Tag archieven: Princeton University Press

Andrew W. Bernstein – Fuji

Andrew W. Bernstein Fuji review, recensie en informatie boek over de beroemdste berg en vulkaan van Japan. Op 23 september 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Andrew W. Bernstein over de berg Fuji. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Andrew W. Bernstein Fuji review en recensie

  • “Andrew Bernstein has written an unusually comprehensive history of Mount Fuji. His scholarly engagement is wide-ranging, treating the reader to a remarkable array of approaches—from earth science and economics to poetry, art, and religion. The fruit of many years’ research, Fuji offers penetrating perspectives on a sacred volcano’s convulsive life.” (Kären Wigen, author of A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600–1912)
  • “A historical tour de force, this biography of Japan’s most famous mountain begins in distant geological times, moves across centuries of change in religious, economic, military, ideological, and environmental factors, and ends its admirably transdisciplinary account at the edge of the future. Kaleidoscopic, informative, beguiling, its essay-like chapters are also a pleasure to read.” (Carol Gluck, author of Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period)

Andrew W. Bernstein Fuji

Fuji

A Mountain in the Making

  • Auteur: Andrew W. Berstein (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de berg Fuji in Japan
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 23 september 2025
  • Omvang: 352 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 35.00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van het boek over de berg Fuji in Japan

Mount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrought havoc and instilled fear. Long an object of worship, Fuji has been inhabited by deities that changed radically over time. It has been both a totem of national unity and a flashpoint for economic and political disputes. And while its soaring majesty has inspired countless works of literature and art, the foot of the mountain is home to military training grounds and polluting industries. Tracing the history of Fuji from its geological origins in the remote past to its recent inscription as a World Heritage Site, Andrew Bernstein explores these and other contradictions in the story of the mountain, inviting us to reflect on the relationships we share with the nonhuman world and one another.

Beautifully illustrated, Fuji presents a rich portrait of one of the world’s most celebrated sites, revealing a mountain forever in the making and offering a meditation on the ability of landscape both to challenge and inspire.

Andrew W. Bernstein is professor of history at Lewis & Clark College and the author of Modern Passings: Death Rites, Politics, and Social Change in Imperial Japan.

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Michael D. Gurven – Seven Decades

Michael D. Gurven Seven Decades review, recensie en informatie boek over hoe de mens geëvolueerd is om langer te leven. Op 16 september 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Michael D. Gurven, de Amerikaanse antropoloog. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Michael D. Gurven Seven Decades review en recensie

  • “Blending scholarly expertise and masterful storytelling, Michael Gurven makes a compelling case that physical, mental, emotional, and social decline are not the inevitable processes we believe them to be. This is a must-read for anyone invested in human longevity.” (Barbara Natterson-Horowitz)
  • “This beautifully written book shows how to get the most good years out of life. In a genre littered with Instagram scientists and antiaging charlatans, Michael Gurven has tapped into a consummately original source of longevity wisdom: an Amazonian tribe with the world’s lowest rate of cardiovascular disease. Here, he harnesses evolutionary biology and his keen anthropology skills to tease out their wisdom to understand the capacity of the human machine. Read it to live longer or just for fun. Either way, you won’t regret it.” (Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and author)
  • “This eye-opening, wise, and entertaining book uniquely combines groundbreaking anthropological and evolutionary insights to explain how and why we age, and how those too often overlooked insights can help all of us age better. Be sure to read this gem of a book!” (Daniel E. Lieberman)

Michael D. Gurven Seven Decades

Seven Decades

How We Evolved to Live Longer

  • Auteur: Michael D. Gurven (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: antropologisch boek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 16 september 2025
  • Omvang: 536 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek
  • Prijs: $ 35,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst boek over waarom we ouder worden van Michael D. Gurven

Our ability to live for decades may seem like a modern luxury made possible by clean water and advances in medicine. In fact, human longevity is a legacy of our unique evolutionary path as a species. Seven Decades challenges the belief that life in the past was “nasty, brutish, and short,” tracing how our capacity for long life came to be and transforming how we think about aging.

