Yale Press Log

Israel's Independence and Churchill's Zionism

As Israel, and its millions of supporters world-wide, celebrate its 60th birthday, few realize the important role that Winston Churchill played in the establishment of the State of Israel and the shaping of the modern Middle East.

Michael Makovsky’s groundbreaking Churchill’s Promised Land, brings this and much more to light in his careful and nuanced examination of Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism.

In exploring Churchill’s evolving and ultimately romantic interest in Zionism, Makovsky offers a fresh, more complete and revealing understanding of this great statesman’s worldview. 

Churchill’s Promised Land won the National Jewish Book Award for History (2007) and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature (2008).

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents. Click here to listen to an interview with Michael Makovsky on the Yale Press Podcast.

Morris's 1948 is a critics' favorite

Under the spotlight of the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence, Benny Morris's recent book, 1948, is a praised as a shining example.

Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features David Margolick's review, saying: "Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively."

The May 5th issue of The New Yorker hit newsstands on Monday with a feature piece by David Remnick. This piece on Israeli history centers around Morris and the publication of 1948, calling it "a commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that, in the wake of the Holocaust, gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another."

Last Monday, David Holahan reviewed the book for the Hartford Courant. 1948, he said, is "a richly detailed and thoroughly researched primer.... A compelling 'aha' book, 1948 brings order to complex, little-understood subjects." He went on to compliment Morris on his "vivid narrative prose and masterly analysis."

Canada's National Post began running excerpts from 1948 on May 5, and will run a total of 5 installments. Read the second and third installments.

Solove interview on NYT Freakonomics blog

Annika Mengisen of the New York Times' Freakonomics blog sat down with another Yale Press author, Daniel Solove. They talked about Solove's new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, and why even those with "virtually no online footprint" should be concerned about their internet reputation. Read the entire interview here.

Other bloggers have picked up this interview. The Tree of Knowledge said that internet reputation is "going to be an interesting area in coming years." And at the Nudges blog, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein emphasized Solove's point about nudges and choice architecture in social networking sites. Thaler and Sunstein themselves have written about this issue in their book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Click here to listen to another interview with Solove on the Yale Press Podcast. Visit Solove's website or read his blog Concurring Opinions. And click here to see Daniel Solove discuss his book as part of Google's Authors@Google speaker series.

May Day and National Hamburger Month

In honor of May Day, Slate ran an article on the best recent books about Communism. After reviewing some basics like the Communist Manifesto, they recommend the Annals of Communism series:

...Once you've got the surveys under your belt, you can turn to Yale University Press' Annals of Communism series, a unique publishing venture designed to make use of Soviet archives. Whether you want Andrei Sakharov's personal files, Stalin's correspondence with Molotov, or documents explaining the Katyn massacre, they're all available in beautifully edited and annotated translations. Don't miss John Haynes and Harvey Klehr's history of the American Communist Party (also a Yale book, also based on Soviet archives), either.

Read the entire article here.

May 1 is also the beginning of National Hamburger Month. Hamburger expert and Yale Press author Josh Ozersky reviewed New York's best burgers for the Daily News. Here is what the Daily News had to say in return about Ozersky and his new book, The Hamburger: A History:

If the city has a professor of patties, it's probably Josh Ozersky, the online food editor for New York magazine.

Not only does he test out several specimens a week, but he has just written a sexy little volume on the history of the patty from its 18th-century beginnings to its postwar boom thanks to White Castle.

Read the entire article here.

Live chats with Zittrain and Speth!

Do you have any questions for Jonathan Zittrain about the future of the Internet? Well, thanks to the Internet, you can ask him today in a live chat with Network World from 2PM to 3PM. You can start posting your questions now, or just check back at 2 to hear Zittrain answer other people's questions.

Network World, in a recent feature on his book, lauded Zittrain's "thought-provoking ideas about the trade-off between convenience and innovation on the Internet." Read the entire review, or click here to read more about the book, including excerpts and the table of contents. Also, click here to watch videos of Zittrain fielding interesting questions on current events and trends at bigthink.com.

And tomorrow at 3 PM, washingtonpost.com will host a live chat with James Gustave Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World. You can begin submitting questions here.

The Bridge at the Edge of the World was reviewed in the Green section of the Washington Post. They said that Speth, who has "long been prominent in the environmental movement," gives "an extremely probing and thoughtful diagnosis of the root causes of planetary distress." Read the entire review here. Or read an excerpt from the book itself.

Thaler and Sunstein, nudging across America

Yale Press authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have received a lot of press and praise for their newest book, Nudge. For those of you who want to hear what the authors themselves have to say, here are some opportunities:

• PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley will have Thaler on air for tonight's show (Friday 4/25). Click here to check your local listings, or here for more information on the program.
• On May 1 in Washington D.C., the CATO Institute will host a talk for Thaler, Sunstein, and a commentator at 12:00 PM.
• On May 16, Thaler and Sunstein will come to Chicago for the GSB Management Conference at the University of Chicago. They will be speaking at 1:00 PM.
• At the Google offices in San Francisco, Thaler and Sunstein will be giving a talk about their book at 1:00 PM on May 29.
• Thaler will be in Miami on June 8th to give a talk about Nudge.
• Sunstein will return to Washington D.C. on June 27th at 7 PM to discuss the book at the bookstore Politics & Prose.

If you just can't wait until Thaler and Sunstein come to town, then listen to Cass Sunstein discuss libertarian paternalism on the Glenn and Helen Show, a podcast broadcast through Politics Central via PajamasMedia.

You can also check out their website, www.nudges.org, for news, announcements and to send your own nudge suggestions to the authors.

Speth's Bridge brings together diverse thinkers

Gus Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, has been praised by a wide range of readers.

A Christian writer from Read the Spirit called Speth's ideas "a sign of hope." A philosopher of social science at ChangingSociety lauded Speth's "very powerful analysis," while comparing his ideas to those of the Dalai Lama. The writer at Kale for Sale wrote that Speth "is bursting at the seams with information and urgency." And Andrew Revkin on his DotEarth New York Times blog mentioned that The Bridge at the Edge of the World is on his reading table. And a review from the Yale Daily News noted that Speth's book makes "an argument supported from professionals from several different disciplines."

To hear what Speth himself has to say about his ideas, here's a video of Speth's April 22 appearance on OnPoint.

"During today's OnPoint, Speth, a former chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and founder of both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, explains why he is unhappy with the current state of environmentalism. He also gauges the changing level of interest in environmental issues on college campuses throughout the country."

View this video here while you still can--It will only be on the site for the next six months.

Click here to listen to an interview with Gus Speth on the Yale Press Podcast.

Thaler and Sunstein on newsprint, airwaves, and blogs

Journalists across the web are giving a nudge--I mean, a nod--to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Thaler and Sunstein wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe, discussing the importance of behavioral economics in policymaking. The Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog pointed their readers towards that article in the Globe.

Newsweek's story Dieting for Dollars began with an anecdote from Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge about two economics grads who gambled on their weight.

On Thursday, while Sunstein guest-blogged for The Volokh Conspiracy in a post titled "Give More Tomorrow and Choice Architecture," Thaler spoke on The Leonard Lopate Show about "How to Choose Wisely." You can download Thaler's segment, or listen with the audio player below.

Hartford Courant profiles Brent and YUP's digital Stalin archive

The Hartford Courant profiled Jonathan Brent, editorial director of Yale Press' Annals of Communism Project, and interviewed him about the Press's $1.3 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin's Personal Archive.

After sharing a story of Stalin's correspondences with director Sergei Eisenstein and novelist Upton Sinclair, the Courant said, "It is documents like the dispatch to Sinclair that distinguish Yale's Stalin archive." Read the entire article here.

The article in the Courant was picked up by the History News Network, as well as by RussiaTrek and cafe historia, who said, "This is surely what the web was designed to do. If only other institutions would follow suit."

