Most contemporary philosophers would call themselves naturalists, yet there is little consensus on what naturalism entails. Originally signifying the notion that science should be the paradigm for phi
Economic stagnation, financial crisis, and increasing inequality have provoked worldwide debate about the reshaping of the market economy. But few are willing to risk a reorientation of dominant ideas
In this groundbreaking book, leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals examine how and why the Holocaust and the Nakba are interlinked without blurring fundamental differences between them. While these tw
Academic freedom rests on a shared belief that the production of knowledge advances the common good. In an era of education budget cuts, wealthy donors intervening in university decisions, and right-w
Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and religiou
Life and Money uncovers the contentious history of the boundary between economy and politics in liberalism. Avoiding the established categories of state and market, Ute Tellmann focuses instead on the
The achievements of the democratic constitutional order have long been associated with the sovereign nation-state. Civic nationalist assumptions hold that social solidarity and social plurality are co
A leading authority explains the origins and history of Chinese medicine from its beginnings in antiquity to today. Paul U. Unschuld describes medicine's close connection with culture and politics thr
Founded by a band of young iconoclasts, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood stunned Victorian England with its revaluation of culture and lifestyle. With Pre-Raphaelitism ascendant in the 1850s and canonic
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most important books of the twentieth century. Its influence reaches far beyond the philosophy of science, and its key terms, such a
Would you like to learn to pray like a medieval Christian? In Mary and the Art of Prayer, Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of the medieval practice of praisingMary through the complex of prayers
For close to a century, Harlem has been the iconic black neighborhood widely seen as the heart of African American life and culture, both celebrated as the vanguard of black self-determination and lam
Nora M. Alter argues that the essay film is a hybrid genre that fuses three major categories of film: feature, art, and documentary. Much like the written essay, its literary predecessor, the essay fi
For all of their focus on asset prices, financial economists rarely ask if assets are priced ethically—that is, if their prices are compatible with the public good. Yet in a world facing major, possib
In the early modern world, the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires sprawled across a vast swath of the earth, from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean. These three polities each encompassed a wide ran
What are the causes of war? How might the world be made more peaceful? In this landmark work of international relations theory, first published in 1959, the eminent realist scholar Kenneth N. Waltz of
The U.S. stock market has been transformed over the last twenty-five years. Once a market in which human beings traded at human speeds, it is now an electronic market pervaded by algorithmic trading,
The year 1873 was one of financial crises. A boom in railway construction had spurred a bull market—but when the boom turned to bust, transatlantic panic quickly became a worldwide economic downturn.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault project is an arctic archive designed to preserve the world’s agricultural biodiversity. What do it and other novel forms of storage tell us about our relationship to th
The New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s is celebrated as a time when maverick directors bucked the system. Against the backdrop of counterculture sensibilities and the prominence of auteur
Imagination allows us to step out of the ordinary, but also to transform it, in our sense of wonder and play, artistic inspiration and innovation, or the eureka moment of a scientific breakthrough. In
Recent political thought has grappled with a crisis in philosophical foundations: How do we justify the explicit and implicit normative claims and assumptions that guide political decisions and social
As consumers, our access to—and appetite for—information about what and how we buy continues to grow. Powered by social media, increasingly we look at the companies behind the products and are disappo
In April 1859, at age fifty, Shinohara Chuemon left his old life behind. Chuemon, a well-off farmer in his home village, departed for the new port city of Yokohama, where he remained for the next four
A seminal work in health economics, Michael Grossman's The Demand for Health, introduced a new theoretical model for determining the health status of the population when first published in 1972. His w
Nationality is the most important legal mechanism for sorting and classifying the world's population today. An individual's state of birth or naturalization determines where he or she can and cannot b
Philosophy has inherited a powerful impulse to embrace either dualism or a reductive monism—either a radical separation of mind and body or the reduction of mind to body. From its origins in the writi
Japanese memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over the nation's society and culture. Concentrating on the years immediately before and after the war (1937 to 1952), Michael Lucken explo
With a nation seemingly more divided than ever, many worry that Americans risk losing ground on solving the complex, interrelated problems the country faces—including rising inequality, the specter of
The black ghetto is thought of as a place of urban decay and social disarray. Like the historical ghetto of Venice, it is perceived as a space of confinement, one imposed on black America by whites. I
All sorts of literary encounters and exchanges took place between China and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, involving an unlikely array of figures including canonica
Much is at stake when we choose a word for a form of violence: whether a conflict is labeled civil war or genocide, whether we refer to “enhanced interrogation techniques” or to “torture,” whether a p
After Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush declared, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Bush’s assertion was not simply jingoist bravado—it encapsulates the civilizationalist moralism
Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the la
We are squandering our planet’s natural capital—its biodiversity, water and soil, and energy sources—at a blistering pace. Major changes must be made to steer our planet and people away from our curre
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have reached a transitional moment. Created as a way to direct excess wealth toward economic development and long-term financial returns, some countries are now seeing a
If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current science encourages us to reject the ghost-in-the-machine explanation—tha
How are we to conceive of acts that suddenly expose the injustice of the prevailing order? These acts challenge long-standing hidden or silently tolerated injustices, but as they are unsupported by ex
Investors are tempted daily with misinformation. They make lucky bets that breed false confidence, and their high-stakes gambles can take an emotional toll. How can anyone stay focused in such a volat
What does it mean to call something "contemporary"? More than simply denoting what's new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we're living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The s
