Books published by Princeton University Press

"A new translation of selections from the 5th century monk John Cassian's writings on ways to avoid distraction and enhance our concentration. Distraction is not just an artifact of the digital age, and we're not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate. Monks in the late Roman Empire beat us to it. Concentration was their job, which made them more aware of how hard it was to master. John Cassian was a monk who lived in the Roman Empire in the fourth and early fifth centuries, the very early days of monasticism. He was born in the Levant and joined his first monastery there, then spent over twenty years in Egypt, interviewing and learning from ascetic hermits. Eventually, he moved to Marseilles to start his own monastery. He found that the monks in Gaul were hungry for stories of what he'd learned in Egypt, and in the 420s, wrote a massive record of his most memorable conversations with the Egyptian ascetics called the Collationes (or Conferences), in which one of the central preoccupations is the art of staying focused. While many monks in Cassian's day blamed demons for their cognitive lapses, Cassian was more convinced that distraction was largely a self-inflicted problem of minds "driven by random impulses" that could be fixed (or at least mitigated) by disciplining the mind itself. A large portion of his Collationes is dedicated to helping monks accomplish this, and his thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks. Many of Cassian's techniques to stay focused became signature elements of the emerging Christian monasticism: renouncing property and family, avoiding sex, eating sparingly. These were all strategies to minimize the things that didn't matter in order to stretch the mind out to God. But he also recommended forms of mental discipline that are accessible today, even to the non-monks among us. In this addition to our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers (AWMR) series, historian of late antiquity Jamie Kreiner selects and focuses on (no pun intended) those portions of Cassian's work that can help us poor, overloaded, overstimulated moderns cope with our inability to concentrate"--

The first biography of Henry VIII's court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age In some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure--a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. This is William or "Will" Somer, the king's fool, a celebrated wit who reportedly could raise Henry's spirits and spent many hours with him, often alone. Was Somer an "artificial fool," a cunning comic who could speak freely in front of the king, or a "natural fool," someone with intellectual disabilities, like many other members of the profession? And what role did he play in the tumultuous and violent Tudor era? Fool is the first biography of Somer--and perhaps the first of a Renaissance fool. After his death, Somer disappeared behind his legend, and historians struggled to separate myth from reality. Unearthing as many facts as possible, Peter K. Andersson pieces together the fullest picture yet of an enigmatic and unusual man with a very strange job. Somer's story provides new insights into how fools lived and what exactly they did for a living, how monarchs and courtiers related to commoners and people with disabilities, and whether aspects of the Renaissance fool live on in the modern comedian. But most of all, we learn how a commoner without property or education managed to become the court's chief mascot and a continuous presence at the center of Tudor power from the 1530s to the reign of Elizabeth I. Looking beyond stereotypes of the man in motley, Fool reveals a little-known world, surprising and disturbing, when comedy was something crueler and more unpleasant than we like to think.

A groundbreaking survey of contemporary Indigenous art and its enduring connections to the land The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans brings together works by many of today's most boldly innovative Native American artists. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, one of the leading artists and curators of her generation, has carefully chosen some fifty works across a diversity of practices--including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video--that share the common thread of the land. This beautifully illustrated book features both well-known and emerging artists, from G. Peter Jemison (Seneca Nation of Indians, Heron Clan) and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma/European descent) to Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) and Rose B. Simpson (Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico). Smith brings her personal perspective to the Native American experience and Indigenous connections to the land. In her essay, heather ahtone examines the history and practices of landscape art, shedding light on how it is both a tool for self-expression and a means to understanding the natural world. Celebrated poet and memoirist Joy Harjo pays homage to the land in her poem "Once the World Was Perfect." Shana Bushyhead Condill discusses the themes and practices that distinguish these artworks. The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans shares new perspectives on these visionary and provocative artists while offering a timely celebration of contemporary Indigenous art. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Exhibition ScheduleNational Gallery of Art, Washington, DC>New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, ConnecticutApril 18-September 15, 2024

