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Hearing Things is a meditation on sound’s work in literature. Drawing on critical works and the commentaries of many poets and novelists who have paid close attention to the role of the ear in writing

Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation’s shifting mood and manners aft

Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana In?s de la Cruz,

Only a scholar as rich in learning as I. Bernard Cohen could do justice to a theme so subtle and yet so grand. Spanning five centuries and virtually all of scientific endeavor, Revolution in Science

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother

How do we get from the polis to the police? Or from Odysseus’ sirens to an ambulance’s? The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by e

Most of us have heard of black holes and supernovas, galaxies and the Big Bang. But few of us understand more than the bare facts about the universe we call home. Jo Dunkley combines her expertise as

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

That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journey—not just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in F

“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is every-thing.” So wrote Jo

Cundill Prize FinalistA Financial Times Book of the YearA Spectator Book of the YearA Five Books Book of the Year "Outstanding, original, and revolutionary. Favereau subjects the Mongols to a much-needed re-evaluation, showing how they were able not only to conquer but to control a vast empire. A remarkable book."--Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads "The Mongols have been ill-served by history, the victims of an unfortunate mixture of prejudice and perplexity...The Horde flourished, in Favereau's fresh, persuasive telling, precisely because it was not the one-trick homicidal rabble of legend."--Wall Street Journal "Fascinating...The Mongols were a sophisticated people with an impressive talent for government and a sensitive relationship with the natural world...An impressively researched and intelligently reasoned book."--Gerard DeGroot, The Times The Mongols are widely known for one thing: conquest. But in this first comprehensive history of the Horde, the western portion of th

Forty years in the making, this long-awaited reinterpretation of Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit is a landmark contribution to philosophy by one of the world’s best-known and most influential philosophers.In this much-anticipated work, Robert Brandom presents a completely new retelling of the romantic rationalist adventure of ideas that is Hegel’s classic The Phenomenology of Spirit. Connecting analytic, continental, and historical traditions, Brandom shows how dominant modes of thought in contemporary philosophy are challenged by Hegel.A Spirit of Trust is about the massive historical shift in the life of humankind that constitutes the advent of modernity. In his Critiques, Kant talks about the distinction between what things are in themselves and how they appear to us; Hegel sees Kant’s distinction as making explicit what separates the ancient and modern worlds. In the ancient world, normative statuses—judgments of what ought to be—were taken to state objective facts. In the mode

An enduring theme of Western philosophy is that we are all one another’s equals. Yet the principle of basic equality is woefully under-explored in modern moral and political philosophy. In a major new work, Jeremy Waldron attempts to remedy that shortfall with a subtle and multifaceted account of the basis for the West’s commitment to human equality.What does it mean to say we are all one another’s equals? Is this supposed to distinguish humans from other animals? What is human equality based on? Is it a religious idea, or a matter of human rights? Is there some essential feature that all human beings have in common? Waldron argues that there is no single characteristic that serves as the basis of equality. He says the case for moral equality rests on four capacities that all humans have the potential to possess in some degree: reason, autonomy, moral agency, and ability to love. But how should we regard the differences that people display on these various dimensions? And what are we t

A compendium of words, phrases, and local meanings has been culled from years of research, using thousands of interviews with representative American communities

Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean: itinerant charismatic practitioners journeying from place to

Stephen Skowronek's wholly innovative study demonstrates that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. In an afterword to this new

Michel Winock’s biography situates Gustave Flaubert’s life and work in France’s century of great democratic transition. Flaubert did not welcome the egalitarian society predicted by Tocqueville. Wary

America’s criminal justice policy reflects irrational fears stoked by politicians seeking to win election. A preeminent legal scholar argues that reform guided by evidence, not politics and emotions,

Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination,

Walter Benjamin was perhaps the twentieth century's most elusive intellectual. His writings defy categorization, and his improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. In a major new b

In this monumental history of the First World War, Germany’s leading historian of the twentieth century’s first great catastrophe explains the war’s origins, course, and consequences. With an unrivale

Humans possess the most expressive faces in the animal kingdom. Adam Wilkins presents evidence ranging from the fossil record to recent findings of genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biolo

Robert Service completes his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union in an eagerly anticipated, authoritative biography of Leon Trotsky.Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and

Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book PrizeMost of us learn about science from media coverage, and anyone seeking factual information on climate change, vaccine safety, genetically modified foods, or the d

In Europe today, staunchly nationalist parties such as France’s National Front and the Austrian Freedom Party are identified as far-right movements, though supporters seldom embrace that label. More o

To all who declare that American democracy is broken—riven by partisanship, undermined by extremism, and corrupted by wealth—history offers hope. In nearly every generation since the nation’s founding

The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American s

Here is the first reliable edition of Keats's complete poems designed expressly for general readers and students.Upon its publication in 1978, Stillinger's The Poems of John Keats won exceptionally h

A Times Higher Education Book of the WeekUnder certain conditions, the right small simple actions can produce large and complex “butterfly effects,” as the #MeToo movement has shown. Thirty years afte

Prostitute, apostle, evangelist—the conversion of Mary Magdalene from sinner to saint is one of the Christian tradition’s most compelling stories, and one of the most controversial. The identity of th

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, awarded both the Pulitzer and the Bancroft prizes, has become a classic of American historical literature. Hailed at its first appearance as “the mo

According to tradition, the First Crusade began at Pope Urban II’s instigation and culminated in July 1099, when western European knights liberated Jerusalem. But what if the First Crusade’s real ca

Among the least-chronicled aspects of post–World War II European intellectual and cultural history is the story of the Russian intelligentsia after Stalin. Young Soviet veterans had returned from the

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the ideas that most Americans lived by started to fragment. Mid-century concepts of national consensus, managed markets, gender and racial identities, ci

From about 1600 to 1800, the Qing empire of China expanded to unprecedented size. Through astute diplomacy, economic investment, and a series of ambitious military campaigns into the heart of Central

Dip into the Dictionary of American Regional English and enter the rich, endlessly entertaining, ever-changing world of American speech. Learn what a Minnesota grandma is making when she fixes lefse,

A EuropeNow Editor’s Pick A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year“Pieter M. Judson’s book informs and stimulates. If his account of Habsburg achievements, especially in the 18th century, is ra

Religion has not been a popular target for economic analysis. Yet the tools of economics can offer deep insights into how religious groups compete, deliver social services, and reach out to potential

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 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