On rumors

Many of us are being misled. Claiming to know dark secrets about public officials, hidden causes of the current economic situation, and nefarious plans and plots, those who spread rumors know precisely what they are doing. And in the era of social media and the Internet, they know a lot about how...

Tear off the masks!

When revolutions happen, they change the rules of everyday life--both the codified rules concerning the social and legal classifications of citizens and the unwritten rules about how individuals present themselves to others. This occurred in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which la...

Changing the world

In May of 1919, women from around the world gathered in Zurich, Switzerland, and proclaimed, "We dedicate ourselves to peace!" Just months after the end of World War I, the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom--a group led by American progressive Jane Addams and comprising veteran ca...

Cross and scepter

A concise history of medieval ScandinaviaChristianity and European-style monarchy—the cross and the scepter—were introduced to Scandinavia in the tenth century, a development that was to have profound implications for all of Europe. Cross and Scepter is a concise history of the Scandinavian kingd...

Byzantine matters

Why the marginalized story of Byzantium has much to teach us about Western historyFor many of us, Byzantium remains "byzantine"—obscure, marginal, difficult. Despite the efforts of some recent historians, prejudices still deform popular and scholarly understanding of the Byzantine civilization, o...

Between mutiny and obedience

Literary and historical conventions have long painted the experience of soldiers during World War I as simple victimization. Leonard Smith, however, argues that a complex dialogue of resistance and negotiation existed between French soldiers and their own commanders. In this case study of wartime...

Intimacy and exclusion

During the years leading up to the revolutions of 1848, liberal and conservative Germans engaged in a contest over the terms of the Enlightenment legacy and the meaning of Christianity--a contest that grew most intense in the Grand Duchy of Baden, where liberalism first became an influential poli...

The life of roman republicanism

In recent years, Roman political thought has attracted increased attention as intellectual historians and political theorists have explored the influence of the Roman republic on major thinkers from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Held up as a "third way" between liberalism and communitaria...

Wild profusion

Wild Profusion tells the fascinating story of biodiversity conservation in Indonesia in the decade culminating in the great fires of 1997-98--a time when the country's environment became a point of concern for social and environmental activists, scientists, and the many fishermen and farmers nati...

The making of the ancient greek economy

A revolutionary account of the ancient Greek economyThis comprehensive introduction to the ancient Greek economy revolutionizes our understanding of the subject and its possibilities. Alain Bresson is one of the world's leading authorities in the field, and he is helping to redefine it. Here he c...

The age of garvey

A groundbreaking exploration of Garveyism's global influence during the interwar years and beyondJamaican activist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem in 1917. By the early 1920s, his program of African liberation and racial uplift had attract...

Principles of animal locomotion

How can geckoes walk on the ceiling and basilisk lizards run over water? What are the aerodynamic effects that enable small insects to fly? What are the relative merits of squids' jet-propelled swimming and fishes' tail-powered swimming? Why do horses change gait as they increase speed? What dete...

The loneliness of the black republican

The story of black conservatives in the Republican Party from the New Deal to Ronald ReaganCovering more than four decades of American social and political history, The Loneliness of the Black Republican examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, fro...

Aristotle's ethics

Aristotle's moral philosophy is a pillar of Western ethical thought. It bequeathed to the world an emphasis on virtues and vices, happiness as well-being or a life well lived, and rationally motivated action as a mean between extremes. Its influence was felt well beyond antiquity into the Middle ...

The secular city

Since its initial publication in 1965, The Secular City has been hailed as a classic for its nuanced exploration of the relationships among the rise of urban civilization, the decline of hierarchical, institutional religion, and the place of the secular within society. Now, half a century later, ...

A chinese pioneer family

1989

How the political events of 1989 shaped Europe after the Cold War1989 explores the momentous events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the effects they have had on our world ever since. Based on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin, ...

The emerging republican majority

One of the most important and controversial books in modern American politics, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) explained how Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968—and why the Republicans would go on to dominate presidential politics for the next quarter century. Rightly or wrongly, th...

Rough country

How the history of Texas illuminates America's post–Civil War pastTracing the intersection of religion, race, and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the...

Number theory

An introductory textbook with a unique historical approach to teaching number theoryThe natural numbers have been studied for thousands of years, yet most undergraduate textbooks present number theory as a long list of theorems with little mention of how these results were discovered or why they ...

