WINTER RECOMENDATIONS
Find The Academy and the Award and Sculpting a Life wherever books are sold!
The first behind-the-scenes history of the organization of the Academy. A crucial contribution to Hollywood history.
The Oscars are just around the corner and film fanatics are buzzing with excitement for Hollywood’s biggest night. Brush up on your Academy history with The Academy and the Award, the inside story of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Business moguls bump elbows with awards darlings in this witty and candid book full of insight from the Academy’s former executive director. The Academy and the Award is a delightful read, and the perfect gift for the cinephile in your life.
Here is the fascinating tale of how the coveted golden statuette of Oscar almost wasn’t and came to be. How I wish I had known this history when I joined the academy. Pure magic!
— Kathy Bates, Oscar recipient and former Academy Governor
Sculpting a Life is the first biography of sculptor Chana Orloff (1888—1968), and the first work to include stories from her unpublished memoir. Paula J. Birnbaum weaves a wide range of interviews and archival sources into a compelling narrative, exploring the artist’s early life in Ukraine, her family’s move to Palestine, her years in Paris during two World Wars and thereafter to time in Israel. Women artists like Orloff have been overlooked by history and excluded from the canon of modernism within art history. Sculpting a Life brings Orloff to the forefront, tells her story at long last, and shows her historical and artistic significance.
A truly vital monument to Chana Orloff’s extraordinarily fascinating place in our extended and fuller understanding of the art of the twentieth century and its creative communities.
— Griselda Pollock, Professor Emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art, University of Leeds
The Art of the Dealer – who made Picasso Picasso?
Belonging and Betrayal is a brilliantly etched portrayal of the family firms that maneuvered, battled, adapted, persevered, and prospered over decades and centuries. In this masterwork, Dellheim shows how to understand the business of culture. — Jonathan Karp, Jewish Review of Books
Find the full review here.
When Freedom Speaks, your guide to the First Amendment
“Greenky’s easy-to-read primer offers general readers and students a telling history and framework for understanding the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodologies courts commonly use to negotiate clashing and competing constitutional values and individual rights to free speech.”—Library Journal
An intimate conversation with forty women across the world

The Washington Post has published an in-depth review of Ellen Warner’s The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fifty. This book is a collection of photographic portraits and interviews, depicting how the second half of life is experienced by women from many different cultures. From a French actress to a British novelist, from an Algerian nomad to a Saudi Arabian doctor, and an American politician, Ellen Warner traveled all over the world interviewing women about their lives.
“Reading Ellen Warner’s The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fiftyis like having one of those intimate conversations with each of 40 women from around the world as they share their formative experiences and advice for younger generations. Their insights are particularly valuable in a country where intergenerational learning is often lost…”
— Maria Leonard Olsen, The Washington Post
Brandeis Magazine on Brandeis University Press at 50!
Brandeis University Press is celebrating its 50th anniversary, a milestone that seemed in doubt only a few years ago, by publishing at an unprecedented clip, offering more than 20 new titles in its 2021 catalog.
“We’re really consolidating what we’ve achieved and are now looking to the future,” says press director Sue Ramin. “We want to publish excellent books that sell — and make an impact.”
Brandeis University Press to exclusively manage the University Press of New England
Brandeis University has acquired and is now the sole owner of all titles and copyrights of the University Press of New England, under a deal finalized on Jan. 1 with Dartmouth College. Going forward, Brandeis University Press will oversee the UPNE list, excluding Dartmouth College Press titles.
“Brandeis University Press is pleased to begin representing these titles and working with their authors going forward. The titles we acquired will dovetail well with BUP’s current titles and our expertise. I am grateful to Dartmouth College for their excellent past stewardship and for working so cooperatively with us as we worked on this acquisition. UPNE has a wonderful deep backlist and we are thankful to the UPNE leadership, editors, and staff who created this excellent list of books. We hope to keep many of these titles in print and look forward to actively promoting and reissuing them,” —Sue Ramin, Director
Publishers of Critically Acclaimed, Award-Winning Books
Brandeis University Press publishes peer-reviewed, critically acclaimed, award-winning books for scholars, students and engaged readers.
Our books cover diverse subjects and perspectives relating to art, politics, culture, history, gender, religion, philosophy, language and literature. Our goal is to illuminate subjects of all stripes with intelligence, curiosity and care.