Tag archieven: Princeton University Press

Minxin Pei – The Broken China Dream

Minxin Pei The Broken China Dream review, recensie en informatie boek over hoe hervorming het totalitarisme nieuw leven inblies. Op 2 december 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek over de Chinees-Amerikaanse politicoloog Minxin Pei over het opkomend totalitarisme in China onder Xi Jinping. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verschenen.

Minxin Pei The Broken China Dream review en recensie

  • “Minxin Pei has authored yet another major statement about China’s post-Mao trajectory. His provocative and lucid analysis of China’s political evolution after Tiananmen concludes with a fascinating account of the rise of Xi Jinping. It will focus discussions of China’s recent past and likely futures for some years to come.” (Andrew G. Walder, Stanford University)
  • “In this outstanding book, today’s leading analyst of modern China reveals why it has been so easy for Xi Jinping to reinstate a totalitarian system. Minxin Pei shows how an unreformed party-state stood behind the economic miracle and how, in the absence of constraining legal or political institutions, Xi Jinping has found it easy to reimpose rule by fear. Anybody interested in modern China should read this book.” (Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times)

Minxin Pei The Broken China Dream

The Broken China Dream

How Reform Revived Totalitarianism

  • Auteur: Minxin Pei (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: Chinese politiek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 2 december 2025
  • Omvang: 324 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 29,95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van boek over opkomend totalitarisme in China

A provocative book that demystifies China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one-man rule instead of democracy as many in the West had hoped.

When China embarked on its transformative journey of modernization in 1979, many believed the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and mark the birth of a democratic, open society. Instead, China reverted to a neo-totalitarian state, one backed by one of the fastest-growing, most formidable economies on earth. The Broken China Dream pulls back the curtain on the regime of strongman Xi Jinping, revealing why the reforms of the post-Mao era have been reversed on nearly every front—and why the world failed to see it coming.

Exposing the truth behind China’s economic ascendency after the Cultural Revolution, Minxin Pei shows how, following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping strategically deployed the tools of capitalism to preserve the Chinese Communist Party. Deng kept intact the institutional foundations of totalitarianism even as he unleashed private entrepreneurship and courted foreign investment, giving China’s one-party state control of a vast repressive apparatus and the most critical sectors of the economy. Only a fragile balance of power among dueling factions prevented the rise of a totalitarian leader in the two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989—but this temporary equilibrium collapsed.

Essential to understanding today’s China, this meticulously researched book is a sobering account of why the country’s reformers and institutions could not stop a shrewd and ruthless politician like Xi from resurrecting dormant totalitarian practices that, for the foreseeable future, have spelled the end of the dream of a free and prosperous China.

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David Woodman – The First King of England

David Woodman The First King of England review, recensie en informatie boek over koning Æthelstan en de geboorte van een koninkrijk. Op 2 september 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van de Engelse historicus David Woodman over Æthelstan, de eerste Engelse koning. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

David Woodman The First King of England review en recensie

  • “A fascinating, meticulously researched, and vital new study of the man who has the best claim to be the first true king of England. David Woodman takes us as close as we can ever hope to get to the personality of Æthelstan, and in doing so shines a light on an intriguing and formative period in British history.” (Dan Jones)
  • “England’s founding father deserves this book: at once scholarly and accessible, attentive to every last morsel of detail yet possessed of a thrillingly epic sweep. David Woodman has done Æthelstan proud.” (Tom Holland)
  • “A magisterial account not only of England’s first king, but of the kingdom itself. Beautifully written and filled with insights, it sheds new light on Æthelstan, his life, and his times.” (Peter Frankopan)

David Woodman The First King of England

The First King of England

Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom

  • Auteur: David Woodman (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: Engelse geschiedenis, historische biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 2 september 2025
  • Omvang: 344 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 35,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek over Æthelstan de eerste koning van Engeland

From one of today’s leading historians of the early medieval period, an enthralling chronicle of Æthelstan, England’s founder king whose achievements of 927 rival the Norman Conquest of 1066 in shaping Britain as we know it.

