Bøker utgitt av Princeton University Press

A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world historyThis book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some ten thousand years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era. Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies-from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting-highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators. He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa. A monumental achievement by one of today's eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.

Why life's shortness-more than anything else-is what makes it meaningfulDeath might seem to render pointless all our attempts to create a meaningful life. Doesn't meaning require transcending death through an afterlife or in some other way? On the contrary, Dean Rickles argues, life without death would be like playing tennis without a net. Only constraints-and death is the ultimate constraint-make our actions meaningful. In Life Is Short, Rickles explains why the finiteness and shortness of life is the essence of its meaning-and how this insight is the key to making the most of the time we do have.Life Is Short explores how death limits our options and forces us to make choices that forge a life and give the world meaning. But people often live in a state of indecision, in a misguided attempt to keep their options open. This provisional way of living-always looking elsewhere, to the future, to other people, to other ways of being, and never committing to what one has or, alternatively, putting in the time and energy to achieve what one wants-is a big mistake, and Life Is Short tells readers how to avoid this trap.By reminding us how extraordinary it is that we have any time to live at all, Life Is Short challenges us to rethink what gives life meaning and how to make the most of it.

"A book that explores the disconnect between the ideals of the Great Awokening and the realities of fixing structural inequality. This book aims to explain how a new elite has risen to prominence and established a social order that is fundamentally premised on exclusion, exploitation and condescension even as its members define themselves in terms of their commitments to uplifting the marginalized and disadvantaged. The book will illustrate how this core tension within the new elite explains a number of trends we've seen, from the Great Awokening to growing political polarization and beyond. We Have Never Been Woke will draw from and build upon al-Gharbi's work over the last six years that has examined the rise of Trump, the crisis of expertise, tensions over 'identity politics' and growing social inequality. It will demonstrate each of these domains as a 'front' of a broader social and cultural conflict - a conflict between those who have come to dominate the 'knowledge economy' and institutions of cultural production and those who feel excluded therefrom. It will highlight the ways symbolic analysts - those elites who have not attained their social position by owning material assets but by trafficing in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis - deploy wokeness as a weapon in this conflict, often at the expense of those who are actually marginalized and disadvantaged in the prevailing order. As We Have Never Been Woke will demonstrate, the Americans who are the primary producers and consumers of content on antiracism, socialism, feminism, etc. also happen to be the primary beneficiaries of gendered, racialized and other forms of inequality - and not passive beneficiaries. We are active participants in exploiting and reproducing inequalities. However, it is difficult for us to 'see' how we contribute to the problem -- precisely because of our deeply felt commitments to social justice. This book aims to deflate these self-serving narratives while dismantling popular (and self-serving) narratives about the 'losers' in the system - leaving readers with a totally different understanding of how social inequality is produced (and by whom), and unnerving questions about what it would take to meaningfully address it"--

Why this holiday season is a great time to rethink the traditional turkey feastA turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today's specially bred, commercially produced birds. In this brief book, bestselling author Peter Singer tells their story-and, unfortunately, it's not a happy one. Along the way, he also offers a brief history of the turkey and its consumption, ridicules the annual U.S. presidential "pardon" of a Thanksgiving turkey, and introduces us to "a tremendously handsome, outgoing, and intelligent turkey" named Cornelius. Above all, Singer explains why we can improve our holiday tables-for turkeys, people, and the planet-by liberating ourselves from the traditional turkey feast. In its place, he encourages us to consider trying a vegetarian alternative-or just serving the side dishes that many people already enjoy far more than turkey. Complete with some delicious recipes for turkey-free holiday feasting, Consider the Turkey will make you reconsider what you serve for your next holiday meal-or even tomorrow's dinner.

