Search results for ""University of Chicago Press""

"Wright's views about population genetics and evolution are so fundamental and so comprehensive that every serious student must examine these books firsthand. . . . Publication of this treatise is a major event in evolutionary biology."-Daniel L. Hartl, "BioScience"

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The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation's founding through the Great Depression, "In Hock" demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic tide could make ends meet only, Wendy A. Woloson argues, by regularly pawning household objects to supplement inadequate wages. Nonetheless, businessmen, reformers, and cultural critics claimed that pawnshops promoted vice, and employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to cast their proprietors as greedy and cold-hearted. Using personal correspondence, business records, and other rich archival sources to uncover the truth behind the rhetoric, Woloson brings to life a diverse cast of characters and shows that pawnbrokers were in fact shrewd businessmen, often from humble origins, who possessed sophisticated knowledge of a wide range of goods in various resale markets. A much-needed new look at a misunderstood institution, "In Hock" is both a first-rate academic study of a largely ignored facet of the capitalist economy and a resonant portrait of the economic struggles of generations of Americans.

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Documenting four painful years in the life of German writer Christa Wolf, this collection of essays, letters and diary entries portrays the cultural and political situation in the former German Democratic Republic. An admired writer, Wolf was reviled after the publication of her novel "What Remains", which was attacked by the press as a belated attempt to establish herself as a victim of the Stasi (the GDR's secret police). The criticism discredited Wolf as a cultural hero in the eyes of many Germans, and plunged her into a deep personal crisis. This volume shows Wolf coming to terms with her ambiguous past and an unforgiving present. Among the writings gathered in this book are discourses with Jurgen Habermas and Gunter Grass, a series of diary entries, and a critical account of Berlin one year after unification, entitled "Whatever Happened to your Smile: Wasteland Berlin 1990". In addition, Wolf defends herself from the media campaign waged against her in Germany. The truth about the GDR, she argues, will be found in its literature, not in the security files used to discredit the GDR's culture.

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This is a text seeking to refute one of the cornerstone beliefs of economics and political science: that economic markets are more efficient than the processes and institutions of democratic government. The author first considers the characteristic of efficient markets - informed, rational participants competing for well-defined and easily transferred property rights - and explains how they operate in democratic politics. He then analyzes how specific political institutions are organized to operate efficiently. "Markets" such as the the Congress in the United States, bureaucracies, and pressure groups, the author asserts contribute to efficient political outcomes. He also provides a theory of institutional design to explain how these political "markets" arise. Finally, Wittman addresses the methodological shortcomings of analyses of political market failure, and offers his own suggestions for a more effective research strategy. Ultimately, the study concludes that nearly all of the arguments claiming that economic markets are efficient apply equally well to democratic political markets; and, conversely, that economic models of political failure are not more valid than the analogous arguments for economic market failure.

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In this concise but ambitious historiographical essay, Wilson argues for an approach to the Meiji Restoration that emphasizes multiple lines of motive and action. "By bringing some very interesting critical theory to his reading, Wilson has produced a book that will shift the terms of discussion on this event."--Harry D. Harootunian

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In this study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women, Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions of spirituality. She argues that despite the marginal role women played in monastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhist hagiographic literature. In narratives used for the edification of Buddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and after death) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring spiritual growth through sexual abstention and repulsion in the immediate world. Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representation of women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of an drocentrism in Buddhist literature and practice.

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On college campuses and in high school halls, being white means being boring. Since whiteness is the mainstream, white kids lack a cultural identity that's exotic or worth flaunting. To remedy this, countless white youths across the country are now joining more outre subcultures like the Black- and Puerto Rican - dominated hip-hop scene, the glamorously morose goth community, or an evangelical Christian organization whose members reject campus partying. Amy C. Wilkins' intimate ethnography of these three subcultures reveals a complex tug-of-war between the demands of race, class, and gender in which transgressing in one realm often means conforming to expectations in another. Subcultures help young people, especially women, navigate these connecting territories by offering them different sexual strategies: wannabes cross racial lines, goths break taboos by becoming involved with multiple partners, and Christians forego romance to develop their bond with God. Avoiding sanctimonious hysteria over youth gone astray, Wilkins meets these kids on their own terms, and the result is a perceptive and provocative portrait of the structure of young lives.

