Books

Rebecca J. Scott explores the dynamics of Cuban emancipation, arguing that slavery was not simply abolished by the metropolitan power of Spain or abandoned because of economic contradictions. Instead, she explains, slave emancipation was a prolonged, gradual and conflictive process unfolding through a series of social, legal, and economic transformations.

Models of Nature studies the early and turbulent years of the Soviet conservation movement from the October Revolution to the mid-1930s—Lenin’s rule to the rise of Stalin. This new edition includes an afterword by the author that reflects upon the study’s impact and discusses advances in the field since the book was first published.

In Peter Meinke’s eleventh collection, he writes poems of humor and sadness. His poems speak truth with the self-assurance of a man willing to laugh at himself and, by extension, he invites us to laugh at ourselves as well.

A detailed, carefully wrought business biography of Henry Clay Frick, one of the leading entrepreneurs in American heavy industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kenneth Warren has provided not only insight into the life of Henry Clay Frick, but a major contribution to our understanding of the history of the basic industries, the shaping of society, locality, and region – and thereby of laying the foundations for the value systems and landscapes of present-day America.

The first thorough guide to the design and history of “Kentuck,” designed in 1953-1954 by Frank Lloyd Wright, only seven miles from Fallingwater. Donald Hoffmann includes more than fifty photographs, drawings, diagrams, and a descriptive text to illustrate the structural peculiarities of the house based on the equilateral triangle.

Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women.

Winner of the 2000 MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize

This is the first work in English to discuss the social and political history of lawyers in a Latin American country. By exploring the lives of lawyers, Uribe-Uran is also able to focus on a general history of Latin America, while exploring key social and political changes and continuities from 1780 to 1850.

Becker investigates how marginalized individuals negotiate public and private spheres, while inventing sustainable communities. She also explores anti-Semitism, cross-dressing, and painter Rosa Bonheur’s lifelong relationships with women.

Based on interviews with more than 100 participants, Van Cott demonstrates how social issues were placed on the constitutional reform agenda and transformed into the nation’s highest law. She follows each reform for five years to assess early results of what she calls an emerging model of multicultural constitutionalism.

Conquering Nature, the only book-length analysis of the environmental situation in Cuba after four decades of socialist rule, is based on extensive examination of secondary sources and informed by the study of development and environmental trends in former socialist countries as well as in the developing world.

Winner of the 2002 Warren Dean Memorial Award from Environmentl History of Latin America.

A selection of poems from three previous books as well as new work, Anderson writes out of deep grief for the political losses of work and money. A counterpoint to the sorrows in these poems is a wry, self-deprecating humor which saves the work from solemnity.

Twelve top scholars analyze Brazilian democracy in a comprehensive, systematic fashion, covering the full period of the New Republic from Presidents Sarney to Cardoso.

The poems of Shepherd’s third book seek to redefine the meaning of mythology, from the ruined representatives of Greek divinity to the dazzling extravagances of predecessors like Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens.

Unforgettable photographs from Roy Stryker’s Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL) capture the convergence of destruction and rejuvenation that is the essence of an urban renaissance–all the anxiety and hope of the fifties is reflected in these poignant photographs and explained through essays and narrative.