On the 100th anniversary of T. S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece, a rich cultural history of The Waste Land's creation, explosive impact, and enduring influenceWhen T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, it put the thirty-four-year-old author on a path to worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize. "e;But,"e; as Jed Rasula writes, "e;The Waste Land is not only a poem: it names an event, like a tornado or an earthquake. Its publication was a watershed, marking a before and after. It was a poem that unequivocally declared that the ancient art of poetry had become modern."e; In What the Thunder Said, Rasula tells the story of how The Waste Land changed poetry forever and how this cultural bombshell served as a harbinger of modernist revolution in all the arts, from abstraction in visual art to atonality in music.From its famous opening, "e;April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land,"e; to its closing Sanskrit mantra, "e;Shantih shantih shantih,"e; The Waste Land combined singular imagery, experimental technique, and dense allusions, boldly fulfilling Ezra Pound's injunction to "e;make it new."e; What the Thunder Said traces the origins, reception, and enduring influence of the poem, from its roots in Wagnerism and French Symbolism to the way its strangely beguiling music continues to inspire readers. Along the way, we learn about Eliot's storied circle, including Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, and Bertrand Russell, and about poets like Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, whose innovations have proven as consequential as those of the "e;men of 1914."e;Filled with fresh insights and unfamiliar anecdotes, What the Thunder Said recovers the explosive force of the twentieth century's most influential poem.

Why the world's most resilient dictatorships are products of violent revolutionRevolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution-such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam-are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism.Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, monarchies, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest-three principal sources of authoritarian breakdown.Looking at a range of revolutionary and nonrevolutionary regimes from across the globe, Revolution and Dictatorship shows why governments that emerge from violent conflict endure.

A history of the largely forgotten peasant revolution that swept central and eastern Europe after World War I-and how it changed the course of interwar politics and World War IIAs the First World War ended, villages across central and eastern Europe rose in revolt. Led in many places by a shadowy movement of army deserters, peasants attacked those whom they blamed for wartime abuses and long years of exploitation-large estate owners, officials, and merchants, who were often Jewish. At the same time, peasants tried to realize their rural visions of a reborn society, establishing local self-government or attempting to influence the new states that were being built atop the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. In The Last Peasant War, Jakub Beneš presents the first comprehensive history of this dramatic and largely forgotten revolution and traces its impact on interwar politics and the course of the Second World War. Sweeping large portions of the countryside between the Alps and the Urals from 1917 to 1921, this peasant revolution had momentous aftereffects, especially among Slavic peoples in the former lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It enabled an unprecedented expansion of agrarian politics in the interwar period and provided a script for rural resistance that was later revived to resist Nazi occupation and to challenge Communist rule in east central Europe. By shifting historical focus from well-studied cities to the often-neglected countryside, The Last Peasant War reveals how the movements and ambitions of peasant villagers profoundly shaped Europe's most calamitous decades.

A groundbreaking new account of the author of The Spanish Tragedy that establishes him as a major Elizabethan dramatistThomas Kyd (1558-1594) was a highly regarded dramatist and the author of The Spanish Tragedy, the first revenge tragedy and the most influential Elizabethan play. In this first full study of his life and works, Brian Vickers discusses Kyd's accepted canon as well as three additional plays Vickers has newly identified as having been written by Kyd-exciting discoveries that establish him as a major dramatist. Thomas Dekker, a fellow Elizabethan dramatist, referred to "industrious Kyd," which suggests a greater output than the three plays traditionally attributed to him-The Spanish Tragedy, Soliman and Perseda, and Cornelia. Kyd worked between 1585 and 1594, when the plague led to the anonymous publication of many plays because of the breakup of several London theatre companies. Researching this corpus, Vickers has identified Kyd's authorship of three more plays: Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy, King Leir and his three daughters, a tragicomedy that provided Shakespeare with his main source, and Fair Em, a love comedy. These attributions are based on two forms of evidence: unique similarities of plot between Kyd's acknowledged and newly attributed plays and many unique phrases shared by all six plays as identified by modern software. Discussing all the plays in detail and placing them in biographical and historical context, Thomas Kyd offers a major reassessment of an underappreciated Elizabethan playwright.

