In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offeri
Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self rule. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump marked
Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the nostalgic rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelera
Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair
From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Europeans struggled to understand their identity in the same way we do as individuals: by comparing themselves to others. In Savages, Romans, and Despot
Every age and social strata has its bad eggs, rule-breakers, and nose-thumbers. As acclaimed popular historian and author of How to Be a Victorian Ruth Goodman shows in her madcap chronicle, Elizabeth
How could Northern California, the wealthiest and most politically progressive region in the United States, become one of the earliest epicenters of the foreclosure crisis? How could this region conti
When Kenneth Burke conceived his celebrated “Motivorum” project in the 1940s and 1950s, he envisioned it in three parts. While the third part, A Symbolic of Motives, was never finished, A
On the battlefields of World War II, with their fellow soldiers as the only shield between life and death, a generation of American men found themselves connecting with each other in new and profound
In this sequel to the tour de force children’s art-history picture book If Picasso Painted a Snowman, Amy Newbold conveys nineteen artists’ styles in a few deft words, while Greg Newbold’s chameleon-l
Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his w
Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century,
Spinoza’s Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of I
Worlds of enchantment await in this beautiful treasury, which contains the most popular fairy and folk tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, and other classic sourc
Miguel Ruiz is a Spanish veteran exiled in France who was a member of “La Nueve” ("The Nine"), a company of men that went straight from fighting for their homeland in the Spanish Civil War to battles
Wildly kaleidoscopic and furiously cinematic, Home After Dark is a literary tour-de-force that renders the brutality of adolescence in the so-called nostalgic 1950s, evoking such classics as The Lord
A companion to his acclaimed work in Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy, Joseph E. Stiglitz, along with Carter Dougherty and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, lays out the econ
A widespread conviction in the need to rescue China’s children took hold in the early twentieth century. Amid political upheaval and natural disasters, neglected or abandoned children became a humanit
In the early years of the twenty-first century, China and India have emerged as world powers. In many respects, this is a return to the historical norm for both countries. For much of the early modern
If you’ve got some money in the bank, chances are you’ve never seriously worried about not being able to withdraw it. But there was a time in the United States, an era that ended just over
Built in 1969, Metsamor, Armenia (then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), was intended as a settlement for employees of a nearby nuclear power plant to be completed between 1976 and 1980. But th
For decades now, the story of art in America has been dominated by New York. It gets the majority of attention, the stories of its schools and movements and masterpieces the stuff of pop culture legen
Brazilian cartoonist Daniel Semanas’s candy-colored debut graphic novel, influenced by American pop art and manga, is set in South Korea in the near future. A young fighter has a fiercely competitive
How investor expectations move markets and the economyThe collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 caught markets and regulators by surprise. Although the government rushed to rescue other financ
Philosophy’s relation to the act of writing is John T. Lysaker’s main concern in Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought. Whether in Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, or
The hallucinogenic and medicinal effects of peyote have a storied history that begins well before Europeans arrived in the Americas. While some have attempted to explain the cultural and religious sig
In Talking Art, acclaimed ethnographer Gary Alan Fine gives us an eye-opening look at the contemporary university-based master’s-level art program. Through an in-depth analysis of the practice o
A gripping revisionist history that shows how ordinary Italians played a central role in the genocide of Italian Jews during the Second World WarIn this gripping revisionist history of Italy’s role 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
In 1956 Harry Belafonte’s Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US—it even threatened to
Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World explores how architectural traditions and practices were shared and exchanged across national borders throughout the world, departing from a narr
Jonathan Sergison is an architect and cofounder of the London and Zurich-based Sergison Bates Architects. Since 2008, in addition to design work, Sergison has taught as professor of design and constru
As both an Olympic gold medalist and two-time world heavyweight champion, boxer Wladimir Klitschko stands apart from most athletes. But he also stands apart another way: in the attention he paid to hi
Since its founding in 1971, Paris-based SCAU Architecture has grown to be one of the premier architectural firms in the world, with landmark projects like the Stade de France, Paris; the Quai des Savo
German modernist architect Konrad Wachsmann (1901–1980) had a career-spanning interest in construction processes—in particular the prefabrication of building components and their assembly
In Frontier Rebels, historian Patrick Spero tells the story of the Black Boys, a band of rebels whose protests ignited the American Revolution. In 1765, as the Stamp Act riled eastern seaports, fronti
How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Chris
No family in the history of American sports has ascended to the storybook level of greatness and royal succession quite like the Mannings. Although the façade has occasionally cracked—murmurs of locke
Until well into the twentieth century, pack animals were the primary mode of transport for supplying armies in the field. The British Indian Army was no exception. In the late nineteenth century, for
The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culmi
