How to use this Page

Yale University Press is proud to announce that three of our books have been chosen by the New York Times for their list of 100 Notable Books of 2007. Those books are Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, and Tim Jeal's Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer.

For their annual Holiday Books edition, the New York Times Sunday Book Review selects 100 "outstanding works from the last year." These three YUP books were selected from all of the books reviewed by the NYT since last year's list was printed on December 3, 2006. A print version of the list will run in the December 2, 2007 edition of the Book Review.

Read the NYT reviews for Alexis de Tocqueville, Two Lives, and Stanley. See the entire list here. Hear the Yale Press Podcast of Hugh Brogan discussing his book here.

In last year's 100 Notable Books of 2006, NYT chose Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. You can read their review for that book here.

On Monday, November 26 at 7 pm, Book Culture bookstore in New York City will host a reading with Yale University Press author Janet Malcolm. Malcolm will start off the evening with passages from her new book and close the evening with a book signing. Book Culture is located at 536 W. 112th St., New York, NY.

Malcolm's new book, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, has received major attention in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. Two Lives was recently chosen as an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review: "Sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography in this study of Stein and Toklas."�Editors' Choice, New York Times Book Review

Janet Malcolm is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and Reading Chekhov, among other books. She writes for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.

Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, wrote an article for the November 19 issue of The Nation. Parsi's article, "The Iranian Challenge," reassesses American assumptions about Iran, and it has caught the attention of bloggers all across the web, including AlterNet, Iran Coverage, Mahler's Prodigal Son, Dictynna's Net, and Still Hangin' on a Cross & Snarking from Golgotha.

Trita Parsi (Yale Press Podcast) is president, National Iranian American Council, and adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS.

Here's Parsi's article, "The Iranian Challenge," that everyone's reading and sharing:

Iran will be the top foreign policy challenge for the United States in the coming years. The Bush Administration's policy (insistence on zero enrichment of uranium, regime change and isolation of Iran) and the policy of the radicals around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (unlimited civilian nuclear capability, selective inspections and replacing the United States as the region's dominant power) have set the two countries on a collision course. Yet the mere retirement of George W. Bush's neocons or Ahmadinejad's radicals may not be sufficient to avoid the disaster of war.

The ill-informed foreign policy debate on Iran contributes to a paradigm of enmity between the United States and Iran, which limits the foreign policy options of future US administrations to various forms of confrontation while excluding more constructive approaches. These policies of collision are in no small part born of the erroneous assumptions we adopted about Iran back in the days when we could afford to ignore that country. But as America sinks deeper into the Iraqi quicksand, remaining in the dark about the realities of Iran and the actual policies of its decision-makers is no longer an option.

A successful policy on Iran must begin by reassessing some basic assumptions:

1. Iran is ripe for regime change.

Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they are not going anywhere anytime soon. (A distinction obviously needs to be made here between the electoral survival of the Ahmadinejad government and the survival of the system as a whole.) The Iranian people certainly deserve a better government--one that provides Iran's youthful population with a better economic future and respects human rights--but the current choice Iranians face is not between Islamic tyranny and democratic freedom. It is between chaos and stability. The increased tensions with the United States over the past year have only strengthened the government's hold on power by limiting the space for prodemocracy activists (much as the 9/11 attacks paved the way for the passing of the Patriot Act and the weakening of Americans' civil rights). Whatever we think of the clergy in Tehran, we cannot afford wishful thinking about their imminent departure.

