On Descartes’ Passive Thought is the culmination of a life-long reflection on the philosophy of Descartes by one of the most important living French philosophers. In it, Jean-Luc Marion examines
It is a curious and relatively little-known fact that for two decades—from the end of World War II until the late 1960s—existentialism’s most fertile ground outside of Europe was in
A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a major American universityHanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler
In Mock Classicism Nilo Couret presents an alternate history of Latin American cinema that traces the popularity and cultural significance of film comedies as responses to modernization and the foreru
“The American people sees itself advance across the wilderness, draining swamps, straightening rivers, peopling the solitude, and subduing nature,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. Tha
In 1968 a team of scientists and engineers from RCA announced the creation of a new form of electronic display that relied upon an obscure set of materials known as liquid crystals. At a time when tel
We live in a self-proclaimed Urban Age, where we celebrate the city as the source of economic prosperity, a nurturer of social and cultural diversity, and a place primed for democracy. We proclaim the
The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment—everything from royal cities and paradise gardens, to hunting enclosures and f
The history of Mexico City is monumental, like Our Lady of Guadalupe that watches over the city. That's because time, people, and cultures have never stopped intermixing there. In the 1920s
The 637 documents in this volume span 1 February to 31 August 1819. As a founding member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, Jefferson helps to obtain builders for the infant institution,
An original and engaging account of the Obama years from a group of leading political historiansBarack Obama's election as the first African American president seemed to usher in a new era, and he too
A sweeping history of Latin American republicanism in the nineteenth centuryBy the 1820s, after three centuries under imperial rule, the former Spanish territories of Latin America had shaken off thei
A new look at the ways van Gogh represented the seasons and the natural world throughout his careerThe changing seasons captivated Vincent van Gogh (1853–90), who saw in their unending cycle the majes
Every square inch of soil is rich with energy and life, and nowhere is this more evident than in the garden. At the tips of our trowels, a sun-driven world of microbes, insects, roots, and stems await
In a groundbreaking history as game-changing as Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, We the Corporations reveals how American business won equal rights
In a book that is part memoir and part history, David Roberts looks back at his personal relationship to extreme risk, and tries to make sense of why so many have committed their lives to the desperat
How kibbutzim thrived for much of the twentieth century despite their inherent economic contradictionsThe kibbutz is a social experiment in collective living that challenges traditional economic theor
The Communist regimes of Europe collapsed more than a quarter century ago, and the Third Reich fell in World War II. But today’s rising global tide of far-right extremism makes totalitarian regi
Market globalization, technology, climate change, and postcolonial political forces are together forging a new, more modern world. However, caught up in the mix are some powerful religious narratives
The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century--the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indon
In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle exploreshow rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of theAmerican experiment—over federalism, taxation, regu
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the agesBlue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and b
The Ben cao gang mu, compiled in the second half of the sixteenth century by a team led by the physician Li Shizhen (1518–1593) on the basis of previously published books and contemporary knowle
The vast, and vastly influential, American military machine has been aided and abetted by cinema since the earliest days of the medium. The US military realized very quickly that film could be used in
The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonst
Since its publication in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring has often been celebrated as the catalyst that sparked an American environmental movement. Yet environmental consciousness and e
In the decades after World War II, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors across Asia and the Pacific found work through the U.S. military. Recently liberated from colonial rule, these
In addition to "Master Race,” this volume includes “The Flying Machine” (based on a story by Ray Bradbury). Other stories include: “Slave Ship,” an unpublished science fiction tale that was only disco
Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inad
The first in-depth account of the historic diplomatic agreement that served as a blueprint for ending the Cold WarThe Helsinki Final Act was a watershed of the Cold War. Signed by thirty-five European
Providing a sweeping millennium-plus history of the learned book in the West, John Willinsky puts current debates over intellectual property into context, asking what it is about learning that helped
What is time made of? We might balk at such a question, and reply that time is not made of anything—it is an abstract and universal phenomenon. In Making Time, Yulia Frumer upends this assumptio
What can be called the long twentieth century represents the most miraculous and creative era in human history. It was also the most destructive. Over the past 150 years, modern societies across the g
Gaza is among the most densely populated places in the world. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half the population is under eighteen years of age. Since Israel occup
It’s in this volume (featuring another two years’ worth of Pogo strips) that we meet one of Walt Kelly’s boldest political caricatures. Folks across America had little trouble equating the insidious w
In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908– 1987), the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneer
Why we need to stop wasting public funds on educationDespite being immensely popular--and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the prima
Cinema and the Wealth of Nations explores how media principally in the form of cinema was used during the interwar years by elite institutions to establish and sustain forms of liberal political econo
Why—against his mentor’s exhortations to publish—did Charles Darwin take twenty years to reveal his theory of evolution by natural selection? In Darwin’s Evolving Identity, Ali
Medieval Italian communes are known for their violence, feuds, and vendettas, yet beneath this tumult was a society preoccupied with peace. Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy is the first book t