"A richly illustrated introduction to the spectacular reptiles that swam the oceans when dinosaurs roamed the landDuring the Mesozoic Era, 252 to 66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the land, but the ocean deeps were roiling with equally spectacular reptiles-including giant predators. This richly illustrated, authoritative, and accessible book introduces readers to the world of these fascinating marine animals, whose predecessors returned to the seas a few million years after the first vertebrates emerged from the water. As we meet ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and many others, we learn about the astonishing anatomical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations that enabled these reptiles to become ocean dwellers again. We also learn about their living descendants, including sea turtles and sea snakes. Featuring stunning artwork depicting these prehistoric ocean creatures and photographs of their fossil remains, this book invites readers to discover the enthralling past of marine reptiles in all their extraordinary diversity"--

Luminous essays on translation and self-translation by the award-winning writer and literary translatorTranslating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages.With subtlety and emotional immediacy, Lahiri draws on Ovid's myth of Echo and Narcissus to explore the distinction between writing and translating, and provides a close reading of passages from Aristotle's Poetics to talk more broadly about writing, desire, and freedom. She traces the theme of translation in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and takes up the question of Italo Calvino's popularity as a translated author. Lahiri considers the unique challenge of translating her own work from Italian to English, the question "e;Why Italian?,"e; and the singular pleasures of translating contemporary and ancient writers.Featuring essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiri's most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator's art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.

How a modern radio works, told through mathematics, history, and selected puzzles The modern radio is a wonder, and behind that magic is mathematics. In The Mathematical Radio, Paul Nahin explains how radios work, deploying mathematics and historical discussion, accompanied by a steady stream of intriguing puzzles for math buffs to ponder. Beginning with oscillators and circuits, then moving on to AM, FM, and single-sideband radio, Nahin focuses on the elegant mathematics underlying radio technology rather than the engineering. He explores and explains more than a century of key developments, placing them in historical and technological context. Nahin, a prolific author of books on math for the general reader, describes in fascinating detail the mathematical underpinnings of a technology we use daily. He explains and solves, for example, Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field. Readers need only a familarity with advanced high school-level math to follow Nahin's mathematical discussions. Writing with the nonengineer in mind, Nahin examines topics including impulses in time and frequency, spectrum shifting at the transmitter, the superheterodyne, the physics of single-sideband radio, and FM sidebands. Chapters end with "challenge problems" and an appendix offers solutions, partial answers, and hints. Readers will come away with a new appreciation for the beauty of even the most useful mathematics.

"A new account of the Antonine plague and its long-lasting effects on the history of the Roman empire"--

"Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century, in no small part because he very much lived the events and ideologies of that century. Born into a Polish family in what was then the western fringe of the Russian Empire, and what is now Lithuania, a young man Milosz found his life upended by the First World War and his father's conscription in the Russian army. In the Second World War, he provided aid to Jews in Warsaw as a partisan and a member of the Polish socialist underground. But after the war he lived as a permanent exile, from Poland, from Soviet communism, from his early fervent Catholicism and then, later, even from the almost garish extremes and inequalities of the American society in which he chose to live. His work is a lasting legacy. His poetry remains in print, whether in Polish or English or the other languages into which it has been translated, and his two classic works of prose non-fiction, The Captive Mind, his reflection on the hypnotic effect of ideology, and Native Realm, his memoir on his life in Poland and his life away from it, have been reissued in Penguin Classics. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. In this new volume of the Writers on Writers series, writer Eva Hoffman draws on her conversations with Milosz during their encounters and her own private engagement with his work, in order to comprehend someone whose intellectual and geographic trajectory serves as a mirror to her own, as someone who emigrated with her family from her native Poland and who has since lived and pursued a literary career in the anglophone world. Hoffman concentrates on several important themes in Milosz's life and work, such as his resistance to dogma and fanaticism, his fascination with place and geographic separation, his awareness of his own exile, his attraction to all life, his capacity for pleasure, and finally his basic humanism, which underpinned his poetry"--

