Focusing on Lillian Hellman's infamous 1980 libel suit against Mary McCarthy for her scornful comments on The Dick Cavett Show, this book explores the roles of truth and lying in American public life and considers why civil discourse seems beyond our reach.

Mr. Bercovitch's subject is the development of the concept of American identity; his method is comparatism to specify the uniqueness of that development; and his discussion, centering upon the interaction of language, myth, and society, explores the Puritan achievement in its broadest cultural context.

From the acclaimed author of Bears, an entertaining, often surprising cultural examination of Earth’s moon, through history, science, and literature, from ancient times to the present.

This entertaining volume is devoted exclusively to English-language proverbs that originated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Witty and wise, the 1,400 entries in the book illuminate a wide range of the experiences and perplexities of modern life.

In this first-ever portrait of eighteenth-century London as the capital of America, Julie Flavell re-creates the famous city’s heyday as the center of an empire that encompassed North America and the West Indies.

This is the first definitive account of Fruitlands, one of history’s most unsuccessful—but most significant—utopian experiments. It was established in Massachusetts in 1843 by Bronson Alcott (whose ten-year-old daughter Louisa May, future author of Little Women, was among the members) and an Englishman called Charles Lane, under the watchful gaze of Emerson, Thoreau, and o...

This powerful work explores the parallel disruption of two families—one in seventeenth-century Holland, the other in America today—when a beloved family member converts to another religion.

This powerful work explores the parallel disruption of two families—one in seventeenth-century Holland, the other in America today—when a beloved family member converts to another religion.

Through a fascinating blend of stories and analysis, historian Craig Harline examines Sunday—from its ancient beginnings among the early Christians to brunch and football in America today.  

A groundbreaking, richly detailed look at the future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age

A personal, penetrating, and polemical account of what Modernism is, this book explores the literature, fine art, and music that it has inspired—and how contemporary literary writing has failed it.

Examining the lives and works of Germaine de Stael, Stendahl, and Georges Cuvier, historian Kathleen Kete creates a groundbreaking cultural history of ambition in post-Revolutionary Napoleonic and Restoration France.

By analyzing the parallel battles over faith and reason in the nineteenth century and ours, scholar Christopher Lane makes a case for the benefits of religious uncertainty.

By analyzing the parallel battles over faith and reason in the nineteenth century and ours, scholar Christopher Lane makes a case for the benefits of religious uncertainty.

A master historian explores the literary art of history and the future of teaching, researching, and writing about the past

The prizewinning journalist turns her attention to a sensational murder trial in an unusual neighborhood in Queens, and discovers the elements of Greek tragedy.

In this lively gambol through the history of quotations, Gary Saul Morson traces our enduring fascination with the words of others and explores how the "shortest literary genre" shapes our culture, our language, and our thought.

Who were the two fifteen-year-old girls from Little Rock—one black, one white—in one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era? From what worlds did they come? What happened to them? How did the picture affect their lives?

Who were the two fifteen-year-old girls from Little Rock—one black, one white—in one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era? From what worlds did they come? What happened to them? How did the picture affect their lives?

Contrary to popular belief, the cultural relationship between the United States and the world has been reciprocal, says Richard Pells. Modernist America brilliantly explains why George Gershwin's music, Cole Porter's lyrics, Jackson Pollock's paintings, and Orson Welles's storytelling were so influential, and why these and other artists and entertainers simultaneously represent both an A...

Black Gotham is a fascinating look at a little-known segment of American history: African-American elites in New York City in the nineteenth century, told through Carla Peterson's intriguing account of her quest to reconstruct the lives of her ancestors.

A fresh investigation of the fate of Picasso, Cocteau, Messiaen, and dozens of other French artists and intellectuals who lived and worked under Nazi occupation.

In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey proves that one of our most maligned emotions is, in fact, a necessary and constructive part of the human experience.

An acclaimed media expert documents a marketing revolution in the making, showing how new media advertisers are stealthily defining who we are, how much we matter, and what we see and do.

An acclaimed media expert documents a marketing revolution in the making, showing how new media advertisers are stealthily defining who we are, how much we matter, and what we see and do.

In this lively book Judith Walkowitz shows how London’s sophisticated and subversive Soho district became a showcase for a new twentieth-century cosmopolitan identity.

A seminal volume on prejudice against children for parents, teachers, psychologists, social workers, policy-makers—anyone concerned with the crucial subject of child welfare.

A seminal volume on prejudice against children for parents, teachers, psychologists, social workers, policy-makers—anyone concerned with the crucial subject of child welfare.

OTHER SECTIONS IN OUR HUMANITIES 2012 CATALOG: