Search results for ""Johns Hopkins University Press""

With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken's death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. Discovered among his private papers and edited by columnist Terry Teachout, this collection is full of the iconoclastic common sense that marked Mencken's astonishing career as the premier American social critic of the twentieth century. This chrestomathy ("a collection of literary passages") incorporates writings about a variety of subjects: politics, war, music, literature, men and women, lawyers, and the brethren of the cloth.

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Through decades of searching, the First Federal Congress Project has collected primary material documenting the debates, decisions, and thoughts of the members of the First Federal Congress. The volumes of the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress permit Congress and its staff, historians, political scientists, jurists, educators, students, and others to understand the most important and productive Congress in United States history. Three new volumes present letters written by and to members of the First Federal Congress during its Second Session, as well as communications from other informed individuals at the seat of government in New York City during late 1789 and 1790. The correspondence brings the official record to life by providing details about the often informal political means by which Congress accomplished its agenda. During this session, the Congress addressed the two most divisive issues facing the young nation: funding the debts from the Revolutionary War (particularly the debts incurred by the individual states) and determining locations for both the temporary and permanent seats of the federal government. It resolved these difficult issues through the Compromise of 1790, silencing sectional threats of disunion for the immediate future. A rich source of information about the members of Congress, their lives in New York, their concerns about their families, and the services they performed for their constituents, the documents from these three new volumes will also be incorporated into The Early Republic, an innovative online reference hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

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A quick yet comprehensive guide for anyone considering hip replacement surgery.Each year, more than 300,000 adults in the United States undergo hip replacement surgery. What can the many people experiencing hip pain in this country expect before, during, and after surgery? Hip Replacement—part of a new series of Johns Hopkins University Press books on specific surgical procedures—is designed to provide quick answers to all of the most common questions individuals have about hip surgery and the recovery process. Focusing on the patient experience, this frank and easy-to-use book highlights real patient experiences with hip pain, diagnosis, and treatment. The book • discusses basic hip anatomy • describes the symptoms of hip arthritis • explores alternative treatments, including lifestyle changes, medications, and surgical treatments other than hip replacement • reviews the entire recovery process, including preferred exercises to help speed your recovery and how quickly you can return to certain activities• features a glossary of key terms and a list of frequently asked questions • contains numerous sidebars touching on important points to consider, questions to ask your doctor, red flags, and risks • is supplemented with useful illustrations and photographsThe book's concise format allows readers to peruse the content quickly in the days leading up to surgery and then refer to it during the recovery period. Written by experts in the field, Hip Replacement is destined to become the most trusted book on this topic. Contributors: Roy K. Aaron, MD, Valentin Antoci, Jr., MD, PhD, Travis Blood, MD, Eric Cohen, MD, Matthew E. Deren, MD, John Froehlich, MD, MBA, Derek R. Jenkins, MD, Dominic T. Kleinhenz, MD, Scott Ritterman, MD, Lee E. Rubin, MD

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A quick yet comprehensive guide for anyone considering hip replacement surgery.Each year, more than 300,000 adults in the United States undergo hip replacement surgery. What can the many people experiencing hip pain in this country expect before, during, and after surgery? Hip Replacement—part of a new series of Johns Hopkins University Press books on specific surgical procedures—is designed to provide quick answers to all of the most common questions individuals have about hip surgery and the recovery process. Focusing on the patient experience, this frank and easy-to-use book highlights real patient experiences with hip pain, diagnosis, and treatment. The book • discusses basic hip anatomy • describes the symptoms of hip arthritis • explores alternative treatments, including lifestyle changes, medications, and surgical treatments other than hip replacement • reviews the entire recovery process, including preferred exercises to help speed your recovery and how quickly you can return to certain activities• features a glossary of key terms and a list of frequently asked questions • contains numerous sidebars touching on important points to consider, questions to ask your doctor, red flags, and risks • is supplemented with useful illustrations and photographsThe book's concise format allows readers to peruse the content quickly in the days leading up to surgery and then refer to it during the recovery period. Written by experts in the field, Hip Replacement is destined to become the most trusted book on this topic. Contributors: Roy K. Aaron, MD, Valentin Antoci, Jr., MD, PhD, Travis Blood, MD, Eric Cohen, MD, Matthew E. Deren, MD, John Froehlich, MD, MBA, Derek R. Jenkins, MD, Dominic T. Kleinhenz, MD, Scott Ritterman, MD, Lee E. Rubin, MD

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"Cities without Suburbs", first published in 1993, has influenced analysis of America's cities by city planners, scholars, and citizens alike. David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, argues that America must end the isolation of the central city from the suburbs if it is to solve its urban problems. Rusk's analysis, extending back to 1950, covers all metropolitan areas in the United States but focuses on the 137 largest metro areas and their principal central cities. He finds that cities that were trapped within old boundaries during the age of sprawl have suffered severe racial segregation and the emergence of an urban underclass; but cities with annexation powers - termed "elastic" by Rusk - have shared in area-wide development. The fourth edition updates Rusk's argument using the 2010 Census and the American Community Survey. It provides new material on the difference between population trends and household trends, the impact of Hispanic immigration, and the potential for city-county consolidation. The fourth edition also brings added emphasis to "elasticity mimics" - a variety of intergovernmental policies that can provide some of the benefits of regional consolidation efforts in situations where annexation and consolidation are impossible.

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Explore the mind of a bee and learn what drives its behavior.Have you ever observed a bee up close and wondered what was going on inside its head? Like ours, insects'' brains take up most of the space in their heads, but their brains are smaller than a grain of rice, only 0.0002% as large as ours. But what purpose does the insect brain serve, and how does that drive their creativity, morality, and emotions? Bees in particular exhibit unexpected and fascinating cognitive skills. In What Do Bees Think About? animal cognition researcher Mathieu Lihoreau examines a century of research into insect evolution and behavior. He explains recent scientific discoveries, recounts researchers'' anecdotes, and reflects on the cognition of these fascinating creatures. Lihoreau''s and others scientist''s research on insects reinforces the importance of protecting and preserving insects such as bees: after all, our survival on the planet is deeply dependent on theirs. This

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Untangling the private feelings, ambitions, and fears of early Americans through their personal writings from the Revolution to the Civil War. Modern readers of history and biography unite around a seemingly straightforward question: What did it feel like to live in the past? In Longing for Connection, historian Andrew Burstein attempts to answer this question with a vigorous, nuanced emotional history of the United States from its founding to the Civil War. Through an examination of the letters, diaries, and other personal texts of the time, along with popular poetry and novels, Burstein shows us how early Americans expressed deep emotions through shared metaphors and borrowed verse in their longing for meaning and connection. He reveals how literate, educated Americansboth well-known and more obscureexpressed their feelings to each other and made attempts at humor, navigating an anxious world in which connection across spaces was difficult to capture. In studying the power of poetr

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An engaging look at how American politics and media reinforce partisan identity and threaten democracy.Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true—and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and—ultimately—mobilize us. Through a process of identity distillation encouraged by public officials, journalists, political and social media, Americans' political identities—how we think of ourselves as members of our political team—drive our belief in and demand for misinformation. It turns out that if being wrong allows us to comprehend the world, have control over it, or connect with our community, all in ways that serve our political team, then we don't want to be right. Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have become more extreme in their positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In the process, these political identities have transformed into a useful but reductive label tied to what we look like, who we worship, where we live, and what we believe. Young offers a road map out of this chaotic morass, including demand-side solutions that reduce the bifurcation of American society and increase our information ecosystem's accountability to empirical facts. By understanding the dynamics that encourage identity distillation, Wrong explains how to reverse this dangerous trend and strengthen American democracy in the process.

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Explores the historical roots of controversies over abortion, fetal personhood, miscarriage, and maternal mortality.On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, asserting that the Constitution did not confer the right to abortion. This ruling, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case, was the culmination of a half-century of pro-life activism promoting the idea that fetuses are people and therefore entitled to the rights and protections that the Constitution guarantees. But it was also the product of a much longer history of archaic ideas about the relationship between pregnant people and the fetuses they carry. In Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America, historian Kathleen M. Crowther discusses the deeply rooted medical and philosophical ideas that continue to reverberate in the politics of women's health and reproductive autonomy. From the idea that a detectable heartbeat is a sign of moral personhood to why infant and maternal mortality rates in the United States have risen as abortion restrictions have gained strength, this is a historically informed discussion of the politics of women's reproductive rights. Crowther explains why pro-life concern for fetuses has led not just to laws restricting or banning abortion but also to delaying or denying treatment to women for miscarriages as well as police investigations of miscarriages. She details the failure to implement policies that would actually improve the quality of infant life, such as guaranteed access to medical care, healthy food, safe housing, and paid maternity leave. We must understand the historical roots of these archaic ideas in order to critically engage with the current legal and political debates involving fetal life.

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The essential guide to understanding fertility and improving your pregnancy chances.The journey to fertility can be daunting and filled with obstacles. In The Expert Guide to Fertility, OB-GYNs Joseph S. Sanfilippo, MD, MBA, and Aarti Kumar, MD, offer the information you need in your journey to achieve pregnancy. They provide an overview of the human reproductive system, describe issues that may impede conception, and explain various medical, surgical, and lifestyle interventions shown to improve one's chances of becoming pregnant. Sanfilippo and Kumar offer important information on:• A broad variety of assisted reproductive technologies, including in vitro fertilization• Diagnostic tests and what to expect throughout your fertility journey• Fertility-preserving options for people diagnosed with cancer and people with recurrent miscarriages, polycystic ovaries, a low egg supply, or endometriosis• Fertility options for LGBTQ+ readers, single parents, and military personnel• Adoption, egg and sperm donation, and egg freezing procedures• Financing options, including tips for working with health care insurers

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The ultimate—and fun!—guide to maintaining vibrant sexual health with aging.In Never Too Late, Shannon Dowler, MD, a family physician who is also an expert on sexually transmitted diseases (STD), provides a refreshing overview of sexual education for people over 55. With the advent of dating apps, vibrant 55+ retirement communities, and sexual enhancement drugs, adults are sexually active well into their golden years. Unfortunately, the rates of STDs are dramatically increasing in older adults. In entertaining, accessible language, Dr. Dowler presents relatable patient stories and hilarious rhymes that make for an easy and fun way to learn about safe sex. This guide covers important topics, including:• How to identify the signs and symptoms of different STDs, including newer infections• The importance of regular screening• Best sexual practices, including guidance on medications • Preventative measures, tests, and treatments• Guidance on how to broach difficult conversations with romantic partners and doctors• Details about changing sexual trends, including dating apps, swinging, and normal aging changes that may impact your sexuality• Conditions commonly confused with sexually transmitted infections, such as urinary tract infections, tick-related infections, and forms of dermatitis• Common misconceptions, myths, and assumptions • Advice on seeking medical care when uninsured or financially limitedNever Too Late will help you take charge of your sexual health and learn how to protect yourself and your current and future partners.

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An easy-to-read yet thorough guide to understanding and managing glaucoma and taking care of your vision. *Winner of a National Health Information Book Award, an American Book Fest Health: Aging/50+ Award, and an American Book Fest Health/General Award*Gold Winner of the National Health Information Book Award by the National Health Information AwardsWhen you receive a glaucoma diagnosis, knowing where to turn and how to understand treatment options can be overwhelming. Fifty percent of people with glaucoma do not even know they have the disease, and those who do may still struggle with managing it. If left untreated, glaucoma can lead to irreversible blindness.The Glaucoma Guidebook is an invaluable resource for anyone living with glaucoma and for those who are at high risk of developing the disease. Dr. Constance Okeke, an expert with over 20 years of experience helping thousands of patients see better, provides the critical advice and best practices needed to take control of your vision. In simple, accessible language, the book explains:• What glaucoma is, including early symptoms• What causes increased eye pressure• Treatment options• How to prevent blindness• How to become an advocate for your own eye healthIf you have been recently diagnosed with glaucoma or are struggling with managing your glaucoma, this is the book for you. With over 50 color images and illustrations and easy-to-follow advice from both Dr. Okeke and actual glaucoma patients, this book will not only serve as a guide for those with glaucoma but also provide invaluable information for family members, caregivers, eyecare providers, and educators.

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Finally, a compelling narrative history of the Lincoln assassination that refuses to ignore John Wilkes Booth's motivation: his growing, obsessive commitment to white supremacy.On April 14, 1865, after nearly a year of conspiring, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the president watched a production of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning. Twelve days later, Booth himself was fatally shot by a Union soldier after an extensive manhunt. The basic outline of this story is well known even to schoolchildren; what has been obscured is Booth's motivation for the act, which remains widely misunderstood nearly 160 years after the shot from his pocket pistol echoed through the crowded theater. In this riveting new book, John Rhodehamel argues that Booth's primary motivation for his heinous crime was a growing commitment to white supremacy. In alternating chapters, America's Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln's commitment to emancipation and racial equality grew, so too did Booth's rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as "King Abraham Africanus the First." Examining Booth's early life in Maryland, Rhodehamel traces the evolution of his racial hatred from his youthful embrace of white supremacy through to his final act of murder. Along the way, he considers and discards other potential motivations for Booth's act, such as mental illness or persistent drunkenness, which are all, Rhodehamel writes, either insufficient to explain Booth's actions or were excuses made after the fact by those who sympathized with him.Focusing on how white supremacy brought about the Civil War and, later, betrayed the conflict's emancipationist legacy, Rhodehamel's masterful narrative makes this old story seem new again. The first book to explicitly name white supremacy as the motivation for Lincoln's assassination, America's Original Sin is an important and eloquent look at one of the most notorious episodes in American history.

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A captivating portrait of futurist artist Iliazd infused with the reflections of his accidental biographer on the stickiness of the genre.The poet Ilia Zdanevich, known in his professional life as Iliazd, began his career in the pre-Revolutionary artistic circles of Russian futurism. By the end of his life, he was the publisher of deluxe limited edition books in Paris. The recent subject of major exhibitions in Moscow, his native Tbilisi, New York, and other venues, the work of Iliazd has been prized by bibliophiles and collectors for its exquisite book design and innovative typography. Iliazd collaborated with many major figures of modern art—Pablo Picasso, Sonia Delaunay, Max Ernst, Joán Miro, Natalia Goncharova, and Mikhail Larionov, among others. His 1949 anthology, The Poetry of Unknown Words, was the first international anthology of experimental visual and sound poetry ever published. The list of contributors is a veritable "Who's Who" of avant-garde writing and visual art. And Iliazd's unique hands-on engagement with book production and design makes him the ideal case study for considering the book as a modern art form. Iliazd is the first full-length biography of the poet-publisher, as well as the first comprehensive English-language study of his life and work. Johanna Drucker weaves two stories together: the history of Iliazd's work as a modern artist and poet, and the narrative of the author's encounter with his widow and other figures in the process of researching his biography. Drucker's reflection on what a biographical project entails addresses questions about the relationship between documentary evidence and narrative, between contemporary witnesses and retrospective accounts. Ultimately, Drucker asks how we should understand the connection between the life of an artist and their work. Enriched with photographs from the Iliazd archive and a wealth of primary documents, the book is a vivid account of a unique contributor to modernism—and to the way we continue to reevaluate the history of twentieth-century culture. Accounts of Drucker's research during the mid-1980s in the personal archive of Madame Hélène Zdanevich, the poet's widow, lend the narrative an incredible intimacy. Drucker recounts how, sitting in the studio that Iliazd occupied from the late 1930s until his death in 1975, she was drawn into the circle of scholars who had made him their focus and were doing foundational work on his significance. She also coped with the difference between the widow's view of the artist as a man she loved and Drucker's own perception of Iliazd's significance within a critical approach to history. Iliazd is at once a rich study of a significant figure and a thoughtful reflection on the way a biography creates an encounter with its always absent subject.

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The first book to examine the complexity of sexual identity, philosophy, and behavior in Amish culture.The Amish offer a startling contrast to the postmodern view of sexuality and gender roles. After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, mainstream American culture never looked back. Meanwhile, the Amish never looked forward. In twenty-first-century Amish communities, heteronormative sexuality is still based on a unifying principle: an understanding of sexuality as emerging from a divine plan. In the eyes of the Amish, sex is squandered by those who embrace it as hedonistic or who carve out a sexual identity that moves them away from that singular, God-given purpose. But this communal emphasis on sex for procreation does not mean that the Amish do not possess a complex range of sexual identities and opinions.In Serpent in the Garden, clinical psychologist James A. Cates breaks new ground in the study of Amish sexuality by examining this shrouded, rarely discussed subject. The first book to bring Amish sexuality into primary focus, this volume argues that, because the Amish are a sexual minority, queer theory is the ideal framework from which to observe their views on sex, sexuality, and gender. The book offers a broad view of sexuality in Amish culture that includes the challenges that gays and lesbians face in the community, as well as an exploration of Amish gender roles, their views toward intimacy, their responses to cases of child sexual abuse, and the role of fetishes among the Amish. Cates draws from multiple perspectives and years of research on the Amish themselves. He also looks at pushback against alternative behaviors or identities, as well as Amish success in keeping mainstream values at bay. With this book, Cates establishes Amish sexuality as a topic worthy of professional attention. Offering readers a more sophisticated understanding of the Amish and of sexual expression among cultures, Serpent in the Garden will appeal to scholars working on gender and sexuality, the Amish, and social service professionals who serve the Amish community.

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How proactive mergers can stabilize and enhance colleges and universities—and ensure their future.With the pool of high school graduates decreasing, national and global competition increasing, and the need to invest in new technologies and approaches growing, many universities and small colleges alike are struggling—not just to thrive, but to survive. In this challenging environment, mergers and consolidations are often viewed as options of last resort. Strategic Mergers in Higher Education, however, argues that college and university mergers are a legitimate and proactive strategic option to help ensure success, maximize quality and service, and yield the best return for faculty and students. In this thoughtful book, Ricardo Azziz and his coauthors—including higher education leaders who have led successful consolidations—address the many questions surrounding institutional mergers. When, they ask—and why—should a merger be considered? How can leaders deal effectively with the many challenges and opposition that a merger will inevitably face? What are the predictors of merger failure and success? And how do we successfully address the postmerger cultural divide?This thorough text demonstrates how mergers can dramatically accelerate the goals of postsecondary institutions. The book is informed by an extensive review of published reports, interviews with over thirty higher education leaders, individual case studies, and the experiences of the authors themselves. Addressing numerous critical questions, this practical guide is aimed at higher education leaders and their boards, the campus leaders charged with executing transformative mergers, and any policy makers interested in change management or the future of higher education.

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How did writers and artists view the intersection of architecture and race in the modernist era?Winner of the MSA First Book Prize of the Modernist Studies AssociationWith the development of the first skyscrapers in the 1880s, urban built environments could expand vertically as well as horizontally. Tall buildings emerged in growing cities to house and manage the large and racially diverse populations of migrants and immigrants flocking to their centers following Reconstruction. Beginning with Chicago's early 10-story towers and concluding with the 1931 erection of the 102-story Empire State Building, Adrienne Brown's The Black Skyscraper provides a detailed account of how scale and proximity shape our understanding of race.Over the next half-century, as city skylines grew, American writers imagined the new urban backdrop as an obstacle to racial differentiation. Examining works produced by writers, painters, architects, and laborers who grappled with the early skyscraper's outsized and disorienting dimensions, Brown explores this architecture's effects on how race was seen, read, and sensed at the turn of the twentieth century. In lesser-known works of apocalyptic science fiction, light romance, and Jazz Age melodrama, as well as in more canonical works by W. E. B. Du Bois, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aaron Douglas, and Nella Larsen, the skyscraper mediates the process of seeing and being seen as a racialized subject. From its distancing apex—reducing bodies to specks—to the shadowy mega-blocks it formed at street level, the skyscraper called attention, Brown argues, to the malleable nature of perception. A highly interdisciplinary work, The Black Skyscraper reclaims the influence of race on modern architectural design as well as the less-well-understood effects these designs had on the experience and perception of race.

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You’re certain to find your favorite butterfly— no matter how exotic—featured within the pages of this lavishly illustrated guide to Lepidoptera life on Earth.Take a fascinating tour of the butterflies of the world guided by renowned lepidopterist and writer Adrian Hoskins, who shares hundreds of spectacular color photographs captured at butterfly hot spots around the world.In the book’s opening chapters, Hoskins describes the evolution, anatomy, lifecycle, ecology, and taxonomy of the world’s butterflies. The second half of the book offers comprehensive coverage of every butterfly family, along with fascinating accounts of butterfly behavior. Readers of all backgrounds will be delighted and informed by interesting facts and stories about Lepidoptera, from the spectacular Tiger Swallowtail, Blue Morpho, and Tibetan Glory, to the legendary Giant Birdwings and the cryptic Variegated Rajah, Amber Phantom, and Scarlet-eyed Skipper.Many books about these beloved creatures focus exclusively on photos of butterflies, with little accompanying text and scant scientific value. However, in this book, Hoskins provides a scientifically rigorous introduction to butterflies that is suitable for both laypersons and professionals. Lepidopterists will benefit from the unique and extensive taxonomically based survey, while enthusiastic amateurs will learn more about butterfly biology without being overwhelmed by jargon.A unique global survey that touches on all butterfly families and subfamilies while celebrating their immense beauty and great diversity, Butterflies of the World is an essential reference and the best book of its kind.

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An annotated collection of classic papers that cover the rich history of wildlife science from Aldo Leopold to Daniel Decker.Prepared by two of the leading figures in wildlife biology, this book gathers in one volume the most influential articles published in the field. Paul R. Krausman and Bruce D. Leopold have collected the forty-two papers that every wildlife student should read. Each piece is introduced with a commentary that explains why it is important and a brief listing of papers that inspired or were inspired by the classic. Practical and conceptual topics consider every aspect of the wildlife profession, including ethics. Ideal for use as a textbook, Essential Readings in Wildlife Management and Conservation is divided into four sections: the philosophical roots of wildlife management, biology, habitat, and human dimensions.Published in association with The Wildlife Society.

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A crucial senatorial debate on the question of the states’ relationship to the federal government.Two generations after the founding, Americans still disagreed on the nature of the Union. Was it a confederation of sovereign states or a nation headed by a central government? To South Carolina Senator Robert Y. Hayne and others of his mindset, only the vigilant protection of states’ rights could hold off an attack on the southern way of life, which was undergirded by slavery. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, on the other hand, believed that the political and economic ascendancy of New England—and the nation—required a strong, activist national government. In The Webster-Hayne Debate, Christopher Childers focuses on the sharp dispute that engaged Webster and Hayne in January 1830. During Senate discussion of western land policy, Childers explains, the senators’ exchanges grew first earnest and then heated, finally landing on the question of union—its nature and its value in a federal republic. Childers argues that both Webster and Hayne, and the factions they represented, saw the West as key to the success of their political plans and sought to cultivate western support for their ideas.A short, accessible account of the conflict and the related issues it addressed, The Webster-Hayne Debate captures an important moment in the early republic. Ideal for use in college classrooms or for readers interested in American history, this book examines a pivotal moment and a critical problem in the history of US politics. It also shows how Americans grappled with the issues of nationalism, sectionalism, and the meaning of union itself—issues that still resonate today.

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How practices from the digital analysis of texts both simplify and enhance traditional literary criticism.Honorable Mention, NAVSA Best Book of the Year by the North American Victorian Studies AssociationWhat is to be gained by reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch from an Excel spreadsheet, or the novels of Charles Dickens through a few hundred dialogue tags—those he said/she saids that bring his characters to life? Sarah Danielle Allison’s Reductive Reading argues that the greatest gift the computational analysis of texts has given to traditional criticism is not computational at all. Rather, one of the most powerful ways to generate subtle reading is to be reductive; that is, to approach literary works with specific questions and a clear roadmap of how to look for the answers. Allison examines how patterns that form little part of our conscious experience of reading nevertheless structure our experience of books. Exploring Victorian moralizing at the level of the grammatical clause, she also reveals how linguistic patterns comment on the story in the process of narrating it. Delving into The London Quarterly Review, as well as the work of Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, and other canonical Victorian writers, the book models how to study nebulous and complex stylistic effects. A manifesto for and a model of how digital analysis can provide daringly simple approaches to complex literary problems, Reductive Reading introduces a counterintuitive computational perspective to debates about the value of fiction and the ethical representation of people in literature.

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An illuminating look at how human vulnerability led to advances in aviation technology.As aircraft flew higher, faster, and farther in the early days of flight, pilots were exposed as vulnerable, inefficient, and dangerous. They asphyxiated or got the bends at high altitudes; they fainted during high-G maneuvers; they spiraled to the ground after encountering clouds or fog. Their capacity to commit fatal errors seemed boundless. The Problem with Pilots tells the story of how, in the years between the world wars, physicians and engineers sought new ways to address these difficulties and bridge the widening gap between human and machine performance.A former Air Force pilot, Timothy P. Schultz delves into archival sources to understand the evolution of the pilot–aircraft relationship. As aviation technology evolved and enthusiasts looked for ways to advance its military uses, pilots ceded hands-on control to sophisticated instrument-based control. By the early 1940s, pilots were sometimes evicted from aircraft in order to expand the potential of airpower—a phenomenon much more common in today's era of high-tech (and often unmanned) aircraft.Connecting historical developments to modern flight, this study provides an original view of how scientists and engineers brought together technological, medical, and human elements to transform the pilot's role. The Problem with Pilots does away with the illusion of pilot supremacy and yields new insights into our ever-changing relationship with intelligent machines.

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A thought-provoking look at the game-changing congressional Class of 1974.In November 1974, following the historic Watergate scandal, Americans went to the polls determined to cleanse American politics. Instead of producing the Republican majority foreshadowed by Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, dozens of GOP legislators were swept out of the House, replaced by 76 reforming Democratic freshmen. In The Class of '74, John A. Lawrence examines how these newly elected representatives bucked the status quo in Washington, helping to effectuate unprecedented reforms. Lawrence’s long-standing work in Congress afforded him unique access to former members, staff, House officers, journalists, and others, enabling him to challenge the time-honored reputation of the Class as idealistic, narcissistic, and naïve “Watergate Babies.” Their observations help reshape our understanding of the Class and of a changing Congress through frank, humorous, and insightful opinions. These reformers provided the votes to disseminate power, elevate suppressed issues, and expand participation by junior legislators in congressional deliberations. But even as such innovations empowered progressive Democrats, the greater openness they created, combined with changing undercurrents in American politics in the mid-1970s, facilitated increasingly bitter battles between liberals and conservatives. These disputes foreshadowed contemporary legislative gridlock and a divided Congress.Today, many observers point to gerrymandering, special-interest money, and a host of other developments to explain the current dysfunction of American politics. In The Class of '74, Lawrence argues that these explanations fail to recognize deep roots of partisanship. To fully understand the highly polarized political environment that now pervades the House and American politics, we must examine the complex politics, including a more open and contentious House, that emerged in the wake of Watergate.

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A fascinating account of one of America’s most important industries and its dangers.Throughout the early twentieth century, railroad safety steadily improved across the United States. But by the 1960s, American railroads had fallen apart, the result of a regulatory straightjacket that eroded profitability and undermined safety. Collisions, derailments, worker fatalities, and grade crossing mishaps skyrocketed, while hazmat disasters exploded into newspaper headlines. In Back on Track, his sequel to Death Rode the Rails, Mark Aldrich traces the history of railroad accidents beginning in 1965, when Congress responded to bankrupt and scandal-ridden carriers by enacting a new safety regime. Aldrich details the federalization of rail safety and the implementation of a massive grade crossing program. He touches on post-1976 economic deregulation, which provided critical financing that underwrote better public safety. He also explores how the National Transportation Safety Board acted as a public scold to shine bright lights on private failings, while Federal Railroad Administration regulations reinforced market incentives for better safety. Ultimately, Aldrich concludes, the past 50 years have seen great strides in restoring railroad safety while enhancing industry profitability. Arguing that it was not inadequate safety regulation but rather stifling economic regulation that initially caused an uptick in train accidents, Back on Track is both a paen to the return of more competitive railroading and the only comprehensive history of the safety of modern American railroads. Praise for Death Rode the Rails"A masterful study of the complex evolution of railroad safety."—American Historical Review"Students of rail safety, and today's Class I railroad managers, need to read this volume."—Trains"Aldrich has created a masterpiece. His research is extensive, drawing on a rich variety of obscure yet relevant sources."—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"One of the first large-scale scholarly studies of railroad safety in America."—Railroad History"A thought-provoking and well-grounded contribution to the history of American economic development."—Journal of American History"Pioneering . . . A central message of Aldrich's book is that 'little accidents' played a crucial though until now largely hidden role in the gradual evolution of a risk society."—Technology and Culture"A work of merit . . . essential reading for historians of transport safety, business, and technology."—Journal of Transport History"Impressive and thoroughly researched . . . Demonstrates how railroad safety evolved from the intersection of market pressures, technology, and public sentiment."—Journal of Southern History

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We accept that, at some point in the history of our universe, living creatures emerged from nonliving matter. Yet from the time of Aristotle until the late nineteenth century, many people believed in spontaneous generation, that living creatures sprang into existence from rotting material. As Daryn Lehoux explains in this fascinating book, spontaneous generation was perhaps the last stand of the ancient scientific worldview. In Creatures Born of Mud and Slime, Lehoux shows that-far from being a superstitious, gullible, or simplistic belief-spontaneous generation was a sophisticated and painstakingly grounded fact that stood up to the best scientific testing. Starting with the ancient Greeks' careful and detailed investigations into how animals are generated straight through to the early modern period, Lehoux brings to life the intellectual contexts, rivalries, observational evidence, and complex and fascinating theories that were used to understand and explain the phenomena. The book highlights both the weirdness and the wonder that lie at the heart of investigations into nature. Lehoux concludes with a new look at a set of conflicting experiments that demonstrate that even the best scientific evidence can end up muddying what we take to be the truth about the world. Creatures Born of Mud and Slime is a compelling look at how we understand conceptions of scientific change, truth, and progress.

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During a period of vocational indecision and deep depression, young William James embarked on a circuitous journey, trying out natural history field work, completing medical school, and studying ancient cultures before teaching physiological psychology on his way to becoming a philosopher. A century after his death, Young William James Thinking examines the private thoughts James detailed in his personal correspondence, archival notes, and his first publications to create a compelling portrait of his growth as both man and thinker. By going to the sources, Paul J. Croce's cultural biography challenges the conventional contrast commentators have drawn between James's youthful troubles and his mature achievements. Inverting James's reputation for inconsistency, Croce shows how he integrated his interests and his struggles into sophisticated thought. His ambivalence became the motivating core of his philosophizing, the heart of his enduring legacy. Readers can follow James in science classes and in personal "speculations," studying medicine and exploring both mainstream and sectarian practices, in museums reflecting on the fate of humanity since ancient times, in love and with heart broken, and in periodic crises of confidence that sometimes even spurred thoughts of suicide. A case study in coming of age, this book follows the famous American philosopher's vocational work and avocational interests, his education and his frustrations-young James between childhood and fame. Anecdotes placed in the contexts of his choices shed new light on the core commitments within his enormous contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religious studies. James's hard-won insights, starting with his mediation of science and religion, led to his appreciation of body and mind in relation. Ultimately, Young William James Thinking reveals how James provided a humane vision well suited to our pluralist age.

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In 1774, Boston bookseller Henry Knox married Lucy Waldo Flucker, the daughter of a prominent Tory family. Although Lucy's father was the third-ranking colonial official in Massachusetts, the couple joined the American cause after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and fled British-occupied Boston. Knox became a soldier in the Continental Army, where he served until the war's end as Washington's artillery commander. While Henry is well known to historians, his private life and marriage to Lucy remain largely unexplored. Phillip Hamilton tells the fascinating story of the Knoxes' relationship amid the upheavals of war. Like John and Abigail Adams, the Knoxes were often separated by the revolution and spent much of their time writing to one another. They penned nearly 200 letters during the conflict, more than half of which are reproduced and annotated for this volume. This correspondence-one of the few collections of letters between revolutionary-era spouses that spans the entire war-provides a remarkable window into the couple's marriage. Placed at the center of great events, struggling to cope with a momentous conflict, and attempting to preserve their marriage and family, the Knoxes wrote to each other in a direct and accessible manner as they negotiated shifts in gender and power relations. Working together, Henry and Lucy maintained their household and protected their property, raised and educated their children, and emotionally adjusted to other dramatic changes within their family, including a total break between Lucy and her Tory family. Combining original epistles with Hamilton's introductory essays, The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox offers important insights into how this relatable and highly individual couple overcame the war's challenges.

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What did it mean, Rebecca K. Shrum asks, for people-long-accustomed to associating reflective surfaces with ritual and magic-to became as familiar with how they looked as they were with the appearance of other people? Fragmentary histories tantalize us with how early Americans-people of Native, European, and African descent-interacted with mirrors. Shrum argues that mirrors became objects through which white men asserted their claims to modernity, emphasizing mirrors as fulcrums of truth that enabled them to know and master themselves and their world. In claiming that mirrors revealed and substantiated their own enlightenment and rationality, white men sought to differentiate how they used mirrors from not only white women but also from Native Americans and African Americans, who had long claimed ownership of and the right to determine the meaning of mirrors for themselves. Mirrors thus played an important role in the construction of early American racial and gender hierarchies. Drawing from archival research, as well as archaeological studies, probate inventories, trade records, and visual sources, Shrum also assesses extant mirrors in museum collections through a material culture lens. Focusing on how mirrors were acquired in America and by whom, as well as the profound influence mirrors had, both individually and collectively, on the groups that embraced them, In the Looking Glass is a piece of innovative textual and visual scholarship.

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Beaked whales have been shrouded in mystery for most of the twentieth century. Denizens of deep, remote ocean waters and highly resistant to life in captivity, they have proven notoriously difficult for humans to observe. Over the past few decades, however, scientists have gained a better understanding of this distinct group of cetaceans, deciphering the natural history of the twenty-two beaked whale species. Here, famed artist and naturalist Richard Ellis and leading beaked whale researcher James G. Mead bring these elusive marine mammals into the limelight. Beaked whales' generous life spans can extend well past 70 years. They spend their decades diving to extreme depths in search of prey, which they capture by expanding their oral cavity suddenly to suck in the squid or fish they are hunting. It appears that these sleek predators may engage in fierce, clandestine aquatic battles, as the bodies of many males are covered in scars. Because many species are only somewhat larger than dolphins, they are often confused with porpoises; however, some larger beaked whale species may grow to 40 feet. These enigmatic and compelling creatures need our help; their numbers are declining, perhaps due to the damaging effects of naval sonar on their sophisticated auditory systems. In Ellis and Mead's book, the beaked whales finally get their due. The duo provides a combination of captivating stories about the species, original Richard Ellis art, and photos from leading natural history photographers. The result is an accessible, beautiful book-the first of its kind on this unusual group of cetaceans. Meet the beaked whales, and enjoy the fascinating and mysterious world in which they live.

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Beginning in 1580, a number of competing London companies sold water directly to consumers through a large network of wooden mains in the expanding metropolis. This new water industry flourished throughout the 1600s, eventually expanding to serve tens of thousands of homes. By the late eighteenth century, more than 80 percent of the city's houses had water connections-making London the best-served metropolis in the world while demonstrating that it was legally, commercially, and technologically possible to run an infrastructure network within the largest city on earth. In this richly detailed book, historian Leslie Tomory shows how new technologies imported from the Continent, including waterwheel-driven piston pumps, spurred the rapid growth of London's water industry. The business was further sustained by an explosion in consumer demand, particularly in the city's wealthy West End. Meanwhile, several key local innovations reshaped the industry by enlarging the size of the supply network. By 1800, the success of London's water industry made it a model for other cities in Europe and beyond as they began to build their own water networks. The city's water infrastructure even inspired builders of other large-scale urban projects, including gas and sewage supply networks. The History of the London Water Industry, 1580-1820 explores the technological, cultural, and mercantile factors that created and sustained this remarkable industry. Tomory examines how the joint-stock form became popular with water companies, providing a stable legal structure that allowed for expansion. He also explains how the roots of the London water industry's divergence from the Continent and even from other British cities was rooted both in the size of London as a market and in the late seventeenth-century consumer revolution. This fascinating and unique study of essential utilities in the early modern period will interest business historians and historians of science and technology alike.

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On Sunday afternoon, March 7, 1965, roughly six hundred peaceful demonstrators set out from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in a double-file column to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. Leading the march were Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Upon reaching Broad Street, the marchers turned left to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge that spanned the Alabama River. "When we reached the crest of the bridge," recalls John Lewis, "I stopped dead still. So did Hosea. There, facing us at the bottom of the other side, stood a sea of blue-helmeted, blue-uniformed Alabama state troopers, line after line of them, dozens of battle-ready lawmen stretched from one side of U.S. Highway 80 to the other. Behind them were several dozen more armed men-Sheriff Clark's posse-some on horseback, all wearing khaki clothing, many carrying clubs the size of baseball bats." The violence and horror that was about to unfold at the foot of the bridge would forever mark the day as "Bloody Sunday," one of the pivotal moments of the civil rights movement. Alabama state troopers fell on the unarmed protestors as they crossed the bridge, beating and tear gassing them. In Selma's Bloody Sunday, Robert A. Pratt offers a vivid account of that infamous day and the indelible triumph of black and white protest over white resistance. He explores how the march itself-and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that followed-represented a reaffirmation of the nation's centuries-old declaration of universal equality and the fulfillment of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Selma's Bloody Sunday offers a fresh interpretation of the ongoing struggle by African Americans to participate freely in America's electoral democracy. Jumping forward to the present day, Pratt uses the march as a lens through which to examine disturbing recent debates concerning who should, and who should not, be allowed to vote. Drawing on archival materials, secondary sources, and eyewitness accounts of the brave men and women who marched, this gripping account offers a brief and nuanced narrative of this critical phase of the black freedom struggle.

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Between 1935 and 1985, the nascent public health profession developed scientific evidence and practical know-how to prevent death on an unprecedented scale. Thanks to public health workers, life expectancy rose rapidly as generations grew up free from the scourges of smallpox, typhoid, and syphilis. In Health and Humanity, Karen Kruse Thomas offers a thorough account of the growth of academic public health in the United States through the prism of the oldest and largest independent school of public health in the world. Thomas follows the transformation of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (JHSPH), now known as the Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a small, private institute devoted to doctoral training and tropical disease research into a leading global educator and innovator in fields from biostatistics to mental health to pathobiology. A provocative, wide-ranging account of how midcentury public health leveraged federal grants and anti-Communist fears to build the powerful institutional networks behind the health programs of the CDC, WHO, and USAID, the book traces how Johns Hopkins helped public health take center stage during the scientific research boom triggered by World War II. It also examines the influence of politics on JHSPH, the school's transition to federal grant funding, the globalization of public health in response to hot and cold war influences, and the expansion of the school's teaching program to encompass social science as well as lab science. Revealing how faculty members urged foreign policy makers to include saving lives in their strategy of "winning hearts and minds," Thomas argues that the growth of chronic disease and the loss of Rockefeller funds moved the JHSPH toward international research funded by the federal government, creating a situation in which it was sometimes easier for the school to improve the health of populations in India and Turkey than on its own doorstep in East Baltimore. Health and Humanity is a comprehensive account of the ways that JHSPH has influenced the practice, pedagogy, and especially our very understanding of public health on both global and local scales.

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Behavioral nudges are everywhere: calorie counts on menus, automated text reminders to encourage medication adherence, a reminder bell when a driver's seatbelt isn't fastened. Designed to help people make better health choices, these reminders have become so commonplace that they often go unnoticed. In Nudging Health, forty-five experts in behavioral science and health policy from across academia, government, and private industry come together to explore whether and how these tools are effective in improving health outcomes. Behavioral science has swept the fields of economics and law through the study of nudges, cognitive biases, and decisional heuristics-but it has only recently begun to impact the conversation on health care. Nudging Health wrestles with some of the thorny philosophical issues, legal limits, and conceptual questions raised by behavioral science as applied to health law and policy. The volume frames the fundamental issues surrounding health nudges by addressing ethical questions. Does cost-sharing for health expenditures cause patients to make poor decisions? Is it right to make it difficult for people to opt out of having their organs harvested for donation when they die? Are behavioral nudges paternalistic? The contributors examine specific applications of behavioral science, including efforts to address health care costs, improve vaccination rates, and encourage better decision-making by physicians. They wrestle with questions regarding the doctor-patient relationship and defaults in healthcare while engaging with larger, timely questions of healthcare reform. Nudging Health is the first multi-voiced assessment of behavioral economics and health law to span such a wide array of issues-from the Affordable Care Act to prescription drugs. Contributors: David A. Asch, Jerry Avorn, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, Alexander M. Capron, Niteesh K. Choudhry, I. Glenn Cohen, Sarah Conly, Gregory Curfman, Khaled El Emam, Barbara J. Evans, Nir Eyal, Andrea Freeman, Alan M. Garber, Jonathan Gingerich, Michael Hallsworth, Jim Hawkins, David Huffman, David A. Hyman, Julika Kaplan, Aaron S. Kesselheim, Nina A. Kohn, Russell Korobkin, Jeffrey T. Kullgren, Matthew J.B. Lawrence, George Loewenstein, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Ester Moher, Abigail R. Moncrieff, David Orentlicher, Manisha Padi, Christopher T. Robertson, Ameet Sarpatwari, Aditi P. Sen, Neel Shah, Zainab Shipchandler, Anna D. Sinaiko, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Cass R. Sunstein, Thomas S. Ulen, Kristen Underhill, Kevin G. Volpp, Mark D. White, David V. Yokum, Jennifer L. Zamzow, Richard J. Zeckhauser

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Medical geneticists began mapping the chromosomal infrastructure piece by piece in the 1970s by focusing on what was known about individual genetic disorders. Five decades later, their infrastructure had become an edifice for prevention, allowing today's expecting parents to choose to test prenatally for hundreds of disease-specific mutations using powerful genetic testing platforms. In Life Histories of Genetic Disease, Andrew J. Hogan explores how various diseases were "made genetic" after 1960, with the long-term aim of treating and curing them using gene therapy. In the process, he explains, these disorders were located in the human genome and became targets for prenatal prevention, while the ongoing promise of gene therapy remained on the distant horizon. In narrating the history of research that contributed to diagnostic genetic medicine, Hogan describes the expanding scope of prenatal diagnosis and prevention. He draws on case studies of Prader-Willi, fragile X, DiGeorge, and velo-cardio-facial syndromes to illustrate that almost all testing in medical genetics is inseparable from the larger-and increasingly "big data"-oriented-aims of biomedical research. Hogan also reveals how contemporary genetic testing infrastructure reflects an intense collaboration among cytogeneticists, molecular biologists, and doctors specializing in human malformation. Hogan critiques the modern ideology of genetic prevention, which suggests that all pregnancies are at risk for genetic disease and should be subject to extensive genomic screening. He examines the dilemmas and ethics of the use of prenatal diagnostic information in an era when medical geneticists and biotechnology companies have begun offering whole genome prenatal screening-essentially searching for any disease-causing mutation. Hogan's focus and analysis is animated by ongoing scientific and scholarly debates about the extent to which the preventive focus in contemporary medical genetics resembles the aims of earlier eugenicists. Written for historians, sociologists, and anthropologists of science and medicine, as well as bioethics scholars, physicians, geneticists, and families affected by genetic conditions, Life Histories of Genetic Disease is a profound exploration of the scientific culture surrounding malformation and mutation.

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Between 1865 and 1937, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency was at the center of countless conflicts between capital and labor, bandits and railroads, and strikers and state power. Some believed that the detectives were protecting society from dangerous criminal conspiracies; others thought that armed Pinkertons were capital's tool to crush worker dissent. Yet the image of the Pinkerton detective also inspired romantic and sensationalist novels, reflected shifting ideals of Victorian manhood, and embodied a particular kind of rough frontier justice. Inventing the Pinkertons examines the evolution of the agency as a pivotal institution in the cultural history of American monopoly capitalism. Historian S. Paul O'Hara intertwines political, social, and cultural history to reveal how Scottish-born founder Allan Pinkerton insinuated his way to power and influence as a purveyor of valuable (and often wildly wrong) intelligence in the Union cause. During Reconstruction, Pinkerton turned his agents into icons of law and order in the Wild West. Finally, he transformed his firm into a for-rent private army in the war of industry against labor. Having begun life as peddlers of information and guardians of mail bags, the Pinkertons became armed mercenaries, protecting scabs and corporate property from angry strikers. O'Hara argues that American capitalists used the Pinkertons to enforce new structures of economic and political order. Yet the infamy of the Pinkerton agent also gave critics and working communities a villain against which to frame their resistance to the new industrial order. Ultimately, Inventing the Pinkertons is a gripping look at how the histories of American capitalism, industrial folklore, and the nation-state converged.

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This critical edition of T. S. Eliot's Poems establishes a new text of the Collected Poems 1909-1962, rectifying accidental omissions and errors that have crept in during the century since Eliot's astonishing debut, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As well as the masterpieces, the edition contains the poems of Eliot's youth, which were rediscovered only decades later, others that circulated privately during his lifetime, and love poems from his final years, written for his wife Valerie Eliot. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the imaginative life of each poem. Calling upon Eliot's critical writings, as well as his drafts, letters, and other original materials, they illustrate not only the breadth of Eliot's interests and the range of his writings, but how it was that the author of "Gerontion" came to write "Triumphal March" and then Four Quartets. Thanks to the family and friends who recognized Eliot's genius and preserved his writings from an early age, the archival record is exceptionally complete, enabling us to follow in unique detail the progress of a mind that never ceased exploring. Following the collected and uncollected poems of the first volume, this second volume opens with the two books of verse of other kinds that Eliot issued: the children's verse of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and his translation of St.-John Perse's Anabase. This volume then gathers the verses Eliot contributed to the learnedly lighthearted exchanges of Noctes Binanianae and others for intimate friends or written off the cuff. Each of these sections has its own commentary. Finally, and pertaining to the entire edition, there is a comprehensive textual history that contains not only variants from all known drafts and the many printings but also extended passages amounting to hundreds of lines of compelling verse. "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind he invented."-William Empson

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In May 1788, the roads into Richmond overflowed with horses and stagecoaches. From every county, specially elected representatives made their way to the capital city for the Virginia Ratification Convention. Together, these delegates-zealous advocates selected by Virginia's deadlocked citizens-would decide to accept or reject the highly controversial United States Constitution, thus determining the fate of the American Republic. The rest of the country kept an anxious vigil, keenly aware that without the endorsement of Virginia-its largest and most populous state-the Constitution was doomed. In The Fate of the Revolution, Lorri Glover explains why Virginia's wrangling over ratification led to such heated political debate. Beginning in 1787, when they first learned about the radical new government design, Virginians had argued about the proposed Constitution's meaning and merits. The convention delegates, who numbered among the most respected and experienced patriots in Revolutionary America, were roughly split in their opinions. Patrick Henry, for example, the greatest orator of the age, opposed James Madison, the intellectual force behind the Constitution. The two sides were so evenly matched that in the last days of the convention, the savviest political observers still could not confidently predict the outcome. Mining an incredible wealth of sources, including letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and transcripts, Glover brings these remarkable political discussions to life. She raises the provocative, momentous constitutional questions that consumed Virginians, echoed across American history, and still resonate today. This engaging book harnesses the uncertainty and excitement of the Constitutional debates to show readers the clear departure the Constitution marked, the powerful reasons people had to view it warily, and the persuasive claims that Madison and his allies finally made with success.

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Among the hundreds of thousands of species of beetles, there is one family, containing some 4,300 species, that stands out as one of the most diverse and important groups of aquatic predatory insects. This is the Dytiscidae, whose species are commonly known as diving beetles. No comprehensive treatment of this group has been compiled in over 130 years, a period during which a great many changes in classification and a near quadrupling of known species has occurred. In Diving Beetles of the World, Kelly B. Miller and Johannes Bergsten provide the only full treatments of all 188 Dytiscid genera ever assembled. Entomologists, systematists, limnologists, ecologists, and others with an interest in aquatic systems or insect diversity will find these extensively illustrated keys and taxon accounts immensely helpful. The keys make it possible to identify all taxa from subfamily to genera, and each key and taxon treatment is accompanied by both photographs and detailed pen-and-ink drawings of diagnostic features. Every genus account covers body length, diagnostic characters, classification, species diversity, a review of known natural history, and world distribution. Each account is also accompanied by a range map and at least one high-resolution habitus image of a specimen. Diving beetles are fast becoming important models for aquatic ecology, world biogeography, population ecology, and animal sexual evolution and, with this book, the diversity of the group is finally accessible.

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The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of disciplines in the 1600s, casting a shadow over the European learned world. The early modern skeptics expressed doubt concerning the existence of an objective reality independent of human perception. They also questioned long-standing philosophical assumptions and, at times, undermined the foundations of political, moral, and religious authorities. How did eighteenth-century scholars overcome this skeptical crisis of confidence to usher in the so-called Age of Reason? In The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment, Anton Matytsin describes how skeptical rhetoric forced philosophers to formulate the principles and assumptions that they found to be certain or, at the very least, highly probable. In attempting to answer the deep challenge of philosophical skepticism, these thinkers explicitly articulated the rules for attaining true and certain knowledge and defined the boundaries beyond which human understanding could not venture. Matytsin explains the dialectical outcome of the philosophical disputes between the skeptics and their various opponents in France, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, and Prussia. He shows that these exchanges transformed skepticism by mitigating its arguments while broadening the learned world's confidence in the capacities of reason by moderating its aspirations. Ultimately, the debates about the powers and limits of human understanding led to the making of a new conception of rationality that privileged practicable reason over speculative reason. Matytsin also complicates common narratives about the Enlightenment by demonstrating that most of the thinkers who defended reason from skeptical critiques were religiously devout. By attempting either to preserve or to reconstruct the foundations of their worldviews and systems of thought, they became important agents of intellectual change and formulated new criteria of doubt and certainty. This complex and engaging book offers a powerful new explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers came to understand the purposes and the boundaries of rational inquiry.

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In May 1798, after Congress released the XYZ Affair dispatches to the public, a raucous crowd took to the streets of Philadelphia. Some gathered to pledge their support for the government of President John Adams, others to express their disdain for his policies. Violence, both physical and political, threatened the safety of the city and the Union itself. To combat the chaos and protect the nation from both external and internal threats, the Federalists swiftly enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. Oppressive pieces of legislation aimed at separating so-called genuine patriots from objects of suspicion, these acts sought to restrict political speech, whether spoken or written, soberly planned or drunkenly off-the-cuff. Little more than twenty years after Americans declared independence and less than ten since they ratified both a new constitution and a bill of rights, the acts gravely limited some of the very rights those bold documents had promised to protect. In The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Terri Diane Halperin discusses the passage of these laws and the furor over them, as well as the difficulties of enforcement. She describes in vivid detail the heated debates and tempestuous altercations that erupted between partisan opponents: one man pulled a gun on a supporter of the act in a churchyard; congressmen were threatened with arrest for expressing their opinions; and printers were viciously beaten for distributing suspect material. She also introduces readers to the fraught political divisions of the late 1790s, explores the effect of immigration on the new republic, and reveals the dangers of partisan excess throughout history. Touching on the major sedition trials while expanding the discussion beyond the usual focus on freedom of speech and the press to include the treatment of immigrants, Halperin's book provides a window through which readers can explore the meaning of freedom of speech, immigration, citizenship, the public sphere, the Constitution, and the Union.

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Ignorance, or the study of ignorance, is having a moment. Ignorance plays a powerful role in shaping public opinion, channeling our politics, and even directing scholarly research. The first collection of essays to grapple with the historical interplay between education and ignorance, Miseducation finds ignorance-and its social production through naivete, passivity, and active agency-at the center of many pivotal historical developments. Ignorance allowed Americans to maintain the institution of slavery, Nazis to promote ideas of race that fomented genocide in the 1930s, and tobacco companies to downplay the dangers of cigarettes. Today, ignorance enables some to deny the fossil record and others to ignore climate science. A. J. Angulo brings together seventeen experts from across the scholarly spectrum to explore how intentional ignorance seeps into formal education. Each chapter identifies education as a critical site for advancing our still-limited understanding of what exactly ignorance is, where it comes from, and how it is diffused, maintained, and regulated in society. Miseducation also challenges the notion that schools are, ideally, unimpeachable sites of knowledge production, access, and equity. By investigating how laws, myths, national aspirations, and global relations have recast and, at times, distorted the key purposes of education, this pathbreaking book sheds light on the role of ignorance in shaping ideas, public opinion, and policy.

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Revealing the astounding mammalian diversity found on the largest Philippine island, The Mammals of Luzon Island is a unique book that functions both as a field guide and study of tropical fauna. The book features 120 fully illustrated species profiles and shows how the mammals fit into larger questions related to evolution, ecology, and biogeography. Luzon's stunning variety of mammals includes giant fruit-eating bats; other bats so small that they can roost inside bamboo stems; giant plant-eating rodents that look like, but are not, squirrels; shrews that weigh less than half an ounce; the rapidly disappearing Philippine warty pig; and the long-tailed macaque, Luzon's only nonhuman primate. While celebrating Luzon's remarkably rich mammal fauna, the authors also suggest conservation strategies for the many species that are under threat from a variety of pressures. Based on a century of accumulated data and fifteen years of intensive study, The Mammals of Luzon Island delivers a message that will appeal equally to scientists, conservationists, and ecologically minded travelers.

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An alternative medical system emphasizing prevention through healthy living, positive mind-body-spirit strength, and therapeutics to enhance the body's innate healing processes, naturopathy has gained legitimacy in recent years. In Nature's Path-the first comprehensive book to examine the complex history and culture of American naturopathy-Susan E. Cayleff tells the fascinating story of the movement's nineteenth-century roots. While early naturopaths were sometimes divided by infighting, they all believed in the healing properties of water, nutrition, exercise, the sun, and clean, fresh air. Their political activism was vital to their professional formation: they loathed the invasive, depletive practices of traditional medicine and protested against medical procedures that addressed symptoms rather than disease causes while resisting processed foods, pharmaceuticals, environmental toxins, and atomic energy. Cayleff describes the development of naturopathy's philosophies and therapeutics and details the efforts of its proponents to institutionalize the field. She recognizes notable naturopathic leaders, explores why women doctors, organizers, teachers, and authors played such a strong role in the movement, and identifies countercultural views-such as antivivisection, antivaccination, and vegetarianism-held by idealistic naturopaths from 1896 to the present. Nature's Path tracks a radical cultural critique, medical system, and way of life that links body, soul, mind, and daily purpose. It is a must-read for historians of medicine and scholars in women's studies and political history, as well as for naturopaths and all readers interested in alternative medicine.

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While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century, even though it has never been "refreshed" by later waves of immigration from abroad. In this probing study, Mark L Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and conservative Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people" - the Old Order Amish and Mennonites. Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents - most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers - this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.

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