2. Iran is irrational and cannot be deterred.

Not true. Iran's foreign policy behavior is highly problematic for the United States, but a careful study of Iran's actions--not just its rhetoric--reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power in the Middle East. Iran often conceals its real objectives behind layers of ideological rhetoric, with the aim of confusing potential enemies and making its policies more attractive to the Muslim nations it seeks to lead. At times it even simulates irrationality as an instrument of deterrence, the calculation being that enemies will be more reluctant to attack Iran if Tehran's response can't be predicted and won't follow a straight cost-benefit analysis. (Richard Nixon used the same strategy during the cold war, in what he called the "madman theory"; he sought to deter the Soviets by making them think he was slightly mad and unpredictable.) In reality, the United States--and Israel--have a long history of deterring Iran. During the Lebanon war of 2006, Israel signaled Tehran's leaders that it would retaliate against Iran if Hezbollah struck Tel Aviv with long-distance missiles. Tehran got the message. Despite many promises by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to hit Israel if the Jewish state continued the bombardment of Lebanon, Iran prevented Hezbollah from using its long-range missiles. Deterrence worked, and an uncontrollable escalation of the war was avoided.

3. Iran is inherently anti-American.

Not quite. To Iran anti-Americanism is a means, not an end. Iran believes that its size and power position it to play a major role in regional affairs. This aspiration, however, clashes with America's aim of isolating and containing Iran. As long as public opinion in the Middle East remains largely critical of the United States, and as long as Washington continues to seek a regional order based on excluding Iran, Iran will likely play on anti-Americanism to make Washington's policy of exclusion as costly as possible and to rally existing anti-American sentiment around Iranian objectives. But if the strategic environment in the region changes--with a different relationship between Tehran and Washington as a result--the utility of anti-Americanism will fade away.

4. Enrichment equals a nuclear bomb.

Not necessarily. The current nuclear impasse is partly rooted in the questionable assumption that zero enrichment is the only route to avoid an Iranian bomb. While the optimal situation is one in which Iran does not enrich, this goal is no longer possible. But that does not mean that a small-scale Iranian enrichment program is tantamount to a nuclear bomb. According to nuclear experts like Bruno Pellaud, former deputy director general and head of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Department of Safeguards, intrusive inspections is the best tool to ensure that Iran doesn't divert its civilian program into a military one. Yet these inspections can only take place as part of a package deal with Iran that includes some level of enrichment. This makes reassessment of the zero-enrichment objective all the more important.

5. Iran seeks Israel's destruction.

False. As I explain in my book Treacherous Alliance, the Iranian clergy have strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, but ideology is not the primary driving force of Iranian foreign policy. The major shifts in Israeli-Iranian relations, from pragmatic entente in the 1960s and '70s to strategic rivalry in the 1990s, have occurred because of changing strategic--not ideological--realities. Whenever Iran's ideological and strategic imperatives have clashed--as was the case in the 1980s, when the common threat from the Soviet Union and Iraq prompted Iran and Israel to pursue clandestine cooperation--realpolitik has prevailed. Today, Iran's ideological and strategic imperatives largely coincide. Israel is seen as a strategic and an ideological threat, and as a result Tehran has actively confronted Israel. But Iran does not seek Israel's destruction, nor does its attitude toward Israel lack pragmatism. In 2002 Iran signaled that it was prepared to adopt a "Malaysian profile" on Israel in return for an end to Israeli and American efforts to isolate Tehran. Iran would, much like Malaysia, be an Islamic state that would not recognize Israel and would occasionally criticize it but would not directly confront the Jewish state. Iran and Israel would simply recognize each other's spheres of influence and stay out of each other's hair. The message was communicated to Israel through various channels, including a presentation by a senior Iranian military figure at a conference in Europe attended by several Israelis. Ze'ev Schiff, the late military affairs editor of Ha'aretz, told me that the consistency of Tehran's message "made it more clear that this was a policy" and not just empty talk. Though Iran has a new and more radical president today, it is still ruled by the same Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the concept of a "Malaysian profile" still enjoys support in the Iranian National Security Council--President Ahmadinejad's venomous rhetoric notwithstanding.

