Search results for ""The University of Chicago Press""

On this blue planet, long before pterodactyls took to the skies and tyrannosaurs prowled the continents, tiny green organisms populated the ancient oceans. Fossil and phylogenetic evidence suggests that chlorophyll, the green pigment responsible for coloring these organisms, has been in existence for some 85 per cent of Earth's long history - that is, for roughly 3.8 billion years. In How the Earth Turned Green, Joseph E. Armstrong traces the history of these verdant organisms, which many would call plants, from their ancient beginnings to the diversity of green life that inhabits the Earth today. Using an evolutionary framework, How the Earth Turned Green addresses questions such as: Should all green organisms be considered plants? Why do these organisms look the way they do? How are they related to one another and to other chlorophyll-free organisms? How do they reproduce? How have they changed and diversified over time? And how has the presence of green organisms changed the Earth's ecosystems? More engaging than a traditional textbook and displaying an astonishing breadth, How the Earth Turned Green will both delight and enlighten embryonic botanists and any student interested in the evolutionary history of plants.

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The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.

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In this sequel to "Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna", John Boyer continues the history of the Christian Social Movement after founder Karl Lueger's rise to power in Vienna in 1897. He traces its evolution from a group of disparate ward politicians, through its maturation into the largest single party in the Austrian parliament by 1907, to its major role in Imperial politics during the World War I. Boyer argues that understanding the unprecedented success that this dissident bourgeois political group had in transforming the basic tenets of political life is crucial to understanding the history of the Central European state and the ways in which it was slowly undermined by popular electoral politics. The movement's efforts to save the Austrian Empire by trying to create an economically-integrated but ethnically-pluralistic state are particularly enlightening today in the shadow of ethnic violence in Sarajevo, where the end of the Austrian Empire began in 1914.

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What kind of literature is the Talmud? To answer this question, Daniel Boyarin looks to an unlikely source: the dialogues of Plato. In these ancient texts he finds similarities, both in their combination of various genres and topics and in their dialogic structure. But Boyarin goes beyond these structural similarities, arguing also for a cultural relationship. In "Socrates and the Fat Rabbis", Boyarin suggests that both the Platonic and the Talmudic dialogues are not dialogic at all. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of represented dialogue and real dialogism, Boyarin demonstrates, through multiple close readings, that the give-and-take in these texts is actually much closer to a monologue in spirit. At the same time, he shows that there is a dialogism in both texts on a deeper structural level between a voice of philosophical or religious dead seriousness and a voice from within that mocks that very high solemnity. Boyarin ultimately singles out Menippean satire as the most important genre through which to understand both the Talmud and Plato, emphasizing their seriocomic peculiarity. An innovative advancement in rabbinic studies, as well as a bold and controversial new way of reading Plato, "Socrates and the Fat Rabbis" makes a major contribution to scholarship on thought and culture of the ancient Mediterranean.

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The ideas and terminology of Darwinism are so pervasive these days that it seems impossible to avoid them, let alone imagine a world without them. But in this remarkable rethinking of scientific history, Peter J. Bowler does just that. He asks: What if Charles Darwin had not returned from the voyage of the Beagle and thus did not write "On the Origin of Species"? Would the absence of Darwin's book have led to a different sequence of events, in which biology developed along a track that did not precipitate a great debate about the impact of evolutionism? Would there have been anything equivalent to "social Darwinism," and if so would the alternatives have been less pernicious and misappropriated? In "Darwin Deleted", Bowler argues that no one else was in a position to duplicate Darwin's complete theory of evolution by natural selection. Evolutionary biology would almost certainly have emerged, but through alternative theories, which were frequently promoted by scientists, religious thinkers, and moralists who feared the implications of natural selection. Because non-Darwinian elements of evolutionism flourished for a time in the real world, it is possible to plausibly imagine how they might have developed. Bowler's unique approach enables him to clearly explain the non-Darwinian tradition and fully elucidate the ideas of other scientists, such as Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley, whose work has often been misunderstood because of their distinctive responses to Darwin. "Darwin Deleted" boldly offers a new vision of scientific history. It is one where the sequence of discovery and development could have led to an alternative understanding of the relationship between evolution, heredity, and the environment-and, most significantly, a less contentious relationship between science and religion, avoiding the polarized attitudes that shape the conversation today.

