Books published by Princeton University Press

Hinduism is currently followed by one-fifth of humankind. Far from a monolithic theistic tradition, the religion comprises thousands of gods, a complex caste system, and hundreds of languages and dialects. Such internal plurality inspires vastly ranging rites and practices amongst Hinduism's hundreds of millions of adherents. It is therefore not surprising that scholars have been hesitant to define universal Hindu beliefs and practices. In this book, Axel Michaels breaks this trend. He examines the traditions, beliefs, and rituals Hindus hold in common through the lens of what he deems its "e;identificatory habitus,"e; a cohesive force that binds Hindu religions together and fortifies them against foreign influences. Thus, in his analysis, Michaels not only locates Hinduism's profoundly differentiating qualities, but also provides the framework for an analysis of its social and religious coherence. Michaels blends his insightful arguments and probing questions with introductions to major historical epochs, ample textual sources as well as detailed analyses of major life-cycle rituals, the caste system, forms of spiritualism, devotionalism, ritualism, and heroism. Along the way he points out that Hinduism has endured and repeatedly resisted the missionary zeal and universalist claims of Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. He also contrasts traditional Hinduism with the religions of the West, "e;where the self is preferred to the not-self, and where freedom in the world is more important than liberation from the world."e; Engaging and accessible, this book will appeal to laypersons and scholars alike as the most comprehensive introduction to Hinduism yet published. Not only is Hinduism refreshingly new in its methodological approach, but it also presents a broad range of meticulous scholarship in a clear, readable style, integrating Indology, religious studies, philosophy, anthropological theory and fieldwork, and sweeping analyses of Hindu texts.

On November 1, 1755--All Saints' Day--a massive earthquake struck Europe's Iberian Peninsula and destroyed the city of Lisbon. Churches collapsed upon thousands of worshippers celebrating the holy day. Earthquakes in Human History tells the story of that calamity and other epic earthquakes. The authors, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders, recapture the power of their previous book, Volcanoes in Human History. They vividly explain the geological processes responsible for earthquakes, and they describe how these events have had long-lasting aftereffects on human societies and cultures. Their accounts are enlivened with quotations from contemporary literature and from later reports. In the chaos following the Lisbon quake, government and church leaders vied for control. The Marques de Pombal rose to power and became a virtual dictator. As a result, the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order lost much of its influence in Portugal. Voltaire wrote his satirical work Candide to refute the philosophy of "e;optimism,"e; the belief that God had created a perfect world. And the 1755 earthquake sparked the search for a scientific understanding of natural disasters. Ranging from an examination of temblors mentioned in the Bible, to a richly detailed account of the 1906 catastrophe in San Francisco, to Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, to the Peruvian earthquake in 1970 (the Western Hemisphere's greatest natural disaster), this book is an unequaled testament to a natural phenomenon that can be not only terrifying but also threatening to humankind's fragile existence, always at risk because of destructive powers beyond our control.

The only Freudian to have been originally trained in folklore and the first psychoanalytic anthropologist to carry out fieldwork, Gza Rcheim (1891-1953) contributed substantially to the worldwide study of cultures. Combining a global perspective with encyclopedic knowledge of ethnographic sources, this Hungarian analyst demonstrates the validity of Freudian theory in both Western and non-Western settings. These seventeen essays, written between 1922 and 1953, are among Rcheim's most significant published writings and are collected here for the first time to introduce a new generation of readers to his unique interpretations of myths, folktales, and legends. From Australian aboriginal mythology to Native American trickster tales, from the Grimm folktale canon to Hungarian folk belief, Rcheim explores a wide range of issues, such as the relationship of dreams to folklore and the primacy of infantile conditioning in the formation of adult fantasy. An introduction by folklorist Alan Dundes describes Rcheim's career, and each essay is prefaced by a brief consideration of its intellectual and bibliographical context.

In Quest of the Hero makes available for a new generation of readers two key works on hero myths: Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero and the central section of Lord Raglan's The Hero. Amplifying these is Alan Dundes's fascinating contemporary inquiry, "e;The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus."e; Examined here are the patterns found in the lore surrounding historical or legendary figures like Gilgamesh, Moses, David, Oedipus, Odysseus, Perseus, Heracles, Aeneas, Romulus, Siegfried, Lohengrin, Arthur, and Buddha. Rank's monograph remains the classic application of Freudian theory to hero myths. In The Hero the noted English ethnologist Raglan singles out the myth-ritualist pattern in James Frazer's many-sided Golden Bough and applies that pattern to hero myths. Dundes, the eminent folklorist at the University of California at Berkeley, applies the theories of Rank, Raglan, and others to the case of Jesus. In his introduction to this selection from Rank, Raglan, and Dundes, Robert Segal, author of the major study of Joseph Campbell, charts the history of theorizing about hero myths and compares the approaches of Rank, Raglan, Dundes, and Campbell.

