Harvard University Press Blog

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history, breaking down key moments and challenging preconceptions about a specifically “German way of war.”

 Why did you feel it important to include the histories of Austria and Switzerland in the story of German military history?

Modern Germany is a very recent creation. The Federal Republic’s current frontiers date from 1990 with the reunification of the two Germanies created by the Cold War. Germany’s size and location in Europe had shifted significantly several times before, while its political structure underwent profound transformations. War was central to all these processes, but it makes little sense to frame German military history in isolation from that of Austria and Switzerland to which it was intimately connected for centuries. All three countries have their own martial traditions and stories, but these are often entwined and have shared much in common, so the book uses “German” more as a shorthand to encompass the large section of Central Europe to which these states belonged.

That’s also why the book starts around 1500, when the countries which are now the German, Austrian, and Swiss republics were part of the Holy Roman Empire. Although the medieval Empire was not short on conflict, wars were usually short and intermittent. The later fifteenth century saw the creation of new mechanisms for mobilizing armies for more sustained and coordinated struggles, in response to broader changes in European warfare. Importantly for German history, this was not achieved by forging a single, national state, but instead through collective, multilateral structures within a decentralized polity.

What do you see as key transformations in German military history?

German military development has broadly followed European trends, but with some important distinctive characteristics. The first key transformation was the creation of a mobilization structure around 1500 which shared the burdens across the numerous principalities and cities composing the Holy Roman Empire. While Switzerland opted out, it nonetheless adopted its own version of this decentralized system which proved surprisingly durable.

The second transformation was the emergence of permanent, professional forces during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These assumed a structure which remained broadly the same into the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815). Those conflicts saw the adoption of new forms of conscription, which became more comprehensive around the mid-nineteenth century and transformed military service into a rite of passage for a significant proportion of young men.

New forms of command and control also emerged in the nineteenth century, notably the General Staff which was widely copied around the world following the unexpected German victory over France in 1870-1. The newly united German Empire now joined Austria as a significant naval power, ranked second only to Britain by 1914 (with Austria-Hungary as seventh largest). Air forces were added during the First World War, but despite producing innovative and iconic aircraft, Germany never succeeded in wielding airpower as effectively as its enemies in either that conflict or WWII.

Defeat in 1945 was indeed a major rupture, but there were several important continuities across the mid-twentieth century, especially in the Communist-controlled East Germany which remained more highly militarized than the West. Germany’s relative disregard for its allies in both world wars also contrasts with its previous and subsequent behavior, and its integration within NATO and the EU echoes the earlier tradition of burden-sharing and multilateral collective security.

What was the role of Prussia in German military history?

Prussia has a central place in German military history, not least because its experience has shaped how that wider story has been perceived and interpreted. Many of the key symbols of German militarism, like the Iron Cross and the Pickelhaube spiked helmet, originated in Prussia. However, it was Austria that was the primary military power until its defeat by Prussia in 1866. Austria consistently had a larger army and was the only German state capable of launching a major war independent of allies.

Prussia’s rise was far from certain, and it only narrowly escaped disaster on several occasions, notably in 1806 when it was decisively defeated by France. Even in 1866, most bets were on an Austrian victory. It is also important not to forget the “Third Germany” of lesser states like Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg, whose armies had often been larger, and sometimes more creative than Prussia’s prior to about 1700, and which remained separate organizations until 1919.

To what extent can we still talk of a “German” way of war?

The presence of these smaller armies alongside the Austrian and Prussian forces already indicates that it is difficult to talk of a single German way of war. Germany’s military history has always contained several threads. What people usually mean by the idea of a German way of war is primarily a product of both world wars, particularly the Second. It is the belief that, surrounded by more numerous and collectively richer enemies, the country had to fight swift, decisive wars of annihilation because it could not afford a protracted war of attrition.

Some German generals had indeed reached that conclusion by the 1850s and interpreted their earlier history, notably the reign of Prussia’s Frederick the Great (1740-86), to justify this belief. This conviction became more entrenched following the victory over France in 1870-1 which nearly unraveled as French partisans and volunteers continued to resist after their country’s regular army had been largely destroyed. Germany entered both world wars convinced it had to win quickly, and the spectacular victories in the opening years of WWII suggested that its armed forces could really achieve this. However, the Germans are hardly unique in desiring a quick victory, while their conduct of both world wars demonstrates the difficulties of doing this. The two post-war Germanies were subsumed within the rival Cold War alliances and had to adopt the doctrines of their American and Soviet sponsors. Reunited Germany’s membership of NATO and the EU continues to constrain any distinct way of war, and Germany’s recent experience in Afghanistan revealed that its forces lack a war-fighting doctrine as opposed to a peacekeeping one.