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Of the thirty miles of Lake Michigan shoreline within the city limits of Chicago, twenty-four miles is public park land. The crown jewels of its park system, the lakefront parks bewitch natives and visitors alike with their brisk winds, shady trees, sandy beaches, and rolling waves. Like most good things, the protection of the lakefront parks didn't come easy, and this book chronicles the hard-fought and never-ending battles Chicago citizens have waged to keep them "forever open, clear, and free."Illustrated with historic and contemporary photographs, Wille's book tells how Chicago's lakefront has survived a century of development. The story serves as a warning to anyone who thinks the struggle for the lakefront is over, or who takes for granted the beauty of its public beaches and parks. "A thoroughly fascinating and well-documented narrative which draws the reader into the sights, smells and sounds of Chicago's story. . . . Everyone who cares about the development of land and its conservation will benefit from reading Miss Wille's book."—Daniel J. Shannon, Architectural Forum"Not only good reading, it is also a splendid example of how to equip concerned citizens for their necessary participation in the politics of planning and a more livable environment."—Library Journal

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Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems—bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.

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"An impressive and important cross-cultural study that has vast implications for history, religion, anthropology, folklore, and other fields. . . . Remarkably wide-ranging and extremely well-documented, it covers (among much else) the following: medieval Christian legends such as the 14th-century Ethiopian Gadla Hawaryat (Contendings of the Apostles) that had their roots in Parthian Gnosticism and Manichaeism; dog-stars (especially Sirius), dog-days, and canine psychopomps in the ancient and Hellenistic world; the cynocephalic hordes of the ancient geographers; the legend of Prester John; Visvamitra and the Svapacas ("Dog-Cookers"); the Dog Rong ("warlike barbarians") during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods; the nochoy ghajar (Mongolian for "Dog Country") of the Khitans; the Panju myth of the Southern Man and Yao "barbarians" from chapter 116 of the History of the Latter Han and variants in a series of later texts; and the importance of dogs in ancient Chinese burial rites. . . . Extremely well-researched and highly significant."—Victor H. Mair, Asian Folklore Studies

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Through fresh readings of texts ranging from Homer's Iliad, Swift's Tale of a Tub, and Austen's Emma through the United States Constitution and McCulloch v. Maryland, James Boyd White examines the relationship between an individual mind and its language and culture as well as the "textual community" established between writer and audience. These striking textual analyses develop a rhetoric—a "way of reading" that can be brought to any text but that, in broader terms, becomes a way of learning that can shape the reader's life."In this ambitious and demanding work of literary criticism, James Boyd White seeks to communicate 'a sense of reading in a new and different way.' . . . [White's] marriage of lawyerly acumen and classically trained literary sensibility—equally evident in his earlier work, The Legal Imagination—gives the best parts of When Words Lose Their Meaning a gravity and moral earnestness rare in the pages of contemporary literary criticism."—Roger Kimball, American Scholar"James Boyd White makes a state-of-the-art attempt to enrich legal theory with the insights of modern literary theory. Of its kind, it is a singular and standout achievement. . . . [White's] selections span the whole range of legal, literary, and political offerings, and his writing evidences a sustained and intimate experience with these texts. Writing with natural elegance, White manages to be insightful and inciteful. Throughout, his timely book is energized by an urgent love of literature and law and their liberating potential. His passion and sincerity are palpable."—Allan C. Hutchinson, Yale Law Journal"Undeniably a unique and significant work. . . . When Words Lose Their Meaning is a rewarding book by a distinguished legal scholar. It is a showcase for the most interesting sort of inter-disciplinary work: the kind that brings together from traditionally separate fields not so much information as ideas and approaches."—R. B. Kershner, Jr., Georgia Review

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From the author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Calamities of Exile combines three gripping narratives that afford a sort of double CAT scan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile."Beautiful but harrowing chronicles of three exiles that probe the moral and personal risks of their encounters with totalitarianism. . . . Piercing and timely."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Weschler . . . combines a novelist's gift for drama with the objectivity and research skills of a journalist. . . . The result is three gripping profiles of very human but also extraordinary men."—Publishers Weekly"[Weschler's] thorough accounting of the men's covert operations, assumed identities and strained relationships with fathers, wives, and colleagues creates a disturbing triptych of the perils of totalitarianism."—Lance Gould, New York Times Book Review"Weschler tells these three tragic tales with an admirable combination of psychological penetration, intellectual thrust, concision and compassion."—Francis King, Spectator"Endlessly absorbing. . . . Breathtaking."—Jeri Laber, Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Cholas and Pishtacos are two provocative characters from South American popular culture - a sensual mixed-race woman and a horrifying white killer - who show up in everything from horror stories and dirty jokes to romantic novels and travel posters. In this book, these two figures become vehicles for an exploration of race, sex, and violence. Mary Weismantel's theory of race and sex begins not with individual identity but with three forms of social and economic interaction: estrangement, exchange and accumulation. She maps the barriers that separate white and Indian, male and female - barriers that exist not in order to prevent exchange, but rather to exacerbate its inequality. Weismantel weaves together sources ranging from her own fieldwork and the words of potato sellers, hotel maids, and tourists to classic works by photographer Marin Chambi and novelist Jose Maria Arguedas.