This is the only illustrated guide specifically tailored to the needs of visitors to this remote and captivating part of the world, and it is the ideal book for armchair naturalists. A Visitor's Guide to South Georgia features hundreds of color photographs of the diverse wildlife and breathtaking scenery to be found at this unique tourist destination. It includes extensive and up-to-date coverage of all wildlife groups-from albatrosses and petrels to seals and penguins-as well as color maps and detailed information for the 23 key visitor sites. This stunning photographic guide describes the history, geology, and culture of South Georgia. It also provides a checklist of all fauna and flora as well as valuable tips for visitors to the islands, and the book's wirebound format enables it to fold out flat for easy use in a water-protective holder. Features hundreds of photos Covers all wildlife groups Includes maps and information for the 23 key visitor sites Describes South Georgia's unique history, geology, and culture Provides a checklist of all fauna and flora Gives valuable tips for visitors

According to one myth, the first Athenian citizen was born from the earth after the sperm of a rejected lover, the god Hephaistos, dripped off the virgin goddess Athena's leg and onto fertile soil. Henceforth Athenian citizens could claim to be truly indigenous to their city and to have divine origins that bypassed maternity. In these essays, the renowned French Hellenist Nicole Loraux examines the implication of this and other Greek origin myths as she explores how Athenians in the fifth century forged and maintained a collective identity.

By showing us the human brain at work, PET (positron emission tomography) scans are subtly--and sometimes not so subtly--transforming how we think about our minds. Picturing Personhood follows this remarkable and expensive technology from the laboratory into the world and back. It examines how PET scans are created and how they are being called on to answer myriad questions with far-reaching implications: Is depression an observable brain disease? Are criminals insane? Do men and women think differently? Is rationality a function of the brain? Based on interviews, media analysis, and participant observation at research labs and conferences, Joseph Dumit analyzes how assumptions designed into and read out of the experimental process reinforce specific notions about human nature. Such assumptions can enter the process at any turn, from selecting subjects and mathematical models to deciding which images to publish and how to color them. Once they leave the laboratory, PET scans shape social debates, influence courtroom outcomes, and have positive and negative consequences for people suffering mental illness. Dumit follows this complex story, demonstrating how brain scans, as scientific objects, contribute to our increasing social dependence on scientific authority. The first book to examine the cultural ramifications of brain-imaging technology, Picturing Personhood is an unprecedented study that will influence both cultural studies and the growing field of science and technology studies.

"e;Ecosystem"e; is an intuitively appealing concept to most ecologists, but, in spite of its widespread use, the term remains diffuse and ambiguous. The authors of this book argue that previous attempts to define the concept have been derived from particular viewpoints to the exclusion of others equally possible. They offer instead a more general line of thought based on hierarchy theory. Their contribution should help to counteract the present separation of subdisciplines in ecology and to bring functional and population/community ecologists closer to a common approach. Developed as a way of understanding highly complex organized systems, hierarchy theory has at its center the idea that organization results from differences in process rates. To the authors the theory suggests an objective way of decomposing ecosystems into their component parts. The results thus obtained offer a rewarding method for integrating various schools of ecology.

George Chapman's translations of Homer are the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "e;On First Looking into Chapman's Homer."e; Swinburne praised the translations for their "e;romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur,"e; their "e;freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire."e; The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "e;For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language."e; This volume presents the original (1611) text of Chapman's translation of the Iliad, making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction and a glossary. Garry Wills contributes a preface, in which he explains how Chapman tapped into the poetic consonance between the semi-divine heroism of the Iliad's warriors and the cosmological symbols of Renaissance humanism.

This book traces the history of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, Mexico,during a four-hundred-year period from late preconquest times throughthe end of Spanish rule in 1821. Nancy Farriss combines the tools of thehistorian and the anthropologist to reconstruct colonial Maya society andculture as a web of interlocking systems, from ecology and modes ofsubsistence through the corporate family and the community to the realmof the sacred. She shows how the Maya adapted to Spanish domination,changing in ways that embodied Maya principles as they applied theirtraditional collective strategies for survival to the new challenges; they fared better under colonial rule than the Aztecs or Incas, who lived in areas more economically attractive to the conquering Spaniards. The author draws on archives and private collections in Seville, Mexico City, and Yucatan; on linguistic evidence from native language documents; and on archaeological and ethnographic data from sources that include her own fieldwork. Her innovative book illuminates not only Maya history and culture but also the nature and functioning of premodern agrarian societies in general and their processes of sociocultural change, especially under colonial rule.

