Download the PDF of Yale University Press’s Spring 2013 catalog!

Another banner season of books is upon us: Yale University Press’s Spring/Summer 2013 catalog, covering new books from February – July 2013 is available for your perusing leisure!

Throughout February on the Yale Press Log, we’ll begin the spring season with an in-depth look into many Backlist titles and their continued relevance to public discourse, in celebration of our venerable “World of Letters,” with over a century of publishing stories and successes from years past. Already we have announced the reissuing of William C. Carter‘s Marcel Proust: A Life, in advance of  the 100th anniversary publication of a new edition of Swann’s Way this fall, and fans of Yale University Press on Tumblr will have caught a glimpse at a YUP print ad that ran in the first issue of the New York Review of Books in 1963!

In March, we launch into another conversation on Politics & Current Events: the harsh lessons of the past yield insights into today’s business world in Patrick J. Murphy and Ray W. Coye‘s Mutiny and Its Bounty: Leadership Lessons from the Age of Discovery. Supreme Court correspondent for the Wall Street Journal Jess Bravin gives the first inside account of America’s continuing legal experiment at Guantanamo Bay—a permanent, offshore justice system designed to assure convictions by denying constitutional rights—in The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay. And Joshua Kurlantzick returns to Yale’s list with Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government, addressing a set of new and disturbing trends: democracies around the world losing ground, waning middle class support of democracy, and rising autocracies.

“The Arts” in April are core to any university’s dissemination of knowledge: a new book from esteemed critic Arthur C. Danto asks us What Art Is, while the inimitable Ivan Brunetti‘s Aesthetics: A Memoir explores his creative process, artistic trajectory, and obscure interests in this eye-popping account filled with drawings, doodles, ephemera, and sketches spanning multiple decades. For Poetry Month, we’ll also have the latest winning volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets: Westerly, by Will Schutt, and updates on the Yale Drama Series for emerging playwrights; to say nothing of the exquisite catalogues accompanying exhibitions around the world from our art museum partners and our celebration of Landscape Architecture Month in April.

As May and graduation all too rapidly approach, the subject of “Life-times” takes center-stage, including new biographies, biological studies, and everyday guides to professional lessons, such as Saul Friedländer‘s biography of Franz Kafka, the Poet of Shame and Guilt, new in the Jewish Lives series; James Barilla‘s My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It; and even a special release from Yale University, reflecting on the passions and commitments of  academia and the mission of the university, told by one of its own.

Controlling the earth’s climate system sounds like science fiction, but scientists, government agencies, and businesses around the world are working on plans to do just that. Clive Hamilton explores the essentials of what we must do to prepare for the age of climate engineering in Earthmasters. And we’ll take a further look at two new books for tree-lovers: Peter Crane‘s Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot and Bonsai: A Patient Art, by Susumu Nakamura and Ivan Watters, with a slideshow of images from the book posted here.

Summer Reading in June begins with Terry Eagleton‘s How to Read Literature, continues with a return to the lucid and transcendental in a new fully annotated edition of essays from Henry D. Thoreau, and takes off with a score of new books by contemporary authors from the Margellos World Republic of Letters: The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell, by Carlos Rojas and translated by the masterful Edith Grossman; La Vida Doble, by Arturo Fontaine, translated by Megan McDowell; and two new nations and another new language enter the series: from India and Iraq, respectively: The Girl with the Golden Parasol, by Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum, and The Corpse Washer, by Sinan Antoon. Be sure not to miss YUP Director John Donatich’s recent address to the Athens Concert Hall on the Margellos WRL series and “the world’s poet,” Kiki Dimoula.

Lastly in July, we will focus on The American Century…and After, with key moments in the American past such as 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm, by Susan Dunn, What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity, by Joseph Margulies, and Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century, by Patrick Smith. From perspectives and situations external to the U.S., and still nevertheless entwined: Restless Valley: Revolution, Murder, and Intrigue in the Heart of Central Asia, by journalist Philip Shishkin, told through his personal and vivid account of years in the region; Timothy Beardson‘s Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future, and Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin, an insider account of Putin’s years and the impending crisis that threatens his power, by Ben Judah.

Join us in the months ahead to read all about these great titles and more!