UChicagoReads: Spring 2024 new releases from The University of Chicago Press

UChicagoReads features books written by UChicago staff, faculty, students, and alumni or those written about University topics. Do you know of a book we should feature? Do you have a book of your own? Email us at uchicagointranet@uchicago.edu.

Originally founded in 1890 as one of the three main divisions of the University of Chicago, The University of Chicago Press publishes books and journals with a mission “to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard and to publish serious works that foster public understanding, provide an authoritative foundation for informed dialogue, and enrich the diversity of cultural life.” Twice a year, The Press releases seasonal catalogs announcing new titles.

In this edition of UChicagoReads, we’re featuring three titles by UChicago faculty that appear in the Spring 2024 catalog. For more new releases from The Press, you can peruse the complete Spring 2024 catalog at your leisure.

John Donne’s Physics

Timothy M. Harrison and Elizabeth D. Harvey
© 2024 | 256 pages

Synopsis

In 1624, poet and preacher John Donne published Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, a book that recorded his near-death experience during a deadly epidemic in London. Four hundred years later, in the aftermath of our own pandemic, Harvey and Harrison show how Devotions crystalizes the power, beauty, and enduring strangeness of Donne’s thinking. Arguing that Donne saw human life in light of emergent ideas in the study of nature (physics) and the study of the body (physick), John Donne’s Physics reveals Devotions as a culminating achievement, a radically new literary form that uses poetic techniques to depict Donne’s encounter with death in a world transformed by new discoveries and knowledge systems.

About the author

Timothy M. Harrison is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Nietzsche’s Legacy: “Ecce Homo” and “The Antichrist,” Two Books on Nature and Politics

Heinrich Meier
© 2024 | 288 pages

Synopsis

Nietzsche’s Legacy takes on the most challenging and misunderstood works in Nietzsche’s oeuvre to illuminate his view of what a philosopher is and what constitutes a philosophic life. Interpreting Ecce Homo and The Antichrist as twin books meant to replace the abandoned Will to Power project, Heinrich Meier recovers them from the stigma of Nietzsche’s late mental collapse, showing that these works are, above all, a lucid self-assessment. The carefully written pair contains both the highest affirmation—the Yes of the “revaluation of all values”—and the most resolute negation—the No to Christianity. How the Yes and the No go together, how the relation between nature and politics is to be determined, how Nietzsche’s intention is governing the political-philosophical double-face: this is the subject of Nietzsche’s Legacy, which opens up a new understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole.

About the author

Heinrich Meier is director emeritus of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich, professor of philosophy at the University of Munich, and permanent visiting professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of nine books, including On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life and Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion.

The Craft of Research: Fifth Edition

Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams
© 2024 | 368 pages

Synopsis

With more than a million copies sold since its first publication, The Craft of Research has helped generations of researchers at every level—from high school students and first-year undergraduates to advanced graduate students to researchers in business and government. Conceived by seasoned researchers and educators Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, this fundamental work explains how to choose significant topics, pose genuine and productive questions, find and evaluate sources, build sound and compelling arguments, and convey those arguments effectively to others.

While preserving the book’s proven approach to the research process, as well as its general structure and accessible voice, this new edition acknowledges the many ways research is conducted and communicated today. Thoroughly revised by Joseph Bizup and William T. FitzGerald, it recognizes that research may lead to a product other than a paper—or no product at all—and includes a new chapter about effective presentations. It features fresh examples from a variety of fields that will appeal to today’s students and other readers. It also accounts for new technologies used in research and offers basic guidelines for the appropriate use of generative AI. And it ends with an expanded chapter on ethics that addresses researchers’ broader obligations to their research communities and audiences as well as systemic questions about ethical research practices.

About the authors

Wayne C. Booth (1921–2005) was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals.

Gregory G. Colomb (1951–2011) was a professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he helped develop the Little Red Schoolhouse curriculum on writing. 

Joseph M. Williams (1933-2008) served as a professor and linguist in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago for nearly three decades. Williams wrote or edited more than 10 books, best known for his 1981 book, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.