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In 1908, the ruler of the Balinese realm of Klungkung and more than 100 members of his family and court were massacred when they marched deliberately into the fire of the Dutch colonial army. The question of what their action meant and its continued significance in contemporary Klungkung forms the basis of Margaret Wiener's anthropolological history. Wiener challenges colonial and academic claims that Klungkung had no "real" power and argues that such claims enabled colonial domination. By focusing on Balinese discourses she makes clear the choices open to Balinese, both at the time of the Dutch conquest and in its narration. At the same time, she shows how these discourses, which revolve around magical weapons acquired from invisible agents such as gods, spirits and ancestors, offer an alternative understanding of Klungkung's power. Moving between Balinese and Dutch narratives and between past and present, Wiener critiques colonial accounts by recounting Balinese memories and interpretations. Her attention to history and local situations illuminates the ways in which colonialism and orientalist scholarship have obscured the power of indigenous rulers and shows how Klungkung, once Bali's paramount realm, was relegated to a peripheral corner of the Indonesian nation-state. Both as a story and as an example of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book should interest students of colonialism, anthropology, history, religion and Southeast Asia.

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These essays, by contributors from the fields ranging from social and political theory to historical sociology and cultural studies, seek to illuminate the significance of the public/private distinction for an increasingly wide range of debates. Commenting on controversies surrounding such issues as abortion rights, identity politics, and the requirements of democratization, many of these essays clarify crucial processes that have shaped the culture and institutions of modern societies.

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The first English translation of Johannes Weigelt's 1927 classic makes available the seminal work in taphonomy, the study of how organisms die, decay, become entombed in sediments, and fossilize over time. Weigelt emphasized the importance of empirical work and made extensive observations of modern carcasses on the Texas Gulf Coast. He applied the results to evidence from the fossil record and demonstrated that an understanding of the postmortem fate of modern animals is crucial to making sound inferences about fossil vertebrate assemblages and their ecological communities. Weigelt spent sixteen months on the Gulf Coast in the mid-1920s, gathering evidence from the carcasses of cattle and other animals in the early stages of preservation. This book reports his observations. He discusses death and decomposition; classifies various modes of death (drowning, cold, dehydration, fire, mud, quicksand, oil slicks, etc.); documents and analyzes the positions of carcasses; presents detailed data on carcass assemblages at the Smither's Lake site in Texas; and, in a final chapter, makes comparisons to carcass assemblages from the geologic past. He raises questions about whether much of the fossil record is a product of unusual events and, if so, what the implications are for paleoecological studies. The English edition of Recent Vertebrate Carcasses includes a foreword and a translator's note that comment on Weigelt's life and the significance of his work. The original bibliography has been brought up to date, and, where necessary, updated scientific and place names have been added to the text in brackets. An index of names, places, and subjects is included, and Weigelt's own photographs of carcasses and drawings of skeletons illustrate the text.

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Just as flowering plants depend on their pollinators, many birds, insects, and bats rely on plants for energy and nutrients. This plant-pollinator relationship is essential to the survival of natural and agricultural ecosystems. "Plant-Pollinator Interactions" portrays the intimate relationships of pollination over time and space and reveals patterns of interactions from individual to community levels, showing how these patterns change at different spatial and temporal scales. Nickolas M. Waser and Jeff Ollerton bring together experts from around the world to offer a comprehensive analysis of pollination, including the history of thinking about specialization and generalization and a comparison of pollination to other mutualisms. An overview of current thinking and of future research priorities, "Plant-Pollinator Interactions" covers an important theme in evolutionary ecology with far-reaching applications in conservation and agriculture. This book will find an eager audience in specialists studying pollination and other mutualisms, as well as with biologists who are interested in ecological, evolutionary, and behavioral aspects of the specialization and generalization of species.

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When Isaac Newton published the "Principia" three centuries ago, only a few scholars were capable of understanding his conceptually demanding work. Yet this esoteric knowledge quickly became accessible in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Britain produced many leading mathematical physicists. In this book, Andrew Warwick shows how the education of these "masters of theory" led them to transform our understanding of everything from the flight of a boomerang to the structure of the universe. Warwick focuses on Cambridge University, where many of the best physicists trained. He begins by tracing the dramatic changes in undergraduate education there since the 18th century, especially the gradual emergence of the private tutor as the most important teacher of mathematics. Next he explores the material culture of mathematics instruction, showing how the humble pen and paper so crucial to this study transformed everything from classroom teaching to final examinations. Balancing their intense intellectual work with strenuous physical exercise, the students themselves - known as the "Wranglers" - helped foster the competitive spirit that drove them in the classroom and informed the Victorian ideal of a manly student. Finally, by investigating several historical "cases", such as the reception of Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, Warwick shows how the production, transmission and reception of new knowledge was profoundly shaped by the skills taught to Cambridge undergraduates. Drawing on a wealth of new archival evidence and illustrations, "Master of Theory" examines the origins of a cultural tradition through which the complex world of theoretical physics was made commonplace.

