Extraction ecologies and the literature of the long exhaustion

How literature of the British imperial world contended with the social and environmental consequences of industrial miningThe 1830s to the 1930s saw the rise of large-scale industrial mining in the British imperial world. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller examines how literature of this era reckoned with ...

American shtetl

A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soilSettled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the ...

Ant architecture

An unprecedented look at the complex and beautiful world of underground ant architectureWalter Tschinkel has spent much of his career investigating the hidden subterranean realm of ant nests. This wonderfully illustrated book takes you inside an unseen world where thousands of ants build intricat...

How birds evolve

A marvelous journey into the world of bird evolutionHow Birds Evolve explores how evolution has shaped the distinctive characteristics and behaviors we observe in birds today. Douglas Futuyma describes how evolutionary science illuminates the wonders of birds, ranging over topics such as the mean...

Indebted

How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class familiesThe struggle to pay for college is a defining feature of middle-class life in America. Caitlin Zaloom takes readers into homes of families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequen...

Super courses

From the bestselling author of What the Best College Teachers Do, the story of a new breed of amazingly innovative courses that inspire students and improve learningDecades of research have produced profound insights into how student learning and motivation can be unleashed—and it’s not through t...

Firepower

How the NRA became a political juggernaut by influencing the behaviors and beliefs of everyday AmericansThe National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations—even despite widespread public s...

In my time of dying

An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuriesIn My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mo...

Forgery and memory at the end of the first millennium

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began fa...

Constructing community

A look at the benefits and consequences of the rise of community-based organizations in urban developmentWho makes decisions that shape the housing, policies, and social programs in urban neighborhoods? Who, in other words, governs? Constructing Community offers a rich ethnographic portrait of th...

Isis

An authoritative introduction to ISIS—now expanded and revised to bring events up to the presentThe Islamic State stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. However, its most striking and distinctive characteristic was its capacity to build govern...

Let's be reasonable

A conservative college professor's compelling defense of liberal educationNot so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative polit...

Nonstate warfare

How nonstate military strategies overturn traditional perspectives on warfareSince September 11th, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered i...

We are not born submissive

A philosophical exploration of female submission, using insights from feminist thinkers—especially Simone de Beauvoir—to reveal the complexities of women’s reality and lived experienceWhat role do women play in the perpetuation of patriarchy? On the one hand, popular media urges women to be indep...

On human nature

A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger ScrutonIn this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and phi...

Hitler's american model

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi GermanyNazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler’s American Model, James Whitman pres...

Byzantium

A captivating account of the legendary empire that made Western civilization possibleByzantium. The name evokes grandeur and exoticism—gold, cunning, and complexity. In this unique book, Judith Herrin unveils the riches of a quite different civilization. Avoiding a standard chronological account ...

The fate of rome

How devastating viruses, pandemics, and other natural catastrophes swept through the far-flung Roman Empire and helped to bring down one of the mightiest civilizations of the ancient worldHere is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the ...

Vanguard of the revolution

The first comprehensive political history of the communist partyVanguard of the Revolution is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. A. James McAdams argue...

Evidence for hope

A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights workEvidence for Hope makes the case that yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. Guantánamo is still open ...

What makes a terrorist

Why we need to think more like economists to successfully combat terrorismIf we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat, we must think more like economists do. Alan Krueger’s What Makes a Terrorist explains why our tactics in the fight against terr...

The quotable darwin

A treasure trove of illuminating and entertaining quotations from the legendary naturalistHere is Charles Darwin in his own words—the naturalist, traveler, scientific thinker, and controversial author of On the Origin of Species, the book that shook the Victorian world. Featuring hundreds of quot...

Heaven's touch

A breathtaking account of how the surrounding cosmos impacts life on EarthDid you know that as you read these words showers of high-speed particles from exploding stars are raining down on you? As you gaze into the starry sky, you might feel isolated from the Universe around you—but you're not. T...

