Open Book Publishers - Summer Newsletter

Welcome to our Summer Newsletter!

We have information on our forthcoming book launches, prizes, updates including new and forthcoming publications and latest reviews, interviews, features and blogs.

Dive in to find out more about what's been happening as well as our plans for the months ahead...

Announcements

NatWest SE100
Online Book Launch: 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design'
Open Book Publishers and the Open Book Collective
Open Access Books Network
Crowdsourcing: 'Health Care in the Information Society' by David Ingram

Books, Resources and Reviews

Featured Book
New Open Access Publications
Forthcoming Open Access Publications
New Blogs and Resources
Call for Proposals
Latest Reviews

We have made it to the Top 100!

We’re thrilled to have made it on this year’s NatWest SE100 Index highlighting the UK’s most outstanding in Social Enterprise.

The list was selected according to a number of different criteria to reflect both business and impact issues – including financial performance, how thoroughly they measured and managed their impact, and their commitment to both climate issues and to taking positive action on equality and diversity.

See the full list on Pioneers Post: https://immersives.pioneerspost.com/SE100-2023/ind

YOU ARE INVITED! Online Book Launch: 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design'

OBP presents a conversation with Jonathan Mallinson, author of 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design'.

Join us on Wed Sep 06 2023 at 16:00 GMT+0100 (British Summer Time) for an exciting virtual event celebrating the release of this captivating book.

Discover the fascinating world of William Moorcroft, a renowned potter known for his unique and innovative designs. This book delves into his life, career, and the contemporary reception of his work. Whether you're an avid collector, art enthusiast, or simply curious about the art of pottery, this book launch is a must-attend event.

During the online event, the author will discuss the book, share insights, and answer your questions. Get ready to be inspired by Moorcroft's artistic journey and gain a deeper understanding of his contributions.

Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to be a part of the book launch of 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design'. Mark your calendars, spread the word, and join us for an evening of art, history, and appreciation for one of the greatest potters!

Reserve a spot at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-book-launch-william-moorcroft-potter-individuality-by-design-tickets-692535220487

Open Book Publishers and the Open Book Collective

Six months have passed since we officially announced that we had joined the Open Book Collective (OBC). Since then, many current library members have decided to renew their Open Book Publishers Membership via the collective and support a fairer OA book publishing ecosystem.

The Open Book Collective has been developed by the COPIM Project, an international partnership funded by Research England and Arcadia Fund. COPIM is building non-profit, community-owned infrastructure to support a resilient future for open access book publishing that enables smaller and more community-focused presses to thrive and multiply. Open Book Publishers is a leading member of the COPIM Project and has been involved in helping to build the Collective.
If you are a library member and would like to find out more about the collective or renew through them, contact our Marketing and Library Relations Officer, Laura Rodriguez, at laura@openbookpublishers.com.

We would also like to invite you to read our official announcement where we explain why we’re joining the Collective and what this will mean for libraries (including our current Library Members), our authors and our readers.

Open Access Books Network

This is not a survey, as Magritte would say... it's surreal how easy it is to answer our questions!

The OABN wants YOUR feedback to get to know our growing network better.
How can we support your work with OA books? Let us know in this (not a) survey!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf7nglzmrN--FYhfucwA5INGlf1dV-WdckaU1yewrPTzNYIkg/viewform

Crowdsourcing: Health Care in the Information Society by David Ingram

We are seeking support from individual citizens, companies, and health care organizations across the world to make this book free to download and read by anyone, anywhere, anytime, irrespective of their financial means.

Download this document if you would like to contribute to the publication costs of Health Care in the Information Society.

Featured Book: Now in OA!

From Handwriting to Footprinting: Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis by Anne Baillot

How do we currently preserve and access texts, and will our current methods be sustainable in the future?

In From Handwriting to Footprinting, Anne Baillot seeks to answer this question by offering a detailed analysis of the methods that enable access to textual materials, in particular, access to books of literary significance. Baillot marshals her considerable expertise in the field of digital humanities to establish a philological overview of the changing boundaries of ‘access’ to literary heritage over centuries, deconstructing the western tradition of archiving and how it has led to current digital dissemination practices. Rigorously examining the negative environmental impact of digital publishing and archiving, Baillot proposes an alternative model of preservation and dissemination which reconciles fundamental traditions with the values of social responsibility and sustainability in an era of climate crisis.

It is invaluable reading for anyone interested in textual history from a linguistic or philological perspective, as well as those working on publishing, archival and infrastructure projects that require the storing and long-term preservation of texts, or who want to know how to develop a more mindful attachment to digitised material.

Resources

From Handwriting to Footprinting : Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis [blog]

Access

This Open Access title is available to read and download for free as well as to purchase in paperback and hardback at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0355

New Open Access Publications
These past months we have released 15 new Open Access titles:

Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation by Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop (eds)

During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19.

Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art by Joanna Page

In Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art, Joanna Page illuminates the ways in which contemporary artists in Latin America are reinventing historical methods of collecting, organizing, and displaying nature in order to develop new aesthetic and political perspectives on the past and the present.

Models in Microeconomic Theory: Expanded Second Edition (She); Models in Microeconomic Theory: Expanded Second Edition (He) by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein

Models in Microeconomic Theory covers basic models in current microeconomic theory. Part I (Chapters 1-7) presents models of an economic agent, discussing abstract models of preferences, choice, and decision making under uncertainty, before turning to models of the consumer, the producer, and monopoly. Part II (Chapters 8-14) introduces the concept of equilibrium, beginning, unconventionally, with the models of the jungle and an economy with indivisible goods, and continuing with models of an exchange economy, equilibrium with rational expectations, and an economy with asymmetric information. Part III (Chapters 15-16) provides an introduction to game theory, covering strategic and extensive games and the concepts of Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium. Part IV (Chapters 17-20) gives a taste of the topics of mechanism design, matching, the axiomatic analysis of economic systems, and social choice.

For Palestine: Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group by Ian Parker (ed)

This book is a collection of lectures written by reputable scholars who offer diverse perspectives on the historical, political and cultural struggles in Palestine. Encompassed in the pages are sixteen chapters produced for the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group. Unlike predecessors of this topic, this book offers a thought-provoking and comprehensive analysis of Palestine, including architectural, cultural, legal, sociological, and psychological questions, providing a larger scope of study that has not yet been done before. Ultimately, this book explores oppression in Palestine and beyond in the Middle East.

Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns (ed)

Having Too Much is the first academic volume devoted to limitarianism: the idea that the use of economic or ecosystem resources should not exceed certain limits. This concept has deep roots in economic and political thought. One can find similar statements of such limits in thinkers such as Plato, Aquinas, and Spinoza. But Having Too Much is the first time in contemporary political philosophy that limitarianism is explored at length and in detail.

From Handwriting to Footprinting: Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis by Anne Baillot

Integrating historical, archival and environmental perspectives, From Handwriting to Footprinting illuminates the impact that digitisation has had on the dissemination and preservation of textual heritage and reflects on what its future may hold. It is invaluable reading for anyone interested in textual history from a linguistic or philological perspective, as well as those working on publishing, archival and infrastructure projects that require the storing and long-term preservation of texts, or who want to know how to develop a more mindful attachment to digitised material.

Breaking Conventions: Five Couples in Search of Marriage-Career Balance at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century by Patricia Auspos

This rich history illuminates the lives and partnerships of five married couples – two British, three American – whose unions defied the conventions of their time and anticipated social changes that were to come in the ensuing century. In all five marriages, both husband and wife enjoyed thriving professional lives: a shocking circumstance at a time when wealthy white married women were not supposed to have careers, and career women were not supposed to marry.

Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island by Lee Haring

The book uncovers the versatility and literary skills of oral narrators in a small African island. Relying on the researches of three French ethnographers who interviewed storytellers in the 1970s-80s, Lee Haring shows a once-colonised people using verbal art to preserve ancient values in the postcolonial world, when the island of Mayotte was transforming itself from a neglected colony to an overseas department of France.

Destins de femmes: French Women Writers, 1750-1850 by John Claiborne Isbell

Destins de femmes is the first comprehensive overview of French women writers during the turbulent period of 1750-1850. John Isbell provides an essential collection that illuminates the impact women writers had on French literature and politics during a time marked by three revolutions, the influx of Romantic art, and rapid technological change.

Digital Transformation: Understanding Business Goals, Risks, Processes, and Decisions by Mathias Cöster, Mats Danielson, Love Ekenberg, Cecilia Gullberg, Gard Titlestad, Alf Westelius and Gunnar Wettergren

Whilst digitisation is far from a new concept, many assume that simply introducing automation and information systems in various forms will be enough to make their organisation’s operations more efficient. This misconception can often lead to disarray and costly mistakes. This book shows how to avoid such issues via careful consideration of what an enterprise really needs.

Seabirds in the North-East Atlantic: Climate Change Vulnerability and Potential Conservation Actions by Henry Häkkinen, Silviu Petrovan, Nigel G. Taylor, William J. Sutherland and Nathalie Pettorelli

This book was produced by the Zoological Society of London and the University of Cambridge with two aims: to assess seabirds’ vulnerability to climate change in the North-East Atlantic, and to identify potential conservation actions that could reduce this vulnerability.

A Relational Realist Vision for Education Policy and Practice by Basem Adi

This volume argues that relational realism can help us to make better educational policy that is more effective in practice. Basem Adi draws on critical realism to thoroughly re-examine fundamental assumptions about how government policymaking works, developing an ontological basis from which to examine existing government approaches and imagine an alternative approach based on a relational realist-informed critical pedagogy.

Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education: Tales from the Field by Dianne Conrad (ed.)

This collection of reflective essays is a treasure trove of advice, reflection and hard-won experience from experts in the field of open and distance education. Each chapter offers tried-and-tested advice for nascent academic writers, delivered with personal, rich, and wonderful stories of the authors’ careers, their process, their research and their writing, and the struggles and triumphs they have encountered in the course of their careers.

The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies by SJ Beard, Martin Rees, Catherine Richards and Clarissa Rios Rojas

This innovative and comprehensive collection of essays explores the biggest threats facing humanity in the 21st century; threats that cannot be contained or controlled and that have the potential to bring about human extinction and civilization collapse. Bringing together experts from many disciplines, it provides an accessible survey of what we know about these threats, how we can understand them better, and most importantly what can be done to manage them effectively.

As always, these titles are freely available to read and download at www.openbookpublishers.com.

Forthcoming Open Access Publications

Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin (eds)

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those “wicked” problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries.

The Linguistic Classification of the Reading Traditions of Biblical Hebrew: A Phyla-and-Waves Model by Benjamin Paul Kantor

In recent decades, the field of Biblical Hebrew philology and linguistics has been witness to a growing interest in the diverse traditions of Biblical Hebrew. Indeed, while there is a tendency for many students and scholars to conceive of Biblical Hebrew as equivalent with the Tiberian pointing of the Leningrad Codex as it appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), there are many other important reading traditions attested throughout history.

William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design by Jonathan Mallinson

William Moorcroft (1872-1945) was one of the most celebrated potters of the early twentieth century. His career extended from the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian age to the Austerity aesthetics of the Second World War. Rejecting mass production and patronised by Royalty, Moorcroft’s work was a synthesis of studio and factory, art and industry. He considered it his vocation to create an everyday art, both functional and decorative, affordable by more than a privileged few: ‘If only the people in the world would concentrate upon making all things beautiful, and if all people concentrated on developing the arts of Peace, what a world it might be,’ he wrote in a letter to his daughter in 1930.

Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century by David Atkinson and Steve Roud (eds)

This deeply researched collection offers a comprehensive introduction to the eighteenth-century trade in street literature – ballads, chapbooks, and popular prints – in England and Scotland. Offering detailed studies of a selection of the printers, types of publication, and places of publication that constituted the cheap and popular print trade during the period, these essays delve into ballads, slip songs, story books, pictures, and more to push back against neat divisions between low and high culture, or popular and high literature.

To find out more about this and other forthcoming titles visit: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/forthcoming

Events
Young versus Champollion: Who Deciphered the Hieroglyphs?

When: Thu 28 Sep 2023, 19:15 - 20:30
Where: This event takes place in the British Library.

With: Andrew Robinson, author of biographies of Young and Champollion (The Last Man Who Knew Everything and Cracking the Egyptian Code), tells the interrelated and sometimes fractious stories of these astonishingly disparate personalities, and thereby explains how the hieroglyphic decipherment required both a myriad-minded polymath and a single-minded professor.

More information at https://www.bl.uk/events/young-versus-champollion-who-deciphered-the-hieroglyphs

Blogs

Stories [that] Matter: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe by Ladan Rahbari & Olga Burlyuk.

Reading about Palestine after Tom Hurndall by Ian Parker.
The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art by Joanna Page.

From Handwriting to Footprinting : Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis by Anne Baillot

On 'Breaking Conventions: Five Couples in Search of Marriage-Career Balance at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century' by Patricia Auspos

Destins de femmes: French Women Writers, 1750-1850 by John Claiborne Isbell

Resources

[video] Author John Claiborne Isbell on his book 'Destins de femmes: French Women Writers, 1750-1850'

[video] 'Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island' - An Interview with author Lee Haring

[audio] Podcast - New Books in Sociology: Migrant Academics' Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe

Call for Proposals

We have various Open Access series all of which are open for proposals, so feel free to get in touch if you or someone you know is interested in submitting a proposal!

Global Communications

Global Communications is a book series that looks beyond national borders to examine current transformations in public communication, journalism and media. Special focus is given on regions other than Western Europe and North America, which have received the bulk of scholarly attention until now.

St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture

St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture, a successful series published by the Centre for French History and Culture at the University of St Andrews since 2010 and now in collaboration with Open Book Publishers, aims to enhance scholarly understanding of the historical culture of the French-speaking world. This series covers the full span of historical themes relating to France: from political history, through military/naval, diplomatic, religious, social, financial, cultural and intellectual history, art and architectural history, to literary culture.

Studies on Mathematics Education and Society

This book series publishes high-quality monographs, edited volumes, handbooks and formally innovative books which explore the relationships between mathematics education and society. The series advances scholarship in mathematics education by bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives to the study of contemporary predicaments of the cultural, social, political, economic and ethical contexts of mathematics education in a range of different contexts around the globe.

The Global Qur'an

The Global Qur’an is a new book series that looks at Muslim engagement with the Qur’an in a global perspective. Scholars interested in publishing work in this series and submitting their monographs and/or edited collections should contact the General Editor, Johanna Pink. If you wish to submit a contribution, please read and download the submission guidelines here.

The Medieval Text Consortium Series

The Series is created by an association of leading scholars aimed at making works of medieval philosophy available to a wider audience. The Series' goal is to publish peer-reviewed texts across all of Western thought between antiquity and modernity, both in their original languages and in English translation. Find out more here.

Applied Theatre Praxis

This series publishes works of practitioner-researchers who use their rehearsal rooms as "labs”; spaces in which theories are generated and experimented with before being implemented in vulnerable contexts. Find out more here.

Digital Humanities

Overseen by an international board of experts, our Digital Humanities Series: Knowledge, Thought and Practice is dedicated to the exploration of these changes by scholars across disciplines. Books in this Series present cutting-edge research that investigate the links between the digital and other disciplines paving the ways for further investigations and applications that take advantage of new digital media to present knowledge in new ways. Proposals in any area of the Digital Humanities are invited. We welcome proposals for new books in this series. Please do not hesitate to contact us (a.tosi@openbookpublishers.com) if you would like to discuss a publishing proposal and ways we might work together to best realise it.