6. The pressure on Iran is working.

Questionable. Pressure alone will not resolve the Iranian crisis. Iran has been under comprehensive US sanctions since 1995. These sanctions have undoubtedly been effective in hurting the Iranian economy and have made Tehran's pursuit of its foreign policy more costly. But they have not forced Iran to abandon its policies. In fact, after twelve years of sanctions Iran is more powerful and more defiant than ever. Ratcheting up sanctions will be nothing more than a higher dose of a policy already proven to be unsuccessful. The combination of ineffective sanctions and unrealistic demands will get the United States nowhere.

7. Stability in the Middle East can be achieved only through Iran's isolation. Quite the contrary. History teaches us that an Iran that isn't part of the region's security architecture will be more destabilizing than an Iran that has been incorporated into the region's political order. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, instead of pursuing an inclusive security architecture for the Persian Gulf, Washington opted to sign bilateral defense pacts with the Arab Gulf states while pursuing a new order in the region based on Iran's prolonged isolation. The policy was called "dual containment," the idea being that the United States would advance the Middle East peace process by containing both Iran and Iraq. What Washington failed to recognize was that the policy of exclusion provided Iran with incentives to undermine US efforts. And the weakest link in the American strategy was the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Without successful peacemaking between the Israelis and Palestinians, America's new regional order could not be achieved and Iran would evade prolonged isolation, Tehran calculated. Though Iran wasn't solely responsible for the collapse of the peace process, it did contribute to undermining it by supporting rejectionist Palestinian organizations at a time when the United States was at the height of its power and when Tehran was in a very weak position. Today the tables have turned. Iran is rising and the United States is mired in Iraq. Instead of repeating a policy that failed under the best circumstances, we must recognize that Iran's propensity to act as the spoiler will decline when it is included, not when it's excluded.

Iran poses a complicated challenge to America, but not an irresolvable one. Despite the tremendous distrust between the two countries, history shows that negotiations can work. In 2001 Tehran and Washington worked closely together to defeat the Taliban and install a new government in Afghanistan. Without Iranian help, the new Constitution of Afghanistan would not have been achieved, according to US diplomats involved in the effort.

Similar cooperation, but on a lower scale, took place before the invasion of Iraq. In 2003 Iran sent the United States a comprehensive negotiations package, only to be snubbed by the Bush Administration. Clearly, success in negotiations can never be guaranteed. But neither can failure. We will never know whether we can succeed in negotiating with Iran until we try. And so far, beyond isolated instances, the Administration has not given broad negotiations a fair chance, nor has the United States pursued a policy of inclusion and regional integration. (A policy of sanctions and confrontation, on the other hand, is a proven failure.)

While hawks are presenting a wide array of arguments as to why we shouldn't talk to Iran--including the notion that, given the quagmire in Iraq, the hand of the United States is now much weaker than it was several years ago, as well as the idea that Washington doesn't have anything to offer--only Washington can offer Tehran what it really seeks: decontainment and reintegration in the Middle East. Iran wants a seat at the table and a say as a legitimate player in all regional decision-making. Iran can make it costly for the United States not to recognize it as a regional power, but it cannot gain its seat at the table without American agreement. This is an extremely valuable carrot Washington can offer Tehran in return for momentous changes in Iranian behavior. In fact, unbeknownst to decision-makers in Washington, America holds an ace up its sleeve. But this ace can be used only in the context of real negotiations.

These negotiations cannot be limited to Iraq or to the nuclear issue alone. The problems between the United States and Iran go well beyond these two issues. There is an underlying geopolitical imbalance that must be addressed. The previous order in the region has crumbled as a result of America's defeat of the Taliban and its subsequent failure to establish a coherent order in Iraq. Even if the nuclear issue and the Iraq calamity were to be resolved, the context that has given meaning to these problems to begin with--the collapse of the previous order and the absence of an all-inclusive security arrangement--will remain unresolved. Any agreement with Iran that does not address this fundamental issue is doomed to be short-lived.

Creating a new regional order, in which the carrot of Iranian inclusion is used to secure radically different behavior from Tehran, is neither a concession to Iran nor a capitulation of American (or Israeli) interests. Rather, it is a recognition that stability in the region cannot be achieved and sustained through the current strategy of pursuing an order based on the exclusion of one of the region's most powerful nations. To change Iran's behavior, we must change our own.

