Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Explores the unacknowledged spirit of reflection, debate, and experimentation present in foundational Spanish American writing. In highlighting the parallels between sixteenth-century debates and post-structuralist approaches to the study of history, this book uncovers an important legacy of the Hispanic intellectual tradition.

Seeks to understand early twentieth-century France by examining novels written about professional women, bourgeois and working-class heroines, and the particular dilemmas that they faced. This book can change the way we think about the Belle Epoque and the interwar period in French literary history.

Explores a scenario common to the works of four French novelists: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Valle's. This book reviews some of the contributing trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism and evolution, understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, puericulture, the experimental method.

This investigation of US relations with Mexico during World War II, includes information on spies and internal bureaucratic struggles in both countries. Although the book focuses on the interactions of the two countries, it shows how Mexico evolved politically in crucial ways during this period.

The new pioneers of this text are ordinary people who have tried to break away from mainstream consumer culture and return to small-town, rural America. The dilemmas, frustrations, adaptations, and triumphs of these neo-homesteaders offer insights to anyone thinking of a move "back to the land."

An interpretation of Rousseau's thought that focuses on his complex concept of nature as one major key to understanding his legacy to modern political philosophy. It examines his efforts to show why, despite a challenge from science, nature can remain a standard for human behaviour.

This study of illegal drugs in the Caribbean examines the nature and scope of drug operations, probing the security implications of those operations and the problems they cause, and assessing countermeasures for dealing with drug traffic and resulting problems.

A series of essays which scrutinize Martin Heidegger's thought, written by an American scholar who has already translated into English Heidegger's works "Early Greek Thinking", "Nietzsche" and "Basic Writings".

The essays in this volume address fundamental questions about the ontology and meaning of music, about composition, performance and song. They range over problems in the evaluation of music and of the place of music in history and culture especially.

A comprehensive analysis of the US criminal justice system as it operates in the international arena. The book examines how and why US law enforcement officials have extended their efforts beyond American borders and looks at the history of US law enforcement abroad.

This text is a study of the black messianic tradition in American literature and history, brought up to date with treatment of recent black leaders, from Jesse Jackson to Louis Farrakhan.

Written at a time when the lumber industry had shifted westward, the chapters in this book recall the days when giant rafts carried lumber down the rivers of Pennsylvania.

This text is a study of conversion to Islam in Inner Asia, among peoples until recently part of the Soviet Union, and its role in the shaping of communal self-understanding from the 14th to the 20th centuries. It includes translations and analyses of a range of passages from various sources.

An introduction to Plato's dialogues, where literary form and philosophical content are inseparable. It deals in turn with Plato's relation to and portraits of Socrates, the literary and philosophical character of the dialogues, and the modes of argumentation employed.

Concentrating on lived religious experience, "Orthodox Russia" brings together some of the best contemporary scholarship on Russian Orthodox beliefs and practices covering a broad historical period - from the Muscovite era through the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

These essays by philosophers of art consider what can be learned from the meaning of art about society, morality and life in general. This leads to discussion of other issues. Is art distinct from life? Is a concern with art's messages consistent with an aesthetic appreciation of its works?

Using as a reference point the issues and theories that dominated social science research on Latin America in the period 1960-80, this volume contributes to "rethinking development", by examining the historical events that accounted for the erosion or demise of once-dominant paradigms.