John Makeham— Forty years ago, intellectual historian Joseph Levenson famously commented: “What the West has probably done to China is to change the latter’s language—what China has done to the West is to enlarge the latter’s vocabulary.” Levenson was referring to a process that began in the decades immediately before
C. Kavin Rowe— One of the greatest mysteries of human life is that we are a problem for ourselves. We tend to act in ways that damage our lives and mess things up. We let our passions run amok, focus on things that don’t matter much rather than on the
Rebecca Mitchell— It was common knowledge among his Russian contemporaries that Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) did not willingly enter into conversation about his music. When commissioned to interview the composer about his musical inspiration in 1915, music critic Grigorii Prokofiev warned the editor of the Russian Musical Newspaper that any such
Welcome to the first installment of Books et Veritas, the column written by Yale University Press’s student interns! In each installment, an intern will write about life and reading at Yale and Yale University Press. In this first post, Alex Blum gives a roundabout answer to the question: what Yale University
Today is National Evaluate Your Life Day, and while the holiday may be quirky, it does offer an excuse to take a moment from your busy schedule and reflect on your life. Philosopher Mark C. Taylor has taken this opportunity to reflect on his own life, one split between the bustle of
Follow @freudeinstein (Jennifer Michael Hecht) There is a certain myth to the idea that most suicides occur around the holidays; in fact, it’s usually in spring and summer that see the highest rates of this irretrievable act. In our latest episode of the Yale Press Podcast, Jennifer Michael Hecht, author
Follow @JeffSharlet Follow @yaleRELIbooks Some stories are best told in fragments, built like mosaics from pieces brought together. The story of American religion, what belief can look like since the early years of this nation, is one of those complex histories that benefits from a multiplicity of disparate voices. In
Follow @freudeinstein Twenty years ago, the suicide of Kurt Cobain shook not only the alternative music scene, but much of popular culture as we know it. The infamous 27 Club, which then included musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, and more recently, Amy Winehouse, was mainly a
Follow @yaleRELIbooks See all 20% off titles in our YUP Backlist History promotion! It’s good practice, if you are going to argue with something, to aim at the best version of that thing you are arguing with. In Reason, Faith, and Revolution, Terry Eagleton argues that opponents of religion
Thoreau: Fully Annotated
In a month, it will have been ten years since Jeffrey S. Cramer published Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition. Cramer has had a prolific and successful decade, editing numerous volumes on Henry David Thoreau and racking up awards and praise. In 2012, radio host Jim Fleming said that Cramer “may know
Continue reading…