2357 Micro-Interviews

700+ Scholars, Artists, Creators
600+ Threads

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THE AGE OF TOMATO - Η ΕΠΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΤΟΜΑΤΑΣ

One evening before dinner was served, I placed on each guest's setting a small carton of locally produced tomato paste, accompanied by a pair of scissors. I introduced the project – the notions on seasonality, coming of age, and, of course, tomatoes before we were served and invited everyone to cut a corner and squeeze the tomato paste onto their plates and table—drawing, and playing with their food.

Georgia Kotretsos
Vonnegut's War – The wide angle

First published in 1969, the novel spoke to a country reckoning with Vietnam—and it speaks just as sharply to 2026, an age of polarization, far-right resurgence, and wars that displace millions. Is a good war possible? Is a just one? A look at why this darkly funny anti-war book still offers a moral vision of kindness and decency amid absurdity.

Susan E. Farrell
To Think Like a Statistician - A close-up

Fifteen hundred stage 1 breast cancer patients, deemed at low risk according to MammaPrint but high risk according to clinical assessment, were divided into two groups: half of them had chemotherapy while the other half followed MammaPrint's advice and went without.

Bradley Efron
The Mess That Made Them – In a nutshell

We meet great artists backward—through the masterpieces, with the ending already known—so their greatness starts to look inevitable. But nobody lived it that way. A book about the long, uncertain middle of creative lives, and a pointed skepticism toward the comforting idea that failure is secretly good for us.

Ryan T. Pozzi
Out of the Ballpark – The wide angle

The specialized lingo makes the sport look like a closed world of arcane obsessives, but it's precisely its sheer visibility that makes it worth thinking about. A historian's account of how following and talking about a game becomes a way into understanding modern life—and why writing about it meant setting aside a lifelong fan's love.

David M. Henkin
The Barberini Butchers – A close-up

Four butchers executed in front of the Pantheon for turning their neighbors into sausage—a gruesome spectacle that opens onto something much larger. Behind it lies the route live animals took through a half-empty ancient city, and the ecological toll of wringing so much meat from the surrounding land.

Bradford A. Bouley
He Has the People – A close-up

A one-term congressman with a threadbare résumé walks into a convention hall built just for the occasion and walks out the nominee. Step inside the roaring room for the electric moment the tide turned, and the raucous, hoarse-throated celebration that spilled into the streets.

Jonathan Earle
America's Wrong Turn – In a nutshell

Trust in American health care has collapsed—from 78% in 1975 to 28% today—and the usual suspects (premiums, medical debt, consolidation, private equity) are treated as separate problems. What if they are all symptoms of one thing: the neoliberal turn that remade the U.S. economy in the 1980s, and swept medicine up in its wake?

John E. McDonough
Untamed Unicorns - The wide angle

Why do securities laws exist at all? The answer runs back to the 1929 crash and the New Deal conviction that sunlight is the best disinfectant. This piece follows how narrow, sensible exemptions to disclosure quietly expanded until secrecy became a matter of choice for some of the largest and most powerful companies in the economy.

Renée M. Jones
Against Heritage - A close-up

Every dish contains a whole world — a tangle of history, culture, and memory that only multiplies with each ingredient. From compiling an index of every food named to building a five-step "toolkit" for protecting culinary heritage from below, this is a reflection on writing about food as an act that shuttles constantly between the intimate and the immense. What can any of us actually do to re-value the traditions on our plates?

Lily Kelting
Action in Artwork — A close-up

Nonggi are traditional Korean folk banners, made collectively around the harvest to motivate, bless, and speak to the gods — even to carry them. In multi-day workshops with an immigrant rights organization, community members paint, embroider, and photo-transfer their hopes onto eight-foot banners over sixteen slow hours, drawing out the stories that shorter projects never reach.

Aram Han Sifuentes
Religion as Make-Believe – In a nutshell

What if religious belief is less like accepting a fact and more like a grand game of make-believe? Drawing an analogy from children who form groups around imaginary heroes, a philosopher argues that "religious credence" is a distinct mental attitude—chosen, bound up with sacred identity, and, unlike ordinary belief, largely immune to evidence.