 Most readers when they think of German military history likely bring up the German forces of WWII. How do you position WWII in the longer history of the German military? 

The Second World War was a titanic struggle, involving unprecedented levels of mobilization and destruction. Around 20 million Germans and Austrians served in the Wehrmacht or other militarized organizations, while by 1945, 60 percent of Germany’s urban space had been destroyed. This cataclysmic event features prominently in the chapters dealing with the twentieth century, but it is also important to place it within the longer story and not to write the rest of German military history as somehow leading inevitably towards Hitler and the Holocaust.

What does this history tell us about the relationship between the German military and the German state today?

The Second World War continues to cast a long shadow over Germany and shapes how its military history is interpreted, as well as how the country views the use of armed force today. The general assumption has been that Germany rejected its military past and became a “civilian power,” relying on diplomacy and economic leverage to exert international influence. Just as the earlier period was not wholly militaristic, military preparations continued to shape the post-war era into the 1990s. Germany’s economic power means that even spending only a small proportion of national wealth on defense is still a lot of money and can buy a lot of fancy kit. What Germany can do with such weaponry remains to be seen.

Order your copy of Iron and Blood »

On Burnout Today with Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter

In The Burnout Challenge, leading researchers of burnout Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter focus on what occurs when the conditions and requirements set by a workplace are out of sync with the needs of people who work there. These “mismatches,” ranging from work overload to value conflicts, cause both workers and workplaces to suffer. In our interview, the authors discuss the current state of burnout in the workplace as well as the reaction to their book.

 You both have been researching burnout in the workplace for a long time. What has been the biggest workplace or management style change you have observed over the full scope of your research? 

While the pressure has increased in many workplaces, others have striven to become more respectful, considerate settings for their people. They do not always succeed in these endeavors, but values of respect and inclusion have become more salient over the decades during which we have been working on burnout. This shift is important because workplace culture plays a major role in shaping experiences at work. 

We know that, since hybrid work is so new, you are reluctant to comment on it without in-depth study, but anecdotally, how do you think this will inform your research going forward?

A big lesson learned from the pandemic is that the job can change. It doesn’t have to be “it is what it is.” And if the job can change, it could change in many innovative ways to create a better work environment for workers to do good work and feel good about it. We must learn from what worked well during the pandemic and what did not.

To some extent, hybrid work increases employees’ sense of control. First, they can exercise more choice in where and when to work. Second, they have less performative pressure when they are working. On management’s end, hybrid work requires managers to have a clearer idea of what exactly they expect from people, to develop trust in employees’ commitment to meeting those expectations, and to articulate clear rationales when they require people to come to a work location. In-person work no longer goes without saying.

But hybrid work is not perfect—it can raise issues of fairness when it is unevenly implemented. Given the various types of work people do and differences in the extent to which work is tied to a specific location, one size will not come close to fitting all. This means that we should also be thinking about other ways to improve the matches between people and their jobs.

When you speak to employees and leaders about the causes of chronic burnout, what is something you say that often surprises them?

The common response is often stronger than surprise. In fact, it is often considered a “game-changer.” What we say is that burnout is not simply a flaw of the worker, but of the workplace. And that means it is not enough to simply fix the worker—the workplace needs to be fixed too. The worker fix tells employees that it is entirely up to them to cope and be resilient, which is often understood as code for putting up with the way things are. The workplace fix requires better management of chronic job stressors that actually cause burnout.  

 How about something you have heard from them that was surprising?

We used to hear that “burnout is a good thing, because it means workers will quit on their own, and I don’t have to fire them.” But recently, we heard a CEO say, “I never worry about my bright, young staff working from home—but I do worry about them living at work.”

With a new book out, you are talking about burnout a lot—does it leave you feeling hopeful or not?

Definitely hopeful! Our book seems to be providing more of a common language for all levels of employees within a workplace, so that everyone can find ways to get on the same page in terms of identifying workplace mismatches and figuring out better solutions.

