The first cartographic reference book on one of today’s most important religious movementsHistorical Atlas of Hasidism is the very first cartographic reference book on one of the modern era's most vib
This book charts how the cartographies of American literature as an institutional category have varied radically across different times and places. Arguing that American literature was consolidated as
When Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Pushkin’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin was first published in 1964, it ignited a storm of controversy that famously resulted in the demise of Nabokov’s friendship w
Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social
A graduate-level text that examines the semiclassical approach to quantum mechanicsPhysical systems have been traditionally described in terms of either classical or quantum mechanics. But in recent y
How New York’s Lower East Side inspired new ways of seeing AmericaNew York City's Lower East Side, long viewed as the space of what Jacob Riis notoriously called the "other half," was also a crucible
Why society’s expectation of economic growth is no longer realisticEconomic growth--and the hope of better things to come—is the religion of the modern world. Yet its prospects have become bleak, with
How Enlightenment Europe rediscovered its identity by measuring itself against the great civilizations of AsiaDuring the long eighteenth century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looke
The first book highlighting the historical roots and contemporary implications of the silhouette as an American art formBefore the advent of photography in 1839, Americans were consumed by the fashion
A provocative new look at concepts of the present, their connection to ideas about time, and their effect on literature, art, and cultureThe problem of the present—what it is and what it means—is one
Early Americans claimed that they looked to "the Bible alone" for authority, but the Bible was never, ever alone. Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States is a wide-ranging exploration o
A leading economist offers a radically new approach to the economic analysis of the lawIn The Republic of Beliefs, Kaushik Basu, one of the world's leading economists, argues that the traditional econ
The gripping stories of ordinary Germans who lived through World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition—but also recovery, reunification, and rehabilitationBroken Lives is a gripping account of
This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events--the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation—to a broad
The first book to challenge modern philosophy’s case against idleness, revealing why the idle state is one of true freedomFor millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all ex
A lavishly illustrated look at how evolution plays out in selective breedingUnnatural Selection is a stunningly illustrated book about selective breeding--the ongoing transformation of animals at the
This beautifully illustrated book provides a new interpretation of modern architecture and design in Germany during the heyday of the Bauhaus and the Werkbund, tracing modernism's lasting allure to it
A richly illustrated and up-close look at the secret lives of spiders and other arachnidsThe American Southwest is home to an extraordinary diversity of arachnids, from spitting spiders that squirt si
How a new understanding of warfare can help the military fight today’s conflicts more effectivelyThe way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns
A new framework for the neuroscientific study of emotions in humans and animalsThe Neuroscience of Emotion presents a new framework for the neuroscientific study of emotion across species. Written b
A new, counterintuitive theory for how social networks influence the spread of behaviorNew social movements, technologies, and public-health initiatives often struggle to take off, yet many diseases d
The untold story of how hereditary data in mental hospitals gave rise to the science of human heredityIn the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylu
When Israeli Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon published the novel Only Yesterday in 1945, it quickly became recognized as a major work of world literature, not only for its vivid historical reconstruction o
The number of species found at a given point on the planet varies by orders of magnitude, yet large-scale gradients in biodiversity appear to follow some very general patterns. Little mechanistic theo
How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to todayAs right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even
American Prophets sheds critical new light on the lives and thought of seven major prophetic figures in twentieth-century America whose social activism was motivated by a deeply felt compassion for th
The entertaining story of four utopian writers—Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman—and their continuing influence todayFor readers reared on the dystopian vi
How did the statues of ancient Greece wind up dictating art history in the West? How did the material culture of the Greeks and Romans come to be seen as "classical" and as "art"? What does "classical
"Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they mon
A thoroughly updated and substantially expanded edition of an acclaimed anthologyThis is a thoroughly updated and substantially expanded new edition of one of the most popular, wide-ranging, and engag
The untold story of how FDR did the unthinkable to save the American economyThe American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 193
The first publication of Albert Einstein’s travel diary to the Far East and Middle EastIn the fall of 1922, Albert Einstein, along with his then-wife, Elsa Einstein, embarked on a five-and-a-half-mont
J. E. Gordon's classic introduction to the properties of materials used in engineering answers some fascinating and fundamental questions about how the structural world around us works. Gordon focuses
Design pervades our lives. Everything from drafting a PowerPoint presentation to planning a state-of-the-art bridge embodies this universal human activity. But what makes a great design? In this compe
Guiding principles for ensuring that central bankers and other unelected policymakers remain stewards of the common goodCentral bankers have emerged from the financial crisis as the third great pillar
The Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in English. It provides English-language readers easier access than ever bef
Voltaire called it "the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language." Rousseau rhapsodized about its intellectual consolations. Kant recited long passages of it from memory during his lect
How the Civil War changed the face of warThe Civil War represented a momentous change in the character of war. It combined the projection of military might across a continent on a scale never before s
As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coe
What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biolo