Read an excerpt from Parsi's Treacherous Alliance, or view the table of contents.

Aviation History Month! Check out some of the Yale University Press books that just fly off the shelves.

A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908-1918, by Robert Wohl

This elegantly written, copiously illustrated book presents the first cultural history of the pioneering phase of aviation. Robert Wohl's fascinating story describes Wilbur Wright and other colorful early aeronauts, aces such as Baron von Richthofen, and the enthusiastic responses to the implications of aviation by such writers and artists as H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Kazimir Malevich, Robert Delaunay, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and Emile Driant.

The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920-1950, by Robert Wohl

This extraordinary account of the development of aviation takes us from Charles Lindbergh’s dramatic New York-Paris flight to the horrifying bombing campaigns of World War II. Robert Wohl recaptures in words and illustrations an era when a wide-ranging cast of characters—among them millionaire Howard Hughes, Italian dictator Mussolini, and architect Le Corbusier—fell under aviation’s spell.

The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons, by Alvin Kernan

What really happened at the Battle of Midway, one of the greatest naval victories of the Second World War? This wrenching book, told by a survivor of the battle, provides the first accurate account and explanation of the devastating losses to America’s torpedo squadrons: only 7 of 51 planes returned, only 29 of 127 crewmen survived, and not a single torpedo hit its target.

Read an excerpt or view the table of contents.

From San Francisco to Washington D.C., Yale University Press authors are speaking across the country.

According to the Washington Post Literary Calendar, Daniel J. Solove will appear tonight at 6:30 P.M. at the Borders Books in downtown Washington D.C. He's going to discuss and sign copies of his new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. For more information, call 202-466-4999, or click here.

Daniel J. Solove is associate professor, George Washington University Law School, and an internationally known expert in privacy law. He is frequently interviewed and featured in media broadcasts and articles, and he is the author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. He lives in Washington, D.C., and blogs at the popular law blog http://www.concurringopinions.com.

Also in Washington D.C., Politics and Prose will host Janet Malcolm, author of Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice tomorrow at 7 P.M. For more information on this free event, click here.

Janet Malcolm is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and Reading Chekhov, among other books. She writes for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, will be speaking to the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Tomorrow at 6 P.M., he will discuss the relations between Israel, Iran, and the United States. Registering online in advance is recommended to assure seating. For more information, or to register online, click here.

Later this week, Parsi will be the keynote speaker at the annual dinner for the North Suburban Peace Initiative in Evanston, IL. The dinner will be on Saturday, November 10th, from 6 to 9 P.M. Reservations can be made today online. For more information, click here.

Trita Parsi is president, National Iranian American Council, and adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He writes frequently about the Middle East and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS News Hour, CNN, and other news programs. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Ben Kiernan was interviewed by Lewis Lapham, former Harper's editor and now editor of Lapham's Quarterly. They discussed Kiernan's recently released Blood and Soil on Lapham's radio program "The World in Time," which aired this past Sunday, October 28. The interview is posted on Lewis Lapham's website at Lapham Quarterly, or can be heard here.

Ben Kiernan will also appear on Book TV later in November. If you missed Kiernan's recent discussion about his book at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or if you just want to hear him speak again, tune in on on Sunday, November 25, at 7:00 AM. For more information, click here.

Daniel Solove will be on KERA Dallas Public Radio's excellent hour-long program Think on November 5 at 1pm local time. Solove is the author of The Future of Reputation.This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet?

Bernd Brunner will be appearing on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show on December 3. Brunner's Bears: A Brief History was released by Yale University Press earlier this month. Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance, was also guest on The Diane Rehm Show earlier this month to talk about his new book.

