The University of Chicago Press

June Features

Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. These and other valedictories are collected in Robert K. Elder’s Last Words of the Executed, an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. Our excerpt has five final statements, one for each of the primary means of execution that we have used in the U.S.

Some maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we do. These maps control behavior, regulating activities from flying to fishing, prohibiting students from one part of town from being schooled on the other, or banishing certain individuals and industries to the periphery. Restrictive cartography is the topic of Mark Monmonier’s No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How Maps Restrict and Control. Read a web-only feature for the book, “Ten Contested Boundaries.”

Politically and economically, Latin America is the land of great hopes and greater disappointments. Despite abundant resources—and a history of productivity and wealth—the region has recently fallen behind, surpassed even by other developing economies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. In Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism Sebastian Edwards explains why these nations have failed to grasp the fruits of globalization and forcefully highlights the dangers of the turn to economic populism. Read an excerpt.

In Another Freedom: The Alternative History of an Idea, Svetlana Boym explores the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece through the present day, suggesting that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only “what is” but also “what if.” “Another freedom” is an adventure that tests the limits of uncertainty and responsibility, of individual imagination and pubic culture. Read an excerpt.

2010 Readers Catalog

Lots of great reading will be found in the hundreds of new and classic works in our 2010 Readers Catalog. Books in all subject areas and geared to the general reader. Most books are discounted 20% when you use promo code AD9376.

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