The first history of indigenous photography in the Middle EastThe birth of photography coincided with the expansion of European imperialism in the Middle East, and some of the medium's earliest images are Orientalist pictures taken by Europeans in such places as Cairo and Jerusalem-photographs that have long shaped and distorted the Western visual imagination of the region. But the Middle East had many of its own photographers, collectors, and patrons. In this book, Stephen Sheehi presents a groundbreaking new account of early photography in the Arab world.The Arab Imago concentrates primarily on studio portraits by Arab and Armenian photographers in the late Ottoman Empire. Examining previously known studios such as Abdullah Freres, Pascal Sebah, Garabed Krikorian, and Khalil Raad, the book also provides the first account of other pioneers such as Georges and Louis Saboungi, the Kova Brothers, Muhammad Sadiq Bey, and Ibrahim Rif'at Pasha-as well as the first detailed look at early photographs of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. In addition, the book explores indigenous photography manuals and albums, newspapers, scientific journals, and fiction.Featuring extensive previously unpublished images, The Arab Imago shows how native photography played an essential role in the creation of modern Arab societies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon before the First World War. At the same time, the book overturns Eurocentric and Orientalist understandings of indigenous photography and challenges previous histories of the medium.

Addressing physicists and mathematicians alike, this book discusses the finite dimensional representation theory of sl(2), both classical and quantum. Covering representations of U(sl(2)), quantum sl(2), the quantum trace and color representations, and the Turaev-Viro invariant, this work is useful to graduate students and professionals. The classic subject of representations of U(sl(2)) is equivalent to the physicists' theory of quantum angular momentum. This material is developed in an elementary way using spin-networks and the Temperley-Lieb algebra to organize computations that have posed difficulties in earlier treatments of the subject. The emphasis is on the 6j-symbols and the identities among them, especially the Biedenharn-Elliott and orthogonality identities. The chapter on the quantum group Ub-3.0 qb0(sl(2)) develops the representation theory in strict analogy with the classical case, wherein the authors interpret the Kauffman bracket and the associated quantum spin-networks algebraically. The authors then explore instances where the quantum parameter q is a root of unity, which calls for a representation theory of a decidedly different flavor. The theory in this case is developed, modulo the trace zero representations, in order to arrive at a finite theory suitable for topological applications. The Turaev-Viro invariant for 3-manifolds is defined combinatorially using the theory developed in the preceding chapters. Since the background from the classical, quantum, and quantum root of unity cases has been explained thoroughly, the definition of this invariant is completely contained and justified within the text.

This comprehensive introduction to the physics and chemistry of Earth's atmosphere explains the science behind some of the most critical and intensely debated environmental controversies of our day. In it, one of the world's leading experts on planetary environments presents the background necessary to assess the complex effects of human activity on our atmosphere and climate. Unique in its breadth and depth of coverage, The Atmospheric Environment includes a survey of Earth's climatic history to provide a context for assessing the changes underway today. It is written for--and will be of lasting value to--a varied audience, including not only students but also professional scientists and others seeking a sophisticated but readable introduction to the frontiers of contemporary research on biogeochemistry, depletion of stratospheric ozone, tropospheric air pollution, and climatology. The book covers both the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere with an account of relevant aspects of ocean science, treats atmospheric science and the climate as an integrated whole, and makes explicit the policy implications of what is known. Its critical account of steps taken by the international community to address the issue of climatic change highlights the challenge of dealing with a global issue for which the political and economic stakes are high, where uncertainties are common, and where there is an urgent need for clear thinking and informed policy. The book also sketches key gaps in our knowledge, outlining where we need to go to fully understand the impact of our actions on the climate. Thorough, timely, and authoritative, this is the book to consult for answers about some of the thorniest and most pressing environmental questions that we face.

