Harvard University Press Blog

Second Chances at First Impressions

Along with all of our new books, each season we release paperback editions of dozens of titles that were first published in cloth a year or two earlier. When a paperback comes out it can be a nice reminder of a favorite work from seasons past, but it can also be an occasion to take a new look at a book that may have escaped notice the first time through. For the books themselves it can be a second chance at a first impression. With that in mind, we’ve collected here the first crop of Fall paperbacks, and excerpted the first few sentences of each. Maybe you’ll find something you didn’t even know you’d missed.

Ian Almond, Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched With Christians across Europe’s Battlegrounds

This book is a somewhat primitive book. It has a very straightforward purpose: to relate a selection of moments in European history when, in the very heart of countries such as Spain, Italy, Greece and Hungary, Muslims and Christians collaborated and co-operated with one another to fight against a common enemy–often an enemy also composed of Muslims and Christians. The book does not really do much more than this. It is not some vast overview of Muslim-Christian relations since 1100, nor an in-depth analysis of inter-cultural exchange between Islam and Christianity. It does not offer profound gems of philosophical insight into how human beings can learn to love one another, nor moving moments of idealism concerning the common humanity which can overcome all political/social/religious divisions, etc., etc. The book’s very modest aim, on the contrary, is to show how Muslims do not belong to an ‘other’ civilisation, but rather to the essence of a ‘Europe’ we are quickly in the process of forgetting.

Bernard Bailyn, Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830

Historical accounts of events and developments that took place in the Atlantic world began to appear almost as soon as contacts were established between Europe and the Americas in the late fifteenth century. But Atlantic history itself—that is, the evolving history of the zone of interaction among the peoples of Western Europe, West Africa, and the Americas—was first seen as a distinct and cohesive subject of historical inquiry in the years immediately after World War II.

Daniel Bodansky, The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law

One evening a few years ago, a volunteer for a well-known environmental organization rang my doorbell to solicit a contribution. I declined, saying that I disagreed with the organization’s positions on various issues. The volunteer demanded to know which ones.

Anthony F. D’Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome

The year was 1468. On Fat Tuesday, the last and most extravagant night of carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat attentively watching the races from his throne high above the boisterous crowd, when suddenly a scuffle broke out. The papal guards had stopped someone who was loudly insisting on speaking with the pope urgently about a matter of life and death. The man, his beard and dark eyes barely discernible under his hood, was dressed like a philosopher. Seeing that he had captured the pope’s attention, the “philosopher” broke free of the guards and intoned: “Holy Father! You are in great danger!” The pope sat up, leaned forward, and beckoned the stranger to approach and explain. What he heard made him tremble and turn pale.

Chrystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching

This is a history of two southern women, Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) and Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), and the thousands of women who joined their campaigns against rape and for women’s rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries during the height of lynching in the American South. Felton was born in 1835 to a prosperous slaveholding family in De Kalb, Georgia. Wells, the daughter of slaves, was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Despite differences in their age, race, class, and status, they both, in very different contexts, took radical stances on rape and lynching. Together, their struggles against sexual violence—Wells advocated on black women’s behalf and Felton mostly fought for the protection of poor white women—brought to southern politics the concerns of women who historically had been excluded from debates about rape and protection. Although both campaigned for women’s safety, they confronted the problem of lynching in completely different ways. While Wells became internationally known for her radical anti-lynching crusade, it was Felton’s notorious plea to “lynch a thousand a week” that thrust her into the national spotlight. From different sides of the color line, Felton and Wells were women’s rights pioneers who negotiated and challenged the racial and sexual politics of the New South.

The Image of the Black in Latin America

This spring PBS aired a four-part series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., called Black in Latin America. The series examines the influence of African descent on Latin America, and is the third part of what Gates calls a trilogy that mimics “the patterns of the triangle trade.” The trilogy began in 1999 with Wonders of the African World, and continued in 2004 with America Beyond the Color Line. The first series explored the relationship between Africa and the New World, the second reported on the lives of modern-day African Americans, and now Black in Latin America shows how the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean are the products of Africa and Europe coming together. All four parts of Black in Latin America can now be watched online, courtesy of PBS. There is also a book, also titled Black in Latin America, written by Gates and forthcoming from NYU Press this summer.  

