Books released during the week of Nov. 5, 2018
How to Fall Slower Than Gravity
And Other Everyday (and Not So Everyday) Uses of Mathematics and Physical Reasoning
Paul J. Nahin
“A fascinating tour de force of a variety of problems covering pure and applied mathematics, physics, and engineering that will keep your mind busy for days. You'll encounter lots of surprises, a healthy dose of challenging math, and many historical episodes told here for the first time. Highly recommended!”—Eli Maor, author of To Infinity and Beyond
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Life of Walatta-Petros
A Seventeenth-Century Biography of an African Woman, Concise Edition
Translated and edited by Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner
Written by Galawdewos
"A heartfelt call for economics to return to its methodological roots in scrupulously separating judgements about economic policy from what can be known as a matter of scientific, empirical evidence. If economists take the advice offered in this book, the subject will become more humble, and humane, as it once used to be."—Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
A People's Constitution
The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic
Rohit De
"This book offers genuinely original insights into the transformation of India’s Constitution into a living reality of social and economic life. Its emphasis on the role of ordinary citizens, and civil society organizations, provides a fascinating perspective ignored in standard accounts focusing on the statecraft of political elites in New Delhi."—Bruce Ackerman, Yale University
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Quantum Many-Body Physics in a Nutshell
Edward Shuryak
“Shuryak’s book is a truly unique contribution to the many-body textbook literature. It employs modern ideas of path integrals and renormalization to provide a unified perspective on many different systems and problems.”—Willem H. Dickhoff, Washington University in St. Louis
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Where Economics Went Wrong
Chicago's Abandonment of Classical Liberalism
David Colander and Craig Freedman
"By 2050, Africans will constitute around a third of the world’s Christian population, roughly a billion people, and over a hundred million of those will live in Ethiopia. As we confront that new reality, the need to rediscover those African cultural and spiritual roots becomes imperative. The story of Walatta-Petros is a wonderful contribution to this task."—Philip Jenkins, Books & Culture
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Books released during the week of Oct. 29, 2018
American Jesuits and the World
How an Embattled Religious Order Made Modern Catholicism Global
John T. McGreevy
"McGreevy's deeply researched work sheds significant light on the European Jesuits' role in shaping modern America."--Publishers Weekly
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
As a City on a Hill
The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon
Daniel T. Rodgers
"[Daniel Rodgers] argues that the comparison of America to a city on a hill that politicians often use, quoting from John Winthrop’s 1630 lay sermon ‘Model of Christian Charity,’ is not true to the sermon’s original sentiment and distorts the historical legacy of the passage. . . . It wasn’t until Cold War–era writers and thinkers revisited the ‘Model’ in search of evidence of America’s universal nature (ignoring the text’s historical context) that it regained popularity. Through a winding, enthralling timeline, Rodgers successfully illuminates the strange history of ‘a text that we think we know so well that we barely know it at all.’"--Publishers Weekly
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer
From Inner Emigration to the Moral Reconstruction of West Germany
Volker R. Berghahn
"This major historical work focuses on the careers of three exemplary journalists, and looks at the evolution of West German journalism and of Hamburg as a journalistic metropolis. Journalists between Hitler and Adenauer reminds us of the enormous influence once exerted by newspapers and magazines and makes an original contribution to our understanding of the roots of the modern Federal Republic.”—David E. Barclay, executive director of the German Studies Association
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Just Giving
Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better
Rob Reich
"Surveying philanthropy from ancient Athens to the modern-day Rockefeller Foundation, and political philosophers from John Stuart Mill to John Rawls, Stanford political science professor Reich . . . mounts a wide-ranging critique of charity and the government preferments that subsidize it. . . . A lucid, thought-provoking analysis of the public impact of charity."--Publishers Weekly
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Making Up Your Own Mind
Thinking Effectively through Creative Puzzle-Solving
Edward B. Burger
"We often claim that education should not just teach facts; it should help us learn how to think clearly. Making Up Your Own Mind is a book that takes that goal seriously. It is brilliantly constructed, clearly written, and fun.”—William C. Powers Jr., former President of the University of Texas, Austin
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Myth of the Eternal Return
Cosmos and History
Mircea Eliade
Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask.
With an introduction by Jonathan Z. Smith.