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In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottero presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottero's broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millenniums BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them. Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews to the contents of medicinal teas and broths and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history's most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible re-creations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottero's guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.

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In this work, John Boswell argues that child abandonment was a common and morally acceptable practice from antiquity until the Renaissance. Using a variety of sources, including drama and mythological-literary texts as well as demographics, Boswell examines evidence that parents of all classes gave up unwanted chldren, "exposing" them in public places, donating them to the church, or, in later centuries, delivering them to foundling hospitals. This work presents a history of the abandoned child that helps to illustrate the changing meaning of family.

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Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and '80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations and propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. Ever since, the immediate cause of the period's rise in inflation has been extensively debated. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on how the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today's global and increasingly complex economic environment.

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On its initial publication, Forgive and Remember emerged as the definitive study of the training and lives of young surgeons. Now with an extensive new preface, epilogue, and appendix by the author, reflecting on the changes that have taken place since the book's original publication, this updated second edition of Charles L. Bosk's classic study is as timely as ever.

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In hospital rooms across the country, doctors, nurses, patients, and their families grapple with questions of life and death. Recently, they have been joined at the bedside by a new group of professional experts, bioethicists, whose presence raises a host of urgent questions. How has bioethics evolved into a legitimate specialty? When is such expertise necessary? How do bioethicists make their decisions? And whose interests do they serve?Renowned sociologist Charles L. Bosk has been observing medical care for thirty-five years. In "What Would You Do?" he brings his extensive experience to bear on these questions while reflecting on the ethical dilemmas that his own ethnographic research among surgeons and genetic counselors has provoked. Bosk considers whether the consent given to ethnographers by their subjects can ever be fully voluntary and informed. He questions whether promises of confidentiality and anonymity can or should be made. And he wonders if social scientists overestimate the benefits of their work while downplaying the risks.Vital for practitioners of both the newly prominent field of bioethics and the long-established craft of ethnography, "What Would You Do?" will also engross anyone concerned with how our society addresses difficult health care issues.

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At Columbia University in 1906, William James gave a highly confrontational speech to the American Philosophical Association (APA). He ignored the technical philosophical questions the audience had gathered to discuss and instead addressed the topic of human energy. Trampling on the rules of academic decorum, James invoked the work of amateurs, read testimonials on the benefits of yoga and alcohol, and concluded by urging his listeners to take up this psychological and physiological problem.What was the goal of this unusual speech? Rather than an oddity, Francesca Bordogna asserts that the APA address was emblematic - it was just one of many gestures that James employed as he plowed through the barriers between academic, popular, and pseudoscience, as well as the newly emergent borders between the study of philosophy, psychology, and the "science of man." Bordogna reveals that James' trespassing of boundaries was an essential element of a broader intellectual and social project. By crisscrossing divides, she argues, James imagined a new social configuration of knowledge, a better society, and a new vision of the human self. As the academy moves toward an increasingly interdisciplinary future, "William James at the Boundaries" reintroduces readers to a seminal influence on the way knowledge is pursued.

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Media attention can play a profound role in whether or not officials act on a policy issue, but how policy issues make the news in the first place has remained a puzzle. Why do some issues go viral and then just as quickly fall off the radar? How is it that the media can sustain public interest for months in a complex story like negotiations over Obamacare while ignoring other important issues in favor of stories on "balloon boy"? With Making the News, Amber E. Boydstun offers an eye-opening look at the explosive patterns of media attention that determine which issues are brought before the public. At the heart of her argument is the observation that the media have two modes: an "alarm mode" for breaking stories and a "patrol mode" for covering them in greater depth. While institutional incentives often initiate alarm mode around a story, they also propel news outlets into the watchdog - like patrol mode around its policy implications - until the next big news item breaks. What results from this pattern of fixation followed by rapid change is skewed coverage of policy issues, with a few receiving the majority of media attention while others receive none at all. Boydstun documents this systemic explosiveness and skew through analysis of media coverage across policy issues, including in-depth looks at the waxing and waning coverage around two issues: capital punishment and the "war on terror." Making the News shows how the seemingly unpredictable day-to-day decisions of the newsroom produce distinct patterns of operation with implications - good and bad - for national politics.