The First King of England is a foundational biography of Æthelstan (d. 939), the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the “kingdom of the English.” In this panoramic work, David Woodman blends masterful storytelling with the latest scholarship to paint a multifaceted portrait of this immensely important but neglected figure, a man celebrated in his day as much for his benevolence, piety, and love of learning as he was for his ambitious reign.

Set against the backdrop of warring powers in early medieval Europe, the book sheds new light on Æthelstan’s early life, his spectacular military victories and the innovative way he governed his kingdom, his fostering of the church, the deft political alliances he forged with Europe’s royal houses, and his death and enduring legacy. It begins with the reigns of Alfred the Great and Edward the Elder, Æthelstan’s grandfather and father, describing how they consolidated and expanded the “kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons.” But it was Æthelstan who would declare himself the first king of all England when, in 927, he conquered the viking kingdom at York, required the submission of a Scottish king, and secured an annual tribute from the Welsh kings.

Beautifully illustrated and breathtaking in scope, The First King of England is the most comprehensive, up-to-date biography of Æthelstan available, bringing a magisterial richness of detail to the life of a consequential British monarch whose strategic and political sophistication was unprecedented for his time.

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Amy Newman – Barnett Newman biografie

Amy Newman Barnett Newman biografie review, recensie en informatie van het boek over de Amerikaanse schilder. Op 28 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek Here van Amy Newman over de Amerikaanse kunstenaar Barnett Newman. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Amy Newman Barnett Newman biografie review en recensie

  • “Barnett Newman told tales, poked authorities, shifted shapes, pronounced truths—and became, to the surprise of many, the oracle of modern American art. How he divined his legendary ‘zip’ is the great story of Amy Newman’s biography, but the artist’s avuncular charm—he was always a Barney not just a Barnett—adds earthy seasoning to his spirited quest.” (Mark Stevens)
  • “Amy Newman delivers an authoritative and compelling account of Barnett Newman as an artist, critic, citizen, and person. Comprehensive in coverage, insightful in analysis, and sensitive in interpretation, the result is a riveting biographical portrait of one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.” (Michael Schreyach, author of Pollock’s Modernism)
  • “Skillfully charts the artist’s improbable path to success. Especially welcome are [Amy Newman’s] efforts to distinguish the true chronology of Newman’s career from his retrospective tendencies toward self-mythologizing. Thoroughly explored too are the ways the painter’s Judaism informed his self-understanding as an artist and influenced his choices of titles and themes…. essential reading for those interested in understanding both the man and his work.” (Library Journal)

Amy Newman Barnett Newman Biography

Barnett Newman

Here

  • Auteur: Amy Newman (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie, kunstboek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 28 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 728 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 39.95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon 

Flaptekst van de biografie van de Amerikaanse schilder Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman (1905–1970), a founding member of the abstract expressionist movement, was a contemporary of such figures as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. He left behind only 118 finished paintings, six sculptures, and 83 acknowledged drawings, yet is often regarded as the greatest painter to have emerged after the Second World War. Barnett Newman is the definitive biography of a charismatic New Yorker who defied the rules and created an art of the sublime.

This landmark book features original research conducted over decades, using scores of interviews, oral histories, and previously unseen correspondence to paint a richly textured portrait of a creative sage who became an exemplar of the artist-citizen. Born in New York to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, he grandly aspired to involve himself in every detail of the city’s life. He was a crusader for the civil service, ran against La Guardia for mayor, worked as a teacher, wrote poetry, criticism, and manifestos, produced political plays, and promoted other artists—all before painting a mature work of his own in his early forties. Newman began with none of the qualities once considered indispensable for a master artist, such as training, apprenticeship, or natural facility. But he possessed a galvanizing intellect and a conviction that aesthetic expression is an ecstatic declaration of existence and an assertion of human dignity.

Drawing on previously unpublished sources gleaned from full access to Newman’s archives, Amy Newman presents a portrait of a maverick whose works are among the most enduring of the twentieth century and whose influence continues to this day.

