Few things come more naturally to us than sex—or so it would seem. Yet to a chimpanzee, the sexual practices and customs we take for granted would appear odd indeed. He or she might wonder why we both
Can genes determine which fifty-year-old will succumb to Alzheimer’s, which citizen will turn out on voting day, and which child will be marked for a life of crime? Yes, according to the Internet, a f
Julia Tanney offers a sustained criticism of today’s canon in philosophy of mind, which conceives the workings of the rational mind as the outcome of causal interactions between mental states that hav
Seamus Heaney, Denis Donoghue, William Pritchard, Marilyn Butler, Harold Bloom, and many others have praised Helen Vendler as one of the most attentive readers of poetry. Here, Vendler turns her illum
How are markets in antiquity to be characterized? As comparable to modern free markets, with differences in scale not quality? As controlled and dominated by the State? Or as a third way, in completel
Barack Obama’s galvanizing victory in 2008, coming amid the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, opened the door to major reforms. But the president quickly faced skepticism from supporters and f
Though his image is tarnished today by unrepentant anti-Semitism, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was better known in the nineteenth century for his provocative musical eroticism. In this illuminating stud
When sickness strikes, people around the world pray for healing. Many of the faithful claim that prayer has cured them of blindness, deafness, and metastasized cancers, and some believe they have been
Dignity plays a central role in thinking about law and human rights, but there is sharp disagreement about its meaning. Combining conceptual precision with a broad historical background, Rosen puts th
Secularism: the definition of this word is as practical and urgent as income inequalities or the paths to sustainable development. In this wide-ranging analysis, Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor pro
Humans are social animals and, in general, don't thrive in isolated environments. Homeless people, many of whom suffer from serious mental illnesses, often live socially isolated on the streets or in
Over 5,000 years ago, the history of humanity radically changed direction when writing was invented in Sumer, the southern part of present-day Iraq. For the next three millennia, kings, aristocrats,
Never has the spirit of innovation been more highly valued than today. Around the world, people see the hard-to-teach skills of creativity as the lifeblood of cultural change and the engine of econom
Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments,
In this compelling story about one of the nineteenth century's most famous Americans, Benjamin Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum Nor
"Read him his rights." We all recognize this line from cop dramas. But what happens afterward? In this book, Richard Leo sheds light on a little-known corner of our criminal justice system--the police
Paradise haunts the Biblical West. At once the place of origin and exile, utopia and final destination, it has shaped our poetic and religious imagination and informed literary and theological account
How was frontier expansion rationalized in the Americas during the late nineteenth century? As new states fleshed out expanded national maps, how did they represent their advances? Were there any dist
The waters around Australia, the world’s smallest continent, are home to the greatest diversity of sharks and rays on Earth. Fully 100 of these sea creatures (along with their little-known relatives,
From the beginning, Darwin’s dangerous idea has been a snake in the garden, denounced from pulpits then and now as incompatible with the central tenets of Christian faith. Recovered here is the less w
Bhaviveka (ca. 500–560 ce) lived at a time of unusual creativity and ferment in the history of Indian Buddhist philosophy. The Mahayana movement was emerging as a vigorous and self-conscious intellect
Drawing on the work of the classical-Marxian economists and their modern successors, Capitalists, Workers, and Fiscal Policy sets forth a new model of economic growth and distribution, and applies it
Males account for roughly 50 percent of the global population, but in America and other places, they account for over 85 percent of violent crime. A graph of relative risk of death in human males show
In South and Central America, a movement toward further economic integration has begun. Those policy actions may one day become part of a process that could create a single economy including several L
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance, was born in Kues on the Moselle River. A polymath who studied canon law and became a cardina
This book is a full-scale exposition of Charles Manski's new methodology for analyzing empirical questions in the social sciences. He recommends that researchers first ask what can be learned from dat
From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity --among them two of th
From an essay by Carlos Jimenez:"Since 1983, when work on my house and studio began, the project has undergone a variety of transformations, expansions, assimilations--simply put, it has followed a pa
In this book, John Roemer presents a unified and rigorous theory of political competition between parties. He models the theory under many specifications, including whether parties are policy oriented
In this companion volume to Bird Coloration: Volume 1, Mechanisms and Measurements, Geoffrey E. Hill and Kevin J. McGraw have assembled some of the world's leading experts in the function and evolutio
One cannot help being struck with wonder at the vivid pink of 10,000 flamingos rising from Lake Nakuru or the glowing red gorget of a ruby-throated hummingbird feeding outside the kitchen window. How
This volume mounts a full-blown attack on the standard neo-classical theory of economic growth, which Richard Nelson sees as hopelessly inadequate to explain the phenomenon of economic growth. He pres
Atlantic history is a newly and rapidly developing field of historical study. Bringing together elements of early modern European, African, and American history--their common, comparative, and interac
Robert Venturi exploded onto the architectural scene in 1966 with a radical call to arms in Complexity and Contradiction. Further accolades and outrage ensued in 1972 when Venturi and Denise Scott Bro
The music of Johannes Brahms is deeply colored, Daniel Beller-McKenna shows, by nineteenth-century German nationalism and by Lutheran religion. Focusing on the composer's choral works, the author offe
In a story of reform and backlash, Lorraine McDonnell reveals the power and the dangers of policies based on appeals to voters' values. Exploring the political struggles inspired by mass educational t
In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled her
For the past twelve billion years, galaxies have governed the Universe, bringing form to the firmament, light to the void. Each one a giant system of as many as hundreds of billions of stars, the gala
Derided as simple, dismissed as inferior to film, famously characterized as a vast wasteland, television nonetheless exerts an undeniable, apparently inescapable power in our culture. The secret of te
Taking up topics as diverse and timely as the work of FBI profilers, the pornography debates, feminist analyses of male supremacy as sexual abuse, the ritual meanings of fraternity gang rape, and the
