Stanford University Press Blog

New Spring Titles from SUP!

Spring is here, and with it come longer daylight hours (more time for reading), warmer temps (for reading outside) and a fresh crop of new titles from Stanford University Press to seize and hold your attention all season long.  This spring's list caters to every taste, interest, and sensibility and covers topics from politics to film, world events to business, science to literature.  While it's impossible for us to pick our favorites (there are too many, and we like them all!), here is a sampling of our tempting titles to whet your appetite:

Journalists, politicians, scholars and others are marking the one-year anniversary of the "Arab Spring" by re-examining the causes, similarities, and differences between the various protest movements that populated the Middle East in 2011.  Josh Stacher's Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria is a critical comparison of the revolutions in Egypt and in Syria in which Stacher argues that the structural underpinnings of autocracies differ very much from one to another, and these differences have everything to do with how regime change will play out within a state.

 

For the cinéaste (or for anyone who's read Paul Rudnick's latest in the New  Yorker), The Beauty of the Real: What Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French Actresses is SF Chronicle film critic and Bay Area Talking Head Mick La Salle's (very opinionated!) tribute to French film, and in particular to the actresses who make it what it is.  American audiences are hungry for the kind of intelligent, introspective, and thought-provoking films that French actresses are making  throughout their careers.  And yes, throughout: from teenagers to nonagenarians.

 

  This election year, Matt Grossman's The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation, and American Governance will be the guide to understanding why some interest groups are far better than others in gaining access to politicians and getting what they want.  As Publishers Weekly stated in their review, "constituencies that are more engaged with public affairs and their communities, he contends, make their voices heard better through organized representation."  In other words, says PW, "Grossmann’s clear-eyed analysis of who gets a seat at the table suggests that democracy’s faults lie not in our lobbyists but in ourselves."

 

The marketplace is awash in titles that suggest "how to" start a business:  entrepreneurship has been the topic in boardrooms and classrooms across the country.  But say you've started your own business, and you've made it through that first hurdle.  You are a success!    Erm...now what?   Professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in Residence at the Darden Graduate School of Business has the answers.  Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Business is for those who want their business to thrive beyond the start-up phase.  He identifies the top ten growth challenges to new businesses and, based on extensive research on more than fifty companies, and offering the lived experiences of eleven entrepreneurs, shows how to overcome them

Be sure to keep checking our website,  blog, Twitter feed (@Stanfordpress) and Face Book Page for more updates as the season rolls on!

Considering "Best Sellers:" Theirs and Ours

We can't put down the Summer Issue of Bookforum, especially their special section on "Best Sellers."      Author commentary by Claire Messud, Patrick McGrath,  Joshua Cohen and others on Rebecca, Love Story, Valley of the Dolls and other blockbusters reminded us of  beach reads, tear-jerkers, and up-all-night books from our past, while longer essays from Mike Dirda, Ruth Franklin, Gerald Howard and Stuart Kelley made us  think about what "best sellers" really say about the publishing business, literary culture, history past and present, and ourselves.  We love Dirda's proposal that "a writer can only be on the best-seller list once," thus freeing up space (and "New York Times Best Seller" naming rights) for newcomers, and his admonishment to "think outside the list" and "break away from reading only the season's most obvious writers and books. " And Ruth Franklin's sobering deconstruction  reminds us that "regardless of what the books contain, a list composed almost entirely of mainstays is a depressing marker of national conservatism and complacency." 

Speaking of "thinking outside the list," a quick look at our own list of top-selling books for the month of June might encourage you to "be brave," as Dirda writes, and try a little something off the beaten path:

1.  Corporate Culture, by Eric G. Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle  

2. Embedded Sustainability, by Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembeyeva

3.  Ordinary Egyptians, by Ziad Fhamy

4.  Homo Sacer, by Giorgia Agamben

5. Gender and Islam in Africa, edited by Margo Badran

6.  Minority Business Success, by Leonard Greenhalgh and James H. Lowry

7.  Bootstrapping Democracy, by Gianpaolo Baicchio, Patrick Heller, and Marcelo K. Silva

8.  Law and Long-Term Economic Change, edited by Deborah Ma and Jan Luiten van Zanden

9.  The Oil Prince's Legacy, by Mary Brown Bullock

10.  Golden Arches East, edited by James L. Watson

 

Pardis Mahdavi and Rhacel Parreñas on Human Trafficking

Across the globe each year there exist an astonishing number of humans who are forced into labor in one way or another. The numbers range from hundreds of thousands to millions upon millions, and yet each year we fail to understand the true process and implications of human trafficking. SUP authors Pardis Mahdavi and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas take us one step further toward understanding this grave phenomenon in their books, which highlight the behind-the-scenes aspect of human trafficking. 