In this fourth edition of the best-known critical study of Hemingway's work Carlos Baker has completely revised the two opening chapters, which deal with the young Hemingway's career in Paris, and has incorporated material uncovered after the publication of his book Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. Professor Baker has also written two new chapters in which he discusses Hemingway's two posthumously published books, A Movable Feast and Islands in the Stream.CONTENTS: Introduction. I. The Slopes of Montparnasse. II. The Making of Americans. III. The Way It Was. IV. The Wastelanders. V. The Mountain and the Plain. VI. The First Forty-Five Stories. VII. The Spanish Earth. VIII. The Green Hills of Africa. IX. Depression at Key West. X. The Spanish Tragedy. XI. The River and the Trees. XII. The Ancient Mariner. XIII. The Death of the Lion. XIV. Looking Backward. XV. Islands in the Stream.

Abridged from the four-volume The Passion of al-Hallaj, one of the major works of Western orientalism, this book explores the life and teaching of a famous tenth-century Sufi mystic and martyr, and in so doing describes not only his experience but also the whole milieu of early Islamic civilization. Louis Massignon (1883-1962), France's most celebrated Islamic specialist in this century and a leading Catholic intellectual, wrote of a man who was for him a personal inspiration. From reviews of the four-volume translation:

Important essays from one of the giants of literary criticism, including a dozen published here in English for the first timeErich Auerbach (1892-1957), best known for his classic literary study Mimesis, is celebrated today as a founder of comparative literature, a forerunner of secular criticism, and a prophet of global literary studies. Yet the true depth of Auerbach's thinking and writing remains unplumbed. Time, History, and Literature presents a wide selection of Auerbach's essays, many of which are little known outside the German-speaking world. Of the twenty essays culled for this volume from the full length of his career, twelve have never appeared in English before, and one is being published for the first time.Foregrounded in this major new collection are Auerbach's complex relationship to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, his philosophy of time and history, and his theory of human ethics and responsible action. Auerbach effectively charts out the difficult discovery, in the wake of Christianity, of the sensuous, the earthly, and the human and social worlds. A number of the essays reflect Auerbach's responses to an increasingly hostile National Socialist environment. These writings offer a challenging model of intellectual engagement, one that remains as compelling today as it was in Auerbach's own time.

Every day on eBay, millions of people buy and sell a vast array of goods, from rare collectibles and antiques to used cars and celebrity memorabilia. The internet auction site is remarkably easy to use, which accounts in part for its huge popularity. But how does eBay really work, and how does it compare to other kinds of auctions? These are questions that led Ken Steiglitz--computer scientist, collector of ancient coins, and a regular eBay user--to examine the site through the revealing lens of auction theory. The result is this book, in which Steiglitz shows us how human behaviors in open markets like eBay can be substantially more complex than those predicted by standard economic theory. In these pages we meet the sniper who outbids you in an auction's closing seconds, the early bidder who treats eBay as if it were an old-fashioned outcry auction, the shill who bids in league with the seller to artificially inflate the price--and other characters as well. Steiglitz guides readers through the fascinating history of auctions, how they functioned in the past and how they work today in online venues like eBay. Drawing on cutting-edge economics as well as his own stories from eBay, he reveals practical auction strategies and introduces readers to the fundamentals of auction theory and the mathematics behind eBay. Complete with exercises and a detailed appendix, this book is a must for sophisticated users of online auctions, and essential reading for students seeking an accessible introduction to the study of auction theory.

The American Revolution swept away old certainties and forced revolutionaries to consider what it meant to be American. Andrew Trees examines four attempts to answer the question of national identity that Americans faced in the wake of the Revolution. Through the writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, Trees explores a complicated political world in which boundaries between the personal and the political were fluid and ill-defined. Melding history and literary study, he shows how this unsettled landscape challenged and sometimes confounded the founders' attempts to forge their own--and the nation's--identity. Trees traces the intimately linked shaping of self and country by four men distrustful of politics and yet operating in an increasingly democratic world. Jefferson sought to recast the political along the lines of friendship, while Hamilton hoped that honor would provide a secure foundation for self and country. Adams struggled to create a nation virtuous enough to sustain a republican government, and Madison worked to establish a government based on justice. Giving a new context to the founders' mission, Trees studies their contributions not simply as policy prescriptions but in terms of a more elusive and symbolic level of action. His work illuminates the tangled relationship among rhetoric, politics, self, and nation--as well as the larger question of national identity that remains with us today.

A small but increasing number of economists have begun to use laboratory experiments to evaluate economic propositions under carefully controlled conditions. Experimental Economics is the first comprehensive treatment of this rapidly growing area of research. While the book acknowledges that laboratory experiments are no panacea, it argues cogently for their effectiveness in selected situations. Covering methodological and procedural issues as well as theory, Experimental Economics is not only a textbook but also a useful introduction to laboratory methods for professional economists.Although the authors present some new material, their emphasis is on organizing and evaluating existing results. The book can be used as an anchoring device for a course at either the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. Applications include financial market experiments, oligopoly price competition, auctions, bargaining, provision of public goods, experimental games, and decision making under uncertainty. The book also contains instructions for a variety of laboratory experiments.

