The Archaeology of Global Change
The Impact of Humans on Their Environment
Edited by Charles L. Redman, Steven R. James, Paul Fish and J. Daniel Rogers

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: May 17, 2004
Price: $49.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-172-3 (1-58834-172-0)

Is humankind on a fast track to self-destruction? Can society develop ways to live in concert with the environment? Are our environmental problems as grave as they seem? The included essays address these issues and much more.

International scientists offer empirical case studies of prehistoric human-ecosystem relationships–some of short-term exploitation, others of... Read more >

Confucius Lives Next Door
What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West
Written by T.R. Reid

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 28, 2000
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77760-1 (0-679-77760-1)

Those who've heard T. R. Reid's weekly commentary on National Public Radio or read his far-flung reporting in National Geographic or  The Washington Post know him to be trenchant, funny, and cutting-edge, but also erudite and deeply grounded in whatever subject he's discussing. In Confucius Lives Next Door he brings... Read more >

Forty Million Dollar Slaves
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
Written by William C. Rhoden

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: July 24, 2007
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 978-0-307-35314-6 (0-307-35314-1)

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the... Read more >

Distant Neighbors
A Portrait of the Mexicans
Written by Alan Riding

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 23, 1989
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-72441-4 (0-679-72441-9)

"This book at long last provides general reader and policymaker alike with the necessary background for understanding Mexico and its present predicament."--Robert S. Leiken, front page, The Washington Post Book World


"A book that has been long in coming.  There is nothing quite like it.  It should teach North Americans much about the complexity... Read more >

Black on White
Black Writers on What It Means to Be White
Written by David R. Roediger

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Schocken
On Sale: January 9, 1999
Price: $11.96
ISBN: 978-0-8052-1114-6 (0-8052-1114-4)

In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America?

From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest... Read more >

Culture & Truth
The Remaking of Social Analysis
Written by Renato Rosaldo

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: August 1, 1993
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4623-4 (0-8070-4623-X)

Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity. Read more >

Living Shrines of Uyghur China
Photographs by Lisa Ross
Written by Lisa Ross

Format: Hardcover, 128 pages
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
On Sale: February 12, 2013
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-58093-350-6 (1-58093-350-5)

Lisa Ross’s ethereal photographs of Islamic holy sites were created over the course of a decade on journeys to China’s Xinjiang region in Central Asia, historically a cultural crossroads but an area to which artists and researchers have generally been denied access since its annexation in 1949. These monumental images show... Read more >

Death, Trust and Society
Mapping Religion and Culture
Written by Lionel Rothkrug

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: March 1, 2006
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-1-55643-551-5 (1-55643-551-7)

Lionel Rothkrug made his name 25 years ago by theorizing that just as a human personality is defined by how an individual organizes his or her powers to behave, so a society acquires personality in the exercise of its organizational powers. Death, Trust and Society revisits and expands on this concept... Read more >

The Pursuit of Perfection
The Promise and Perils of Medical Enchancement
Written by Sheila Rothman and David Rothman

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 9, 2004
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75835-8 (0-679-75835-6)

What does it mean to live in a time when medical science can not only cure the human body but also reshape it? How should we as individuals and as a society respond to new drugs and genetic technologies? Sheila and David Rothman address these troubling questions with a singular blend... Read more >

Colonial Encounters in a Native American Landscape
The Spanish and Dutch in North America
Written by Nan A. Rothschild

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: October 17, 2003
Price: $39.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-138-9 (1-58834-138-0)

A unique comparative study of colonial encounters between the Spanish in New Mexico and the Dutch in New York.

Nan A. Rothschild examines the process of colonialism in two separate areas of 17th-century North America seeking to answer several key questions: Where did each group live vis-à-vis the other? How entangled were... Read more >

Sexism and God Talk
Toward a Feminist Theology
Written by Rosemary R. Ruether

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: April 1, 1993
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1205-5 (0-8070-1205-X)

“By the time Ruether finishes, systematic theology has undergone a radical critique from which it emerges transformed rather than simply modified or totally rejected. She has constructed a full-fledged feminist theology-the first within a Christian context.” -The New York Times Book Review
Read more >

Juan Rulfo's Mexico

Photographed by Juan Rulfo
Translated by Carlos Fuentes and Margot Glantz

Format: Hardcover, 223 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: August 17, 2002
Price: $60.00
ISBN: 978-1-58834-097-9 (1-58834-097-X)

Juan Rulfo was one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth century. His 1955 novel Pedro Páramo is considered one of the foundational classics of magic realism, predating One Hundred Years of Solitude by more than a decade. Lesser known are his haunting photographs of Mexico, which exhibit remarkable parallels... Read more >

Letter Perfect
The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z
Written by David Sacks

Format: Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: August 3, 2004
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1173-3 (0-7679-1173-3)

“[A] gem of popular linguistic history.”
—Publishers Weekly

David Sacks has written a lively and learned account of the alphabet–and cultural history–in Letter Perfect.

Clearly explaining the letters as symbols of precise sounds of speech, the book begins with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 b.c.), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt... Read more >

The Island of the Colorblind

Written by Oliver Sacks

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 12, 1998
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-70073-6 (0-375-70073-0)

Oliver Sacks has always been fascinated by islands--their remoteness, their mystery, above all the unique forms of life they harbor. For him, islands conjure up equally the romance of Melville and Stevenson, the adventure of Magellan and Cook, and the scientific wonder of Darwin and Wallace.

Drawn to the tiny Pacific atoll... Read more >

Orientalism

Written by Edward W. Said

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 12, 1979
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-74067-6 (0-394-74067-X)

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Updated with a new Afterword in 1994.  In this acclaimed and now-classic work, Said examines the way in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East.  Orientalism is a subtle and far-reaching critique of the attitudes that the West has traditionally assumed... Read more >

A Woman Scorned

Written by Peggy Sanday

Format: eBook, 338 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: December 14, 2011
Price: $11.99
ISBN: 978-0-307-80209-5 (0-307-80209-4)

2011 Edition with a New Afterword by the author

The venerable and often misquoted phrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" continues to haunt American women who accuse men of sexual harassment and rape. In this bracing study of American sexual culture and the politics of acquaintance rape, anthropologist Peggy... Read more >

Taking Charge
The Electric Automobile in America
Written by Michael Schiffer

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: June 22, 2010
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-076-4 (1-58834-076-7)

The tumultuous history of inventors and corporations who have tried to bring the electric car to the market.

Amazingly, in 1900 28 percent of all cars were electric. By 1920 the electric car had all but vanished and gas-powered cars dominated the market. In Taking Charge, Schiffer deftly explores how cultural factors... Read more >

Tastes of Paradise
A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants
Written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 29, 1993
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-74438-2 (0-679-74438-X)

Schivelbusch chronicles how humanity transformed its history in the course of finding the rare condiments, stimulants, intoxicants, and narcotics—from coffee, tea, and chocolate to nutmeg, alcohol, and opium—that helped to make life more tolerable, and how the drive for these pleasure substances fueled the energies of the Old World with a... Read more >

The Balfour Declaration
The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Written by Jonathan Schneer

Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: January 3, 2012
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7603-8 (0-8129-7603-7)

Winner, 2010 National Jewish Book Award (Writing Based on Archival Material)

Issued in London in 1917, the Balfour Declaration was one of the key documents of the twentieth century. It committed Britain to supporting the establishment in Palestine of “a National Home for the Jewish people,” and its reverberations continue to be... Read more >

The Stammering Century

Written by Gilbert Seldes
Introduction by Greil Marcus

Format: Trade Paperback, 452 pages
Publisher: NYRB Classics
On Sale: November 6, 2012
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-59017-580-4 (1-59017-580-8)

Gilbert Seldes, the author of The Stammering Century, writes:

This book is not a record of the major events in Ameri­can history during
the nineteenth century. It is concerned with minor movements, with the
cults and manias of that period. Its personages are fanatics, and radicals,
and mountebanks... Read more >

Anthropology Explored, Second Edition
The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes
Edited by Ruth Selig, Marilyn R. London and P. Ann Kaupp

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: April 17, 2004
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-093-1 (1-58834-093-7)

This new edition offers a variety of clearly written and readily accessible articles from the Smithsonian’s highly acclaimed, award-winning publication AnthroNotes. Some of the world’s leading anthropologists explore fundamental questions humans ask about themselves as individuals, as societies, and as a species. The articles reveal the richness and breadth of anthropology... Read more >

The Storyteller's Daughter
One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland
Written by Saira Shah

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 12, 2004
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3147-4 (1-4000-3147-8)

The vivid, often startling memoir of a young woman shaped by two dramatically disparate worlds. Saira Shah is the English-born daughter of an Afghan aristocrat, inspired by his dazzling stories to rediscover the now lost life their forebears presided over for nine hundred years within sight of the minarets and lush... Read more >

Under the Influence
The Literature of Addiction
Written by Rebecca Shannonhouse
Foreword by Pete Hamill

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: February 4, 2003
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-75716-7 (0-375-75716-3)

Drawing on two centuries of important literary and historical writings, Rebecca Shannonhouse has shaped a remarkable collection of works that are, in turn, tragic, compelling, hilarious, and enlightening. Together, these selections comprise a profound and truthful portrait of the life experience known as addiction.

Under the Influence offers classic selections from fiction... Read more >

Back to Our Future
How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything
Written by David Sirota

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: March 15, 2011
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-51878-1 (0-345-51878-0)

Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past.

In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes... Read more >

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Written by Rebecca Skloot

Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: February 2, 2010
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2 (1-4000-5217-3)

Winner of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine’s 2011 Communication Award for Best Book
Winner of the 2010 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction
Winner of the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize
Named by more than 60 critics as one of the best books of 2010,... Read more >