The art of being governed

An innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the stateHow did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) deal with the demands of the state? In The Art of Being Governed, Michael Szonyi explores the myriad ways that families fulfil...

Bible nation

How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make America a “Bible nation”Like many evangelical Christians, the Green family of Oklahoma City believes that America was founded on a “biblical worldview as a Christian nation.” But the Greens are far from...

Midlife

How can you reconcile yourself with the lives you will never lead, with possibilities foreclosed, and with nostalgia for lost youth? How can you accept the failings of the past, the sense of futility in the tasks that consume the present, and the prospect of death that blights the future? In this...

The mexican heartland

A major new history of capitalism from the perspective of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, who sustained and resisted it for centuriesThe Mexican Heartland provides a new history of capitalism from the perspective of the landed communities surrounding Mexico City. In a sweeping analytical narrat...

Reputation

A compelling exploration of how reputation affects every aspect of contemporary lifeReputation touches almost everything, guiding our behavior and choices in countless ways. But it is also shrouded in mystery. Why is it so powerful when the criteria by which people and things are defined as good ...

Insomniac dreams

Nabokov's dream diary—published for the first timeOn October 14, 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, a lifelong insomniac, began a curious experiment. Over the next eighty days, immediately upon waking, he wrote down his dreams, following the instructions in An Experiment with Time by British philosopher Joh...

C. p. cavafy

C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) lived in relative obscurity in Alexandria, and a collected edition of his poems was not published until after his death. Now, however, he is regarded as the most important figure in twentieth-century Greek poetry, and his poems are considered among the most powerful in mo...

Under crescent and cross

Did Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages cohabit in a peaceful "interfaith utopia"? Or were Jews under Muslim rule persecuted, much as they were in Christian lands? Rejecting both polemically charged ideas as myths, Mark Cohen offers a systematic comparison of Jewish life in medieval Islam and Chr...

Remembering scottsboro

How one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the United States continues to haunt the nation’s racial psycheIn 1931, nine black youths were charged with raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. Despite meager and contradictory evidence, all nine were found guilty and eight of the defe...

On purpose

A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western thought, from ancient Greece to the presentCan we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and even Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which profoundly shook the idea, was una...

The extreme gone mainstream

How clothing brands coded with racist and nationalist symbols are bringing extremism into the German mainstreamFar right politics and extremist violence are on the rise across Europe, prompting scholars and policymakers to question why extremism has become so appealing to so many people. Cynthia ...

Stars and planets

The indispensable guide to the night sky—now in a newly updated and expanded editionIn this newly updated and expanded edition of their classic work, Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion illuminate the night sky as never before, providing novice stargazers and professional astronomers alike with the most i...

Multimethod research, causal mechanisms, and case studies

An innovative and accessible textbook on multimethod and case-study researchMultimethod research has become indispensable to doing social science, and is essential to anyone who conducts large-scale research projects in political science, sociology, education, comparative law, or business. This a...

The contentious public sphere

Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media...

Building an american empire

How American westward expansion was governmentally engineered to promote the formation of a white settler nationWestward expansion of the United States is most conventionally remembered for rugged individualism, geographic isolationism, and a fair amount of luck. Yet the establishment of the fort...

Presidential selection

Dickinson's misery

How do we know that Emily Dickinson wrote poems? How do we recognize a poem when we see one? In Dickinson's Misery, Virginia Jackson poses fundamental questions about reading habits we have come to take for granted. Because Dickinson's writing remained largely unpublished when she died in 1886, d...

The apotheosis of captain cook

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-c...

How the idea of religious toleration came to the west

Religious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present univers...

What is world literature?

World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of worl...

The promise of american life

The Promise of American Life is part of the bedrock of American liberalism, a classic that had a spectacular impact on national politics when it was first published in 1909 and that has been recognized ever since as a defining text of liberal reform. The book helped inspire Theodore Roosevelt's N...