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There are more than 1,300 species of bats - or almost a quarter of the world's mammal species. But before you shrink in fear from these furry "creatures of the night," consider the bat's fundamental role in our ecosystem. A single brown bat can eat several thousand insects in a night. Bats also pollinate and disperse the seeds for many of the plants we love, from bananas to mangoes and figs. Bats: A World of Science and Mystery presents these fascinating nocturnal creatures in a new light. Lush, full-color photographs portray bats in flight, feeding, and mating in views that show them in exceptional detail. The photos also take the reader into the roosts of bats, from caves and mines to the tents some bats build out of leaves. A comprehensive guide to what scientists know about the world of bats, the book begins with a look at bats' origins and evolution. The book goes on to address a host of questions related to flight, diet, habitat, reproduction, and social structure: Why do some bats live alone and others in large colonies? When do bats reproduce and care for their young? How has the ability to fly - unique among mammals - influenced bats' mating behavior? A chapter on biosonar, or echolocation, takes readers through the system of high-pitched calls bats emit to navigate and catch prey. More than half of the world's bat species are either in decline or already considered endangered, and the book concludes with suggestions for what we can do to protect these species for future generations to benefit from and enjoy. From the tiny "bumblebee bat" - the world's smallest mammal - to the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, whose wingspan exceeds five feet, A Battery of Bats presents a panoramic view of one of the world's most fascinating yet least-understood species.

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The writings of the Marquis de Sade have recently attained notoriety in the canon of world literature. Now Sade himself is often celebrated as a heroic apostle of individual rights and a giant of philosophical thought. In this detailed investigative work, Laurence Bongie tests these claims and finds them unfounded and undeserved."A valuable correction to the perception of Sade as a profound thinker, a great writer, and a martyr to liberty. Drawing on original archival work, Bongie tries to illuminate Sade's childhood and his relationship with his parents. . . . Fluent and well-informed."—Library Journal"Mr. Bongie . . . has written an investigation focusing on one aspect of Sade's character and development, his heretofore neglected relationship with his aristocratic mother. . . . A profitable selection."—Richard Bernstein, New York Times"A welcome corrective. Bongie's book . . . aims to deflate the exalted claims made about the marquis by demonstrating that he was a monstrous character."—Scott Stossel, Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement

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While freedom of speech has been guaranteed us for centuries, the First Amendment as we know it today is largely a creation of the past 80 years. "Eternally Vigilant" brings together a group of distinguished legal scholars to reflect boldly on its past, its present shape, and what forms our understanding of it might take in the future. The result is a unique volume spanning the entire spectrum of First Amendment issues, from its philosophical underpinnings to specific issues like campaign regulation, obscenity and the new media.

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In contrast to the vast literature on Euclidean geometry as a whole, little has been published on the relatively recent developments in the field of combinatorial geometry. Boltyanskii and Gohberg's book investigates this area, which has undergone particularly rapid growth in the last thirty years. By restricting themselves to two dimensions, the authors make the book uniquely accessible to interested high school students while maintaining a high level of rigor. They discuss a variety of problems on figures of constant width, convex figures, coverings, and illumination. The book offers a thorough exposition of the problem of cutting figures into smaller pieces. The central theorem gives the minimum number of pieces into which a figure can be divided so that all the pieces are of smaller diameter than the original figure. This theorem, which serves as a basis for the rest of the material, is proved for both the Euclidean plane and Minkowski's plane.

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Getting from here to there may be simple for one individual. But as any parent, scout leader, or CEO knows, herding a whole troop in one direction is a lot more complicated. Who leads the group? Who decides where the group will travel, and using what information? How do they accomplish these tasks? "On the Move" addresses these questions, examining the social, cognitive and ecological processes that underlie patterns and strategies of group travel. Chapters discuss how factors such as group size, resource distribution and availability, the costs of travel, predation, social cohesion and cognitive skills affect how individuals as well as social groups exploit their environment. Most chapters focus on field studies of a wide range of human and nonhuman primate groups, from squirrel monkeys to Turkana pastoralists, but chapters covering group travel in hyenas, birds, dolphins and bees provide a broad taxonomic perspective and offer new insights into comparative questions, such as whether primates are unique in their ability to coordinate group-level activities.

