The University of Pittsburgh Press is a publisher with distinguished lists in a wide range of scholarly and cultural fields. They publish books for general readers, scholars, and students. The Press focuses on selected academic areas: Latin American studies, Russian and East European studies, Central Asian studies, composition and literacy studies, environmental studies, urban studies, the history of architecture and the built environment, and the history and philosophy of science, technology, and medicine. Their books about Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania include history, art, architecture, photography, biography, fiction, and guidebooks.
Their renowned Pitt Poetry Series represents many of the finest poets active today, as reflected in the many prestigious awards their work has garnered over the past four decades. In addition, the Press is home to the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and, in rotation with other university presses, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. They sponsor the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which recognises the finest collective works of short fiction available in an international competition.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9780822958291
Pub Date: 21 Mar 2004
Description:
The bureaucracy in the United States has a hand in almost all aspects of our lives, from the water we drink to the parts in our cars. For a force so influential and pervasive, however, this body of all nonelective government officials remains an enigmatic, impersonal entity.The literature of bureaucratic theory is rife with contradictions and mysteries.
Bureaucrats, Politics, and the Environment attempts to clarify some of these problems.The authors surveyed the workers at two agencies: enforcement personnel from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and employees of the New Mexico Environment Department. By examining what they think about politics, the environment, their budgets, and the other institutions and agencies with which they interact, this work puts a face on the bureaucracy and provides an explanation for its actions.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 88
ISBN: 9780822958406
Pub Date: 21 Mar 2004
Description:
esse Lee Kercheval writes with wit, vivid language, and devastating honesty in these autobiographical poems. Tracing the timelines of her life forward and backward, she offers a moving examination of the role of family and the possible/probable/hoped for existence of God—and how our perceptions of the divine can be transformed from a kindergartner’s dyslexically scrawled "doG loves U" to the ever-present but oft-ignored Dog Angel of the title. Ranging from a cross-country drive to bury her mother’s ashes at Arlington National Cemetery, to a family vacation in Spain, to an imagined final exam given by her children, Kercheval explores the vagaries of love, loss, faith, grief, and joy with a calm, convincing wisdom that permeates this resonant and wonderful collection.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 96
ISBN: 9780822958420
Pub Date: 14 Mar 2004
Description:
Bob Hicok's poems are often edgy, brazen, and funny. They’re just as likely to be soulful, reflective, and provocative. Usually at the same time.
As Hicok builds toward the punchline of a poem set up with his characteristic wit, he zigs into seriousness. A thoughtful meditation that builds to a moment of epiphany zags into comedy. Hicok's fluid ability to shift moods, the richness of his visual palette, and his idiosyncratic use of language fill the pages of Insomnia Diary. The fourth collection of poetry from this former automotive die designer delivers more of the cunning brilliance that has become Hicok's hallmark.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 312
ISBN: 9780822961758
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2004
Description:
Following the largest peasant revolution in history, Russia's urban-based Bolshevik regime was faced with a monumental task: to peacefully \u201cmodernize\u201d and eventually \u201csocialize\u201d the peasants in the countryside surrounding Russia's cities. To accomplish this, the Bolshevik leadership created the People's Commissariat of Agriculture (Narkomzem), which would eventually employ 70,000 workers. This commissariat was particularly important, both because of massive famine and because peasants composed the majority of Russia's population; it was also regarded as one of the most moderate state agencies because of its nonviolent approach to rural transformation.
Working from recently opened historical archives, James Heinzen presents a balanced, thorough examination of the political, social, and cultural dilemmas present in the Bolsheviks' strategy for modernizing of the peasantry. He especially focuses on the state employees charged with no less than a complete transformation of an entire class of people. Heinzen ultimately shows how disputes among those involved in this plan-from the government, to Communist leaders, to the peasants themselves-led to the shuttering of the Commissariat of Agriculture and to Stalin's cataclysmic 1929 collectivization of agriculture.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9780822958185
Pub Date: 15 Feb 2004
Description:
Pennsylvania Constitutional Development has proven to be the definitive study of the history of Pennsylvania's constitution in its first four incarnations. Rosalind Branning's critique, first published in 1960, reflects the movement that led to the constitution of 1968. After tracing the history of the 1776 constitution and its earliest revisions--in 1790 and 1838--Branning primarily focuses on the constitutional convention of 1872-73 and the resulting document of 1874, which endured for almost a century.