On top of all that, Gates is also the co-editor, with David Bindman, of The Image of the Black in Western Art, a series that we recently resurrected in partnership with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, which Gates directs. Last fall we published the first four books of what will ultimately be ten, and the fifth and sixth are due this fall. In the fifth book, which is actually Part 2 of Volume III, there is a chapter called “The South American Scene,” which illustrates much of the history covered by Gates in Black in Latin America.

The Image of the Black in Western Art documents representations of people of African descent throughout the history of Western art. Much of that representation begins with the slave trade. As Black in Latin America makes clear, the overwhelming majority of the African slaves brought to the new world were taken south of the United States. As Gates explained in an interview with PBS, of the 11.2 million Africans that are known to have survived the Middle Passage and landed in the New World, only 450,000 came to the United States. So, what Black in Latin America explores, and what The Image of the Black in Western Art documents, is this incredible history of the presence of people of African descent in South America and in the Caribbean.

In The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol III, Part 2, we see this, the first visual representation of an enslaved African in the Americas: 

"An unqualified 'yes'"

That's the answer to the question of whether today's immigrants assimilate as easily into the American mainstream as the Italians, Irish and Germans of yore, say the authors of Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, interviewed this past weekend on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday."

Inheriting the City draws upon the results of a remarkable study that incorporated the life stories of residents from all five New York City boroughs. Check out a map of the respondents to get an idea of the scope of the study (it's big and will open in a new window for you).

Ortega addresses UN General Assembly; HUP re-releases Blood of Brothers

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega addressed the UN General Assembly last week, lambasting US "imperialists" on behalf of the "millions of victims of colonialism and neo-colonialism" around the world. The world is accustomed to hearing strong words from Ortega, whose Sandinista National Liberation Front first governed Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990. The first comprehensive account of this tumultuous period to appear was New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer's Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, a readable, first-person narrative that chronicled Kinzer's travels through the war-torn Central American nation at a time when its struggles frequently dominated the international spotlight, thanks in no small part to the Reagan administration's covert (and illegal) funnelling of aid to the contras. As the best connected journalist in Central America, Kinzer was able to personally meet and interview people at every level of the Somoza, Sandinista and contra hierarchies, as well as dissidents, heads of state, and countless ordinary citizens throughout the region. Upon the book's initial release, Library Journal called it "an example of public journalism at its best."

Blood of Brothers had been out of print for some time until The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University released its paperback edition in September, distributed by HUP. Now that the Sandinistas are (partially) back in power, it's a good opportunity to take a look back and see how this whole thing started. There's no better way to do that than with Blood of Brothers in your hand.

NB: Kinzer is also the co-author of the classic Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, which does for 1950s Guatemala what Blood of Brothers does for 1980s Nicaragua.

Latin American leftists

With Fidel Castro reportedly in "grave condition" after three failed surgeries, Hugo Chavez looks poised to pick up his torch, announcing plans to nationalize Venezuela's energy industry and pushing through a constitutional measure designed to allow him to run for President once again when his term expires in 2013. Echoes of Castro graced Chavez's inauguration speech last week when he uttered the phrase "Fatherland, socialism, or death" as he took the presidential oath, and his meeting with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Saturday confirmed that like Castro, he doesn't put placating the United States too high on his list of priorities.

The resurgent Latin American left has made Alan McPherson's Yankee No!: Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations more relevant than ever for people who want to understand the context in which today's events are taking place. See our last post for more info on the book, or check out an excerpt over at the main HUP site.

Congratulations from Brazil

This has got to be a first--we've made the Congressional Record...in Brazil.

