Stanford University Press Blog

TimeToRead Recommendations

Don't miss the final days of free shipping on online orders through our website with the discount code TIMETOREAD-FM. SUP is helping independent booksellers and bookstores by pledging 5% of its online sales in April and May to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation.

 

 

We asked our editors "what SUP book you'd most like to read, now that we all (in theory) have TimeToRead?" These are their top book recommendations:

 

 

The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Vol. 1: To 1877 »

Edited by JOSEPH L. LOCKE and BEN WRIGHT

Recommended by: Alan Harvey, Director

I’m fortunate enough to see every book as it progresses through the Press, and I dip into each one to a greater or lesser degree. But actually relaxing and letting a book soak over me is rare. Our books inform and educate, and I have certainly learned a lot from titles like Artful Design or The Cult of the Constitution. But the current pandemic leads me to want a bigger picture, something foundational, spanning centuries. That leads me to The American Yawp. I’m not embarrassed to admit that American history wasn’t top of the curriculum at school in England, and this book has helped fill in many holes in my understanding of my adopted country.

Nakba Day Recommended Reading

A girl in a protest on Nakba Day 2010, Hebron, West Bank. Image has been cropped. Photo by Shy Halatzi, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

 

To reflect on Nakba Day we have composed a recommended reading list focused around Palestinian experience.

 

 

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine »

By NOURA ERAKAT

Winner of the 2019 Palestine Book Awards, sponsored by the Middle East Monitor (MEMO).

 

Bronze Medal in the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) - Current Events I (Political/Economic/Foreign Affairs) category, sponsored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

 

Justice in the Question of Palestine is often framed as a question of law. Yet none of the Israel-Palestinian conflict's most vexing challenges have been resolved by judicial intervention. Occupation law has failed to stem Israel's settlement enterprise. Laws of war have permitted killing and destruction during Israel's military offensives in the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accord's two-state solution is now dead letter.

Justice for Some offers a new approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures—from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza—Noura Erakat shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions. Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests than the Palestinians'. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable.

"Noura Erakat's incisive exploration of the role of law in shaping the development of Israel/Palestine reveals the consistent genuflection of international legal institutions to Israel's reliance on well-established colonial practices. She also forcefully argues that the skillful use of international law as a tool of struggle can be generative of hope and possibility—for Palestine and the world. Justice for Some is precisely the book we need at this time."

—Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

Earth Day Week Recommended Reading

Books about sustainability, nature, and the environment.

Free for commercial use. Via Pixabay.

 

We have composed a recommended reading list for Earth Day Week 2020.

 

 

Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care »

By GIORGOS KALLIS

How did we come to think of the planet and its limits as we do? Limits reclaims, redefines, and makes an impassioned plea for limits—a notion central to environmentalism—clearing them from their association with Malthusianism and the ideology and politics that go along with it. Giorgos Kallis rereads reverend-economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his legacy, separating limits and scarcity, two notions that have long been conflated in both environmental and economic thought. 

"Malthus is a key figure for understanding how to survive the twenty-first century, yet Kallis shows we have spent the last two hundred years misunderstanding him. Quirky, provocative, and engaging,  Limits is a must-read book for environmentalists and anti-environmentalists alike."

—Bill Adams, University of Cambridge

 

 

The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market with the Planet »

By MAGALI A. DELMAS with DAVID COLGAN

Magali A. Delmas and David Colgan argue that many green products now offer the total package—a "green bundle" that checks the environmental box, but also offers improved performance, health benefits, savings, and status. To help consumers cut through the noise and make their best decisions, we need new strategies. The award-winning The Green Bundle offers some of the best and most effective communication techniques for pushing consumers in the right direction. If you are looking to win over the convenient consumer or understand how companies can create the next tipping point in green consumption, this is the research-based, practical guide for you.

"The Green Bundle offers penetrating insight into green products, showing how businesses can fully realize this latent market. Synthesizing behavioral economics, human psychology, and basic business principals, the authors set forth a brilliant but practical guide on how to ignite consumer interest in sustainably produced goods."

—Steve McCormick, former CEO of The Nature Conservancy and former President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Distracting Reads Part 2

Recommended reading for right now

Free shipping on all online orders » with the discount code TIMETOREAD-FM until April 30

 

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing we have composed a recommended reading list focused around books that will engage, fascinate, and delight.

