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Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) is the first book of poetry published by an African American author. Written while Wheatley was a slave in Boston, the collection was published in England. Regarded for her mastery of classical poetic form, Phillis Wheatley earned praise from Voltaire and George Washington. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral has long been the subject of scholarly work on the history of African American literature, with some critics arguing that Wheatley’s poems proved detrimental to the struggle of enslaved African Americans. Whether Wheatley made excuses for slavery or, as some have argued, included subtle critiques of the institution in her writing, her talent and importance to the history of African American literature remain undisputed.

Despite her status as a slave, Phillis Wheatley seems to have viewed herself as a blessed individual, a woman for whom life itself was a sign of God’s grace, and in whom talent arose in the form of a foreign language. Many of her poems—elegies, odes, and monologues—are aimed at others. Whether in mourning, in praise, or in warning, Wheatley frequently offers her own voice to university students, royalty, God, the muses, and deceased infants. When she does offer glimpses of herself, for instance, in her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” she provides a complex perspective on her status as a slave: “’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, / Taught my benighted soul to understand / That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too.” While her words may seem strange to our modern view of the American institution of slavery, they provide an important historical lens onto the adoption of Christianity by African American slaves, who developed a faith grounded in resistance, hope, and redemption.

This edition of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Between 1532 and 1602, the works of Geoffrey Chaucer were published in no less than six folio editions. These were, in fact, the largest books of poetry produced in sixteenth-century England, and they significantly shaped the perceptions of Chaucer that would hold sway for centuries to come. But it is the stories behind these editions that are the focus of Megan L. Cook's interest in The Poet and the Antiquaries. She explores how antiquarians—historians, lexicographers, religious polemicists, and other readers with a professional, but not necessarily literary, interest in the English past—played an indispensable role in making Chaucer a figure of lasting literary and cultural importance.

After establishing the antiquarian involvement in the publication of the folio editions, Cook offers a series of case studies that discuss Chaucer and his works in relation to specific sixteenth-century discourses about the past. She turns to early accounts of Chaucer's biography to show how important they were in constructing the poet as a figure whose life and works could be known, understood, and valued by later readers. She considers the claims made about Chaucer's religious views, especially the assertions that he was a proto-Protestant, and the effects they had on shaping his canon. Looking at early modern views on Chaucerian language, she illustrates how complicated the relations between past and present forms of English were thought to be. Finally, she demonstrates the ways in which antiquarian readers applied knowledge from other areas of scholarship to their reading of Middle English texts.

Linking Chaucer's exceptional standing in the poetic canon with his role as a symbol of linguistic and national identity, The Poet and the Antiquaries demonstrates how and why Chaucer became not only the first English author to become a subject of historical inquiry but also a crucial figure for conceptualizing the medieval in early modern England.

A compelling and prismatic love story of one family's defiance in the face of injustice—and how their story echoes across generations.

"It is both overwhelming and affirming to imagine, in the midst of their darkest hours, and in the middle of a country and a war that willfully misperceived them as enemy aliens, that the future, for Itaru and Shizuko Ina, was not only possible, but would deliver redemption in the form of the intimate, inexhaustible attention of a daughter." —Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall

In 1942 newlyweds Itaru and Shizuko Ina were settling into married life when the United States government upended their world. They were forcibly removed from their home and incarcerated in wartime American concentration camps solely on account of their Japanese ancestry. When the Inas, under duress, renounced their American citizenship, the War Department branded them enemy aliens and scattered their family across the U.S. interior. Born to Itaru and Shizuko during their imprisonment, psychotherapist and activist Satsuki Ina weaves their story together in this moving mosaic. Through diary entries, photographs, clandestine letters, and heart-wrenching haiku, she reveals how this intrepid young couple navigated life, love, loss, and loyalty tests in the welter of World War II-era hysteria.

The Poet and the Silk Girl illustrates through one family's saga the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who resisted racist oppression, fought for the restoration of their rights, and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity. With psychological insight, Ina excavates the unmentionable, recovering a chronicle of resilience amidst one of the severest blows to American civil liberties. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family's ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lyrical and gripping, this cautionary tale implores us to prevent the repetition of atrocity, pairing healing and protest with galvanizing power.

