Thrill Ride

The Transformation of Hersheypark

John R. Haddad

“Combining delightful storytelling and writing with engaging research, Thrill Ride takes us on an intimate and sweeping journey through Hershey’s factory town to early Hersheypark.”Gary Cross, coauthor of The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century

Emma Stebbins

Carving Out History

Edited by Karli Wurzelbacher, Foreword by Tony Kushner, Essays by Patricia Cronin, Ricky Flores, David J. Getsy, Melissa L. Gustin, Katrin Horn, and Laura Turner Igoe

With the order for the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, Emma Stebbins became the first woman to earn a public sculpture commission from the city of New York. Today, this monument is a beloved global icon, while the full scope of Stebbins’s history-making life and work is virtually unknown. Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History recognizes her as one of the most significant American sculptors of the nineteenth century.

The Pink Scar

How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ+ Rights

Thomas R. Dunn

“The Pink Scar is an urgently needed book. In the face of ongoing and renewed LGBTQ+ erasure from public memory, this book is a must-read for students of public memory and anyone interested in Holocaust and/or LGBTQ+ history.”&mdash:Pamela VanHaitsma, author of Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age: A Rhetorical Education

Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature

Adriaan van Klinken

“Adriaan van Klinken’s book breaks new critical ground. He brings a keen, probing intellect to the task of dissecting the provocative and fascinating ways in which Nigerian literature is shaped by, and reshapes, traditions of Christianity. Van Klinken’s is a consistently absorbing and indispensable critical account.”—Okey Ndibe, author of Foreign Gods, Inc.

Congratulations to Felipe Pereda, whose book The Man Who Broke Michelangelo’s Nose has been named the winner of the 2025 Sheila ffolliott Prize for the Best Book in Art History from The Sixteenth Century Society!

Congratulations to Loretta Victoria Ramirez, whose book The Wound and the Stitch: A Genealogy of the Female Body from Medieval Iberia to SoCal Chicanx Art won the bronze medal for the 2025 International Latino Book Awards Best Academic Themed Book, College Level!

Coaster 101 said of John R. Haddad’s Thrill Ride: “After reading the book, I can’t wait to return to the park—I will have a newfound appreciation for what’s there today and for the legacy built by those who made it happen.”

Mediaevalia is new to PSU Press, and volume 46 recently published! Check out “The Wounds of Saint Francis and Female Devotion in an Illuminated Legenda Maior,” by Holly Flora, free to read until 6/6/2026.

American Gothic Studies has published its second issue! Read “Lichenthropy: Possibility Space and the Chthulucene in The Last of Us” by Krista Collier-Jarvis, free to read until 5/1/2026.

Congratulations to Matt Poland, whose article “Eliot at Yale” in George Eliot—George Henry Lewes Studies won the 2024 Donald Gray Prize for best essay published in the field of Victorian Studies from the North American Victorian Studies Association! The article is free to read until 6/6/26.

Constructing the Human in the Hebrew Bible

Tanner E. Walker

“Walker challenges scholars of the Hebrew Bible to take seriously the multiple ways these texts construct and deconstruct categories like human/animal. In the process, he provides compelling new readings of well-known biblical narratives in light of this larger question about constructed humanness.”— Phillip Michael Sherman, author of Babel’s Tower Translated: Genesis 11 and Ancient Jewish Interpretation

Exploring the Composition of the Pentateuch, Volume 2

Edited by L. S. Baker Jr., Kenneth Bergland, Felipe A. Masotti, and A. Rahel Wells

“This diverse collection of essays challenges both the status quo and cutting-edge theories in today’s Pentateuchal historical critical research. Its essays challenge oft unchallenged presuppositions related to the dating and literary coherence of the Pentateuch, offering a wide assortment of effective arguments engaging its non-Western literary coherence, literary reuse and dependence, ancient scribal and editorial practices, dialectical variation in diachronic linguistics, among other important topics.”—Neal A. Huddleston, Trinity International University

Sleepless Planet

A Graphic Guide to Healing from Insomnia

Maureen Burdock

“Restless readers would benefit from putting this on their nightstand.”
—Publishers Weekly

Heartcore

Štěpánka Jislová

One of New York Public Library’s Best New Comics for Adults of 2025