Happenings at the JHU Press

Stars Wars fanatics the world over, Mobtown not excluded, celebrated May the 4th be with You, I’ll Have Another is headed to Baltimore for the second leg of the Triple Crown, and the Baltimore Orioles swept the Boston Red Sox after a marathon 17-inning game. We’ve been busy at the Press, too. Read on for a roundup of recent happenings at America’s oldest university press.

New to Hit the Shelves

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution: For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships of organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. This stunning book by Theodore W. Pietsch celebrates the manifest beauty, intrinsic interest, and human ingenuity of these exquisite trees of life.

The Tea Party: A Brief History: The Tea Party burst on the national political scene in 2009–2010, powered by right-wing grassroots passion and Astroturf big money. In this concise book, American political historian Ronald P. Formisano probes the remarkable rise of the Tea Party movement during a time of economic crisis and cultural change and examines its powerful impact on American politics.

Beatlemania: Technology, Business, and Teen Culture in Cold War America: André Millard examines the phenomenon of Beatlemania from an original perspective—the relationship among the music business, recording technologies, and teen and young adult culture of the era. Beatlemania offers a new way of understanding the days of the Fab Four and the band’s long-term effects on the business and culture of music.

Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland: Cleland is among the most scandalous figures in British literary history, both celebrated and attacked as a pioneer of pornographic writing in English. Hal Gladfelder combines groundbreaking research into Cleland’s tumultuous life with incisive readings of his sometimes extravagant, sometimes perverse body of work.

The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector: For centuries, all manner of truth-seekers have used the lie detector. In this eye-opening book, Geoffrey C. Bunn unpacks the history of this device from the Lindbergh baby case to the O.J. Simpson trial and explores the interesting and often surprising connection between technology and popular culture.

Secret Lives of Ants: Jae Choe takes readers into a miniature world dominated by six-legged organisms—the world of the ant. All of nature is revealed through the secret lives of the amazing ants, and in the words of the author, “Once you get to know them, you’ll love them.”

Praise for the Short Story

Richard Burgin continues to intrigue readers with his latest fiction collection, Shadow Traffic. Per Contra: An International Journal of the Arts, Literature, and Ideas calls it “brilliant, arguably his best book yet.” And a review in Potomac: A Journal of Poetry and Politics congratulates Burgin for “pumping out gripping and resilient fiction year after year.”

Robley Wilson’s Who Will Hear Your Secrets? is still receiving rave reviews. Publisher’s Weekly calls his storiespitch-perfect.” The collection features stories focused on fragile human relationships marked by lies, betrayals, suppressed memories, and rare moments of joy.

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