This is the definitive treatment of the phenomenology of galaxies--a clear and comprehensive volume that takes full account of the extraordinary recent advances in the field. The book supersedes the classic text Galactic Astronomy that James Binney wrote with Dimitri Mihalas, and complements Galactic Dynamics by Binney and Scott Tremaine. It will be invaluable to researchers and is accessible to any student who has a background in undergraduate physics. The book draws on observations both of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and of external galaxies. The two sources are complementary, since the former tends to be highly detailed but difficult to interpret, while the latter is typically poorer in quality but conceptually simpler to understand. Binney and Merrifield introduce all astronomical concepts necessary to understand the properties of galaxies, including coordinate systems, magnitudes and colors, the phenomenology of stars, the theory of stellar and chemical evolution, and the measurement of astronomical distances. The book's core covers the phenomenology of external galaxies, star clusters in the Milky Way, the interstellar media of external galaxies, gas in the Milky Way, the structure and kinematics of the stellar components of the Milky Way, and the kinematics of external galaxies. Throughout, the book emphasizes the observational basis for current understanding of galactic astronomy, with references to the original literature. Offering both new information and a comprehensive view of its subject, it will be an indispensable source for professionals, as well as for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.

A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination-poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious-displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens. Celestial Aspirations explores how British literature and art during that period exploited classical representations of these soaring themes-through philosophical, scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler.From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens, Verrio and Thornhill, Philip Hardie focuses on the ways that the history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England, narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton's Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardie considers the Whig sublime, as well as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, he looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the heavens-as a reward for political and military achievement on the one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual exertion on the other.Celestial Aspirations offers an intriguing look at how creative minds reworked ancient visions of time and space in the early modern era.

This major interpretation of the Revolution of 1848-1849 in Germany stresses its character as a mass political phenomenon. Building skillfully on the theme of the interaction of self-conscious radicalism and spontaneous popular movements, Jonathan Sperber analyzes the social and religious antagonisms of pre-1848 German society and shows how they were politicized by the democratic political opposition.

Brook Thomas explores the new historicism and the challenges posed to it by a postmodern world that questions the very possibility of newness. He considers new historicism's engagement with poststructuralism and locates the former within a tradition of pragmatic historiography in the United States.

How do corporations and other organizations maintain and transmit their cultures over time? Culture and Demography in Organizations offers the most reliable and comprehensive answer to this complex question to date. The first book on the subject to ground its analysis in mathematical tools and computer simulation, it goes beyond standard approaches, which focus on socialization within organizations, by explicitly considering the effects of demographic processes of entry, exit, and organizational growth. J. Richard Harrison and Glenn R. Carroll base their analysis on a formal model with three components: hiring, socialization, and employee turnover. In exploring the model's implications through computer simulation methods, the authors cover topics such as organizational growth and decline, top management teams, organizational influence networks, terrorist organizations, cultural integration following mergers, and organizational failure. For each topic, they identify the conditions influencing cultural transmission. In general, they find that demographic processes play a central role in influencing organizational culture and that studying these processes leads to some surprising insights unavailable when considering socialization alone. This book, which also serves as an ideal introduction to the increasingly popular use of computer simulation, will be an indispensable resource for scholars and students of organization theory and behavior, cultural studies, strategic management, sociology, economics, and social simulation.

The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's attempts through 4,000 years of written history to make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to understand its physical nature, and to know its real and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of elaborate "e;contraptions"e; by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately, about the "e;grand contraption"e; we've constructed through the ages in an effort to understand and identify with the universe. According to Park, people long ago conceived of our world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils, and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting certainty of celestial movement they discerned numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the scientific exploration of the universe. The journey reveals many common threads stretching from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of today. For example, humans have tended to imagine Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it with the reverence it deserves.

Ideology played a momentous role in modern Japanese history. Not only did the elite of imperial Japan (1890-1945) work hard to influence the people to "e;yield as the grasses before the wind,"e; but historians of modern Japan later identified these efforts as one of the underlying pathologies of World War II. Available for the first time in paperback, this study examines how this ideology evolved. Carol Gluck argues that the process of formulating and communicating new national values was less consistent than is usually supposed. By immersing the reader in the talk and thought of the late Meiji period, Professor Gluck recreates the diversity of ideological discourse experienced by Japanese of the time. The result is a new interpretation of the views of politics and the nation in imperial Japan.