Brunner's engaging book examines the shared history of people and bears. Hopscotching through history, literature, and science, Bernd Brunner presents a delightfully illustrated compendium of information about different cultures’ attitudes toward bears, the central place of bears in our myths and dreams, how our images of bears do and do not mesh with reality, and more.

Shakespeare's inner thought process will be the subject of a panel discussion held at Yale tomorrow, October 30. "Shakespeare the Thinker" will be at 4:30 p.m., in the Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall, 1080 Chapel Street. The panel is free and open to the public.

Among the notable panelists are literary critic Harold Bloom and Connecticut Poet Laureate John Hollander. The event is hosted by Yale University Press, the Yale Center for British Art and the Whitney Humanities Center.

According to the Yale University Office of Public Affairs, the event was organized in honor of the late A. D. Nuttall and the recent publication of his book, Shakespeare the Thinker.

A. D. Nuttall’s study of Shakespeare’s intellectual preoccupations is a literary tour de force and comes to crown the distinguished career of a Shakespeare scholar. Certain questions engross Shakespeare from his early plays to the late romances: the nature of motive, cause, personal identity and relation, the proper status of imagination, ethics and subjectivity, language and its capacity to occlude and to communicate. Yet Shakespeare’s thought, Nuttall demonstrates, is anything but static. The plays keep returning to, modifying, and complicating his creative preoccupations. Nuttall allows us to hear and appreciate the emergent cathedral choir of play speaking to play. By the later stages of Nuttall’s book this choir is nearly overwhelming in its power and dimensions. The author does not limit discussion to moments of crucial intellection but gives himself ample space in which to get at the distinctive essence of each work.

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

For more information about the panel discussion, click here or contact Manana Sikic at 203 432-0673.

Janet Malcolm's recently published Two Lives has attracted a deluge of major media attention, including a nod from the New York Times Sunday Book Review. The Editor's Choice list praises Two Lives as "sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography." To see this week's complete list, click here.

The Wall Street Journal's John Gross also raves about Two Lives, calling it "shrewd, humane and beautifully written." He goes on to say that Malcolm's book is "woven together with a more general consideration of their lives and personalities -- a very acute one....She makes Stein's work seem more meaningful than most commentators do by bringing out its full psychological interest. And while she doesn't flinch from showing Stein at her worst, she reminds us of her good qualities too."

Read the entire Wall Street Journal review.

Christine Smallwood of Salon.com also reviewed the book recently, remarking that many "will find Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice hard to put down." The book is part of Malcolm's "ongoing investigation into narrative," and it "powerfully demonstrates how [Stein's and Toklas'] images have been built and passed down to us....The biographer's game is a kind of treasure hunt, and Two Lives lays bare its rules."
Read the entire Salon.com review.

Malcolm will also be reading at the 92nd Street Y this coming Sunday, October 7th as part of the Brunch Series. Sign up for Yale Press Log's RSS feed to stay in touch with additional YUP author events and media appearances.

Read an excerpt of Two Lives.
View the table of contents.

Labyrinth Books New Haven will host Ben Kiernan on Wednesday, October 10th at 5:30pm to celebrate his recently published Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. This book party and conversation is free and open to the public. For more details and information on the event, click here. For a list of all Labyrinth Books events, visit labyrinthbooks.com.

Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Grisw old Professor of History, professor of international and area studies, and the founding director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University (www.yale.edu/gsp). His previous books include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, published by Yale University Press.

Read an excerpt.

View the table of contents.

Daniel Solove's essay " 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy," recently published by the San Diego Law Review, is rippling through web discussions and blogs, with commenters citing excerpts of the article as "one of the best descriptions of the privacy problem" (Cochese Tonto @ Schneier on Security) and "Solove skillfully deconstructs the blithe 'nothing to hide' argument by identifying the flaws in its framing". (VortexDNA)

Read the essay abstract from SSRN.

On the heels these and other online discussions, Solove's upcoming book tackles additional internet privacy issues in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, to be released this fall by Yale University Press.

This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet?