Cornell University Press imprint: 972 books
Sacred Folly
A New History of the Feast of Fools
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2011
For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women’s clothes, sang obscene songs, swung...
Certain Sainthood
Canonization and the Origins of Papal Infallibility in the Medieval Church
Language: English
Release Date: March 21, 2016
The doctrine of papal infallibility is a central tenet of Roman Catholicism, and yet it is frequently misunderstood by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Much of the present-day theological discussion points to the definition of papal infallibility made at Vatican I in 1870, but the origins of the...
To Follow in Their Footsteps
The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages
Language: English
Release Date: September 6, 2012
When the First Crusade ended with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, jubilant crusaders returned home to Europe bringing with them stories, sacred relics, and other memorabilia, including banners, jewelry, and weapons. In the ensuing decades, the memory of the crusaders' bravery and pious sacrifice...
Kith, Kin, and Neighbors
Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In the mid-seventeenth century, Wilno (Vilnius), the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was home to Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars, who worshiped in Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches, one synagogue, and one mosque. Visitors regularly...
Emperor of the World
Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Charlemagne never traveled farther east than Italy, but by the mid-tenth century a story had begun to circulate about the friendly alliances that the emperor had forged while visiting Jerusalem and Constantinople. This story gained wide currency throughout the Middle Ages, appearing frequently in...
Princely Brothers and Sisters
The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In Princely Brothers and Sisters, Jonathan R. Lyon takes a fresh look at sibling networks and the role they played in shaping the practice of politics in the Middle Ages. Focusing on nine of the most prominent aristocratic families in the German kingdom during the Staufen period (1138–1250), Lyon...
Erotic Exchanges
The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2013
In Erotic Exchanges, Nina Kushner reveals the complex world of elite prostitution in eighteenth-century Paris—the demimonde—by focusing on the professional mistresses who dominated it. These dames entretenues exchanged sex, company, and sometimes even love for being "kept." Most of these women...
The Manly Art
Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2012
"It didn't occur to me until fairly late in the work that I was writing a book about the beginnings of a national celebrity culture. By 1860, a few boxers had become heroes to working-class men, and big fights drew considerable newspaper coverage, most of it quite negative since the whole enterprise...
A Moral Technology
Electrification as Political Ritual in New Delhi
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
In India over the past century, electrification has meant many things: it has been a colonial gift of modern technology, a tool of national integration and political communication, and a means of gauging the country's participation in globalization. Electric lights have marked out places of power,...
by Valerie Garver
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: April 20, 2012
Despite the wealth of scholarship in recent decades on medieval women, we still know much less about the experiences of women in the early Middle Ages than we do about those in later centuries. In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of...
Spartak Moscow
A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed...
My Reach
A Hudson River Memoir
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
In this memoir of the Hudson River and of her family, Susan Fox Rogers writes from a fresh perspective: the seat of her kayak. Low in the water, she explores the bays and the larger estuary, riding the tides, marveling over sturgeons and eels, eagles and herons, and spotting the remains of the ice...
Tax Havens
How Globalization Really Works
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
From the Cayman Islands and the Isle of Man to the Principality of Liechtenstein and the state of Delaware, tax havens offer lower tax rates, less stringent regulations and enforcement, and promises of strict secrecy to individuals and corporations alike. In recent years government regulators, hoping...
China 2020
How Western Business Can—and Should—Influence Social and Political Change in the Coming Decade
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Chinese society is plagued by many problems that have a direct impact on its current and future business and political environment-worker rights, product safety, Internet freedom, and the rule of law. Drawing on knowledge gained through personal interviews, documentary sources, and almost two decades...