Books published by Princeton University Press

Argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography legitimize the state. This book insists that true democracy requires sharing power, not regulation by it. It applies this argument to various topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power.

A revelatory collection of the artist's sketches and preparatory drawings, featuring many that have never been published beforeThe great Russian modernist painter and theorist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Few documents provide more insight into his evolution from figural to abstract art-or into the development of abstraction in the early twentieth century-than the pages of his sketchbooks. Featuring previously unpublished drawings, Wassily Kandinsky: The Sketchbooks is a comprehensive selection of hundreds of sketches from twelve notebooks Kandinsky kept between 1889 and 1935. Beginning with early figure studies, architectural sketches, and landscapes, the notebooks reveal a process of exploration that would lead Kandinsky from his first experiments in geometric abstraction to paintings that reshaped modernism. Demonstrating Kandinsky's mastery of color, line, shape, composition, and movement, the book includes notes and preparatory studies for major paintings, such as the "analytical drawing" for Composition VII (1913), the first study for Several Circles (1926), and Study for Composition IX, a preliminary working of his 1936 masterpiece. Visually stunning, the book offers a remarkable, intimate look at how Kandinsky sought to discover nothing less than a spiritually transcendent form of art.

Songs, barks, roars, hoots, squeals, and growls: exploring the mysteries of how animals communicate by soundWhat is the meaning of a bird's song, a baboon's bark, an owl's hoot, or a dolphin's clicks? In The Voices of Nature, Nicolas Mathevon explores the mysteries of animal sound. Putting readers in the middle of animal soundscapes that range from the steamy heat of the Amazon jungle to the icy terrain of the Arctic, Mathevon reveals the amazing variety of animal vocalizations. He describes how animals use sound to express emotion, to choose a mate, to trick others, to mark their territory, to call for help, and much more. What may seem like random chirps, squawks, and cries are actually signals that, like our human words, allow animals to carry on conversations with others. Mathevon explains how the science of bioacoustics works to decipher the ways animals make and hear sounds, what information is encoded in these sound signals, and what this information is used for in daily life. Drawing on these findings as well as observations in the wild, Mathevon describes, among many other things, how animals communicate with their offspring, how they exchange information despite ambient noise, how sound travels underwater, how birds and mammals learn to vocalize, and even how animals express emotion though sound. Finally, Mathevon asks if these vocalizations, complex and expressive as they are, amount to language. For readers who have wondered about the meaning behind a robin's song or cicadas' relentless "tchik-tchik-tchik," this book offers a listening guide for the endlessly varied concert of nature.

An evolutionary case for the existence of free willScientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency-or free will-is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose. Traversing billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice arose from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to be introspective, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell's argument has important implications-for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence. An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose, and why it matters.

"What happens when animals get sick? Do they rely exclusively on their bodies own defense systems to protect them, or are there other behaviors they can use to heal themselves? Humans have been using plants, fungi, and other natural mechanisms to treat ailments and disease for millennia--why not animals too? It turns out they do! In 1987, primatologist Michael Huffman noticed an ill chimpanzee collecting shoots of a plant called Vernonia amygdalina, which humans in the area used to treat stomach upset and fever. The ill chimpanzee removed the plant's outer bark and sucked on the soft inner branches. Within 24 hours, she appeared to have largely recovered. Although there have been stories about animals medicating themselves, and traditional healers have looked to animals to help develop treatments for years, Huffman's observations are widely considered the first official scientific evidence of an animal actively medicating itself to treat disease. Since then, scientists have found conclusive evidence for medication in all manner of species--including bees, ants and butterflies, as well as monkeys, birds, apes, and elephants. Self-medication behaviors (for which scientists have developed a rigorous field definition) range from prophylactic consumption of anti-parasitic berries by monkeys and therapeutic use of alkaloids by woolly bear caterpillars, to blue jays' use of ant-produced formic acid as bug-repellent. In Animal Doctors, Professor of Biology and science communicator Jaap de Roode will provide an overview of the scientific study of animal self-medication, drawing on both the scientific literature and first-person interviews with key contributors to the field to ask how animals use medication against the parasites and pathogens that ail them"--