 

 

Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime, A MusiComic Manifesto »

By GE WANG

 Do you want to embrace your creative side? Try Artful Design. What we make, makes us. This is the central tenet of Artful Design, a photorealistic comic book that examines the nature, purpose, and meaning of design. Using music as a universal phenomenon that has evolved alongside technology, this book breaks down concrete case studies in computer-mediated toys, tools, games, and instruments, including the best-selling app Ocarina. Ge Wang implores us to both embrace and confront technology, not purely as a means to an end, but in its potential to enrich life. 

Interested in this book? Consider tuning in every Wednesday 1 PM for Artful Design Television an online, multi-format weekly series encompassing artful design, music, coding, critical making with helpings of history and philosophy. No experience needed; it's free and all are welcome. For details or to register please visit the Artful Design TV page.

Silver in the Graphic Novel/Drawn Book - General category in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards

 

 

 

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism »

By NICK COULDRY and ULISES A. MEJIAS

Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, the book offers a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.

"A profound exploration of how the ceaseless extraction of information about our intimate lives is remaking both global markets and our very selves. The Costs of Connection represents an enormous step forward in our collective understanding of capitalism's current stage, a stage in which the final colonial input is the raw data of human life. Challenging, urgent, and bracingly original."

—Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies, Rutgers University

 

 

Motherhood: A Confession »

By NATALIE CARNES

Thinking about what it means to be a parent? Try Motherhood. What if Augustine's Confessions had been written not by a man, but by a mother? How might her tales of desire, temptation, and transformation differ from his? In this memoir, Natalie Carnes describes giving birth to a daughter and beginning a story of conversion strikingly unlike Augustine's—even as his journey becomes a surprising companion to her own.

The challenges Carnes recounts will be familiar to many parents. She wonders what and how much she should ask her daughter to suffer in resisting racism, patriarchy, and injustice.

Distracting Reads Part 1

Recommended reading for right now

Free shipping on all online orders » with the discount code TIMETOREAD-FM until April 30

 

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing we have composed a recommended reading list focused around books that will engage, fascinate, and delight.

 

 

Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO »

By DAVID J. HALPERIN

Sitting inside and wondering about life, the universe, and visible and invisible invaders? Try Intimate Aliens. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species.

"David Halperin doesn't believe in the literal reality of flying saucers, but he understands that they needn't physically exist to teach us lessons about a culture that sees them. Part folklorist and part psychologist, Halperin reads our UFO mythos like an alienist analyzing an extended collective dream."

—Jesse Walker, author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory

 

 

 

Invisible Companions: Encounters with Imaginary Friends, Gods, Ancestors, and Angels »

By J. BRADLEY WIGGER

Have you been thinking about the potential heights of creativity and imagination? In his award-winning book Invisible Companions J. Bradley Wigger travels five countries on three continents to hear children describe their invisible friends—one-hundred-year-old robins and blue dogs, dinosaurs and teapots, pretend families and shape-shifting aliens—companions springing from the deep well of childhood imagination. Drawing on these interviews, as well as a new wave of developmental research, he finds a fluid and flexible quality to the imaginative mind that is central to learning, co-operation, and paradoxically, to real-world rationality.

Timely Reads Part 1

Recommended reading for right now

Free shipping on all online orders » with the discount code TIMETOREAD-FM until April 30

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing we have composed a recommended reading list focused around books helpful for this moment.

 

 

Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic »

By KATHERINE A. MASON

Are you curious about how a crisis like COVID-19 can change healthcare systems?  In her award-winning  book Infectious Change Katherine A. Mason investigates local Chinese public health institutions in Southeastern China, examining how the outbreak of SARS re-imagined public health as a professionalized, biomedicalized, and technological machine. If this captures your attention then don’t miss Katherine Mason’s blog entry which includes an epilogue addressing the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

 

 

SARS in China: Prelude to Pandemic? »

Edited By ARTHUR KLEINMAN AND JAMES L. WATSON

Continuing the theme of learning from the SARS pandemic, SARS in China focuses on specific aspects of the SARS outbreak—epidemiological, political, economic, social, cultural, and moral. They analyze SARS as a form of social suffering and raise questions about the relevance of national sovereignty in the face of such global threats.

 

 

 

Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders »

By JENNIFER GARVEY BERGER and KEITH JOHNSTON

Are you working from home and leading a team? Simple Habits for Complex Times by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston provides three integral practices that enable leaders to navigate the unknown.