She uses the published Debates, newspaper files, and the observations of contemporary writers and statesmen to provide a detailed and engaging study of the politics and leadership of the time. Her analysis demonstrates that this constitutional convention produced an instrument that was designed to meet nineteenth-century needs but would need significant revisions by future generations. Foreseeing the very issues that would be addressed in the 1967-68 constitutional convention, Branning identifies the elements that are necessary for successful constitutional lawmaking.The evolution of Pennsylvania's body of laws serves as a cogent example of the opportunities and foibles intrinsic to the process of defining effective governance of a state. Pennsylvania Constitutional Development remains an essential resource for students and historians, and should be read by anyone interested in the government of the Keystone State.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9780822958253
Pub Date: 28 Jan 2004
Description:
For much of the twentieth century, unions played a vital role in shaping political regimes and economic development strategies, particularly in Latin America and Europe. However, their influence has waned as political parties with close ties to unions have adopted neoliberal reforms harmful to the interests of workers.What do unions do when confronted with this \u201cloyalty dilemma\u201d?
Katrina Burgess compares events in three countries to determine the reasons for widely divergent responses on the part of labor leaders to remarkably similar challenges. She argues that the key to understanding why some labor leaders protest and some acquiesce lies essentially in two domains: the relative power of the party and the workers to punish them, and the party's capacity to act autonomously from its own government.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9780822961444
Pub Date: 01 Jan 2004
Description:
The monumental American Guide Series, published by the Federal WritersÆ Project, provided work to thousands of unemployed writers, editors, and researchers in the midst of the Great Depression. Featuring books on states, cities, rivers, and ethnic groups, it also opened an unprecedented view into the lives of the American people during this time. Untold numbers of projects in progress were lost when the program was abruptly shut down by a hostile Congress in 1939.
One of those, "The Negro in Pittsburgh," lay dormant in the Pennsylvania State Library until it was microfilmed in 1970. The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh marks the first publication of this rich body of information. This unique historical study of the cityÆs black population features articles on civil rights, social class, lifestyle, culture, folklore, and institutions from colonial times through the 1930s.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 80
ISBN: 9780822958352
Pub Date: 07 Dec 2003
Description:
There is a proverb in China, hu kou ba ya, literally “pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth,” used to describe any extremely difficult task. When Shao Wei first arrived in the United States at age thirty-one, her desire to write poems in English seemed almost impossible. Pulling a Dragon's Teeth, a first stop on the successful journey toward that goal, is filled with the rhythms and visions of this exciting young poet.
Shuttling between her childhood in a small mountain city on the shores of the Yangtze River (soon to be flooded by the Three Gorges Dam Project) and adulthood in Manhattan, Shao Weicaptures the pains and joys of tradition and displacement familiar to any immigrant. Blending fairy tales, New York images, family stories, and the universal rites of passage associated with growing up, she paints a vibrant canvas of passion and imagination.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 88
ISBN: 9780822958307
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2003
Description:
In a poetic voice that is at once reflective and lively, Sandra Kohler explores the patterns of everyday life and the inner drama of imagination. Though these poems are mostly set amidst the familiarity of a suburban household and the family garden, this environment appears far from mundane as Kohler peels away the veneer of domestic tranquility to reveal a world busy with human passion and the rhythms of the earth. Nature is present at every turn, an ethereal twin, as the narrator’s emotions take the form of cardinals in flight, a rushing river, or a potato sprouting from the dark.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9780822958369
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2003
Description:
Given the tensions and demands of medicine, highly successful physicians and surgeons rarely achieve equal success as prose writers. It is truly extraordinary that a major, international pioneer in the controversial field of transplant surgery should have written a spellbinding, and heart-wrenching, autobiography.Thomas Starzl grew up in LeMars, Iowa, the son of a newspaper publisher and a nurse.
His father also wrote science fiction and was acquainted with the writer Ray Bradbury. Starzl left the family business to enter Northwestern University Medical School where he earned both and M.D. and a PhD. While he was a student, and later during his surgical internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he began the series of animal experiments that led eventually to the world\u2019s first transplantation of the human liver in 1963.Throughout his career, first at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Pittsburgh, he has aroused both worldwide admiration and controversy. His technical innovations and medical genius have revolutionized the field, but Starzl has not hesitated to address the moral and ethical issues raised by transplantation. In this book he clearly states his position on many hotly debated issues including brain death, randomized trials for experimental drugs, the costs of transplant operations, and the system for selecting organ recipients from among scores of desperately ill patients.There are many heroes in the story of transplantation, and many \u201cpuzzle people,\u201d the patients who, as one journalist suggested, might one day be made entirely of various transplanted parts. They are old and young, obscure and world famous. Some have been taken into the hearts of America, like Stormie Jones, the brave and beautiful child from Texas. Every patient who receives someone else\u2019s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle. \u201cIt was not just the acquisition of a new part,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe rest of the body had to change in many ways before the gift could be accepted. It was necessary for the mind to see the world in a different way.\u201d The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people. \u201cSome were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.\u201d
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9780822962472
Pub Date: 26 Oct 2003
Series: Drue Heinz Literature Prize
Description:
The characters in Speed-Walk and Other Stories often find themselves dislocated, living in places that do not resemble or feel like home. Their lives have somehow been turned on their axes, and often they cannot comprehend why. The stories in this stunning debut collection are united by their protagonists' common quest to make sense of the world, to bring it into focus, to set it right, to adapt.