An inside look at a "e;no-excuses"e; charter school that reveals this educational model's strengths and weaknesses, and how its approach shapes studentsSilent, single-file lines. Detention for putting a head on a desk. Rules for how to dress, how to applaud, how to complete homework. Walk into some of the most acclaimed urban schools today and you will find similar recipes of behavior, designed to support student achievement. But what do these "e;scripts"e; accomplish? Immersing readers inside a "e;no-excuses"e; charter school, Scripting the Moves offers a telling window into an expanding model of urban education reform. Through interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, and analysis of documents and data, Joanne Golann reveals that such schools actually dictate too rigid a level of social control for both teachers and their predominantly low-income Black and Latino students. Despite good intentions, scripts constrain the development of important interactional skills and reproduce some of the very inequities they mean to disrupt.Golann presents a fascinating, sometimes painful, account of how no-excuses schools use scripts to regulate students and teachers. She shows why scripts were adopted, what purposes they serve, and where they fall short. What emerges is a complicated story of the benefits of scripts, but also their limitations, in cultivating the tools students need to navigate college and other complex social institutions-tools such as flexibility, initiative, and ease with adults. Contrasting scripts with tools, Golann raises essential questions about what constitutes cultural capital-and how this capital might be effectively taught.Illuminating and accessible, Scripting the Moves delves into the troubling realities behind current education reform and reenvisions what it takes to prepare students for long-term success.

Fascinating profiles of modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy talesJack Zipes has spent decades as a "scholarly scavenger," discovering forgotten fairy tales in libraries, flea markets, used bookstores, and internet searches, and he has introduced countless readers to these remarkable works and their authors. In Buried Treasures, Zipes describes his special passion for uncovering political fairy tales of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offers fascinating profiles of more than a dozen of their writers and illustrators, and shows why they deserve greater attention and appreciation. These writers and artists used their remarkable talents to confront political oppression and economic exploitation by creating alternative, imaginative worlds that test the ethics and morals of the real world and expose hidden truths. Among the figures we meet here are Édouard Laboulaye, a jurist who wrote acute fairy tales about justice; Charles Godfrey Leland, a folklorist who found other worlds in tales of Native Americans, witches, and Roma; Kurt Schwitters, an artist who wrote satirical, antiauthoritarian stories; Mariette Lydis, a painter who depicted lost-and-found souls; Lisa Tetzner, who dramatized exploitation by elites; Felix Salten, who unveiled the real meaning of Bambi's dangerous life in the forest; and Gianni Rodari, whose work showed just how political and insightful fantasy stories can be. Demonstrating the uncanny power of political fairy tales, Buried Treasures also shows how their fictional realities not only enrich our understanding of the world but even give us tools to help us survive.

A gorgeously illustrated book documenting acclaimed artist Kara Walker's major new installation';a groundbreaking collaboration merging art and technology' (New York Times)Kara Walker is renowned for her bold examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality through her profound work that has appeared in exhibitions around the world. She has created monumental sculptures, including A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (2014), for the former Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn, and Fons Americanus (2019) for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. This beautifully designed book documents the creation of Walker's major new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) (2024), at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.The installation features eight Black automatons, including the seven-foot-tall prophetess, Fortuna, who responds to each visitor with a choreographed routine and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth. Situated in fields of obsidiana volcanic glass with deep spiritual propertiesthe other robotic dolls, or Gardeners, rise and fall, gesture, turn, and clamortrapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle. Evoking wonder, reflection, respite, and hope, the work explores the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society.This book presents Walker's working drawings and paintings, photographs of her creative process with collaborators, and detailed images of the final installation. Also included are an illuminating text by Walker, an essay by product designer David A. M. Goldberg, a selection of fashion designer Gary Graham's notebook pages, an excerpt from Donna Haraway's influential essay ';A Cyborg Manifesto,' experimental short fiction by writer Damani McNeil, and a conversation between Walker and curator Eungie Joo.Exhibition ScheduleSFMOMA, San FranciscoJuly 1, 2024Spring 2026Published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Princeton University Press

Revisiting an almost-forgotten American interracial literary culture that advanced racial pluralism in the decades before the 1960sIn Impermanent Blackness, Korey Garibaldi explores interracial collaborations in American commercial publishing-authors, agents, and publishers who forged partnerships across racial lines-from the 1910s to the 1960s. Garibaldi shows how aspiring and established Black authors and editors worked closely with white interlocutors to achieve publishing success, often challenging stereotypes and advancing racial pluralism in the process.Impermanent Blackness explores the complex nature of this almost-forgotten period of interracial publishing by examining key developments, including the mainstream success of African American authors in the 1930s and 1940s, the emergence of multiracial children's literature, postwar tensions between supporters of racial cosmopolitanism and of "e;Negro literature,"e; and the impact of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements on the legacy of interracial literary culture.By the end of the 1960s, some literary figures once celebrated for pushing the boundaries of what Black writing could be, including the anthologist W. S. Braithwaite, the bestselling novelist Frank Yerby, the memoirist Juanita Harrison, and others, were forgotten or criticized as too white. And yet, Garibaldi argues, these figures-at once dreamers and pragmatists-have much to teach us about building an inclusive society. Revisiting their work from a contemporary perspective, Garibaldi breaks new ground in the cultural history of race in the United States.

