Another Five Dollar Friday Sale! We can’t promise there will be a sale every Friday, but we will be announcing them regularly in the coming months via Twitter, Facebook, our blog, and our website. Here are the Five Dollar Five for Friday, March 8, 8am to 4pm (HST), while supplies last:
Japan: Why It Works, Why It Doesn’t
Light Waves: Fine Tuning the Mind
Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956
Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness
The State in Myanmar
The UH Press Asian Studies 2013 catalog is now available! The catalog has been redesigned to showcase our new and forthcoming Asian studies titles. (All books published prior to late 2012 and currently in print can be found at our website.) To view the PDF, click on the catalog cover image to the left.
Highlights include:
* An illustrated anthology of well-known masterpieces and unusual writing from 18th-century Edo’s counterculture — An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850
*Four new titles in the Spatial Habitus series — The Hermit’s Hut: Asceticism and Architecutre in India, China’s Contested Capital: Architecture, Ritual, and Response in Nanjing, Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea, and Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China
* Short fiction from Japan’s foremost Marxist writer, Kobayashi Takiji, including a new translation of an anticapitalist classic that became a runaway bestseller in Japan in 2008, nearly eight decades after its publication — The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle
* A timely collection of essays exploring Japan’s role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries — Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power
* An expansive new study on the varied roles Southeast Asia’s monumental remains (Angkor, Pagan, Borobudur, and Ayutthaya, among others) have played in the histories of its modern nations — A Heritage of Ruins: The Ancient Sites of Southeast Asia and Their Conservation
* Close description and analysis of the history, geographical whereabouts, and doctrinal positions of early schools of Buddhism by André Bareau, one of the foremost scholars of Buddhism of his generation — The Buddhist Schools of the Small Vehicle
* Two volumes in the new series Korean Classics Library — Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea and Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society
Did China drive or resist the early wave of globalization? Some scholars insist that China contributed nothing to the rise of the global economy that began around 1500. Others have placed China at the center of global integration. Neither side, though, has paid attention to the complex story of China’s maritime policies. Drawing on sources from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the West, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757, an important new work by Gang Zhao, systematically explores the evolution of imperial Qing maritime policy and sets its findings in the context of early globalization.
“This is an important work based on impressive erudition that offers a convincing reinterpretation of Chinese attitudes toward maritime trade.” —John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California
Perspectives on the Global Past
February 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3643-6 / $56.00 (CLOTH)
During the eighteenth century, Edo (today’s Tokyo) became the world’s largest city, quickly surpassing London and Paris. Its rapidly expanding population and flourishing economy encouraged the development of a thriving popular culture. Innovative and ambitious young authors and artists soon began to look beyond the established categories of poetry, drama, and prose, banding together to invent completely new literary forms that focused on the fun and charm of Edo. Their writings were sometimes witty, wild, and bawdy, and other times sensitive, wise, and polished. Now some of these high spirited works, celebrating the rapid changes, extraordinary events, and scandalous news of the day, have been collected in An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850, edited by Sumie Jones, with Kenji Watanabe, an accessible volume highlighting the city life of Edo.
“Anyone who wishes to soak up the atmosphere of Japanese urban life in those marvellous years before Edo became Tokyo need look no further than this anthology. Designed around six thematic categories, the book leads us right to the heart of the colorful, the earthy, the comic, the scabrous world of what in the mid-eighteenth century was in all likelihood the largest city in the world. A special strength of this collection is its successful attempt to capture one of the most remarkable aspects of popular literature of the time: the visual excitement of the woodblock printed page. A superb teaching resource that puts Edo within reach of the classroom.” —Richard Bowring, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge
February 2013
ISBN 978-0-8248-3629-0 / $70.00 (CLOTH)
ISBN 978-0-8248-3740-2 / $30.00 (PAPER)
UH Press’ very first Five Dollar Friday Sale is this week Friday, March 1. From 8am to 4pm (HST), these oldie-but-goodie titles will be available for $5 each at our website, while supplies last:
Listen to the latest New Books Network podcasts featuring interviews with Press authors Kevin Carr, Barbara Ambros, and Luke Roberts.
