Books published by Columbia University Press

Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari spent decades striving for resolution of the Tibetan-Chinese conflict. He was the Dalai Lama's special envoy and chief negotiator with the People's Republic of China in the formal negotiations over the status of Tibet. In this revealing memoir, Gyari chronicles his lifetime of service to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause.

Is immersion just another name for enclosure? In this groundbreaking analysis of virtual reality in Japan, Paul Roquet uncovers how the technology intersects with the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation.

This book brings together remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia's finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siecle avant-garde.

This book brings together remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia's finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siecle avant-garde.

Combining poetic observation with philosophical contemplation and scientific evidence, Adrian Parr offers a moving vision of a world in upheaval and a potent manifesto for survival. Earthlings is both a joyful celebration of the magnificence of the biosphere and an urgent call for action to save it.

Wai-yee Li traces notions of the pleasures and dangers of things in the literature and thought of late imperial China. She considers core oppositions-people and things, elegance and vulgarity, real and fake, lost and found-to tease out the ambiguities of material culture.

This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. They examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption-building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically.

This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. They examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption-building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically.

Lorraine Marchand lays out a step-by-step framework for spurring success. She shares her eight laws of innovation, a formula for driving significant and lasting transformation in any organization.

What Really Counts is an essential, firsthand story of the promise and challenges of accounting for social, economic, and environmental benefits. Ronald Colman recounts two decades of working with three governments to adopt measures capable of quantifying factors that GDP overlooks.

The computational neuroscientist Daniel Graham offers an innovative paradigm for understanding the brain. He argues that the brain is not like a single computer-it is a communication system, like the internet.

Mind Thief is a comprehensive and engaging history of Alzheimer's that demystifies efforts to understand the disease. Beginning with the discovery of "presenile dementia" in the early twentieth century, Han Yu examines over a century of research and controversy.

Yuhang Li examines how lay Buddhist women in late imperial China forged a connection with the subject of their devotion, arguing that women used their own bodies to echo that of Guanyin. She combines empirical research with theoretical insights from both art history and Buddhist studies.

Jacob Edmond examines the turn toward repetition in poetry, using the explosion of copying to offer a deeply inventive account of modern and contemporary literature. Make It the Same explores how poetry is increasingly made from other texts through sampling, appropriation, and other forms of repetition.

Lance Freeman traces the evolving role of predominantly black neighborhoods in northern cities from the late nineteenth century through the present day. He reveals the forces that caused the ghetto's role as haven or hell to wax and wane.

Investigates the cultural and ideological motivations behind early imaginings of the magician, the sorceress, and the witch in the ancient world. This book highlights the degree to which these ancient cultures shared ideas about power and legitimate authority, even while constructing and deploying those ideas in different ways.

The Analyst is an intimate and searching portrait of Milton Wexler, written by his daughter, an acclaimed historian. Alice Wexler illuminates her father's intense private life and explores how his life and work illuminate the broader reaches of Freudian ideas in the United States.

Ruth DeFries argues that a surprising set of time-tested strategies from the natural world can help humanity weather contemporary crises. Exploring the lessons that life on Earth can teach us about coping with complexity, What Would Nature Do? offers timely options for civilization to reorganize for a safe and prosperous future.

Thomas Doherty offers a lively and comprehensive cultural history of the media coverage of the abduction of the child of Charles and Anne Lindbergh and its aftermath. He traces how newspapers, radio, and newsreels reported on what was dubbed the "crime of the century."

In Fantastic Fossils, Donald R. Prothero offers an accessible, entertaining, and richly illustrated guide to the paleontologist's journey. He details the best places to look for fossils, the art of how to find them, and how to classify the major types.

Judith Friedlander reconstructs the history of the New School in the context of ongoing debates over academic freedom, intellectual dissidents, and democratic education. She tells a dramatic story of academic, political, and financial struggle through brief sketches of New School administrators, faculty members, trustees, and students.

Human embryo research touches upon strongly felt moral convictions, and it raises such deep questions about the promise and perils of scientific progress that debate over its development has become a moral and political imperative. From in vitro fertilization to embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and gene editing, Americans have repeatedly struggled with how to define the moral status of the human embryo, whether to limit its experimental uses, and how to contend with sharply divided public moral perspectives on governing science.Experiments in Democracy presents a history of American debates over human embryo research from the late 1960s to the present, exploring their crucial role in shaping norms, practices, and institutions of deliberation governing the ethical challenges of modern bioscience. J. Benjamin Hurlbut details how scientists, bioethicists, policymakers, and other public figures have attempted to answer a question of great consequence: how should the public reason about aspects of science and technology that effect fundamental dimensions of human life? Through a study of one of the most significant science policy controversies in the history of the United States, Experiments in Democracy paints a portrait of the complex relationship between science and democracy, and of U.S. society's evolving approaches to evaluating and governing science's most challenging breakthroughs.

Shari'a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. Brinkley Messick uses the writings of the Yemeni past to offer a comprehensive view of the shari'a as a localized and lived phenomenon in a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and insights offered by the anthropologist as reader.

The earliest and most influential commentary on the Zhuangzi is that of Guo Xiang (265-312). Richard John Lynn's translation of the Zhuangzi is the first to follow Guo's commentary in its interpretive choices. Its guiding principle is how Guo read the text, which allows for the full integration of the Zhuangzi with Guo's commentary.

This book offers a guided introduction to Chinese nonfictional prose and its literary and cultural significance. It features more than one hundred major texts from antiquity through the Qing dynasty that exemplify major genres, styles, and forms of traditional Chinese prose.

This book offers a guided introduction to Chinese nonfictional prose and its literary and cultural significance. It features more than one hundred major texts from antiquity through the Qing dynasty that exemplify major genres, styles, and forms of traditional Chinese prose.

How does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? This book explores the ideological landscape of international relations from the colonial era to the present. It offers a foundational statement on the intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy.

How does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? This book explores the ideological landscape of international relations from the colonial era to the present. It offers a foundational statement on the intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy.

Federico Finchelstein draws on a striking combination of thinkers-Jorge Luis Borges, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Schmitt-to consider fascism as a form of political mythmaking. At a moment when forces redolent of fascism cast a shadow over world affairs, this book provides a timely critical analysis of the dangers of myth in modern politics.

This book explores the natural history of sex in urban bacteria, fungi, plants, and nonhuman animals. Kenneth D. Frank illuminates the reproductive behavior of scores of species.