Yale Press Log

Yale Press wraps up Nat'l Poetry Month with awards and readings

At their annual awards ceremony last night, The Publishing Triangle announced Janet Malcolm, author of the critically acclaimed Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, as winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. View the complete list of award winners here.

This remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.

For those poety lovers in the New Haven area, the five most recent winners of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets competition will read from their work on Friday, May 2nd.  Free and open to the public, the event will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, Room 208, at 4:00 p.m.

Awarded since 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize celebrates the most prominent new American poets by bringing the work of previously unpublished artists to the attention of the larger public.  Previous winners of the prize include such talents as Adrienne Rich, John Ashberry, and Robert Hass.  It is the longest-running poetry prize in the United States. More information on the event after the jump.

Happy 444th Birthday, Will!

"When we are born we cry that we are come... to this great stage of fools," William Shakespeare once wrote. Well, 444 years ago today, Shakespeare entered this great stage of fools and made a little more sense out of it. To learn about how he did this, check out the wide array of Yale Press titles about the Bard, including Shakespeare the Thinker by A. D. Nuttall.

Nuttall’s profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare’s thought is a literary tour de force, a marvelous inquiry into the questions that engrossed the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the dynamic nature of Shakespeare’s evolving answers and provides for twenty-first-century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespeare’s plays.

Click here for an extended question & answer discussion with Nuttall. View the table of contents or read an excerpt.

To read Shakespeare's words as they should be read, Yale Press offers the Annotated Shakespeare series. Judith McGowan from the American Association of School Librarians says, "The volumes in this series will enrich any library that stocks editions of individual Shakespeaean plays."

Through the Annotated Shakespeare series, today’s readers have immediate access to the tools they need to help them better comprehend the plays of Shakespeare and explore their many possible interpretations. Each volume includes an informative introduction by the editor, Burton Raffel, a critical essay by Harold Bloom, and comprehensive on-page annotations that assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and lines. Handsome and affordable, these paperback editions invite every reader to get to know—or become reacquainted with—the genius of Shakespeare.

David Noel Freedman: May 12, 1922 - April 8, 2008

We are sad to report that David Noel Freedman, eminent biblical scholar and General Editor of the Anchor Bible for fifty years, died on April 8. His family plans to hold a memorial celebration in San Diego at a later date and has suggested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Society of Biblical Literature for a scholarship in his name.

Condolences may be sent to the family at 39 Meadow Glen, Petaluma, CA 94952.

William Propp wrote this obituary for the Society of Biblical Literature:

      On April 8, 2008, former SBL President (1975-76) David Noel Freedman, Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, died at the home of his son David and daughter-in-law Genevieve in Petaluma, California.  He was 85 years old. 

      Freedman was born Noel Freedman on May 12, 1922, in New York city, to Beatrice and David Freedman.  He deeply admired his immigrant father, a successful playwright and shtik writer for the likes of Eddie Cantor and Buster Keaton.  The over-worked Freedman senior died in 1936 at age 38, and his son adopted a new first name in his honor.  In his 70s and 80s, David Noel Freedman tried to bring back his father’s memory in another way, reissuing some of his works in print and arranging for a staging of his father’s first hit, Mendel, Inc.

The New Republic on Obama's economic guru and Gordin's yikhes

In the March 12th issue of The New Republic, Noam Scheiber writes of the effect of Richard Thaler's economic theories on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Scheiber writes, "Thaler is revered by the leading wonks on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Though he has no formal role, Thaler presides as a kind of in-house intellectual guru, consulting regularly with Obama's top economic adviser." Thaler and Cass Sunstein recently wrote Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Read more about Thaler's influence on Obama here.

Elsewhere in that same issue of The New Republic, Stephen Greenblatt discusses the yikhes--"status or honor" in Yiddish--of playwright Jacob Gordin. Greenblatt positively reviews The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America, saying that "the late Ruth Gay's fine and lively translation of Gordin's most famous play, along with the richly informative accompanying biographical and interpretative essays by Gay and Sophie Glazer, enable readers without Yiddish to understand what stirred Gordin's original audience so deeply." Read the entire review here.

The New Republic also extensively reviewed The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman for their February 27th issue. TNR subscribers can read that review here.