A monumental work of history that reveals the Ottoman dynasty's important role in the emergence of early modern EuropeThe Ottomans have long been viewed as despots who conquered through sheer military might, and whose dynasty was peripheral to those of Europe. The Last Muslim Conquest transforms our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, showing how Ottoman statecraft was far more pragmatic and sophisticated than previously acknowledged, and how the Ottoman dynasty was a crucial player in the power struggles of early modern Europe.In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Gabor Agoston captures the grand sweep of Ottoman history, from the dynasty's stunning rise to power at the turn of the fourteenth century to the Siege of Vienna in 1683, which brought an end to Ottoman incursions into central Europe. He discusses how the Ottoman wars of conquest gave rise to the imperial rivalry with the Habsburgs, and brings vividly to life the intrigues of sultans, kings, popes, and spies. Agoston examines the subtler methods of Ottoman conquest, such as dynastic marriages and the incorporation of conquered peoples into the Ottoman administration, and argues that while the Ottoman Empire was shaped by Turkish, Iranian, and Islamic influences, it was also an integral part of Europe and was, in many ways, a European empire.Rich in narrative detail, The Last Muslim Conquest looks at Ottoman military capabilities, frontier management, law, diplomacy, and intelligence, offering new perspectives on the gradual shift in power between the Ottomans and their European rivals and reframing the old story of Ottoman decline.

How an acceptance of our limitations can lead to a more fulfilling life and a more harmonious societyWe live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible-a good-enough life for all.Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around.Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid.

"A beautifully illustrated, large-format study of Yellowstone's birdlife, written by a team of renowned Park ornithologists and wildlife biologists"--

Twenty-nine Breton tales, as told over a series of long winter nights, featuring an ingenious miller, a Jerusalem-bound ant, a mad dash at midnight, and more In the late nineteenth century, the folklorist François-Marie Luzel spent countless winter evenings listening to stories told by his neighbors, local Breton farmers and villagers. At these social gatherings, known as veillées, Luzel recorded the tales in unusual detail, capturing a storytelling tradition that is now almost forgotten. The Midnight Washerwoman and Other Tales of Lower Brittany collects twenty-nine stories gathered by Luzel, many translated into English for the first time. The tales are presented in a series of five imaginary veillées, giving readers a unique opportunity to listen in on a long-ago winter's night of storytelling. Some of the stories mix the apparently supernatural with the everyday--as in the title tale, when a mysteriously nocturnal washerwoman causes three handsome lads to flee so quickly they lose their clogs in the process. Others invite listeners to root for the underdog, as when a simple miller outwits a powerful seigneur. Another tale must have been greeted with raucous laughter as it recounts an ascending ladder of obstacles--from a mouse to a cat to a man to God (or the Devil) himself--confronted by a traveling ant. Michael Wilson, the volume's editor and translator, provides a substantive introduction that discusses Luzel's work and the significance of Breton storytelling.

A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations. Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade, Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.

The uses of shame (and shamelessness) in spheres that range from social media and consumerism to polarized politics and mass violence Today, we are caught in a shame spiral--a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And if so, for whom? In Shame, David Keen explores the function of modern shaming, paying particular attention to how shame is instrumentalized and weaponized. Keen points out that there is usually someone who offers an escape from shame--and that many of those who make this offer have been piling on shame in the first place. Self-interested manipulations of shame, Keen argues, are central to understanding phenomena as wide-ranging as consumerism, violent crime, populist politics, and even war and genocide. Shame is political as well as personal. To break out of our current cycle of shame and shaming, and to understand the harm that shame can do, we must recognize the ways that shame is being made to serve political and economic purposes. Keen also traces the rise of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who possess a dangerous shamelessness, and he asks how shame and shamelessness can both be damaging. Answering this question means understanding the different types of shame. And it means understanding how shame and shamelessness interact--not least when shame is instrumentalized by those who are selling shamelessness. Keen points to a perverse and inequitable distribution of shame, with the victims of poverty and violence frequently being shamed, while those who benefit tend to exhibit shamelessness and even pride.

An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times The world's first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies seven kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity. What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world's largest empires--for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires--Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India--made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten. Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

A richly illustrated introduction to the world's living and extinct sea mammals From the gregarious sea otter and playful dolphins to the sociable narwhal and iconic polar bear, sea mammals are a large, diverse, and increasingly precious group. In this book, Annalisa Berta, a leading expert on sea mammals and their evolution, presents an engaging and richly illustrated introduction to past and present species of these remarkable creatures, from the blue whale and the northern fur seal to the extinct giant sperm whale, aquatic sloth, and walking sea cow. The book features more than 50 individual species profiles, themed chapters, stunning photographs, and specially commissioned paleo-illustrations of extinct species. It presents detailed accounts of these mammals' evolutionary path, anatomy, behavior, habitats, and conservation. And because these are key species that complete many food chains and have the widest influence of all sea life, the book also offers insights into a broad variety of marine worlds today and in the future.

Philosopher Myisha Cherry teaches us the right ways to deal with wrongdoing in our lives and the world Sages from Cicero to Oprah have told us that forgiveness requires us to let go of negative emotions and that it has a unique power to heal our wounds. In Failures of Forgiveness, Myisha Cherry argues that these beliefs couldn't be more wrong--and that the ways we think about and use forgiveness, personally and as a society, can often do more harm than good. She presents a new and healthier understanding of forgiveness--one that will give us a better chance to recover from wrongdoing and move toward "radical repair." Cherry began exploring forgiveness after some relatives of the victims of the mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, forgave what seemed unforgiveable. She was troubled that many observers appeared to be more inspired by these acts of forgiveness than they were motivated to confront the racial hatred that led to the killings. That is a big mistake, Cherry argues. Forgiveness isn't magic. We can forgive and still be angry, there can be good reasons not to forgive, and forgiving a wrong without tackling its roots solves nothing. Examining how forgiveness can go wrong in families, between friends, at work, and in the media, politics, and beyond, Cherry addresses forgiveness and race, canceling versus forgiving, self-forgiveness, and more. She takes the burden of forgiveness off those who have been wronged and offers guidance both to those deciding whether and how to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. By showing us how to do forgiveness better, Failures of Forgiveness promises to transform how we deal with wrongdoing in our lives, opening a new path to true healing and reconciliation.

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre--and why that's a good thing Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it's hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth--whatever it is--is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open--to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated--or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens. According to Schwitzgebel's "Universal Bizarreness" thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary "Universal Dubiety" thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism--a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities.

A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh's climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America's experience in VietnamOn May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of "e;War Communism."e; Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians.Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

The most comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of one of the most important religious orders in the modern worldSince its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus-more commonly known as the Jesuits-has played a critical role in the events of modern history. From the Counter-Reformation to the ascent of Francis I as the first Jesuit pope, The Jesuits presents an intimate look at one of the most important religious orders not only in the Catholic Church, but also the world. Markus Friedrich describes an organization that has deftly walked a tightrope between sacred and secular involvement and experienced difficulties during changing times, all while shaping cultural developments from pastoral care and spirituality to art, education, and science.Examining the Jesuits in the context of social, cultural, and world history, Friedrich sheds light on how the order shaped the culture of the Counter-Reformation and participated in the establishment of European empires, including missionary activity throughout Asia and in many parts of Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also explores the place of Jesuits in the New World and addresses the issue of Jesuit slaveholders. The Jesuits often tangled with the Roman Curia and the pope, resulting in their suppression in 1773, but the order returned in 1814 to rise again to a powerful position of influence. Friedrich demonstrates that the Jesuit fathers were not a monolithic group and he considers the distinctive spiritual legacy inherited by Pope Francis.With its global scope and meticulous attention to archival sources and previous scholarship, The Jesuits illustrates the heterogeneous, varied, and contradictory perspectives of this famed religious organization.

As national political fights are waged at the state level, democracy itself pays the priceOver the past generation, the Democratic and Republican parties have each become nationally coordinated political teams. American political institutions, on the other hand, remain highly decentralized. Laboratories against Democracy shows how national political conflicts are increasingly flowing through the subnational institutions of state politics-with profound consequences for public policy and American democracy.Jacob Grumbach argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups have shifted their sights to the state level, nationalizing state politics in the process and transforming state governments into the engines of American policymaking. He shows how this has had the ironic consequence of making policy more varied across the states as red and blue party coalitions implement increasingly distinct agendas in areas like health care, reproductive rights, and climate change. The consequences don't stop there, however. Drawing on a wealth of new data on state policy, public opinion, money in politics, and democratic performance, Grumbach traces how national groups are using state governmental authority to suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, and erode the very foundations of democracy itself.Required reading for this precarious moment in our politics, Laboratories against Democracy reveals how the pursuit of national partisan agendas at the state level has intensified the challenges facing American democracy, and asks whether today's state governments are mitigating the political crises of our time-or accelerating them.