the implications for their own institution. Read More
Collaborative innovations in support of diverse voices November 10, 2021 A few weeks ago, I sat in a Zoom room with our social science team, in awe (again) of my colleagues’ commitment and their embrace of change. Read More
Margaret Jacobs on After One Hundred Winters November 09, 2021 After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. Read More
Humanities to the rescue November 08, 2021 Environmentally speaking, it might be said that Western culture backed the wrong horse with both Christianity and capitalism. Each ingrained a self-centeredness—respectively, inter- and intra-species—that has proven disastrous for the planet. Read More