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During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen - and state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens," a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century. In "The Black Child-Savers", the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice, Geoff K. Ward examines the origins and organization of this separate and unequal juvenile justice system. Ward explores how generations of "black child-savers" mobilized to challenge the threat to black youth and community interests and how this struggle grew aligned with a wider civil rights movement, eventually forcing the formal integration of American juvenile justice. Ward's book reveals nearly a century of struggle to build a more democratic model of juvenile justice - an effort that succeeded in part, but ultimately failed to deliver black youth and community to liberal rehabilitative ideals. At once an inspiring story about the shifting boundaries of race, citizenship, and democracy in America and a crucial look at the nature of racial inequality, "The Black Child-Savers" is a stirring account of the stakes and meaning of social justice.

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Splashed against the tumultuous Clinton years and framed by the clash between gay political might and anti-gay activism, "All the Rage" presents the first authoritative guide to the new gay visibility. From the public outing of Ellen DeGeneres to the vicious murder of Matthew Shepard, gay lives and images have moved onto the centre stage of American public life. Lesbians and gay men are indeed everywhere, from television sitcoms to Budweiser ads, from the White House to the Magic Kingdom. Combining personal stories with incisive analysis, Suzanna Danuta Walters chronicles this historic moment in our culture, arguing that we live in a time when gays are seen, but not necessarily known. Many consider the new gay visibility a sign of social acceptance, while others charge that it is mere window dressing, obscuring the dogged persistence of discrimination. Walters moves beyond these positions and instead argues that these realities coexist: gays are at once the sign of social decay in our culture and the chic flavour of the month. Taking on the common wisdom that visibility means progress, "All the Rage" maps the terrain on which gays are accepted as witty accessories in movies, gain access to political power, and yet still fall into constrictive stereotypes. Walters warns us with clarity and wit of the pitfalls of equating visibility with full integration into the fabric of American society. From the playful TV fantasies of lesbian weddings on "Friends" to the very real obstacles confronting gay marriage, from the award-winning comedy "Will & Grace" to Bible-thumping radio superhost Dr. Laura, "All the Rage" takes on naive celebrants and jaded naysayers alike. With a sophisticated mix of caution and optimism, the book provides an illuminating guide through these heady, controversial times.

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Chandra is an intimate portrait of a highly private and brilliant man, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a Nobel laureate in physics who has been a major contributor to the theories of white dwarfs and black holes. "Wali has given us a magnificent portrait of Chandra, full of life and color, with a deep understanding of the three cultures--Indian, British, and American--in which Chandra was successively immersed...I wish I had the job of reviewing this book for the New York Times rather than for Physics Today. If the book is only read by physicists, then Wali's devoted labors were in vain."--Freeman Dyson, Physics Today "An enthralling human document."--William McCrea, Times Higher Education Supplement "A dramatic, exuberant biography of one of the century's great scientists."--Publishers Weekly

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The inevitability of gravitational collapse for stellar bodies of sufficient mass was convincingly demonstarted by S. Chandrasekhar in the 1930s, black holes and neutron stars played a minor role in serious analyses of physical or astrophysical phenomena until the discovery of quasars and pulsars in the 1960s. Black holes and neutron stars are now generally recognized as key components of many astrophysical systems, and play a central role in the understanding of gravitational phenomena at both the classical and quantum levels. Based on a symposium held in honour of S. Chandrasekhar, these papers provide a comprehensive summary of progress made in the 1990s on the theory of black holes and relativistic stars.

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On March 16, 1978, the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, and what followed—the fifty-five days of captivity that resulted in Moro's murder—constitutes one of the most striking social dramas of the twentieth century. In this compelling study of terrorism, Robin Wagner-Pacifici employs methods from sociology, symbolic anthropology, and literary criticism to decode the many social "texts" that shaped the event: political speeches, newspaper reports, television and radio news, editorials, photographs, Moro's letters, Red Brigade communiques, and appeals by various international figures. The analysis of these "texts" calls into question the function of politics, social drama, spectacle, and theater. Wagner-Pacifici provides a dramaturgic analysis of the Moro affair as a method for discussing the culture of politics in Italy.

