Books published by Princeton University Press

Explores the relation between agape (or Christian charity) and social justice. The author defines agape as the central virtue in Christian ethical thought and action and applies his insights to three concrete issues: political violence, forgiveness, and abortion.

During the nineteenth century, women authors for the first time achieved professional status, secure income, and public fame. This book examines the various ways women writers negotiated the market realities of authorship, and looks at the myths and models women writers constructed to elevate their place in the profession.

Presents insights from developments in commercial policy theory to show how the pursuit of social and environmental agendas can be creatively reconciled with the pursuit of free trade. This book argues that free trade, by raising living standards, can serve these agendas far better than can a descent into trade sanctions and restrictions.

Chronicles Orazio Morandi's fabulous rise and fall against the backdrop of enormous political and cultural turmoil that characterized Italy in the early seventeenth century. This book documents a world in which occult knowledge commanded power and reveals widespread libertinism behind monastery walls.

Why do we hate Milton's God? The author reengages with a perennial problem in Milton studies, one whose genealogy dates back at least to the Romantics, but which finds its most cogent modern expression in William Empson's revulsion at Milton's God and Stanley Fish's defense.

Emphasizing the importance of cultural theory for film history, this book guides readers on a series of "inferential walks" through Italian culture in the first decades of the 21st century. It draws a cultural history that persuasively argues for a spatial, corporal interpretation of film language.

Popular understanding of Zen Buddhism typically involves a stereotyped image of isolated individuals in meditation, contemplating nothingness. This book presents the 'other side of Zen', by examining the movement's growth during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) in Japan and by shedding light on the Japanese religious landscape during the era.

Explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. This work takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do.

Tells the story of ancient Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements ten thousand years ago to the Arab conquest in the seventh century. With illustrations of important works of art and architecture in every chapter, this title traces the rise and fall of successive civilizations and people in Iraq over the course of millennia.

Famine remains one of the worst calamities that can befall a society. Mass starvation - whether it is inflicted by drought or engineered by misguided or genocidal economic policies - devastates families, weakens the social fabric, and undermines political stability. This title traces the history of famine from the earliest records to today.

Insurgent citizenships have arisen in cities around the world. This book examines the insurgence of democratic citizenship in the urban peripheries of Sao Paulo, Brazil, its entanglement with entrenched systems of inequality, and its contradiction in violence. It argues that contradictory realizations of citizenship characterize all democracies.

Discusses both the foundations and techniques of MK and other spectral classification systems. This book introduces the astrophysics of spectroscopy, reviews the entire field of stellar astronomy, and shows how the well-tested methods of spectral classification are a tool for graduate students and researchers working in astronomy and astrophysics.

Describes the author's experience of the bombing trials in a Manhattan federal court in 2001. This book looks at the investigation leading up to the trial, encounters with some of the FBI's leading terrorism investigators, and moments of drama from the proceedings themselves.

People obey the law if they believe it's legitimate, not because they fear punishment, this is the startling conclusion of this study. This book suggests that lawmakers would do much better to make legal systems worthy of respect than to instil fear. It finds that people obey law primarily because they believe in respecting legitimate authority.

Analyzes trust as a fundamental issue of social relationships. This book asks whether trust - which critics identify as essential in creating a cohesive society - can continue to serve this role. It shows that trust is losing its unifying power because the individual, is being reduced to a sum of group identities and an abstract matrix of rules.

Presents a series of essays on the changes that continue to sweep across anthropology. This book examines how the discipline's central practice of ethnography has been changed by "multi-sited" approaches to anthropology and how new research patterns are transforming anthropologists' careers.