Perhaps more than any other cause, the passage of texts from scroll to codex in late antiquity converted the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity and enabled the worldwide spread of Christian faith. Guy Stroumsa describes how canonical scripture was established and how its interpretation replaced blood sacrifice in religious ritual.

The Sea of Separation, a new free verse translation of Tulsidas’s beloved Ramcaritmanas, presents renowned episodes from the Ramayana epic, including Ram’s battles with demons, the kidnapping of his wife Sita, and the god Hanuman’s heroic journey to Lanka to find her.

Americans widely believe that the U.S. Constitution was almost wholly created when it was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. Jonathan Gienapp recovers the unknown story of the Constitution’s second creation in the decade after its adoption—a story with explosive implications for current debates over constitutional originalism and interpretation.

The letters of Jerome (ca. AD 345–420) are an essential source for our knowledge of Christian life in the fourth and fifth centuries AD; they also provide insight into one of the most striking and complex personalities of the time.

Libanius (314-393 CE), who was one of the last great publicists and teachers of Greek paganism, has much to tell us about the tumultuous world of the fourth century CE. His works include Orations, the first of which is an autobiography, and Letters.

Rising prosperity was supposed to bring democracy to China, yet the Communist Party’s political monopoly endures. How? Minxin Pei looks to the surveillance state. Though renowned for high-tech repression, China’s surveillance system is above all a labor-intensive project. Pei delves into the human sources of coercion at the foundation of CCP power.

The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts contain early versions of six episodes later included in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Discovered in 2018 and presented here for the first time in English, the folios reveal the autobiographical extent of Proust’s work and the “sacred moment” when his genius blossomed.

The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts contain early versions of six episodes later included in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Discovered in 2018 and presented here for the first time in English, the folios reveal the autobiographical extent of Proust's work and the "sacred moment" when his genius blossomed.

Kennedy argues that American radicalism is possible and desirable. One base for radical politics is the institutional workplace; another is popular culture (hence, sexy dressing). Kennedy’s aim is to wed the rebelliousness, irony, and irrationalism of cultural modernism and postmodernism to the earnestness of political correctness.

In six wide-ranging lectures on art history, the problems of form, and his own career, celebrated twentieth-century activist-painter Ben Shahn explores the labor of artistic creation, the confines of formal instruction, and the realization of a genuine artistic voice.