Stanford University Press Blog

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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

Hands Outstretched

Sociology is driven by human interaction and a desire for social good.

by MARCELA MAXFIELD

The scallop shell emblem in a street along the Camino de Santiago in Logroño, Spain. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Just before joining Stanford University Press this past February, I decided to take the trip of a lifetime. I booked my ticket to Bordeaux, and plotted the route by bus and train to St. Jean Pied-de-Port—a small, medieval French town at the foot of the Pyrenees and famed starting point of the traditional pilgrimage across northern Spain, the Camino de Santiago. Six weeks from that point, I arrived at the lighthouse at the end of the world, in Finisterre.

For a trip so destination-oriented, the Camino had a strange muddling effect on any notions I had about the trajectory of my life. I had been working in publishing in New York City for four years before deciding that I would prefer to join the ranks of academics whose books I was helping to publish. That was the plan, at any rate, when I started across the mountain range that first day. I would spend my time contemplating my program of study in the days to follow, trekking among the vineyards, over highways, and through austere farming villages.

But instead of thinking about what academic track would make the most sense for me, I was distracted by the people around me—walking archives of tragedy, humor, nostalgia, and empathy—some of whom became like family to me for that relatively short span of time, and others with whom I interacted only once, maybe with just a passing smile. But even in those cases, their stories often wound back to me in the words of others. Over soup in a hostel one night I was asked, “Did you hear about the 87-year-old woman from New Zealand who is walking the Camino alone?” A face surfaced in my memory, smiling at me from underneath her pink knit hat as we waited in line for coffee, weeks ago. “She told me that her family is moving her into a nursing home next year and won’t let her travel on her own any more after this. She plans to throw her boots into the ocean at the end.”

Sociology’s terrain is vast and varied—possibly personified by the pilgrim stopping into a hostel and finding kinship among strangers.

Transcending Without Transcendence

A tribute to extraordinary scholar and Meridian series editor, Werner Hamacher.

Select titles from the Meridian series. Photo by Kalie Caetano.

 

It was with the heaviest of hearts that Stanford University Press learned of the death of Meridian series editor Werner Hamacher this past month. Professor at the University of Frankfurt, and founder of its Institute of General and Comparative Literary Studies, which he also directed, Hamacher was also the Emmanuel Levinas Chair and Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at The European Graduate School.

SUP’s collaboration with Werner Hamacher dates back to 1991, when he and series co-founder David Wellbery (who served as co-editor until 2000) reached out to former Stanford editor Helen Tartar with the idea of forming a book series that would be a forum for work in literary and aesthetic theory, particularly that being done in France, Germany, and the United States. The series name was meant to pay homage to Paul Celan and his influential poetological statement of the same name, which was eventually published in a prizewinning translation in the series itself; but it equally referenced the editors’ desire to cross geographical meridians, to privilege internationality, and to foster work that remapped connections between disciplines, institutions, and national traditions.

Werner’s acumen as a series editors was unparalleled.

In Memory of Alan Mintz

Mintz’s commitment to Hebrew literature came through powerfully in his writing.

Select works of Alan Mintz. Photo by Kalie Caetano.

Last week, the field of Jewish Studies lost an influential scholar whose work leaves a lasting impression on the study of Hebrew literature. Alan Mintz passed away on May 20, just a few weeks before the planned publication of his latest book, a major critical study of S.Y. Agnon’s A City in Its Fullness.

We at Stanford University Press were grateful for the opportunity to work with Alan Mintz, whose intellectual commitment to interpreting and advocating for the importance of Hebrew literature came through powerfully in his writing. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the larger community of Alan’s colleagues, students, friends, and family who will keenly feel his loss.

Here, we share remembrances of Alan from current and former editors of the Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture series who worked with Alan throughout the years.

 

—STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

11 Indie Booksellers We Love

More than retailers, bookstores are cultural anchors—and these are a few of our favorites.

by THE STANFORD PRESS STAFF

Public domain via Pixabay.

An independent bookstore is more than a retailer; It’s a resource and a refuge for the readerly and the writerly, often doubling as a community space (sometimes tripling as a cat enclave). Local booksellers are cultural anchors, connecting us with information, knowledge, and worlds beyond and it is this cherished institution that we celebrate today, on Independent Bookstore Day. Indies across the country are marking the occasion with great events and special offers and we’re commemorating the day with a list of some of our all-time favorite bookshops.

Year-End Staff Picks (Part III)

Take 40% off of our staff picks—and 25% off everything else on our site!

by THE STANFORD PRESS STAFF

 

To celebrate the end of the year we’ve picked out a few of our favorite titles to share with you. Browse all of our staff picks here and peruse through parts one and two of our staff recommendations for more on why we love these books. All of our recommended books, including those below, are now 40% off—and everything else on our site is 25% off through the first week of January!

 

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The Miracle of Analogy »
or The History of Photography, Part 1

by KAJA SILVERMAN

RECOMMENDED BY:
Emily-Jane Cohen, Executive Editor

Silverman’s endorsement of photography’s powers of revelation and her championing of the photographic imagination is a poetic yet historically informed attempt to rethink our relationship to the world and to each other. This beautifully written book thus has an ethical dimension that makes it more than “just” a brand new theory or history of a medium, though it is very much that as well.