Princeton University Press

07/18/2025

An eclectic collection of strange and amazing stories about body parts you never knew you had, from acetabulum to zygomaticus major.

Out now! Learn more about this intriguing book and explore a free sample: https://hubs.ly/Q03tdp3G0

Adam Taor's Bodypedia is a lively, fact-filled romp through your body, from A to Z. Featuring almost 100 stories on topics ranging from the beastly origins of goosebumps to the definitive answer to the Motown classic “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” these fascinating tales from your entrails explore the wonders of anatomy, one body part at a time.

With a keen scalpel, Adam Taor peels away the layers to bring your underappreciated insides to light. What distinguishes crocodile tears from yours? What possessed Isaac Newton to stick a needle into his eye socket? How does brain glue thwart self-improvement gurus? Why did one of the world’s most influential surgeons steal a giant? Providing insights into these and other curiosities, Taor illuminates the ingenuity, mystery, and eccentric history of your anatomy like never before. Along the way, you will meet the geniuses, mavericks, and monsters (sometimes all the above) who got their hands bloody discovering, dissecting, and naming your parts.

With beautiful drawings by Nathalie Garcia, Bodypedia celebrates what makes you tick, and reveals why the best stories are hidden inside you.

• Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

07/18/2025

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

How the fight for civil rights in America became an important front in the Cold War.

The 25th anniversary edition of Mary L. Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights is out now. Read a free sample and save 30% with code PUP30: https://hubs.ly/Q03tb9BF0

In 1958, an African American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soon after World War II, American racism became a major concern of US allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Racial segregation undermined the American image, harming foreign relations in every administration from Truman to Johnson. Mary Dudziak shows how the Cold War helped to facilitate desegregation and other key social reforms at home as the United States sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress. Cold War Civil Rights situates the Cold War in civil rights history while giving an international perspective to the fight for racial justice in America.

07/18/2025

Today complex numbers have such widespread practical use—from electrical engineering to aeronautics—that few people would expect the story behind their derivation to be filled with adventure and enigma.

In An Imaginary Tale, Paul Nahin tells the 2000-year-old history of one of mathematics’ most elusive numbers, the square root of minus one, also known as i. He recreates the baffling mathematical problems that conjured it up, and the colorful characters who tried to solve them.

Find the ebook for $2.99/£2.99—nearly everywhere you buy ebooks and audiobooks:

Mathematics An Imaginary Tale: The Story of √-1 Paul J. Nahin Collections: Princeton Science Library Paperback Price: $2.99/£2.99 ISBN: Published: Feb 22, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Illus: 1 halftone. 47 line illus. ebook (EPUB via app) Price: $2.99/£2.99 ISBN: Published: Feb 22, 2010 Copyright: 2010 ...

07/18/2025

Exploring topics from black holes to the Big Bang, to the search for habitable planets, this reading list illuminates humanity’s exploration of space—from the scientific to the philosophical. Please enjoy 30% off with code PUP30.

https://hubs.ly/Q03xR-Ps0

07/18/2025

The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen co**se, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest.

For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest’s treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk.

Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions—often in the climbers’ own words—ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or “sahibs,” to use the Sherpas’ phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers’ behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas’ attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been “spoiled” by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.

Curious readers, please enjoy 30% off with code PUP30.

https://lnkd.in/gZtzu3Dt

"[Ortner's book] written so clearly and with such evident fascination with the subject that it's more than just accessible to lay readers: it's captivating. I've had anthropology texts put me to sleep right after morning coffee, but this one kept me awake at night."—Michael Parfit, New York Times Book Review

"Having lived and worked with the Sherpas for more than thirty years as a serious anthropologist, Ortner is in an ideal position to introduce the other, unknown culture involved with Himalayan climbing. . . . Fascinating."—Pico Iyer, New York Review of Books

Awards and Recognition
Winner of the J.I. Staley Prize

National Park Service National Geographic

07/18/2025

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 arrives 2 September. Preorder your copy: https://hubs.ly/Q03v3HS70

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.

07/17/2025

Beepedia is a one-of-a-kind celebration of bees, from A to Z. Featuring dozens of alphabetical entries on topics ranging from pollination and beekeeping to the peculiar lifestyles of cuckoo bees and carrion-eating vulture bees, this enticing, pocket-sized compendium takes you on an unforgettable journey into the remarkable world of bees.

Out now. Explore a free sample: https://hubs.ly/Q03tdxGd0

Explore the many wonders of bee morphology, behavior, and ecology, and learn about the role of bees in agriculture, art, literature, and religion. With more than 20,000 described species, bees can be found anywhere on the planet where flowering plants are pollinated by insects. With Laurence Packer as your guide, you will meet some of the most inquisitive and prolific bee experts who ever lived and marvel at the astonishing variety of wild bees and the creative methods scientists use to study them. Discover why bees have intrigued us for millennia, why Napoleon Bonaparte chose the bee as his emblem when he became emperor, where the expression “the bee’s knees” comes from, and much more.

With captivating drawings by Ann Sanderson, Beepedia is an informative and entertaining blend of fact, folklore, and fancy that will captivate anyone who has ever been curious about these amazing insects.

• Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

07/17/2025

A guide to the art of reviewing scholarly books, with strategies and suggestions.

Steven E. Gump's How to Review Scholarly Books is out now. Save 30% with code PUP30 and explore a free sample: https://hubs.ly/Q03tb4G60

Scholarly book reviews should be enjoyable—both to write and to read. All too often, though, they offer little more than chapter-by-chapter summaries. In this comprehensive handbook, Steven Gump offers an encouraging guide to crafting valuable reviews of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. Readers learn how to write engaging, respectful reviews that make intellectual contributions of their own. With extensive experience in both writing and editing scholarly book reviews, Gump walks prospective reviewers through the process of selecting a book to review, identifying a venue to publish the review, reading and annotating the book, and writing a review that is tailored to the audience of the target venue, with the possibility of dissemination to popular outlets beyond the core field.

Alongside this practical advice, Gump offers a generous philosophy of scholarly book reviewing that considers the roles of book reviews and the responsibilities of book reviewers within the broader scholarly ecosystem. Readers learn how to uplift the voices and contributions of authors, how to prepare the next generation of reviewers (including undergraduates or graduate students), and how to elevate an unjustly underestimated genre. Ultimately, this essential guide brings into renewed focus the joys of reading scholarly works, engaging with intellectual ideas, and writing incisively.

07/17/2025

Stephen Buranyi has written an excellent review of The Power of Prions by Michel Brahic in the London Review of Books! Prion research is characterised by unexpected observations that seem to violate the scientific consensus – read more about them here:

How and why do proteins, which are produced by our body to build structures (such as skin and muscle) or carry out tasks...

07/17/2025

Studies have always been quiet places for reading, thinking, and (sometimes) unraveling: a sanctuary for your thoughts. In the London Review of Books, Anthony Grafton explores Andrew Hui’s The Study, a book about how libraries became places of focus and imagination:

The library made possible a new kind of intellectual life. Machiavelli, when he’d been exiled from Florence, described...

07/16/2025

Dive into the life and work of writer Fyodor with Joseph Frank's widely acclaimed biography series and never-before-published lectures and essays.

Save 30% with code PUP30: https://hubs.ly/Q03xxt_F0