Brazil Through the Eyes of William James is a critical, bilingual (English–Portuguese) edition of William James’s diaries, letters, and drawings from his 1865 journey to Brazil published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and distributed by HUP. The other day, the book received an official "Congratulations" ("Voto de Aplauso") from the Federal Senate in Brazil. The summary reads:

Requer VOTO DE APLAUSO à Professora MARIA HELENA P. T. MACHADO, pelo seu trabalho acerca das pesquisas realizadas na Amazônia pelo Filósofo norte-americano William James, o estudioso que popularizou o termo pragmatismo.

The book has made somewhat of a splash in Brazil already, garnering a two-page spread in Estado de Sao Paulo and a review in Folha de Sao Paulo, the country's most popular newspaper. Congratulations to Dr. Machado and to everyone involved in the publication of this important work.

Chomsky alive and kicking

Permit the cliche, but rumors of Noam Chomsky's death have been greatly exaggerated. Two days ago we reported on Hugo Chavez's speech to the United Nations in which he called US President George Bush "the devil" and complained that the smell of "sulfur" still permeated the air around the podium where Bush spoke. But that wasn't the only curious statement that came from Chavez that day. At another point during his speech, Chavez held up a copy of Noam Chomsky's book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, urging his listeners to read the book rather than watch movies, which "make people stupid." The Venezuelan president also expressed regret that he was not able to meet Chomsky before the famed linguist's death.

One problem--Chomsky's not dead. Reached at his house in Lexington, MA, the 77-year-old told the New York Times that he is not only still alive, but working as hard as ever. Indeed, although he's retired from teaching, he still commutes to his office at MIT and is currently working on a new book (Mr. Chavez will undoubtedly be thrilled to hear about this last point). Being name-checked by the Venezuelan president does appear to have its advantages, however--Hegemony or Survival went from 160,722nd place on Amazon.com's rankings list to number seven, virtually overnight.

Anti-Americanism in Latin America

Anti-US sentiment out of Latin America reached a fever pitch today with Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez's speech to the UN General Assembly, in which he referred to US President George Bush as "the devil":

From the Washington Post:

"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush's address on Tuesday and making the sign of the cross. "He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world."

Chavez, who has joined Iran in opposing U.S. influence, accused Washington of "domination, exploitation and pillage of peoples of the world."

"We appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our head," he said.

This isn't the first time Venezeulans have found themselves at odds with US foreign policy, nor is it the first time they've expressed that opposition with vehemence. During Richard Nixon's 1958 trip to Caracas, Venezuelans attacked his motorcade out of anger over US support for the dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. Alan McPherson begins his HUP book Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations with a re-telling of those chaotic days:

On May 13, 1958, it may have seemed to many people that Latin Americans just did not like the United States anymore. That afternoon, Vice President Richard Nixon, while on a good will mission to South America, headed a motorcade into Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. When the cars slowed down, onlookers rushed to gather around them. For twelve minutes, the crowd rocked the vehicles, bashed them with sticks and iron bars, spat on the windows, and shouted at the passengers. The U.S. delegates and their Venezuelan escorts feared for their lives, and barely escaped. The incident brought a climax to protests that marred every stop on Nixon’s itinerary. Whatever else this was, most witnesses agreed, it was anti-Americanism--unbridled hostility toward "the United States." Costa Rican president José Figueres, like others, tried to define the problem narrowly: "People cannot spit on a foreign policy which is what they meant to do." Others feared a tide of revolution. As one aide told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, "The preponderance of U.S. influence in Latin America is being challenged." Among shaken U.S. diplomats, the general consensus was at least that "real violence" against U.S. representatives was "something new," a qualitative leap in boldness stemming from resentment against nearly every aspect of U.S. influence in Latin America.

Yankee No! received accolades when it was first released in 2003, and the book only appears to have grown more relevant since that time. In an age where a Latin American head of state takes to the podium at the world's largest deliberative body to denounce his American counterpart as "the devil," it seems that Foreign Affairs had it right when they said of Yankee No! that "this well-written and balanced book should be required reading in the White House, in Langley, and around Foggy Bottom." Well, no senior government officials have called for their review copies just yet, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

||| Read an excerpt from Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations.