With its dominance as a European power and the explosion of its prose and dramatic writing, Spain provided an irresistible literary source for English writers of the early modern period. But the deep and escalating political rivalry between the two nations led English writers to negotiate, disavow, or attempt to resolve their fascination with Spain and their debt to Spanish sources. Amid thorny issues of translation and appropriation, imperial competition, the rise of commercial authorship, and anxieties about authenticity, Barbara Fuchs traces how Spanish material was transmitted into English writing, entangling English literature in questions of national and religious identity, and how piracy came to be a central textual metaphor, with appropriations from Spain triumphantly reimagined as heroic looting.

From the time of the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada of the 1580s, through the rise of anti-Spanish rhetoric of the 1620s, The Poetics of Piracy charts this connection through works by Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Thomas Middleton. Fuchs examines how their writing, particularly for the stage, recasts a reliance on Spanish material by constructing narratives of militaristic, forcible use. She considers how Jacobean dramatists complicated the texts of their Spanish contemporaries by putting them to anti-Spanish purposes, and she traces the place of Cervantes's Don Quixote in Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Shakespeare's late, lost play Cardenio. English literature was deeply transnational, even in the period most closely associated with the birth of a national literature.

Recovering the profound influence of Spain on Renaissance English letters, The Poetics of Piracy paints a sophisticated picture of how nations can serve, at once, as rivals and resources.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

The Presocratic philosophers, writing in Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, invented new ways of thinking about human life, the natural world, and structures of reality. They also developed novel ways of using language to express their thought. In this book, Victoria Wohl examines these innovations and the productive relation between them in the work of five figures: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus.
 
Bringing these thinkers into conversation with modern critical theorists on questions of shared concern, Wohl argues for the poetic sophistication of their work and the inextricable convergence of their aesthetic form and philosophical content. In addition to offering original readings of these fascinating figures and robust strategies for interpreting their fragmentary, rebarbative texts, this book invites readers to communicate across entrenched divisions between literature and philosophy and between antiquity and modernity.
 

The Poison Tree (1873) is a novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Originally serialized in Bangadarshan, a popular literary magazine founded by Chatterjee in 1872 and later edited by Rabindranath Tagore, The Poison Tree is a story that engages with the subject of widow remarriage. “The river flowed smoothly on—leaped, danced, cried out, restless, unending, playful. On shore, herdsmen were grazing their oxen—one sitting under a tree singing, another smoking, some fighting, others eating. Inland, husbandmen were driving the plough, beating the oxen, lavishing abuse upon them, in which the owner shared.” With his wife’s blessing, Nagendra sets out on a journey by boat down the river. When a sudden storm forces him to leave his boat for safety, he comes across the ruined home of Kundanandini, a young widow caring for her father in his final days. When the old man dies, Kundanandini begs him to take her to Calcutta. As he begins to fall for the beautiful woman, he struggles with the demands of family, religion, and tradition, knowing that love wields power over them all. Tragic and timeless, The Poison Tree is a brilliant romance from a legendary figure in Bengali literature. This edition of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s The Poison Tree is a classic of Bengali literature and utopian science fiction reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Popular liberal writing on race has relied on appeals to the value of "diversity" and the fading memory of the Civil Rights movement to counter the aggressive conservative assault on liberal racial reform generally, and on black well-being, in particular. Yet appeals to fairness and justice, no matter how heartfelt, are bound to fail, Marcellus Andrews argues, since the economic foundations of the Civil Rights movement have been destroyed by the combined forces of globalization, technology, and tight government budgets.
The Political Economy of Hope and Fear fills an important intellectual gap in writing on race by developing a hard-nosed economic analysis of the links between competitive capitalism, racial hostility, and persistent racial inequality in post-Civil Rights America. Andrews speaks to the anger and frustration that blacks feel in the face of the nation's abandonment of racial equality as a worthy objective by showing how the considerable difficulties that black Americans face are related to fundamental changes in the economic fortunes of the U.S.
The Political Economy of Hope and Fear is an economist's plea for unsentimental thinking on matters of race to replace the mixture of liberal hand wringing and conservative mythmaking that currently passes for serious analysis about the nation's racial predicament.