Neil Van Leeuwen
Markets of Pain - A close-up

Ten thousand farmers gather to cheer a politician’s empty promises, scoring poppies by hand exactly as their great-grandparents did—only it is 1981, not the 1880s. A single rally opens onto a hidden world where peasant labor, state power, and global capital collide, and it suggests why “crisis” may be the wrong word for what came next.

Benjamin Robert Siegel
Sidewalk Nation – The wide angle

A pandemic's worth of neighborhood walks turned into a question: why has the law almost everywhere made the property owner next door responsible for the public walkway out front? Where property law, local government, and the First and Fourth Amendments all meet the pavement, most of what happens turns out to be a policy choice we get to make.

Michael Pollack
Diversityland — In a nutshell

One of the wealthiest and most racially diverse suburbs in the country tells itself three things: that it is harmonious, that it has no racial inequality, and that these facts make it superior to everywhere else. Two years and 150 interviews later, the harmony turns out to be real — and to rest on an unspoken bargain about which racial realities may be named out loud. Diversity, it turns out, is not the same thing as equity.

Kiara Wyndham
Vonnegut's War – In a nutshell

It changed how we write about war, got banned and burned, inspired rock bands, and put phrases into the language—yet the story behind the novel is as gripping as the book itself. A POW digging corpses from the ruins of firebombed Dresden, a discredited historian, and a strange leap into alien abduction: how a masterpiece took twenty-four years to find its shape.

Susan E. Farrell
He Has the People – The wide angle

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A long-ago election, held as the country tore itself apart over slavery, speaks uncomfortably to our own moment of fragile institutions and contested democracy—and to what it means when voters have to choose in the middle of a crisis.

Jonathan Earle
Out of the Ballpark – In a nutshell

What does it actually mean to say baseball "means" something? A case for dropping the tired clichés about national character and instead treating the game as an object of inquiry—one whose meanings accumulated over time, across North America, East Asia, and the Caribbean, and alongside every other form of modern mass entertainment.

David M. Henkin
Markets of Pain - The wide angle

How does a humble crop, scraped by hand in the fields of central India, connect overdose deaths in America to the development dreams of newly independent states? Following the poppy across the century between empire and epidemic, a historian of agriculture uncovers the people and systems that quietly supplied the world’s pain relief—and the pride of families still producing a drug the world has almost stopped buying.

Benjamin Robert Siegel
Voices in Stone - A close-up

The lives of statues then can take unexpected twists. While some are ready to write the obituary of the public statue, the appearance in many places of new monuments to honour modern-day heroes, whether the leaders of independence struggles or top-flight football players, demonstrates that the genre continues to thrive.

Paul Brummell
Nostalgic Futures - A close-up

It's beyond the scope of any single book to provide a framework for preemptively stopping reactionary activity. But through analyzing the affective economies — the emotions circulating in these controversies — I demonstrate the various ways that looking to the interactions of fans of speculative fiction can enable us, be it scholars or the general public, to really understand these reactionary groups' formation, their communication, and their continuation.

Max Dosser
A Kitchenette to Fit Your Needs - A close-up

A celebrated civil-rights drama and the family that grew wealthy from the very apartments it depicts turn out to be tangled together in surprising ways. This close reading resists easy heroes and villains, showing how people working within unjust systems can fund real change while remaining caught in those systems' contradictions.

Amani C. Morrison
Sidewalk Nation – In a nutshell

We walk over it every day without a second thought, yet this thin strip of public space is where fights over commerce, protest, policing, homelessness, free speech, and accessibility all collide. A case for treating an overlooked civic resource as the contested, high-stakes ground it actually is—and for rethinking who should be responsible for it.

Michael Pollack
He Has the People – In a nutshell

We treat some outcomes as inevitable—of course the log-cabin boy became president at the nation's hour of crisis. But what if we took the sheer contingency of the past seriously? A case for narrative history that restores human agency, chance, and the sense that things could have gone very differently.

Jonathan Earle
The Barberini Butchers – In a nutshell

For a few decades in the seventeenth century, Rome was flooded with an astonishing amount of meat—at times a pound of it per person, per day. Why did feeding a city so much lamb and pork become a statement of religious and political power in the age of the Reformation? A story of faith, appetite, and the artisans who moved meat from pasture to table.

