Synopses & Reviews
"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance."
Willis G. Regier, The Chronicle Review
"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience."
The Times Higher Education Supplement
"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes."
New Criterion
"Published in the geek-chic format."
BookForum
"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs."
Tricycle
"Now an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. . . . Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit text on the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes. Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics 30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Mahabhárat itself Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartrihari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature."
LiveMint
"The Clay Sanskrit Library has recently set out to change the scene by making available well-translated dual-language (English and Sanskrit) editions of popular Sanskritic texts for the public."
Namarupa
"By any measure the Ramáyana of Valmiki is one of the great epic poems of world literature. . . . Now the New York University Press is republishing the translations, without notes and with minimal introductions, in more accessible and less expensive editions, as part of the Clay Sanskrit Library. So far the translators have been eminently successful."
The New York Sun [Refers to the nine volumes of the Ramáyana]
Rama goes to the monkey capital of Kishkíndha to seek help in finding Sita, and meets Hánuman, the greatest of the monkey heroes. There are two claimants for the monkey throne, Valin and Sugríva; Rama helps Sugríva win the throne, and in return Sugríva promises to help in the search for Sita. The monkey hordes set out in every direction to scour the world, but without success until an old vulture tells them she is in Lanka. Hánuman promises to leap over the ocean to Lanka to pursue the search.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Review
“The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance.”
“No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience.”
“The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes.”
“Published in the geek-chic format.”
“Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs.”
Review
“In Sperm Counts, Moores new book about the cultural meanings of sperm, she tells this story to illustrate her own childhood naiveté about a substance that, as she now sees it, is far from simple. These days, according to Moore, sperm has tremendous cultural meaning—and looking at it in its many contexts, from children's books to pornography, can tell us a great deal about the skittish state of American masculinity. . . . Sperm Counts is a serious book, and the first on its subject. But it also includes anecdotes from Moores life, lending it a more conversational tone than most academic works. The book's margins are even squiggled with sketches of sperm—flip the pages and they swim around. (This is a subject matter, after all, that requires a certain degree of levity.) Moore happily lists spermatic nicknames (‘baby gravy, ‘gentlemens relish, ‘pimp juice) before skewering, in a later chapter, the burgeoning home sperm-test industry (sample ad slogan: ‘I don't know how that semen got in my underwear!).”
-Salon.com,
Review
“You may never look at the family jewels the same way again”
-Conceive Magazine,
Review
“Written from a cultural, social, gender study standpoint, and provides useful insights for an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural examination of masculinity. . . . Anyone interested in semen, sperm, sperm donation, sex education or pornography will have something to learn.”
-Sex Roles,
Review
“[Moore] examines how sperm is seen through a variety of social lenses, including pornography, sperm banking, children's books on reproduction and criminal DNA evidence.”
-Between the Lines Magazine,
Review
“Incredibly well researched and captivating read.”
-Girlwithpen.blogspot.com,
Synopsis
Rama goes to the monkey capital of Kishk-ndha to seek help in finding Sita, and meets Hnuman, the greatest of the monkey heroes. There are two claimants for the monkey throne, Valin and Sugr-va; Rama helps Sugr-va win the throne, and in return Sugr-va promises to help in the search for Sita. The monkey hordes set out in every direction to scour the world, but without success until an old vulture tells them she is in Lanka. Hnuman promises to leap over the ocean to Lanka to pursue the search.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Synopsis
Rama goes to the monkey capital of Kishkíndha to seek help in finding Sita, and meets Hánuman, the greatest of the monkey heroes. There are two claimants for the monkey throne, Valin and Sugríva; Rama helps Sugríva win the throne, and in return Sugríva promises to help in the search for Sita. The monkey hordes set out in every direction to scour the world, but without success until an old vulture tells them she is in Lanka. Hánuman promises to leap over the ocean to Lanka to pursue the search.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Synopsis
2007 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleWinner of the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
It has been called sperm, semen, seed, cum, jizz, spunk, gentlemen's relish, and splooge. But however the “tacky, opaque liquid that comes out of the penis” is described, the very act of defining “sperm” and “semen” depends on your point of view. For Lisa Jean Moore, how sperm comes to be known is based on who defines it (a scientist vs. a defense witness, for example), under what social circumstances it is found (a doctors office vs. a crime scene), and for what purposes it will be used (in vitro fertilization vs. DNA analysis). Examining semen historically, medically, and culturally, Sperm Counts is a penetrating exploration of its meaning and power.
Using a “;follow that sperm” approach, Moore shows how representations of sperm and semen are always in flux, tracing their twisting journeys from male reproductive glands to headline news stories and presidential impeachment trials. Much like the fluid of semen itself can leak onto fabrics and into bodies, its meanings seep into our consciousness over time. Moores analytic lens yields intriguing observations of how sperm is “spent” and “reabsorbed” as it spurts, swims, and careens through penises, vaginas, test tubes, labs, families, cultures, and politics.
Drawn from fifteen years of research, Sperm Counts examines historical and scientific documents, children's “facts of life” books, pornography, the Internet, forensic transcripts and sex worker narratives to explain how semen got so complicated. Among other things, understanding how we produce, represent, deploy and institutionalize semen-biomedically, socially and culturally-provides valuable new perspectives on the changing social position of men and the evolving meanings of masculinity. Ultimately, as Moore reveals, sperm is intimately involved in not only the physical reproduction of males and females, but in how we come to understand ourselves as men and women.
About the Author
Lisa Jean Moore is Professor of Sociology and Womens Studies and Coordinator of Gender Studies at Purchase College, State University of New York. She is author of Sperm Counts: Overcome by Mans Most Precious Fluid, co-author of Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility , and co-editor of the forthcoming collection The Body Reader (all from NYU Press).