A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Associat
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year on Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet UnionThe Russian oil industry—which vies with Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer and exporter of oil, provid
Economists make confident assertions in op-ed columns and on cable news—so why are their explanations often at odds with equally confident assertions from other economists? And why are all economic
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearAccording to census projections, by 2050 nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Latino, and the overwhelming majority of these will be of Mexican
Since the fifteenth century, when humanist writers began to speak of a “middle” period in history linking their time to the ancient world, the nature of the Middle Ages has been widely debated. Ac
A radical reconsideration of how we develop the qualities that make us human, based on decades of cutting-edge experimental work by the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Ant
Why do American ghettos persist? Scholars and commentators often identify some factor—such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime—as the key to solving the problem and recommend po
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceIn 1858, challenger Abraham Lincoln debated incumbent Stephen Douglas seven times in the race for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. More was at stake than s
Shapiro draws on recent work in the philosophy of action to develop an original and compelling answer to this age-old question. Breaking with a long tradition in jurisprudence, he argues that the law
There are always more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in one's philosophy---and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in
We Often Speak of the Dignity owed to a person. And dignity is a word that regularly appears, in political speeches, Charters are promulgated in its name, and appeals to it are made when people all ov
Two hundred and thirty-four striking photographs of the port of Boston combine with interpretive commentary to recapture the flavor, buoyancy, and excitement of the city's years as one of the two or t
On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston’s Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event t
No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is part of who they are. Their “motherland” has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have be