Bradford A. Bouley
SimPolitics - A close-up

What are the ways to produce new models and prototypes within the computational imaginary of politics? Mainstream games rarely reflect alternatives. As Jim Gasperini noted when making Hidden Agenda, discussed in the last chapter, "No matter how fantastic the fantasy, no matter how simulated the simulation, the outlines of our familiar reality will always be discernible underneath."

Fenwick McKelvey
Untamed Unicorns - In a nutshell

America's biggest startups are raising trillions in private markets while sidestepping the disclosure rules that once protected investors and the public. This conversation traces how four decades of deregulation shrank the public markets, let companies stay private for decades, and handed founders nearly unchecked power. It asks what that shift means for ordinary people locked out of an insular, network-driven financing system.

Renée M. Jones
Markets of Pain - In a nutshell

The opioid crisis is almost always told as a uniquely American tale of corporate greed. But what if it was really the wreckage of a global system, built over more than a century to supply the world with morphine, codeine, and pain pills? This is the hidden history of legal opium—the crop that moved from hand-scored poppy fields through treaties and monopolies into the medicine cabinets of the West.

Benjamin Robert Siegel
Voices in Stone - The wide angle

Excepting the wondrous creations of the Greek god Hephaestus, and the statue of the murdered Commendatore in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, statues are themselves passive and emotionless participants in their biographies. The lives of statues are really the lives of the humans who interact with them. The book tells their stories.

Paul Brummell
Against Heritage - The wide angle

Why compare fine dining across three continents? Because zooming out reveals that no celebrated chef is truly exceptional — each one recycles the same nostalgic dreams of primitiveness and wildness that writers have leaned on for centuries. Seen from this vantage, even "the local" turns out to be a thoroughly global idea, and the plate becomes a way to think through the entangled political, ecological, and cultural crises of the Anthropocene.