Luminous, profound and extremely stimulating. . . . This is an essay which everyone interested in the history of religion and in the mentality of ancient man will have to read. It is difficult to speak too highly of it.—Review of Religion
Paperback | 2018
Uneven Centuries
Economic Development of Turkey since 1820
Şevket Pamuk
"The story of the economy and institutions of the Turkish Republic is often told as if there was a sharp rupture with the Ottoman era. The reality is much more complex, with many lines of continuity and the long shadow of the Ottoman past shaping many aspects of Turkish economic and political development. There is no better source that exposits these continuities and explains in what ways Turkey has changed and in what ways it has remained trapped by its past than this erudite, well-researched book. A must-read for anybody interested in Turkish economic history and the general institutional and economic problems of the developing world.”—Daron Acemoglu, coauthor of Why Nations Fail
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Books released during the week of Oct. 22, 2018
Bankers and Bolsheviks
International Finance and the Russian Revolution
Hassan Malik
"A highly readable tale of one of history’s biggest booms and busts, with valuable perspective for contemporary investors."—Emmanuel Roman, CEO, PIMCO
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Calculus Gallery
Masterpieces from Newton to Lebesgue
William Dunham
With a new preface by the author
"The Calculus Gallery is a wonderful book. The style is inviting; the explanations are clear and accessible…. Mathematicians, scientists, and historians alike can learn much that is interesting, much that is mathematically significant, and a good deal that is both."—Judith V. Grabiner, Science
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
The Correspondence of Henry D. Thoreau
Volume 2: 1849-1856
Henry D. Thoreau
Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, with Elizabeth Hall Witherell and Lihong Xie
This is the second volume in the first full-scale scholarly edition of Thoreau’s correspondence in more than half a century. When completed, the edition’s three volumes will include every extant letter written or received by Thoreau—in all, almost 650 letters, roughly 150 more than in any previous edition, including dozens that have never before been published.
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Dark Commerce
How a New Illicit Economy Is Threatening Our Future
Louise I. Shelley
"Dark Commerce tells a gripping tale of how the exponential growth of illicit trade is risking human and planetary well-being. Shelley documents the mechanisms of illicit trade and helps us understand how it is causing an explosion in environmental crime and contributing to the world’s sixth extinction. Revealing the sordid underbelly of a globalized trading system, this book is a must-read for all who are concerned with our collective future."—Frances Beinecke, former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Digital Renaissance
What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture
Joel Waldfogel
"Is it the best of times or the worst of times for the entertainment industry? It depends on whether you ask the producers or the consumers. Distilling knowledge gleaned from years of research, Joel Waldfogel digs into this question with gusto and comes up with a definitive answer for all."—Hal R. Varian, Chief Economist, Google
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Final Act
The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War
Michael Cotey Morgan
"The Final Act is a masterpiece. Michael Cotey Morgan tells a complex story with a novelist’s attention to narrative and a historian’s depth and scope. This will be, I am confident, the definitive work on the most important development in international relations of the postwar period."—Philip Bobbitt, author of The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Fugitive Democracy
And Other Essays
Sheldon S. Wolin
Edited by Nicholas Xenos
"These essays are stunning. No one speaks for democracy as Wolin does."—Anne Norton, author of On the Muslim Question
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
The Genome Factor
What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals about Ourselves, Our History, and the Future
Dalton Conley & Jason Fletcher
"A fresh look at the nature vs. nurture debate. . . . Illuminating."--Kirkus
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2017
eBook available
Gulls Simplified
A Comparative Approach to Identification
Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson
"Dunne and Karlson’s beautiful and engaging book fills a need and will be much appreciated by the birding community."—Dennis Paulson, author of Shorebirds of North America
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls
Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future
David L. Hu
"I recommend this book to all interested in biology and nature-inspired engineering. They will learn much and be marvelously entertained."—Bert Hölldobler, coauthor of The Ants
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Masters of Craft
Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy
Richard E. Ocejo
"A sociologist walks in a bar . . . and discovers the soul of a new economy . . . Mr. Ocejo has a good eye and ear. He has talked to a lot of people. And his book is full of acutely heard and closely observed details."--William L. Hamilton, Wall Street Journal
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2017
eBook available
Moved to Tears
Rethinking the Art of the Sentimental in the United States
Rebecca Bedell
"An important contribution to American art history, Moved to Tears focuses our attention on a hugely critical element—the sentimental—that dominated the production and reception of art until the success of modernist art around 1900. Beautifully written, Bedell’s case is well-made and irrefutable, and stands as a correction to our tendencies to disregard or devalue the emotional elements of nineteenth-century art." —Bruce Robertson, author of Marsden Hartley
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Power of Networks
Six Principles That Connect Our Lives
Christopher G. Brinton & Mung Chiang
"Authoritative but accessible. . . . Pitched perfectly at the reader with a background in technology who's interested in finding out more about the principles that underpin so much of daily life. . . . This isn’t a superficial book though, and the easily grasped comparisons lead on to an in-depth treatment, though without the maths of a full-blown text book."--Dominic Lenton, Engineering and Technology
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
The Real Planet of the Apes
A New Story of Human Origins
David R. Begun
"[The Real Planet of the Apes] is enthralling, making accessible an absolutely critical period of human evolution and scientific debates surrounding the interpretation of its evidence--including [Begun's] own controversial thesis."--Steven Mithen, New York Review of Books
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2015
eBook available
Restoration
The Fall of Napoleon in the Course of European Art, 1812-1820
Thomas Crow
"A major scholarly achievement and an exhilarating read, Restoration provides an absorbing narrative about European art during and after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. With a wealth of fresh interpretations, this extraordinarily wide-ranging, authoritative, and concise book gives us a new understanding of art under the Restoration as uniquely unstable, provisional, and mobile."—Bridget Alsdorf, Princeton University
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Setting the People Free
The Story of Democracy, Second Edition
John Dunn
With a new preface and conclusion
"A marvellously rich book."—David Marquand, New Statesman
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men
Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye
Translated and edited by Jack Zipes
"In this collection, Jack Zipes, the most important fairy-tale scholar of his generation, revives the considerable work of nineteenth-century French jurist and politician Édouard Laboulaye, whose fairy tales have not been previously anthologized, much less republished or critically studied. This latest discovery is a welcome one, and Zipes’s translations of the tales are extremely well done."—Domna C. Stanton, coeditor of Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
Theology and the Scientific Imagination
From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Second Edition
Amos Funkenstein
With a foreword by Jonathan Sheehan
"A bold study of ideas . . . bristling with insight and perceptive reinterpretation of familiar episodes in the history of natural philosophy." —David C. Lindberg, Journal of the History of Medicine
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
To Cast the First Stone
The Transmission of a Gospel Story
Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman
"Brilliantly conceived, massively researched, and convincingly argued, Knust and Wasserman’s wide-ranging analysis of the pericope adulterae is a milestone in the field of textual studies, destined to be the definitive account for a generation."—Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Workers' Tales
Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain
Edited by Michael Rosen
"This is a wonderful and wonder-filled collection, which testifies not only to the breadth of the human imagination but also to the enduring importance of my favourite virtue, hope. There couldn’t be a better time to bring these stories back into print. We need them more than ever."—Philip Pullman
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
Books released during the week of Oct. 15, 2018
Identity Crisis
The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
John Sides, Michael Tesler & Lynn Vavreck
"Other academics may also be skeptical of Cyberwar. A forthcoming book on the 2016 campaign, Identity Crisis, by the political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, argues that Russian interference was not a major factor in the Presidential election, and that the hacked e-mails ‘did not clearly affect’ perceptions of Clinton. Instead, they write, Trump’s exploitation of divisive race, gender, religious, and ethnicity issues accounted for his win."--Jane Mayer, New Yorker
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Millions, Billions, Zillions
Defending Yourself in a World of Too Many Numbers
Brian W. Kernighan
"This sophisticated, rich, and accessible book walks us through something we all need but are almost never taught: number sense. The reader is left with real skills and confidence about understanding and interpreting numbers, probabilities, graphics, and much more. Brian Kernighan has done a great service by offering tools that will help all of us become more informed citizens, patients, parents, and news consumers—and better bullshit detectors."—Zeynep Tufekci, contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Tale of Genji
A Visual Companion
Melissa McCormick
"Almost from the moment of its creation in the eleventh century, Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji has inspired visual artists. Now Melissa McCormick has brought forth a compelling and beautiful edition of the Genji Album, the oldest complete suite of illustrations of this masterpiece of world literature. This is an achievement to be celebrated and savored by anyone who has ever been touched by Murasaki’s genius."—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
Three Stones Make a Wall
The Story of Archaeology
Eric H. Cline
With illustrations by Glynnis Fawkes
"Intensely readable. . . . Cline is a winning spokesman for his field, with a warm and generous voice evocative of the best university lectures. . . . More than a few readers may feel a sudden urge to rush out to a nearby mound or midden, with spade and trowel in hand."--James Romm, Wall Street Journal
Paperback | 2018
Hardcover | 2017
eBook available
Books released during the week of Oct. 8, 2018
Adaptation and Natural Selection
A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought
George C. Williams
With a new foreword by Richard Dawkins
"A beautifully written and excellently reasoned essay in defense of Darwinian selection as a sufficient theory to explain evolution without the necessity of group selection, population adaptation, or progress."—R. C. Lewontin, Science
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
The Book of Revelation
A Biography
Timothy Beal
"This is perhaps the most engaging, accessible, and thought-provoking book on Revelation that I have ever read."—Adele Reinhartz, author of Bible and Cinema
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
History of Modern Psychology
Lectures Delivered at ETH Zurich, Volume 1, 1933-1934
C. G. Jung
Edited by Ernst Falzeder
With a foreword by Ulrich Hoerni
Translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Ernst Falzeder
Between 1933 and 1941, C. G. Jung delivered a series of public lectures at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Intended for a general audience, these lectures addressed a broad range of topics, from dream analysis to yoga and meditation. Here for the first time in English are Jung’s lectures on the history of modern psychology from the Enlightenment to his own time, delivered in the fall and winter of 1933–34.
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
How to Be Free
An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life
Epictetus
Encheiridion and Selections from Discourses
Translated and with an introduction by A. A. Long
"It is hard to think of a book that will make a greater contribution than this one to the growing interest in Stoicism as a way of life. No one can write with more authority on Stoicism than A. A. Long. As a translator, he combines the knowledge of an influential scholar with the grace of a fine English stylist, and his accessible introduction distills a lifetime of learning. How to Be Free hits the mark beautifully."—Brad Inwood, author of Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
The Imperial Nation
Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires
Josep M. Fradera
Translated by Ruth MacKay
"Prodigious and stimulating, The Imperial Nation reveals the complexities of the relationship between empire and nation in the Atlantic world from the late eighteenth century into the twentieth. This impressive and vigorously argued book will be the focal point of scholarly debate for some time to come."—Frederick Cooper, New York University
Hardcover | 2016
eBook available
Stet
Poems
Dora Malech
"With anagrammatic swerve, Dora Malech stitches letters into lyric tapestries of cascading metamorphoses. The stunning final series reinvents a Plath poem: poiesis becoming as palpable as the dawning of crystals in dark matter."—Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of Poetry
Hardcover | 2018
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
Books released during the week of Oct. 1, 2018
Divination and Human Nature
A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical Antiquity
Peter T. Struck
"The core of this beautifully researched and lucidly argued book is a study of the most important and influential philosophical analyses of divination from the ancient world."--Brad Inwood, Times Literary Supplement
Hardcover | 2016
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
The Holy Roman Empire
A Short History
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger
Translated and with a preface by Yair Mintzker
"This important book advances a new interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire that promises to free analyses of the empire's inner workings from the burdens of contemporary political memory. Stollberg-Rilinger makes the imperial political system, endlessly complex though it was, accessible and comprehensible to a wider audience."—David M. Luebke, author of Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia
Hardcover | 2018
eBook available
The Sum of Small Things
A Theory of the Aspirational Class
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
"A rare clear-eyed book about the rich."--Andy Beckett, The Guardian
Hardcover | 2017
Paperback | 2018
eBook available
The Unsolid South
Mass Politics and National Representation in a One-Party Enclave
Devin Caughey
"The Unsolid South is fresh, convincing, and written with the utmost skill, intelligence, and knowledge of the historical territory. Caughey takes on a big topic and does it large justice."—David R. Mayhew, author of The Imprint of Congress
Hardcover | 2018
Paperback | 2018
eBook available