In selecting Suzanne Greenberg's fiction for the 2003 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Rick Moody wrote, "A charge sometimes leveled against contemporary fiction these days is that it has abrogated its responsibility to depict civilization as it actually exists. . . . Speed-Walk replies forcefully to this aesthetic error by locating its protagonists in completely recognizable environments. . . . [They] are ever engaged by the routines of American life: walking the dog, eating at the sushi bar, doing the laundry." Tightly written yet realistically spare, these stories provide a blueprint for survival when the unexpected is thrust into an ordinary life.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
ISBN: 9780822958338
Pub Date: 19 Oct 2003
Description:
Ostinato Vamps is Wanda Coleman's first book of poetry since the demise of her longtime publisher, Black Sparrow Press. It continues and enlarges the traits that have been her hallmark for more than three decades: a fierce adherence to the truth and a language so musical one can almost hear the blues line underneath her stanzas.Linguistically daring, lyrically breathtaking, stylistically bold, these poems both explore familiar territory and shatter stereotypes.
Life is difficult, often unfair, but it belongs to the living, as Coleman reminds us in no uncertain terms. Racing between an earthy eroticism and fatalistic despair, filled with humor and tragedy, these poems are alive. They breathe. They challenge us even as they reward us for seeking the truth.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9780822958277
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2003
Description:
Those concerned with investigating the political functions of the family far too often identify only one: the production of \u201cgood democratic citizens.\u201d As a result, public discussion of family law and policy has been confined to a narrow continuum that ignores the family's other, often subversive, political functions.In The Public Family David Herring's goal is to create a new rhetoric that moves beyond the stalemate that often results from the war between advocates of parental rights and those of children's rights.
This \u201crhetoric of associational respect\u201d allows him to constructively address the role of rights and the limits of individualism in political and legal theory. While acknowledging the family's importance in facilitating state functioning and power in a large, pluralistic democracy (the aforementioned production of good citizens), Herring fully explores the ways in which the family produces diversity and promotes tolerance. Unlike other works on the subject, which view the differences between individuals as constituting the central challenge for American society, Herring focuses on the importance of such differences. In doing so, he enriches and enlivens the often divisive public discussion of family law and policy.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9780822958222
Pub Date: 10 Sep 2003
Description:
Mariolina Salvatori presents an anthology of documents that examine the evolution of American education in the nineteenth century and meaning of the word pedagogy.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780822958239
Pub Date: 30 Jul 2003
Description:
In the course of the nineteenth century, Jamaica transformed itself from a pestilence-ridden \u201cwhite man\u2019s graveyard\u201d to a sun-drenched tourist paradise. Deftly combining economics with political and cultural history, Frank Fonda Taylor examines this puzzling about-face and explores the growth of the tourist industry into the 1990s. He argues that the transformations in image and reality were not accidental or due simply to nature\u2019s bounty.
They were the result of a conscious decision to develop this aspect of Jamaica\u2019s economy.Jamaican tourism emerged formally at an international exhibition held on the island in 1891. The international tourist industry, based on the need to take a break from stressful labor and recuperate in healthful and luxurious surroundings, was a newly awakened economic giant. A group of Jamaican entrepreneurs saw its potential and began to cultivate a tourism psychology which has led, more than one hundred years later, to an economy dependent upon the tourist industry.The steamships that carried North American tourists to Jamaican resorts also carried U.S. prejudices against people of color. \u201cTo Hell with Paradise\u201d illustrates the problems of founding a tourist industry for a European or U.S. clientele in a society where the mass of the population is poor, black, and with a historical experience of slavery and colonialism. By the 1990s, tourism had become the lifeblood of the Jamaican economy, but at an enormous cost: enclaves of privilege and ostentation that exclude the bulk of the local population, drug trafficking and prostitution, soaring prices, and environmental degradation. No wonder some Jamaicans regard tourism as a new kind of sugar.Taylor explores timely issues that have not been previously addressed. Along the way, he offers a series of valuable micro histories of the Jamaican planter class, the origins of agricultural dependency (on bananas), the growth of shipping and communications links, the process of race relations, and the linking of infrastructural development to tourism. The text is illustrated with period photographs of steamships and Jamaican tourist hotels.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 136
ISBN: 9780822958260
Pub Date: 20 Jul 2003
Description:
Suffused with pain and power, Minnie Bruce Pratt's poetry is as evocative of the swamps and streets of the southern United States as it is of the emotional lives of those too often forced into the margins of society. Vivid, lush, and intensely honest, these poems capture the rough edges of the world and force us to pay attention.