From acclaimed historian Michael Brenner, a mesmerizing portrait of Munich in the early years of Hitler's quest for powerIn the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918-19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.In an electrifying narrative that takes readers from Hitler's return to Munich following the armistice to his calamitous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Brenner demonstrates why the city's transformation is crucial for understanding the Nazi era and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Brenner describes how Hitler and his followers terrorized Munich's Jews and were aided by politicians, judges, police, and ordinary residents. He shows how the city's Jews responded to the antisemitic backlash in many different ways-by declaring their loyalty to the state, by avoiding public life, or by abandoning the city altogether.Drawing on a wealth of previously unknown documents, In Hitler's Munich reveals the untold story of how a once-cosmopolitan city became, in the words of Thomas Mann, "e;the city of Hitler."e;

An important look at a groundbreaking forty-year study of Darwin's finchesRenowned evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant have produced landmark studies of the Galapagos finches first made famous by Charles Darwin. In How and Why Species Multiply, they offered a complete evolutionary history of Darwin's finches since their origin almost three million years ago. Now, in their richly illustrated new book, 40 Years of Evolution, the authors turn their attention to events taking place on a contemporary scale. By continuously tracking finch populations over a period of four decades, they uncover the causes and consequences of significant events leading to evolutionary changes in species.The authors used a vast and unparalleled range of ecological, behavioral, and genetic data-including song recordings, DNA analyses, and feeding and breeding behavior-to measure changes in finch populations on the small island of Daphne Major in the Galapagos archipelago. They find that natural selection happens repeatedly, that finches hybridize and exchange genes rarely, and that they compete for scarce food in times of drought, with the remarkable result that the finch populations today differ significantly in average beak size and shape from those of forty years ago. The authors' most spectacular discovery is the initiation and establishment of a new lineage that now behaves as a new species, differing from others in size, song, and other characteristics. The authors emphasize the immeasurable value of continuous long-term studies of natural populations and of critical opportunities for detecting and understanding rare but significant events.By following the fates of finches for several generations, 40 Years of Evolution offers unparalleled insights into ecological and evolutionary changes in natural environments.

How human institutions-markets, states, communities, religions, guilds and families-have helped both to control and to exacerbate epidemics throughout history. How do societies tackle epidemic disease? In Controlling Contagio, Sheilagh Ogilvie answers this question by exploring seven centuries of pandemics, from the Black Death to Covid-19. For most of history, infectious diseases have killed many more people than famine or war, and in 2019 they still caused one death in four. Today, we deal with epidemics more successfully than our ancestors managed plague, smallpox, cholera or influenza. But we use many of the same approaches. Long before scientific medicine, human societies coordinated and innovated in response to biological shocks-sometimes well, sometimes badly. Ogilvie uses historical epidemics to analyze how human societies deal with "externalities"-situations where my action creates costs or benefits for others beyond those that I myself incur. Social institutions-markets, states, communities, religions, guilds, and families-help us manage the negative externalities of contagion and the positive externalities of social distancing, sanitation, and immunization. Ogilvie shows how each institution enables us to coordinate, innovate and inspire each other to limit contagion. But each institution also has weaknesses that can make things worse. Markets shut down voluntarily during every epidemic in history-but they also brought people together, spreading contagion. States mandated quarantines, sanitation, and immunization-but they also waged war and censored information, exacerbating epidemics. Religions admonished us to avoid infecting our neighbours-but they also preached against science and medical innovations. What decided the outcome, Ogilvie argues, was a temperate state, an adaptable market, and a strong civil society where a diversity of institutions played to their own strengths and checked each other's flaws.

