Yale University Press: 2009 books

In this provocative book, one of our most eminent political scientists poses the question, “Why should we uphold our constitution?” The vast majority of Americans venerate the American Constitution and the principles it embodies, but many also worry that the United States has fallen behind other...

Since the 2004 presidential campaign, when the Bush presidential advance team prevented anyone who seemed unsympathetic to their candidate from attending his ostensibly public appearances, it has become commonplace for law enforcement officers and political event sponsors to classify ordinary expressions...

In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the laws, the histories, the prophecies, and the wisdom of the ancient biblical...

The first-ever detailed, comprehensive history of intelligence, from Moses and Sun Tzu to the present day The history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley...

A compelling and original recovery of Native American resistance and adaptation to colonial America   With rigorous original scholarship and creative narration, Lisa Brooks recovers a complex picture of war, captivity, and Native resistance during the “First Indian War” (later named King Philip’s...

The most powerful military alliance in history, NATO shaped the geopolitical contours of the Cold War and continues to structure the contemporary international system. The NATO agreement is reprinted here with speeches and essential historical documents concerning the alliance’s founding and subsequent...

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...

As words and stories are increasingly disseminated through digital means, the significance of the book as object—whether pristine collectible or battered relic—is growing as well. Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books spotlights the personal libraries of thirteen favorite novelists who share...

At just thirty years of age, Napoleon Bonaparte ruled the most powerful country in Europe. But the journey that led him there was neither inevitable nor smooth.  This authoritative biography focuses on the evolution of Napoleon as a leader and debunks many of the myths that are often repeated about...

A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers In this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and violence, but also diversity,...

Fragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world’s most alluring cities—a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city’s pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past.

An illuminating study of America’s agricultural society during the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Founding eras In the eighteenth century, three†‘quarters of Americans made their living from farms. This authoritative history explores the lives, cultures, and societies of America’s farmers...