Both before it was built and since, people have been boosting and bashing Boston’s Prudential Center, whose construction began in earnest fifty years ago. Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape, by architectural historian Elihu Rubin and published today by Yale University Press, captures and explains what the
One of the joys and challenges of literary biography is deciding how to interpret the ripples that are made as each new nugget of information drops into that heady mixture of facts and figures, vibrant anecdotes and dynamic interpretations that make up what we call an author’s “life and work.”
Earlier this year, Marc Michael Epstein, author of The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination, gave a lecture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, called “Bad Boy: Portrait of the Rylands Haggadah as Naughty Sibling.” In the text and video below, he explains the significance and pleasures of working
Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-1781) is a classic work of literary biography, covering 52 poets whom the author felt had the most influence on the English language. Now, John Sutherland follows in this great tradition with his sweeping and ambitious book, Lives of the Novelists:
Whether you’re traveling far and wide or relaxing in your favorite patio chair this summer, no one can deny that extra leisure time is wonderfully filled with books. Here at Yale University Press, we’re boasting an exciting year of literary studies, including Bernard Avishai’s Promiscuous, a biography of Philip Roth’s
Sarah Underwood— Recent events have reminded us how difficult it was in the past, and often still is today, for people to speak openly about their ideas. From the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Arab Spring, public declaration of belief and protest continue to appear regularly in headlines. It
As summer begins, new cooking and eating habits begin to form: fresh produce from gardens and orchards become more widely available, but how have our practices changed alongside technological and economic developments? For most Americans, the store racks, and now even online grocers, have eliminated the agricultural pleasures, ponderings, and
Ellen Elias-Bursać, editor of Vlada Stojiljkovic‘s translation of Ranko Marinkovic‘s 1965 novel Cyclops, writes on the special and playful relationship formed between author and translator by their respective attentions to wit, banter, and humor, along with excerpts from the text. Like many previously published titles in the Margellos World Republic of
Ivan Lett— Judith Walkowitz is my kind of historian. She’s interested in the same kinds of topics as I am: cultural history, social history, women’s history, and applies them to my favorite time and place: early twentieth-century London. Walkowitz’s new book, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London, published this week,
In Southern Africa: Old Treacheries and New Deceits, Stephen Chan delves into the changing landscape of Southern Africa, examining recent developments in the region with an eye towards their wider ramifications across the continent and beyond. Focusing particularly on South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, Chan paints complex portraits of often