University of Pittsburgh Press is celebrating with the re-launch of our Cuban Studies series. The series recently came under the editorship of Alejandro de la Fuente, who is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University. New volumes will feature an all-new look. Cuban Studies Volume 43 will be available in mid-July.

Acclaimed, prolific philosopher Nicholas Rescher is featured in our newest Q&A. His latest book is A Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes. UPP: You earned your doctorate at Princeton in 1951 at the age of 22, a record for that university’s philosophy department, and have been hard at work in the field ever since. So, why philosophy as a career? NR: At the outset my career choice ran neck and neck between philosophy and mathematics. But I found that I had to work at mathematics while philosophy seemed to come naturally. UPP: In the Introduction to your new book, A Journey…

A Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes Nicholas Rescher PHILOSOPHY “Rescher’s Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes is just that—and much more. The book is immensely wide-ranging, highly instructive, and a delight for anyone interested in ideas, intellectual puzzles, and the breadth of philosophical imagination. The engaging narrative style invites reading for pleasure; the range gives the book relevance to scores of philosophical topics; and the sketches themselves contribute ideas on major issues.” —Robert Audi, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Nicholas Rescher presents the first comprehensive chronology of philosophical anecdotes, spanning from antiquity to the…

Re-Collecting Black Hawk Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES “The decade’s smartest and most destabilizing book on Indians, Americans, amnesia, and memory. This book unsettles conventional wisdom of all kinds. Straightforward images document the massive and mysterious project by citizens of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois to inscribe the name of a nineteenth-century Indian leader on a staggering variety of stores, parks, bars, nursing homes, teams, and schools. An instant classic, in the tradition of Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip.” —Paul Chaat Smith,…

Florida poet Barbara Hamby, who has published three books with the Pitt Poetry series, is known for cooking up delicious verse. Poet Laureate Billy Collins described one of her collections as offering “a generous helping of poems so crackling with references and busy with verbal energy you might feel them buzzing in your hands.” It turns out that one of Hamby’s other passions is soup! “I love soup. It is the ultimate comfort food,” she said. Hamby usually has a freezer full of several different kinds, and enjoys trying new recipes.” Most of my soups are easy, and many are…