Bøker utgitt av Harvard University Press

What were the critical characteristics that distinguished the imperial period of the state from its pre-imperial period? In a provocative study on comparative empire, noted historians identify periods of transition across history that reveal how and why empires emerge.

Heroes and heroines in antiquity inhabited a space somewhere between gods and humans. In this detailed, yet brilliantly wide-ranging analysis, Jones starts from literary heroes such as Achilles and moves to the historical record of those exceptional men and women who were worshiped after death.

This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John S. Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet A. Jacobs's autobiography.

Linking the study of business and politics, Haynes reconstructs the passionate and protracted debate over the development of the book trade in nineteenth-century France. In tracing the contest over literary production in France, Haynes emphasizes the role of the Second Empire in enacting-but also in limiting-press freedom and literary property.

This novel was intended to be far sunnier than The Scarlet Letter and to illustrate "the folly" of tumbling down on posterity "an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate." Critics have faulted the book for explaining away hereditary guilt or for a contradictory denial of it, but Denis Donoghue offers fresh appreciation of the novel.

Hawthorne's greatest romance is often simplistically seen as a timeless tale of desire, sin, and redemption. In his Introduction, Michael J. Colacurcio argues that it is also a serious historical novel. This edition reproduces the authoritative text of The Scarlet Letter in the Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

For two years, the author shared the life of the "Weston School," an elite New England boarding school. Vividly describing the pastoral landscape and graceful buildings, the variety of classes and activities, and the official and unofficial rules that define the school, this book reveals a small world of ambitious, intensely pressured students.

No Small Matter uses dazzling images and evocative descriptions to reveal the virtually invisible realities and possibilities of nanoscience. It considers both the benefits and the risks of nano/microtechnology-from the potential of quantum computers and single-molecule genomic sequencers to the concerns about self-replicating nanosystems.

Filelfo (1398-1481), one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance, was the principal humanist working in Lombardy in the middle of the Quattrocento and served as court poet to the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. His Odes constitute the first complete cycle of Horatian odes since classical antiquity.

Cuban takes a richly detailed history of the Austin, Texas, school district, under Superintendent Pat Forgione, to ask the question that few politicians and school reformers want to touch: given effective use of widely welcomed reforms, can school policies and practices put all children at the same academic level?

American schools have always been locally created and controlled. But since Title I in 1965 appropriated nearly a billion dollars for public schools, federal money and programs have been influencing every school in America. The authors argue that huge gaps existed between policies and programs and the real-world practices they attempted to change.

In the Middle Ages, enormously popular bestiaries presented people with descriptions of rare and unusual animals, typically paired with a moral or religious lesson. Entomologist May Berenbaum and illustrator Jay Hosler draw on the powerful cultural symbols of these antiquated books to create a beautiful and witty bestiary of the insect world.

Bailey tells the story of the all-volunteer force from the 1960s through the Iraq War. Based on archival research and interviews with Army officers and recruiters, ad executives, and policy makers, America's Army confronts political, moral, and social issues a volunteer force raises for a democratic society and for the defense of our nation.

"Read him his rights." We all recognize this line from cop dramas. But what happens afterward? In this book, Leo sheds light on a little-known corner of our criminal justice system--the police interrogation. An important study of the criminal justice system, this book provides interesting answers and raises some unsettling questions.

This book provides an historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and U.S. wage structure through the 20th century. During the first 80 years of the 20th century, the increase of educated workers was higher than demand for them. This boosted income for most and lowered inequality. The reverse has been true since about 1980.

In the first book-length study in English of the Bencao gangmu (Systematic materia medica) of Li Shizhen (1518-1593), Nappi reveals a "cabinet of curiosities" of gems, beasts, and oddities whose author was devoted to using natural history to guide the application of natural and artificial objects as medical drugs.

Thorne confronts the history and enduring legacy of anti-foundationalist thought. At its heart, this book is a plea not to take doubt at its word-a plea for the return of a vanished philosophical intelligence and for the retirement of an anti-Enlightenment thinking that commits the very crimes that it lays at Enlightenment's door.

Measuring Up demystifies educational testing-from MCAS to SAT to WAIS. Bringing statistical terms down to earth, Koretz takes readers through the most fundamental issues that arise in educational testing and shows how they apply to some of the most controversial issues in education today, from high-stakes testing to special education.

In the spring of 1832, when the Indian warrior Black Hawk and a thousand followers marched into Illinois to reoccupy lands ceded to American settlers, the U.S. Army turned to rival tribes for military support. In order to grasp Indian motives, Hall explores their alliances in earlier wars with colonial powers and in intertribal conflicts.

Rubin shows how the sites and practices of reciting poetry influenced American readers' lives and helped them to find meaning in a poet's words. By blurring boundaries between "high" and "popular" poetry, and between modern and traditional, Rubin reveals a fuller, more democratic way of studying our poetic language and ourselves.

Between 1917 and 1921, Jewish intellectuals and writers across the Russian empire pursued a "Jewish renaissance." Here is a revisionist argument about the nature of cultural nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and socialism, and culture itself-the pivot point for the encounter between Jews and European modernity over the past century.

Teskey argues that Milton's creative power is drawn from a rift at the center of his consciousness over the question of creation itself. This rift forces the poet to oscillate deliriously between two incompatible perspectives, at once affirming and denying the presence of spirit in what he creates.

Solove offers a comprehensive overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy and ultimately provides a provocative resolution. He argues that are multiple forms of privacy, related to one another by family resemblances. His theory bridges cultural differences and addresses historical changes in views on privacy.

Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant's political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant's ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant's views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

Why did the United States become a global power? Frank Ninkovich shows that a cultural predisposition for thinking in global terms blossomed in the late nineteenth century, making possible the rise to world power as American liberals of the time took a wide-ranging interest in the world.

Veron presents the geological history of the Great Barrier Reef, the biology of coral reef ecosystems, and a primer on what we know about climate change. He concludes that most coral reefs will be dead from mass bleaching and irreversible acidification within the coming century unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed.

For a year and a half, Stevens worked in the admissions office of a New England college known for high academic standards, a beautiful campus, and social conscience. Ambitious high schoolers and savvy guidance counselors know that admission here is highly competitive. But creating classes, Stevens finds, is more complicated than most imagine.

This book depicts competing approaches to reproductive health on plantations in the antebellum South, as black women and white men sought to enhance the health of enslaved mothers. The first book to focus solely on the health care of enslaved women, it argues for the critical role of reproductive medicine in the slave system of antebellum America.

Schwartz presents the history of genetics through the eyes of a dozen or so central players, beginning with Charles Darwin and ending with Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller. This book offers readers background for understanding the latest findings in genetics and those still to come in the search for the genetic basis of complex diseases and traits.

Shaken by the ongoing clergy sexual abuse scandal, and challenged from within by social and theological division, American Catholics are at a crossroads. O'Toole tells the story of this ancient church from the perspective of ordinary people, the lay believers who have kept their faith despite persecution from without and clergy abuse from within.