At our talks about the book, our focus on addressing mismatches seems to be resonating with people. The huge changes to the way people work that occurred during the lockdown phase of the pandemic have increased awareness of the extent to which work can be done so differently than it used to be done.

 

The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs has been recommended by Forbes, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and Arianna Huffington, who called it “Vital reading for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.”

Order your copy of The Burnout Challenge »

Inside the Perfumed World of Bohemian Paris with Theresa Levitt

In her new book Elixir: A Parisian Perfume House and the Quest for the Secret of Life, Theresa Levitt tells the story of two scientific outcasts whose work rewrote the boundary between life and nonlife—and in so doing, takes us on a sensory journey through nineteenth-century Paris. Here, we asked Levitt a few questions about some of the unexpected things she discovered while writing this fascinating history.

 What first brought you to writing a book about the history and chemistry of perfume?

I had been interested for a while in the question of whether there is anything “special” about life. People often think that once you get the development of modern chemistry, everyone accepts that living and non-living things are made up of the same matter, and there is no difference between them. But I was seeing plenty of people in the nineteenth century who remained convinced there was a fundamental distinction (and who ultimately turned out to be right!). Two of my favorites were a grouchy, reclusive physicist named Jean-Baptiste Biot and a down-trodden, oft-ignored chemist named Auguste Laurent. One day, I noticed that both of them mentioned working with a certain perfumer, Edouard Laugier. I decided to try pulling on that thread to see who he was, and it revealed a whole world where aroma and essential oils were at the center of one of the liveliest scientific debates of the time.

I think when people hear the word “perfume,” they sometimes think of an esoteric, even frivolous, luxury product. But it was really part of one of humankind’s oldest endeavors: to capture and preserve the ephemeral qualities of plants. And its pursuit helped revise our understanding of life itself.

Could you describe what it was like to work in a Parisian distillery in the 18th/19th century?

Distilling was one of the most skilled and delicate operations of the time. For centuries, it had been part of the alchemists’ practice, with recipes written in secret code involving sometimes over a hundred ingredients. By the eighteenth century, it was taught in the apothecaries’ guild. Distillers and perfumers emerged as more specialized offshoots of the apothecaries, but their practices were largely the same. They would have a variety of different stills and alembics in the back room, suited to different purposes. In some they might try to capture the volatile essential oils of a plant directly. In others, they might pass brandy through again and again, adding different botanicals each time, or pausing for stages of maceration or infusion. Everything had to be exactly right—the timing, the sequence, the materials—for the product to turn out.

The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals continues to be a scientific mystery. How can that be?

It does seem wild that there are big, fundamental questions that science is still trying to figure out. But this is one of them. Organic molecules can come in both right-handed and left-handed varieties, and when chemists make them in a lab, both kinds appear in equal numbers. Chemically speaking, they are identical to one another. But right-handed molecules can’t interact the same way with left-handed molecules. Since our bodies are made up of these asymmetric molecules, this has a huge impact on how food is digested, medicines affect the body, and even how things smell. It was quite a detective story to figure this out, especially coming at a time when chemists thought it was naïve to talk about atoms as physical objects that had a particular spatial arrangement.

This book is not just about perfume—it also tackles revolution, the vibrant culture of bohemian Paris, shifting trends in health and hygiene, scientific breakthroughs, and more. How did all these aspects of your research and writing come together?

The bigger story here is the invention of the modern world. It’s an intensely exciting time period, seeing the end of a social structure that had been in place for centuries and the foundations of an entirely new one. Science and technology were at the center of all this change, kicked off by the magic trick of being able to turn fossil fuels into usable energy. There was hope that this technological bounty could bring about a new era of liberty and equality, and that things that had been hoarded by the elites would be available to everyone. In particular demand were the resources for health and hygiene, which included perfume in this period. And perfume does have a front-seat to all these changes. It’s among the first products to be artificially synthesized from petroleum products—another exploitation of fossil fuels that profoundly shaped the modern world.

Elixir features a wide cast of characters, including Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, and Louis Pasteur. What surprising things did you uncover about some of these figures?