Blending vivid storytelling with cutting-edge science, anthropologist Michael Gurven weaves tales from his years of field experience among Indigenous societies whose diet and traditional lifeways are closer to how we all lived prior to industrialization, demonstrating how these communities are relatively free of the chronic diseases of aging such as heart disease, dementia, and diabetes. He provides compelling evidence that our longevity first evolved among our hunting and gathering ancestors and shows how the human body was built to last around seven decades. At a time when people are more likely to live to old age than ever before, Gurven discusses how we can harness this amazing evolutionary feat through a shift in societal values, one that balances self-reliance with interdependence, nurtures multigenerational ties, prioritizes women’s health and longevity, and enables us to rediscover the wisdom of our elders.

Sharing bold new perspectives on human aging, Seven Decades draws important lessons from our ancestral history, bridging the past with the present to reveal what healthy, happy, and productive old age could look like for all generations.

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Kenneth L. Feder – Native America

Kenneth L. Feder Native America review, recensie en informatie boek met het verhaal over de eerste volkeren in Amerika. Op 10 september 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek over de eerste bevolking van het continent Amerika, geschreven door Kenneth L. Feder de emeritus professor antropologie van Central Connecticut State University. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Kenneth L. Feder Native America review en recensie

  • “Feder tells the story of North America’s amazing archaeology with passion, humility, and humor. Native America is not just authoritative; it’s a page-turner. I highly recommend it to anyone with even the slightest interest in the continent’s archaeology. You’ll learn a lot and have fun along the way.” (Brad Lepper, curator of archaeology, Ohio History Connection)
  • “Generations of students—including me—can count themselves lucky to have had their first introduction to archaeology through the works of Kenneth Feder. Native America, which introduces cutting-edge findings and conveys the deepest respect for Indigenous peoples and their cultures, continues his tradition of superb writing. His accessible tone and irreverent humor disguise the fact that this book is a master class in American archaeology. This is an essential book for anyone interested in understanding current scientific perspectives on the origins and histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It sets a new standard to which all anthropology writers should aspire.” (Jennifer Raff, author of Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas)

Kenneth L. Feder Native America

Native America

The Story of the First Peoples

  • Auteur: Kenneth L. Feder (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: antropologisch boek over de eerste Amerikanen
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 10 september 2025
  • Omvang: 440 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 39.95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek over de eerste volkeren in van Amerika

Native America presents an infinitely surprising and fascinating deep history of the continent’s Indigenous peoples. Kenneth Feder, a leading expert on Native American history and archaeology, draws on archaeological, historical, and cultural evidence to tell the ongoing story, more than 20,000 years in the making, of an incredibly resilient and diverse mixture of peoples, revealing how they have ingeniously adapted to the many changing environments of the continent, from the Arctic to the desert Southwest.

Richly illustrated, Native America introduces close to a hundred different peoples, each with their own language, economic and social system, and religious beliefs. Here, we meet the Pequot, Tunxis, Iroquois, and Huron of the Northeast; the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Apache of the Southwest; the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Lakota of the Northern Plains; the Haida, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish of the Northwest Coast; the Tule River and Mohave of Southern California; the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole of the Southeast; and the Inuit and Kalaallit of the Arctic. We learn about hunters of enormous Ice Age beasts; people who raised stone toolmaking to the level of art; a Native American empire ruled by a king and queen, with a huge city at its center and colonies hundreds of miles away; a society that made the desert bloom by designing complex irrigation networks; brilliant architects who built fairy castles in sandstone cliffs; and artists who produced beautiful and moving petroglyphs and pictographs that reflect their deep thinking about history, the sacred, the land, and the sky.

Native America is not about peoples of the past, but vibrant, living ones with an epic history of genius and tenacity—a history that everyone should know.

Kenneth L. Feder is professor emeritus of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University. His books include Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in ArchaeologyThe Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory, and Native American Archaeology in the Parks: A Guide to Native Heritage Sites in Our National Parks and Monuments.

