[N.B.] COVID certainly disrupted our book launch series but here you'll find information on events we hosted prior to that interruption...

GMU Press Book Launch: Peacebuilding Through Dialogue

The University Libraries, Mason Publishing and the University Bookstore present

Peacebuilding Through Dialogue
Education, Human Transformation, and Conflict Resolution
Edited by Peter N. Stearns

Peter Stearns & Susan Allen

Peacebuilding Through Dialogue: Education, Human Transformation, and Conflict Resolution

Wednesday, March 20th
3:00-4:30 p.m.

Main Reading Room (2001)
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Peacebuilding Through Dialogue is an invitation to scholars, students, and engaged citizens to discover the power and versatility of dialogue as a peacebuilding practice. Edited by Peter Stearns, the book features thirteen authors considering dialogue in the context of teaching and learning; dialogue as part of personal and interpersonal growth; and dialogue in conflict resolution and other situations of great change. With its expansive approach, the book makes original and invaluable contributions to peace studies, civic studies, education studies, organizational studies, conflict resolution studies, and dignity studies.

Join us for a very special book launch event on Wednesday, March 20, featuring a conversation with volume editor Peter Stearns and contributor Susan Allen. 

Books will be available for purchase at the event.

This book is published by George Mason University Press in collaboration with the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue of Cambridge, Mass. 

Mason Author Series: Ideals of the Body with Sun-Young Park

The University Libraries, Mason Publishing and the University Bookstore present

Ideals of the Body
Architecture, Urbanism, and Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris
By Sun-Young Park

Sun-Young Park

Ideals of the Body: Architecture, Urbanism, & Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris

Thursday, March 7th
3:00-4:30 p.m.

Main Reading Room (2001)
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Modern hygienic urbanism originated in the airy boulevards, public parks, and sewer system that transformed the Parisian cityscape in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet these well-known developments in public health built on a previous moment of anxiety about the hygiene of modern city dwellers. Amid fears of national decline that accompanied the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, efforts to modernize Paris between 1800 and 1850 focused not on grand and comprehensive structural reforms, but rather on improving the bodily and mental fitness of the individual citizen. These forgotten efforts to renew and reform the physical and moral health of the urban subject found expression in the built environment of the city—in the gymnasiums, swimming pools, and green spaces of private and public institutions, from the pedagogical to the recreational.

In Ideals of the Body, Sun-Young Park, assistant professor of history and art history, reveals how these anxieties about health and social order, which manifested in emerging ideals of the body, created a uniquely spatial and urban experience of modernity in the postrevolutionary capital, one profoundly impacted by hygiene, mobility, productivity, leisure, spectacle, and technology.

Refreshments will be provided. The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.

Mason Author Series: Policing Black Bodies with Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith

The University Libraries, Mason Publishing and the University Bookstore present

Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith

Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled and How To Work For Change

Thursday, October 4
3:00-4:30 p.m.

Main Reading Room (2001)
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Angela J. Hattery, Professor and Director, Women and Gender Studies, and Earl Smith, Adjunct Faculty, Sociology will discuss their book, Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives are Surveilled and How to Work for Change. In Policing Black Bodies, the authors make a compelling case that the policing of Black bodies goes far beyond individual stories and isolated incidents of brutality. They connect the regulation of African American people in many settings, including the public education system and the criminal justice system, into a powerful narrative about the myriad ways Black bodies are policed.

Refreshments will be provided. The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.

Mason Author Series: The Case Against Education with Bryan Caplan

The University Libraries, Mason Publishing,
and the University Bookstore present

Bryan Caplan

Discussing his new book: The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money

Thursday, May 3
3:00-4:30 pm

Main Reading Room
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Case Against Education- book coverDespite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. In The Case Against Education, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students’ skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity—in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.

Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation is our society’s top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability. He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education, because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.

headshot of Bryan CaplanBryan Caplan is professor of economics at George Mason University and a blogger at EconLog. He is the author of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun than You Think and The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton). He lives in Oakton, Virginia.

“Would-be students and their parents are rethinking the assumption that a good life is impossible without an expensive degree–not to mention the chase for college admission that begins at kindergarten if not before. [This new book] may help to let out a little more air.”–Naomi Schaefer Riley, Wall Street Journal

 

Refreshments will be provided.

The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.

Virginia Wine book and author event

The University Libraries, George Mason University Press,
and the University Bookstore present

Virginia Wine: Four Centuries of Change

Featuring author Andrew Painter

Tuesday, April 10
4:30-6:00 pm

Main Reading Room
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Cover: Virginia Wine“[An] impressive work celebrating the collective and individual achievements of the commonwealth’s wine industry “
— Gerald L. Baliles, Governor of Virginia 1986-1990

No state can claim a longer history of experimenting with and promoting viticulture than Virginia—nor does any state’s history demonstrate a more astounding record of initial failure and ultimate success. Virginia Wine: Four Centuries of Change presents a comprehensive record of the Virginia wine industry, from the earliest Spanish accounts describing Native American vineyards in 1570 through its astonishing rebirth in the modern era. The author chronicles the dynamic personalities, diverse places, and engrossing personal and political struggles that have established the Old Dominion as one of the nation’s preeminent wine regions, an industry that now accounts for nearly $1 billion in annual sales, with more than 275 wineries growing more than 30 varieties of grapes.

head shot of author Andrew Painter

Andrew A. Painter is an attorney specializing in land use and zoning. A Virginia native, Andrew has spent more than eight years researching the growth of its wine industry. He is a graduate of the University of Mary Washington, the University of Virginia, and the University of Richmond.

“A detailed, yet readable history that addresses an unmet need for a written record similar to those already available for the world’s more established wine regions. Virginia viticulture and winemaking have come of age, and deserve no less.”
— Felicia Warburg Rogan, Founder, Oakencroft Vineyard & Winery

Refreshments will be provided.

The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.

Book launch: Playfair

The University Libraries, George Mason University Press,
and the University Bookstore present

Playfair: The True Story of the British Secret Agent Who Changed How We See the World

Thursday, March 22
2:00-3:30 pm

Main Reading Room
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

Featuring author Bruce Berkowitz

Cover of Playfair by Bruce BerkowitzWilliam Playfair may be the most famous person you have never heard of. Best known today as the inventor of “statistical graphics”—the line, bar, and pie charts we all use today—Playfair was also a pioneer in strategic analysis, and a secret agent who carried out espionage and subversion against France on behalf of Great Britain.
This is the first book to uncover the full, true account of this remarkable, colorful man—undeniably brilliant, hopelessly flawed, and fundamentally important. Its pages reveal the astounding inventions and adventures of this larger-than-life swashbuckler, rogue, genius, and patriot.

“In addition to being a draftsman, inventor, company promoter, land speculator, economist, patriotic pamphleteer and bank-note counterfeiter, Playfair was a secret agent and international conspirator… He was adept at ducking and weaving from the truth, covering his tracks, mystifying his motives, and protecting his sources. Mr. Berkowitz’s Playfair is above all a work of ingenious detection and reconstruction.”
—The Wall Street Journal

Bruce Berkowitz is the author of several books and articles about national security, history, and international relations.

 

Refreshments will be provided.

The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.

Mason Author Series: Lincoln Mullen

Cover of "The Chance of Salvation" by Lincoln A. MullenThe University Libraries, Mason Publishing,
and the University Bookstore present

Lincoln Mullen

Discussing his new book: The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America

Thursday, March 1
3:00-4:30 pm

Main Reading Room
Fenwick Library, Fairfax Campus

While United States has a long history of religious pluralism, Americans have often believed their faith determines their eternal destiny. The result is that Americans switch religions more often than any other nation. The Chance of Salvation traces the history of the distinctively American idea that religion is a matter of individual choice.

Lincoln A. MullenLincoln Mullen shows how Americans’ willingness to change faiths has created a shared assumption that religious identity is a decision. As Americans confronted a growing array of religious options in the 19th century, pressures to convert altered the basis of American religion. Evangelical protestants, enslaved and freed African Americans, Mormons, American Jews, and Catholics each developed different views on conversion, divine justice, and redemption.

Lincoln A. Mullen is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University. An historian of American religion, Mullen’s digital historical work has also taken him into U.S. legal history and the history of early American elections.

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Refreshments will be provided.

The Mason Author Series is co-sponsored by the University Bookstore.