Well, they all relied on the restorative powers of perfume! There are letters from Pasteur’s father telling him to put drops of cologne in his hair to keep from getting headaches while he studied. And Napoleon went through nearly a bottle a day, crediting it with giving him superhuman energy. He would empty a bottle of cologne in the bath, and then spend hours there, reading letters and conducting business. Marie Antoinette, meanwhile, was so concerned with being surrounded by fine scents, that she used perfume not only on herself, but also on the sheep and cows she kept at her Petit Trianon retreat.

When we think about the Palace of Versailles and its opulence, we usually aren’t thinking about how it smelled as part of that. What was the role of perfume in the royal residence?

The scents of Versailles were as central to its function as its mirrors and gold paneling. Nearly everything in the palace was perfumed—the people, the wigs, the fabrics, the air itself—and every interaction was informed by the competing aromas. Much of this had to do with status, of course. Members of court could spend a good portion of their budget on signature perfumes. But I’m convinced there was a deeper impulse as well. I was shocked by just how much effort went into supplying the court with perfume. There was an entire industry devoted to growing fragrant plants in the south of France, concentrating them into small vials, and sending them to Versailles. This was motivated not just by vanity, but by an impulse to life itself. Medical theories of the time held that bad smells brought disease and promoted decay, while good ones were associated with growth and vitality. For the residents of Versailles, these little bottles thus held their best bet for preserving their life and youth.

Order your copy of Elixir »

A Conversation with Elizabeth Cobbs about Fearless Women

For Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the work of Elizabeth Cobbs, whose new book Fearless Women shows how the movement for women’s rights has been deeply entwined with the history of the United States since its founding. Cobbs traces the lives of pathbreaking women who, inspired by American ideals, fought for the cause in their own ways. These stories offer valuable lessons for the state of the nation today.

 In Fearless Women, you argue that feminism has been as important in shaping who we are as Americans as were the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression. Why?

Up to now, this fact has not been largely recognized, but my book shows that many of the major achievements that have defined US history are connected with strides in women’s rights and the civic activism of feminists. The Industrial Revolution depended on the creation of a literate labor force—one that female teachers produced after women won the right to attend school. Susan B. Anthony organized the petition campaign that sped passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and Frances Perkins (the first female member of any presidential cabinet) spearheaded the creation of Social Security and fair labor laws. This list of transformative developments could—and does—go on.

How did you pick the women that you profiled in the book? For instance, you profile Susan B. Anthony but not Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Why?

This was the fun part: deciding whose work was most transformative, or whose own life experience reflected the biggest challenges that American women faced in any given era. In this case, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the more famous writer and orator, it was Anthony who literally got the word out. She did the painstaking, relentless, uncompensated, unglamorous work of organizing, year in and year out, sweeping from Maine to California. By the end, she took my breath away. Every chapter presented the same set of choices. Sometimes I picked the more famous individual, but equally often the less famous: someone who made a difference in a new way, like Martha Cotera of Texas, who made women’s rights into a Mexican-American cause during the 1970s.

When you look back at the struggle for women’s rights, can you describe what life was like for the average American woman in 1776? What were the personal consequences of not having specific rights at different points in US history?

Marriage was the key determinant of a woman’s rights in the former English colonies and new nation. An unmarried woman—so long as she was not enslaved or indentured—could own property and sign contracts on her own behalf. But once a woman married, she in effect vanished from the law. Her legal identity was “covered” by her husband. Everything she owned became his, including any children she “gave” him. He had the right to “chastise” her as he saw fit, and even forbid her from leaving the house.

Patriotism and feminism are not usually mentioned in the same breath. Why do you put them together?

The movement for women’s rights began in 1776, as a consequence of the Revolution. People like Abigail Adams saw women’s fight for liberty as directly connected with the larger fight for freedom. In my research, I found that every generation in some way or another linked their goals with the stated promise of America. This fed their convictions—and improved their success. Most considered themselves patriots.

The women’s movement is sometimes criticized as being white-dominated and even racist. What do you make of that as a historian?

Historically, feminists could be racist (and some were) just as Civil Rights activists could be sexist (and some were). This is an easy charge to prove. Much more commonly, however, people in these causes worked together and shared similar values. If I had chosen a man to represent feminism, I would have picked Frederick Douglass. Similarly, a book on abolition could easily feature Susan B. Anthony. To me, the charge that feminism has been a “white” movement betrays a lack of knowledge about the valuable—and valued—contributions of women of color. That knowledge gap, if you will, helped motivate this book.