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This important new work by Roy Wagner is about the autonomy of symbols and their role in creating culture. Its argument, anticipated in the author's previous book, The Invention of Culture, is at once symbolic, philosophical, and evolutionary: meaning is a form of perception to which human beings are physically and mentally adapted. Using examples from his many years of research among the Daribi people of New Guinea as well as from Western culture, Wagner approaches the question of the creation of meaning by examining the nonreferential qualities of symbols—such as their aesthetic and formal properties—that enable symbols to stand for themselves.

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Read by Protestants and Catholics alike, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633-94) was the foremost German woman poet and writer in the seventeenth-century German-speaking world. Privileged by her social station and education, she published a large body of religious writings under her own name to a reception unequaled by any other German woman during her lifetime. But once the popularity of devotional writings as a genre waned, Catharina's works went largely unread until scholars devoted renewed attention to them in the twentieth century. For this volume, Lynne Tatlock translates for the first time into English excerpts from the first two sets of thirty-six meditations, restoring Catharina to her rightful place in print. These meditations foreground the roles of women in the life of Jesus Christ - including accounts of women at the Incarnation and the tomb - and in scripture in general. Tatlock's selections give the modern reader a sense of the structure and nature of Catharina's devotional writings, highlighting the alternative they offer to the male-centered view of early modern literary and cultural production during her day, and redefining the role of women in Christian history.

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"From meetings and conversation with men, love affairs arise. In the midst of pleasures, banquets, dances, laughter and self-indulgence, Venus and her son Cupid reign supreme...Poor young girl, if you emerge from these encounters a captive prey! How much better it would have been to remain at home or to have broken a leg of the body rather than of the mind!" So wrote the 16th-century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives in a famous work dedicated to Henry VIII's daughter, Princess Mary, but intended for a wider audience interested in the education of women. Praised by Erasmus and Thomas More, Vives advocated education for all women, regardless of social class and ability. From childhood through adolescence to marriage and widowhood, this manual offers practical advice as well as philosophical meditation and was recognized soon after publication in 1524 as the most authoritative pronouncement on the universal education of women. Arguing that women were intellectually equal if not superior to men, Vives stressed intellectual companionship in marriage over procreation, and moved beyond the private sphere to show how women's progress was essential for the good of society and state.

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The original impulse for groups to separate from society and establish communities of their own was religious. Though the religious side of this drive toward separation remains strong, the last two centuries have seen the appearance of secular communities with a socialist or anarchist orientation. In The Communal Experience, nominated for a National Book Award in 1973, Laurence Veysey explores the close resemblances between the secular and religious forms of cultural radicalism through intensive observation of four little-known communities. Veysey compares the history of secular communities such as the early Ferrer Colony and Modern School, of Shelton, New Jersey, with contemporary anarchist communities in New York, Vermont, and New Mexico. Religious communes—"Communities of Discipline"—such as the Vedanta monasteries of the early twentieth century are compared with contemporary mystical communities in New Mexico. Distinctions between the anarchist and the mystical groups are most obvious from their approach to communal life. As Veysey shows, anarchist communities are loose, unstructured, voluntaristic; the mystics establish more rigid life-styles, focus on spiritual leaders, and hold community a secondary goal to self-realization. In a new preface written for this Phoenix Edition, he describes his return to a New Mexican mystical community and the changes that have occurred in the six years since his last visit.

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French poet Paul Verlaine was a major representative of the symbolist movement during the latter half of the 19th century. Norman Shapiro's translations seek to display Verlaine's ability to transform into verse the essence of everyday life and make evident the reasons for his renown in France and throughout the Western world. This selection provides the reader with a cross-section of Verlaine's repertoire. Shapiro has included a number of the poet's early works, showing him at his most capricious and lyrical; many poems from his middle period, which reflect his on-again, off-again conversion to Catholicism after his tumultuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud; and poems from his late period, when he fell prey to poverty, dissipation, and disease. These later poems, rarely anthologized, and for the most part little known, mark an important shift in Verlaine's style and exhibit the biting wit and deep sincerity that characterize this entire collection. Biographical introductions and notes help explain the circumstances that gave rise to Verlaine's work. By spanning the poet's entire life work, Shapiro presents to scholars, students, and general readers of poetry the full range of Verlaine's achievement.

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This newest volume in the "Works of Giuseppe Verdi" series comprises his only two surviving secular choral works: "Inno popolare", or "Hymn of the People", for unaccompanied male chorus, and "Inno delle nazioni", or "Hymn of the Nations", for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra. Verdi wrote the brief "Inno popolare" in 1848 at the behest of the Italian philosopher and patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, hoping that it would become an anthem for Italy. He wrote no more independent patriotic pieces until he was asked in 1861 to represent his country with a patriotic composition at a musical jubilee during London's International Exhibition of 1862. The resulting piece was "Inno delle nazioni", the critical edition of which is based on Verdi's autograph score, preserved at the British Library. Other important sources include the composer's musical sketches, recently discovered in the Verdi family villa, and the performing parts Toscanini used for a BBC broadcast in 1943.

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Familiar landmarks in hundreds of American towns, Carnegie libraries today seem far from controversial. In Free to All, however, Abigail A. Van Slyck shows that the classical façades and symmetrical plans of these buildings often mask a complex and contentious history."The whole story is told here in this book. Carnegie's wishes, the conflicts among local groups, the architecture, development of female librarians. It's a rich and marvelous story, lovingly told."—Alicia Browne, Journal of American Culture"This well-written and extensively researched work is a welcome addition to the history of architecture, librarianship, and philanthropy."—Joanne Passet, Journal of American History"Van Slyck's book is a tremendous contribution for its keenness of scholarship and good writing and also for its perceptive look at a familiar but misunderstood icon of the American townscape."—Howard Wight Marshall, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians"[Van Slyck's] reading of the cultural coding implicit in the architectural design of the library makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the limitations of the doctrine 'free to all.'"—Virginia Quarterly Review

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This work presents an analysis of the classic problem of constraints on pronominal anaphora within the framework of cognitive grammar. The author proceeds from the position that grammatical structure can be characterized in terms of semantic and phonological representations, without autonomous syntactic structures or principles, such as tree structures or c-command. She argues that constraints on anaphora can be explained in terms of semantic interactions between nominals and the contexts in which they are embedded. Integrating the results of previous work, van Hoek develops a model in which some nominals function as "conceptual reference points" which dominate over stretches defined by the semantic relations among elements. When a full noun is in the domain of a reference point, co-reference is ruled out, since the speaker would be sending contradictory messages about the salience of the noun's referent. This book is designed to interest theoretical linguists of all persuasions.

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Brought back into print in the 1990s to wide acclaim, re-designed new editions of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee Mysteries are now available.Written by a Dutch diplomat and scholar during the 1950s and 1960s, these lively and historically accurate mysteries have entertained a devoted following for decades. Set during the T'ang dynasty, they feature Judge Dee, a brilliant and cultured Confucian magistrate disdainful of personal luxury and corruption, who cleverly selects allies to help him navigate the royal courts, politics, and ethnic tensions in imperial China. Robert van Gulik modeled Judge Dee on a magistrate of that name who lived in the seventh century, and he drew on stories and literary conventions of Chinese mystery writing dating back to the Sung dynasty to construct his ingenious plots.Necklace and Calabash finds Judge Dee returning to his district of Poo-yang, where the peaceful town of Riverton promises a few days' fishing and relaxation. Yet a chance meeting with a Taoist recluse, a gruesome body fished out of the river, strange guests at the Kingfisher Inn, and a princess in distress thrust the judge into one of the most intricate and baffling mysteries of his career.An expert on the art and erotica as well as the literature, religion, and politics of China, van Gulik also provides charming illustrations to accompany his engaging and entertaining mysteries.

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The Monkey and The Tiger includes two detective stories, "The Morning of the Monkey" and "The Night of the Tiger." In the first, a gibbon drops an emerald in the open gallery of Dee's official residence, leading the judge to discover a strangely mutilated body in the woods—and how it got there. In the second, Dee is traveling to the imperial capital to assume a new position when he is separated from his escort by a flood. Marooned in a large country house surrounded by fierce bandits, Dee confronts an apparition that helps him solve a mystery.

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The most comprehensive account available of the rise and fall of the Black Power Movement and of its dramatic transformation of both African-American and larger American culture. With a gift for storytelling and an ear for street talk, William Van Deburg chronicles a decade of deep change, from the armed struggles of the Black Panther party to the cultural nationalism of artists and writers creating a new aesthetic. Van Deburg contends that although its tactical gains were sometimes short-lived, the Black Power movement did succeed in making a revolution—one in culture and consciousness—that has changed the context of race in America."New Day in Babylon is an extremely intelligent synthesis, a densely textured evocation of one of American history's most revolutionary transformations in ethnic group consciousness."—Bob Blauner, New York TimesWinner of the Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award, 1993

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On the road to Survival City, Tom Vanderbilt maps the visible and invisible legacies of the cold war, exhuming the blueprints for the apocalypse we once envisioned and chronicling a time in which we all lived at ground zero. In this road trip among ruined missile silos, atomic storage bunkers, and secret test sites, a lost battleground emerges amid the architecture of the 1950s, accompanied by Walter Cotten's stunning photographs. "Survival City" looks deep into the national soul, unearthing the dreams and fears that drove us during the latter half of the twentieth century.

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Among the topics considered in this classic study are world origins and supernatural powers, attitudes toward the dead, the medicine man and shaman, hunting and gathering rituals, war and planting ceremonies, and newer religions, such as the Ghost Dance and the Peyote Religion."The distinctive contribution of [Red Man's Religion] is the treatment of topics, the insight and the perspective of the author, and her ability to transmit these to the reader. . . . Trais and aspects of religion are not treated as abstract entitites, to be enumerated and summated, assigned a geographic distribution, and then abandoned. No page is a dry recital; each is an illumination. Insight and wisdom are framed in poetic prose. An offering of information in such a medium merits gratitude."—American Anthropologist

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The Caribbean "market woman" is ingrained in the popular imagination as the archetype of black womanhood in countries throughout the region. Challenging this stereotype and other outdated images of black women, "Downtown Ladies" offers a more complex picture by documenting the history of independent international traders - known as informal commercial importers, or ICIs - who travel abroad to import and export a vast array of consumer goods sold in the public markets of Kingston, Jamaica. Both by-products of and participants in globalization, ICIs operate on multiple levels and, since their emergence in the 1970s, have made significant contributions to the regional, national, and global economies. Gina Ulysse carefully explores how ICIs, determined to be self-employed, struggle with government regulation and other social tensions to negotiate their autonomy. Informing this story of self-fashioning with reflections on her own experience as a young Haitian anthropologist, Ulysse combines the study of political economy with the study of individual and collective identity to reveal the uneven consequences of disrupting traditional class, color, and gender codes in individual societies and around the world.

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An interpretative history of global urbanity in the 1920s and 1930s, from the vantage point of Bombay, London, and Shanghai, that follows the life of business tycoon Victor Sassoon. In this book, historian Rosemary Wakeman brings to life the frenzied, crowded streets, markets, ports, and banks of Bombay, London, and Shanghai. In the early twentieth century, these cities were at the forefront of the sweeping changes taking the world by storm as it entered an era of globalized commerce and the unprecedented circulation of goods, people, and ideas. Wakeman explores these cities and the world they helped transform through the life of Victor Sassoon, who in 1924 gained control of his powerful family's trading and banking empire. She tracks his movements between these three cities as he grows his family's fortune and transforms its holdings into a global juggernaut. Using his life as its point of entry, The Worlds of Victor Sassoon paints a broad portrait not just of wealth, cosmopolitan

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A history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor. In Insatiable City, Theresa McCulla probes the overt and covert ways that the production of food and the discourse about it both created and reinforced many strains of inequality in New Orleans, a city significantly defined by its foodways. Tracking the city's economy from nineteenth-century chattel slavery to twentieth-century tourism, McCulla uses menus, cookbooks, newspapers, postcards, photography, and other material culture to limn the interplay among the production and reception of food, the inscription and reiteration of racial hierarchies, and the constant diminishment and exploitation of working-class people. The consumption of food and people, she shows, was mutually reinforced and deeply intertwined. Yet she also details how enslaved and free people of color in New Orleans used food and drink to carve paths of mobility, stability, autonomy, freedom, profit, and joy. A story of pai

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Now in paperback, a compelling biography of Lydia Maria Child, one of nineteenth-century America's most courageous abolitionists. By 1830, Lydia Maria Child had established herself as something almost unheard of in the American nineteenth century: a beloved and self-sufficient female author. Best known today for the immortal poem Over the River and through the Wood, Child had become famous at an early age for spunky self-help books and charming children's stories. But in 1833, Child shocked her readers by publishing a scathing book-length argument against slavery in the United Statesa book so radical in its commitment to abolition that friends abandoned her, patrons ostracized her, and her book sales plummeted. Yet Child soon drew untold numbers to the abolitionist cause, becoming one of the foremost authors and activists of her generation. Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life tells the story of what brought Child to this moment and the extraordinary life she lived in respo

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Addiction is now seen as an ordinary feature of human nature, an idea that introduces new doubts about the meaning of our desires. Over the last forty years, a variety of developments in American science, politics, and culture have reimagined addiction in their own ways, but they share an important understanding: increasingly, addiction is described as normal, the natural result of a body that has been exposed to potent stimuli. This shift in thinking suggests that addiction is a condition latent in all of us, a common response to a society rich in thrills. In Addiction Becomes Normal, Jaeyoon Park provides a history and critical analysis of the normalization of addiction in late-modern American society. By exploring addiction science, diagnostic manuals, judicial reform, and public health policy, he shows how seeing addiction as normal has flourished in recent decades and is supported throughout cultural life in the United States by the language of wellness, psychotherapy, and