"This is mandatory reading if you want a shot at navigating complexity with grace. Jennifer and Keith render complexity visible, accessible, and workable. We all know about the pressures of uncertainty and the rapid pace of change, but 'the how' of being a leader has been unfathomable—until now. "

—Gayle Karen K. Young, Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Wikimedia Foundation

Suggested Reading for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we have composed a recommended reading list focused around civil rights, history, and justice.

 

 

 

Black Quotidian »
Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

By Matthew F. Delmont

A Stanford Digital Project

 

 

Winner of the 2019 Garfinkel Prize in Digital Humanities, sponsored by the American Studies Association (ASA) - Digital Humanities Caucus.

 

Black Quotidian explores everyday lives of African Americans in the twentieth century. Drawing on an archive of digitized African-American newspapers, Matthew F. Delmont guides readers through a wealth of primary resources that reveal how the Black press popularized African-American history and valued the lives of both famous and ordinary Black people. Claiming the right of Black people to experience and enjoy the mundane aspects of daily life has taken on a renewed resonance in the era of Black Lives Matter, an era marked by quotidian violence, fear, and mourning.

As a work of digital history, Black Quotidian models an innovative approach to research exploration and scholarly communication. As a teaching resource, it fosters self-driven exploration of primary resources within and beyond the curriculum.

THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS DIGITAL PUBLISHING INITIATIVE RECEIVES $1.15 MILLION TO IMPLEMENT PHASE 2 OF THE PROGRAM

The three-year grant will help accelerate growth and ensure ongoing success of the digital publishing program.

 

 

A proposal to continue the development of a digital publishing initiative at Stanford University has been awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Modeling how humanistic and social science research is presented and disseminated online, the Stanford University Press initiative is rethinking scholarly communication for the digital age.

The three-year grant will help accelerate growth and ensure ongoing success of the digital publishing program.

The Stanford University Press program of Interactive Scholarly Works (ISWs) is recognized in the academic publishing world as a frontrunner in digital publishing, setting standards of composition, peer review, production, marketing, archiving, and preservation. Phase 1 of this program, also funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, published four interactive scholarly works, with this first batch of publications released via supDigital.org. During this initial phase, Stanford University Press considered dozens of submissions, conducted peer review on a carefully selected group, and proceeded to develop and produce these projects to the highest standards.

Top Picks from the Winter Sale (Part Deux)

Through January 14th, take 30% off everything on our site, including these 5 staff picks.

Photo by Kalie Caetano.

In celebration of the year’s end, we’ve picked out a few of our favorite titles from 2017 to share with you—all of which are 30% off through January 14th as part of our site-wide Winter Sale. Hundreds of titles spanning dozens of disciplines are on offer: browse books by discipline, or check out our recent award winners and bestsellers, or, for those looking for a few quick recommendations, check out our list of staff picks below, and get ready to stuff your stockings or your book bags with titles guaranteed to entertain, enlighten and intrigue.

 

1

Us&Them »

by BAHIYYIH NAKHJAVANI

RECOMMENDED BY:
Linda Stewart, Marketing Specialist

A novel that plays with voice and narration, Us&Them is a beautiful look at family life in all its intricacies, intimacies, and difficulties. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani takes us on a journey through Paris, Tehran, L.A., Germany, Australia, and beyond, opening our eyes to the ways immigration and alienation shift our ideas of belonging and home. The three generations of women at the heart of the novel come alive through strained interactions and rich inner monologues. Through a series of non-linear, interconnected stories, the novel unfolds into a witty, charming, and very familiar tale of the human connection that we all crave.

OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani and Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran by Roxanne Varzi.

Top Picks from the Winter Sale

Through January 14th, take 30% off everything on our site, including these 5 staff picks.

Photo by Kalie Caetano.

In celebration of the year’s end, we’ve picked out a few of our favorite recent titles to share with you—all of which are 30% off through January 14th as part of our site-wide Winter Sale. Hundreds of titles spanning dozens of disciplines are on offer: browse books by discipline, or check out our recent award winners and bestsellers, or, for those looking for a few quick recommendations, check out our list of staff picks below, and get ready to stuff your stockings or your book bags with titles guaranteed to entertain, enlighten and intrigue.

 

1

The Manhattan Project »
A Theory of a City

by DAVID KISHIK

RECOMMENDED BY:
Max Shanley, Sales Assistant

What if Walter Benjamin did not in fact die in 1940 but, rather, changed his name, moved to New York, and lived on there until 1987? What if, in 1957, he began a sequel to his gargantuan The Arcades Project called The Manhattan Project, shifting his focus from Paris to New York? What if the composing of this text would become his sole occupation for his remaining 30 years? What if that manuscript found its way to the New York Public Library where it wasn't discovered again until 2008? This wildly imaginative book entertains this premise with edge, heart, and humor and, in doing so, breathes new life into Benjamin's ideas and body of work, broadening the possibilities of what writings on cities can accomplish.

OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Benjamin’s Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory edited by Gerhard Richter and Vanishing Streets: Journeys in London by J. M. Tyree.

Accent on Quality

How the Press went from a printer to a publisher, all with the help of the “Press Gang.”

"The Press Gang." 1929. Photo from the Stanford University Press archives.

One year after the founding of Stanford University, an enterprising printer from the Pioneer Class set up a campus print shop and began running university publications and odd jobs off of his second-hand press—equipment that he purchased with crowd sourced funds from the Stanford faculty. This humble print shop, started by Julius Quelle and encouraged along by Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan, would become the forerunner of today’s Stanford University Press, now celebrating its 125th year of publishing. While Quelle’s shop produced one of the earliest books in the Press’s history—and the first to bear the Press imprint as it appears today—it was not until 1915, when Quelle hired a talented bookbinder from Leipzig, that his modest press had the capability to publish and masterfully bind lengthier books of Stanford faculty and affiliates. That bookbinder, along with a master pressman, a part-time English professor, and another university president, would inaugurate a new and ambitious era in the Press’s history.

These industrious individuals—the “Press Gang”—would put Stanford University Press on the map with verve and diligence.

The bookbinder in question was John Borsdamm, a name that still rings bells in bookmaking and book arts circles today, whose works can be found in the White House Library (not to mention myriad private collections) and by whose hands or under whose direct supervision each Stanford book was bound for thirty-five years. Borsdamm would serve perhaps one of the longest tenures in Press history and see it through one of its most transformational periods, forming a link between its early days as a small job shop under the stewardship of Quelle and its later incarnation as a fully staffed, well-oiled publisher. For it was only a year after Borsdamm was hired that a new president came to the helm at Stanford: Ray Lyman Wilbur. Early on in his post as president, Wilbur penned a letter to his business manager avowing that, “the wisest thing we could do about our printing is to buy out the University Press.” Accordingly, in 1917 the Board of Trustees offered Quelle just shy of ten thousand dollars for his press and its equipment; Quelle took the deal and returned to New York where he continued working as a pressman. Borsdamm, meanwhile, stayed on with the press, which, now under university management, was rehoused in a new, larger facility to which Quelle’s equipment was moved, there to be joined by a new fleet of linotype machines, a Miehle Press, and, of course, new bindery equipment for book production.

125 Years of Publishing

And the pioneer printer and university president who started it all.

 

Stanford University Press—or at least the idea of it—was born in March 1891 in Bloomington, Indiana. It was there that Leland and Jane Stanford offered the presidency of their new university to David Starr Jordan, then the president of Indiana University. Between the time the offer was made and the Stanfords’ departure the next day, Jordan drew up a memo of understanding for the Stanfords’ approval­—“I should like your assent to the following propositions,” Jordan wrote, of which there were four. The fourth and final proposition read: “That provision be made for the publication of the results of any important research on the part of professors or advanced students. Such papers may be issued from time to time as ‘Memoirs of the Leland Stanford Junior University.’” The Stanfords accepted his terms, and the university, with Jordan at the helm, opened in October 1891. The campus’s first publishing ventures were not long in following: In September 1892, it launched the Leland Stanford Junior University Monographs series, and with its first publication, Stanford University Press was born.

The Tarriff Controversy in the United States, 1780–1833 by Orrin Leslie Elliott was the first-ever monograph published by the university.

Or at least, part of it. For that exact same year, Julius Andrew Quelle, a member of Stanford’s inaugural “pioneer class,” established a printing facility on campus—what would come to be known colloquially as “the Stanford University Press.” And though university publications were occasionally shopped out to printers in nearby San Jose or San Francisco, it was Quelle who, out of his cramped quarters in the university power plant, printed the first two books to bear the SUP imprint as it appears today. And it was by President Jordan’s request that the imprint appear on all of the books produced for the university in Quelle’s small shop—a shop that in only a few decades would become the property of the university and an award-winning publishing house.