In writing this book, did you notice unsuccessful as well as successful strategies for expanding women’s rights that might inform the struggle today?

Absolutely! Something that became particularly clear was the turn towards non-partisanship after the US Civil War. Republican and Democratic stalwarts kept trying to suck women into endorsing their candidates, but Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton renounced their ties to Lincoln’s party and turned the movement away from partisanship—a technique that persisted until the vote was won in 1920. That heritage continues in groups like the League of Women Voters, started by Anthony’s protégé, Carrie Chapman Catt. Nonpartisanship or bipartisanship served feminism until the 1980s, when Phyllis Schlafly made opposition to women’s rights a badge of party identity, and Democrats cooperated.

 When you consider the struggle for women’s rights in America today, with the reversal of Roe, do you think that this is the beginning of a significant reversal or a temporary stumbling block?

There are no light switches in history. Long-term trends don’t just turn off. The movement towards greater freedom for all individuals, including women, is nearly 300 years old, so it is hard to see it ending abruptly. If I had to guess, I would call this a setback that could (and should) have been anticipated. Indeed, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others worried that the constitutional reasoning behind Roe was susceptible to challenge. Advocates for reproductive choice will now have to undertake the hard campaigning that anti-abortion forces did for decades if they want states to protect rights that the federal government no longer does.

Order your copy of Fearless Women »

The War in Ukraine: Updated Reading List

It is inconceivable to think that a year has passed since Russia first launched its devastating invasion of Ukraine. The following books shed light on the ongoing conflict and provide a better understanding of Ukrainian history as well as the complicated, intertwined pasts of both countries as the war continues. Recent titles published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute also highlight the voices of Ukrainian writers through timely and harrowing narratives.

  The Torture Camp on Paradise Street
Stanislav Aseyev

Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev details his experience as a prisoner for nearly three years at a modern-day concentration camp overseen by the Federal Security Bureau of the Russian Federation in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. This compelling memoir offers critical insight into the operations of Russian forces in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

 The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin
Eugene M. Fishel

Eugene Fishel asks whether, how, and under what circumstances the United States has considered Ukraine’s sovereignty in its relations with Moscow. The Moscow Factor brings together for the first time documentary evidence and declassified materials, retrospective articles by former policymakers, and memoirs by erstwhile senior officials.

 The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad
Volodymyr Rafeyenko

In The Length of Days, featuring a wild cast of characters, Volodymyr Rafeyenko combines poetry and wicked humor with elements of magical realism. The novel is set in 2014, mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z—an uncanny foretelling of what this letter has come to symbolize since February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

 

In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas
Stanislav Aseyev

In this collection of dispatches, Aseyev attempts to understand the reasons behind the success of Russian propaganda among the residents of the industrial region of Donbas. For the first time, an inside account shows the toll on real human lives and civic freedoms that citizens continue to suffer in Russia’s hybrid war on its territory.

 

Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love
Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Mondegreen tells the story of a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region who has escaped to Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. Written in beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people—and cities—are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification.

 

The Ukrainian West: Culture and the Fate of Empire in Soviet Lviv
William Jay Risch

Months before crowds in Moscow dismantled monuments to Lenin, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv toppled theirs. William Jay Risch argues that Soviet politics of empire created this anti-Soviet city, and that opposition from the periphery as much as from the imperial center was instrumental in unraveling the Soviet Union.

 

Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History
Yuri Kostenko

Based on original and previously unavailable documents, Yuri Kostenko’s account of the negotiations surrounding the Budapest Memorandum agreement between Ukraine, Russia, and the US reveals for the first time the internal debates of the Ukrainian government, as well as the pressure exerted upon it by its international partners.

 

Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Karel C. Berkhoff

Karel C. Berkhoff describes how a blend of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racist notions about the Slavs produced a reign of terror and genocide in the Third Reich’s largest colony. He also shows how a pervasive Soviet mentality worked against solidarity, explaining why the vast majority of the population did not resist the Germans.

 

Russia: The Story of War
Gregory Carleton

Outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, but Russians see themselves as surrounded by enemies, defensively fighting off invader after invader, or called upon by history to be the savior of Europe, or Christianity, or civilization itself, often at immense cost. As Gregory Carleton shows, war is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic.

