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A graphic short-cut to our fall 2016 catalog, for your viewing pleasure.
With autumn upon us a new season of books make their debut. To browse all of our new offerings, take a look at our Fall 2016 catalog, available online. For an abridged (and illustrated) version check out the infographic below, which breaks down our recently released and soon-to-come titles (for more information on a particular book, hover over the cover):
A pilgrimage through London reveals the beauty of the banal.
What to do with your last day in London? After twenty years of visiting, my answer hasn’t changed. Walk along the river somewhere. You can never get lost if you steer by the water. I set off from the Charing Cross—London lore defines the city as any point within fifteen miles of the spot—and I begin my journey by replicating the viewpoint of Monet’s Houses of Parliament. I had just seen the famous painting in the National Gallery, where a woman’s voice had decried the tourists for taking pictures of the pictures.
“They won’t stop them from doing it,” she declaimed for all of us silly foreigners to hear, “Heaven knows why.”
In the galleries, I snapped a picture of someone else’s phone held aloft in front of Caravaggio’s Judith, the severed head on the platter miniaturized on the tiny screen. I wanted to preserve my own subjective experience of the museum, which was about jostling for glimpses while tour guides held forth and tourists snapped away.
Recovering the cultural memory of Salonica’s Jewish community.
The dynamic port city of Salonica, once home to the Young Turk movement that overthrew the Ottoman sultan in 1909 and the city over which the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Ottomans fought during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, is today a largely forgotten corner of the former Ottoman Empire and the second city of contemporary Greece. Salonica and her Jews—who remarkably numbered half of the city’s diverse inhabitants a century ago—once played key roles in the region’s culture, politics, and commerce. But the historic significance of the city in modern times—and particularly that of its Jewish residents—has largely been excised from academic and popular consciousness, a veritable “orphan of history,” as one scholar put it.
The historic significance of Salonica in modern times—and particularly that of its Jewish residents—has largely been excised from academic and popular consciousness.
The city’s invisibility to the outside world runs counter to my own upbringing, which was filled with stories from my Salonican-born relatives, all centering around this vibrant place and its people. Enchanting tales were told of my great grandfather, a rabbi and kabbalist, walking down the streets of Salonica side by side with a priest and an imam, or composing protective amulets for farmers who repaid him with live poultry and fresh produce; or my grandfather and his brother riding their prized possession—a bicycle—along the sea with the White Tower in the distance; or my great uncle and his wife and their children remaining in the city and “disappearing” during World War II. But how exactly did they disappear? Just as importantly, how had they lived? I wanted to access this lost world of Jewish Salonica—both to understand the world from which my family came and to restore a voice to the city and its Jewish community.
Tips and best practices for authors with bookstore events and readings.
Congratulations! You’ve toiled and labored over a manuscript, found a publisher, and saw your project to fruition. It would seem, initially, like the hardest part is behind you, but before you collapse on your chaise lounge with a Manhattan, it’s my job to insist that there’s still much work to be done. As a marketer and former bookstore employee, I’m unabashedly biased when I say public appearances and readings are foundational to a book’s success. While the plan of attack will differ by genre (i.e. a niche monograph versus a trade-friendly title), suffice it to say that one of the best ways to put your product in people’s hands is to show up with it in person. That’s all fine and good, but it’s arduous to plan a book tour! Below you’ll find my tips on milking appearances for all they’re worth, from the booking process to the after-party.
How Europeans once saw themselves through Turkish eyes at the opera.
This summer the Rossini Opera Festival—dedicated to producing the works of composer Gioachino Rossini and located in the composer’s hometown of Pesaro on the Adriatic Sea—presented the comedy Il turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy), first performed in 1814 but nowadays rarely staged. In the Europe of 2016, deeply polarized over Middle Eastern Muslim refugees and the longstanding presence of Muslim immigrants, this light-hearted comic opera hits some very provocative notes: it tells the tale of a traveling Turk, the vocally glamorous, irresistibly seductive Prince Selim, who comes to Italy, as if on vacation. It’s an opera that, even as it entertains us, compels us to reflect seriously about the nature of our current cultural conflict and the very different sorts of imagined encounters that have formed a part of Western culture.
Under the influence of the Enlightenment Turks became figures of interest with whom Europeans could ultimately identify.
Operas about Turks were actually a staple of the performance repertory throughout the eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century, when Rossini became the last important composer to feature singing Turks in his operas. Under the influence of the European Enlightenment Turks became figures of interest with whom Europeans could ultimately identify; they could recognize in Turkish scenarios their own political ambivalences (concerning absolute government), their own social anxieties (about the hierarachy of the sexes), and could even explore a European sense of self as mirrored in the figure of the singing Turk.
Decades after the war’s end, Obama steps into Asia’s history debates in Hiroshima.
Though the end of World War II may seem part of the distant past (Japan formally surrendered seventy-one years ago today) the cultural and political legacy of that conflict still looms large over the international stage, particularly in Asia. President Barack Obama’s visit this past May to Hiroshima did more than pay homage to the victims of the atomic bombing carried out by the United States more than seven decades ago. The President also stepped into the complex and often treacherous realm of wartime historical memory.
Memories of wartime events among the combatants of the war are fractured and contested.
Memories of wartime events among the combatants of the war are fractured and contested—Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and Americans have formed almost distinct narratives of the war and its meaning. And even within those societies, there are rivaling accounts and understandings of the past. These divergent memories explain why wartime history issues remain a catalyst for conflict in the region, where political leaders use this history to mobilize nationalist feelings.
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