Books Fall 2017
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The MIT Press Fall 2017 The MIT Press TRADE history | technology The Chinese Typewriter A History Thomas S. Mullaney Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters—in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and suc- cesses in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter. The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for “Jesus” to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained “typewriter girls” and “typewriter boys.” Still later was the “Double Pigeon” typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of How Chinese characters “predictive text.” triumphed over the QWERTY Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, keyboard and laid the not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic foundation for China’s substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The information technology Chinese Typewriter, not just an “object history” but grappling with broad successes today. questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened. September 6 x 9, 480 pp. Thomas S. Mullaney is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University 86 illus. and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in $34.95T/£27.95 cloth Modern China. 978-0-262-03636-8 MITPRESS.MIT.EDU | FALL 2017 1 TRADE politics | education Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces Diversity and Free Expression in Education John Palfrey foreword by Alberto Ibarguen Safe spaces, trigger warnings, microagressions, the un-invitation of speakers, demands to rename campus landmarks—debate over these issues began in lecture halls and on college quads but ended up on op-ed pages in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, on cable news, and on social media. Some of these critiques had merit, but others took a series of cheap shots at “crybullies” who needed to be coddled and protected from the real world. Few questioned the assumption that col- leges must choose between free expression and diversity. In Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces, John Palfrey argues that the essential democratic values of diversity and free expression can, and should, coexist on campus. Palfrey, currently Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, and formerly Professor and Vice Dean at Harvard Law School, writes that free expression and diversity are more compatible than opposed. Free expression can serve everyone—even if it has at times been dominated by white, male, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied citizens. Diversity is about self-expression, learning from one another, and working together across differences; it can encompass academic freedom without condon- ing hate speech. Palfrey proposes an innovative way to support both diversity and How the essential democratic free expression on campus: creating safe spaces and brave spaces. In safe values of diversity and spaces, students can explore ideas and express themselves without feeling free expression can coexist marginalized. In brave spaces—classrooms, lecture halls, public forums— on campus. the search for knowledge is paramount, even if some discussions may make certain students uncomfortable. The strength of our democracy, says October Palfrey, depends on a commitment to upholding both diversity and free 5 3/8 x 8, 184 pp. 1 illus. expression, especially when it is hardest to do so. $19.95T/£14.95 cloth John Palfrey is Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, coauthor of Born 978-0-262-03714-3 Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, and author of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge volume Intellectual Property Strategy. 2 FALL 2017 | MITPRESS.MIT.EDU TRADE history | women’s studies A Brief History of Feminism Patu \ Antje Schrupp translated by Sophie Lewis The history of feminism? The right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, white pantsuits? Oh, but there’s so much more. And we need to know about it, especially now. In pithy text and pithier comics, A Brief History of Feminism engages us, educates us, makes us laugh, and makes us angry. It begins with antiquity and the early days of Judeo-Christianity. (Mary Magdalene questions the maleness of Jesus’s inner circle: “People will end up getting the notion you don’t want women to be priests.” Jesus: “Really, Mary, do you always have to be so negative?”) It continues through the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Enlight- enment (“Liberty, equality, fraternity!” “But fraternity means brother- hood!”). It covers the beginnings of an organized women’s movement in the nineteenth century, second-wave Feminism, queer feminism, and third-wave Feminism. Along the way, we learn about important fi gures: Olympe de Gouges, author of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” (guillotined by Robespierre); Flora Tristan, who linked the op- pression of women and the oppression of the proletariat before Marx and Engels set pen to paper; and the poet Audre Lorde, who pointed to the racial obliviousness of mainstream feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. We learn about bourgeois and working-class issues, and the angry racism of some American feminists when black men got the vote before women An engaging illustrated did. We see God as a long-bearded old man emerging from a cloud (and history of feminism from once, as a woman with her hair in curlers). And we learn the story so far antiquity through third- of a history that is still being written. wave feminism, featuring Sappho, Mary Magdalene, Patu is an artist and cofounder of the artist collective radical jetset, creators of comic books, murals, and installations. Antje Schrupp is a journalist and Mary Wollstonecraft, political scientist living in Frankfurt am Main. Sojourner Truth, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others. September 6 x 9, 88 pp. 222 illus. $14.95T/£12.95 cloth 978-0-262-03711-2 MITPRESS.MIT.EDU | FALL 2017 3 TRADE science | math The Beauty of Numbers in Nature Mathematical Patterns and Principles in the Natural World Ian Stewart From a zebra’s stripes to a spider’s web, from sand dunes to snowflakes, nature is full of patterns underlaid by mathematical principles. In The Beauty of Numbers in Nature, Ian Stewart shows how life forms from the principles of mathematics. Each chapter in The Beauty of Numbers in Nature explores a different kind of patterning system and its mathematical underpinnings. In doing do, the book also uncovers some universal pat- terns—both in nature and made by humans—from the basic geometry of ancient Greece to the complexities of fractals. Stewart draws on a wide range of sources to examine the mathemat- ics of patterns: the Pythagoreans’ obsession with numbers as the philo- sophical basis of the universe; a great mathematician who wondered about how a violin makes music; a clerk in a patent office who realized that space and time can get mixed together; a maverick mathematician who questioned why nature spurns such regular geometric shapes as spheres and cylinders in favor of jagged lightning bolts, asymmetrically branching trees, and the uneven terrain of mountainsides. The book begins with a simple and often-asked question about the shape and individual uniqueness of snowflakes. How can such a strange mixture of regularity and irregularity exist in a tiny bit of frozen water? By From a zebra’s stripes to a the end of the book, readers will have learned that mathematical patterns spider’s web: an engaging can come in many guises, some of which don’t resemble patterns at all. examination of patterns in nature and the mathematics Ian Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, that underlie them. U.K., and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author or coauthor of more than 100 books, including Does God Play Dice? and (with Terry Pratchett and Jack Cohen) The Science of Discworld series. His app Incredible Numbers won a October 6 1/2 x 8 3/4, 224 pp. Digital Book World Award, and he was cowinner of the 2015 Lewis Thomas Prize 200 illus. for Writing about Science. $24.95T paper 978-0-262-53428-4 “Stewart explains complicated ideas brilliantly.” For sale only in North America —New Scientist “Stewart is the soul of clarity.” —Booklist 4 FALL 2017 | MITPRESS.MIT.EDU TRADE music | design Designed for Hi-Fi Living The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder foreword by Daniel Miller The sleek hi-fi console in a well-appointed midcentury American living room might have had a stack of albums by musicians like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, or Patti Page. It was just as likely to have had a selection of LPs from slightly different genres, with such titles as Cocktail Time, Music for a Chinese Dinner at Home, The Perfect Background Music for Your Home Movies, Honeymoon in Hawaii, Strings for a Space Age, or Cairo! The Music of Modern Egypt.