Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
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This catalogue focuses on works on paper by contemporary artist Jane Hammond, who garnered a reputation in the art world as a painter in New York in the 1990s. Through the interplay of text and recycled images, Hammond has produced a series of fresh, compelling, and provocative pieces. Most recently, Hammond has launched an exploratory journey ......
This collection considers one of the most important figures of the modern canon of political philosophy, John Locke. A physician by training and profession, Locke not only wrote one of the most important and well-known treatises of the modern canon, but also made important contributions in the areas of seventeenth-century law and public policy, ......
In recent decades, scholars have shown an increasing interest in gossip’s social, psychological, and literary functions. The first book-length study of medieval gossip, Transforming Talk shifts the current debate and argues that gossip functions primarily as a transformative discourse, influencing not only social interactions but ......
Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation
From Pablo to Osama is a comparative study of Colombian drug-smuggling enterprises, terrorist networks (including al Qaeda), and the law enforcement agencies that seek to dismantle them. Drawing on a wealth of research materials, including interviews with former drug traffickers and other hard-to-reach informants, Michael Kenney ......
Spanish Accounts of the Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada Expedition of Conquest
In early April 1536, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led a military expedition from the coastal city of Santa Marta deep into the interior of what is today modern Colombia. With roughly eight hundred Spaniards and numerous native carriers and black slaves, the Jiménez expedition was larger than the combined forces under Hernando ......
Pennsylvania Deer and Their Horns, published in 1915, stands alongside a number of Shoemaker’s volumes, such as Wolf Days in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Lion or Panther, dedicated to telling the tales of vanishing or extinct Pennsylvania wildlife. Pennsylvania Deer and Their Horns places these tales ......
The History, Legends and Description of Penn's Cave in Centre County
Published in 1916, this illustrated edition of Penn’s Grandest Cavern begins with several legends of Penn’s Cave and the surrounding area, followed by a description and history, all compiled and written by Henry W. Shoemaker. His description of the caverns reads like a travel guide, with information about not only the cave ......
Legends and Traditions, Old and New, Gathered Among the Pennsylvania Mountains
Published in 1924, More Allegheny Episodes is the last of twelve volumes in Henry Shoemaker’s Pennsylvania Folklore Series, published during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This volume is a companion and sequel to the author’s 1922 Allegheny Episodes, containing more stories compiled from across ......
Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania
Allegheny Episodes is the eleventh of twelve volumes in Henry Shoemaker’s Pennsylvania Folklore Series. Published in 1922—years before Shoemaker’s time as Pennsylvania’s first state folklorist—Allegheny Episodes includes twenty-five stories written in his typical literary style. Some tales recall ......