 The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present
Serhii Plokhy

The Frontline collects essays in a companion volume to Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe and Chernobyl. The essays present further analysis of key events in Ukrainian history, including Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the West, the Holodomor and World War II, the impact of Chernobyl, and Ukraine’s contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ringing in the New Year with HUP’s 2022 Bestsellers

There is no better way for readers to usher in the new year than by looking back to the books that defined the last.

For Harvard University Press, our 2022 bestsellers make up a diverse list of books across time and discipline. Last year gave us new essentials like Thomas Piketty’s A Brief History of Equality and Henry Louis Gates and Andrew S. Curran’s Who’s Black and Why?, both of which speak directly to current pressing issues of injustice and inequality. Ever relevant, Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home and Eswar S. Prasad’s The Future of Money continue to provide insight into today’s political and economic climate. And classics such as John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Oscar Wilde’s The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, and T. M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other remain staples of bookshelves everywhere.

Heading into 2023, we know these books will continue to resonate with and connect us to the wider world. Below is a full list of the titles that topped our charts last year.

The Lecture: Bringing to India the Best and Brightest on Ideas and Issues That Matter

 

HarperCollins and Harvard University Press have a new collaboration– The Lecture, a series of talks by writers and thinkers from around the world brought to Indian audiences. 

  The inaugural lecture –‘Vivekananda, Guru to the World’– by Professor Ruth Harris will take place at Delhi’s iconic India Habitat Centre's Stein Auditorium, on Friday January 27, 2023, 7.00 p.m.  The lecture will be based on Professor Harris’s definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Professor Harris is Senior Research Fellow at All Soul’s College, University of Oxford; Fellow of the British Academy; and Professor of European History at the University of Oxford. 

In her book, published by Harvard University Press, Professor Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda’s thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East–West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas. 

  George Andreou, Director, Harvard University Press, remarked, ‘We are thrilled at the opportunity to bring Ruth Harris’s important book to a wider audience in India and to expand our critical partnership with HarperCollins.’ 

Speaking on the initiative, Ananth Padmanabhan, Chief Executive Officer, HarperCollins, said, ‘At HarperCollins we believe in the transformative power of words and as a publisher, through our books, we have endeavored to create a platform for ideas that spark conversations. We are delighted to partner with Harvard University Press, and begin this new series where we will host talks by some of the world’s brightest minds writing about people, ideas and issues that matter.’ 

A New Chapter for Harvard Book Store

Starting in the summer of 2023, for the first time in almost thirty years, Harvard Book Store will have two locations: their flagship store in Harvard Square, and a large new store in the Prudential Center in Boston.  For University Press Week, we wanted to show some bookseller love, so we reached out to Rachel Cass, General Manager of the Harvard Book Store to see what's planned for their exciting new location.  

Among the many challenges of opening a second location, a central question has been identifying what exactly makes us Harvard Book Store. In Cambridge, we sit directly across the street from Harvard’s Widener Library, with Harvard students and faculty walking by on their way to and from classes and tourists wandering in as part of their visit to one of the world’s most prestigious universities. While we are a general-interest, independent bookstore, unaffiliated with Harvard, the university is central to our neighborhood, our customer base, and our identity as booksellers.

In Boston, we will sit at the edge of the Prudential Center mall, at the base of one of the city’s most recognizable buildings and just up the escalator from the Prudential Center stop on the Green Line. It will see a different customer base than we have in Harvard Square. The readers who visit us in Boston will no doubt love books just as much, but from a perspective that is less directly academic: residents and office tenants of the Prudential Center Tower, tourists awaiting their scheduled Duck Boat tours, and shoppers exploring the mall and the surrounding Back Bay neighborhood. So what does it mean to be Harvard Book Store in that space?

What I have always loved about independent bookselling, and bookselling at Harvard Book Store in particular, is that it is the ultimate liberal arts profession, if we consider liberal arts to mean a commitment to well-roundedness and the pursuit of ideas. A bookseller gets to be interested in anything and everything, regularly giving recommendations for history books to one customer and romance novels to the next. It reminds me of my freshman year, when I took courses in mathematics, English, sociology, political science, French, and art history and danced at 80s Night to unwind. While trade publishers encompass much of that range, it is university presses that add the variety and rigor to truly capture the ideals of the liberal arts and run with them.