Since gaining independence, the United Republic of Tanzania has enjoyed relative stability. More recently, the nation transitioned peacefully from "single-party democracy" and socialism to a multiparty political system with a market-based economy. But Tanzania's development strategies—based on the leading economic ideas at the time of independence—also opened the door for unscrupulous dealmaking among political elites and led to economic decline in the 1960s and 1970s that continues to be felt today. Indeed, the shift to a market-oriented economy was motivated in part by the fiscal interests of government profiteers.

The Political Economy of Tanzania focuses on the nation's economic development from 1961 to the present, considering the global and domestic factors that have shaped Tanzania's economic policies over time. Michael F. Lofchie presents a compelling analysis of the successes and failures of a country whose postcolonial history has been deeply influenced by high-ranking members of the political elite who have used their power to advance their own economic interests. The Political Economy of Tanzania offers crucial lessons for scholars and policy makers with a stake in Africa's future.

Recovering the powerful and influential contributions of women from the nation’s formative years

The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists traces the significance of Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in shaping American political thinking. These women understood the relationship between sexism, racism, and economic inequality; yet, they are virtually unknown in American political thought because they are considered activists, not theorists. Their efforts to expand the reach of America’s founding ideals laid the groundwork not only for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but for the broader expansion of civil, political, and human rights that would characterize much of the twentieth century and continues to unfold today.

Drawing on a careful reading of speeches, letters and other archival sources, Lisa Pace Vetter shows the ways in which the early women’s rights movement and abolitionism were central to the development of American political thought. The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists demonstrates that early American political thought is incomplete without attention to these important female thinkers, and that an understanding of early American women’s movements is incomplete without considering its profound impact on political thought.

A complex and thoughtful guide to the indispensable role of women in shaping the American way of life, The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists is essential for a comprehensive understanding of the history of American political thought.

2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was not only one of the most important leaders of the nineteenth century women’s rights movement but was also the movement’s principal philosopher. Her ideas both drew from and challenged the conventions that so severely constrained women’s choices and excluded them from public life.
In The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sue Davis argues that Cady Stanton’s work reflects the rich tapestry of American political culture in the second half of the nineteenth century and that she deserves recognition as a major figure in the history of political ideas. Davis reveals the way that Cady Stanton’s work drew from different political traditions ranging from liberalism, republicanism, inegalitarian ascriptivism, and radicalism. Cady Stanton’s arguments for women’s rights combined approaches that in contemporary feminist theory are perceived to involve conflicting strategies and visions. Nevertheless, her ideas had a major impact on the development of the varieties of feminism in the twentieth century.
Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton draws on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources and promises to fill a gap in the literature on the history of political ideas in the United States as well as women’s history and feminist theory.

2013 Finalist, 26th Annual Oregon Best Book Award


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Frederick Douglass, one of the most prominent figures in
African-American and United States
history, was born a slave, but escaped to the North and became a well-known
anti-slavery activist, orator, and author. In The Political Thought of
Frederick Douglass, Nicholas Buccola provides an important and original
argument about the ideas that animated this reformer-statesman. Beyond his role
as an abolitionist, Buccola argues for the importance of understanding Douglass
as a political thinker who provides deep insights into the immense challenge of
achieving and maintaining the liberal promise of freedom. Douglass, Buccola
contends, shows us that the language of rights must be coupled with a robust
understanding of social responsibility in order for liberal ideals to be
realized. Truly an original American thinker, this book highlights Douglass’s
rightful place among the great thinkers in the American liberal tradition.



Podcast — Nicholas Buccola on Frederick Douglass and Liberty.

Early essays by a legendary freedom fighter and Indian intellectual

“The state, the government machinery is just a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to further and safeguard its interest. We want to snatch and handle it to utilize it for the consummation of our ideal, that is, social reconstruction on a new, that is, Marxist, basis.” – Bhagat Singh

The young martyr Bhagat Singh is a legend of the Indian anti-colonial struggle. He was not just a man of action, but of great intellect and deep insight.

While still in his early teens, he showed a depth of understanding of Indian political reality. He read widely and became fluent in several Indian languages, as well as English. Moreover, he wrote insightful political essays, ones that a much older person would have been proud to have written.

It is not only that his call to arms against the British imperialists inspired Indians – young and old. It is that his written works continue to stir the minds of all those who seek a world where everyone is equal, and all can fully develop their capacities. He is as much a part of the Indian radical tradition today as he was one hundred years ago.

A look at gun control, campus sexual assault, immigration, and more that considers the future of responses to domestic violence

Domestic violence is commonly assumed to be a bipartisan, nonpolitical issue, with politicians of all stripes claiming to work to end family violence. Nevertheless, the Violence Against Women Act expired for over 500 days between 2012 and 2013 due to differences between the U.S. Senate and House, demonstrating that legal protections for domestic abuse survivors are both highly political and highly vulnerable. Racial and gender politics, the move toward criminalization, reproductive justice concerns, gun control debates, and political interests are increasingly shaping responses to domestic violence, demonstrating the need for greater consideration of the interplay of politics, domestic violence, and how the law works in people’s lives.

The Politicization of Safety provides a critical historical perspective on domestic violence responses in the United States. It grapples with the ways in which child welfare systems and civil and criminal justice responses intersect, and considers the different, overlapping ways in which survivors of domestic abuse are forced to cope with institutionalized discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status. The book also examines movement politics and the feminist movement with respect to domestic violence policies. The tensions discussed in this book, similar to those involved in the #metoo movement, include questions of accountability, reckoning, redemption, healing, and forgiveness.

What is the future of feminism and the movements against gender-based violence and domestic violence? Readers are invited to question assumptions about how society and the legal system respond to intimate partner violence and to challenge the domestic violence field to move beyond old paradigms and contend with larger justice issues.

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country.

The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens.

Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected.

In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today.

Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation.

The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all.

THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION
The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

An important understanding of the role public opinion plays in crime prevention policy

"Defund the police.” This slogan became a rallying cry among Black Lives Matter protesters following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. These three words evoke a fundamental question about America’s policy priorities: should the nation rely predominantly upon the branches of the criminal justice system to arrest, prosecute, and imprison offenders, or should the nation prioritize fixing structural causes of crime by investing more heavily in the infrastructure and institutions of disadvantaged communities? To put it simply, do Americans actually prefer punishment over crime prevention?

The Politics of Crime Prevention examines American public opinion about crime prevention in the twenty-first century with a particular focus on how average citizens would choose to prioritize resources between the criminal justice system and community-based institutions. Kevin H. Wozniak analyzes differences of opinion across lines of race, social class, and political partisanship, and investigates whether people’s willingness to invest in communities depends upon the kind of communities that would receive money. This book moves beyond criminologists’ typical focus on public opinion about punishment that follows acts of crime to instead examine public attitudes toward crime prevention. In this brilliant and compelling study, Wozniak reveals that politicians profoundly underestimate the American public’s desire to prioritize community investment and that it is long past time to help communities thrive instead of turning to the criminal justice system to respond to every social problem.

Winner of the 2006 Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Organized Section Best First Book Award from the American Political Science Association

Winner of the 2006 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists

Ange-Marie Hancock argues that longstanding beliefs about poor African American mothers were the foundation for the contentious 1996 welfare reform debate that effectively "ended welfare as we know it." By examining the public identity of the so-called welfare queen and its role in hindering democratic deliberation, The Politics of Disgust shows how stereotypes and politically motivated misperceptions about race, class and gender were effectively used to instigate a politics of disgust.
The ongoing role of the politics of disgust in welfare policy is revealed here by using content analyses of the news media, the 1996 congressional floor debates, historical evidence and interviews with welfare recipients themselves. Hancock's incisive analysis is both compelling and disturbing, suggesting the great limits of today's democracy in guaranteeing not just fair and equitable policy outcomes, but even a fair chance for marginalized citizens to participate in the process.

In this impressive book, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson examine the uses and abuses of the word “genocide.” They argue persuasively that the label is highly politicized and that in the United States it is used by the government, journalists, and academics to brand as evil those nations and political movements that in one way or another interfere with the imperial interests of U.S. capitalism. Thus the word “genocide” is seldom applied when the perpetrators are U.S. allies (or even the United States itself), while it is used almost indiscriminately when murders are committed or are alleged to have been committed by enemies of the United States and U.S. business interests. One set of rules applies to cases such as U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Israeli oppression of Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter of so-called communists and the people of East Timor, U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo, the U.S. war of “liberation” in Iraq, and mass murders committed by U.S. allies in Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Another set applies to cases such as Serbian aggression in Kosovo and Bosnia, killings carried out by U.S. enemies in Rwanda and Darfur, Saddam Hussein, any and all actions by Iran, and a host of others.
With its careful and voluminous documentation, close reading of the U.S. media and political and scholarly writing on the subject, and clear and incisive charts, The Politics of Genocide is both a damning condemnation and stunning exposé of a deeply rooted and effective system of propaganda aimed at deceiving the population while promoting the expansion of a cruel and heartless imperial system.

A straightforward discussion of the issues surrounding immigration

U.S. immigration has been the subject of furious debates for decades. On one side, politicians and the media talk about aliens and criminals, with calls to “deport them all.” On the other side, some advocates idealize immigrants and gloss over problems associated with immigration. Dialogue becomes possible when we dig deeper and ask tough questions: Why are people in other countries leaving their homes and coming here? What does it mean to be “illegal”? How do immigration raids, prisons, and border walls impact communities? Who suffers and who profits from our current system—and what would happen if we transformed it?

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers goes beyond soundbites to tackle these concerns in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. First published in 2007, this updated and expanded edition is an effective tool to confront current stereotypes and disinformation. Those who believe immigrants take jobs from citizens, don't pay taxes, strain public services, and threaten the dominant culture will find their assumptions challenged with compelling arguments and hard data. Ideal for classroom use, The Politics of Immigration provides those who are undecided about immigration with the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion.

2024 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice Reviews

The political dynamics that shape the Innocence Movement

Since 1989, more than 3000 people are known to have been exonerated after being wrongly convicted in the United States. Each one of these cases represents a gross miscarriage of justice; they are stories of lives upended by a criminal legal system gone awry. Yet, this number just scratches the surface and does not capture the full breadth of wrongful convictions, which may well number in the tens of thousands.

The Politics of Innocence explores the political dynamics that have shaped the proliferation of innocence-related policies across the United States and the ways in which wrongful convictions affect public opinion about the criminal legal system. Although some have suggested that this issue transcends ideological divisions, the authors argue that public opinion and the policies that address wrongful convictions are a product of the political landscape. Using original data, the authors show how political ideology influences awareness of the issue, affects support for policy reform, and, in particular electoral contexts, influences state policy adoption. The Politics of Innocence is a moving and data-driven account of wrongful convictions.

Pundits and commentators are constantly striving to understand the political behavior of Latinos—the largest minority in the United States and a key voting block. As Catherine E. Wilson makes clear in The Politics of Latino Faith, not only are Latinos a religious community, but their religious institutions, in particular faith-based organizations, inform daily life and politics in Latino communities to a considerable degree.
Timely and discerning, The Politics of Latino Faith is a unique scholarly work that addresses this increasingly powerful political force. As Wilson shows, Latino religious institutions, whether congregations or faith-based organizations, have long played a significant role in the often poor and urban communities where Latinos live.
Concentrating on urban areas in the South Bronx, Philadelphia, and Chicago, she provides a systematic look at the spiritual, social, and cultural influence Latino faith-based organizations have provided in American life. Wilson offers keen insight into how pivotal religious identity is in understanding Latino social and political involvement in the United States. She also shows the importance of understanding the theological underpinnings at work in these organizations in order to predict their political influences.