Abert's Mozart tops WSJ list

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, music critic James Penrose listed the five best books to "sound the depths of composers' lives." The number one book on that list is Hermann Abert's W.A. Mozart. Here's what Penrose had to say about the book:

Modern Mozart scholarship is indebted to Hermann Abert's groundbreaking biography, and little wonder. When it appeared in German almost 90 years ago, this engaging work was the last word on Mozart's life (1756-91) and music, offering penetrating analysis and wonderful accounts of his travails and triumphs and of his operas, concertos, church music and symphonies. But until last year, the book had never been translated into English. Stewart Spencer admirably executed the task for Yale University Press, and editor Cliff Eisen, a distinguished Mozart scholar, updated the text with scrupulous and marvelously perceptive annotations. Abert's study is a model of musical biography.

Penrose is not alone in his praise for W.A. Mozart. H.C. Robbins Landon calls it "indispensable. There is no doubt that Abert’s biography of Mozart is the most distinguished and best informed ever written, and it is incomprehensible that it has never been translated into English." Laurence Dreyfus of Magdalen College, Oxford agrees, finding W.A. Mozart to be "a very useful book. Nothing else does the job."

Read from the rest of the WSJ list.

Kronman in the Yale Daily News

The Yale Daily News ran an article on Anthony Kronman's new book, Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. The article, found here, discussed the impact of Kronman's ideas upon the Yale campus, including how Kronman "inspired" University President Richard Levin for his annual freshman address.

Education's End makes a passionate plea to revive the humanities’ lost tradition of preparing young people to address life’s most important question, what living is for. Tony Kronman explores how political correctness and the research ideal have led the humanities astray, and he argues that the study of life’s meaning is an essential component in higher education.

Spine-tingling books from YUP

In honor of the Halloween spirit, check out these spooks--I mean books--from Yale University Press.

Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber

In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers the first scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends. From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires, his book is fascinating reading.

Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity by J. E. Lendon

What set the successful armies of Sparta, Macedon, and Rome apart from those they defeated? In this major new history of battle from the age of Homer through the decline of the Roman empire, J. E. Lendon surveys a millennium of warfare to discover how militaries change—and don’t change—and how an army’s greatness depends on its use of the past.

The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult by Clément Chéroux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem, and Sophie Schmit

This fascinating book assembles more than 250 photographic images from the Victorian era to the 1960s, each purporting to document an occult phenomenon: levitations, apparitions, transfigurations, ectoplasms, spectres, ghosts, and auras. Drawn from the archives of European and American occult societies and private and public collections, the photographs in many cases have never before been published.

Ghost Ships: A Surrealist Love Triangle by Robert McNab

This book tells the story of a secret journey made by three significant figures in the Surrealist movement—the painter Max Ernst, Paul Eluard (cofounder of Surrealism), and Eluard’s wife Gala—exploring their ménage à trois and the impact of the trip on their work.

Whether you're hiding under the covers or hiding under the hardcovers, Yale University Press wishes you a Happy Halloween!

Panel at Yale in honor of Nuttall's Shakespeare the Thinker

Shakespeare's inner thought process will be the subject of a panel discussion held at Yale tomorrow, October 30. "Shakespeare the Thinker" will be at 4:30 p.m., in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, 1080 Chapel Street. The panel is free and open to the public.

Among the notable panelists are literary critic Harold Bloom and Connecticut Poet Laureate John Hollander. The event is hosted by Yale University Press, the Yale Center for British Art and the Whitney Humanities Center.

According to the Yale University Office of Public Affairs, the event was organized in honor of the late A. D. Nuttall and the recent publication of his book, Shakespeare the Thinker.

A. D. Nuttall’s study of Shakespeare’s intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to the late romances: the nature of motive, cause, personal identity and relation, the proper status of imagination, ethics and subjectivity, language and its capacity to occlude and to communicate. Yet Shakespeare’s thought, Nuttall demonstrates, is anything but static. The plays keep returning to, modifying, and complicating his creative preoccupations. Nuttall allows us to hear and appreciate the emergent cathedral choir of play speaking to play. By the later stages of Nuttall’s book this choir is nearly overwhelming in its power and dimensions. The author does not limit discussion to moments of crucial intellection but gives himself ample space in which to get at the distinctive essence of each work.

