Give to Cornell University Press and help us change the world—one book at a time

March 13, 2017March 14, 2017 jonathanhall

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Contribute to the mission of Cornell University Press on Giving Day.
(University Press Gift Fund Number: 317123)

This is a crucial moment in the transformation of Cornell University Press. Never in our 148-year history have our books been more important, while the business model for the publication of primary scholarship has never been under greater siege. We are stuck between the bookends of mission and margin—embracing our role in the tenure certification process and publishing first books while exploring initiatives that will help us remain financially viable.

Cornell University Press books won an unprecedented sixty awards across a range of disciplines in 2016. We published books such as Deadly River about the UN cover-up of the cholera epidemic in Haiti and Violence as a Generative Force detailing an unknown Bosnian genocide. We carefully craft the world’s stories such as former Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan’s book, My Nuclear Nightmare, about the Fukushima disaster. Our bestselling titles reflect the burning issues of the moment: race in America, voter fraud, grand strategy, human rights, international security, war, and nationalism. Books like these can change the world. Continue reading “Give to Cornell University Press and help us change the world—one book at a time” →

Doctors at War – A Modern Nonfiction Update to MAS*H

March 6, 2017March 6, 2017 jonathanhallAfghan National Army, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Anthropology, Auto-ethnography, British Army, Cambridge University, Ethnography, Extreme research, Health Care, Joint Force Medical Group, MASH, Medicine, Medics, Military, Participant observation, Psychological injury, PTSD, Sociology, Surgeons, Taliban, Teams, US Army

Cambridge Professor Embedded in Afghanistan Military Hospital
Explores the Courage, Compassion, and Comic Tragedy of Modern War

“There is a massive propaganda industry, embraced by all institutions from schools to the press and churches, that seeks to deny the stark facts de Rond chronicles. This is why the British Ministry of Defense did not want the book published. De Rond shines a light on a reality we are not supposed to see. It is a reality, especially in an age of endless techno war, we must confront if we are to recover the human.”
—Chris Hedges, author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

We weren’t supposed to read Mark de Rond’s new book Doctors at War.

A high-ranking medical officer in the British Ministry of Defense insisted de Rond write this book, and do so without fear of censorship. However, upon its completion, the ministry told de Rond it would oppose the book due to his exceptionally candid and true-to-life account of a trauma surgical team at work in the “world’s bloodiest” field hospital, Camp Bastion, in Afghanistan. Despite such pressure, Mark de Rond has chosen to publish the book.

Doctors at War tells of the highs and lows of surgical life in hard-hitting detail, bringing to life a morally ambiguous world in which good people face impossible choices, and in which routines designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of highlighting war’s absurdity. Mark de Rond, a professor of organizational ethnography at Cambridge University, lifts the cover on a world rarely ever seen, let alone written about, and helps rebalance popular and overly heroic, adrenaline packed tales of what it is like to go to war. Here the crude and visceral coexist with the tender and affectionate, as do pleasure and guilt, kindness and cruelty, courage and cowardice, and the profound and pointless. In sum, it provides a unique insight into the lived experience of war from the point of view of good people forced to make difficult choices in an absurd environment.

Purchase Doctors at War today on our website and receive a special 30% discount. Use promo code 09CAU6.

For more information please contact Jonathan Hall: jlh98@cornell.edu

Interview with Mark de Rond:
Continue reading “Doctors at War – A Modern Nonfiction Update to M*A*S*H” →

Cornell University Press Welcomes Martyn Beeny

September 8, 2016September 8, 2016 jonathanhall

Cornell University Press is proud to announce the appointment of Martyn Beeny to the position of marketing director. Martyn Beeny comes to Cornell University Press with more than a decade of experience in scholarly publishing, most recently at the University of Nebraska Press and, prior to that, at the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Beeny begins work at Cornell University Press in the middle of October. He will oversee marketing campaigns for more than one hundred titles per year in such diverse fields as anthropology, health care policy, higher education, history, labor relations, life sciences, politics and international relations, urban studies, and most recently Southeast Asian studies under the new collaboration with Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program (SEAP).

Throughout his publishing career Beeny has taken an innovative and collaborative approach to marketing and selling books, and in his new position he will work to identify new markets and platforms for the Press to further enhance its global outreach efforts.

“The book publishing world is constantly in motion and we are in the midst of what appears to be an exciting and dramatic period,” said Beeny. “As such, innovation, particularly in marketing, is crucial. Cornell University Press’s well-established, rich history and tradition has provided it with a stable platform to bring new ideas and vision to the marketing of CUP’s titles and brand. I am excited to help magnify Cornell’s prominent role as a dynamic leader of university presses, and the book publishing world at large.”

“We are excited to have Martyn Beeny joining our marketing team,” said director Dean Smith. “Martyn believes in pushing the boundaries of traditional book marketing and brings an established track record for success. He has the inventive techniques and bold approach necessary to help drive CUP forward.”