Reveals the underexplored politics and activism of non-traditional sexual minorities

Over the past four decades, there has been significant research focused on the political and social lives of lesbian, gay, and transgender (LGT) individuals, exploring how these sexual communities interact with politicians and voters who identify as straight. However, due to society’s binary view of sexuality, this research has overlooked non-traditional sexual minorities.

To address this omission, The Politics of Perverts delves into the political attitudes and activities of individuals who identify with non-traditional sexual orientations and practices, such as Polyamory, BDSM, the Furry Fandom, Nudism, and the large bisexual population within these communities. These groups face similar discrimination, stigma, and lack of legal protections in various aspects of life.

The authors shed light on the political identities, affiliations, and attitudes of these communities in the
United States, revealing how sexuality and politics are even more deeply intertwined at the margins of society. Despite facing challenges, these communities actively engage in political discussions and activities in hopes of fostering greater inclusivity, better representation, and more informed policies.

Triggered by the massive and often violent civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, in 1968 the Johnson Administration created the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence to analyze violent protest and to make recommendations on how to reduce it. The report that Jerome H. Skolnick and his team of researchers produced in the remarkably short time span of seven months had a significant influence on policymakers and law enforcers, and also sold over 100,000 copies before going out of print in the early 1980s. The book examined antiwar, student, and black protest, and studied the responses of the law enforcement and judicial communities to violent protest.
Forty years later and long out of print, the book remains a classic. In light of new twenty-first-century confrontations including anti-Iraq War demonstrations, face-offs between environmentalists and developers, and the continued specter of street violence between cops and people of disadvantaged communities, the time is ripe to reconsider the report’s findings. In his new preface and introduction, Skolnick compares the trends and events documented in the original report to their present-day forms of protest.

What did it mean to be Roman after the fall of the western Roman empire in 476, and what were the implications of new formulations of Roman identity for the inhabitants of both east and west? How could an empire be Roman when it was, in fact, at war with Rome? How did these issues motivate and shape historical constructions of Constantinople as the New Rome? And how did the idea that a Roman empire could fall influence political rhetoric in Constantinople? In The Politics of Roman Memory, Marion Kruse visits and revisits these questions to explore the process by which the emperors, historians, jurists, antiquarians, and poets of the eastern Roman empire employed both history and mythologized versions of the same to reimagine themselves not merely as Romans but as the only Romans worthy of the name.

The Politics of Roman Memory challenges conventional narratives of the transformation of the classical world, the supremacy of Christian identity in late antiquity, and the low literary merit of writers in this period. Kruse reconstructs a coherent intellectual movement in Constantinople that redefined Romanness in a Constantinopolitan idiom through the manipulation of Roman historical memory. Debates over the historical parameters of Romanness drew the attention of figures as diverse as Zosimos—long dismissed as a cranky pagan outlier, but here rehabilitated—and the emperor Justinian, as well as the major authors of Justinian's reign, such as Prokopios, Ioannes Lydos, and Jordanes. Finally, by examining the narratives embedded in Justinian's laws, Kruse demonstrates the importance of historical memory to the construction of imperial authority.

Shier-Jones offers a theological and practical guide for
pioneer ministers (both ordained and lay) and mission minded
congregations on how to initiate and support fresh
expressions of Church. Drawing on Scripture as well as real life
case studies, she illustrates best practice – and highlights
the possible dangers – in working to transform a God-given
vision for mission into a reality.

Between the English Civil War of 1642 and the American Revolution, countless British missionaries announced their intention to "spread the gospel" among the native North American population. Despite the scope of their endeavors, they converted only a handful of American Indians to Christianity. Their attempts to secure moral and financial support at home proved much more successful.

