Oxford University Press

The Death and Life of Authentic Urban PlacesSharon Zukin argues that the rapid and pervasive demand for authenticity--and the consequent escalating real estate prices--has helped drive out the very people who first lent a neighborhood its authentic aura: immigrants, the working class, and artists. Zukin traces this economic and social evolution in...

For more than half of his long life, composer Roger Sessions was a commanding figure on the American musical scene. He enjoyed the solid respect of his peers, and as a teacher of a generation of composers and author of compelling writings on his craft, his influence on musical thought remains profound. Yet, even in his lifetime, his music endured...

'Christianity is Strange'A vivid account of the belief system of early-modern France as expressed in        different writing genres from sermons to martyr tragedies, lyric poetry to spiritual        autobiography. Parish considers the distinctive doctrines that the heritage of the        Catholic Reformation brought to light....

As an essayist, philosopher, ex-pencil manufacturer, notorious hermit, tax protester, and all-around original thinker, Thoreau led so singular a life that he is in some ways a perfect candidate for the historical and biographical treatments made possible by the  Historical Guides to American Authors series format. William E. Cain, the volume...

Politics, Markets, and the Battle for America's FutureIn Obama at the Crossroads, eminent political scientists Desmond King and Larry        Jacobs have gathered some of the best scholars in American politics to take stock of        this extraordinary period. Covering the financial crisis, health care reform, racial        politics, foreign policy,...

Tracing Christianity's rise from its birth on the edge of the Roman empire--when it proclaimed itself to be a religion for the entire world, not just for one people, one time, and one place--to its key role in Europe's maritime and colonial expansion, Sanneh sheds new light on the ways in which post-Western societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin...