This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Finalist for the 2022 Cheiron Book Prize​ An Organ of Murder explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing in particular on the influence of phrenology. In the United States, phrenology shaped the production of medico-legal knowledge around crime, the treatment of the criminal within prisons and in public discourse, and sociocultural expectations about the causes of crime. The criminal was phrenology’s ideal research and demonstration subject, and the courtroom and the prison were essential spaces for the staging of scientific expertise. In particular, phrenology constructed ways of looking as well as a language for identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in American culture, law, and medicine, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life.

Describing Italy as "the only region of the earth that I truly love," James Fenimore Cooper used the style of picturesque impressionism to convey his vision of Italy as the microcosm of an ordered and a beautiful world. In theory, the picturesque style of writing could produce verbal sketches that embodied a visual complexity similar to that of the great Baroque and Romantic landscape paintings. In practice, the hundreds of travel books written in the picturesque style in the early 1900s communicated rapturous enthusiasm with blurred or even false reports of actual scenes. Cooper, with his scrupulous fidelity to the seen world, intended to alter this practice decisively. The response of his imagination to the light, color, forms, artifacts and figures of the Italian landscape and to the manifold significances they embody follows in joyful appreciation of the land, culture and people of a country that induced in him the desire "to enjoy the passing moment." In Italy, Cooper refrained from commenting on politics, though he was an incorrigibly political man who responded to an insistent need to define the New World in defining the Old. The independence of his observations drew censure from American reviewers of the 1830s, who could not comprehend that his preference for the Bay for Naples over New York Harbor reflected his intellectual passion to rise above nationalistic feelings in matters of taste, morality and justice.

A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early nineteenth century master of American popular fiction American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War romance. America’s first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be intimately engaged with the world. In this second volume of his definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter half of Cooper’s life, detailing a period of personal and political controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific literary creation. We hear of Cooper’s progressive views on race and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way for later novelists to make a living through their writing. Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of this underappreciated American literary icon.

Epic story an aircraft carrier under attack in the Pacific Ocean--the attackers leave none alive. Except one. Tony Chappel manages to survive the horrific event and becomes stranded on a deserted island alone, without any hope of rescue. He fights for survival and has to live with what he fears most. Not only does Tony struggle with the death of his friends but also the struggle within himself to live for a greater purpose.

"Through richly detailed accounts of individual entrepreneurs, including the prominent printer-publisher Mathew Carey, Remer reveals the economic logic behind this distinctive book trade."—The Book

Turning to his own extensive maritime experience, Cooper’s novel, written in Paris in 1827, reflects his immersion in the romantic movement that was sweeping the Continent. European readers enjoyed his poetic and imaginative portrayal of the sea, while American readers were interested in how he depicted the early stirrings of nationalism in the New World decades prior to the Revolution. Cooper’s striking association of the sublime power of nature with the rebellious spirit of his pirate-hero established and defined the sea novel as a literary genre. By far the most influential of his maritime tales, The Red Rover was read and admired by Goethe and Berlioz, Melville and Conrad. This edition, the first to be based on Cooper’s original manuscript, offers the modern reader a major document of romanticism and a compelling narrative of adventure at sea.