By Sarah Beckwith (NHC Fellow, 1994–95; 2012–13) In Signifying God, Sarah Beckwith explores the most lavish, long-lasting, and complex form of collective theatrical enterprise in English history: the York Corpus Christi plays. First staged as early as 1376, the plays were performed annually until the late 1500s and involved as much as a tenth of the city … Continued
By John Shelton Reed (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Creating a sort of periodic table of the southern populace, Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy catalogs and describes the several social types-gentleman and lady, "lord of the lash" and cunning belle, fun-loving "good old boy," depraved redneck, and other figures-that have animated the region since antebellum times.
By Gilbert M. Joseph (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) This book addresses a central problem often ignored by students of twentieth-century Mexico: the breakdown of the old order during the first years of the revolutionary era. That process was more contested and gradual in Yucatan than in any other Mexican region, and this close examination of the … Continued
By Peter Lake (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) Short, cheap pamphlets with catchy titles and crude woodcuts lured readers in early modern England. The pamphlets described notorious murders and the sometimes providential means by which the culprit was captured and condemned to the scaffold. In this extraordinary book, Peter Lake examines how various groups—protestant, puritan, and catholic, … Continued
Edited by Stephen Salkever (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought provides a guide to understanding the central texts and problems in ancient Greek political thought, from Homer through the Stoics and Epicureans. Composed of essays specially commissioned for this volume and written by leading scholars of classics, political science, and … Continued
Edited by Carl Woodring (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) and James Shapiro The Columbia Anthology pays tribute to the renowned works that any include–Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Eliot, Auden. But the book also resurrects the voices of excellent poets, particularly women–such as Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Ingram, and Christina Rossetti. Unencumbered by extensive notes that divert … Continued
By Richard Newhauser (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) The history of avarice as the deadliest vice in western Europe has been said to begin in earnest only with the rise of capitalism or, earlier, the rise of a money economy. In this first full-length study of the early history of greed, Richard Newhauser shows that avaritia, the … Continued
By Douglas Porch (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) The legend of Beau Gaste and the hell-raising, hard-drinking, long-suffering, loyal Legionnaires has been immortalized by countless novels and Hollywood movies. Here Douglas Porch examines the Legion myth and goes beyond it to explore the Legion's mystique and describe its performance from its founding in 1831 to today.
By Bertram Wyatt-Brown (NHC Fellow, 1989–90; 1998–99) The novels of Walker Percy–The Moviegoer, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome to name a few–have left a permanent mark on twentieth-century Southern fiction; yet the history of the Percy family in America matches anything, perhaps, that he could have created. Two centuries of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, … Continued
By John Opie (NHC Fellow, 1980–81) This book provides fascinating insights into how present-day American land legislation has evolved. In doing so the author identifies the many problems that the family farmer has had to face over the past two centuries at the hands of the weather, unstable product prices, and politicians.