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

For more information about the panel discussion, click here or contact Manana Sikic at 203 432-0673.

Yale University Press Partners with NetLibrary, OCLC -- Adds Digital Content

Published on BookStandard.com and InfoToday.com:

Yale University Press is now adding digital content to NetLibrary (www.oclc.org), OCLC’s platform for econtent to libraries worldwide. Among notable titles in the Yale collection are Ali Allawi’s The Occupation of Iraq, E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, the Yale Series of Younger Poets, the Annotated Shakespeare, the Lamar Series in Western History, Yale University Press Health and Wellness series, and others.

More than 400 Yale University Press titles are currently available through NetLibrary, and another 2000-plus titles will be added after the backlist is digitized.

“It’s fitting that as we enter into our second century, we begin to establish partnerships that will help us fulfill our founding mission—to aid in the discovery and dissemination of knowledge—well into the future,” said John Donatich, director of Yale University Press. "With this in mind, we are very pleased to be working with NetLibrary and excited by the new opportunities that this relationship will afford."

"OCLC NetLibrary is pleased to be able to offer titles from Yale University Press, one of the most distinguished American university presses," said Chip Nilges, vice president of OCLC Business Development. "These titles represent works that promote a greater understanding of our world, and will be of great benefit to users of all libraries, and particularly academic institutions." Users now have access to more than 150,000 titles from 400-plus publishers in OCLC NetLibrary’s econtent platform offered through 15,000-plus libraries worldwide.

Read the entire The Book Standard article or Information Today, Inc. article.

Anthony T. Kronman tells Inside Higher Ed why great books are still great

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Anthony T. Kronman, author of Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, discussed higher education's movement away from from the most important questions in life.

Read the entire interview.

Kronman's book makes a passionate plea to revive the humanities’ lost tradition of preparing young people to address life’s most important question, what living is for. Kronman explores how political correctness and the research ideal have led the humanities astray, and he argues that the study of life’s meaning is an essential component in higher education.

Here's what others have said about Education's End:

• President Emeritus of Williams College Francis Oakley says, "Kronman unfolds here a sustained argument marked by subtlety, force, nuance, and considerable appeal."
• A "bold and provocative book" written with "eloquence and passion," says Michael J. Sandel, author of The Case against Perfection and Public Philosophy.
• "A brilliant, sustained argument that is as forthright, bold, and passionately felt as it is ideologically unclassifiable and original.," says Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World:  Power Nonviolence and the Will of the People. He goes on to say that "although Kronman’s specific area of concern is higher education, his argument will reach far beyond campus walls."
• Alvin Kernan, author of In Plato's Cave, applauds Kronman for his "carefully reasoned position of what happened, why it did, and what needs and can be done about it."

Anthony T. Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Since stepping down as Dean of the Law School in 2004, he has been teaching in the Directed Studies Program at Yale and devoting himself to the humanities.

BREAKING NEWS: Yale University Press Acquires Anchor Bible Series from Doubleday

For Immediate Release: September 25, 2007

Yale University Press Acquires
Anchor Bible Series from Doubleday

New York and New Haven— The Anchor Bible Series, a prestigious collection of more than 115 volumes of biblical scholarship, has been acquired by Yale University Press from Doubleday.  Yale University Press will publish all backlist and new volumes in the series, to be renamed Anchor Yale Bible, going forward.  Stephen Rubin, President and Publisher of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, and John Donatich, Director of Yale University Press, jointly announced the deal today.  Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

This sale will enable Doubleday to enhance its existing focus on publishing general religious titles for the trade market.  Yale University Press will be adding a highly-regarded line of books that strengthens its existing publishing program and serves its mandate to publish serious works that further scholarly investigation and advance interdisciplinary inquiry.  Yale Press plans to develop the series with new interdisciplinary ways of studying the bible while taking advantage of the new technologies within digital platforms.

Remembering our founding fathers on Independence Day

Today we celebrate 231 years of American independence with parades and traditional past times of barbecues and fireworks. As we enjoy this patriotic holiday, Yale University Press looks to our founding fathers who brought forth new ideas to an emerging nation.