How to turn the paradoxes built into anti-racism work into drivers of learning and change. Even as anti-racism practices seemed to be gain momentum, the nation shows signs of falling back into longstanding patterns of racial injustice and inequality. Leaders who introduce antiracist approaches to their organizations often face backlash from white colleagues and skepticism from colleagues of color, leading to paralysis. In What Might Be, Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day-like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, Sturm identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava.

How race shapes expectations about whose losses matterIn democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can't always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to winning; they have generally been able to exercise political rule without having to accept sharing it. Black citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance. Black grief is exemplified by current protests against police violencethe latest in a tradition of violent death and subsequent public mourning spurring Black political mobilization. The potent politics of white grievance, meanwhile, which is also not new, imagines the United States as a white country under siege.Drawing on African American political thought, Hooker examines key moments in US racial politics that illuminate the problem of loss in democracy. She connects today's Black Lives Matter protests to the use of lynching photographs to arouse public outrage over postReconstruction era racial terror, and she discusses Emmett Till's funeral as a catalyst for the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. She also traces the political weaponization of white victimhood during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Calling for an expansion of Black and white political imaginations, Hooker argues that both must learn to sit with loss, for different reasons and to different ends.

A new history of the Celts that reveals how this once-forgotten people became a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and FranceBefore the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turkey. Celts registered deeply on the classical imagination for a thousand years and were variously described by writers like Caesar and Livy as unruly barbarians, fearless warriors, and gracious hosts. But then, in the early Middle Ages, they vanished. In The Celts, Ian Stewart tells the story of their rediscovery during the Renaissance and their transformation over the next few centuries into one of the most popular European ancestral peoples. The Celts shows how the idea of this ancient people was recovered by scholars, honed by intellectuals, politicians, and other thinkers of various stripes, and adopted by cultural revivalists and activists as they tried to build European nations and nationalisms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long-forgotten, the Celts improbably came to be seen as the ancestors of most western Europeans-and as a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and France. Based on new research conducted across Europe and in the United States, The Celts reveals when and how we came to call much of Europe "Celtic," why this idea mattered in the past, and why it is still matters today, as the tide of nationalism is once again on the rise.

Why human biology is far more expansive than the simple categories of female and maleBeing human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawing on the latest science to explain why the binary view of the sexes is fundamentally flawed—and why having XX or XY chromosomes isn’t as conclusive as some would have us believe.In this lively and provocative book, leading biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes begins by tracing the origin and evolution of sex, describing the many ways in the animal kingdom of being female, male, or both. Turning to humans, he presents compelling evidence from the fossil and archaeological record that attests to the diversity of our ancestors’ sexual bonds, gender roles, and family and community structures, and shows how the same holds true in the lived experiences of people today. Fuentes tackles hot button debates around sports and medicine, explaining why we can acknowledge that females and males are not the same while also embracing a biocultural reality where none of us fits neatly into only one of two categories.Bringing clarity and reason to a contentious issue, Sex Is a Spectrum shares a scientist’s perspective on why a binary view of sex and gender is not only misguided but harmful, and why there are multitudes of ways to being human.

The revolution in science that is transforming our understanding of extinct lifeWe used to think of fossils as being composed of nothing but rock and minerals, all molecular traces of life having vanished long ago. We were wrong. Remnants of Ancient Life reveals how the new science of ancient biomolecules-pigments, proteins, and DNA that once functioned in living organisms tens of millions of years ago-is opening a new window onto the evolution of life on Earth.Paleobiologists are now uncovering these ancient remnants in the fossil record with increasing frequency, shedding vital new light on long-extinct creatures and the lost world they inhabited. Dale Greenwalt is your guide to these astonishing breakthroughs. He explains how ancient biomolecules hold the secrets to how mammoths dealt with the bitter cold, what colors dinosaurs exhibited in mating displays, how ancient viruses evolved to become more dangerous, and much more. Each chapter discusses different types of biomolecules and the insights they provide about the physiology, behavior, and evolution of extinct organisms, many of which existed long before the age of dinosaurs.A marvelous adventure of discovery, Remnants of Ancient Life offers an unparalleled look at an emerging science that is transforming our picture of the remote past. You will never think of fossils in the same way again.

