HEB Best Sellers, Spring 2012

ACLS Humanities E-Book recently reported and paid its latest round of royalties to our participating publishers and authors. Please find the top ten most frequently hit titles in our collection of over 3,300 titles for this latest royalty period listed below.

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso) remains in first place. Also making repeat appearances on this list are Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic Books), Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford University Press), Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (Oxford University Press), Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press), Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press), and Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge).

Titles in Latin American studies, gender studies, and U.S. history are new in this round. They are Inga Clendinnen's Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge University Press, 2003; first published in 1987), Joan Wallach Scott's Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia University Press, 1999; first published in 1989) and Steven Mintz, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Harvard University Press, 2004). New titles making a jump into the top ten hit books can indicate course adoption for a semester and/or general shifting interests in academia and the scholarly community.

1. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006)
2. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic Books, 1973)
3. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford University Press, 1976)
4. Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (Oxford University Press, 1990)
5. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press, 1957)
6. Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, 2006)
7. Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
8. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge, 1995)
9. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia University Press, 1999)
10. Mintz, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Harvard University Press, 2004)

ALA Midwinter 2012 Recap

The American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Dallas (January 20-23) afforded HEB the opportunity to present an update of its collection to attendees and to speak with many of our subscribers, whose feedback on content and features they’d like to see added to the collection is always welcome. In part based on comments collected at ALA, we are now in the process of reviewing prospective interface improvements with our technical partners at the University of Michigan’s MPublishing division and are working toward a web overhaul later this year.

At ALA, HEB was able to announce a new round of forthcoming titles—405 total, including 83 award-winning books—scheduled for release this spring, with new titles being added in philosophy, film and media studies, literature as well as multiple other areas. To download a complete list of these, please see http://www.humanitiesebook.org/titlelist.html.

As before, interest in prospective handheld/mobile editions of books from our online collection was high. HEB is still working on a definitive list of titles to be converted to mobile-friendly formats, and we’ll be posting this on our website in the coming months. For the time being, a subset of handheld editions will be available for individual sale at an affordable price ($9.99) via Amazon, iBooks, and several other online retailers. We are also working on a model for offering these titles as part of a subscription package in the future.

Interest in and buzz surrounding emerging technologies both for delivery—e.g., cloud versus download—and discovery of digital content was high at ALA. HEB staff was able to confer about this with representatives of other scholarly publishing initiatives as well as with a number of commercially-oriented content providers and vendors, in our ongoing inquiry into what is most relevant to the former group and what is relevant to all readers.

Finally, HEB collected roughly 100 entries for our iPad raffle. The drawing has now been held and we’re pleased to announce the winner: Lynette Nickell, Children's and Young Adult Services Librarian at the Ector County Library in Odessa, Texas.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to see us.

HEB at ALA Midwinter 2012

HEB will once again participate as an exhibitor at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, TX, January 20-23.


More than 400 books will be added next spring to our collection—bringing the total to over 3,700—and we will have an updated list of these forthcoming titles available that we'd like to share with you. Drop by to hear what else is new at HEB and pick up our giveaways.

If you are attending ALA, please stop by booth 1360 or write to Patti Whittier (pwhittier@hebook.org) to set up an appointment. We look forward to seeing you!

For meeting details and registration, please visit ALA's website http://www.alamidwinter.org.

HEB Best Sellers, Fall 2011

ACLS Humanities E-Book recently reported and paid its latest round of royalties to our participating publishers and individual authors. Below we once again list the top ten most frequently hit titles in our collection of over 3,300 titles for this latest royalty period.

Several titles from previous periods remain in the top ten: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso) is again in first place; Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press), Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge), John W. Dower's War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Pantheon), and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic Books) have all previously appeared on this list.

Among the new entries rounding out this diverse roster of classic and contemporary works, history, cultural studies, gender studies, as well as race and ethnicity clearly remain of interest to HEB subscribers. One new addition is George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books), perhaps also reflecting a growing interest in LGBT studies among humanistic scholars. HEB will in fact be adding to its list of LGBT/Queer Studies titles in the coming year, one of several areas we are in the process of expanding.

1. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006)
2. Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, 2006)
3. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic Books, 1973)
4. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge, 1995)
5. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (Pantheon, 1993)
6. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1996)
7. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford University Press, 1988)
8. Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1994)
9. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1983)
10. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (Schocken Books, 1995)

HEB Launches New Handheld Editions Program

The first titles from HEB's online collection converted for use with handheld devices are now available for purchase from various distributors. Among this initial set are a number of seminal works now out-of-print and out-of-copyright—and often hard to find—which we are making available in an affordable downloadable edition, such as William Bradford, Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647; George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England; Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica; John Hobson, Imperialism: A Study; Hubert Jedin's History of the Council of Trent, Volumes I and II; Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy; M. Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, Volumes I and II; and Frederick Winslow Taylor, Scientific Management, Comprising Shop Management.

We will be offering additional titles for use with mobile devices and posting details about our handheld editions program on our website in the near future. Please stay tuned.

New on HEB: The English Institute's Work of Genre

HEB is pleased to announce the release of our latest XML title, The Work of Genre, edited by Robyn Warhol and published by The English Institute in collaboration with ACLS. This represents the second born-digital installment in the English Institute's ongoing series of publications derived from its annual conferences and comprises selected papers from the 2009 conference held at Harvard University. (For more information the launch of this digital series and its initial installment, On Periodization, please see the following link.) This volume features seven essays, in addition to the editor's introduction, exploring questions such as: How do genres come into being, and what distinguishes them one from another? What do considerations of genre occlude, as well as reveal? What kinds of generic categories might be useful for critical analysis today?

HEB will continue to offer further installments of this series, edited by Meredith L. McGill of Rutgers University, on an annual basis.

HEB Pricing for 2011-2012

ACLS Humanities E-Book is experiencing growing pains! This year, we have seen a dramatic increase in the size of the collection. With an average of 500 new titles added each year, the HEB program has now surpassed 3,300 titles of recognized high quality in the humanities. HEB just celebrated its 10th anniversary, passing the 1 million page mark!

Our growth reflects the popularity of HEB’s list and the continual improvement in content, search and access. The collection has expanded to include the highest-quality work in anthropology, linguistics, film and media studies, as well as sociology and philosophy. Additionally, HEB will continue to seek the best works in the humanities to create the most robust collection available in one package.

HEB will be making only moderate price increases this year, continuing to offer the most cost-effective resource in the humanities today. These price increases (effective as of August 1, 2011) are necessary to manage the growth in our operation, ongoing expansion of content and list development. As HEB has not raised its subscription rates in nearly five years, this reflects greater value based on the rapidly expanding list offered to its members. HEB continues to maintain competitive pricing despite the exponential growth of the collection. You can find our pricing on our website: http://www.humanitiesebook.org/pricingsubscriptions.html.

We continue to appreciate your loyalty and support of the ACLS Humanities E-Book program and its commitment to quality. And as always, we appreciate your feedback, thoughts and comments.

Drop us a line at:  info@hebook.org.