At Harvard Book Store, university presses are an important part of how we set ourselves apart and add depth to our shelves. We feature scholarly titles in our New Releases email each week, we have a display of Academic New Arrivals near the front of the store, our Publisher Focus window often features academic presses, and it’s not uncommon to find stacks of important Harvard, MIT, and Princeton University Press books on our featured displays. To be sure, the scope of our university press selection reflects the academic community around us, but it also speaks to the ways we strive to make our inventory well-rounded. Our Romance section, which has expanded significantly in recent years, sits in the same room as our large Philosophy and Cultural & Critical Theory sections. It is this juxtaposition that I keep coming back to when I think about what makes us Harvard Book Store.

In addition to the ways that university press books are featured in our store, they add nuance to nearly every section. For example, in our U.S. History section, we carry a wide selection of titles across all aspects of American history, but it is local university presses that bring us books on the history of innovation in Cambridge or a topographical history of the city of Boston. Beyond local interest, university presses are not afraid to explore the tiniest corners of a subject, or the big ideas that can change a person’s thinking. They unearth obscure history, ask about the implications of the latest technology, analyze political movements, and follow the threads of the most challenging questions. Even in our genre fiction sections, university presses add variety with once-forgotten backlist titles and works in translation.

In many ways, university presses embody what it means to be independent. Committed to intellectual freedom, they are also as varied as the universities that sponsor them. Much like independent bookstores, each university press has its own voice and perspective. That combination—booksellers and customers curating a selection from among highly refined and idiosyncratic catalogues—can be magic. You will not walk into any other bookstore and see the exact inventory of books that you will see at Harvard Book Store. And the books that we carry in Boston will not be identical to those we carry in Cambridge. But the method and philosophy and ideals that put them there will be the same.

Of course, a bookstore is much more than just the books within it. It is the booksellers and the customers and the conversations that happen over books and awards and current events. But the selection of books does tell a big part of our story, and this year’s University Press Week theme, #NextUP, is a fitting one for us, as we look toward the next chapter in Harvard Book Store’s story. It is my hope that, with the help of our university press partners, we will be able to find ways to continue our commitment to ideas and a spirit of constant learning, and make a home for Harvard Book Store and for readers at the Pru. 

Marking the 75th Anniversary of Independence from British Rule

August 14 and August 15 mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of independence from British rule for Pakistan and India, respectively. Inextricably linked to the birth of these two South Asian nations is the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent that tragically accompanied the end of British colonialism.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, described the moment of independence as a tryst with destiny. “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…” he said in his famous speech on August 15, 1947.

The world-renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wrote in “Subh-e-Azadi” (“Dawn of Freedom”):

These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light —
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing.
(Translated from Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali)

The volumes below illuminate the lives of individuals, the politics, and the literary traditions that shape the rich histories of both nations. They are in the spirit of Nehru’s midnight and Faiz’s dawn alike.

Pakistan

Aqil Shah, The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan
Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea
Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics
Ammara Maqsood, The New Pakistani Middle Class
Bullhe Shah, translated by Christopher Shackle, Sufi Lyrics: Selections from a World Classic

India

Manan Ahmed Asif, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India
Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire
Faisal Devji, The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence
William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation
Edited by Ramachandra Guha, Makers of Modern India 
Ruth Harris, Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda
Ramin Jahanbegloo, The Gandhian Moment
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History
Madhav Khosla, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy
Neeti Nair, Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India
Dinyar Patel, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism
Mircea Raianu, Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism
Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty, The Essential Tagore
Ananya Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India
Steven I. Wilkinson, Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence

HUP ReadUP: Summer Reads

We asked our colleagues, “What is one word you would use to describe an ideal summer read?” Their answers range across all the summer feels, from those easygoing lazy hazy days to that voltage of energy that fires up a reawakening. What’s more, their responses include book recommendations sure to help you breeze through the sunny season—from our own library as well as those of fellow university presses.

