New Publications
Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought
Margaret Meserve
Renaissance humanists believed that the origins of peoples could reveal crucial facts about their modern political character. Margaret Meserve explores what happened when European historians turned to study the political history of a faith other than their own.
Meserve investigates the methods and illuminates the motives of scholars 
negotiating shifting boundaries--between scholarly research and political propaganda, between a commitment to critical historical inquiry and the pressure of centuries of classical and Christian prejudice, between the academic ideals of humanism and the everyday demands of political patronage. Drawing on political oratory, diplomatic correspondence, crusade propaganda, and historical treatises, Meserve shows how research into the origins of Islamic empires sprang from--and contributed to--contemporary debates over the threat of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean. Humanist histories of the Turks were sharply polemical, portraying the Ottomans as a rogue power. But writings on other Muslim polities include some of the first positive appraisals of Muslim statecraft in the European tradition.
This groundbreaking book offers new insights into Renaissance humanist scholarship and the long-standing European debates over the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
Reviews
This erudite and elegant book explores the efforts of Renaissance humanists to understand the Ottoman Turks and the world they came from. Using rich evidence, much of it not studied before, Meserve teaches us a great deal about the transmission, use, and misuse of historical and political information in modern Europe's first public sphere.
--Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
A superb and original study, impressively researched and cogently argued, on a significant aspect of humanist scholarship. It will be of interest to scholars in Renaissance, late medieval, early modern, Ottoman, Turkish, and Islamic studies, as well as a broader audience of readers who follow the growing literature on European views of other societies.
--Cemal Kafadar, Harvard University
Meserve's achievement is brilliant and important on several levels. She has given us what will become a much cited study on early Western 'orientalism.' She has enormously enriched our understanding not only of Renaissance humanism, but also of the relationship between the humanists and their medieval predecessors, pointing to a reconsideration of what is traditionally viewed as medieval and what is viewed as Renaissance. For decades to come, this will serve as a standard work on the humanist understanding of the Turk.
--John Monfasani, State University of New York at Albany
The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue
Mark Noll & James Turner
Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have been responsible for the establishment of many colleges and universities in America. Until recently, however, they have
taken very different approaches to the subject of education and have viewed one anothers traditions with suspicion. In this volume, Mark Noll and James Turner offer critical but appreciative reassessments of the two traditions. Noll, writing from an evangelical perspective, and Turner, from a Roman Catholic perspective, consider the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach and what they might learn from the other. The authors then provide brief responses to each others essays. Thoughtful readers from both traditions will find insightful and challenging ideas regarding the importance of Christian learning and the role of faith in the modern college or university.
On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru
Sabine MacCormack
Winner of the 2007 John E. Fagg Prize and James A. Rawley Prize
Historians have long recognized that the classical heritage of ancient Rome contributed to the development of a vibrant society in Spanish South America, but was the impact a one-way street? Although the Spanish destruction of the Incan empire changed the Andes forever, the civil society that did emerge was not the result of Andeans and Creoles passively absorbing the wisdom of ancient Rome. Rather, Sabine MacCormack proposes that civil society was born of the intellectual endeavors that commenced with the invasion itself, as the invaders sought to understand an array of cultures. Looking at the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century people who wrote about the Andean region that became Peru, MacCormack reveals how the lens of Rome had a profound influence on Spanish understanding of the Incan empire.
Tracing the varied events that shaped Peru as a country, MacCormack shows how Roman and classical literature provided a framework for the construal of historical experience. She turns to issues vital to Latin American history, such as the role of language in conquest, the interpretation of civil war, and the founding of cities, to paint a dynamic picture of the genesis of renewed political life in the Andean region. Examining how missionaries, soldiers, native lords, and other writers employed classical concepts to forge new understandings of Peruvian society and history, the book offers a complete reassessment of the ways in which colonial Peru made the classical heritage uniquely its own.
Sabine MacCormack is Theodore Hesburgh Professor of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton).
Review:
"Historian MacCormack offers a fresh examination of Spanish understanding of culture and history in the lands that became Peru. . . . This clearly written, thoughtful, and perceptive volume is based on outstanding research in printed primary and secondary materials in Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and English."--Choice
Endorsements:
"On the Wings of Time is a delight to read. MacCormack's meditations are those of a master scholar and storyteller; this is a very significant and novel contribution to our understanding of South American history."--Sabine Hyland, Saint Norbert College
"This book is pathbreaking in its approach to the historiography of the Spanish colonial world. MacCormack has exquisite control of the relevant sources, and weaves them together in a masterful and original way."--Bruce Mannheim, University of Michigan
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
Mark Noll
The Civil War was a major turning point in American religious thought, argues Mark A. Noll. Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. 
Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.
In addition to examining what white and black Americans wrote about slavery and race, Noll surveys commentary from foreign observers. Protestants and Catholics in Europe and Canada saw clearly that no matter how much the voluntary reliance on scriptural authority had contributed to the construction of national civilization, if there were no higher religious authority than personal interpretation regarding an issue as contentious as slavery, the resulting public deadlock would amount to a full-blown theological crisis. By highlighting this theological conflict, Noll adds to our understanding of not only the origins but also the intensity of the Civil War.
Review
In an informative account of the theological dramas that underpinned and were unleashed by the Civil War, Noll (America's God) argues that mid-19th-century America harbored "a significant theological crisis." Quite simply, ministers disagreed about how to read the Bible-and as much as it was a result of fierce disagreements about slavery or Union, Noll says, the Civil War was a crisis over biblical interpretation. The Bible's apparent acceptance of slavery led Christians into bitter debates, with Southern proslavery theologians detailing an elaborate defense of the "peculiar institution" and Northern antislavery clerics arguing that the slavery found in the Old Testament bore no resemblance to the chattel slavery of Southern plantations. Noll detours, for several chapters, to Europe, analyzing what Christians there had to say about America's sectional and scriptural debates. He suggests that religious upheaval did not evaporate at Appomattox. In the postbellum years, Americans grappled with two great problems of "practical theology": racism, and the convulsions of capitalism. This book's substantive analysis belies its brevity. As today's church debates over homosexuality reveal a new set of disagreements about how to read the Bible, this slim work of history is surprisingly timely. (Apr. 24) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
From Roosevelt to Truman: Postdam, Hiroshima and the Origins of the Cold War
Wilson D. (Bill) Miscamble, C.S.C.
On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died and Harry Truman took his place in the White House. Historians have been arguing ever since about the implications of this transition for American foreign policy in general and relations with the Soviet 
Union in particular. Was there essential continuity in policy or did Truman's arrival in the Oval Office prompt a sharp reversal away from the approach of his illustrious predecessor? This study explores this controversial issue and in the process casts important light on the outbreak of the Cold War. From Roosevelt to Truman investigates Truman's foreign policy background and examines the legacy that FDR bequeathed to him. This work reveals that the real departure in American policy came only after the Truman administration had exhausted the legitimate possibilities of the Rooseveltian approach of collaboration with the Soviet Union.
Review
Compelling and controversial subject involving two major political and historical figures - Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Examining whether there was essential continuity in policy or did Truman's arrival in the Oval Office prompt a sharp reversal away from the approach of his illustrious predecessor. Casts important light on the outbreak of the Cold War.
Fundamentalism and American Culture
George Marsden
Many American's today are taking note of the surprisingly strong political force that is the religious right. Controversial decisions by the government are met with hundreds of lobbyists, millions of dollars of advertising spending, and a powerful grassroots response. How has the fundamentalist movement managed to resist the pressures of the scientific community and the draw of modern popular culture to hold on to their ultra-conservative Christian views? Understanding the movement's history is key to answering this question. Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most 
influential religious movements.
For Marsden, fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives; they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and to fight. In Marsden's words (borrowed by Jerry Falwell), "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something." In the late nineteenth century American Protestantism was gradually dividing between liberals who were accepting new scientific and higher critical views that contradicted the Bible and defenders of the more traditional evangelicalism. By the 1920s a full-fledged "fundamentalist" movement had developed in protest against theological changes in the churches and changing mores in the culture. Building on networks of evangelists, Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and missions agencies, fundamentalists coalesced into a major protest movement that proved to have remarkable staying power.
For this newedition, a major new chapter compares fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement. Never has it been more important to understand the history of fundamentalism in our rapidly polarizing nation. Marsden's carefully researched and engrossing work remains the best way to do just that.
George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of HIstory at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
With Our Labor and Sweat: Indegenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru 1550-1700
Karen Graubert
Based upon substantial new research, this book investigates the heterogeneity of experiences of rural and urban indigenous women in early colonial Peru, from the 
massive changes in their working lives, to their utilization of colonial law to seek redress, to their creation of urban dress styles that reflected their new positions as consumers and as producers under Spanish rule.
Review
Based upon substantial new research, this book investigates the heterogeneity of experiences of rural and urban indigenous women in Peru during the first two centuries of Spanish colonization. Using wills, as well as other notarial and legal documents, it discusses changes in their working lives and how their identity as “Indians” as well as women was shaped in a multicultural society. From their utilization of colonial law to seek redress, to their creation of urban dress styles that reflected their new positions as consumers and as producers under Spanish rule, the early colonial period witnessed a dramatic upheaval in indigenous women's lives. By analyzing the migration from rural to urban areas, interaction with Spanish as well as African society, and the lives of both plebeians and elites, the author provides a thorough picture of this transformational period.
Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior Poet in the age of Crusades
Paul Cobb
A fascinating portrait of Usama ibn Munquidh, the famed 12th century warrior-
poet and chronicler of everyday Muslim in the era of the first Crusade.