Books published by Cornell University Press

"Don Quixote is the first great modern paranoid adventurer.... Grandiosity and persecution define the characters of Swift's Gulliver, Stendhal's Julien Sorel, Melville's Ahab, Dostoyevsky's Underground Man, Ibsen's Masterbuilder Solness...

How do leaders perceive threat levels in world politics, and what effects do those perceptions have on policy choices? Mark L. Haas focuses on how ideology shapes perception. He does not delineate the content of particular ideologies, but rather the...

According to Peter van Inwagen, visible inanimate objects do not, strictly speaking, exist. In defending this controversial thesis, he offers fresh insights on such topics as personal identity, commonsense belief, existence over time, the phenomenon...

The underground has been a dominant image of modern life since the late eighteenth century. A site of crisis, fascination, and hidden truth, the underground is a space at once more immediate and more threatening than the ordinary world above. In...

First English-language edition, with revisions and additions by the author. This classic work by one of the world's most distinguished Egyptologists was first published in German in 1984. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt offers a distillation of...

Jean-Pierre Vernant's concise, brilliant essay on the origins of Greek thought relates the cultural achievement of the ancient Greeks to their physical and social environment and shows that what they believed in was inseparable from the way they...

Copeland asks why governments make decisions that lead to, sustain, and intensify conflicts, drawing on detailed historical narratives of several twentieth-century cases, including World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

Overcoming the Odds looks closely at the lives of an ethnically diverse group of 505 men and women who were born in 1955 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and who have been monitored from the prenatal period through early adulthood by psychologists...

Friedman analyzes the revolution in the theory and practice of meteorology initiated by Vilhelm Bjerknes and his collaborators.

How should democratic societies define justice for cultural minority groups, and how might such justice be secured? This book is a nuanced and judicious response to a critical issue in political theory-the challenge of according equal respect and...

One of the special charms of the Odyssey, according to Charles Segal, is the way it transports readers to fascinating places. Yet despite the appeal of its narrative, the Odyssey is fully understood only when its style, design, and mythical patterns...

Making Mondragon is a groundbreaking look at the history of worker ownership in the Spanish cooperative. First published in 1988, it remains the best source for those looking to glean a rich body of ideas for potential adaptation and implementation elsewhere from Mondragon's long and varied experience.

Satan is both a revealing study of the compelling figure of the Devil and an imaginative and persuasive inquiry into the forces that shape a concept and ensure its survival.

This lively and learned book traces the history of the concept of evil and its personification as the Devil from ancient times to the period of the New Testament and across cultures and civilizations.

Jones offers a lucid and thorough analysis of the economic, social, military, and environmental problems that contributed to the failure of the Romans, drawing on literary sources and on recent archaeological evidence.

In Heretics and Colonizers, Nicholas B. Breyfogle explores the dynamic intersection of Russian borderland colonization and popular religious culture.

They borrow from published works without attribution. They remake literary creation in the image of consumption. They celebrate the art of scissors and paste. Who are these outlaws? Postmodern culture-jammers or file-sharing teens? No, they are the...

Liberal democracies very rarely fight wars against each other, even though they go to war just as often as other types of states do. John M. Owen IV attributes this peculiar restraint to a synergy between liberal ideology and the institutions that...

In recent decades, media outlets in the United States-most notably the Internet-have claimed to serve the public's ever-greater thirst for information. Scandals are revealed, details are laid bare because "the public needs to know." In Publicity's...

"An extremely fascinating study, packed with insights and illumination and astute observation. It is first-rate philosophy-clearheaded, imaginative, sophisticated, and resourceful. And in its historical and technological dimensions, it connects with...

The Burmese army took political power in Burma in 1962 and has ruled the country ever since. The persistence of this government-even in the face of long-term nonviolent opposition led by activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...

In recent years, we have grown accustomed to philosophical language that is intensely self-conscious and rhetorically thick, often tragic in tone. It is enlivening to read Bergson, who exerts so little rhetorical pressure while exacting such a...

Finnemore examines changes over the past 400 years about why countries intervene militarily as well as in the ways they have intervened.

Forty years of rapid industrialization have transformed millions of South Korean peasants and their sons and daughters into urban factory workers. Hagen Koo explores the experiences of this first generation of industrial workers and describes its...

Kathleen Paul challenges the usual explanation for the racism of post-war British policy. According to standard historiography, British public opinion forced the Conservative government to introduce legislation stemming the flow of dark-skinned...

A home aquarium seems a peaceful place. Gazing at its inhabitants as they swim slowly through their small universe is a soothing, even hypnotic, experience. But this seeming tranquillity is only surface deep. Like their wild counterparts, these tiny...

What is it about ethnicity that breaks countries apart and drives people to acts of savage violence against their lifelong neighbors? Stuart Kaufman finds the roots of ethnic violence in myths and symbols, the stories ethnic groups tell about who they are.

In this now-classic work of the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps military strategists and policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates.

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was the most spectacularly violent and remains today the most controversial of all the East European upheavals of that year. Despite (or perhaps because of) the media attention the revolution received, it remains...