History | Columbia University Press (2024)

A History of Anti-Racism in Science

On 10 June 2020, researchers in the United States and elsewhere joined the Strike for Black Lives, a mass walkout that sought to draw attention to systemic racism and racial inequality. This high-profile protest might have given the impression that antiracism in science is a relatively recent concern, propelled by the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged in the 2010s. However, just as feminism in academia predates the #MeToo movement, anti-racism in science has a much longer history.

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The Long, Bloody History of the Israel-Gaza “Border”

When Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, it broke through a boundary that was widely considered impenetrable. Starting in the 1990s, and intensifying significantly since Hamas took power in 2007, the Israeli state has enforced a harsh border regime designed to keep both Hamas and Gaza separate from Israel —despite the territory’s remaining under Israeli occupation by most international judgments. The border regime around the Strip included concrete walls above and below ground, aerial surveillance, cameras, motion sensors, and weaponry, as well as the blockade imposed since 2007.

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I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo

There are very few icons in the chronicles of the Chinese struggle against state repression. This meticulously researched and wonderfully crafted biography will help change that. Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Prize winner who died while incarcerated, lived a life of extraordinary courage, sacrifice, and achievement.

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M. Todd Bennett on the Secretive Story of the Glomar Explorer

Shane Harris talks with Bennett about his book Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency,which shows how the exposure of the secret program led to a public backlash against disclosures of classified information and helped reinforce the culture of secrecy that envelops the CIA’s work. The phrase “neither confirm nor deny,” which Bennett tells Harris has become a kind of coy cliche, originates from attempts to uncover the facts of the Glomarmission.

Nicholas Wilson: Modernity's Corruption—A historical Sociology Perspective

In our second episode, we talk to Professor Nicholas Hoover Wilson, or Nick, from Stony Brook University. Nick's book, Modernity's Corruption, investigates the English East India Company and how it became a case study as a moment of transition to how we today understand corruption - as an exchange and violation from public officials acting for private gains - from an extremely historically significant perspective that was diverse and mostly situational.

An Archaeological History of New York City

New York City has had a long and varied history. From the time of the Native Americans to the late 1800s when the boroughs were folded into the city limits many people, cultures, and events have left their mark. That mark leaves a material culture that has been excavated by teams of archaeologists over the last half-century or more. That artifact collection now has a home and as a result, this book was written to tell the story of that collection. We bring on two of the four authors in this episode to talk about the book and the city.

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Online book talk: Fazzi, Smoke on the Water

Smoke on the Watertells the compelling story of a campaign against environmental degradation in which people from marginalized communities took on the might of the U.S. military-industrial complex. It offers new insights into the transnational dimensions of environmental regulation, the significance of nonstate actors in international history, and the making of environmental justice movements.

Published in partnership withHoward University’s College of Arts and SciencesandColumbia University’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, theseriesshowcases scholarship and writing that enriches our understanding of Black experiences in the past, present, and future with the goal of reaching beyond the academy to intervene in urgent national and international conversations about the experiences of people of African descent.Read about the editorial board.

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Capitalism has served as an engine of growth, a source of inequality, and a catalyst for conflict in American history. While remaking our material world, capitalism’s myriad forms have altered—and been shaped by—our most fundamental experiences of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and citizenship. This series takes the full measure of the complexity and significance of capitalism, placing it squarely back at the center of the American experience. By drawing insight and inspiration from a range of disciplines and alloying novel methods of social and cultural analysis with the traditions of labor and business history, our authors take history “from the bottom up” all the way to the top.

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Continuing with its already established record, Columbia Studies in International and Global History seeks to present some of the finest and most innovative work coming out of the current landscapes of international and global historical scholarship. Grounded in empirical research, the titles in the series transcend the usual area boundaries and address questions of how history can help us understand contemporary problems, including poverty, inequality, power, political violence, and accountability beyond the nation-state. The series includes a wide range of topics and historical epochs, and it offers a combination of trade and scholarly books dealing with wider themes from global and international perspectives.

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The Race, Inequality, and Health series explores how race has become a basis for discrimination and inequality, as well as a foundation for reactionary or affirmative group politics. The goal of this series is to offer an intellectual space for leading scholars—combining work in history, the social sciences, the biological sciences, and public health—that will deepen our understanding of how ideological and scientific claims about race and race difference have impacted health and society both historically and in the present day.

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Winner, 2023 SAA Book Award - Popular, Society for American Archaeology

Buried Beneath the Cityuses urban archaeology to retell the history of New York, from the deeper layers of the past to the topsoil of recent events.

Winner, 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapese

Before Central Parkshows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

Winner, 2023 Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award, International History and Politics Section, American Political Science Association

Drawing on a wide range of sources,Worldmaking in the Long Great Warretells the origin story of the modern Middle East.

Winner, 2023 Toshihide Numata Book Award, Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley

Buddhist Historiography in Chinacasts new light on the intellectual history of Chinese Buddhism and on Buddhists’ understanding of the past.

Caelyn Cobb
Politics (International Relations, Comparative; Security Studies); History (Global, Asia, Middle East)

Stephen Wesley
American Politics and Foreign Relations; History (United States, New York City)

Columbia University Press distributes publications several international and domestic presses, including the Association for Asian Studies, ibidem Press, Jagiellonian University Press, transcript publishing, Verlag Barbara Budrich.