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A new, innovative approach to the work of Fluxus artist George Maciunas. Though widely recognized as the founder of the legendary Fluxus movement, George Maciunas has long been a puzzling figure in the history of twentieth-century art. Many have questioned whether he should be considered an artist at all. In Fluxus Administration, critic and art historian Colby Chamberlain reveals the consistent artistic practice hidden behind Maciunas's varied work in architecture, music, performance, publication, graphic design, film, and real estate as an attempt to create models for community through structures of bureaucracy. In this deeply researched study, Chamberlain traces how Maciunas's art insinuated itself into settings as unlikely as the routes of the postal service, the fine print of copyright law, the zoning strictures of urban planning, and the corridors of hospitals. These shifting frames of reference expand our understanding of where an artistic practice can operate and what for

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A revolutionary notebook that challenges us to play outside (and with) the lines. A standard notebook displays page after page of horizontal lines. But what if we break the pattern? What if the ruled pages grew unruly? In this Nonstandard Notebook, lines twist, fragment, curve, and crisscross in beautiful formations. Each sheet is a distinctive work of imagination, asking us to draw, doodle, and journal in the same spirit. Page after page, as we journey from lines to parabolas to waves, deep questions ariseabout form, art, and mathematics. How do we harness the infinite? Why do patterns permeate nature? What are the limitations and possibilities of human vision? Nonstandard Notebook explores these questions and more through its provocative and inspirational images, each displayed with the mathematics that generated it. We see how straight lines can form fractal crenellations, how circles can disrupt and unify, and how waves and scaling can form complex landscapes (or even famou

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An exploration of how age affects the experience and life prospects of asylum-seekers in Germany. Heartbreaking images of children in distress have propelled some of the most urgent calls for action on immigration crises, and that compassion often affects how state asylum policies are structured. In Germany, for example, the immigration system is engineered to protect minors, which leads to unintended consequences for migrants. In Forever 17, Ulrike Bialas follows young African and Central Asian migrants in Germany as they navigate that system. Without official paperwork or even, in many cases, knowledge of their exact age, migrants must decide how to present their complicated life stories to government officials. They quickly realize that their age can have an outsized effect on the outcome of their cases. A migrant under 18, for example, can’t be deported, but might instead be placed in a youth home, where they will be subject to strict curfew laws. An 18-year-old adult, on the other hand, can get permission to work, but not opportunities to go to school. Regardless of their age—actual or assumed—migrants face great difficulties. Those classified as minors must live with the psychological burden of being treated like children, while those classified as adults must live without the practical support and legal protections reserved for minors. The significance of age stands in stark contrast to the ambiguities inherent in its determination. Though Germany’s infamous bureaucracy is designed to issue clear statements about refugees and migrants, the truth is often more complicated, and officials are forced to grapple with the difficult implications of their decisions. Ultimately, Bialas shows, policies surrounding asylum seekers fall dramatically short of their humanitarian ideals. Even those policies designed to help the most vulnerable can lead to outcomes that drastically limit the possibilities for migrants in real need of protection and keep them from leading fulfilling lives.

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A whirlwind journey through fungus frontiers that underscores how appreciating fungi is key to understanding our planet’s power and fragility. What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Splitting time between the northern and southern hemispheres, ecologist Alison Pouliot ensures that she experiences two autumns per year in the pursuit of fungi—from Australia’s deserts to Iceland’s glaciers to America’s Cascade Mountains. In Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms, we journey alongside Pouliot, magnifiers in hand, as she travels the world. With Pouliot as our guide, we smell fire-loving truffles that transform their scent after burning to lure mammals who eat them and, ultimately, spread their spores. We spot the eerie glow of the ghost fungus, a deceptive entity that looks like an edible oyster mushroom but will soon heave back out—along with everything else in your stomach—if you take a bite. And we crawl alongside vegetable caterpillars, which are neither vegetable nor caterpillar but a fungus that devours insects from the inside out. Featuring stunning color photographs of these mycological miracles, Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms shows that understanding fungi is fundamental for harmonizing with the natural world.

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A far-reaching examination of how America came to treat street and corporate crime so differently. While America incarcerates its most marginalized citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute corporate wrongdoing. Dual Justice unearths the intertwined histories of these two phenomena and reveals that they constitute more than just modern hypocrisy. By examining the carceral and regulatory states' evolutions from 1870 through today, Anthony Grasso shows that America's divergent approaches to street and corporate crime share common, self-reinforcing origins. During the Progressive Era, scholars and lawmakers championed naturalized theories of human difference to justify instituting punitive measures for poor offenders and regulatory controls for corporate lawbreakers. These ideas laid the foundation for dual justice systems: criminal justice institutions harshly governing street crime and regulatory institutions governing co

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