The digitization of Stalin's Personal Archive is a new initiative of Yale University Press' acclaimed Annals of Communism series, begun in 1992.  The digitized documents from this archive will become the basis for future scholarly research, while expediting traditional book publications on topics of great importance in understanding Soviet and twentieth-century world history.

NYT on professions and recessions: Sennett and Fraser

Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Lewis Hyde reviewed The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. He explains the book's ideas, saying that he enjoyed "the companionship of its inquiring intelligence." Hyde goes on to tell the readers, "There is much to learn here." Read the entire review here.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than "skilled manual labor," Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman's work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

Click here to listen to an interview with Richard Sennett on the Yale Press Podcast. View the table of contents, or read an excerpt from The Craftsman.

In an article on Wall Street-bound graduates and their nervousness about the recession, Louise Story of the New York Times asked Yale Press author Steve Fraser. Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, also teaches an undergraduate seminar on Wall Street at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the beginning of the semester, Mr. Fraser noticed that students seemed to think the housing crisis was unrelated to their goals in finance and was caused mostly by irresponsible borrowers. But after the collapse of Bear Sterns, he said, they had "a great deal more sympathy for people who have already been affected by this crisis.

"There’s a sense in the class now that things are more worrying, that this may affect them."

Read the entire New York Times article here. Click here to listen to an interview with Fraser on the Yale Press Podcast.

Remembering Dith Pran

Dith Pran, author of Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors, passed away on Sunday in New Brunswick, N.J, as reported in the New York Times. He was a photojournalist for the New York Times and founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project.

This extraordinary book contains eyewitness accounts of life in Cambodia during Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, accounts written by survivors who were children at the time. The book has been put together by Pran, whose own experiences in Cambodia were so graphically portrayed in the film The Killing Fields.

The testimonies related here bear poignant witness to the slaughter the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the Cambodian people. The contributors—most of them now in the United States and pictured in photographs that accompany their stories—report on life in Democratic Kampuchea as seen through children's eyes. They speak of their bewilderment and pain as Khmer Rouge cadres tore their families apart, subjected them to harsh brainwashing, drove them from their homes to work in forced-labor camps, and executed captives in front of them. Their stories tell of suffering and the loss of innocence, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Click here to read the entire New York Times obituary.

Two Yale Press authors to talk on NPR today

Tune your dials to NPR from 11-noon EST today and you're bound to hear one of our Yale Press authors share their expertise.

James Gustave Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, will talk to Diane Rehm about the effect of American-style consumer capitalism upon the environment. To learn more about his appearance on The Diane Rehm Show, click here.

The author of Red Sky at Morning would be the first to agree that we are in deep environmental trouble, but he offers hope that there is still time to avert global catastrophe. Gus Speth explores a wide variety of promising and even radical ideas for transforming modern capitalism so as to protect and restore the natural world.

Or you can hear Josh Ozersky, author of The Hamburger: A History and online food editor for New York Magazine. Ozersky will discuss the juicy story of America's favorite sandwich live on WBUR's On Point. For more information, click here.

A lively and entertaining history of the hamburger and why it is no mere sandwich in America, but an icon. Josh Ozersky uncovers an array of facts and stories about the hamburger’s evolution and chronicles how the burger has reflected—and even shaped—American business and culture.

Nudging Against Global Warming

In his Findings column for the New York Times, John Tierney wonders why Americans aren't changing their lives in reaction to climate change. "We need the right nudge," Tierney says, referring to the recent release from Yale Press authors Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Taking a cue from Thaler and Sunstein, Tierney suggests a piece of jewelry that measures the wearer's carbon footprint and displays it to the world on a scale from red to green. Writing a blog post for TierneyLab, Tierney nudged his readers to help him out with this project: "Do you have a better name, or a better nudge of kind? The best suggestion will be rewarded with a copy of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago." Click here to read the entire post or enter the contest.

For more information about nudges, check out Nudge or the website for the book, www.nudges.org, with news, reviews, a blog and even a glossary.