A collection of inspiring and empowering quotations from an artist noted for her frank treatment of sex—and for her portraits of Madonna, Pamela Anderson, Lady Gaga, and LizzoSince the 1980s, Marilyn Minter has been a pioneer of sex-positive feminism in the contemporary art world, pushing the boundaries of what kind of imagery is acceptable in fine art, especially when produced by women. In her photorealistic paintings, including of celebrities such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Lizzo, Minter draws on the aesthetics of fashion magazines, depicting cropped women’s faces and bodies laden with jewels and couture accessories. In some of her work, she has explored how the meaning of pornographic imagery changes when it’s appropriated and transformed by a woman artist. Gathered from interviews, articles, and other sources, Minter-isms is a compelling collection of quotations that presents Minter’s revealing thoughts on art, women, power, sexuality, pornography, politics, and more. Filled with wisdom and humor, the book offers new insights about the life, work, and mind of this groundbreaking artist.“I used to think I was the worst person that ever lived, and that’s pretty narcissistic of me. I wasn’t even close.”“My whole goal was to see if it would change the meaning if women owned sexual imagery, if we actually started making imagery for our own pleasure and amusement.”“When it comes to sexual imagery even the most enlightened people can become paralyzed.”“I’m really glad to see mediocre women artists getting lots of attention, because the boys have been doing it for years. It’s about time we’re allowed mediocre women, too.”

A revealing collection of quotations from the world-renowned artist and political activist behind the iconic Obama “Hope” poster and the “Obey Giant” street-art campaignShepard Fairey is one of today’s most important and influential street artists, activists, and graphic designers. His instantly recognizable designs—“André the Giant has a Posse,” “Obey Giant,” the Obama “Hope” poster, and the “We the People” posters for the 2017 Women’s March—have become an indelible part of visual culture, appearing in countless media, including stickers, stencils, prints, T-shirts, album covers, murals, and fine art. Fairey-isms is a compelling collection of quotations from this fascinating artist. Gathered from interviews, articles, and other sources, these quotations offer rich insights about his life and work, including his thoughts on art, creativity, politics, and propaganda and his reflections on his influences—from skateboarding, The Clash, and Public Enemy to Russian Constructivism and artists such as Futura, Barbara Kruger, and Andy Warhol.“I use the word ‘Obey’ in much of my art as a form of reverse psychology. Though most people wish they were independent, many obediently follow the path of least resistance and are uncomfortable with confronting the word ‘Obey.’”“Any message that’s worth delivering can be amplified with art.”“I called my work propaganda out of an understanding that there’s an irony, because every piece of visual communication has an agenda. Any of it could be called propaganda.”“Repetition works.”

A major biography of the brilliant naturalist, traveler, humanitarian, and codiscoverer of natural selectionAlfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, he shared in the discovery of natural selection and founded the discipline of evolutionary biogeography.Radical by Nature tells the story of Wallace’s epic life and achievements, from his stellar rise from humble origins to his complicated friendship with Charles Darwin and other leading scientific lights of Britain to his devotion to social causes and movements that threatened to alienate him from scientific society.James Costa draws on letters, notebooks, and journals to provide a multifaceted account of a revolutionary life in science as well as Wallace’s family life. He shows how the self-taught Wallace doggedly pursued bold, even radical ideas that caused a seismic shift in the natural sciences, and how he also courted controversy with nonscientific pursuits such as spiritualism and socialism. Costa describes Wallace’s courageous social advocacy of women’s rights, labor reform, and other important issues. He also sheds light on Wallace’s complex relationship with Darwin, describing how Wallace graciously applauded his friend and rival, becoming one of his most ardent defenders.Weaving a revelatory narrative with the latest scholarship, Radical by Nature paints a mesmerizing portrait of a multifaceted thinker driven by a singular passion for science, a commitment to social justice, and a lifelong sense of wonder.

How the Middle East can achieve political change and social progressThe Middle East is in upheaval: a widening chasm between state and society, the failure of governing elites to address citizens’ genuine grievances, massive economic mismanagement—all made worse by repeated interventions by Western powers. Why has political change been so difficult to achieve? In The Great Betrayal, Fawaz Gerges argues that the convergence of political authoritarianism, meddling by the West, and the effects of prolonged regional conflicts have produced political paralysis and economic stagnation. The agency of everyday people has been thwarted by an authoritarian status quo that is maintained by a powerful partnership of external and internal forces.Gerges traces more than a century of consequential events in the region, from the end of the Ottoman Empire and the European carve-up of the Middle East to the Iranian Revolution and the Arab Spring uprisings. He shows how the people of the Middle East have been systematically denied self-determination, political representation, and effective government. Gerges finds that the region, with its diversity, variability, and volatility, defies abstract grand theories—previous accounts that have attributed the Middle East’s problems to modernism, for example, or to any one cause—ignore the complexity and specificity of the issues. What can we learn from the Middle East’s vexed history? Gerges is optimistic, declaring that the region’s future will be determined not by dictators and their superpower patrons but by a growing population of Arab and Muslim youth who demand to be treated as citizens and not as subjects.