Yale University Press Ignition: 34 books
Fragile Empire
How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2013
“A beautifully written and very lively study of Russia that argues that the political order created by Vladimir Putin is stagnating” (Financial Times).
From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to the Russian Far East, journalist Ben Judah has traveled throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics,...
Darkness at Dawn
The Rise of the Russian Criminal State
Language: English
Release Date: April 10, 2003
“The Russia that Satter depicts in this brave, engaging book cannot be ignored . . . Required reading for anyone interested in the post-Soviet state” (Newsweek).
Anticipating a new dawn of freedom after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russians could hardly have foreseen the reality...
Love
A History
Language: English
Release Date: July 19, 2011
“What is love? May plunders Western poetry, philosophy and psychology to find answers . . . Thought-provoking stuff” (The Sunday Telegraph).
Love—unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting—is worshipped today as the West’s only universal religion. To challenge...
J M Barrie and the Lost Boys
The Real Story Behind Peter Pan
Language: English
Release Date: July 11, 2003
This literary biography is “a story of obsession and the search for pure childhood . . . Moving, charming, a revelation” (Los Angeles Times).
J. M. Barrie, Victorian novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, led a life almost as interesting as his...
Restless Valley
Revolution, Murder, and Intrigue in the Heart of Central Asia
Language: English
Release Date: May 21, 2013
This award-winning foreign correspondent’s vivid account of Central Asia’s recent history “reads like a novel but is the stuff of hard-won journalism” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan).
Here are the stories of two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling...
An Empire of Ice
Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science
Language: English
Release Date: May 31, 2011
A Pulitzer Prize–winning author examines South Pole expeditions, “wrapping the science in plenty of dangerous drama to keep readers engaged” (Booklist).
An Empire of Ice presents a fascinating new take on Antarctic exploration—placing the famed voyages of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen,...
Francis of Assisi
The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint
Language: English
Release Date: October 23, 2012
A biography of the saint as both mystic and man: “The single best book about Francis now available in English” (Commonweal).
In this towering work, Andre Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi, particularly the important research of recent decades, to create...
Knowing the Enemy
Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror
Language: English
Release Date: January 4, 2006
“In considerable detail and with admirable clarity, [Habeck] contributes one of the most valuable books on the ongoing Middle East—and world—crisis” (Booklist, starred review).
After September 11, Americans agonized over why nineteen men hated the United States enough to kill three...
The Invention of News
How the World Came to Know About Itself
Language: English
Release Date: February 1, 2014
“A fascinating account of the gathering and dissemination of news from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution” and the rise of the newspaper (Glenn Altschuler, The Huffington Post).
Long before the invention of printing, let alone the daily newspaper, people wanted to stay...
Simón Bolívar
A Life
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2006
The “impeccably researched, uncommonly honest, and . . . very well written” biography of the nineteenth century Venezuelan military and political leader (Alvaro Vargas Llosa, New Republic).
Simón Bolívar was a revolutionary who freed six South American countries from Spanish Imperial...
Elephants on the Edge
What Animals Teach Us about Humanity
Language: English
Release Date: October 6, 2009
“At times sad and at times heartwarming . . . Helps us to understand not only elephants, but all animals, including ourselves” (Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation).
Drawing on accounts from India to Africa and California to Tennessee, and on research in neuroscience, psychology,...
Dubai
Gilded Cage
Language: English
Release Date: May 28, 2010
This revealing portrait of the famously wealthy Persian Gulf city investigates the human cost of its miraculous rise to global prominence.
In less than two decades, Dubai has transformed itself from an obscure territory of the United Arab Emirates into a global center for business, tourism,...
Lawrence of Arabia's War
The Arabs, the British and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI
Language: English
Release Date: May 24, 2016
This radically new perspective on T. E. Lawrence, the Arab Revolt, and WWI in the Middle East provides essential insight into today’s violent conflicts.
Archaeologist and historian Neil Faulkner draws on ten years of field research in the Middle East to offer the first truly multidisciplinary...
by Martha Hodes
Language: English
Release Date: February 24, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: February 24, 2015
A historian examines how everyday people reacted to the president’s assassination in this “highly original, lucidly written book” (James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom).
The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender,...