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A milestone in feminist literature, this marvelous European romance, narrated by a woman, is considered the first psychological novel in a modern language and a precursor of stream-of-consciousness fiction. Written by Giovanni Boccaccio between 1343 and 1345, The Elegy has never before been available in a complete or accurate English translation. Lady Fiammetta, the first-person narrator and protagonist, recounts how, although a married woman, she falls in love with a handsome young foreigner named Panfilo and, driven by irresistible passion, becomes his lover. Panfilo subsequently abandons Fiammetta and returns to his native land, where his elderly father is said to be dying. When he fails to keep his promise to return, Fiammetta, in what is the heart of the narrative, describes her longings, her anguish, and her despair. A host of contradictory sentiments drive her to desperation and to an unsuccessful suicide attempt. After a time, Fiammetta resumes her futile wait for Panfilo. She finally resolves to seek him out in his native land. Disguising her true intent from her husband, she secures his promise to help her in this undertaking. Addressing an exclusively female audience, Fiammetta warns them about the vicious ways of men. Her whole narrative, in fact, adds up to an indictment of men as both readers and lovers. Eliciting a remarkably wide range of responses from readers and critics, Fiammetta has been variously described as a pathetic victim of male cruelty; an irresponsible fool of a girl; a sophisticated, cunning, and wholly disingenuous female; and, finally, a genuinely modern woman. Whatever judgment we make of her, Fiammetta stands out among medieval women as an ardent and outspoken feminist.

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English law underwent rapid transformation in the sixteenth century in response to the Reformation and the growing power of the legal profession. In "A Power to Do Justice", Bradin Cormack argues that jurisdictional encounters and crises made visible the law's resemblance to the literary arts, and that Renaissance writers engaged with the concept of jurisdiction to reflect both on the nature of law and on their own imaginative practice. Reassessing the relationship between English literature and law from More to Shakespeare and Webster, Cormack shows that where literary texts attend to jurisdiction, they dramatize how boundaries and limits are the very precondition of law's power.

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How should we speak of bodies and souls? In Coming to Mind, Lenn E. Goodman and D. Gregory Caramenico pick their way through the minefields of materialist reductionism to present the soul not as the brain's rival but as its partner. What acts, they argue, is what is real. The soul is not an ethereal wisp but a lively subject, emergent from the body but inadequately described in its terms. Rooted in some of the richest philosophical and intellectual traditions of Western and Eastern philosophy, psychology, literature, and the arts as well as the latest findings of cognitive psychology and brain science - Coming to Mind is a subtle manifesto of a new humanism and an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the human person. Drawing on new and classical understandings of perception, consciousness, memory, agency, and creativity, Goodman and Caramenico frame a convincing argument for a dynamic and integrated self capable of language, thought, discovery, caring, and love.

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Why do aircraft fly? How do their wings support them? In the early years of aviation, there was an intense dispute between British and German experts over the question of why and how an aircraft wing provides lift. The British, under the leadership of the great Cambridge mathematical physicist Lord Rayleigh, produced highly elaborate investigations of the nature of discontinuous flow, while the Germans, following Ludwig Prandtl in Gottingen, relied on the tradition called "technical mechanics" to explain the flow of air around a wing. Much of the basis of modern aerodynamics emerged from this remarkable episode, yet it has never been subject to a detailed historical and sociological analysis. In "The Enigma of the Aerofoil", David Bloor probes a neglected aspect of this important period in the history of aviation. Bloor draws upon papers by the participants - their restricted technical reports, meeting minutes, and personal correspondence, much of which has never before been published - and reveals the impact that the divergent mathematical traditions of Cambridge and Gottingen had on this great debate. Bloor also addresses why the British, even after discovering the failings of their own theory, remained resistant to the German circulation theory for more than a decade. The result is essential reading for anyone studying the history, philosophy, or sociology of science or technology - and for all those intrigued by flight.

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This text provides an account of the abbe Jacques-Paul Migne, one of the great entrepreneurs of the 19th century. A priest in Orleans from 1824 to 1833, Migne then moved to Paris, where, in the space of a decade, he built one of the most extensive publishing ventures of all time. Using the latest innovations in print technology, advertising and merchandising, the abbe's assembly-line production and innovative marketing of the massive editions of the Church Fathers placed him at the forefront of France's new commerce. Characterized by the police as one of the great "schemers" of the century, this priest-entrepreneur put the most questionable of business practices in the service of his devotion to Catholicism. Part detective novel, part morality tale, Bloch's narrative should be of interest to scholars of 19th-century French intellectual history, as well as to general readers interested in the history of publishing.

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A piece of Plymouth Rock. A lock of George Washington's hair. Wood from the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. Various bits and pieces of the past - often called "association items" - may appear to be eccentric odds and ends, but they are valued because of their connections to prominent people and events in American history. Kept in museum collections large and small across the United States, such objects are the touchstones of our popular engagement with history. In Sacred Relics, Teresa Barnett explores the history of private collections of items like these, illuminating how Americans view the past. She traces the relic-collecting tradition back to eighteenth-century England, then on to articles belonging to the founding fathers and through the mass collecting of artifacts that followed the Civil War. Ultimately, Barnett shows how we can trace our own historical collecting from the nineteenth century's assemblages of the material possessions of great men and women.

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The first known Chicago Tribune theater review appeared on March 25, 1853. An anonymous notice, it shared the page with two other announcements - one about a pair of thousand-pound hogs set to be slaughtered and another trumpeting the largest load of lumber ever to leave Chicago. "And thus Chicago's priorities were starkly laid out right there on that page," begins Chris Jones in the introduction to this new collection. "Hog butcher for the world and windy self-promoter, specializing in commerce-driven superlatives. The arts came a poor third. Critics would rail against that perceived set of civic priorities for years." The Chicago of today, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the world's premier cities for theater, and no one has had a more consistent front-row seat to its ascendance than the Chicago Tribune theater critics. Bigger, Brighter, Louder weaves together more than 150 years of Tribune reviews into a compelling narrative, pairing full reviews with commentary and history. With a sharp eye for telling details and a keen sense of historical context, Jones, longtime chief Tribune theater critic, takes readers through decades of highs and lows, successes and failures. The book showcases fascinating early reviews of actors and shows that would go on to achieve phenomenal success, including a tryout of A Raisin in the Sun with newcomer Sidney Poitier and the first major review of The Producers. It also delves into the rare and the unusual, such as a previously unpublished Tennessee Williams interview and a long conversation with Edward Albee's mother. Bigger, Brighter, Louder offers a vital store of primary documents about Chicago arts and a riveting look at the history behind the city's rise to theatrical greatness.

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Behavior genetics has always been a breeding ground for controversies. From the "criminal chromosome" to the "gay gene," claims about the influence of genes like these have led to often vitriolic national debates about race, class, and inequality. Many behavior geneticists have encountered accusations of racism and have had their scientific authority and credibility questioned, ruining reputations, and threatening their access to coveted resources. In Misbehaving Science, Aaron Panofsky traces the field of behavior genetics back to its origins in the 1950s, telling the story through close looks at five major controversies. In the process, Panofsky argues that persistent, ungovernable controversy in behavior genetics is due to the broken hierarchies within the field. All authority and scientific norms are questioned, while the absence of unanimously accepted methods and theories leaves a foundationless field, where disorder is ongoing. Critics charge behavior geneticists with political motivations; champions say they merely follow the data where they lead. But Panofsky shows how pragmatic coping with repeated controversies drives their scientific actions. Ironically, behavior geneticists' struggles for scientific authority and efforts to deal with the threats to their legitimacy and autonomy have made controversy inevitable-and in some ways essential-to the study of behavior genetics.

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For over fifty years, numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our control. These two perspectives dominate contemporary views of society, but by rejecting the importance of place they are both deeply flawed. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, "Great American City" argues that communities still matter because life is decisively shaped by where you live. To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade's research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath. Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies but updated for the twenty-first century, "Great American City" is at once a landmark research project, a commanding argument for a new theory of social life, and the story of an iconic city.

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In 2003 the Human Genome Project announced that it had achieved a stunning scientific breakthrough: the full map of the human genome, and with it our first complete picture of the basic building block of human life. Since then, boasts about the benefits - and warnings of the dangers - of genomics have remained front-page news. For the nonscientist, the claims and counterclaims are dizzying - what does it really mean to understand the genome? Barry Barnes and John Dupre offer an answer to that question and many more in "Genomes and What to Make of Them", a clear and lively account of the genomic revolution and its promise. The book opens with a brief history of the science of genetics and genomics, from Mendel to Watson and Crick and all the way up to Craig Venter; from there the authors delve into the use of genomics in determining evolutionary paths. Barnes and Dupre then consider both the power and risks of genetics, from the economic potential of plant genomes to overblown claims that certain human genes can be directly tied to such traits as intelligence or homosexuality. Ultimately, the authors argue, we are now living with a new knowledge as powerful in its way as nuclear physics, and the stark choices that face us - between biological warfare and gene therapy, a new eugenics or a new agricultural revolution - will demand the full engagement of both scientists and citizens.

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A political movement rallies against under regulated banks, widening gaps in wealth, and gridlocked governments. Sound familiar? More than a century before Occupy Wall Street, the People's Party of the 1890s was organizing for change. They were the original source of the term "populism," and a catalyst for the later Progressive Era and New Deal. Historians wrote approvingly of the Populists up into the 1950s. But with time and new voices, led by historian Richard Hofstadter, the Populists were denigrated, depicted as demagogic, conspiratorial, and even anti-Semitic. In a landmark study, Walter Nugent set out to uncover the truth of populism, focusing on the most prominent Populist state, Kansas. He focused on primary sources, looking at the small towns and farmers that were the foundation of the movement. The result, The Tolerant Populists, was the first book-length, source-based analysis of the Populists. Nugent's work sparked a movement to undo the historical revisionism and ultimately found itself at the center of a controversy that has been called "one of the bloodiest episodes in American historiography." This timely rerelease of The Tolerant Populists comes as the term finds new currency - and new scorn - in modern politics. A definitive work on populism, it serves as a vivid example of the potential that political movements and popular opinion can have to change history and affect our future.

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Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances - most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard - and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.

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As the economies of China, India, and other Asian nations continue to grow, these countries are seeking greater control over the rules that govern international trade. Setting the rules carries with it the power to establish advantage, so it's no surprise that everyone wants a seat at the table-or that negotiations over rules often result in stalemates at meetings of the World Trade Organization. Nowhere is the conflict over rule setting more evident than in the simmering "standards wars" over the rules that define quality and enable the adjudication of disputes. In Global Rivalries, Amy A. Quark explores the questions of how rules are made, who makes them, and how they are enforced, using the lens of cotton - a simple commodity that has become a potent symbol of both the crisis of Western rule - making power and the potential for powerful new rivals to supplant it. Quark traces the strategies for influencing rule-making processes employed not only by national governments but also by transnational corporations, fiber scientists, and trade associations from around the globe. Quark analyzes the efficacy of their approaches and the implications for more marginal actors in the cotton trade, including producers in West Africa. By placing the current contest within the historical development of the global capitalist system, Global Rivalries highlights a fascinating interaction of politics and economics.

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In 1997, after General Motors shuttered a massive complex of factories in the gritty industrial city of Flint, Michigan, workers placed signs around the empty facility reading, "Demolition Means Progress," suggesting that the struggling city could not move forward to greatness until the old plants met the wrecking ball. Much more than a trite slogan, the phrase encapsulates the operating ethos of the nation's metropolitan leadership from at least the 1930s to the present. Throughout, the leaders of Flint and other municipalities repeatedly tried to revitalize their communities by demolishing outdated structures and institutions and overseeing numerous urban renewal campaigns - many of which yielded only a more impoverished and more divided metropolis. After decades of these efforts, the dawn of the twenty-first century found Flint one of the most racially segregated and economically polarized metropolitan areas in the nation. In one of the most comprehensive works yet written on the history of inequality and metropolitan development in modern America, Andrew R. Highsmith uses the case of Flint to explain how the perennial quest for urban renewal - even more than white flight, corporate abandonment, and other forces - contributed to mass suburbanization, racial and economic division, deindustrialization, and political fragmentation. Challenging much of the conventional wisdom about structural inequality and the roots of the nation's urban crisis, Demolition Means Progress shows in vivid detail how public policies and programs designed to revitalize the Flint area ultimately led to the hardening of social divisions.

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Many books have been written about the University of Chicago over its 120-year history, but most of them focus on the intellectual environment, favoring its great thinkers and their many breakthroughs. Yet for the students and scholars who live and work here, the physical university - its stately buildings and beautiful grounds - forms an important part of its character. "Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago" explores the environment that has supported more than a century of exceptional thinkers. This photographic guide traces the evolution of campus architecture from the university's founding in 1890 to its plans for the twenty-first century. When William Rainey Harper, the university's first president, and the trustees decided to build a set of Gothic quadrangles, they created a visual link to European precursors and made a bold statement about the future of higher education in the United States. Since then the university has regularly commissioned forward-thinking architects to design buildings that expand - or explode - traditional ideals while redefining the contemporary campus. Full of panoramic photographs and exquisite details, "Building Ideas" features the work of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ives Cobb, Holabird & Roche, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Netsch, Ricardo Legorreta, Rafael Vinoly, Cesar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The guide also includes guest commentaries by prominent architects and other notable public figures. It is the perfect collection for Chicago alumni and students, Hyde Park residents and visitors, and anyone inspired by the institutional ideas and aspirations of architecture.

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In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences - psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others - and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people - Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others - and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a "Cold War rationality." Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality - optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical - in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.

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In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise. Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech's improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech's science and business, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech's founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits. "Genentech" tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.

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In "The Neighbor", three of the most significant intellectuals working in psychoanalysis and critical theory collaborate to show how the problem of neighbor love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In "Toward a Political Theology of the Neighbor," Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl Schmitt's political theology of the enemy and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In "Miracles Happen," Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor love through a bracing reassessment of Benjamin and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical violence, Slavoj Zizek's "Neighbors and Other Monsters" reconsiders the idea of excess to rehabilitate a positive sense of the inhuman and challenge the influence of Levinas on contemporary ethical thought. A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and hate, self and other, personal and political, "The Neighbor" has proven to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial text for understanding the persistence of political theology in secular modernity. This new edition contains a new preface by the authors.

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Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In "Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams", Andrew S. Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, "Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams" depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries - from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban - and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

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If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles' birth - and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel's many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women-witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes - Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.

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Synthesizing theoretical and empirical analyses of the processes that help shape these unique ecosystems, Tropical Rainforests looks at the effects of evolutionary histories, past climate change, and ecological dynamics on the origin and maintenance of tropical rainforest communities. Featuring recent advances in paleoecology, climatology, geology, molecular systematics, biogeography, and community ecology, the volume also offers insights from those fields into how rainforests will endure the impact of anthropogenic change. With more than sixty contributors, Tropical Rainforests will be of great interest to students and professionals in tropical ecology and conservation.

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Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality, in which he set forth the Principle of Generic Consistency, is a major work of modern ethical theory that, though much debated and highly respected, has yet to gain full acceptance. Deryck Beyleveld contends that this resistance stems from misunderstanding of the method and logical operations of Gewirth's central argument. In this book Beyleveld seeks to remedy this deficiency. His rigorous reconstruction of Gewirth's argument gives its various parts their most compelling formulation and clarifies its essential logical structure. Beyleveld then classifies all the criticisms that Gewirth's argument has received and measures them against his reconstruction of the argument. The overall result is an immensely rich picture of the argument, in which all of its complex issues and key moves are clearly displayed and its validity can finally be discerned. The comprehensiveness of Beyleveld's treatment provides ready access to the entire debate surrounding the foundational argument of Reason and Morality. It will be required reading for all who are interested in Gewirth's theory and deontological ethics and will be of central importance to moral and legal theorists.

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How have the weapons of the nuclear age changed the rules of international politics? Can co-operation replace coercion as an instrument of security? This book compares the biographies of four dissident intellectuals who grappled with these questions throughout their careers - Louise Weiss, Leo Szilard, E.P. Thompson, and Danilo Dolci. Though they shared a revulsion for the "balance of terror," they possessed sharply divergent visions of a post-Cold War peace, from the Gandhi-like non-violence of Dolci to Szilard's relentless quest for US-Soviet joint diplomacy. Weiss, a French journalist and realpolitiker, believed that a united European military power would break the Cold War impasse; Szilard, a physicist and father of the atomic bomb, pressed for co-operative diplomacy between the superpowers; Thompson, a British historian, mobilized millions in the grassroots campaign for European Nuclear Disarmament; and Dolci, an Italian poet, experimented with conflict resolution through education and non-violence. By comparing the ideals, successes, and failures of these activists, this book illustrates the problematic boundary between "realism" and utopianism" in the nuclear age.

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From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history - but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this groundbreaking revelation, "In Time of War" explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam J. Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics - such as what they cost in lives and resources - than by the same political interests and group affiliations that influence our ideas about domestic issues. With the help of World War II - era survey data that had gone virtually untouched for the past sixty years, Berinsky begins by disproving the myth of 'the good war' that Americans all fell in line to support after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack, he reveals, did not significantly alter public opinion but merely punctuated interventionist sentiment that had already risen in response to the ways that political leaders at home had framed the fighting abroad. Weaving his findings into the first general theory of the factors that shape American war-time opinion, Berinsky also sheds new light on our reactions to other crises. He shows, for example, that our attitudes toward restricted civil liberties during Vietnam and after 9/11 stemmed from the same kinds of judgments we make during times of peace. With Iraq and Afghanistan now competing for attention with urgent issues within the United States, "In Time of War" offers a timely reminder of the full extent to which foreign and domestic politics profoundly influence - and ultimately illuminate - each other.

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Though some dismiss opera as old-fashioned, it shows no sign of disappearing from the world's stage. So why do audiences continue to flock to it? Given its association with wealth, one might imagine that opera tickets function as a status symbol. But while a desire to hobnob with the upper crust might motivate the occasional operagoer, for hardcore fans the real answer, according to "The Opera Fanatic", is passion - they do it for love. Opera lovers are an intense lot, Claudio E. Benzecry discovers in his look at the fanatics who haunt the legendary Colon Opera House in Buenos Aires, a key site for opera's globalization. Listening to the fans and their stories, Benzecry hears of two-hundred-mile trips for performances and nightlong camp-outs for tickets, while others testify to a particular opera's power to move them - whether to song or to tears - no matter how many times they have seen it before. Drawing on his insightful analysis of these acts of love, Benzecry proposes new ways of thinking about our relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it.

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American spirituality - meaning astrology, yoga, and the huge number of other alternative strains of religion pursued by individuals outside of traditional organizations - is usually thought to be a product of the postmodern era. Aromatherapy, crystals, and an interest in one's aura are supposedly relics of the narcissism and iconoclasm of the 1960s. But, as "The New Metaphysicals" reveals, contemporary American spirituality has deep historic roots in the nineteenth century and a great deal in common with traditional religious movements: it turns out the New Age is getting on in years. To explore the world of contemporary spiritual practitioners, Courtney Bender combines research into the history of the movement with fieldwork in Cambridge, Massachusetts - a key site of alternative religious inquiry from Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James to today. Through her ethnographic analysis, Bender discovers that a focus on the new, on progress, and on the way spiritualist beliefs intersect with science obscures the historical roots of spirituality from its practitioners as well as from the many scholars who have studied it. Perceptive, persuasive, and at times gently humorous, "The New Metaphysicals" will greatly broaden our understanding of religion in America.

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In "The Tragedy and Comedy of Life", Seth Benardete focuses on the idea of the good in what is widely regarded as one of Plato's most challenging and complex dialogs, the Philebus. Traditionally the Philebus is interpreted as affirming the doctrine that the good resides in thought and mind rather than in pleasure or the body. Benardete challenges this view, arguing that Socrates vindicates the life of the mind over the life of pleasure not by separating the two and advocating a strict asceticism, but by mixing pleasure and pain with mind in such a way that the philosophic life emerges as the only possible human life. Benardete combines a probing and challenging commentary that subtly mirrors and illuminates the complexities of this dialog with the finest English translation of the Philebus yet available. The result is a work that will be of great value to classicists, philosophers, and political theorists alike.

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This text examines the role played by the mass media and public opinion in the development of United States foreign policy in the Gulf War. Tracing the flow of news, public opinion and policy decisions from Saddham Hussein's rise to power in 1979, to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, through the outbreak and conclusion of the war, the contributors look at how the media have become key players in the foreign policy process. They examine the prewar media debate, news coverage during and after the war, how the news-gathering process shaped the content of the coverage and the media's effect on public opinion and decision-makers. "Taken by Storm" also examines more general patterns in post-Cold War journalism and foreign policy, particularly how contemporary journalistic practices determine whose voices and what views are heard in foreign policy coverage.

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Focusing on medieval women with a wide range of occupations and life-styles, the interdisciplinary essays in this collection examine women's activities within the patriarchal structures of the time. Individual essays explore women's challenges to a sexual ideology that confined them strictly to the roles of wives, mothers, and servants. Also included are sections on women and work, cultural production and literacy, and religious life. These essays provide a greater understanding of the ways in which gender has played a part in determining relations of power in Western cultures. This volume makes a vital contribution to the current scholarship about women in the Middle Ages.

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