Lily Kelting

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THE AGE OF TOMATO - Η ΕΠΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΤΟΜΑΤΑΣ
Georgia Kotretsos
One evening before dinner was served, I placed on each guest's setting a small carton of locally produced tomato paste, accompanied by a pair of scissors. I introduced the project – the notions on seasonality, coming of age, and, of course, tomatoes before we were served and invited everyone to cut a corner and squeeze the tomato paste onto their plates and table—drawing, and playing with their food.
20260815-kotretsos-the-age-of-the-tomato-a-close-up
Vonnegut's War – The wide angle
Susan E. Farrell
First published in 1969, the novel spoke to a country reckoning with Vietnam—and it speaks just as sharply to 2026, an age of polarization, far-right resurgence, and wars that displace millions. Is a good war possible? Is a just one? A look at why this darkly funny anti-war book still offers a moral vision of kindness and decency amid absurdity.
20260905-farrell-vonneguts-war-the-wide-angle
To Think Like a Statistician - A close-up
Bradley Efron
Fifteen hundred stage 1 breast cancer patients, deemed at low risk according to MammaPrint but high risk according to clinical assessment, were divided into two groups: half of them had chemotherapy while the other half followed MammaPrint's advice and went without.
20260904-efron-to-think-like-a-statistician-a-close-up
The Mess That Made Them – In a nutshell
Ryan T. Pozzi
We meet great artists backward—through the masterpieces, with the ending already known—so their greatness starts to look inevitable. But nobody lived it that way. A book about the long, uncertain middle of creative lives, and a pointed skepticism toward the comforting idea that failure is secretly good for us.
20260903-pozzi-the-mess-that-made-them-in-a-nutshell
Out of the Ballpark – The wide angle
David M. Henkin
The specialized lingo makes the sport look like a closed world of arcane obsessives, but it's precisely its sheer visibility that makes it worth thinking about. A historian's account of how following and talking about a game becomes a way into understanding modern life—and why writing about it meant setting aside a lifelong fan's love.
20260902-henkin-out-of-the-ballpark-the-wide-angle
The Barberini Butchers – A close-up
Bradford A. Bouley
Four butchers executed in front of the Pantheon for turning their neighbors into sausage—a gruesome spectacle that opens onto something much larger. Behind it lies the route live animals took through a half-empty ancient city, and the ecological toll of wringing so much meat from the surrounding land.
20260901-bouley-barberini-butchers-a-close-up
He Has the People – A close-up
Jonathan Earle
A one-term congressman with a threadbare résumé walks into a convention hall built just for the occasion and walks out the nominee. Step inside the roaring room for the electric moment the tide turned, and the raucous, hoarse-throated celebration that spilled into the streets.
20260831-earle-he-has-the-people-a-close-up
America's Wrong Turn – In a nutshell
John E. McDonough
Trust in American health care has collapsed—from 78% in 1975 to 28% today—and the usual suspects (premiums, medical debt, consolidation, private equity) are treated as separate problems. What if they are all symptoms of one thing: the neoliberal turn that remade the U.S. economy in the 1980s, and swept medicine up in its wake?
20260830-mcdonough-americas-wrong-turn-in-a-nutshell
Untamed Unicorns - The wide angle
Renée M. Jones
Why do securities laws exist at all? The answer runs back to the 1929 crash and the New Deal conviction that sunlight is the best disinfectant. This piece follows how narrow, sensible exemptions to disclosure quietly expanded until secrecy became a matter of choice for some of the largest and most powerful companies in the economy.
20260829-jones-untamed-unicorns-the-wide-angle
Against Heritage - A close-up
Lily Kelting
Every dish contains a whole world — a tangle of history, culture, and memory that only multiplies with each ingredient. From compiling an index of every food named to building a five-step "toolkit" for protecting culinary heritage from below, this is a reflection on writing about food as an act that shuttles constantly between the intimate and the immense. What can any of us actually do to re-value the traditions on our plates?
20260828-lily-kelting-against-heritage-a-close-up
Action in Artwork — A close-up
Aram Han Sifuentes
Nonggi are traditional Korean folk banners, made collectively around the harvest to motivate, bless, and speak to the gods — even to carry them. In multi-day workshops with an immigrant rights organization, community members paint, embroider, and photo-transfer their hopes onto eight-foot banners over sixteen slow hours, drawing out the stories that shorter projects never reach.
20260827-aram-han-sifuentes-action-in-artwork-a-close-up
Religion as Make-Believe – In a nutshell
Neil Van Leeuwen
What if religious belief is less like accepting a fact and more like a grand game of make-believe? Drawing an analogy from children who form groups around imaginary heroes, a philosopher argues that "religious credence" is a distinct mental attitude—chosen, bound up with sacred identity, and, unlike ordinary belief, largely immune to evidence.
20260826-van-leeuwen-religion-as-make-believe-in-a-nutshell
Markets of Pain - A close-up
Benjamin Robert Siegel
Ten thousand farmers gather to cheer a politician’s empty promises, scoring poppies by hand exactly as their great-grandparents did—only it is 1981, not the 1880s. A single rally opens onto a hidden world where peasant labor, state power, and global capital collide, and it suggests why “crisis” may be the wrong word for what came next.