A compelling book that casts the Qur'anic encounter with Jews in an entirely new lightIn this panoramic and multifaceted book, Meir Bar-Asher examines how Jews and Judaism are depicted in the Qur'an and later Islamic literature, providing needed context to those passages critical of Jews that are most often invoked to divide Muslims and Jews or to promote Islamophobia. He traces the Qur'anic origins of the protection of Jews and other minorities living under the rule of Islam, and shows how attitudes toward Jews in Shi'i Islam are substantially different from those in Sunni Islam. Bar-Asher sheds light on the extraordinary contribution of Jewish tradition to the Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an, and draws important parallels between Jewish religious law, or halakha, and shari'a law.An illuminating work on a topic of vital relevance today, Jews and the Qur'an offers a nuanced understanding of Islam's engagement with Judaism in the time of Muhammad and his followers, and serves as a needed corrective to common misperceptions about Islam.

A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern designAlloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa. Leading architects such as Gordon Bunshaft and Eero Saarinen turned to sculptors including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Isamu Noguchi to produce site-determined, large-scale sculptures tailored for their buildings' highly visible and well-traversed threshold spaces. The parameters of these spaces-atriums, lobbies, plazas, and entryways-led to various designs like sculptural walls, ceilings, and screens that not only embraced new industrial materials and processes, but also demonstrated art's ability to merge with lived architectural spaces.Marin Sullivan argues that these sculptural commissions represent an alternate history of midcentury American art. Rather than singular masterworks by lone geniuses, some of the era's most notable spaces-Philip Johnson's Four Seasons Restaurant in Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, Max Abramovitz's Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius's Pan Am Building-would be diminished without the collaborative efforts of architects and artists. At the same time, the artistic creations within these spaces could not exist anywhere else. Sullivan shows that the principle of synergy provides an ideal framework to assess this pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture. She also explores the afterlives of these postwar commissions in the decades since their construction.A fresh consideration of sculpture's relationship to architectural design and functionality following World War II, Alloys highlights the affinities between the two fields and the ways their connections remain with us today.

How the urban spectator became the archetypal modern viewer and a central subject in late nineteenth-century French artGawkers explores how artists and writers in late nineteenth-century Paris represented the seductions, horrors, and banalities of street life through the eyes of curious viewers known as badauds. In contrast to the singular and aloof bourgeois flaneur, badauds were passive, collective, instinctive, and highly impressionable. Above all, they were visual, captivated by the sights of everyday life. Beautifully illustrated and drawing on a wealth of new research, Gawkers excavates badauds as a subject of deep significance in late nineteenth-century French culture, as a motif in works of art, and as a conflicted model of the modern viewer.Bridget Alsdorf examines the work of painters, printmakers, and filmmakers who made badauds their artistic subject, including Felix Vallotton, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Honore Daumier, Edgar Degas, Jean-Leon Gerome, Eugene Carriere, Charles Angrand, and Auguste and Louise Lumiere. From morally and intellectually empty to sensitive, empathetic, and humane, the gawkers these artists portrayed cut across social categories. They invite the viewer's identification, even as they appear to threaten social responsibility and the integrity of art.Delving into the ubiquity of a figure that has largely eluded attention, idling on the margins of culture and current events, Gawkers traces the emergence of social and aesthetic problems that are still with us today.

A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal EmpireIn the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite objects animated early modern experience, from the intimate, sensory pleasure of garments to the monumentality of imperial tents. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India tells the story of textiles crafted and collected across South Asia and beyond, illuminating how cloth participated in political negotiations, social conversations, and the shared seasonal rhythms of the year.Drawing on small-scale paintings, popular poetry, chronicle histories, and royal inventory records, Sylvia Houghteling charts the travels of textiles from the Mughal imperial court to the kingdoms of Rajasthan, the Deccan sultanates, and the British Isles. She shows how the "e;art of cloth"e; encompassed both the making of textiles as well as their creative uses. Houghteling asks what cloth made its wearers feel, how it acted in space, and what images and memories it conjured in the mind. She reveals how woven objects began to evoke the natural environment, convey political and personal meaning, and span the distance between faraway people and places.Beautifully illustrated, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India offers an incomparable account of the aesthetics and techniques of cloth and cloth making and the ways that textiles shaped the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia.