Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

There are few subordinates better placed to describe the amazing turn in Soviet foreign policy between 1985 and 1991 than Pavel Palazchenko. . . . He has produced a solid, reliable account . . . that will be important supplementary reading for future historians and students of the Cold War.-Washington Post Book World"The historical record is fortunate that a man as gifted and capable as Pavel Palazchenko served as interpreter for Gorbachev and Shevardnadze from 1985 through the fall of the Soviet Union. His is a keen mind, and his recollections and observations add to our understanding of those crucial years."-James A. Baker, III, 61st U.S. Secretary of State "Palazchenko was always more than a gifted interpreter, and his book is thereby an especially revealing account of pivotal events and pivotal people. A compelling read."-George P. Shultz, 60th U.S. Secretary of State"The memoirs of Pavel Palazchenko are remarkably revealing-not in the sense of sensational new disclosures, but in the re-creation of the thinking and decisions of the Soviet leaders, in particular illuminating their relationships with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush and Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker. It is a straightforward account by a keen observer at closest hand, full of insight, and makes a real contribution to understanding the history of these crucial final years of the Cold War and of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is, as well, well-written and a pleasure to read."-Raymond L. Garthoff, The Brookings InstitutionDo Not Use Matlock quote"Pavel Palazchenko has given us a well-written, inside account of Gorbachev's and Shevardnadze's diplomacy. Remarkably objective, it is full of insights, makes fascinating reading, and will also be a prime source for scholars long into the future."-Jack F. Matlock, Jr., George F. Kennan Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, and former U.S. Ambassador to the USSRAs the principal English interpreter for Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, in the critical period of 1985-1991, Pavel Palazchenko participated in all U.S.-Soviet summit talks leading to the end of the Cold War. This personal and political memoir sheds new light on Soviet/American relations and personalities during that time.Palazchenko focuses on what he saw with his own eyes during important negotiating sessions with world leaders such as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He shares his impressions and opinions about these leaders as well as their Soviet counterparts and gives a first-hand account of the phase of preparation leading up to important international events, including the process of hammering out positions on sensitive arms control issues. Palazchenko describes the events themselves, such as the summits in Reykjavik, Malta, and Moscow, adding many fascinating details to previous accounts.Palazchenko contends that the peaceful end of the Cold War was possible not because of some behind-the-scenes dealings, but because of the trust that gradually developed between world leaders. He shows us how this developing trust led to the remarkably peaceful transition from the dangerous pre-1985 confrontation to the new relationships between major powers. This book sheds light on Soviet thinking about Soviet/U.S. relations, the Third World, arms control, German reunification, and the Gulf War. It also provides an insider's view of domestic politics and policy during Gorbachev's last year in power and Soviet developments leading up to the collapse of the USSR.

A collection of essays by poet Julia Spicher Kasdor focusing on aspects of Mennonite life. Essays examine issues of gender, cultural, and religious identity as they relate to the emergence and exercise of literary authority.

In the most comprehensive selection of his letters ever published, Norman Gates allows Richard Aldington to tell the story of his life in his own words. Unlike Aldington''s autobiography, Life for Life''s Sake, published twenty years before his death, these letters include those two important decades of his life and do not depend upon memory. Gates provides an introduction to each of the book''s five sections, sketching Aldington''s biography during that decade, but the reader may then listen to Aldington''s own voice speaking through his letters.Richard Aldington was married to the American poet H.D. and was a friend to many other writers and artists at the center of the Modern period. His comments on his colleagues and their work, his efforts to promote their literary fortunes, his passionate love for two wives and two mistresses, are all a part of these letters. So, too, are his experiences on the editorial staffs of the Egoist and the Criterion, which brought him to touch with European and American writers. For a clear picture of the literary world of this time, Aldington''s letters are indispensable.

Ellens is the first historian to tackle a comprehensive history of the church rates question, and he carries it off in a superlative fashion. The church rates issue was the great Dissenting issue during the period, and Ellens reveals with insight and admirable clarity the intricacies of the changing relationships as the Liberal party's support waxed and waned. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Victorian Britain.-R. W. Davis, Washington UniversityThis book, covering the period 1832 to 1868, describes how the so-called "church rates" controversy contributed to the rise of a secular liberal state in England and Wales. The church rate was an ancient tax required of all ratepayers, regardless of denomination, for the upkeep of parish churches of the Church of England. This meant that Dissenters and other non-Anglicans paid for the support of the established Church. In the 1830s, however, the Dissenters determined to tolerate the situation no longer. The resulting thirty-six-year struggle became the central church-state issue of the Victorian period. Ellens further argues that church rates played a pivotal role in the shaping of Victorian liberalism. Dissenters desired a society in which church and state would be separate and religious affairs voluntary. When Gladstone decided to champion the Dissenters' "voluntaryist" cause in the 1860s, he established the relationship that would give him the solid basis of electoral strength he needed to carry out the great liberal reforms of his governments after 1868. Elegantly written and argued, this book carefully details the process of disestablishment in England and Wales and uncovers an important and little-recognized dimension to the formation of the Liberal party.

French-Cuban author Eduardo Manet's work is acclaimed internationally, though mainly overlooked by French and Latin American critics due to his odd position as a Latin American writing in French. This study includes poetry, plays, novels and films written and directed by this bilingual writer.

A study of George Palmer Putnam, American 19th-century publisher. It discusses his productive life in print, interrelating this with the life of his family, with the changing patterns of life in New York City and the nation, and with the institutionalization of modern print culture.

Scaramuzza, Scaramouche: the commedia dell''arte figure made a triumphal entry into German literature in the plays of Caspar Stieler (1632-1707). Transformed into a master of language and languages, Scaramutza - social critic, voluptuary, and mouthpiece for his author - ushers in a new type of comedy that depends more on the happy ending than on laughter for its effect. This study should both establish the significance of the long-neglected dramatic works of Caspar Stieler, already regarded as an important lyric poet of the German Baroque, and serve to initiate a reevaluation of German comedy and of the standard definition of the comic genre used by Germanists as Aikin explores the heroic or romantic comedy as a subgenre of literary merit. The study includes a discussion of Stieler''s important contributions to the development of the German-language Singspiel and opera.

Scholars who seek the roots of Milton''s influence in the early republic will have in one volume precisely the kind of information they need. And those who wish to understand Milton''s place among the American Romantics more generally will [find here] fine chapters on Emerson, Thoreau, and the other Transcendentalists. This book will have wide appeal among Miltonists and people in American literature, but even more so for those who wish to be stimulated to reconsider transatlantic literary culture.-Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina"Van Anglen has written a fascinating chapter in New England literary sociology, [revealing] how early nineteenth-century New England used the poetry, example, and person of Milton to solve the problem of authority. The author knows the material thoroughly. His scholarship is inclusive and up-to-date. This is a solid achievement."-Robert D. Richardson, Wesleyan UniversityThe New England Milton concentrates on the poet''s place in the writings of the Unitarians and the Transcendentalists, especially Emerson, Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Jones Very, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, and demonstrates that his reception by both groups was a function of their response as members of the New England elite to older and broader socio-political tensions in Yankee culture as it underwent the process of modernization. For Milton and his writings (particularly Paradise Lost) were themselves early manifestations of the continuing crisis of authority that later afflicted the dominant class and professions in Boston; and so, the Unitarian Milton, like the Milton of Emerson''s lectures or Thoreau''s Walden, quite naturally became the vehicle for literary attempts by these authors to resolve the ideological contradictions they had inherited from the Puritan past.

In this rich historical study, Maurice Friedberg recounts the impact of translation on the Russian literary process. Beginning with Pushkin in the early nineteenth century, he traces the history of translation until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Literary Realism and the Ekphrastic Tradition examines representative texts and the theories of realism upon which they are based. It studies the foundations of these theories in the philosophies of language contemporaneous with them. Beginning with Adamicism, Mack Smith looks at the way humanist, rationalist, empiricist, Kantian, positivist, and poststructuralist theories of language are textually dramatized. He considers the cultural and personal influences that affect historical notions of realism and reality. He also demonstrates the rhetorical basis of realism by considering a mimetic device used by novelists in rendering a faithful version of reality--ekphrasis, the narrative description of a work of art. Smith seeks a middle ground between the extremes of theory and interpretation, discourse and reality, and textualism and history, thus making an important contribution to the revaluation of literary studies.

This reinterpretation of Kant's positive theory of knowledge in the "Critique of Pure Reason" argues that he is fundamentally concerned with the very possibility of a priori knowledge - the very possibility of the possibility of empirical knowledge in the first place.

An examination of Jonathan Edwards's Puritan theology and vision of salvation as a dynamic process of sharing God's excellence and holiness. This study places Edwards in relation to Roman Catholic traditions and in the context of a broader Christian tradition.