Books to look out for in June 2019

British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century

Challenging the Anglo-French Connection

The study of sociability in the long eighteenth century has long been dominated by the example of France. In this innovative collection, we see how a distinctively British model of sociability developed in the period from the Restoration of Charles II to the early nineteenth century through a complex process of appropriation, emulation and resistance to what was happening in France and other parts of Europe.

Why I Like This Story

On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that “Nobody can read like a writer,” Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values.

The Karl Muck Scandal

Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America

One of the cherished narratives of American history is that of the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to its shores. Accounts of the exclusion and exploitation of Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth century and Japanese internment during World War II tell a darker story of American immigration. Less well-known, however, is the treatment of German-Americans and German nationals in the United States during World War I. Initially accepted and even welcomed into American society at the outbreak of war, this group would face rampant intolerance and anti-German hysteria.

City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950

Nothing defines the songs of the Great American Songbook more centrally than their urban sensibility. In City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950, renowned author and broadcaster Michael Lasser offers an evocative and probing account of the popular songs — including some written originally for the stage or screen — that America heard, sang, and danced to during the turbulent first half of the twentieth century.

The Wings of Atalanta

Essays Written along the Color Line

This book springs from two premises. The first is that, with a nod toward Marianne Moore, America is – has always been – an imaginary place with real people living in it. The second is that slavery and its legacies explain how and why this is the case. The second premise assumes that slavery – and, after that fell, white supremacy generally – have been necessary adjuncts to American capitalism.

The Faust Tales of Christoph Rosshirt

A Critical Edition with Commentary

The Faust legend, which has come down to us most famously in Goethe’s tragedy but also in countless other incarnations since the late sixteenth century, was first collected and presented as a cohesive narrative (in manuscript) by Christoph Rosshirt during the 1570s. Rosshirt was also the first to provide illustrations of Faust, hand-colored by Rosshirt himself. This book offers a critical edition of Rosshirt’s six tales, including an introductory chapter, a facsimile of the manuscript, a transcription and first-ever English translation on facing pages, as well as a history of Faust illustrations.

State Formation in Early Modern Alsace, 1648-1789

State Formation in Early Modern Alsace, 1648-1789, examines the wide range of power-sharing solutions the kings of France and Alsatian lords worked out between them through a close study of five territories ruled by the dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld. Some lands fell immediately to France; some required significant concessions; others contested the French bid for rulership. France eventually acquired all five territories. Lazer’s research makes a much-needed contribution to our understanding of the process of state formation in early modern Europe.

Claude Debussy

A Critical Biography

François Lesure’s “critical biography” of Claude Debussy (Fayard, 2003) is widely recognized by scholars as the most comprehensive and reliable account of that composer’s life and career as well as of the artistic milieu in which he worked. This encyclopedic volume draws extensively on Debussy’s complete correspondence (at that time unpublished), a painstaking tracking of contemporary reviews and comments in the press, and an examination of other primary documents-including private diaries-that had not been available to previous biographers. As such, Lesure’s book presents a wealth of new information while debunking a number of myths that had developed over the years since the composer’s death in 1918.

African Islands

Leading Edges of Empire and Globalization

In African Islands: Leading Edges of Empire and Globalism, contributors argue for the importance of Africa’s islands in integrating the continent into wider networks of trade and migration that links it with Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Essays consider the cosmopolitan and culturally complex identities of Africa’s islands, analyzing the process and extent to which trade, slavery, and migration bonded African elements with Asian, Arabic, and European characteristics over the years.

Robert Lowell in a New Century

European and American Perspectives

In March 2017, leading Lowell scholars from Europe and America gathered at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland in commemoration of his 100th birthday. The essays deriving from the conference and presented here after careful revision reveal new aspects of Lowell: for instance, the poet’s influence on his peers, discussed by Thomas Travisano, the biographer of Elizabeth Bishop; or echoes of Milton in Lowell’s work.