New Releases
Savoring Power, Consuming the Times
The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
Pina Palma
Pina Palma’s Savoring Power, Consuming the Times: The Metaphors of Food in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature is an innovative look at the writings of five important Italian authors—Boccaccio’s Decameron, Pulci’s Morgante, Boiardo’s Innamorato, Ariosto’s Furioso, and Aretino’s Ragionamento. Through the prism of gastronomy, Palma examines these key works in the Western literary canon, bringing into focus how their authors use food and gastronomy as a means to critique the social, political, theological, philosophical, and cultural beliefs that constitute the fabric of the society in which they live.
Palma begins with the anthropological principle that food represents the universal transformation…
Read More
René Girard and Secular Modernity
Christ, Culture, and Crisis
Scott Cowdell
In René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis, Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard’s controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard’s thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard’s thinking, and, in particular, Girard’s distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard’s singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible’s exposure of the cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and…
Read MoreForthcoming E-book Perpetual Ownership $23.80
Forthcoming E-book 30-day Ownership $7.00
Press News
Ignacio Walker's DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA in English translation
In 2009, Ignacio Walker—scholar, politician, and one of Latin America’s leading public intellectuals—published La Democracia en America Latina. Now available in English, with a new prologue, and significantly revised and updated for an English-speaking audience, Democracy in Latin America: Between Hope and Despair contributes to the necessary and urgent task…
CHOICE Magazine praises two Brazilian translations
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Roots of Brazil is one of the iconic books on Brazilian history, society, and culture. Originally published in 1936, it appears for the first time in an English language translation. Choice says: “Considered by most historians to be one of three foundational books in Brazilian historiography,…