Sennett's The Craftsman in print, blogs, and air waves

In addition to the blogs Hand Made Theory, Zeigarnika, and Greenjeans Blog that feature Richard Sennett's The Craftsman, guardian.co.uk has two reviews and an article by Sennett himself.

The review that appeared in the Observer on February 17 says, "As in his previous books, Sennett ranges fluently across philosophy, literature, art, music and technology." Meanwhile, the reviewer from the Guardian says, "Richard Sennett is a prime observer of society, an American, a pragmatist who takes the nitty gritty of daily life and turns it into a disquisition on morality.... He is an enchanting writer with important things to say." For a taste of what he has to say, check out his article, "Labours of Love," which appeared last month in the Guardian.

Sennett was also invited as a guest on The Diane Rehm Show, where he talked about everyone's potential to be a craftsman. Listen to the show in Real Audio format here, or in Windows Media format here. If you want to hear more from Sennett, click here to listen to an interview with him on the Yale Press Podcast.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than "skilled manual labor," Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

View the table of contents, or read an excerpt from the book.

Jeal wins NBCC award for Biography!

The National Book Critics Circle awarded Tim Jeal first place in the category of Biography for Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. The NBCC blog Critical Mass liveblogged the award ceremony:

7:06 p.m.: Art Winslow announces the winner for Biography. It's...

TIM JEAL, FOR STANLEY: THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE OF AFRICA'S GREATEST EXPLORER!

7:10 p.m.: Tim Jeal takes the mike, and is "deeply grateful" to his wife for putting up with him. Says "gobsmacked," which is the best reason for putting anyone from the UK near a mike.

Read more about the award here.

Jeal's been having a great week. Last Thursday he was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the category of Biography. The winner of that award will be announced in late April at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Tim Jeal is the author of two previous biographies, Livingstone and Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts, both published by Yale University Press and both chosen as Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

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.

Khrushcheva’s Imagining Nabokov tops reading lists

Andrew Nagorski, award-winning journalist and senior editor at Newsweek International, is a fan of Nina Khrushcheva’s Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics. When asked by the blog "Writers Read," Nagorski said, "At a time when Putin’s Russia is once again claiming a special status and scorning the West and its concept of democracy, Nina Khrushcheva has written an extended meditation on one of that country’s great writers: Vladimir Nabokov.... Nabokov was a truly modern man, someone who offers a much-needed antidote to the increasingly narrow outlook of Russia’s current rulers."

This book offers the original hypothesis that the novels of Russian-turned-American writer Vladimir Nabokov are highly relevant to the political transformation underway in Russia today. Nina Khrushcheva suggests that Nabokov’s fictional Western characters can be useful guides for acquiring new skills that the advent of democracy, capitalism, and open borders requires.

You may have seen Khrushcheva in her appearance on the Russia Today network yesterday, talking about the upcoming Russian elections. If you missed it, be sure to tune in to CBC Radio (Canada) on Feb. 29th. She will appear on As It Happens to discuss both the elections and Imagining Nabokov.

If you want to see Khrushcheva in person, then go to the New School on March 7th, where she'll appear with Jack Matlock and Ian Buruma. For more information on that author event, click here.

Who was the real Fidel Castro?

In the wake of his resignation, many are asking who Fidel Castro really was, and what really happened in Cuba during his tenure as President. The answer to these questions--and more--can be found in two Yale Press titles, both available in paperback.

The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman

Published on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, this timely book, the most intimate and dispassionate biography of Fidel Castro to date, offers a fresh assessment of the revolutionary leader. Written by the British ambassador to Cuba in the early 1990s, it chronicles the events of Castro’s extraordinary life and explores the contradiction between the private character and the public reputation.

Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott

In this acute and profoundly engaged exploration of Cuban history, British journalist Richard Gott illuminates the island’s entire revolutionary past, from pre-Columbian times to the present. He emphasizes little-known aspects of Cuba’s early centuries and provides an extraordinary account of Castro’s regime, its lonely survival in the post-Soviet years, and its expected future. View the table of contents by clicking here.