In The Poor Indians, Laura Stevens delves deeply into the language and ideology British missionaries used to gain support, and she examines their wider cultural significance. Invoking pity and compassion for "the poor Indian"—a purely fictional construct—British missionaries used the Black Legend of cruelties perpetrated by Spanish conquistadors to contrast their own projects with those of Catholic missionaries, whose methods were often brutal and deceitful. They also tapped into a remarkably effective means of swaying British Christians by connecting the latter's feelings of religious superiority with moral obligation. Describing mission work through metaphors of commerce, missionaries asked their readers in England to invest, financially and emotionally, in the cultivation of Indian souls. As they saved Indians from afar, supporters renewed their own faith, strengthened the empire against the corrosive effects of paganism, and invested in British Christianity with philanthropic fervor.

The Poor Indians thus uncovers the importance of religious feeling and commercial metaphor in strengthening imperial identity and colonial ties, and it shows how missionary writings helped fashion British subjects who were self-consciously transatlantic and imperial because they were religious, sentimental, and actively charitable.

An up-close look at how porn permeates our culture

Pictures of half-naked girls and women can seem to litter almost every screen, billboard, and advertisement in America. Pole-dancing studios keep women fit. Men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on planes and trains. To top it off, the last American President has bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.”

This pornification of our society is what Bernadette Barton calls “raunch culture.” Barton explores what raunch culture is, why it matters, and how it is ruining America. She exposes how internet porn drives trends in programming, advertising, and social media, and makes its way onto our phones, into our fashion choices, and into our sex lives. From twerking and breast implants, to fake nails and push-up bras, she explores just how much we encounter raunch culture on a daily basis—porn is the new normal.

Drawing on interviews, television shows, movies, and social media, Barton argues that raunch culture matters not because it is sexy, but because it is sexist. She shows how young women are encouraged to be sexy like porn stars, and to be grateful for getting cat-called or receiving unsolicited dick pics. As politicians vote to restrict women’s access to birth control and abortion, The Pornification of America exposes the double standard we attach to women’s sexuality.

The Port Huron Statement was the most important manifesto of the New Left student movement of the 1960s. Initially drafted by Tom Hayden and debated over the course of three days in 1962 at a meeting of student leaders, the statement was issued by Students for a Democratic Society as their founding document. Its key idea, "participatory democracy," proved a watchword for Sixties radicalism that has also reemerged in popular protests from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street.

Featuring essays by some of the original contributors as well as prominent scholars who were influenced by the manifesto, The Port Huron Statement probes the origins, content, and contemporary influence of the document that heralded the emergence of a vibrant New Left in American culture and politics. Opening with an essay by Tom Hayden that provides a sweeping reflection on the document's enduring significance, the volume explores the diverse intellectual and cultural roots of the Statement, the uneasy dynamics between liberals and radicals that led to and followed this convergence, the ways participatory democracy was defined and deployed in the 1960s, and the continuing resonances this idea has for political movements today. An appendix includes the complete text of the original document.

The Port Huron Statement offers a vivid portrait of a unique moment in the history of radicalism, showing that the ideas that inspired a generation of young radicals more than half a century ago are just as important and provocative today.

Contributors: Robert Cohen, Richard Flacks, Jennifer Frost, Daniel Geary, Barbara Haber, Grace Elizabeth Hale, Tom Hayden, Michael Kazin, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jane Mansbridge, Lisa McGirr, James Miller, Robert J. S. Ross, Michael Vester, Erik Olin Wright.

“The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.”-Rebecca West

“A fairy tale in reverse.” -The Sunday Times

Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady is regarded as one of the towering works of Victorian literature; an exceptional examination of the disparate nature between Americans and Europeans, and the divides between contentment and money. Isabel Archer, one of the most compelling heroines of American literature, is at the center of this moving story about the manners and mores of 19th Century life.