20260825-benjamin-siegel-markets-of-pain-a-close-up
Sidewalk Nation – The wide angle
Michael Pollack
A pandemic's worth of neighborhood walks turned into a question: why has the law almost everywhere made the property owner next door responsible for the public walkway out front? Where property law, local government, and the First and Fourth Amendments all meet the pavement, most of what happens turns out to be a policy choice we get to make.
20260824-pollack-sidewalk-nation-the-wide-angle
Diversityland — In a nutshell
Kiara Wyndham
One of the wealthiest and most racially diverse suburbs in the country tells itself three things: that it is harmonious, that it has no racial inequality, and that these facts make it superior to everywhere else. Two years and 150 interviews later, the harmony turns out to be real — and to rest on an unspoken bargain about which racial realities may be named out loud. Diversity, it turns out, is not the same thing as equity.
20260823-wyndham-diversityland-in-a-nutshell
Vonnegut's War – In a nutshell
Susan E. Farrell
It changed how we write about war, got banned and burned, inspired rock bands, and put phrases into the language—yet the story behind the novel is as gripping as the book itself. A POW digging corpses from the ruins of firebombed Dresden, a discredited historian, and a strange leap into alien abduction: how a masterpiece took twenty-four years to find its shape.
20260822-farrell-vonneguts-war-in-a-nutshell
He Has the People – The wide angle
Jonathan Earle
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. A long-ago election, held as the country tore itself apart over slavery, speaks uncomfortably to our own moment of fragile institutions and contested democracy—and to what it means when voters have to choose in the middle of a crisis.
20260819-earle-he-has-the-people-the-wide-angle
Out of the Ballpark – In a nutshell
David M. Henkin
What does it actually mean to say baseball "means" something? A case for dropping the tired clichés about national character and instead treating the game as an object of inquiry—one whose meanings accumulated over time, across North America, East Asia, and the Caribbean, and alongside every other form of modern mass entertainment.
20260818-henkin-out-of-the-ballpark-in-a-nutshell
Markets of Pain - The wide angle
Benjamin Robert Siegel
How does a humble crop, scraped by hand in the fields of central India, connect overdose deaths in America to the development dreams of newly independent states? Following the poppy across the century between empire and epidemic, a historian of agriculture uncovers the people and systems that quietly supplied the world’s pain relief—and the pride of families still producing a drug the world has almost stopped buying.
20260817-benjamin-siegel-markets-of-pain-the-wide-angle
Voices in Stone - A close-up
Paul Brummell
The lives of statues then can take unexpected twists. While some are ready to write the obituary of the public statue, the appearance in many places of new monuments to honour modern-day heroes, whether the leaders of independence struggles or top-flight football players, demonstrates that the genre continues to thrive.
20260816-brummell-voices-in-stone-a-close-up
Nostalgic Futures - A close-up
Max Dosser
It's beyond the scope of any single book to provide a framework for preemptively stopping reactionary activity. But through analyzing the affective economies — the emotions circulating in these controversies — I demonstrate the various ways that looking to the interactions of fans of speculative fiction can enable us, be it scholars or the general public, to really understand these reactionary groups' formation, their communication, and their continuation.
20260814-dosser-nostalgic-futures-a-close-up
A Kitchenette to Fit Your Needs - A close-up
Amani C. Morrison
A celebrated civil-rights drama and the family that grew wealthy from the very apartments it depicts turn out to be tangled together in surprising ways. This close reading resists easy heroes and villains, showing how people working within unjust systems can fund real change while remaining caught in those systems' contradictions.
20260813-morrison-a-kitchenette-to-fit-your-needs-a-close-up
Sidewalk Nation – In a nutshell
Michael Pollack
We walk over it every day without a second thought, yet this thin strip of public space is where fights over commerce, protest, policing, homelessness, free speech, and accessibility all collide. A case for treating an overlooked civic resource as the contested, high-stakes ground it actually is—and for rethinking who should be responsible for it.
20260812-pollack-sidewalk-nation-in-a-nutshell
He Has the People – In a nutshell
Jonathan Earle
We treat some outcomes as inevitable—of course the log-cabin boy became president at the nation's hour of crisis. But what if we took the sheer contingency of the past seriously? A case for narrative history that restores human agency, chance, and the sense that things could have gone very differently.
20260811-earle-he-has-the-people-in-a-nutshell
The Barberini Butchers – In a nutshell
Bradford A. Bouley
For a few decades in the seventeenth century, Rome was flooded with an astonishing amount of meat—at times a pound of it per person, per day. Why did feeding a city so much lamb and pork become a statement of religious and political power in the age of the Reformation? A story of faith, appetite, and the artisans who moved meat from pasture to table.
20260810-bouley-barberini-butchers-in-a-nutshell
SimPolitics - A close-up
Fenwick McKelvey
