Books published by University of Pennsylvania Press

Liberty's Prisoners chronicles how the penitentiary, though initially designed as an alternative to corporal punishment for the most egregious of offenders, quickly became a holding tank for those who attempted to lay claim to the new nation's promise of liberty.

Gabriel N. Rosenberg argues that public acceptance of the political economy of agribusiness hinged on federal efforts to normalize rural heterosexuality.

Katherine Eggert explores the crumbling state of humanistic learning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the benefits of relying on alchemy despite its recognized flaws.

Slavery and the Democratic Conscience explains how democratic subjects confronted and came to terms with slaveholder power in the early American Republic. Slavery was not an exception to the rise of American democracy, Padraig Riley argues, but was instead central to the formation of democratic institutions and ideals.

Examining the production of books and the circulation of material texts between London and the provincial centers of Dublin, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia, Joseph Rezek claims that the publishing vortex of London inspired a dynamic array of economic and aesthetic practices that shaped an era in literary history.

Richly illustrated with archival photos, this comprehensive study of the American department store industry traces the changing economic and political contexts that brought about the decline of downtown shopping districts and the rise of big-box stores and suburban malls.

A chronological collection of essays, America at the Ballot Box uses the history of presidential elections to illuminate both the fundamental character of American political democracy, and its evolution from the early Republic to the late twentieth century.

The Associational State argues that the relationship between state and civil society is fluid, and that the trajectory of American politics is not driven by ideological difference but by the ability to achieve public ends through partnerships forged between the state and voluntary organizations.

Anglicizing America revisits the theory of Anglicization and reconsiders its application to the lives and histories of the Atlantic world, from Britain to the Caribbean to the western wildernesses, at key moments before, during, and after the American Revolution.