The Portrait of a Lady opens as the beautiful and fiery American Isabel Archer travels to England to visit her wealthy Aunt Touchett. She is introduced her Uncle Touchett, her cousin Ralph, and the local nobleman, Lord Warburton, who wastes no time in asking for Isabel’s hand in marriage. In character with Isabel’s independent spirt, she refuses the proposal, and while on a trip to London receives a second proposal from an American suitor; once again, she refuses. When she learns that her uncle is deathly ill, Isabel returns to the Touchett home, where she inherits a great fortune following his death. Traveling to Italy with her Aunt as a great heiress, she is introduced to Gilbert Osmond, a self-centered and calculating American expatriate. Despite the warnings from her family and friends, Isabel falls for Osborne and in turn is pulled the darkness of deception. The Portrait of a Lady is a tragic yet humane masterpiece of American literature.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Portrait of a Lady is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

The Post Office (1914) is a play by Rabindranath Tagore. Published following his ascension to international fame with the 1912 Nobel Prize in Literature, the play was introduced to an international audience by W. B. Yeats. When the Irish poet discovered Tagore’s work in translation, he felt an intense kinship with a man whose work was similarly grounded in spirituality and opposition to the British Empire. Brought to Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1913, The Post Office remains one of Tagore’s most influential literary works. “The doctor says all the organs of his little body are at loggerheads with each other, and there isn't much hope for his life. There is only one way to save him and that is to keep him out of this autumn wind and sun.” Under doctor’s orders, Amal is confined to his uncle’s home and courtyard, encouraged in his studies despite his desire to experience the world beyond books. Standing at the front gate, he watches life pass him by along the road, speaking with whoever will stop to listen. When construction begins on a new post office nearby, Amal dreams of one day serving as a messenger for the king. This edition of Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office is a classic of Indian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Despite claims from
pundits and politicians that we now live in a post-racial America, people seem
to keep finding ways to talk about race—from celebrations of the inauguration
of the first Black president to resurgent debates about police
profiling, race and racism remain salient features of our world. When faced
with fervent anti-immigration sentiments, record incarceration rates of Blacks and
Latinos, and deepening socio-economic disparities, a new question has erupted
in the last decade: What does being post-racial mean?

The Post-Racial Mystique explores
how a variety of media—the news, network television, and online, independent media—debate,
define and deploy the term “post-racial” in their representations of American
politics and society. Using examples from both mainstream and niche media—from prime-time television series to specialty Christian media and audience
interactions on social media—Catherine Squires draws upon a variety of
disciplines including communication studies, sociology, political science, and
cultural studies in order to understand emergent strategies for framing
post-racial America. She reveals the ways in which media texts cast U.S.
history, re-imagine interpersonal relationships, employ statistics, and
inventively redeploy other identity categories in a quest to formulate
different ways of responding to race.

The Post-Secular in Question considers whether there has in fact been a religious resurgence of global dimensions in recent decades. This collection of original essays by leading academics represents an interdisciplinary intervention in the continuing and ever-transforming discussion of the role of religion and secularism in today’s world. Foregrounding the most urgent and compelling questions raised by the place of religion in the social sciences, past and present, The Post-Secular in Question restores religion to a more central place in social scientific thinking about the world, helping to move scholarship “beyond unbelief.”

Contributors: Courtney Bender, Craig Calhoun, Michele Dillon, Philip S. Gorski, Richard Madsen, Kathleen Mahoney, Tomoko Masuzawa, Eduardo Mendieta, John Schmalzbauer, James K. A. Smith, John Torpey, Bryan S. Turner, Hent de Vries.

A brief history of the Caucusus region during and after the Post-Soviet Wars

The Post-Soviet Wars is a comparative account of the organized violence in the Caucusus region, looking at four key areas: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Zürcher’s goal is to understand the origin and nature of the violence in these regions, the response and suppression from the post-Soviet regime and the resulting outcomes, all with an eye toward understanding why some conflicts turned violent, whereas others not. Notably, in Dagestan actual violent conflict has not erupted, an exception of political stability for the region. The book provides a brief history of the region, particularly the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting changes that took place in the wake of this toppling. Zürcher carefully looks at the conditions within each region—economic, ethnic, religious, and political—to make sense of why some turned to violent conflict and some did not and what the future of the region might portend.

This important volume provides both an overview of the region that is both up-to-date and comprehensive as well as an accessible understanding of the current scholarship on mobilization and violence.