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TRANSACTIONS & MEMOIRS & PROCEEDINGS

Mary Pat McPherson, Executive Officer
Mary C. McDonald, Editor
Susan M. Babbitt, Associate Editor
Celeste Bivings, Editorial Assistant

The Publications Department of the American Philosophical Society continues to maintain the reputation for scholarly excellence that began with Benjamin Franklin and the publication of the first Transactions in 1771. This first series recorded Society activities, elections, deaths, etc., and reported on scholarly research in various disciplines in the humanities and sciences. Early publications included the findings of David Rittenhouse and the Transit of Venus. Today the Transactions is a highly respected series of monographs, five of which are currently published each year. Titles printed in 2010 include:

• Sporting with the Classics: The Latin Poetry of William Dillingham, by Estelle Haan
• Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1396–1529: Grammars, Lexica, and Classroom Texts, by Paul Botley
• Alhacen on Refraction: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 7 of Alhaen’s De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitāb al-Manāzir, by A. Mark Smith (WINNER OF THE 2010 J. F. LEWIS AWARD)
• The Ground Sloth Megalonyx (Xenartha: Megalonychidae) from the Pleistocene (Late Irvingtonian) Camelot Local Fauna, Dorchester County, South Carolina, by Stephen E. Fields
• Johann Schöner’s Globe of 1515: Transcription and Study, by Chet Van Duzer

A second series of books was started in 1937 with the first volume of the Memoirs, books of various lengths in many scholarly disciplines. Our publication in 2010 is Visual Mechanic Knowledge: The Workshop Drawings of Isaac Ebenezer Markham (1795–1825), New England Textile Mechanic, by David J. Jeremy and Polly C. Darnell.

The Society also publishes a quarterly journal, the Proceedings.  The first volume of the Proceedings published in 1838.  Articles in the journal include papers read at the Society's biannual meetings, independent essays sent to the APS by outside scholars, and biographical memoirs of Society members. Recent issues are available online on the APS website.

Our print-on-demand Lightning Rod Press series started in 2008. This year’s publication is Climate Crises in Human History, edited by A. Bruce Mainwaring, Robert Giegengack, and Clauio Vita-Finzi. The timely monograph considers the response of selected cultures to climate events that have been documented from the archaeological and geological records, and serves as a corrective to dogmatic claims about the future of climate and of mankind.

A new series started this year with the publication of Biographical Memoirs of Members of the American Philosophical Society. Obituaries of members that printed in the APS Yearbook and the Proceedings are being reprinted. Our first venture is Classics and Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. The distinguished classicists and archaeologists featured in this volume present a panorama of twentieth-century discoveries and developments in the study of Antiquity and the personalities behind them.

The APS Yearbook includes a listing of resident and international members, the President's Annual Message, the Report of the Executive Officer, and reports from the departments of the American Philosophical Society. It is available to the members of the American Philosophical Society on the Members Only website.

Previous volumes of our Transactions and Proceedings are available to scholars through JSTOR, an online library archive (www.jstor.org). We are a part of the Arts and Sciences Complement IV group. Volumes are archived with a three- to four-year window; currently titles through 2006 are available on the JSTOR site. Also, several of our more-popular Transactions and Memoirs titles that were out of print are available for on-demand printing. Requests can be made to our fulfillment service, Diane Publishing (orders [at] dianepublishing [dot] net).

Manuscripts may be sent to the Publications Department for review and discussion by the Committee on Publications. The Committee meets three times a year, in February, June, and October. All manuscripts are reviewed by at least two qualified scholars. See the APS stylesheet for further information.

Publications Department
American Philosophical Society
104 South Fifth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Ordering information

Please e-mail:
fulfillment [at] amphilsoc [dot] org
or
orders [at] dianepublishing [dot] net