Explore our groundbreaking books that facilitate teaching across disciplines. To request an exam copy, click on “Request an Exam or Desk Copy” on the book page, and this will take you to our distributor’s site where you can order your copy.
Religion in America by Lisa D. Pearce and Claire Chipman Gilliland
Written in an engaging and accessible tone, Religion in America probes the dynamics of recent American religious beliefs and behaviors. Charting trends over time using demographic data, this book examines how patterns of religious affiliation, service attendance, and prayer vary by race and ethnicity, social class, and gender. The authors identify demographic processes such as birth, death, and migration, as well as changes in education, employment, and families, as central to why some individuals and congregations experience change in religious practices and beliefs while others hold steady. Religion in America challenges students to examine the demographic data alongside everyday accounts of how religion is experienced differently across social groups to better understand the role that religion plays in the lives of Americans today and how that is changing.
Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age:
A Sourcebook edited by Nimrod Hurvitz, Christian C. Sahner, Uriel Simonsohn, Luke Yarbrough
Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Islamic rule in the seventh century, Muslims constituted a tiny minority in most areas under their control. But by the beginning of the modern period, they formed the majority in most territories from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Across such diverse lands, peoples, and time periods, conversion was a complex, varied phenomenon. Converts lived in a world of overlapping and competing religious, cultural, social, and familial affiliations, and the effects of turning to Islam played out in every aspect of life. Conversion therefore provides a critical lens for world history, magnifying the constantly evolving array of beliefs, practices, and outlooks that constitute Islam around the globe. This groundbreaking collection of texts, translated from sources in a dozen languages from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries, presents the historical process of conversion to Islam in all its variety and unruly detail, through the eyes of both Muslim and non-Muslim observers.
Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature by Jordan D. Rosenblum
Though ancient rabbinic texts are fundamental to analyzing the history of Judaism, they are also daunting for the novice to read. Rabbinic literature presumes tremendous prior knowledge, and its fascinating twists and turns in logic can be disorienting. Rabbinic Drinking helps learners at every level navigate this brilliant but mystifying terrain by focusing on rabbinic conversations about beverages, such as beer and wine, water, and even breast milk. By studying the contents of a drinking vessel—including the contexts and practices in which they are imbibed—Rabbinic Drinking surveys key themes in rabbinic literature to introduce readers to the main contours of this extensive body of historical documents.
Features and Benefits:
- Contains a broad array of rabbinic passages, accompanied by didactic and rich explanations and contextual discussions, both literary and historical
- Thematic chapters are organized into sections that include significant and original translations of rabbinic texts
- Each chapter includes in-text references and concludes with a list of both referenced works and suggested additional readings