Books published by publisher University of Wisconsin Press

University Press returns with another short and captivating portrait of one of history’s most compelling figures, Eleanor Roosevelt.Eleanor Roosevelt was an iconic figure. Best known for being First Lady of the United States during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, she conquered shyness and marital betrayal and used her quiet power to knock down barriers of race and gender in the United States and promote human rights around the world.After her husband died, Eleanor went on to become chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission where she formulated, presented, and worked to secure global implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – words that are now written into national constitutions around the globe. This short book tells the intensely human story of a woman who changed the world in a way that no one else could.

This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful. Features include: * coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families * more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa * keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations * habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy * a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds * glossaries of botanical and habitat terms * a full index for each volumeWetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.

Now available in paperback, Kevin O’Neill’s highly praised study of rural Ireland in the years leading up to the "Great Hunger" of the 1840s explicates the social, economic, and demographic conditions of the era. He argues that overpopulation and deprivation were inextricably linked to a third variable—the rapid economic development of rural Ireland that was shaped by British interests.

Oedipus Rex is the greatest of the Greek tragedies. The story of the mythological king, who is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother, has resonated in world culture for almost 2,500 years. But Sophocles’ drama as originally performed was much more than a great story—it remains a superb poetic script and exciting theatrical experience, now faithfully brought to life in this English translation and audiobook. David Mulroy’s brilliant verse rendition of Oedipus Rex recaptures the aesthetic and theatrical power of Sophocles’ masterpiece while also achieving a highly accurate translation in clear, contemporary English. Professional actors from the American Players Theatre re-create Sophocles’ pulsing, iambic rhythms with vitality and hypnotic forward momentum. Faculty and students from the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Music perform the choruses and other music, based on ancient Greek modes.

This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful. Features include: * coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families * more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa * keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations * habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy * a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds * glossaries of botanical and habitat terms * a full index for each volumeWetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.

University Press returns with another short and captivating portrait of one of history’s most compelling figures, Alexander Hamilton.Alexander Hamilton was an orphan from a remote island in the Caribbean. Yet he went on to become one of the elite Founding Fathers of the United States, and, as America’s first Treasury Secretary, the founder of the nation’s financial system. A man of honor, conviction, and genius, Alexander was still not immune to scandal and conflict. His extra-marital affair deeply hurt his beloved wife and brought him ridicule from his political opponents. And his dispute with Vice President Aaron Burr resulted in their famous duel – and in Hamilton’s violent and premature death.This short book tells the intensely human story of a man who changed the world in a way that no one else could.

One of twelve children in a close-knit, affluent Catholic Belgian family, Jan Vansina began life in a seemingly sheltered environment. But that cocoon was soon pierced by the escalating tensions and violence that gripped Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In this book Vansina recalls his boyhood and youth in Antwerp, Bruges, and the Flemish countryside as the country was rocked by waves of economic depression, fascism, competing nationalisms, and the occupation of first Axis and then Allied forces. Within the vast literature on World War II, a much smaller body of work treats the everyday experiences of civilians, particularly in smaller countries drawn into the conflict. Recalling the war in Belgium from a child’s-eye perspective, Vansina describes pangs of hunger so great as to make him crave the bitter taste of cod-liver oil. He vividly remembers the shock of seeing severely wounded men on the grounds of a field hospital, the dangers of crossing fields and swimming in ponds strafed by planes, and his family’s interactions with occupying and escaping soldiers from both sides. After the war he recalls emerging numb from the cinema where he first saw the footage of the Nazi death camps, and he describes a new phase of unrest marked by looting, vigilante justice, and the country’s efforts at reunification. Vansina, a historian and anthropologist best known for his insights into oral tradition and social memory, draws on his own memories and those of his siblings to reconstruct daily life in Belgium during a tumultuous era.Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School LibrariansBest Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public work: the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many names: the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.

The women's rights movement grew out of the women's suffrage movement of the mid-1800s and also addressed other women's legal rights issues. The second wave of the movement, which promoted economic, political, and social equality, gained momentum in the 1960s and '70s, when such groups as the National Organization for Women fought for equal pay and laws banning employment discrimination. Clearly written, The Women's Rights Movement is an illuminating introduction to one of the most prominent reform movements of the last 40 years. The book is published by Chelsea House Publishers, a leading publisher of educational material.

Recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Dawoud Bey has created a body of photography that masterfully portrays the contemporary American experience on its own terms and in all of its diversity.Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply offers a forty-year retrospective of the celebrated photographer’s work, from his early street photography in Harlem to his current images of Harlem gentrification. Photographs from all of Bey’s major projects are presented in chronological sequence, allowing viewers to see how the collective body of portraits and recent landscapes create an unparalleled historical representation of various communities in the United States. Leading curators and critics—Sarah Lewis, Deborah Willis, David Travis, Hilton Als, Jacqueline Terrassa, Rebecca Walker, Maurice Berger, and Leigh Raiford—introduce each series of images.Revealing Bey as the natural heir of such renowned photographers as Roy DeCarava, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee, Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply demonstrates how one man’s search for community can produce a stunning portrait of our common humanity.