Search results for ""princeton university press""
Princeton University Press The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture
From the first century, when Buddhism entered China, the foreign religion shaped Chinese philosophy, beliefs, and ritual. At the same time, Buddhism had a profound effect on the material world of the Chinese. This wide-ranging study shows that Buddhism brought with it a vast array of objects big and small--relics treasured as parts of the body of the Buddha, prayer beads, and monastic clothing--as well as new ideas about what objects could do and how they should be treated. Kieschnick argues that even some everyday objects not ordinarily associated with Buddhism--bridges, tea, and the chair--on closer inspection turn out to have been intimately tied to Buddhist ideas and practices. Long after Buddhism ceased to be a major force in India, it continued to influence the development of material culture in China, as it does to the present day. At first glance, this seems surprising. Many Buddhist scriptures and thinkers rejected the material world or even denied its existence with great enthusiasm and sophistication. Others, however, from Buddhist philosophers to ordinary devotees, embraced objects as a means of expressing religious sentiments and doctrines. What was a sad sign of compromise and decline for some was seen as strength and versatility by others. Yielding rich insights through its innovative analysis of particular types of objects, this briskly written book is the first to systematically examine the ambivalent relationship, in the Chinese context, between Buddhism and material culture.
£43.65
Princeton University Press Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair
Violence so often begets violence. Victims respond with revenge only to inspire seemingly endless cycles of retaliation. Conflicts between nations, between ethnic groups, between strangers, and between family members differ in so many ways and yet often share this dynamic. In this powerful and timely book Martha Minow and others ask: What explains these cycles and what can break them? What lessons can we draw from one form of violence that might be relevant to other forms? Can legal responses to violence provide accountability but avoid escalating vengeance? If so, what kinds of legal institutions and practices can make a difference? What kinds risk failure? Breaking the Cycles of Hatred represents a unique blend of political and legal theory, one that focuses on the double-edged role of memory in fueling cycles of hatred and maintaining justice and personal integrity. Its centerpiece comprises three penetrating essays by Minow. She argues that innovative legal institutions and practices, such as truth commissions and civil damage actions against groups that sponsor hate, often work better than more conventional criminal proceedings and sanctions. Minow also calls for more sustained attention to the underlying dynamics of violence, the connections between intergroup and intrafamily violence, and the wide range of possible responses to violence beyond criminalization. A vibrant set of freestanding responses from experts in political theory, psychology, history, and law examines past and potential avenues for breaking cycles of violence and for deepening our capacity to avoid becoming what we hate. The topics include hate crimes and hate-crimes legislation, child sexual abuse and the statute of limitations, and the American kidnapping and internment of Japanese Latin Americans during World War II. Commissioned by Nancy Rosenblum, the essays are by Ross E. Cheit, Marc Galanter, Fredrick C. Harris, Judith Lewis Herman, Carey Jaros, Frederick M. Lawrence, Austin Sarat, Ayelet Shachar, Eric K. Yamamoto, and Iris Marion Young.
£29.09
Princeton University Press Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond
Deep Life takes readers to uncharted regions deep beneath Earth's crust in search of life in extreme environments and reveals how astonishing new discoveries by geomicrobiologists are helping the quest to find life in the solar system. Tullis Onstott, named one of the 100 most influential people in America by Time magazine, provides an insider's look at the pioneering fieldwork that is shining vital new light on Earth's hidden biology--a thriving subterranean biosphere that scientists once thought to be impossible. Come along on epic descents two miles underground into South African gold mines to experience the challenges that Onstott and his team had to overcome. Join them in their search for microbes in the ancient seabed below the desert floor in the American Southwest, and travel deep beneath the frozen wastelands of the Arctic tundra to discover life as it could exist on Mars. Blending cutting-edge science with thrilling scientific adventure, Deep Life features rare and unusual encounters with exotic life forms, including a bacterium living off radiation and a hermaphroditic troglodytic worm that has changed our understanding of how complex subsurface life can really be. This unforgettable book takes you to the absolute limits of life--the biotic fringe--where today's scientists hope to discover the very origins of life itself.
£25.45
Princeton University Press King David in the Index of Christian Art
£54.56
Princeton University Press Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization
Has globalization the phenomenon outgrown "globalization" the concept? In Distant Proximities, one of America's senior scholars presents a work of sweeping vision that addresses the dizzying anxieties of the post-Cold War, post-September 11 world. Culminating the influential reassessment of international relations he began in 1990 with Turbulence in World Politics, James Rosenau here undertakes the first systematic analysis of just how complex these profound global changes have become. Among his many conceptual innovations, he treats people-in-the-street as well as activists and elites as central players in what we call "globalization." Deftly weaving striking insights into arresting prose, Rosenau traces the links and interactions between people at the individual level and institutions such as states, nongovernmental organizations, and transnational corporations at the collective level. In doing so he masterfully conveys how the emerging new reality has unfolded as events abroad increasingly pervade the routines of life at home and become, in effect, distant proximities. Rosenau begins by distinguishing among various local, global, and private "worlds" in terms of their inhabitants' orientations toward developments elsewhere. He then proceeds to cogently analyze how the residents of these worlds shape and are shaped by the diverse collectivities that crowd the global stage and that sustain such issues as human rights, corruption, the global economy, and global governance. Throughout this richly imaginative, fluidly written book, Rosenau examines how anti-globalization protests and the terrorist attacks on America amount to quintessential distant proximities. His book is thus a pathbreaking inquiry into the dynamics that lie beyond globalization, one that all thoughtful observers of the world scene will find penetrating and provocative.
£43.65
Princeton University Press The Outsider: Prejudice and Politics in Italy
One of the most wide-ranging studies of prejudice undertaken in a decade, The Outsider combines new research methods and rich analysis to upend many of our assumptions about prejudice. Noting that hostility toward immigrants has been on the rise throughout Western Europe, Paul Sniderman and his team conduct the first study of prejudice in Italy and offer insights applicable to nearly all countries worldwide. The study of prejudice, they argue, has been both stimulated and limited by tensions among partial theories. Prejudice and group conflict are said to be rooted in the psychological makeup of individuals, or alternatively, to spring from real competition over material goods or social status, or yet again, to follow in the wake of a quest for identity. It is the distinctive effort of The Outsider to develop a unified theory of prejudice integrating personality, realistic conflict, and social identity approaches. Drawing on computer-assisted interviewing, this book focuses on Italy partly because it has experienced two different waves of immigration, from Northern Africa and Eastern Europe, and thus allows one to consider to what extent the color of immigrants' skin imposes a special burden of prejudice. Italy is also an apt site for the study of intolerance because of long-standing prejudices that have existed internally, between Northern and Southern Italians. The book's findings show that any point of difference--color, nationality, or language--marks the immigrant as an outsider. The fact of difference, not the particular mode of difference, is crucial. Moreover, the general election of 1994 provided a rare opportunity to investigate the political impact of prejudice when the party system was itself in the process of transformation. The authors uncover a potential line of cleavage: rather than prejudice being concentrated on the political right, it has a wide following among the less educated of the political left. Analyzing the contributions of personality, social-structural factors, and political orientation to the wave of intolerance toward immigrants, The Outsider offers unprecedented insights into the phenomenon of prejudice and its link to politics.
£29.09
Princeton University Press Female Acts in Greek Tragedy
Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for an unusually rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece. This book examines, for example, the tragic response to legislation regulating family life that may have begun as early as the sixth century. It also draws upon contemporary studies of virtue ethics and upon feminist reconsiderations of the Western ethical tradition. Foley maintains that by viewing public issues through the lens of the family, tragedy asks whether public and private morality can operate on the same terms. Moreover, the plays use women to represent significant moral alternatives. Tragedy thus exploits, reinforces, and questions cultural cliches about women and gender in a fashion that resonates with contemporary Athenian social and political issues.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Knowledge, Information, and Expectations in Modern Macroeconomics: In Honor of Edmund S. Phelps
Macroeconomics would not be what it is today without Edmund Phelps. This book assembles the field's leading figures to highlight the continuing influence of his ideas from the past four decades. Addressing the most important current debates in macroeconomic theory, it focuses on the rates at which new technologies arise and information about markets is dispersed, information imperfections, and the heterogeneity of beliefs as determinants of an economy's performance. The contributions, which represent a breadth of contemporary theoretical approaches, cover topics including the real effects of monetary disturbances, difficulties in expectations formation, structural factors in unemployment, and sources of technical progress. Based on an October 2001 conference honoring Phelps, this incomparable volume provides the most comprehensive and authoritative account in years of the present state of macroeconomics while also pointing to its future. The fifteen chapters are by the editors and by Daron Acemoglu, Jess Benhabib, Guillermo A. Calvo, Oya Celasun, Michael D. Goldberg, Bruce Greenwald, James J. Heckman, Bart Hobijn, Peter Howitt, Hehui Jin, Charles I. Jones, Michael Kumhof, Mordecai Kurz, David Laibson, Lars Ljungqvist, N. Gregory Mankiw, Dale T. Mortensen, Maurizio Motolese, Stephen Nickell, Luca Nunziata, Wolfgang Ochel, Christopher A. Pissarides, Glenda Quintini, Ricardo Reis, Andrea Repetto, Thomas J. Sargent, Jeremy Tobacman, and Gianluca Violante. Commenting are Olivier J. Blanchard, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mark Gertler, Robert E. Hall, Robert E. Lucas, Jr., David H. Papell, Robert A. Pollak, Robert M. Solow, Nancy L. Stokey, and Lars E. O. Svensson. Also included are reflections by Phelps, a preface by Paul A. Samuelson, and the editors' introduction.
£67.68
Princeton University Press Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action - Twentieth-Anniversary Edition
Why does society oscillate between intense interest in public issues and almost total concentration on private goals? In this classic work, Albert O. Hirschman offers a stimulating social, political, and economic analysis dealing with how and why frustrations of private concerns lead to public involvement and public participation that eventually lead back to those private concerns. Emerging from this study is a wide range of insights, from a critique of conventional consumption theory to a new understanding of collective action and of universal suffrage.
£26.90
Princeton University Press Religions of Asia in Practice: An Anthology
The acclaimed volumes of Princeton Readings in Religions present the remarkable range of all that is encompassed in the practice of religions, across the centuries and across the world. Religions of Asia in Practice: An Anthology brings together into a single volume the most important and fascinating selections from the volumes on Buddhism, India, China, Tibet, and Japan to give an overview of how religions have been lived by both ordinary and extraordinary people throughout the continent of Asia. These materials--many of which had never before been translated into any Western language--include ritual manuals, hagiographical and autobiographical writings, popular commentaries, instructions to children, poetry, and folktales. Each is preceded by a substantial introduction in which the translator discusses the text's history and influence and guides the reader through points of potential difficulty and particular interest. The volume includes, in addition, clear and compelling introductions to each of the major traditions. Religions of Asia in Practice: An Anthology offers a fascinating look at the spectrum of religious practices in Asia over almost three millennia. As such, it is ideally suited for use as a textbook in courses on world or Eastern religions as well as for the general reader.
£45.24
Princeton University Press The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 29: 1 March 1796 to 31 December 1797
In the twenty-two months covered by this volume, Jefferson spent most of his time at Monticello, where in his short-lived retirement from office he turned in earnest to the renovation of his residence and described himself as a "monstrous farmer." Yet he narrowly missed being elected George Washington's successor as president and took the oath of office as vice president in March 1797. In early summer he presided over the Senate after President John Adams summoned Congress to deal with the country's worsening relations with France. As the key figure in the growing "Republican quarter," Jefferson collaborated with such allies as James Monroe and James Madison and drafted a petition to the Virginia House of Delegates upholding the right of representatives to communicate freely with their constituents. The unauthorized publication of a letter to Philip Mazzei, in which Jefferson decried the former "Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council" who had been "shorn by the harlot England," made the vice president the uncomfortable target of intense partisan attention. In addition, Luther Martin publicly challenged Jefferson's treatment, in Notes on Virginia, of the famous oration of Logan. Jefferson became president of the American Philosophical Society and presented a paper describing the fossilized remains of the megalonyx, or "great claw." At Monticello he evaluated the merits of threshing machines, corresponded with British agricultural authorities, sought new crops for his rotation schemes, manufactured nails, and entertained family members and visitors.
£106.99
Princeton University Press Debussy and His World
Claude Debussy's Paris was factionalized, politicized, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change--which characterized French society and music from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I--that Debussy re-thought music. This book captures the complexity of the composer's restless personal and artistic identity within the new picture emerging of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-siecle Paris. Debussy's setting did not simply mold his style. Rather, it challenged him to define a style and then to revamp it again and again as he situated himself simultaneously via the present and the past. These essays trace Debussy's perpetual reinvention, both social and creative, from his earliest to his last works. They explore tensions and contradictions in his best-known compositions and examine lesser-known pieces that reveal new aspects of Debussy's creative appropriation from poetry, painting, and non-Western music. The contributors reveal the extent to which Debussy's personal and professional lives were intertwined and sometimes in conflict. Belonging to no one group or class, but crossing many, Debussy abjured the orthodox. A maverick who reviled all convention and searched for a music that authentically reflected experience, Debussy balked at entering any situation--salons, musical societies, or factions--that would categorize and thus distort him. Because of this, music lovers still argue over the degree to which Debussy's music is Impressionist, symbolist, or even French. Aptly, the volume's editor reads Debussy's last works as a dialogue with himself that reflects his inherently pluralistic, paradoxical, negotiated, and ever-changing identity. William Austin's description of Debussy as "one of the most original and adventurous musicians who ever lived" is often repeated. This book illustrates how right Austin was and shows why Debussy's unclassifiable art continues to fascinate and perplex his historians even as it enthralls new listeners. The contributors are Leon Botstein, Christophe Charle, John Clevenger, Jane F. Fulcher, David Grayson, Brian Hart, Gail Hilson-Woldu, and Marie Rolf.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy
For generations, influential thinkers--often citing the tragic polarization that took place during Germany's Great Depression--have suspected that people's loyalty to democratic institutions erodes under pressure and that citizens gravitate toward antidemocratic extremes in times of political and economic crisis. But do people really defect from democracy when times get tough? Do ordinary people play a leading role in the collapse of popular government? Based on extensive research, this book overturns the common wisdom. It shows that the German experience was exceptional, that people's affinity for particular political positions are surprisingly stable, and that what is often labeled polarization is the result not of vote switching but of such factors as expansion of the franchise, elite defections, and the mobilization of new voters. Democratic collapses are caused less by changes in popular preferences than by the actions of political elites who polarize themselves and mistake the actions of a few for the preferences of the many. These conclusions are drawn from the study of twenty cases, including every democracy that collapsed in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in interwar Europe, every South American democracy that fell to the Right after the Cuban Revolution, and three democracies that avoided breakdown despite serious economic and political challenges. Unique in its historical and regional scope, this book offers unsettling but important lessons about civil society and regime change--and about the paths to democratic consolidation today.
£29.09
Princeton University Press The Complete Works of W. H. Auden, Volume II: Prose: 1939-1948
W. H. Auden's first ten years in the United States were marked by rapid and extensive change in his life and thought. He became an American citizen, fell in love with Chester Kallman, and began to reflect on American culture and to explore the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr and other Protestant theologians. This volume contains every piece of prose that Auden wrote during these years, including essays and reviews he published under pseudonyms. Most have never been reprinted in any form since their initial publication in such magazines and newspapers as the Nation, the New Republic, Common Sense, Vogue, and the New York Times. Auden's prose during this period is frequently directly autobiographical even as he comments on literature, psychology, politics, and religion. The writings range from a dialogue about W. B. Yeats through a respectful parody of Gertrude Stein to Jamesian essays on Henry James. They also include lively and often profound responses to ancient and modern history as well as to contemporary issues in politics and religion. Other highlights include writings on opera and poetry as well as reports of Auden's lectures and the text of an unfinished autobiographical book, The Prolific and the Devourer. Throughout, Edward Mendelson's extensive and illuminating editor's notes explain all contemporary and private allusions. By making available a large cache of important but previously difficult-to-obtain writings on key subjects, this volume will be of obvious appeal to Auden's legions of admirers. It will also be enjoyed by everyone interested in twentieth-century literature, religion, and culture.
£70.59
Princeton University Press Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War
Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood." "Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life." Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state that slogans like these appeared routinely in newspapers, on posters, and in government proclamations. In this penetrating historical study, Jeffrey Brooks draws on years of research into the most influential and widely circulated Russian newspapers--including Pravda, Isvestiia, and the army paper Red Star--to explain the origins, the nature, and the effects of this unrelenting idealization of the state, the Communist Party, and the leader. Brooks shows how, beginning with Lenin, the Communists established a state monopoly of the media that absorbed literature, art, and science into a stylized and ritualistic public culture--a form of political performance that became its own reality and excluded other forms of public reflection. He presents and explains scores of self-congratulatory newspaper articles, including tales of Stalin's supposed achievements and virtue, accounts of the country's allegedly dynamic economy, and warnings about the decadence and cruelty of the capitalist West. Brooks pays particular attention to the role of the press in the reconstruction of the Soviet cultural system to meet the Nazi threat during World War II and in the transformation of national identity from its early revolutionary internationalism to the ideology of the Cold War. He concludes that the country's one-sided public discourse and the pervasive idea that citizens owed the leader gratitude for the "gifts" of goods and services led ultimately to the inability of late Soviet Communism to diagnose its own ills, prepare alternative policies, and adjust to new realities. The first historical work to explore the close relationship between language and the implementation of the Stalinist-Leninist program, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! is a compelling account of Soviet public culture as reflected through the country's press.
£34.19
Princeton University Press Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives
Despite the supreme political and economic significance of boundaries--and ongoing challenges to existing national boundaries--scant attention has been paid to their ethics. This volume explores how diverse ethical traditions understand the political and property rights reflected in territorial and jurisdictional boundaries. It is the first book to bring together thinkers from a range of traditions, both religious and secular, to discuss the ethics of boundaries. Each contributor represents a tradition's views on questions surrounding the use of boundaries to delimit property and political rights. What does it mean to own something? What resources should not be privately owned? What justifies the erection of political boundaries between one people and another? How "hard" should such boundaries be? What rights extend to minorities within a state? Should territorial boundaries coincide with social ones? Does national autonomy have an ethical basis, or is it an aspect of modern power politics? Should we aim for a more inclusive community than that afforded by modern nation-states? Cross-chapter dialogue and a substantive conclusion draw out similarities and differences among the traditions represented, traditions that include Christianity, classical liberalism, Confucianism, international law, Islam, Judaism, liberal egalitarianism, and natural law. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Nigel Biggar, Joseph Boyle, Joseph Chan, Russell Hardin, Will Kymlicka, Loren Lomasky, Robert McCorquodale, Richard B. Miller, David Novak, Sulayman Nyang, Michael Nylan, Raul C. Pangalangan, Daniel Philpott, Jeremy Rabkin, Hillel Steiner, M. Raquibuz Zaman, and Noam J. Zohar.
£34.19
Princeton University Press Inventing the "Great Awakening"
This book is a history of an astounding transatlantic phenomenon, a popular evangelical revival known in America as the first Great Awakening (1735-1745). Beginning in the mid-1730s, supporters and opponents of the revival commented on the extraordinary nature of what one observer called the "great ado," with its extemporaneous outdoor preaching, newspaper publicity, and rallies of up to 20,000 participants. Frank Lambert, biographer of Great Awakening leader George Whitefield, offers an overview of this important episode and proposes a new explanation of its origins. The Great Awakening, however dramatic, was nevertheless unnamed until after its occurrence, and its leaders created no doctrine nor organizational structure that would result in a historical record. That lack of documentation has allowed recent scholars to suggest that the movement was "invented" by nineteenth-century historians. Some specialists even think that it was wholly constructed by succeeding generations, who retroactively linked sporadic happenings to fabricate an alleged historic development. Challenging these interpretations, Lambert nevertheless demonstrates that the Great Awakening was invented--not by historians but by eighteenth-century evangelicals who were skillful and enthusiastic religious promoters. Reporting a dramatic meeting in one location in order to encourage gatherings in other places, these men used commercial strategies and newly popular print media to build a revival--one that they also believed to be an "extraordinary work of God." They saw a special meaning in contemporary events, looking for a transatlantic pattern of revival and finding a motive for spiritual rebirth in what they viewed as a moral decline in colonial America and abroad. By examining the texts that these preachers skillfully put together, Lambert shows how they told and retold their revival account to themselves, their followers, and their opponents. His inquiries depict revivals as cultural productions and yield fresh understandings of how believers "spread the word" with whatever technical and social methods seem the most effective.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience
How should governments and central banks use monetary policy to create a healthy economy? Traditionally, policymakers have used such strategies as controlling the growth of the money supply or pegging the exchange rate to a stable currency. In recent years a promising new approach has emerged: publicly announcing and pursuing specific targets for the rate of inflation. This book is the first in-depth study of inflation targeting. Combining penetrating theoretical analysis with detailed empirical studies of countries where inflation targeting has been adopted, the authors show that the strategy has clear advantages over traditional policies. They argue that the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank should adopt this strategy, and they make specific proposals for doing so. The book begins by explaining the unique features and advantages of inflation targeting. The authors argue that the simplicity and openness of inflation targeting make it far easier for the public to understand the intent and effects of monetary policy. This strategy also increases policymakers' accountability for inflation performance and can accommodate flexible, even "discretionary," monetary policy actions without sacrificing central banks' credibility. The authors examine how well variants of this approach have worked in nine countries: Germany and Switzerland (which employ a money-focused form of inflation targeting), New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Israel, Spain, and Australia. They show that these countries have typically seen lower inflation, lower inflation expectations, and lower nominal interest rates, and have found that one-time shocks to the price level have less of a "pass-through" effect on inflation. These effects, in turn, are improving the climate for economic growth. The authors warn, however, that the success of inflation targeting depends on operational details, such as how the targets are defined and when they are announced. They also show that inflation targeting is not a panacea that can make inflation perfectly predictable or reduce it without economic costs. Clear, balanced, and authoritative, Inflation Targeting is a groundbreaking study that will have a major impact on the debate over the right monetary strategy for the coming decades. As a unique comparative study of what central banks actually do in different countries around the world, this book will also be invaluable to anyone interested in how economic policy is made.
£34.19
Princeton University Press Metastable Liquids: Concepts and Principles
Metastable Liquids provides a comprehensive treatment of the properties of liquids under conditions where the stable state is a vapor, a solid, or a liquid mixture of different composition. It examines the fundamental principles that govern the equilibrium properties, stability, relaxation mechanisms, and relaxation rates of metastable liquids. Building on the interplay of kinetics and thermodynamics that determines the thermophysical properties and structural relaxation of metastable liquids, it offers an in-depth treatment of thermodynamic stability theory, the statistical mechanics of metastability, nucleation, spinodal decomposition, supercooled liquids, and the glass transition. Both traditional topics--such as stability theory--and modern developments--including modern theories of nucleation and the properties of supercooled and glassy water--are treated in detail. An introductory chapter illustrates, with numerous examples, the importance and ubiquity of metastable liquids. Examples include the ascent of sap in plants, the strategies adopted by many living organisms to survive prolonged exposure to sub-freezing conditions, the behavior of proteins at low temperatures, metastability in mineral inclusions, ozone depletion, the preservation and storage of labile biochemicals, and the prevention of natural gas clathrate hydrate formation. All mathematical symbols are defined in the text and key equations are clearly explained. More complex mathematical explanations are available in the appendixes.
£106.99
Princeton University Press Unitary Representations of Reductive Lie Groups. (AM-118), Volume 118
This book is an expanded version of the Hermann Weyl Lectures given at the Institute for Advanced Study in January 1986. It outlines some of what is now known about irreducible unitary representations of real reductive groups, providing fairly complete definitions and references, and sketches (at least) of most proofs. The first half of the book is devoted to the three more or less understood constructions of such representations: parabolic induction, complementary series, and cohomological parabolic induction. This culminates in the description of all irreducible unitary representation of the general linear groups. For other groups, one expects to need a new construction, giving "unipotent representations." The latter half of the book explains the evidence for that expectation and suggests a partial definition of unipotent representations.
£76.41
Princeton University Press Radically Elementary Probability Theory. (AM-117), Volume 117
Using only the very elementary framework of finite probability spaces, this book treats a number of topics in the modern theory of stochastic processes. This is made possible by using a small amount of Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis and not attempting to convert the results into conventional form.
£45.84
Princeton University Press Characters of Reductive Groups over a Finite Field. (AM-107), Volume 107
This book presents a classification of all (complex) irreducible representations of a reductive group with connected centre, over a finite field. To achieve this, the author uses etale intersection cohomology, and detailed information on representations of Weyl groups.
£89.51
Princeton University Press The Theory of Sex Allocation. (MPB-18), Volume 18
This book is the first comprehensive treatment of sex allocation from the standpoint of modern evolutionary theory. It shows how the determination of sex ratio, resource allocation to sperm versus egg within simultaneous hermaphroditism, and the evolution of sex reversal can he explained as examples of a single process. The genetical theory, developed mostly with graphical arguments, also specifies when hermaphroditism and dioecy are themselves evolutionary stable. The work balances theory with field and laboratory research, providing critical tests of the theory by empirical studies of sex ratio in parasitoid wasps and mites, sex reversal in shrimp and coral reef fish, and allocation of resources to pollen versus seeds in higher plants. In addition, the author oilers an encyclopedic review of the field and laboratory work of other scientists, reviews many as yet untested hypotheses in sex allocation, and points toward numerous plant and animal systems that hold promise for future tests.
£70.59
Princeton University Press Infinite Loop Spaces (AM-90), Volume 90: Hermann Weyl Lectures, The Institute for Advanced Study. (AM-90)
The theory of infinite loop spaces has been the center of much recent activity in algebraic topology. Frank Adams surveys this extensive work for researchers and students. Among the major topics covered are generalized cohomology theories and spectra; infinite-loop space machines in the sense of Boadman-Vogt, May, and Segal; localization and group completion; the transfer; the Adams conjecture and several proofs of it; and the recent theories of Adams and Priddy and of Madsen, Snaith, and Tornehave.
£58.21
Princeton University Press Food Webs and Niche Space. (MPB-11), Volume 11
What is the minimum dimension of a niche space necessary to represent the overlaps among observed niches? This book presents a new technique for obtaining a partial answer to this elementary question about niche space. The author bases his technique on a relation between the combinatorial structure of food webs and the mathematical theory of interval graphs. Professor Cohen collects more than thirty food webs from the ecological literature and analyzes their statistical and combinatorial properties in detail. As a result, he is able to generalize: within habitats of a certain limited physical and temporal heterogeneity, the overlaps among niches, along their trophic (feeding) dimensions, can be represented in a one-dimensional niche space far more often than would be expected by chance alone and perhaps always. This compatibility has not previously been noticed. It indicates that real food webs fall in a small subset of the mathematically possible food webs. Professor Cohen discusses other apparently new features of real food webs, including the constant ratio of the number of kinds of prey to the number of kinds of predators in food webs that describe a community. In conclusion he discusses possible extensions and limitations of his results and suggests directions for future research.
£43.65
Princeton University Press Introduction to Algebraic K-Theory. (AM-72), Volume 72
Algebraic K-theory describes a branch of algebra that centers about two functors. K0 and K1, which assign to each associative ring ? an abelian group K0? or K1? respectively. Professor Milnor sets out, in the present work, to define and study an analogous functor K2, also from associative rings to abelian groups. Just as functors K0 and K1 are important to geometric topologists, K2 is now considered to have similar topological applications. The exposition includes, besides K-theory, a considerable amount of related arithmetic.
£54.56
Princeton University Press Topics in Harmonic Analysis Related to the Littlewood-Paley Theory. (AM-63), Volume 63
This work deals with an extension of the classical Littlewood-Paley theory in the context of symmetric diffusion semigroups. In this general setting there are applications to a variety of problems, such as those arising in the study of the expansions coming from second order elliptic operators. A review of background material in Lie groups and martingale theory is included to make the monograph more accessible to the student.
£50.93
Princeton University Press Contributions to the Theory of Games (AM-39), Volume III
A new group of contributions to the development of this theory by leading experts in the field. The contributors include L. D. Berkovitz, L. E. Dubins, H. Everett, W. H. Fleming, D. Gale, D. Gillette, S. Karlin, J. G. Kemeny, R. Restrepo, H. E. Scarf, M. Sion, G. L. Thompson, P. Wolfe, and others.
£91.10
Princeton University Press Contributions to the Theory of Nonlinear Oscillations (AM-20), Volume I
The description for this book, Contributions to the Theory of Nonlinear Oscillations (AM-20), Volume I, will be forthcoming.
£78.00
Princeton University Press Contributions to Fourier Analysis. (AM-25)
The description for this book, Contributions to Fourier Analysis. (AM-25), will be forthcoming.
£60.39
Princeton University Press The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689-1764
More than 100,000 Ulster Presbyterians of Scottish origin migrated to the American colonies in the six decades prior to the American Revolution, the largest movement of any group from the British Isles to British North America in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a vast store of archival materials, The People with No Name is the first book to tell this fascinating story in its full, transatlantic context. It explores how these people--whom one visitor to their Pennsylvania enclaves referred to as "a spurious race of mortals known by the appellation Scotch-Irish"--drew upon both Old and New World experiences to adapt to staggering religious, economic, and cultural change. In remarkably crisp, lucid prose, Patrick Griffin uncovers the ways in which migrants from Ulster--and thousands like them--forged new identities and how they conceived the wider transatlantic community. The book moves from a vivid depiction of Ulster and its Presbyterian community in and after the Glorious Revolution to a brilliant account of religion and identity in early modern Ireland. Griffin then deftly weaves together religion and economics in the origins of the transatlantic migration, and examines how this traumatic and enlivening experience shaped patterns of settlement and adaptation in colonial America. In the American side of his story, he breaks new critical ground for our understanding of colonial identity formation and of the place of the frontier in a larger empire. The People with No Name will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in transatlantic history, American Colonial history, and the history of Irish and British migration.
£29.09
Princeton University Press Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political
American democracy faces severe challenges today, as everyday life gathers pace, national borders become increasingly porous, and commodity culture becomes more dominant. Democracy and Vision assembles a cast of prominent political theorists to consider the problems confronting political life by reviewing, assessing, and expanding on the ideas of one of the most influential political thinkers of the past forty years, Sheldon Wolin. The book consists of three sections linked by the underlying theme of Wolin's monumental effort to define "the political" and the conditions of democratic life. In the first, Nicholas Xenos, George Kateb, Fred Dallmayr, and Charles Taylor focus, in particular, on whether mass political participation, sustainable in times of upheaval as what Wolin aptly termed "fugitive democracy," can be buoyed by political institutions during periods of stability. In the second section, Wendy Brown, Aryeh Botwinick, Melissa A. Orlie, and Anne Norton examine the relevance of Wolin's ideas to current debates about, for example, social diversity and the commercialization of culture. In the last, Stephen K. White, Kirstie M. McClure, Michael J. Shapiro, and J. Peter Euben address globalization and temporality in relation to Wolin's narrative of decline, asking, among other things, whether citizenship today must incorporate a cosmopolitan dimension. These essays--and an introduction by William Connolly that lucidly outlines Wolin's thought and the deep uncertainty about political theory in the 1960s that did much to inspire his work--offer unprecedented insights into Wolin's lament that modernity has meant the loss of the political.
£31.28
Princeton University Press Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason
Kant claims to have established his table of categories or "pure concepts of the understanding" according to the "guiding thread" provided by logical forms of judgment. By drawing extensively on Kant's logical writings, Beatrice Longuenesse analyzes this controversial claim, and then follows the thread through its continuation in the transcendental deduction of the categories, the transcendental schemata, and the principles of pure understanding. The result is a systematic, persuasive new interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason. Longuenesse shows that although Kant adopts his inventory of the forms of judgment from logic textbooks of his time, he is nevertheless original in selecting just those forms he holds to be indispensable to our ability to relate representations to objects. Kant gives formal representation to this relation between conceptual thought and its objects by introducing the term "x" into his analysis of logical forms to stand for the object that is "thought under" the concepts that are combined in judgment. This "x" plays no role in Kant's forms of logical inference, but instead plays a role in clarifying the relation between logical forms (forms of concept subordination) and combinations ("syntheses") of perceptual data, necessary for empirical cognition. Considering Kant's logical forms of judgment thus helps illuminate crucial aspects of the Transcendental Analytic as a whole, while revealing the systematic unity between Kant's theory of judgment in the first Critique and his analysis of "merely reflective" (aesthetic and teleological) judgments in the third Critique.
£43.65
Princeton University Press Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
Poet, philosopher, and sensitive misanthrope, a spectacular fly in the ointment of the refined eleventh-century Andalusian-Jewish elite, Solomon Ibn Gabirol comes down to us as one of the most complicated intellectual figures in the history of post-biblical Judaism. Unlike his worldly predecessor Shmuel HaNagid, the first important poet of the period, Ibn Gabirol was a reclusive, mystically inclined figure whose modern-sounding medieval poems range from sublime descriptions of the heavenly spheres to poisonous jabs at court life and its pretenders. His verse, which demonstrates complete mastery of the classicizing avant-garde poetics of the day, grafted an Arabic aesthetic onto a biblical vocabulary and Jewish setting, taking Hebrew poetry to a level of metaphysical sophistication and devotional power it has not achieved since. Peter Cole's selection includes poems from nearly all of Ibn Gabirol's secular and liturgical lyric genres, as well as a complete translation of the poet's long masterwork, "Kingdom's Crown." Cole's rich, inventive introduction places the poetry in historical context and charts its influence through the centuries. Extensive annotations accompany the poems. This companion volume to Peter Cole's critically acclaimed Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid presents the first comprehensive selection of Ibn Gabirol's verse to be published in English and brings to life an astonishing body of poetry by one of the greatest Jewish writers of all time.
£26.90
Princeton University Press Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace
There is a widespread belief, among both political scientists and government policymakers, that "democracies don't fight each other." Here Joanne Gowa challenges that belief. In a thorough, systematic critique, she shows that, while democracies were less likely than other states to engage each other in armed conflicts between 1945 and 1980, they were just as likely to do so as were other states before 1914. Thus, no reason exists to believe that a democratic peace will survive the end of the Cold War. Since U.S. foreign policy is currently directed toward promoting democracy abroad, Gowa's findings are especially timely and worrisome. Those who assert that a democratic peace exists typically examine the 1815-1980 period as a whole. In doing so, they conflate two very different historical periods: the pre-World War I and post-World War II years. Examining these periods separately, Gowa shows that a democratic peace prevailed only during the later period. Given the collapse of the Cold War world, her research calls into question both the conclusions of previous researchers and the wisdom of present U.S. foreign policy initiatives. By re-examining the arguments and data that have been used to support beliefs about a democratic peace, Joanne Gowa has produced a thought-provoking book that is sure to be controversial.
£23.99
Princeton University Press Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890-1940
Dipesh Chakrabarty combines a history of the jute-mill workers of Calcutta with a fresh look at labor history in Marxist scholarship. Opposing a reductionist view of culture and consciousness, he examines the milieu of the jute-mill workers and the way it influenced their capacity for class solidarity and "revolutionary" action from 1890 to 1940. Around and within this empirical core is built his critique of emancipatory narratives and their relationship to such Marxian categories as "capital," "proletariat," or "class consciousness." The book contributes to currently developing theories that connect Marxist historiography, post-structuralist thinking, and the traditions of hermeneutic analysis. Although Chakrabarty deploys Marxian arguments to explain the political practices of the workers he describes, he replaces universalizing Marxist explanations with a sensitive documentary method that stays close to the experience of workers and their European bosses. He finds in their relationship many elements of the landlord/tenant relationship from the rural past: the jute-mill workers of the period were preindividualist in consciousness and thus incapable of participating consistently in modern forms of politics and political organization.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan
Why has postwar Japanese abortion policy been relatively progressive, while contraception policy has been relatively conservative? The Japanese government legalized abortion in 1948 but did not approve the pill until 1999. In this carefully researched study, Tiana Norgren argues that these contradictory policies flowed from very different historical circumstances and interest group configurations. Doctors and family planners used a small window of opportunity during the Occupation to legalize abortion, and afterwards, doctors and women battled religious groups to uphold the law. The pill, on the other hand, first appeared at an inauspicious moment in history. Until circumstances began to change in the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical industry was the pill's lone champion: doctors, midwives, family planners, and women all opposed the pill as a potential threat to their livelihoods, abortion rights, and women's health. Clearly written and interwoven with often surprising facts about Japanese history and politics, Norgren's book fills vital gaps in the cross-national literature on the politics of reproduction, a subject that has received more attention in the European and American contexts. Abortion Before Birth Control will be a valuable resource for those interested in abortion and contraception policies, gender studies, modern Japanese history, political science, and public policy. This is a major contribution to the literature on reproductive rights and the role of civil society in a country usually discussed in the context of its industrial might.
£29.09
Princeton University Press The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 4: Journal, Volume 4: 1851-1852.
From 1837 to 1861 Thoreau kept a Journal that began as a conventional record of ideas, grew into a writer's notebook, and eventually became the principal imaginative work of his career. The source of much of his published writing, the Journal is also a record of both his interior life and his monumental studies of the natural history of his native Concord, Massachusetts. In contrast to earlier editions, the Princeton Edition reproduces the Journal in its original and complete form, in a reading text that is free of editorial interpolations but keyed to a comprehensive scholarly apparatus. Despite activities as time-consuming and varied as urveying for the town of Concord and helping a fugitive slave escape to Canada, Thoreau wrote nearly eight hundred manuscript pages in his Journal during the eight months covered by this volume. Confirmed in his vocation as a natural historian, he began to compile the richly detailed records of Concord's woods, fields, and streams that would occupy him for the rest of his life, and he consciously shaped the Journal to reflect his new aims as a writer. He also began major revisions of his Walden that would lead to its publication in 1854.
£92.43
Princeton University Press The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: The Maine Woods
The Maine Woods is a characteristically Thoreauvian book: a personal account of exploration, of exterior and interior discovery in a natural setting, conveyed in taut, workmanlike prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are valuable in themselves. But his impassioned protest against despoilment in the name of commerce and sport, which even by the 1850s threatened to deprive Americans of the "tonic of wildness," makes The Maine Woods an especially vital book for our time. This edition presents Thoreau's fullest account of the wilderness as he intended it.
£92.43
Princeton University Press Making Peace with the 60s
David Burner's panoramic history of the 1960s conveys the ferocity of debate and the testing of visionary hopes that still require us to make sense of the decade. He begins with the civil rights and black power movements and then turns to nuanced descriptions of Kennedy and the Cold War, the counterculture and its antecedents in the Beat Generation, the student rebellion, the poverty wars, and the liberals' war in Vietnam. As he considers each topic, Burner advances a provocative argument about how liberalism self-destructed in the 1960s. In his view, the civil rights movement took a wrong turn as it gradually came to emphasize the identity politics of race and ethnicity at the expense of the vastly more important politics of class and distribution of wealth. The expansion of the Vietnam War did force radicals to confront the most terrible mistake of American liberalism, but that they also turned against the social goals of the New Deal was destructive to all concerned. Liberals seemed to rule in politics and in the media, Burner points out, yet they failed to make adequate use of their power to advance the purposes that both liberalism and the left endorsed. And forces for social amelioration splintered into pairs of enemies, such as integrationists and black separatists, the social left and mainline liberalism, and advocates of peace and supporters of a totalitarian Hanoi. Making Peace with the 60s will fascinate baby boomers and their elders, who either joined, denounced, or tried to ignore the counterculture. It will also inform a broad audience of younger people about the famous political and literary figures of the time, the salient moments, and, above all, the powerful ideas that spawned events from the civil rights era to the Vietnam War. Finally, it will help to explain why Americans failed to make full use of the energies unleashed by one of the most remarkable decades of our history.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Universities and Their Leadership
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Princeton University, leading educators and commentators participated in a symposium jointly sponsored by Princeton and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Universities and Their Leadership is a collection of original essays from presenters at the Princeton Conference on Higher Education. Individually, these essays discuss aspects of contemporary higher education in the U.S. Taken together, they offer a useful perspective on issues that face American universities as they enter the twenty-first century. The opening essay, "The University and Its Critics" by Frank Rhodes, confronts criticisms of the American university, examines how universities have changed over recent decades, and suggests a plan of action to restore public confidence and strengthen bonds of community within universities. "On the Accountability of Higher Education in the United States," by Martin Trow, deals with the critical issue of responsibility. Harold Shapiro's essay, "University Presidents--Then and Now," blends personal insights with a historical account of changes over time in the roles of university presidents. In commenting on Shapiro's paper, Hanna Gray draws on her experiences as a university president and her training as a historian to demonstrate that university presidents have always operated under constraints. Henry Rosovsky and Inge-Lise Ameer collaborate in the essay "A Neglected Topic: Professional Conduct of College and University Teachers," to which Amy Gutmann responds in an essay entitled "How Can Universities Teach Professional Ethics?" Oliver Fulton contributes a cross-cultural perspective in "Unity or Fragmentation, Convergence or Diversity: The Academic Profession in Comparative Perspective in the Era of Mass Higher Education." Daniel J. Kevles's essay, "A Time for Audacity: What the Past Has to Teach the Present about Science and the Federal Government," considers the historical partnership between the scientific community and the government. In reaction, Frank Press in "New Policies for New Times" comments on the shifting actions of major political parties in supporting research, and Maxine Singer, in her essay "On the Future of America's Scientific Enterprise," surveys opportunities and problems that have been created by recent scientific advances.
£76.41
Princeton University Press Kierkegaard's Writings, XVI, Volume 16: Works of Love
The various kinds and conditions of love are a common theme for Kierkegaard, beginning with his early Either/Or, through "The Diary of the Seducer" and Judge William's eulogy on married love, to his last work, on the changelessness of God's love. Works of Love, the midpoint in the series, is also the monumental high point, because of its penetrating, illuminating analysis of the forms and sources of love. Love as feeling and mood is distinguished from works of love, love of the lovable from love of the unlovely, preferential love from love as the royal law, love as mutual egotism from triangular love, and erotic love from self-giving love. This work is marked by Kierkegaard's Socratic awareness of the reader, both as the center of awakened understanding and as the initiator of action. Written to be read aloud, the book conveys a keenness of thought and an insightful, poetic imagination that make such an attentive approach richly rewarding. Works of Love not only serves as an excellent place to begin exploring the writings of Kierkegaard, but also rewards many rereadings.
£34.19
Princeton University Press Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race
In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most vexing problem. Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life. Gutmann examines alternative political responses to racial injustice. She argues that American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice. Whether policies should be color-conscious, class conscious, or both in particular situations, depends on an open-minded assessment of their fairness. Exploring timely issues of university admissions, corporate hiring, and political representation, Gutmann develops a moral perspective that supports a commitment to constitutional democracy. Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race.
