Linguist Rishi Rajpopat solves an ancient puzzle, showing that Pa?ini’s Sanskrit grammar is self-sufficient. Centuries of commentators, having misunderstood it, created tools to overcome its supposed flaws, but to no avail. By reinterpreting some key Pa?inian rules, Rajpopat shows that the language machine is in fact entirely free of such glitches.

Vice President John Adams faces a turbulent world of rebellion in this volume of the Papers of John Adams, which chronicles the period from March 1791 to January 1797. From the French Revolution to the negotiation of the Jay Treaty, Adams was involved in key decisions that defined US foreign policy for decades to come.

The unity of the organism—an assembly of organs, tissues, cells, and genes working toward a common goal—has long been taken for granted. The essays in this collection pierce the organismal veil to consider how an organism persists, even as internal conflict, from cancer cells to selfish genes, threatens its integrity and survival.

This investigation not only revises what historians have long thought of the attitude of barristers toward the French Revolution, but also offers insights into the corporate character of Old Regime society and how the Revolution affected it.

Alexander Herzen’s Past and Thoughts was the most influential memoir in tsarist Russia. Passionate and insightful, Herzen watched both eagerly and warily as Europeans sought liberation via the modern nation-state. The first new English-language translation in a century, this annotated edition welcomes a new generation of readers.

Almost every town in France has a street named for Louis Pasteur-but did he alone stop people from spitting, persuade them to dig drains, influence them to get vaccinated? Latour makes the case that Pasteur's success depended upon a network of forces including the public hygiene movement, the medical profession, and colonial interests.

The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent. Along the way, he falls asleep, forgetting his identity. This edition includes the original Syriac text, a Greek translation, a Greek homily version, and English translation.

What happens when performance defies social and political boundaries? Performing Transgression offers a new cultural history of non-elite spectacle in Heian Japan (794–1185)—boisterous dengaku music and dance, daring sangaku acrobatics, and the infectious lyrics of imayo songs—that challenged and fascinated the aristocracy.

Peripheries: A Journal of Word, Image, and Sound is a literary and arts journal based at Harvard Divinity School. It includes poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, visual art that is, broadly understood, “peripheral” exploring the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, forms, and genres.