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Tom Jackson – Insect Architecture

Tom Jackson Insect Architecture review, recensie en informatie boek over hoe insecten hun wereld bouwen, ontwerpen en vormgeven. Op 9 november 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Tom Jackson, de Amerikaanse schrijver over de bouwwerken die insecten maken. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Tom Jackson Insect Architecture review en recensie

  • “This book is about as fascinating a read as you will ever have, even if you never gave a thought to the lives of insects before … You simply cannot fail to be impressed with it all and not a little gobsmacked along the way.” (David Gascoigne, writer of Travels with Birds)

Tom Jackson Insect Architecture

Insect Architecture

How Insects Build, Engineer, and Shape Their World

  • Auteur: Tom Jackson
  • Soort boek: insecten boek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 9 september 2025
  • Omvang: 176 pagina’s (150 afbeeldingen)
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 29,95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek over de bouwwerken van insecten

Insect Architecture takes you inside the amazing structures that insects build, from the paper galleries of yellowjacket wasps to elaborate termite mounds complete with royal chambers and air-conditioning systems. Each chapter focuses on a group of insect architects, describing the materials and methods they use while exploring the structures themselves in detail. Blending spectacular illustrations with illuminating case studies of representative species from around the world, this is the ultimate guide to insect artistry and innovation.

  • Features a wealth of color photos, explanatory diagrams and blueprints, step-by-step sequences, and visual spreads
  • Covers all major groups of insect architects and the broad array of structures they build
  • Explains how anatomy, life cycle, and habitat are the ingredients to extraordinary creations
  • Profiles the insect world’s most accomplished builders—from beetles, bees, and cicadas to moths, wasps, ants, and termites
  • Discusses the ecological impacts of insect architecture
  • Reveals how insect builders have inspired human design innovations

Tom Jackson is an acclaimed science writer and conservationist. His books include Biology: An Illustrated History of Life ScienceThe Magnificent Book of Dangerous Animals, Micro Monsters, and Genetics in Minutes: 200 Key Ideas of Evolution and Biology in an Instant. He was the chief editor of Insects and Spiders of the World.

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Ludovic Orlando – Horses

Ludovic Orlando Horses review, recensie en informatie boek over en de 4000 jaar durende genetische reis door de wereld van het paarden. Op 9 september 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press de Engelse vertaling van La Conquête du cheval: Une histoire génétique, het boek van Ludovic Orlando  de uit Frankrijk afkomstige moleculair bioloog. Er is heen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Ludovic Orlando Horses review en recensie

  • “This is a breathtaking book from the geneticist who decoded the horse’s ancient secrets. It is a modern tale of serendipity, power, and relentless spirit.” (Christina Warinner, Harvard University)
  • “Ludovic Orlando is among the most brilliant scientists I have ever worked with. In Horses, he reveals how cutting-edge DNA research is rewriting the story of the four-thousand-year history of human-equine relationships. I warmly recommend his book, a fascinating blend of history, science, and personal narrative.” (Eske Willerslev, University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge)
  • “The origins and subsequent biological and cultural history of most domestic animals remain patchy. With this titanic book, Ludovic Orlando has ensured that what we now know about horses matches the outsized effect they have had on human history over the past four thousand years.” (Greger Larson, University of Oxford)

Ludovic Orlando Horses

Horses

A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World

  • Auteur: Ludovic Orlando (Frankrijk)
  • Soort boek: populair wetenschappelijk paardenboek
  • Origineel: La Conquête du cheval: Une histoire génétique (2023)
  • Engelse vertaling: Teresa Lavender Fagan
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 9 september 2025
  • Omvang: 288 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 29,95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek van Ludovic Orlando over de genetische geschiedenis van het paard

Ludovic Orlando garnered world acclaim for helping to rewrite the genomic history of horse domestication. Horses takes you behind the scenes of this ambitious genealogical investigation, revealing how he and an international team of scientists discovered the elusive origins of modern horses. Along the way, he shows how the domestication of the horse changed the trajectory of civilization—with benefits and unforeseen consequences for the animals themselves.