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo by Rhacel Parreñas has yet to be published and will hit the shelves in September of this year. In the book, Parrenas attempts to unveil the true nature of trafficking in Japan by documenting her experience while working alongside Filipina migrant workers--who accounted for more that 10 percent of the total estimated trafficking victims in 2004.  She addresses both the unknown and the misconceived in the world of trafficking and attempts to uncover the true motives and experiences of the workers themselves. 

Like Parreñas’ forthcoming book, Pardis Mahdavi’s recent Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai also addresses the misunderstandings of forced human labor and how they can lead to more harm than good for the workers involved. Gridlock illustrates the true reality and atrocity of the migrant worker’s life in Dubai with an abundance of personal narratives from the workers themselves. 

Mahdavi supplements the workers' stories with exhaustive research into the Western policies for tracking and limiting human trafficking. The US creates a Trafficking in Persons Report each year, categorizing countries into 3 tiers of trafficking conditions. While some believe that the TIP Report is a political tactic for the US, masked in the rosy language of human rights, Mahdavi believes that though the Western policies may be more harmful than helpful in some cases, the TIP is a respectable and viable step to identifying and reducing human trafficking instances around the globe.  You can view the TIP Report as well as the designated 3-Tier chart here. 

In a recent review in Jadaliyya, the relationship between Mahdavi’s research and the TIP Report is examined and excerpts of the compelling worker narratives are explored.  Through these excerpts is a glimpse into how Mahdavi highlights the fact that people enter into forced labor for any number of reasons – force, economic conditions, escape – while still focusing on the fact that Western anti-trafficking policies may serve to make circumstances worse for the trafficked persons and delving into aspects of Western trafficking policy that many may be unfamiliar with.   

To learn more about SUP’s author’s insights into human trafficking, visit the Stanford University Press website for more on Pardis Mahdavi’s Gridlock here and the upcoming Illicit Flirtations by Rhacel Parreñas here.

 

The Confession of an SUP Editor: I’m a Book Worm Turned E-Reader

By Margo Beth Crouppen, Acquisitions Editor, Organizational Studies and Economics

At the end of my formal education, having written a thesis and worked as a features writer at UC Davis’ daily newspaper, I promised myself: I will never again write anything for public consumption.  I’m nearing a decade since I made this pledge and, apart from the rare exception of a contest entry or a fervent response to a news article or blog post, I’ve pretty much kept my oath.  I am a book editor, the guy behind the guy who writes.  This is both my station and my comfort zone.  Why then, am I writing this post?

A recent chain of events, which started at the Stanford University Press holiday party, has changed my outlook on reading—and even my self conception as a “word nerd” and a “book person” to some extent.  Inexplicably, I feel compelled to share this transformation—both as a staunch book lover and as a member of the quickly changing publishing industry.

Let’s begin with the facts.  I love books.  Until recently, I had read everything in my home bookshelves—cover to cover.  At 19, I vowed to read all of Philip Roth’s novels and meet him prior to his death.  I have nearly reached the goal of finishing his published works, and would have met it already if he would stop publishing so fervently.  I like paper.  I relish bookstores.  And, no matter how much I adore books, I haven’t read much for pleasure since I became an Acquiring Editor—so in the past five years (or thereabouts).  I am sorry, dear colleagues, to give away our dirty secret.  But, for those of you reading who are not in Books Editorial I am pretty typical for an editor in this regard.  Reading equals work.  And, on most nights, I would rather curl up with The Real Housewives on Bravo than the great American novel.

So, when I won a Kindle this past December in a Press-wide raffle, I half expected it to become a high tech coaster on my coffee table.  Not only was I unsure that I would use it, but I was resistant to doing so.  My allegiance has always been to print, and I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon because of its vast impact on the publishing industry during my tenure within it.  But, it seemed like the waste of a win if I didn’t give it a try.  And, to my surprise, that little device re-kindle-ed my interest in personal reading.

Why?  I’ve been giving that some thought, and I count five reasons:

