Books published by Cornell University Press

Since the unprecedentedly effective performance of the allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, the role of American air power in future wars has become a topic of often heated public debate. In this balanced appraisal of air...

Using as his sources the Egyptian texts and the testimony of classical authors, Serge Sauneron illuminates the role of the priesthood in Ancient Egypt.

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience.

"This bold, intellectually ambitious, and wholly original book challenges the way in which Western social science understands China.... It will set the standard for all future comparative and theoretical research on China."-Timothy Brook, Stanford...

Despite a flood of recent works on Martin Heidegger and Nazism, there has been no sustained investigation of the shared themes that were the common ground between Heidegger's thought and that of the ideologists of National Socialism. In this lucid and...

"If our procedure is to work steadily in the direction of drawing as fine art, rather than (as we so often find) beginning from examples of such art, where shall we begin? One attractive possibility is to begin at the beginning-not the beginning in...

The French-Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) is today remembered as the central moralist of the twentieth century and remains a major presence in the contemporary humanities. In this book, written in lucid and jargon-free prose, Samuel Moyn...

This new account of early Cold War history focuses on the emergence of a bipolar structure of power, the continuing importance of the German question, and American efforts to create a united Western Europe.

A matchless handbook for decades, this classic work has been the natural history bible for countless teachers and others who seek information about their environment.

A lively introduction to historical methodology, an overview of the techniques historians must master in order to reconstruct the past.

Jenny Jochens captures in fascinating detail the lives of women in pagan and early Christian Iceland and Norway: their work, sexual behavior, marriage customs, reproductive practices, familial relations, religious practices, and legal constraints.

The United States has never felt at home abroad. The reason for this unease, even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, is not frequent threats to American security. It is America's identity. The United States, its citizens believe, is...

Hull argues that the routines and practices of the Imperial German Army, unchecked by effective civilian institutions, increasingly sought the absolute destruction of its enemies as the only guarantee of the nation's security.

Marshaling evidence from a wide array of international sources, Penny M. Von Eschen offers a vivid portrayal of the African diaspora in its international heyday, from the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress to the UN.

Volume II consists of vocabularies for all of the texts and exercises in Volume I of this work, intended to provide a foundation in the grammar of classical Chinese.

The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms...

During the early modern period, western Europe was transformed by the proliferation of new worlds-geographic worlds found in the voyages of discovery and conceptual and celestial worlds opened by natural philosophy, or science.

In The Senses of Modernism, Sara Danius develops a radically new theoretical and historical understanding of high modernism. The author closely analyzes Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and James Joyce's...

In the domain of visual images, those of fine art form a tiny minority. This original and brilliant book calls upon art historians to look beyond their traditional subjects-painting, drawing, photography, and printmaking-to the vast array of "nonart"...

James B. Given analyzes the inquisition in one French region in order to develop a sociology of medieval politics. Established in the early thirteenth century to combat widespread popular heresy, inquisitorial tribunals identified, prosecuted, and...

Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about-and rethink-international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist...

Phelan's compelling readings cover important theoretical ground by introducing a valuable distinction between disclosure functions and narrator functions.

Salvador Dali's autobiography confesses that "Hitler turned me on in the highest," while Sylvia Plath maintains that "every woman adores a Fascist." Susan Sontag's famous observation that art reveals the seamier side of fascism in bondage, discipline...

Hilde Lindemann Nelson focuses on the stories of groups of people-including Gypsies, mothers, nurses, and transsexuals-whose identities have been defined by those with the power to speak for them and to constrain the scope of their actions. By placing...

The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siecle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers.

"This is a truly illuminating and necessary book. Jeffrey Isaac lucidly explores the moral and political dilemmas of this turbulent fin-de-siecle, East and West. His passionate approach is inspired by a genuine moral vision that sees liberal democracy...

The Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno was a notable supporter of the new science that arose during his lifetime; his role in its development has been debated ever since the early seventeenth century. Hilary Gatti here reevaluates Bruno's...

"Literature matters because... it allows for experiences important to the living out of a sophisticated and satisfying human life; because other arenas of culture cannot provide them to the same degree; and because a relatively small number of...

Duels and bloodfeuds have long been regarded as essentially Continental phenomena, counter to the staid and orderly British ways of settling differences. In this surprising work of social and legal history, Paul R. Hyams reveals a post-Conquest...

"The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not...