£29.09
Princeton University Press The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives
A superb introduction to the ethical aspects of war and peace, this collection of tightly integrated essays explores the reasons for waging war and for fighting with restraint as formulated in a diversity of ethical traditions, religious and secular. Beginning with the classic debate between political realism and natural law, this book seeks to expand the conversation by bringing in the voices of Judaism, Islam, Christian pacifism, and contemporary feminism. In so doing, it addresses a set of questions: How do the adherents to each viewpoint understand the ideas of war and peace? What attitudes toward war and peace are reflected in these understandings? What grounds for war, if any, are recognized within each perspective? What constraints apply to the conduct of war? Can these constraints be set aside in situations of extremity? Each contributor responds to this set of questions on behalf of the ethical perspective he or she is presenting. The concluding chapters compare and contrast the perspectives presented without seeking to adjudicate their differences. Because of its inclusive, objective, comparative, and dialogic approach, the book serves as a valuable resource for scholars, journalists, policymakers, and anyone else who wants to acquire a better understanding of the range of moral viewpoints that shape current discussion of war and peace. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Joseph Boyle, Michael G. Cartwright, Jean Bethke Elshtain, John Finnis, Sohail H. Hashmi, Theodore J. Koontz, David R. Mapel, Jeff McMahan, Richard B. Miller, Aviezer Ravitzky, Bassam Tibi, Sarah Tobias, and Michael Walzer.
£36.36
Princeton University Press Quantum Mechanics and Its Emergent Macrophysics
The quantum theory of macroscopic systems is a vast, ever-developing area of science that serves to relate the properties of complex physical objects to those of their constituent particles. Its essential challenge is that of finding the conceptual structures needed for the description of the various states of organization of many-particle quantum systems. In this book, Geoffrey Sewell provides a new approach to the subject, based on a "macrostatistical mechanics," which contrasts sharply with the standard microscopic treatments of many-body problems. Sewell begins by presenting the operator algebraic framework for the theory. He then undertakes a macrostatistical treatment of both equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics, which yields a major new characterization of a complete set of thermodynamic variables and a nonlinear generalization of the Onsager theory. The remainder of the book focuses on ordered and chaotic structures that arise in some key areas of condensed matter physics. This includes a general derivation of superconductive electrodynamics from the assumptions of off-diagonal long-range order, gauge covariance, and thermodynamic stability, which avoids the enormous complications of the microscopic treatments. Sewell also unveils a theoretical framework for phase transitions far from thermal equilibrium. Throughout, the mathematics is kept clear without sacrificing rigor. Representing a coherent approach to the vast problem of the emergence of macroscopic phenomena from quantum mechanics, this well-written book is addressed to physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists interested in quantum theory, statistical physics, thermodynamics, and general questions of order and chaos.
£89.51
Princeton University Press Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria
Greed, frustrated love, traffic jams, infertility, politics, polygamy. These--together with depictions of traditional village life and the impact of colonialism made familiar to Western readers through Chinua Achebe's writing--are the stuff of Nigerian fiction. Bearing Witness examines this varied content and the determined people who, against all odds, write, publish, sell, and read novels in Africa's most populous nation. Drawing on interviews with Nigeria's writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers, surveys, and a careful reading of close to 500 Nigerian novels--from lightweight romances to literary masterpieces--Wendy Griswold explores how global cultural flows and local conflicts meet in the production and reception of fiction. She argues that Nigerian readers and writers form a reading class that unabashedly believes in progress, rationality, and the slow-but-inevitable rise of a reading culture. But they do so within a society that does not support their assumptions and does not trust literature, making them modernists in a country that is simultaneously premodern and postmodern. Without privacy, reliable electricity, political freedom, or even social toleration of bookworms, these Nigerians write and read political satires, formula romances, war stories, complex gender fiction, blood-and-sex crime capers, nostalgic portraits of village life, and profound explorations of how decent people get by amid urban chaos. Bearing Witness is an inventive and moving work of cultural sociology that may be the most comprehensive sociological analysis of a literary system ever written.
£47.29
Princeton University Press Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: The Registered Charters of Its Conqueror, Jaume I, 1257-1276. III: Transition in Crusader Valencia: Years of Triumph, Years of War, 1264-1270
In this volume, a panoramic history of medieval Valencia continues to unfold, as the noted scholar Robert Burns presents a new set of documents from the registers of Jaume the Conqueror at the Crown Archives in Barcelona. Here Burns focuses on 500 government charters covering the years 1264 to 1270, the culmination of the king's warrior fame in Christendom, and places these documents within the context of Jaumes's pan-Mediterranean military and political exploits. The most impressive archives of its kind outside the papal series, this collection is invaluable to medievalists as well as to historians interested in topics ranging from colonialism to rhetoric to economics during the Crusade period. Together the five Diplomatarium volumes will reconstruct the thousands of charters describing the daily business of Jaumes's kingdom and will provide detailed paraphrases of each document to aid scholars with little or no Latin. The third volume describes Jaume distributing public baths and taverns and artisans' quarters, constructing irrigation networks and castles, licensing butchers and physicians, noticing even dovecotes and beehives and oranges, operating on credit and on charismatic itinerant presence, interacting with his many Jewish and Muslim communities, and leading his armies to battle. Meanwhile, Jaumes's bureaucrats are at work elaborating a Roman law framework, shaping an institutional and commercial system, and defining the kingdom's religious identity. In a kaleidoscope of human detail, these documents open a window on an exotic past that medievalists and all historians can enjoy.
£116.45
Princeton University Press After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars
The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the World Wars in 1919 and 1945. Here John Ikenberry asks the question, what do states that win wars do with their newfound power and how do they use it to build order? In examining the postwar settlements in modern history, he argues that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. The author explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions--both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power--has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit "constitutional" characteristics. The open character of the American polity and a web of multilateral institutions allow the United States to exercise strategic restraint and establish stable relations among the industrial democracies despite rapid shifts and extreme disparities in power. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, After Victory will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today. It also speaks to today's debate over the ability of the United States to lead in an era of unipolar power.
£34.19