This day in history--Revolution Day in Cuba

Well, yesterday in history, at least. It was Revolution Day in Cuba. Over ten thousand gathered in the eastern city of Bayamo to hear Fidel Castro give his annual Revolution Day speech. Castro took the opportunity to brag about the island's health care system, remarking that thanks to new programs, more and more Cubans are reaching the age of 100. Always the joker, he reassured "our little neighbors to the north" that "they should not fear, for I am not planning to be in office at that age."

Whatever you think about Castro, it's clear that the Cuban Revolution he helped to foment qualifies as one of the major political events of the twentieth century. But while everyone knows the legend about Castro, his brother and Che Guevara stranded in the Sierra Maestra mountains, biding their time and organizing what was to become the final assault on the Batista regime, some scholars, unsatisfied with this one-sided (and officially-promoted) account, have begun to reconsider the roles of other, less well-known groups in helping to encourage the revolution.

Enter Julia Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground, a book in which Castro and his mountain guerrillas (the sierra) take a backseat to members of the urban underground known as the llano. In the Introduction, Sweig explains how the origins of the sierra-llano historiographical dispute originated with none other than the good doctor himself, Ernesto "Che" Guevara:

Virtually all of the scholarly, historical attempts to tell the story of how Castro overthrew Batista start with Guevara’s emphasis on the rebel army or guerrilla war as the principal cause of Batista’s demise. Guevara delineates two competing camps within the 26th of July Movement: the sierra, the rebels in the Sierra Maestra, and the llano, the largely middleclass and professional Cubans running the urban underground in Cuba’s towns and cities. The sierra-llano rivalry, or the ideological, strategic, organizational, and political polarization between the armed rebels in the mountains and the clandestine militia in the cities, remains the leitmotif for subsequent accounts of how the 26th of July Movement seized power in January 1959.

Sweig is only able to tell this story due to the unprecedented access to previously-classified documents concerning Castro's 26 of July Movement she received from the Cuban government. Indeed, Sweig was the only scholar, inside or outside of Cuba, to gain such access. Inside the Cuban Revolution thus offers a look at the events of the late 1950s that you really can't get anywhere else. A picture of the Revolution much different from the official myth-making emerges, one in which the role of the llano becomes more significant than anyone outside the movement could have previously realized. A whole cast of characters surfaces whose names had been lost to history--middle-class urban professionals like Frank País, Armando Hart, Haydée Santamaria, Enrique Oltuski and Faustino Pérez, men whose crucial roles have only really become clear thanks to Sweig's historical sleuthing.

On the whole what emerges, as is often the case when new sources come to light, is a situation that now looks a lot messier than the official versions of the story would have us believe. Castro, while maintaining a central role, is nonetheless not the sole decision-maker in a movement characterized by uneasy cooperation between the urban and rural insurrectionists. This expansion of our historiographical horizons is what makes Inside the Cuban Revolution such an important book, one that will be read for a long time by people not content to be spoon-fed romantic stories about revolutionaries in the wilderness.

||| Read an excerpt from Inside the Cuban Revolution in which Sweig describes the three main myths her book overturns (pdf link).

Books on Latin America from the David Rockefeller Center

From the current issue of the Harvard University Gazette:

Harvard University announced Monday (May 15) that David Rockefeller, a member of the Harvard College Class of 1936 and longtime benefactor, has increased to $25 million his endowment gift to support Harvard's Latin American studies center. The new gift of an additional $10 million to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies will support the center's research, teaching, and publishing activities, and will provide increased funding for undergraduate and graduate students who study Latin America and travel to the region.

Since 1998, the Rockefeller Center has produced a steady stream of books on Latin America, including a revised and updated edition of the 1982 classic Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, which remains the standard account of the CIA-backed overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. Other highlights include Titu Cusi: A 16th Century Account of the Conquest, an account of the Spanish conquest of the Inca that dates to 1570, and Passing Lines: Sexuality and Immigration, a work in which fifteen leading scholars examine the role sexuality plays in immigration. See the Rockefeller Center website for a full list of publications, all of which are available through HUP.