An intimate account of the eighteenth-century Bank of England that shows how a private institution became "a great engine of state"The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders-and yet came to be considered, as Adam Smith described it, "a great engine of state." In Virtuous Bankers, Anne Murphy explores how this private organization became the guardian of the public credit upon which Britain's economic and geopolitical power was based. Drawing on the voluminous and detailed minute books of a Committee of Inspection that examined the Bank's workings in 1783-84, Murphy frames her account as "a day in the life" of the Bank of England, looking at a day's worth of banking activities that ranged from the issuing of bank notes to the management of public funds. Murphy discusses the bank as a domestic environment, a working environment, and a space to be protected against theft, fire, and revolt. She offers new insights into the skills of the Bank's clerks and the ways in which their work was organized, and she positions the Bank as part of the physical and cultural landscape of the City: an aggressive property developer, a vulnerable institution seeking to secure its buildings, and an enterprise necessarily accessible to the public. She considers the aesthetics of its headquarters-one of London's finest buildings-and the messages of creditworthiness embedded in that architecture and in the very visible actions of the Bank's clerks. Murphy's uniquely intimate account shows how the eighteenth-century Bank was able to deliver a set of services that were essential to the state and commanded the confidence of the public.

How poetic modernism shaped Arabic intellectual debates in the twentieth century and beyondCity of Beginnings is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century. Robyn Creswell introduces English-language readers to a poetic movement that will be uncannily familiar-and unsettlingly strange. He also provides an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War, when Beirut became both a battleground for rival ideologies and the most vital artistic site in the Middle East. Arabic modernism was centered on the legendary magazine Shi'r ("e;Poetry"e;), which sought to put Arabic verse on "e;the map of world literature."e; The Beiruti poets-Adonis, Yusuf al-Khal, and Unsi al-Hajj chief among them-translated modernism into Arabic, redefining the very idea of poetry in that literary tradition. City of Beginnings includes analyses of the Arab modernists' creative encounters with Ezra Pound, Saint-John Perse, and Antonin Artaud, as well as their adaptations of classical literary forms. The book also reveals how the modernists translated concepts of liberal individualism, autonomy, and political freedom into a radical poetics that has shaped Arabic literary and intellectual debate to this day.

Why a monumental diary by an aunt and niece who published poetry together as "e;Michael Field"e;-and who were partners and lovers for decades-is one of the great unknown works of late-Victorian and early modernist literatureMichael Field, the renowned late-Victorian poet, was well known to be the pseudonym of Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece, Edith Cooper (1862-1913). Less well known is that for three decades, the women privately maintained a romantic relationship and kept a double diary, sharing the page as they shared a bed and eventually producing a 9,500-page, twenty-nine-volume story of love, life, and art in the fin de siecle. In Chains of Love and Beauty, the first book about the diary, Carolyn Dever makes the case for this work as a great unknown "e;novel"e; of the nineteenth century and as a bridge between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Victorian marriage plot and modernist experimentation.While Bradley and Cooper remained committed to publishing poetry under a single, male pseudonym, the diary, which they entitled Works and Days and hoped would be published after their deaths, allowed them to realize literary ambitions that were publicly frustrated during their lifetime. The women also used the diary, which remains largely unpublished, to negotiate their art, desires, and frustrations, as well as their relationships with contemporary literary celebrities, including Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and Walter Pater.Showing for the first time why Works and Days is a great experimental work of late-Victorian and early modernist writing, one that sheds startling new light on gender, sexuality, and authorship, Dever reveals how Bradley and Cooper wrote their shared life as art, and their art as life, on pages of intimacy that they wanted to share with the world.

A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms-for good or illThe British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America-from French fries to Awesome, man!-are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases-such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky-have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks. After tracing Britishisms that entered the American vocabulary in the nineteenth century and during the world wars, Gobsmacked! discusses the most-used British terms in America today. It features chapters on the American embrace of British insults and curses, sports terms, and words about food and drinks. The book also explores the American adoption of British spellings, pronunciations, and grammar, and cases where Americans have misconstrued British expressions (for example, changing can't be arsed to can't be asked) or adopted faux-British usages, like pronouncing divisive as "divissive." Finally, the book offers some guidance on just how many Britishisms an American can safely adopt without coming off like an arse. Rigorously researched and documented but written in a light, conversational style, this is a book that general readers and language obsessives will love. Its revealing account of a surprising and underrecognized language revolution might even leave them, well, gobsmacked.