Previous podcasts featured authors Hank Glassman, Bryan Cuevas, Lori Meeks, and Daniel Veidlinger.
The New Books Network “is a consortium of podcasts dedicated to raising the level of public discourse by introducing serious authors to serious audiences.”
Our Year of the Snake Sale is just a day away! Click on the banner to view a complete, searchable list of sale books—including the just-published new edition of Mary Sia’s Classic Chinese Cookbook and all of John DeFrancis’ popular dictionaries (ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, ABC Chinese-English Dictionary: Desk Reference Edition, ABC English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary)—and visit www.uhpress.hawaii.edu from Friday, February 8 (noon, HST) to Wednesday, February 13 (noon, HST). (Discount prices will not appear online until the sale begins.)
University of Hawai‘i Press is exhibiting at this year’s annual conference of the College Art Association, February 13–16, at the Hilton New York.
Press acquisitions editor Patricia Crosby will be attending. Please visit us at booth 323, where we will offer a 20% discount and free shipping in the U.S. The free shipping applies to all orders received or placed at the conference.
Kung Hee Fat Choy! The Year of the Black Snake officially begins on Sunday, February 10, but you don‘t have to wait until then to save 40% on select China titles, both published and distributed by UH Press.
Click on the banner to view a complete, searchable list of sale books—including the just-published new edition of Mary Sia’s Classic Chinese Cookbook and all of John DeFrancis’ popular dictionaries (ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, ABC Chinese-English Dictionary: Desk Reference Edition, ABC English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary)—and visit www.uhpress.hawaii.edu from Friday, February 8 (noon, HST) to Wednesday, February 13 (noon, HST). (Discount prices will not appear online until the sale begins.)
Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, was named an Outstanding Reference Source by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association. The award was established in 1958 to recommend the most outstanding reference publications for small and medium-sized public and academic libraries. The selected titles are valuable reference resources and are highly recommended for inclusion in any library’s collection.
Japanese Philosophy was also recently recognized as an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine:
“This massive tome will stand for the forseeable future as the gold standard for comprehensive treatment of all matters of Japanese philosophy. The three editors, all significant names within this small but growing subfield, have assembled an impressive group of established and up-and-coming scholars to translate and provide introductions to each entry, resulting in a readable sourcebook remarkable in both scope and acuity of analysis. . . . Essential.”
Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women: Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu, by Christina Laffin, explores the world of thirteenth-century Japan through the life of a prolific noblewoman known as Nun Abutsu (1225–1283). Abutsu crossed gender and genre barriers by writing the first career guide for Japanese noblewomen, the first female-authored poetry treatise, and the first poetic travelogue by a woman—all despite the increasingly limited social mobility for women during the Kamakura era (1185–1336). Capitalizing on her literary talent and political prowess, Abutsu rose from middling origins and single-motherhood to a prestigious marriage and membership in an esteemed literary lineage.
“Laffin draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources in Japanese and English to create the most comprehensive picture we have to date of a remarkable woman who has been written out of the standard narratives of Japanese social, political, and literary history. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of women in the complex interplay of power, poetry, and politics in medieval Japan.” —Rajyashree Pandey, Goldsmiths, University of London
January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3565-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India, by Kavita Datla, pursues an alternative account of the political disagreements between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, conflicts too often described as the product of primordial and unchanging attachments to religion. The author suggests that the political struggles of India in the 1930s, the very decade in which the demand for Pakistan began to be articulated, should not be understood as the product of an inadequate or incomplete secularism, but as the clashing of competing secular agendas. Her work explores negotiations over language, education, and religion at Osmania University, the first university in India to use a modern Indian language (Urdu) as its medium of instruction, and sheds light on questions of colonial displacement and national belonging.
“This is a brilliantly innovative book that offers provocative insights into South Asian history, the workings of colonialism, and the interface of linguistic and religious identities in India’s premier princely state of Hyderabad. The author marshals an impressive range of sources to make a significant intervention in the field of Islamicate learning, moving beyond the much-discussed madrasa mode of education to document the birth and growth of India’s first vernacular public university.” —Syed Akbar Hyder, University of Texas at Austin
January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3609-2 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
