Traditional thinking on metaphors has divided them into two camps: dead and alive. Conventional expressions from everyday language are classified as dead, while much rarer novel or poetic metaphors are alive. In the 1980s, new theories on the cognit…
"Disciplining the Poor" lays out the underlying logic of contemporary poverty governance in the United States. The authors argue that poverty governance - how social welfare policy choices get made, how authority gets exercised, and how collective p…
Sovereignty and the Sacred challenges contemporary models of polity and economy through a two-step engagement with the history of religions. Beginning with the recognition of the convergence in the history of European political theology between the…
Although the niche concept has fallen into disfavour among ecologists in recent years, Jonathan M. Chase and Mathew A. Leibold argue that the niche is an ideal tool with which to unify disparate research and theoretical approaches in contemporary ec…
Renaissance logician, philosopher, humanist, and teacher, Peter Ramus (1515-72) is best known for his attack on Aristotelian logic, his radical pedagogical theories, and his new interpretation for the canon of rhetoric. His work, published in Latin…
The late 1960s are remembered today as the last time wholesale social upheaval shook Europe and the United States. College students during that tumultuous period - epitomized by the events of May 1968 - were as permanently marked in their worldviews…
Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and Djing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated break-dancing and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United St…
Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and DJing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated break-dancing and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United St…
First published in 1690, "The Court Midwife" made Justine Siegemund (1636-1705) the spokesperson for the art of midwifery at a time when most obstetrical texts were written by men. More than a technical manual, "The Court Midwife" contains descripti…
Documenting the real world of the contemporary hospital, its nurses, and their moral and ethical crises, this work analyzes the forces that shape moral decisions in hospitals. Based on more than ten years of field research, "Beyond Caring" contains…
"The Limits of Liberty is concerned mainly with two topics. One is an attempt to construct a new contractarian theory of the state, and the other deals with its legitimate limits. The latter is a matter of great practical importance and is of no sma…
From its beginnings in Twilight fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million cop…
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brun…
While competing with Langston Hughes for the title of "Poet Laureate of Harlem," Countee Cullen (1903-46) crafted poems that became touchstones for American readers, both black and white. Inspired by classic themes and working within traditional for…
Misunderstood and stereotyped, the black family in America has been viewed by some as pathologically weak while others have acclaimed its resilience and strength. Those who have drawn these conflicting conclusions have gnerally focused on the nuclea…
From lagging book sales and shrinking job prospects to concerns over the discipline's "narrowness," myriad factors have been cited by historians as evidence that their profession is in decline in America. Ian Tyrrell's "Historians in Public" shows t…
Ezer Vierba's The Singer's Needle offers an innovative history of twentieth-century Panama that illuminates the nature of power and politics in a small but volatile nation. Using novelistic techniques, Vierba explores three episodes that proved crit…
In the wake of the Kennedy era, a new kind of ethnic hero emerged within African-American popular culture. Uniquely suited to the times, burgeoning pop icons projected the values and beliefs of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and reflect…
Over a lifetime of studying Cuban Santeria and other religions related to Orisha worship - a practice also found among the Yoruba in West Africa - Stephan Palmie has grown progressively uneasy with the assumptions inherent in the very term Afro-Cuba…
Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that - su…
J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn were titanic figures in the midcentury United States, wielding national power in government and the legal system through intimidation and insinuation. Hoover's FBI thrived on secrecy, threats, and illeg…
Who is responsible for juvenile delinquency? Mark D. Jacobs uses ethnographic, statistical, and literary methods to uncover the many levels of disorganization in American juvenile justice. By analyzing the continuities betwen normal casework and exc…
This long-awaited work explores the place of kokugaku (rendered here as "nativism") during Japan's Tokugawa period. Kokugaku, the sense of a distinct and sacred Japanese identity, appeared in the eighteenth century in reaction to the pervasive influ…
Written by some of the most distinguished literary translators working in English today, these essays offer new and uncommon insights into the understanding and craft of translation. The contributors not only describe the complexity of translating l…
Understanding the challenges of corporate governance is central to our comprehension of the economic dynamics driving corporations today. Among the most important institutions in capitalism, corporations and joint-stock companies had their origins i…
Even in the midst of an economic boom, most Americans would agree that civic institutions are hard pressed and that they are growing ever more cynical and disconnected from one another. In response to this bleak assessment, advocates of "civil socie…
Blood. Invention. Language. Resistance. World. Five ordinary words that do a great deal of conceptual work in everyday life and literature. In this original experiment in critical semantics, Roland Greene considers how these words changed over the c…
Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a soluti…
Will ever-more sensitive screening tests for cancer lead to longer, better lives? Will anticipating and trying to prevent the future complications of chronic disease lead to better health? Not always, says Robert Aronowitz in Risky Medicine. In fact…
In a bravura performance that ranges from Aaron Burr to O. J. Simpson, Robert A. Ferguson traces the legal meaning and cultural implications of prominent American trials across the history of the nation. His interdisciplinary investigation carries h…
What constitutes a need? Who gets to decide what people do or do not need? In modern France, scientists, both amateur and professional, were engaged in defining and measuring human needs. These scientists did not trust in a providential economy to d…
We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our liv…
Before you read this book, you have homework to do. Grab a notebook, go outside, and find a nearby patch of nature. What do you see, hear, feel, and smell? Are there bugs, birds, squirrels, deer, lizards, frogs, or fish, and what are they doing? Wha…
Has inquiry into the meaning of life become outmoded in a universe where the other-worldiness of religion no longer speaks to us as it once did, or, as Nietzsche proposed, where we are now the creators of our own value? Has the ancient question of t…
The human history of depicting birds dates to as many as 40,000 years ago, when Paleolithic artists took to cave walls to capture winged and other beasts. But the art form has reached its peak in the last four hundred years. In The Art of the Bird,…
Ground-breaking when first published in 1945, Black Metropolis remains a landmark study of race and urban life. Few studies since have been able to match its scope and magnitude, offering one of the most comprehensive looks at black life in America.…
Michelangelo studied and wrote poetry throughout his life, and his finest literary efforts are allied with the masterwoks of his visual art, and this translation captures the pathos, complexity, and ardor of both Michelangelo's language and his poet…
The Historical Renaissance both exemplifies and examines the most influential current in contemporary studies of the English Renaissance: the effort to analyze the interplay between literature, history, and politics. The broad and varied manifestati…
The building and management of public housing is often seen as a signal failure of American public policy, but this is a vastly oversimplified view. In "Purging the Poorest", Lawrence J. Vale offers a new narrative of the seventy-five-year struggle…
October Aubade If I slept too long, forgive me. A north wind quickened the window frames so the room pitched like a moving train and the pillow's whiff of hickory and shaving soap conjured your body beside me. So I slept in the berth as the train ch…
Synthesizing theoretical and empirical analyses of the processes that help shape these unique ecosystems, Tropical Rainforests looks at the effects of evolutionary histories, past climate change, and ecological dynamics on the origin and maintenance…
Thomas Paine was the spark that ignited the American Revolution. More than just a Founding Father, he was a verbal bomb-thrower, a rationalist, and a rebel. In his influential pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis, Paine codified both colon…
Religion has been a central part of human experience since at least the dawn of recorded history. The gods change, as do the rituals, but the underlying desire remains a desire to belong to something larger, greater, most lasting than our mortal, fi…
If Barack Obama had not won in Iowa, most commentators believe that he would not have been able to go on to capture the Democratic nomination for president. "Why Iowa?" offers the definitive account of those early weeks of the campaign season: from…
"A Place That Matters Yet" unearths the little-known story of Johannesburg's MuseumAfrica, a South African history museum that embodies one of the most dynamic and fraught stories of colonialism and postcolonialism, its life spanning the eras before…
This study examines small-scale experiments in physics, in particular the relation between theory and practice. The contributors focus on interactions among the people, materials and ideas involved in experiments. The first half of the book is prima…
Teacher and author Vivian Paley is highly regarded by parents, educators, and other professionals for her original insights into such seemingly everyday issues as play, story, gender, and how young children think. In "The Classrooms All Young Childr…
In this book, Reuven Brenner argues that people bet on new ideas and are more willing to take risks when they have been outdone by their fellows on local, national, or international scales. Such bets mean that people deviate from the beaten path and…
Haydn's music has been performed continuously for more than two hundred years. But what do we play, and what do we listen to, when it comes to Haydn? Can we still appreciate the rich rhetorical nuances of this music, which from its earliest days was…
As one of Africa's few democracies, Senegal has long been thought of as a leader of moral, political, and economic development on the continent. We tend to assume that any such nation has achieved favorable international standing due to its own meri…
For centuries, France has been the world's greatest wine-producing country. Its wines are the global gold standard, prized by collectors, and its winemaking regions each offer unique tasting experiences, from the spice of Bordeaux to the berry notes…
