Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Utilizes the collection of magic texts from the late Middle Ages at St. Augustine's, Canterbury, to examine the orthodoxy of magical approaches to the medieval universe and to show how it was possible to combine magical studies with a monastic vocation.

A collection of essays examining the Australian Citizens' Parliament, a project in deliberative democracy held in 2009. Explores its organization, the deliberation, the flow of beliefs and ideas, facilitator and organizer effects, and its impacts from a variety of theoretical, empirical, and practice perspectives.

Examines the lives and religious commitments of the Philadelphia elite during the period of industrial prosperity that extended from the late nineteenth century through the 1920s.

A collection of critical essays by leading scholars on British political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Essays cover all aspects of Oakeshott's thought, from his theory of knowledge and philosophies of history, religion, art, and education to his reflections on morality, politics, and law.

A critical translation of the unabridged Italian text of Domenico Bernini's biography of his father, seventeenth-century sculptor, architect, painter, and playwright Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Includes commentary on the author's data and interpretations, contrasting them with other contemporary primary sources and recent scholarship.

Explores the political philosophy of John Rawls in relation to public policy issues, including war, mental disability, nonhuman animals, legacy, and affirmative action. Pays special attention to the relationship of religion to these issues and to the processual characteristics of Rawls's method.

Draws on philosophical and novelistic texts from the Western European and Russian canons to explore a crucial moment in the epistemological history of narrative and present a nonreductive way of conjugating the histories of philosophy and the novel.

An inventory of the private possessions of Lorenzo il Magnifico de' Medici, head of the ruling Medici family during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance.

Our understanding of the rise of the nation-state is based heavily on the Western European experience of war. Challenging the dominance of this model, this text looks at Latin America's much different experience as more relevant to politics today in regions as varied as the Balkans and Africa.

Explores the Byzantine aesthetic of fugitive appearances by placing and filming art objects in spaces of changing light, and by uncovering the shifting appearances expressed in poetry, descriptions of art, and liturgical performance.

A first-hand account, by a U.S. diplomat, of the 1967 military coup in Greece, and of how U.S. policy was formulated, debated, and implemented during this period. Explores Greek-U.S. relations within the larger historical framework of the Cold War.

Explores the life and work of Lydia Bailey, a leading printer in the book trade in Philadelphia from 1808 to 1861. Includes a list of almost nine hundred of her known imprints.

Describes the role of traditional Jewish texts in the development of modern Yiddish literature, as well as the closely related development of modern Hebrew literature.

Examines the potential for distrust in an environment of ethnocultural diversity arising from increasing rates of immigration, and its implications for a democratic society. Incorporates democratic theory, multiculturalism theory, and migration theory.

An analysis of the Hebrew Bible's non-Semitic terminology, providing insight into foreign contact in ancient Israel.

Presents a new approach to Jorge Luis Borges' work, exploring dimensions of his literary project involving theology, blindness, literary imagination, gender, sexuality, and suicide.

Provides updated editions of seventy-one historical inscriptions of Ashurbanipal and includes all historical inscriptions on clay prisms, clay cylinders, and wall slabs, as well as on other stone objects (including paving stones) from Nineveh, Assur, and Kalhu.