• I do not like to commit myself to a book only to find out that I do not want to finish it.  I feel as though I have wasted money.  And, then I have to further tarnish my bookshelf with unfinished oeuvres.  With Kindle, I can read a sample before buying.  Sure, I could go to a bookstore, slump down along the shelves, and do the same.  Or, I could use the “search inside” feature or Google Books or Amazon to scope out my possible reads.  But, these options require me to be in a particular location: in front of a computer or in a store, whereas Kindle allows me to get part of a book essentially in book form for sampling.  With this freedom, I am more willing to explore possible reads, leading me into more books.
• I am impatient.  When I want something, I want it now, and nothing beats having a book that I want in 15 seconds.  Now, nothing sucks more than finding out that a book I want in 15 seconds in not available on Kindle (Amazon, if you are reading, Random Family, please…).  But, in many cases, I ask and it is delivered.
• I am lazy.  I hate losing my place in a book, and then having to shuffle through to find it anew.  Kindle keeps my place.  Even more brilliant, I can lie on one arm, hold the device, and turn the page, never shifting positions.  This seems frivolous, but I promise that it opens up a whole new world of reading “stances.”
• I am a neat freak living in a San Francisco apartment.  Think tiny, and already crowded with bookshelves stacked two rows deep.  So, space saving is appreciated.
• It’s kind of like…reading.  On Kindle, I can highlight passages and take notes, keeping up all of my type A, former English major habits.  And, the e-ink screen doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m looking at yet another glowing box (on top of my iPhone, work laptop, and personal desktop computer).

So, there you have it: the whole truth.  In recent years, publishing has been a rough playground, with shrinking sales, tougher times getting titles into readers’ hands, and the list goes on.  I’ve lamented this in the office, all the while running home to my television, and contributing to the breakdown between readers and books as a consumer. 

If any of my seemingly frivolous reasons for liking the Kindle resonate with dormant readers and lead them to give e-reading a try—whether on a laptop, an iPhone, a Kindle, or any other device—writing this piece and outing myself will have been worth it.  Books—whatever their form—need audiences.  A book is a conversation that we have with an author when he or she is not there.  The world needs those long-form conversations/stories; they are an irreplaceable piece of our social fabric—at least by my thinking.  And, trust me, if we can find a way to get past our everyday hang-ups—whether space, or buyer’s remorse, etc.—reading books feels great.

Suggested Reading for International Women's Day, March 8, 2011

We've just published two fantastic titles about two remarkable women who, in radically different times and circumstances, triumphed over extreme difficulties to create thought-provoking, lasting legacies.

 
As Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reminds us in her review of Barbara Babcok's Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz, "long before Hillary Clinton’s tears and Sarah Palin’s hockey mom, savvy American women were fighting their way into the public sphere, with a burp cloth in one hand and a copy of the Constitution in the other."  Famous in her time, Clara Foltz was the first woman admitted to the California Bar and a renowned jury lawyer, public defender, legal reformer, and women's suffragist.  Woman Lawyer recreates her accomplished life while shedding new light on the turbulent history and politics of the late nineteenth century.

 Shahla Talebi offers an intimate, personal account of her own turbulent history in Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran (read Kirkus's rave review here).  

   Talebi tells of her imprisonment, twice, under two very different regimes in Iran, first under that of the Shah, then again, and for nearly a decade, under that of the Islamic Republic.  Her unique perspective affords her an unprecedented opportunity to reflect on the nature of torture, government responsibility and, more simply, basic aspects of cruelty in daily life.

Post-Awards Season Blues? Look No Further...

Are you suffering from post-Oscar blues?  Do you have red-carpet withdrawal?  All dressed up in your vintage Dior with nowhere to go?  Fear not!  Pour yourself a glass of champagne (or sparkling apple cider if you're rehabbing like Charlie Sheen) and celebrate with us as we remember all the prestigious book awards SUP has garnered in the past year:

Aspinall, Islam and Nation
Co-winner, ASAA Mid-career Researcher Prize for Excellence in Asian Studies 2010, Asian Studies Association of Australia
Baer, The Dönme
Finalist, National Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Book Council
Baker, On Demand
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Barlow, From Hot War to Cold
Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize, New York Chapter, Navy League of the United States
Bergère, Shanghai
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Case, Between States
Barbara Jelavich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Book Prize, Hungarian Studies Association
George Louis Beer Prize, American Historical Association
Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies, Association for the Study of
    Nationalities and the Harriman  Institute
Cavell, Little Did I Know
Honorable Mention PROSE Awards (PSP Awards for Excellence), Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers
Davis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
DeHart, Ethnic Entrepreneurs
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Feldman, Glory and Agony
Finalist, National Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Book Council
Fischer, A Poverty of Rights
Roberto Reis Prize, Brazilian Studies Association
Gillerman, Germans into Jews
Pacific Coast Branch Book Award, American Historical Association (AHA) Pacific Coast Branch
Halliday, Bankrupt
Best Scholarly Book Award, ASA Section on Global and Transnational Sociology
Viviana Zelizer Distinguished Scholarship Award, ASA Section on Economic Sociology
Co-winner, Distinguished Book Award, ASA Sociology of Law Section
Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Hess, Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Jansen, Knowledge in the Blood
Selected for outstanding recognition, Recognition Award, AERA Division B
Katchadourian, Guilt
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Kolve, Telling Images
Christian Gauss Award, Phi Beta Kappa
Levin, Bohemia in America, 1858–1920
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Li, Village China Under Socialism and Reform
Runner-up, Robert W. Hamilton Award, University Co-operative Society
Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Matt, The Zohar 5, Gold Medal, California Book Awards (Nonfiction) , Commonwealth Club of California
Miron, From Continuity to Contiguity
National Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Book Council
Mittelman, Hyperconflict
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Ng, The Common Law in Two Voices,
Co-Winner, Distinguished Book Award, ASA Sociology of Law Section
Restall , The Black Middle
Mexican History Book Prize, Conference on Latin American History
Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever
Honorable Mention, Norris and Carol Hundley Award, American Historical Association (AHA) Pacific Coast Branch
Russo, Companies on a Mission
ONE Book Award, Organizations and the Natural Environment Division of the Academy of Management
Saito, The Politics of Exclusion
Oliver Cromwell Cox Award, ASA Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities
Samuels, Inventing the Israelite
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, Modern Language Association
Suzuki, Becoming Modern Women
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Walker, Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism
Book Award, SAMLA Studies
Wengeroff, Memoirs of a Grandmother
National Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Book Council
Whyte, Myth of the Social Volcano
Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Barbara Babcock's Woman Lawyer, Author and Subject Share Avidity for Women's and Civil Rights