Latest Reviews

he Last Years of Polish Jewry; Volume 1: At the Edge of the Abyss: Essays, 1927–33 by Robert Brym (ed. & trans.) and Eli Jany (trans.)

[Leshchinsky's] books and articles remain until today among the most important sources on Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Now we can read one of his books in English in the volume, The Last Years of Polish Jewry: At the Edge of the Abyss, 1927-33, edited by Professor Robert Brym....The second volume of this project will hopefully soon be published.

- Mikhail Krutikov, Chair, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and associate, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan "He Foresaw the Downfall of Polish Jewry 10 Years before the Holocaust". Forverts (Forward), 2023.

The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist, Volume 1 by Andrew Hobbs

This is a fascinating book, offering a rare first-hand insight into the experience of a local 19th-century British journalist in his own words […] It is definitely worth reading the journalist’s account of his own life.

- European Journal of Communication, vol. 37, no. 6, 2022.

‘Fragile States’ in an Unequal World: The Role of the g7+ in International Diplomacy and Development Cooperation by Isabel Rocha de Siqueira

I have no doubt that ‘Fragile States’ in an Unequal World gives a unique, fascinating, and thought-provoking account of the people in the g7+ community. It will be valuable for scholars, policymakers, development practitioners, and students of world politics who seek to know more about the experiences, testimonies, expectations and perspectives of political actors in conflict-affected states, especially concerning the creation of the g7+, the idea of fragile states, and the problems confronting the current international development assistance framework.

- Babatunde F. Obamamoye, E-International Relations, 2023.

Ancient Greek I: A 21st Century Approach by Philip S. Peek

The whole course consists of thirty modules, all available for free download, and a print edition is available for £39.95 – good value for a 610-page book and invaluable for those who prefer or need a physical book for their learning [...] No one knows for sure how ancient Greek was pronounced but there is a scholarly consensus and “Ancient Greek I” includes audio links to help learners familiarize themselves with the sounds and pronunciation. It has never been easier to begin learning a language that has never died.

- Sean Sheehan, "Learning ancient Greek". The Prisma - The Multicultural Newspaper, 2023.

Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame: Medieval Miracles and Modern Remakings by Jan M. Ziolkowski

In his six-volume The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity (2018), Jan Ziolkowski offered the community of medievalists and numerous other readers the most comprehensive reception history of any medieval text ever produced. Geared towards a mixed audience of specialists and non-specialists alike in style, tone, and scholarly apparatuses, they offer a uniquely rich resource on modern European and world medievalisms in high and popular culture, scholarship, the arts, music, and media. The free access to Ziolkowski’s academic research via Open Book Publishers, an independent open access publisher for the humanities and social sciences, makes his publication an enviable example of how medievalists might reach audiences beyond academe [...] Jan Ziolkowski’s volume commands the admiration and gratitude of anyone who has ever even dabbled in reception history. Revealing first the first version and analogues of the premodern textual history, then the successful survival of the thirteenth-century miracle of the Virgin in the downright Darwinian competition among freshly discovered medieval literature in the late nineteenth and twentieth century, is a major feat of archival research, translation, and cultural contextualization. Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame is also an eloquent caveat for those who might erroneously believe that medievalisms in the modern world are all malevolent, radical abuses of the medieval past for postmedieval sexist, racist, and white supremacist purposes. The path of the juggler narrative related by this volume invalidates such essentializing predispositions and shows, instead, reimaginations of or analogues to the Old French poem that include multiple genres (poetry, short story, drama, opera), diverse responses to spirituality (Catholicism, secularism, Buddhism), and dozens of unique regional and national traditions (from France through Galicia, Germany, Persia, and North America).

- Richard J. Utz, The Medieval Review, 2023.