Books published by Cornell University Press

In this highly original work, Catherine Wendy Bracewell reconstructs and analyzes the tumultuous history of the uskoks of Senj, the martial bands who operated on the Habsburg Military Frontier in Croatia between the 1530s and the 1620s.

This book offers the first comprehensive account of Dostoevsky's philosophical outlook. Drawing on the writer's novels and, more so than other scholars, on his essays, letters, and notebooks, Scanlan examines Dostoevsky's beliefs.

"Fanon was consummately incapable of telling the story of himself. He lived in the immediacy of the moment, with an intensity that embodied everything he evoked. Fanon's discourse pertained to a present tense that was unburdened by its narrative past...

As portrayed in this masterful biography, Jozef Tiso's life not only illuminates the modern history of Slovakia but also supplies a missing piece of the larger puzzle that was interwar and wartime Europe.

It's 1974 in DeKalb County, Illinois, and the planets have failed to align for Roy Conlon. Widowed and broke, he finds that his eight-year-old son Eric is suddenly a mystery to him. And as powerful forces pull Eric away, Roy's efforts to hold onto his son are threatened by weakness, guilt, and his participation in a foolish crime.

In Neom the laws of physics are lax and everyone still gets high. The city squares do it so they can keep working nonstop. And, for a thousand years, Alison has done it to cope with the burdens of immortality. If you can't die, she says, at least you can be as stoned as the living dead.

Balladeer of the city's broken and forgotten men, the author looks for inspiration in urban side streets and alleys, where crooked schemes are hatched, where lives end violently, and where pretty much everyone is up to no good. He depicts the lives of people who have woefully lost their way in the world.

What drove Russia to its disastrous war with Japan in 1904? This book attempts to find the answer in Russia's erratic and confused diplomacy. It explains how the key to understanding tsarist involvement in East Asia lies in the ideologies of the Russians who competed to impose their visions of imperial destiny on the East.

Lord Acton (1834-1902) is often called a historian of liberty. Acton is mainly known for a single maxim, 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. In this title, the author presents an indepth consideration of Acton's thought.

The metaphor of the nomad may at first seem surprising for Russia given its history of serfdom, travel restrictions, and strict social hierarchy. This book traces the image of the nomad and its relationship to Russian national identity through the debates and discussion of works by writers like Karamzin, Pushkin, Goncharov, and Dostoevsky.

From the time the word kul-tura entered the Russian language in the early nineteenth century, Russian arts and letters have thrived on controversy. This book examines the development of a public discourse on national self-representation in nineteenth-century Russia, as it was styled by the visual arts and in popular journalism.

From 1505 to 1689, Russia's Tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides and the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, this book offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia.

This work traces the construction of Russia's cultural landscape, showing how 19th-century representations of nature reflected and shaped Russians' ideas about themselves and their nation. It should appeal to those who are interested in landscape history and in Russian art and culture.

In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem organized an election to depose chief-of-state Bao Dai, after which he proclaimed himself the first president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam. The United States sanctioned the results of this election, which was widely condemned as fraudulent, and provided substantial economic aid and advice to the RVN. Because...

Why was the story of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent so important to medieval literary culture? Eric Jager argues that during the Middle Ages the story of the Fall was incorporated into a comprehensive myth about language. Drawing on a wide range of texts...

By approaching an important foreign policy issue from a new angle, Jonathan Mercer comes to a startling, controversial discovery: a nation's reputation is not worth fighting for.

Since January 2004, a violent separatist insurgency has raged in southern Thailand, resulting in more than three thousand deaths. Though largely unnoticed outside Southeast Asia, the rebellion in Pattani and neighboring provinces and the Thai...

Pressman draws on and critiques realist, normative, and institutionalist understandings of how alliance decisions are made.

The most interesting tensions and ambitions of twentieth-century American poetry intersect in one resonant word: voice. The term "poetic voice" emphasizes poetry's reliance on sound, which is prominent in ethnic American writings, new formalism, and...

Caitrin Lynch shows how contemporary Sri Lankan women navigate a complex web of political, cultural, and socioeconomic forces. Lynch details precisely how gender, nationalism, and globalization influence everyday life in Sri Lanka.

A groundbreaking study of deaf identity, minority politics, and sign language, traces the history of the deaf community in Japan.

A study in poetic interaction, The "Odyssey" in Athens explores the ways in which narrative structure and parallels within and between epic poems create or disclose meaning. Erwin F. Cook also broadens the scope of this intertextual approach to include...

Taking a novel anthropological approach to the issue of white ethnicity in the United States, this book challenges the model of uniform ethnic family and community culture, and argues for a reconsideration of the meaning of class, kinship, and gender in America's past and present.

Over the years, Edward Fowler, an American academic, became a familiar presence in San'ya, a run-down neighborhood in northeastern Tokyo. The city's largest day-labor market, notorious for its population of casual laborers, drunks, gamblers, and...

Like the male heroes of epic poetry, Helen of Troy has been immortalized, but not for deeds of strength and honor; she is remembered as the beautiful woman who disgraced herself and betrayed her family and state. Norman Austin here surveys...

Like many others of my generation, I first read Camus in high school. I carried him in my backpack while traveling across Europe, I carried him into (and out of) relationships, and I carried him into (and out of) difficult periods of my life. More...

Juxtaposing and connecting the art of states and the art of art historians with vernacular or popular arts such as reggae and hip-hop, Crispin Sartwell suggests that we need to take much more seriously the aesthetics of political thought and action.

A major contribution to our understanding of contemporary urban warfare, war economies, and the political repercussions of humanitarian action.