Just this morning, author Barbara Babcock’s interview on the newly published book Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz was featured as a cover story on Rorotoko.com. The book is a biographical and thematic study of Clara Shortridge Foltz, California's first woman lawyer. Foltz is remembered for her invention and championship of the idea of the public defender and her persistence even in the face of terrific prejudice and opposition to women lawyers.  Foltz aided in the long struggle for women’s rights, attending rallies, marching, and lobbying persistently. Her journey was not a struggle for women's rights only, but for the right of the poor as well. Foltz was the only person in her time to suggest that poor people deserved rights and representation just as much as people who could afford legal aid themselves.  After conducting a diligent campaign in Los Angeles, the first public defender came to existence in 1913 thanks to Foltz.

Like the great woman at the center of her story, author Barbara Babcock is also a champion of women’s rights and public defense.  Babcock was the first woman to be part of the regular faculty at Stanford Law School and she’s certainly utilized her position to further the path of women’s and civil rights. From sexual discrimination courses to civil and criminal procedure seminars, Babcock passes the championing torch of civil rights on to her students everyday.

For anyone interested in civil rights and legal reform, particularly in California’s history, Babcock's book will come as a welcome read. For a more in-depth look at the book and Babcock's own thoughts on Clara Foltz and women’s rights, look into her interview on Rorotoko. There have been a lot of rights and a lot of wrongs done on the path to civil liberties for all, and these women have committed some “rights” worth reading about.

We've got a little list...

Wondering what to buy for those difficult-to-please friends or family members on your holiday gift list?  We respectfully suggest Five Plays, by Anton Chekhov, in a brilliant new translation by Marina Brodskaya, with an introduction by Tobias Wolff.  Russophiles, Drama Queens and Lovers of Great Literature will thrill to Brodskaya's new interpretation, which has already won high praise from both scholars and actors (Peter Saarsgard no less!) alike.     What's more, the translation includes previously mistranslated and omitted passages which reveal the nuances, music, and rhythm of the Russian language.  Brodskaya allows us to understand what Russian speakers already do:  Chekhov possessed an unparalleled sense of humor that made its presence felt in all of his works.  (Three Sisters a comedy? Who knew?)

Some gossippy tidbits to share while you are being showered with praise and thanks for finding the perfect gift?  Brodskaya, born and raised in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, was labeled a traitor and enemy of the state by her high school (!), after which she was tried and expelled and offered a car, an apartment, and a ticket to Siberia to “find herself.”  Thank goodness for us she found herself instead in Philadelphia, and is now a translator, teacher, and interpreter in Northern California.

 Check back for more gift-giving ideas from SUP.

Stefanos Geroulanos on secularism, atheism, antihumanism

Historical and modern takes on what it means to be secular, atheist, and humanist are being re-evaluated. Stefanos Geroulanos' new book An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought delves into the transformations of atheism, the fragmentation of humanist thought, and what he calls "negative philosophical anthropology."

Geroulanos seeks to redefine how we think about anti-humanism and atheism. You can read his own abstract about the topic in his post on the Immanent Frame and check out the book at the Stanford University Press website as well.

Inside Romantic Paris with Michael Marrinan

Michael Marrinan, art historian at Stanford University and author of the recent Stanford University Press publication Romantic Paris Histories of a Cultural Landscape, 1800-1850, explains how his work led him to explore a cultural history of Paris.

You can view the video of Marrinan's talk here.