Cheerful

• Memory Speaks
• Lives of Houses (Princeton University Press)
“I wouldn’t want to read anything too heavy or depressing over summer.”
—Ellie

Diverting

• Memory Speaks
• Go Ahead in the Rain (University of Texas Press)
“I’m looking for a book that takes me away from everyday concerns, with entertainment value.”
—Ken

Engaging / Engrossing

• The Invention of the Restaurant
• Goya (Princeton University Press)
“I’m willing to work at reading scholarly books. But in the summer, I’d rather not work too hard.”
—Alex

• Memory Speaks
• Gilgamesh (Yale University Press)
“I am looking for something that is fun to read, that can hold my attention despite potential summer distractions. I don’t want anything too somber or heavy.”
—Anne

• Not Thinking like a Liberal
• The Dissolution of the Monasteries (Yale University Press)
“I like to lose myself in a book, and summer provides a space to do so.”
—Richard

Empowering

• From Here to There
• Confidence Culture (Duke University Press)
“To me, summer is a time where it feels like we all re-emerge from the hibernation of winter and engage more with our community. Whether that’s with personal social events or outdoor activities that you enjoy alone, I like a book in summer that gives me confidence to shake off any anxiety that lingers from winter and enjoy the new season.”
—Alison

Escape / Escapism / Escapist

• Lessons from Plants
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press)
“The winter is long in New England! Summer is a time to forget those cold dark days and soak up the sunshine, literally and metaphorically!”
—Amanda

• On Not Being Someone Else
• Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University Press)
“In the summer I want to switch off and be transported somewhere else through reading.”
—Alice

• On Not Being Someone Else
• Contra Instrumentalism (University of Nebraska Press)
“At least once a year, I like to entertain the possibility of disappearing inside of a book.”
—Jillian

Fast

• From Here to There
• The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press)
“The book has to grab me right out of the gate and not let go—I never want reading to be a slog but I especially don’t want that for a summer read.”
—Indrani

Fun

• Spacefarers
• Imaginary Languages (MIT Press)
“When I was a student, summer was always the time when I could read ‘fun’ books rather than my assigned school reading. That mentality has stuck with me to this day, and even though I can read whatever I want at any point in the year, I still have a tendency to gravitate toward fun books in the summer months.”
—Katrina

Immersive

• Monsters of the Gévaudan
• The Pursuit of the Millennium (Oxford University Press)
“Summer reads should offer escape from the cares of the world; an immersive book transports the reader from the tedium and misery of the quotidian to another point in spacetime—preferably one that is more miserable (but perhaps not more tedious) than one’s own.”
—Jake

Insightful

• The Intellectual Lives of Children
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press)
“My favorite kind of summer read offers a million small moments—these are the best teachers, bringing me to the world and the world to me.”
—Emeralde

Liberating

• From Here to There
• The Fall of Robespierre (Oxford University Press)
“Summer reading is not about keeping up with work, news, or trends. It should be an escape from the rhythms of normal life.”
—Sam

Lighthearted

• Taxi from Another Planet
• Blooming Flowers (Yale University Press)
“I associate that word with summer reads because I always think of reading on the beach, and those are ideal beach reads for me!”
—Laila

Perspective

• Nothing Ever Dies
• Old Truths and New Clichés (Princeton University Press)
“Summer is a great time to leave behind the familiar and seek unfamiliar perspectives on history and current events.”
—Kate

Provocative

• Desperate Remedies
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press)
“My book group doesn’t meet in the summer, and I miss the animated discussions that keep me thinking about a book long after I’ve finished it. During our hiatus I look for books that really challenge, disturb, or inspire me.”
—Christine

Swelter

• Liner Notes for the Revolution
• All I Ever Wanted (University of Texas Press)
“I get through the dog days downing hot tea and hot sauce; listening to loud live music in unsheltered parking lots; sweat watching Deadwood eps in unair-conditioned rooms; and reading words that burn to stay cool.”
—Jenn

Thought-provoking

• Desperate Remedies
• The Club (Yale University Press)
“Summer is generally a time to recalibrate, carve out time for reflection, explore new places, and embark on new experiences. The right book can take you on a fruitful journey of the mind.”
—Joy

Transporting / Transportive

• When the King Took Flight
• Autobiography of a Geisha (Columbia University Press)
“When reading for pleasure, I like to be taken to another time/place.”
—Vanessa

• Objects of Love and Regret
• The Long, Long Life of Trees (Yale University Press)
“Summer reads should take one to places beyond the usual drudge of everyday life—to faraway places, stories, and people that take me away from my four walls (or beach lounger!) to another world.”
—Rebekah

 

Dip into more summer reads »