Thus it was in these parallel strands—President Jordan’s commitment to publish works from the academic community and Quelle’s entrepreneurial endeavors as the campus pressman—that the origins of Stanford University Press are to be found. And this year marks 125 years since both the establishment of Quelle’s print shop and the debut of the university’s first-ever publication. How these two pioneers—Stanford’s first president and one of its first students—laid the groundwork for the publishing tradition at Stanford reveals a great deal about the charter and character of the university in its earliest days, not to mention the mandate that continues to animate the work bearing the SUP imprint.

This year marks 125 years since both the establishment of Quelle’s print shop and the debut of the university’s first-ever publication.

Deals from the Back-to-School Sale

This month take 30% off all of our books, including these quick reads, classics, and magnum opuses.

Photo by Kalie Caetano.

Now through October 1st, all (yes, all) of our books are 30% off for our Back-to-School Sale. Hundreds of titles spanning dozens of disciplines are on offer: you can browse books by discipline, check out our recent award winners and bestsellers, peruse our list of 8 new and noteworthy titles, or take some cues from our deal highlights below. Here we’re showcasing cheap quick reads, must-grab deals on magnum opuses, and a few discounted disciplinary classics.

 

1

Stanford Briefs »

A short-form imprint of Stanford University Press

Our Stanford Briefs, weighing in at around 100 pages each, bring considered viewpoints to bear on ongoing debates in short and incisive form. These scholarly hot takes weigh in on a variety of timely issues. For instance, in How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate, Andrew J. Hoffman explores how social influences and identity politics trump climate science and engender political inertia; more importantly, he offers his suggestions for how to bridge these divides. In How Civility Works, Keith J. Bybee explores the viability of civil discourse in American public life, amidst media platforms saturated with bluster and vitriol and teeming with trolls and hostility. Leo R. Chavez, meanwhile, unpacks the politics around US race relations and undocumented immigrants and their children in his Brief, Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship (now available for preorder). The best part? During our Back-to-School sale, Briefs are just $9.09 plus shipping.

 

OTHER BRIEFS YOU MAY LIKE: Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt by Joel Beinin, The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han, or We Are All Migrants: Political Action and the Ubiquitous Condition of Migrant-hood by Gregory Feldman.

Top Picks from the Back-to-School Sale

This month, take 30% off all of our books, including these 8 popular and timely reads.

Photo by Kalie Caetano.

Now through October 1st, all (yes, all) of our books are 30% off for our Back-to-School Sale. Hundreds of titles spanning dozens of disciplines are on offer: browse books by discipline, or check out our recent award winners and bestsellers, or, for those looking for a few quick recommendations, check out our list of 8 new and noteworthy titles below.

 

1

A Practical Education »
Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees

by RANDALL STROSS

RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
humanists, headhunters, and anxious parents of college-aged progeny

That liberal arts degrees are a poor choice for today’s job market is a seemingly unimpeachable truism—yet Randall Stross is on a mission to impeach it. Following the career paths of a few contrarian humanities majors, Stross points to their success as proof positive that a liberal arts education is vocational; that in an era where industries evolve at breakneck speed, the versatility and critical thinking skills of a humanist education are rare and valuable assets. Weaving these case studies together with a history of one of the nation’s top universities and an account of the longstanding pull-and-tug between humanist disciplines and technical learning, A Practical Education shows that liberal arts majors can excel not in spite of, but because of, their education.

ALSO SEE: A Practical Education was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and is excerpted here.

OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Cultures@SiliconValley by J.A. English-Lueck and The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges by Joseph A. Soares.

Experiments in Digital

Our aim is to establish a program for peer-reviewed, interactive, digital scholarship.

by ALAN HARVEY

Friederike Sundaram, Acquisitions Editor for digital humanities and computational social sciences, navigates Enchanting the Desert by Nicholas Bauch in the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. Enchanting the Desert (published in 2016) was the Press's first-ever born-digital publication.

We are now two and a half years into our four-year experiment in digital publishing. Our goal, to establish a program for the formal, peer-reviewed publication of scholarly works that are truly interactive, with no print counterpart, was an ambitious one, and the learning curve has been incredibly steep. But we’re now at the point where the lessons learned can be discussed in context and shared with the broader community.

We stepped into this experiment with the expectation that the primary difficulties would be technology-driven. Little did we know that much of the infrastructure we take for granted in the print world simply doesn’t exist within the digital. From the mechanics and processes of peer review, through the mundane aspects of copyright registration and library cataloguing, and on to the incredibly thorny issue of preservation, each step has been a challenge. And the challenge has been met across the Press, not simply by the four core team members of our Mellon-funded program.