The mystery of the invisible hand

Economics professor and amateur detective Henry Spearman tackles a mystery where the price of art is murderIn The Mystery of the Invisible Hand, Henry Spearman, an economics professor with a knack for solving crimes, is pulled into a case that mixes campus intrigue, stolen art, and murder. Arrivi...

Do zombies dream of undead sheep?

A look at the true nature of the zombie brainEven if you've never seen a zombie movie or television show, you could identify an undead ghoul if you saw one. With their endless wandering, lumbering gait, insatiable hunger, antisocial behavior, and apparently memory-less existence, zombies are the ...

A house divided

This anthology brings together under one cover the most important abolitionist and--unique to this volume--proslavery documents written in the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It makes accessible to students, scholars, and general readers the breadth of the slavery...

Confucian perfectionism

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising fr...

Seeing with their hearts

At the turn of the last century, as industrialists and workers made Chicago the hardworking City of Big Shoulders celebrated by Carl Sandburg, Chicago women articulated an alternative City of Homes in which the welfare of residents would be the municipal government's principal purpose. Seeing Wit...

Would you kill the fat man?

From the bestselling coauthor of Wittgenstein's Poker, a fascinating tour through the history of moral philosophyA runaway train is racing toward five men who are tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. You are standing on a footbridge looking down on...

Victorian sappho

What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealiz...

The new neotropical companion

The acclaimed guide to the ecology and natural history of the American tropics—now fully updated and expandedThe New Neotropical Companion is the completely revised and expanded edition of a book that has helped thousands of people to understand the complex ecology and natural history of the most...

Wizards, aliens, and starships

Explaining the science behind science fiction and fantasy—from the probable to the impossibleFrom space elevators to interstellar travel, science fiction and fantasy writers have come up with some brilliant, innovative ideas. Yet how plausible are these ideas—for instance, could Mr. Weasley’s fly...

A history of modern french literature

An accessible and authoritative new history of French literature, written by a highly distinguished transatlantic group of scholarsThis book provides an engaging, accessible, and exciting new history of French literature from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, from Rabelais and Margue...

Transcultural cinema

David MacDougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe. His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith MacDougall) include The Wedding Camels, Lorang's Way, T...

Hamlet in purgatory

In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fal...

International ethics

Symmetry

Symmetry is a classic study of symmetry in mathematics, the sciences, nature, and art from one of the twentieth century's greatest mathematicians. Hermann Weyl explores the concept of symmetry beginning with the idea that it represents a harmony of proportions, and gradually departs to examine it...

A short history of medieval philosophy

Pterosaurs

The most authoritative illustrated book on flying reptiles availableFor 150 million years, the skies didn't belong to birds—they belonged to the pterosaurs. These flying reptiles, which include the pterodactyls, shared the world with the nonavian dinosaurs until their extinction 65 million years ...

Monarchs and milkweed

The fascinating and complex evolutionary relationship of the monarch butterfly and the milkweed plantMonarch butterflies are one of nature's most recognizable creatures, known for their bright colors and epic annual migration from the United States and Canada to Mexico. Yet there is much more to ...

Evolution's bite

Whether we realize it or not, we carry in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. Our teeth are like living fossils that can be studied and compared to those of our ancestors to teach us how we became human. In Evolution’s Bite, noted paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar brings together for the first ...

Finance and the good society

Nobel Prize-winning economist explains why we need to reclaim finance for the common goodThe reputation of the financial industry could hardly be worse than it is today in the painful aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. New York Times best-selling economist Robert Shiller is no apologist for ...

Allegory

Anyone who has ever said one thing and meant another has spoken in the mode of allegory. The allegorical expression of ideas pervades literature, art, music, religion, politics, business, and advertising. But how does allegory really work and how should we understand it? For more than forty years...

Government paternalism

Should governments save people from themselves? Do governments have the right to influence citizens' behavior related to smoking tobacco, eating too much, not saving enough, drinking alcohol, or taking marijuana—or does this create a nanny state, leading to infantilization, demotivation, and brea...

Hegel's social ethics

Hegel’s Social Ethics offers a fresh and accessible interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s most famous book, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Drawing on important recent work on the social dimensions of Hegel’s theory of knowledge, Molly Farneth shows how his account of how we know rests on his account o...

The analytic tradition in philosophy, volume 2

An in-depth history of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of languageThis is the second of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philos...

Capitalism without capital

Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the abi...

The struggle to reform our colleges

Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from hereDuring the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online le...