Books published by Columbia University Press

Now in its second edition, The Classic Hundred Poems presents the most anthologized poems in the English language in chronological order. Complete with detailed, informative notes; bibliographic information on poems and poets; a glossary of terms; and author, title, and first line indexes, The Classic Hundred Poems is a treasured resource for students, teachers, and poetry enthusiasts.

A collection of English-language readings on Japan. Containing materials on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion, this text features an introduction to Japanese civilization. It also covers the Tokugawa period to 1868 and addresses the spread of neo-Confucianism and Buddhism and the encounters of Japan and the West.

A collection of English-language readings on Japan. Containing materials on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion, this book features an introduction to Japanese civilization. It covers the Tokugawa period to 1868 and addresses the spread of neo-Confucianism and Buddhism and the initial encounters of Japan and the West.

Offers an overview of 20th-century writing from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Containing stories from the colonial period in Taiwan, literature by Tibetan authors, samplings from the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, and others, this book gives an introduction to Chinese society and culture.

Distinguished philosophers, Buddhist scholars, physicists, and cognitive scientists examine the contrasts and connections between the worlds of Western science and Buddhism. Contributors, the Dalai Lama among them, assess not only the fruits of inquiry from East and West, they shed light on the underlying assumptions of these disparate world views.

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone's legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler's new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship-and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change.Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles's Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life.Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone-the "e;postoedipal"e; subject-rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

This strategy, derived from Newtonian mechanism, is embodied in reductionism: break what is complicated into simpler pieces, understand the pieces themselves, and reconstruct organisms from this understanding. In Life Itself, Robert Rosen argues that such a view is neither necessary nor sufficient to answer the question.

'Counterpoint in Composition' began life not as a book, but as a collection of examples from the literature. Dr. Salzer and Dr. Schachter assembled it to show the connections between the simple procedures of species counterpoint and the complexities of composition, an approach to counterpoint deriving from the work of Heinrich Schenker.

A collection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of China, this text provides a resource for scholars and students and an introduction for general readers.

Music videos have ranged from simple tableaux of a band playing its instruments to multimillion dollar, high-concept extravaganzas. Born of a sudden expansion in new broadcast channels, music videos continue to exert an enormous influence on popular music. They help to create an artist's identity, to affect a song's mood, to determine chart success: the music video has changed our idea of the popular song.Here at last is a study that treats music video as a distinct multimedia artistic genre, different from film, television, and indeed from the songs they illuminate-and sell. Carol Vernallis describes how verbal, musical, and visual codes combine in music video to create defining representations of race, class, gender, sexuality, and performance. The book explores the complex interactions of narrative, settings, props, costumes, lyrics, and much more. Three chapters contain close analyses of important videos: Madonna's "e;Cherish,"e; Prince's "e;Gett Off,"e; and Peter Gabriel's "e;Mercy St."e;

A provocative guide to Deleuze by Deleuze, this collection traces the intellectual journey of one of the most important French philosophers and clarifies the key critical concepts in the work of this vital figure who has had an impact on aesthetics, film theory, psychoanalysis and cultural studies.

Every fossil tells a story. Best-selling paleontology author Donald R. Prothero describes twenty-five famous, beautifully preserved fossils in a gripping scientific history of life on Earth. Recounting the adventures behind the discovery of these objects and fully interpreting their significance within the larger fossil record, Prothero creates a riveting history of life on our planet. The twenty-five fossils portrayed in this book catch animals in their evolutionary splendor as they transition from one kind of organism to another. We witness extinct plants and animals of microscopic and immense size and thrilling diversity. We learn about fantastic land and sea creatures that have no match in nature today. Along the way, we encounter such fascinating fossils as the earliest trilobite, Olenellus; the giant shark Carcharocles; the "e;fishibian"e; Tiktaalik; the "e;Frogamander"e; and the "e;Turtle on the Half-Shell"e;; enormous marine reptiles and the biggest dinosaurs known; the first bird, Archaeopteryx; the walking whale Ambulocetus; the gigantic hornless rhinoceros Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived; and the Australopithecus nicknamed "e;Lucy,"e; the oldest human skeleton. We meet the scientists and adventurers who pioneered paleontology and learn about the larger intellectual and social contexts in which their discoveries were made. Finally, we find out where to see these splendid fossils in the world's great museums. Ideal for all who love prehistoric landscapes and delight in the history of science, this book makes a treasured addition to any bookshelf, stoking curiosity in the evolution of life on Earth.

Richard John Lynn presents an English translation of the commentary on the "I Ching" written by Wang Bi (226-249), who was regarded as the chief authority on the work for some 700 years.

-- Burton Watson

The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his Essays, written sometime between 1330 and 1332, are all suffused with an unspoken acceptance of Buddhist beliefs.

The only English translation available of the most important first-hand account of the "Northern Crusades" in the Baltic states has finally been reprinted, with additional maps and a revised introduction by James A. Brundage. Henry's chronicle is the only surviving evidence for many episodes in the early stages of Christendom in the Eastern Baltic.

"Before the People's Republic was established in 1949, American missionaries, businessmen, and diplomats sought to remake China in their own image, only to be soundly rejected as capitalists and imperialists after the Communists came to power. What followed was a twenty-year period of mutual hostility and isolation. When China's leaders turned to the West and Japan in the 1980s, their goal was to attract investment and to absorb ideas, methods, and technologies for Chinese purposes. Their goal, as Mao put it, was "to make the foreign serve China." Chinese Encounters with America tells the stories of twelve women and men whose experiences with America transformed their lives and careers. Neither immigrants nor exiles, they came to the United States seeking knowledge and skills that would advance their country's modernization. Upon returning to the People's Republic of China they made significant contributions in the fields of diplomacy, science, business, academia, policy studies, civil society, sports, dance, music, media, and the environment. Each chapter shows how they interpreted and adapted their understanding of America to China's ever-changing social, political, and economic circumstances. Their individual stories, focused mainly on the past fifty years of engagement, offer unique insights on China, the United States, and relations between our two countries. The personalities described in this book are vastly different from the nineteenth-century laborers who came to mine gold and build railroads in America's West and they are unlike those who fled from wars to seek safe haven in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Neither sojourners nor refugees, the figures in this book are "returnees"--those who went abroad and came back to the People's Republic of China. Each chapter tells the story of one individual and each is informed by several shared questions: Why did these Chinese men and women go the United States and why did they return to China? What were their expectations and how did their perceptions change after seeing the complicated realities of the United States firsthand? What difference did their American encounters make in their lives and professions after went back to China? What do their lives tell us about the complexities of Sino-American relations?"--