Beeny earned both his PhD in History and BA in American Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Jocelyn Crowley on “Hannity & Colmes”

November 13, 2008November 13, 2008 jonathanhall

Jocelyn Crowley, author of the new Cornell University Press title, Defiant Dads: Fathers’ Rights Activists in America, was recently interviewed by her husband Alan Colmes and Sean Hannity on the popular Fox News show, “Hannity & Colmes.”

You can watch the segment in its entirety here.

Highlight: “What I found through my research is that they [fathers’ rights groups] provide fathers and men with important information about their legal rights in terms of divorce, separation, child support, and alimony. And they also provide their fathers with great relationship advice.”

Nature of the Rainforest

October 15, 2008 jonathanhall

As a sneak preview of our forthcoming new book Nature of the Rainforest, we are proud to unveil a selection of the book’s many stunningly beautiful photographs taken by the world-acclaimed nature photographers Michael Fogden and Patricia Fogden.

We hope you enjoy them.

The gliding leaf frog (Agalyschnis Spurrelli) can glide at angles of 45 degrees, enabling it to move easily from tree to tree in the forest canopy and to escape arboreal predators. / Nikon F4; Micro-Nikkor 105 mm; multiple electronic flashes at f/16; Fujichrome film.

The eggs of rain frogs (Eleutherodactylus spp.) are laid in damp leaf litter rather than water. There the embryos undergo direct development, metamorphosing completely into froglets within the eggs. / Nikon F4; Micro-Nikkor 105 mm; multiple electronic; flashes at f/16; Fujichrome film.

A parrot snake (Leptophis depressirostris) in defensive threat display with wide-open mouth. / Nikon F3; Micro-Nikkor 105 mm; electronic flash at f/22; Fujichrome film.

The Guanacaste dry forest in Costa Rica is an important wintering area for ruby-throated hummingbirds. This molting male is feeding at the flowers of the leguminous tree Gliricidia sepium. / Canon 1Ds; Canon Macro Lens 180 mm; multiple electronic flashes at f/22; Digital.

The female brown-throated three-toed sloth carries her single offspring with her for several months until the young sloth can forage on its own. The infant clings to its mother's fur and is taken everywhere with her, snuggled up in its own portable hammock from which it views the world with lively curiosity. / Nikon F3; Zoom-Nikkor 80-200 mm; Kodachrome film. — The female brown-throated three-toed sloth carries her single offspring with her for several months until the young sloth can forage on its own. The infant clings to its mother’s fur and is taken everywhere with her, snuggled up in its own portable hammock from which it views the world with lively curiosity. / Nikon F3; Zoom-Nikkor 80-200 mm; Kodachrome film.

Lessing Wins Nobel Prize; Cornell Press Book Examines National Identity in Her Work

October 11, 2007October 11, 2007 jonathanhall

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to British novelist Doris Lessing, whom the Swedish Academy praised as an “epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny”. Born in 1919 to English parents living in Iran, she was raised in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia, Lessing migrated to England in the 1930s. Her books include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the Children of Violence series (1952-1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Fifth Child (1988).

In her 1998 Cornell University Press book, From the Margins of Empire: Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Louise Yelin explores Lessing’s fiction from the perspective of her colonial African childhood and position as a white woman in postcolonial Britain, highlighting the invented, hybrid nature of national identity that appears throughout her work. In the 2001 Yearbook of English Studies, Stephen Cowden lauded this comparative study of the three women writers working at the edge of the British Empire as a “complex account of the relationship between issues of gender, national identity, and political affiliation,” while Betsy Draine, writing in Contemporary Literature, declared that “Yelin’s study presents the novels provocatively, insightfully, and with a perfectly balanced appreciation of text and context. . . . Her uncovering . . . testifies to the imaginative power of writers with a will to write a different story.”

London Underground: New Game Mines Territory Explored in Two Cornell Titles

October 10, 2007 jonathanhall

David L. Pike’s books—2005’s Subterranean Cities and the just-published Metropolis on the Styx—explore the cultural history of underground spaces in the modern city and the role of these forbidding places in the modern imagination.

Focusing on London and Paris, Pike’s books guide readers through the labyrinths, both physical and psychical, that lurk beneath the sidewalks and present, according to novelist and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, “a considerable work of urban archaeology, textual burrowing, and headlong epiphany. . . . [in which] cities of metaphor are mapped from clues found in lost libraries, on excursions to catacombs, movie houses, sepulchres, and sewers.”

Tapping into this same fascination with the chthonic, the creators of the highly anticipated PC/online game Hellgate: London set their adventure in a post-apocalyptic London that has been overrun by hordes of terrifying demons, leaving the city desolate and forcing the unlucky survivors to the only sanctuary left, the Underground, banded together in order to gain a foothold against the minions of darkness and ultimately save the bloodline of humanity.

While we can’t guarantee gamers that these books will help them defeat their virtual opponents, they do offer a larger cultural, historical, and imaginative context in which to think about the game’s setting.

Sage House News: The Cornell University Press Blog

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Author: jonathanhall