Yale Press authors explore Broadway, investigate Roswell, and report on Latin America

Especially in these winter months, it's hard to imagine a world without "Baby, It's Cold Outside" and other classic Frank Loesser tunes. Mark Steyn, reviewing Thomas L. Riis' Frank Loesser for the Wall Street Journal, realizes that "a world without Frank Loesser and 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' would be very cold indeed." Steyn calls Frank Loesser by Yale Press author Thomas L. Riis "a solid overview of an underappreciated talent." Steyn not only praises this "invaluable" book, but also Yale University Press as a whole for the "important and valuable Broadway Masters series of musicological studies." You can read the entire review here.

Frank Loesser, most famous for composing the ever-popular musical Guys and Dolls (1950), also wrote the music and lyrics for the Pulitzer prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and other hits. This book is the first to bring the full story of Loesser’s life and creative achievement in Hollywood and on Broadway into the light.

Elsewhere in the Wall Street Journal, Max Holland listed the "Five Best" books on untangling the rise of conspiracy theories. Number 2 was Yale Press' Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America by Robert Alan Goldberg, which Holland called "unrivaled" for books published within the past decade. You can see Holland's entire list here.

In this enthralling book Robert Goldberg focuses on conspiracy theories in post-World War II America, examining how they became popular and why they remain so. He investigates conspiracy theories surrounding the Roswell UFO incident, the Communist threat, the rise of the Antichrist, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Jewish plot against black America. Those who suspect conspiracies are not confined to the lunatic fringe, Goldberg shows. In fact, paranoid rhetoric and thinking are disturbingly widespread and have become an integral part of American political culture.

You can tune in tomorrow to KERA Texas public radio to hear Michael Reid, author of Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul. His hour-long interview for Think with Krys Boyd will start at noon, February 12, and can be heard online here.

Latin America, home to half-a-billion people, the world's largest reserves of arable land, and 8.5 percent of global oil, is in the midst of a vast transformation. Michael Reid, a journalist with many years of experience in the region, explores Latin America's current shift to the political left, its struggle to compete economically, and the potential for democracy to flourish there.

Yale Press Awarded $1.3 Million Grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Yale University Press is pleased to announce that it has received a $1.3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin's Personal Archive.

The digitization of Stalin's Personal Archive is a new initiative of Yale University Press's acclaimed Annals of Communism series, begun in 1992.  The digitized documents from this archive will become the basis for future scholarly research, while expediting traditional book publications on topics of great importance in understanding Soviet and twentieth-century world history.  Scholars worldwide will be able to investigate the rare primary source materials and documents contained in this archive without having to travel to Moscow where the archive is held and will be able to communicate their findings instantaneously online. The archive contains significant new materials relating to Stalin's political life and death:  documents concerning foreign policy with Germany before World War II; Stalin's communications with Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKDV during the Great Purges; Stalin's directives to the Politburo after World War II; material illuminating his relations with Western intellectuals and political leaders, including Franklin D. Roosevelt; and his private notations concerning Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, and other Soviet leaders. It also contains inestimably important materials from Stalin's library.

Fred Shapiro names year's top 10 quotes

As 2008 approaches, Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, looked back on all of the quotes, soundbytes, and catchphrases that made an impact in 2007. Now, Shapiro has prepared a top ten list of the most memorable quotes, Reuters reports.

Shapiro's number one for 2007 was "Don't tase me, bro!" from University of Florida student Andrew Meyer. According to Reuters, Shapiro sees this quote as "a symbol of pop culture success. Within two days it was one of the most popular phrases on Google and one of the most viewed videos. It also showed up on ringtones and T-shirts."

Shapiro's list was also featured on NBC's TODAY show. On Meyer's quote, Shapiro told MSNBC, "It's not Shakespeare, but there is a kind of folk eloquence in that. It wouldn't be a quote if he didn't say 'bro'.... That had just the right rhythm to make it memorable."

To read Reuter's article on the entire list, click here. To see TODAY's segment on it, launch the video found here.

This reader-friendly quotation book is unique in its focus on modern and American quotations.  It is also the first to use state-of-the-art research methods to capture famous quotations and to trace sources of quotations to their true origins.  It contains more than 12,000 entries not only from literary and historical sources but also from popular culture, sports, computers, politics, law, and the social sciences. With fascinating annotations, extensive cross-references, and a large keyword index, the book is a curious reader's delight.

Read an excerpt from the book, or listen to an interview with Fred Shapiro on the Yale Press Podcast.

YUP authors on FM radio

A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, author of Hotel: An American History, appeared on WBUR Boston's On Point to discuss "how America invented the hotel, and how the hotel invented America." You can listen to the program--which aired on Thursday, December 13th--in Windows Media Player by clicking here, or with RealPlayer by clicking here. For an excerpt from Hotel: An American History, a slideshow of images from the book, or more about the radio program, click here. Or if you want to hear even more from Sandoval-Strausz, click here for his interview from the Yale Press Podcast.

Hotel is a spellbinding history of the hotel in America—a saga in which politicians and prostitutes, tourists and confidence men, celebrities and salesmen all have a role. The book explores the modern hotel as a distinctly American invention, the development of its architecture, and its influence on society from colonial days to the civil rights movement.

And from WAQY Springfield, MA, Bax & O'Brien interviewed Daniel Solove about his book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. The interview, which took place this morning, can be heard in two parts, here and here.

This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet?

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

Etzioni ponders the hypocrisy of illegal immigration policies

In another blog for The Huffington Post, Yale Press author Amitai Etzioni discusses "The Immigration Hypocrisy." He begins:

The United States is spending scores of billions of dollars to build fences and to train and enlarge the border patrol in an effort to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, especially from south of the border. However, if an immigrant has few extra bucks and a bit of know-how, he or she can avoid the hot desert, the dangerous coyotes, and possible confrontations with the Minutemen or border patrol agents. They can simply fly to the US, enjoying complimentary drinks and munchies on one of the numerous airlines, and, once their visa has expired, they can just stay. No one knows exactly how many of the 300 million (I kid you not) visitors who came to the US simply refuse to leave when their time is up, but the number is very substantial. (Estimates vary between 60% to "only" 40% of all illegal immigrants).

Continue reading "The Immigration Hypocrisy."

Yale University Press recently released Amitai Etzioni's Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy.

Few would argue against the need for change in American foreign policy, but what approach would be best? Amitai Etzioni here proposes a foreign policy that is both pragmatic and morally sound—one in which basic security is the first priority. His ideas ring with the sound of reason, and his book should be required reading for every leader, policy maker and voter in America.

Amitai Etzioni is a Professor of International Relations at the George Washington University. Among his books are From Empire to Community, Political Unification Revisited, Winning Without War, and The Common Good. He served as a Senior Aid to the White House and as President of the American Sociological Association. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Berkeley. He was listed as one of the top 100 American intellectuals in Richard Posner’s book Public Intellectuals.

Yale Press books about unlikely neighbors and allies

In light of continued media coverage about the U.S.'s relationship with Iran, Trita Parsi's attention-grabbing Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States was reviewed by both Salon and Bloomberg News. Gary Kamiya of Salon calls it "an important new book," addressing a "fundamental misunderstanding of the country" of Iran. Celestine Bohlen of Bloomberg News admires the book for "tackling the complex question of Israel's role in what has become a triangular relationship" between Iran, the U.S., and Israel.

Read an excerpt, view the table of contents, or listen to an interview with the author on the Yale Press Podcast.

Slate and Seattle Times have recently praised In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, released earlier this year in paperback.

This intriguing book examines the often surprising ways that crows and ravens and humans interact. Featuring more than 100 striking illustrations, the book recounts lively stories about crows and ravens throughout history and around the world, and the authors challenge us to reconsider our thinking not only about these compelling birds but also about ourselves.