Amy Newman is an art historian and journalist. She is the author of Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962–1974 and the editor (with Irving Sandler) of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. She is not related to Barnett Newman.

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John Blair – Killing the Dead

John Blair Killing the Dead review, recensie en informatie boek over vampierepidemieën van Mesopotamië tot de Nieuwe Wereld. Op 11 november 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het nieuwe boek van John Blair, de Britse historicus en mediëvist. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

John Blair Killing the Dead review en recensie

  • “We all think we know about vampires, but John Blair brings his expertise as archaeologist and historian to reveal the disconcertingly wide range of stories and evidence about the undead across an astonishing variety of human cultures, from the ancient world to the present day. With Blair’s sure guidance, we may understand better how other cultures have sought to make sense of the terrors of the world around them.” (Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity)
  • “This is the first historical survey of beliefs in dangerous dead humans to take in all time and the whole of the world. It is therefore also the first to identify the way in which such beliefs wax and wane, and travel. As a result, it moves knowledge of the subject up into a whole new register.” (Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present)

John Blair Killing the Dead

Killing the Dead

Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World

  • Auteur: John Blair (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de vampier
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 11 november 2025
  • Omvang: 536 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 35,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek van John Blair over de geschiedenis van vampiers

Killing the Dead provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria—the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, John Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties.

In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history—in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India.

Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals.

John Blair is an Emeritus Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His many books include Building Anglo-Saxon EnglandThe Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, and The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction.

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Christopher I. Beckwith – The Scythian Empire

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire review, recensie en informatie boek over Centraal-Eurazië en de geboorte van de klassieke periode van Perzië tot China. Op 4 juni 2024 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Christopher I. Beckwith, de hoogleraar Centraal-Euraziatische Studies aan de Universiteit van Indiana over de Scythen en de Scytische beschaving. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire review en recensie

  • The Scythian Empire is simply, dazzlingly original. . . . [Beckwith’s] curiosity, imagination and learning–from the Yellow River to the Danube, from archaeology to linguistics–do what every history ought to do but few achieve: compel the reader to think.” (Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal)
  • “Often regarded by historians as a collection of savage tribes, the Scythians emerge as a pivotal force of the ancient world in this monumental history.” (The New Yorker)
  • “Prodigiously learned … Full of hitherto unthought-of connections across the northern steppes. Not everyone will agree with Beckwith, but all will be challenged by his book which turns the classical world as we know it inside out.” (History Today)

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire

The Scythian Empire

Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China

  • Auteur: Christopher I. Beckwith (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de Scythen
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 4 juni 2024
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Prijs: £ 20,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst boek van Christopher I. Beckwith over het Scythische Rijk

In the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE, Scythian warriors conquered and unified most of the vast Eurasian continent, creating an innovative empire that would give birth to the age of philosophy and the Classical age across the ancient world—in the West, the Near East, India, and China. Mobile horse herders who lived with their cats in wheeled felt tents, the Scythians made stunning contributions to world civilization—from capital cities and strikingly elegant dress to political organization and the world-changing ideas of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Laotzu—Scythians all. In The Scythian Empire, Christopher I. Beckwith presents a major new history of a fascinating but often forgotten empire that changed the course of history.

At its height, the Scythian Empire stretched west from Mongolia and ancient northeast China to northwest Iran and the Danube River, and in Central Asia reached as far south as the Arabian Sea. The Scythians also ruled Media and Chao, crucial frontier states of ancient Iran and China. By ruling over and marrying the local peoples, the Scythians created new cultures that were creole Scythian in their speech, dress, weaponry, and feudal socio-political structure. As they spread their language, ideas, and culture across the ancient world, the Scythians laid the foundations for the very first Persian, Indian, and Chinese empires.

Filled with fresh discoveries, The Scythian Empire presents a remarkable new vision of a little-known but incredibly important empire and its peoples.

Christopher I. Beckwith is born on 23 October 1945 He is American philologist and distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. His many books include Empires of the Silk RoadThe Tibetan Empire in Central AsiaGreek Buddha, and Warriors of the Cloisters.

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