In this New York Times Bestseller, Gore Vidal's Inventing a Nation provides us with his uniquely irreverent take on America’s founding fathers. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation and considers the impact of their ideas and personalities on an America that he views with both pride and concern.

Yale University presents 24-hr Shakespeare Marathon

A 24-hr Shakespeare marathon, the first of its kind at Yale Unversity, will be held this weekend at the Old Campus. According to the Yale Daily News, a full reading of all of his 39 plays, 5 narrative poems and 154 sonnets will be performed and read on campus. A similar marathon was peformed at Wellesley College in 2004 and several Yale students who attended the even decided to bring the project to New Haven. Taking place in four classrooms on Old Campus, the event is open to the public and participation is encouraged.

Released last week by Yale University Press, A.D. Nuttall's Shakespeare the Thinker is hot on the heels of this one-of-a-kind event.  A. D. Nuttall's profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare's thought is a literary tour de force, a marvelous inquiry into the questions that engrossed the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the dynamic nature of Shakespeare's evolving answers and provides for twenty-first-century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespeare's plays.

For full text of the Yale Daily News article, written by contributing reporter Rebecca Arzoian, click here.

Can't Get Enough Rome?

The current HBO series “Rome” comes just months after the release of Adrian Goldworthy’s acclaimed new biography Caesar: Life of a Colossus. As Goldsworthy writes in his introduction to the book, “in his fifty-six years, Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover and adulterer.” Goldsworthy incorporates all these facets of Caesar’s story into what Publishers Weekly calls an “exhaustive, lucid, elegantly written life.” Listen to an interview with Adrian Goldsworthy on the Yale Press Podcast.

Interested readers will also enjoy Anthony Barrett’s Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome, Jerome Carcopino’s Daily Life in Ancient Rome, and J. E. Lendon’s Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity—all available in paperback from Yale University Press.

Caesar Hailed Again

Steve Coates reviewed Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Says Coates:

The dramatic trajectory of [Caesar’s] life, with its bloody denouement, well suits Goldworthy’s vigorous and un-self-conscious style. The result is an authoritative and exciting portrait not only of Caesar but of the complex society in which he lived.

Read the full Times book review here.

Click here to listen to an interview with Adrian Goldsworthy on the Yale Press Podcast.

The Late Republic?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Mark Miller writes, “There are points of similarity between the political culture of late republican Rome and our own, but the differences reveal how far we have to go before we hit bottom -- contrary to the dire warnings emanating from certain political quarters today.”

And further:

“As Adrian Goldsworthy makes clear in his excellent biography, Caesar changed the times he lived in by dint of skill, charisma and unfathomable ambition -- he indeed bestrode the narrow world like a colossus. . . It would be wrong for us to draw too many lessons for our current world from this outsize figure from classical history. The checks and balances in our own republic were designed to protect against the kinds of political instability or democracy-erosion that leads to Caesarism. But it can't hurt to be reminded grand political ambitions can sometimes leave the rest of us worse off than before.”

But wasn’t the entire Republican system in Rome set up to prevent the consolidation of power under one man? And didn’t this system last for nearly 500 years? As Goldsworthy shows in his book, the later years of the Roman Republic were marked by astonishing violence and the repeal of centuries-old tradition, custom, and law. It is precisely because this late Republican period was so tumultuous that it is so compelling. And it begs the question (if only for the sake of argument): How much stronger are our current checks and balances than the Roman ones?

Comment here.

Hail, Caesar!

If you haven't heard it already, tune in to Tom Ashbrook's conversation with Adrian Goldsworthy on NPR's On Point.

From the On Point website: "Hail, Caesar!" they still cry in the movies as once they saluted in the heart of ancient Rome and on battlefields from Gaul to Syria.

Julius Caesar -- general, consul, dictator -- is one of the most magnetic and controversial figures in all of history. Few have matched his power, his military and political genius, his glory - and his infamy. He raised an empire, and destroyed a democratic republic. Many look for lessons in his story today.

British historian Adrian Goldsworthy is out with an acclaimed new biography of the man proclaimed a god in the Roman Senate, and killed in the Roman Senate.

Adam Kirsch of The New York Sun calls Caesar: Life of a Colossus, "one of the most fascinating biographies you will come across this year."

Read a pdf excerpt from the book.