New on HEB: Three Gutenberg-e Titles

HEB has just released three additional titles in its ongoing Gutenberg-e series. These latest installments complete the HEB edition of this pathbreaking collaboration between Columbia University Press and the American Historical Association intended to make innovative scholarship available to readers in a digital format. Support for the Gutenberg-e initiative was provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Newly available on HEB, Societies, Religion, and History: Central East Tanzanians and the World They Created, c. 200 BCE to 1800 CE by Rhonda Gonzales delves into the history of the Ruvu peoples living along the central Tanzania coast. The work explores the archaeological and linguistic significance of this particular region, which was central to brokering economic and other interactions between various societal and geographic groups over a period of hundreds of years. 

Laura J. Mitchell's Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa  addresses colonial/imperial expansion and conflict between representatives of the Dutch East India Company and indigenous peoples, as well as Indian-Ocean slaves, in South Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—bringing to light the habits and practices of European settlers outside of organized political and military efforts that proved instrumental to exerting colonial control over local frontier regions.

Finally, Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity by Margaret Poulos investigates the symbolism of depictions of women-in-arms and well as actual historic female participation in three armed conflicts: the War of Independence or Greek Revolution of 1821, the National Resistance movement (1941–44) and the Greek Civil War (1946–49), in a dissertation that addresses the intersections between nationalism, militarism and feminism.

HEB is pleased to offer its own editions of all 35 prize-winning books in the series in a cross-searchable, XML format. For a complete list of titles, please see this link.

HEB's Top Users for 2013

Below is our list of the twenty-five institutional subscribers to ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) with the highest usage for 2013. Among these are some of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the US, the United Kingdom and Canada.

1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2. University of Toronto, Toronto, CA
3. York University, Toronto, CA
4. Harvard University
5. American Public University System
6. Columbia University
7. The University of Chicago
8. Durham University, Durham, UK
9. Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
10. New York University
11. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
12. Yale University
13. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
14. University of Wisconsin, Madison
15. McGill University
16. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
17. Stanford University
18. University of Sydney
19. London School of Economics, UK
20. University of California, San Diego
21. University of California, Berkeley
22. University of Liverpool, UK
23. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
24. Princeton University
25. University of Virginia

Usage statistics reflect both page views and searches.

For a complete list of current subscribers, please see this page.

New Participating Publishers for 2014

HEB is pleased to announce that we have recently partnered with four new university presses in our efforts to bring scholarship of enduring value to our subscribers. Our most recently signed collaborating publishers, who will be contributing to our upcoming title release in summer 2014, are Southern Illinois University Press, Baylor University Press, Michigan State University Press and University of Toronto Press.

The number of publishers who have elected to work with HEB now stands at 112, including both university and some commercial presses. All content has been vetted by scholars and/or consists of books that have won prizes in their fields. 

Please see our growing list of contributing publishers here.

HEB's Top Ten Titles for July 2013-December 2013

As we do every six months, HEB is pleased to publish another top-hit titles list, covering the second half of 2013. The most frequently accessed titles in our collection of 4,000 books typically reflect course adoptions, and tend to feature a number of recurring books every cycle (such as, once again, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures, Henry Jenkins's Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Anne McClintock's Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest).

For the fall 2013 semester, we are seeing a rising interest in sociology, cultural studies, nationalism and post colonialism, women's and gender studies, religion, and technology. There are three new entries making their first appearance among the top-hit titles for this period: Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, David E. Nye's Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, and Karen McCarthy Brown's Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn.

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. Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York University Press, 2006)
4. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (Routledge, 1995)
5. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1996)
6. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2004)
7. Power, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Perseus Books, 2002)
8. Nye, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (MIT Press, 2006)
9. Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (University of California Press, 1991)
10. Mintz, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood (Harvard University Press, 2004)

Forthcoming in 2014: New Titles from Harvard University Press

ACLS Humanities E-Book's (HEB) forthcoming title release in early summer 2014 will include 49 titles from Harvard University Press, published between 1948 and 2010 and covering diverse areas such as European History, U.S. History, Asian History, Science & Technology, Women’s Studies, and Literature. Many of these books are prizewinners in their fields. Others were recommended by ACLS’s constituent learned societies, such as the American Academy of Religion, the World History Association, the American Society for Environmental History and the American Historical Association's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Historians Task Force.



Harvard University Press was among the original set of publishers to partner with HEB when the collection launched in 2002 (as the ACLS History E-Book Project). Founded in 1913, Harvard University Press continues to be a leading publisher of convergent works in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences, while also taking bold steps toward innovative partnerships and an expanded commitment to facilitating scholarly conversation around the globe.

HEB is pleased to be able to feature these new titles and continue our collaboration with Harvard University Press.

Forthcoming in 2014: New Titles from Oxford University Press

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is pleased to report that our forthcoming title release in early summer 2014 will include 112 titles published by Oxford University Press, covering areas from U.S. History to Women’s Studies to Music & Musicology. These titles are either prizewinners in their fields and/or have been recommended for inclusion in our collection by ACLS’s constituent learned societies, such as the American Academy of Religion, the World History Association and the American Society for Legal History, as especially valuable for course work, research and reference.

OUP was one of the original publishers to partner with HEB when the collection first launched (as the ACLS History E-Book Project) in 2002. As a department of the University of Oxford, OUP furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world’s largest university press with the widest global presence.

We are happy to be able to add to our offerings from this esteemed university press and look forward to continuing our collaboration with OUP in the future.

New on HEB: Three Gutenberg-e Titles

HEB is pleased  to release three new titles in its ongoing Gutenberg-e series.

In Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi draws on a range of archival, narrative, and oral historical sources in this treatment of the economy and society of nineteenth-century Afghanistan, paying special attention to the ramifications of British Indian colonialism.

Erika Lauren Lindgren’s Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany presents the material underpinnings of spirituality in female Dominican monasteries, as well as the sensual aspects of religious practice, taking into account the women's own documentation of their experiences of the monastic environment in so-called Sister-Books.

Bin Yang’s Between Winds and Clouds: the Making of Yunnan (Second Century BCE-Twentieth Century CE) addresses the transformation of an ethnically and culturally distinct region in Southeast Asia into a Chinese province over a period of 2000 years, and frames this process in a broad historical context that includes both local and international players.

All three books were selected by the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press as part of their Gutenberg-e initiative, awarding scholarship that incorporates innovative use of digital technology.