Orlando brought together world-class experts in genomics, archaeology, and the history of peoples, languages, and migrations. Comparing the DNA of ancient horses to the genomes of dozens of modern horse breeds, these researchers reconstructed millennia of equine evolutionary history. They now believe that horses were first domesticated some 4,200 years ago on the steppes of the North Caucasus. Orlando discusses how selective breeding has significantly intensified over the past two centuries, giving rise to faster, stronger horses but also creating a severe decline in genetic diversity that has made horses more prone to genetic diseases. He looks at breeds throughout history and around the world, explaining how they have been bred for particular purposes or environments, from Botai and Przewalski’s horses to the warhorses of the Vikings and Genghis Khan, Arabian horses, thoroughbreds, Himalayan steeds, and mules.

Blending panoramic storytelling with cutting-edge genetic science, Horses chronicles an unbreakable bond that was forged thousands of years ago on the windswept Eurasian Steppe, one that heralded a bold new era in the human drama—that of speed.

Ludovic Orlando holds a doctorate in paleogenetics, is a CNRS silver medal-winning research director, and heads the Toulouse Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics at Paul-Sabatier University. He participated in the sequencing of the first ancient human genome and pushed the limits of DNA analysis beyond half a million years. His work is internationally recognized for having rewritten the genomic history of horse domestication.

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Ellen Wohl – Following the Bend

Ellen Wohl Following the Bend review, recensie en informatie boek over hoe je een rivier kunt lezen en de aard ervan kunt begrijpen. Op 9 september 2024 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het nieuwe boek van Ellen Bend, de Amerikaanse professor geowetenschappen. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Ellen Wohl Following the Bend review en recensie

  • “Wonderfully engaging. Wohl’s storytelling is rich with the deep insights about rivers that she has cultivated over decades of research, fieldwork, and experiences.” (Joann Mossa, University of Florida)
  • “A thoroughly appealing book about rivers and how they flow and change. Wohl seamlessly blends her personal experiences with the science of rivers in an accessible way, drawing broad connections between the multifaceted aspects of rivers across space and time. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as will other readers who enjoy rivers recreationally, appreciate nature, or are just interested in natural phenomena.” (Stephanie L. Shepherd, Auburn University)
  • “In Following the Bend, Wohl delivers a highly readable and personal account of the form and functioning of rivers. Exploring the intricate interactions of rivers with time, space, climate, landscape, the sea, and life-forms—including humanity—this is a must-read for all fluviophiles, professional and otherwise.” (Eric B. Taylor, author of Rivers Run Through Us)

Ellen Wohl Following the Bend

Following the Bend

How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature

  • Auteur: Ellen Wohl (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: populair wetenschappelijk rivierenboek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 9 september 2025
  • Omvang: 304 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 29,95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van het boek van Ellen Wohl over het begrijpen van rivieren

When we look at a river, either up close or while flying over a river valley, what are we really seeing? Following the Bend takes readers on a majestic journey by water to find answers, along the way shedding light on the key concepts of modern river science, from hydrology and water chemistry to stream and wetland ecology.

In this accessible and uniquely personal book, Ellen Wohl explains how to “read” a river, blending the latest science with her own personal experiences as a geologist and naturalist who has worked on rivers for more than three decades. She charts how water travels through the hydrologic cycle around the globe and downstream to distribute energy, move sediment, and shape river channels, and how living organisms adapt to life in flowing water to create vibrant river ecosystems. Wohl looks at the role of disturbances such as floods and droughts and discusses how geologists interpret the sedimentary records of past river processes. She illustrates how river networks interact with Earth’s surface and considers issues for rivers in the future, such as progressive drying, river restoration, and advocating for the legal personhood of a river to maintain its distinctive spirit, identity, and integrity.

Sharing a new understanding of how rivers function as both physical systems and ecosystems, Following the Bend enables us to observe rivers with fresh eyes and more fully appreciate the beauty, vibrancy, and complexity of our planet’s vital waterways.

Ellen Wohl is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Colorado State University. Her many books include Dead Wood: The Afterlife of TreesSomething Hidden in the Ranges: The Secret Life of Mountain Ecosystems, and Of Rock and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American West.

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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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