What are the ways to produce new models and prototypes within the computational imaginary of politics? Mainstream games rarely reflect alternatives. As Jim Gasperini noted when making Hidden Agenda, discussed in the last chapter, "No matter how fantastic the fantasy, no matter how simulated the simulation, the outlines of our familiar reality will always be discernible underneath."
20260809-mckelvey-simpolitics-a-close-up
Untamed Unicorns - In a nutshell
Renée M. Jones
America's biggest startups are raising trillions in private markets while sidestepping the disclosure rules that once protected investors and the public. This conversation traces how four decades of deregulation shrank the public markets, let companies stay private for decades, and handed founders nearly unchecked power. It asks what that shift means for ordinary people locked out of an insular, network-driven financing system.
20260808-jones-untamed-unicorns-in-a-nutshell
Markets of Pain - In a nutshell
Benjamin Robert Siegel
The opioid crisis is almost always told as a uniquely American tale of corporate greed. But what if it was really the wreckage of a global system, built over more than a century to supply the world with morphine, codeine, and pain pills? This is the hidden history of legal opium—the crop that moved from hand-scored poppy fields through treaties and monopolies into the medicine cabinets of the West.
20260807-benjamin-siegel-markets-of-pain-in-a-nutshell
Voices in Stone - The wide angle
Paul Brummell
Excepting the wondrous creations of the Greek god Hephaestus, and the statue of the murdered Commendatore in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, statues are themselves passive and emotionless participants in their biographies. The lives of statues are really the lives of the humans who interact with them. The book tells their stories.
20260806-brummell-voices-in-stone-the-wide-angle
Against Heritage - The wide angle
Lily Kelting
Why compare fine dining across three continents? Because zooming out reveals that no celebrated chef is truly exceptional — each one recycles the same nostalgic dreams of primitiveness and wildness that writers have leaned on for centuries. Seen from this vantage, even "the local" turns out to be a thoroughly global idea, and the plate becomes a way to think through the entangled political, ecological, and cultural crises of the Anthropocene.
20260805-lily-kelting-against-heritage-the-wide-angle
To Think Like a Statistician - In a nutshell
Bradley Efron
Is it a good idea to think like a statistician? A confident Yes here, admittedly by someone who earns his living doing so. We live in a random universe, where truth most often lies hidden beneath a fog of noise. Statistics is the science of peering through the fog and learning from experience, especially experience that arrives in sometimes contradictory pieces: Did the COVID vaccines save or cost lives? Is sugar good or bad for you?
20260804-efron-to-think-like-a-statistician-in-a-nutshell
SimPolitics - The wide angle
Fenwick McKelvey
What I hope people take away is both a skepticism that computers can fix politics, and better demands for claims that it will. Especially in the next election cycle, how can we assess accurately the hype. My book helps readers distinguish between what's new and what's just someone who knows the rules of the game, trying to oversell the new tool or piece of software.
20260803-mckelvey-simpolitics-the-wide-angle
A Kitchenette to Fit Your Needs - The wide angle
Amani C. Morrison
What starts as a literary curiosity turns into an archival scavenger hunt across sociology, public-housing records, and — improbably — a health-sciences library. This is the story of chasing a nearly invisible housing form through the archive, and of what history's cycles of segregation, migration, and neglect can teach us about the housing pressures of our own moment.
20260802-morrison-a-kitchenette-to-fit-your-needs-the-wide-angle
THE AGE OF TOMATO - Η ΕΠΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΤΟΜΑΤΑΣ
Georgia Kotretsos
Nineteenth-century theatre thus operated as a densely social and often unruly space, where attention was dispersed and porous. Contemporary "social theatre" extends this condition into a more open and continuous field of exchange, where gestures of approval and disapproval circulate instantaneously. This raises questions of temporality and agency: what is seasonal—the act, the incident, or its reception?
20260801-kotretsos-the-age-of-the-tomato-the-wide-angle
Nostalgic Futures - The wide angle
Max Dosser
One of the best authors to do this kind of storytelling is Ted Chiang, who writes short stories where there's this technology, this novum, this thing dropped into the world. The story isn't really about that — it's about people interacting with it. He'll present people who are very positive about it and people who are very negative. So they're really these sociological takes on how the world is different because of this technology.
20260731-dosser-nostalgic-futures-the-wide-angle
The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese - A close-up
Karima Moyer-Nocchi
Told in eight scenes, this close-up follows macaroni and cheese from Juliette Corson's 1877 fifteen-cent dinners for the poor through the anti-Italian cholera panic of the 1880s and the tariff fights of the 1890s. The resolution is pure irony: Americans planted durum wheat at home and, by World War I, were exporting it back to the very countries whose "imported" macaroni still filled their shelves.
20260730-moyer-nocchi-epic-history-macaroni-and-cheese-a-close-up
Alan Dunn: The Cartoonist as Architectural Critic - A close-up
Gabriele Neri
That small, brilliant joke encapsulates an entire debate that had been raging for years about the "readability" of modern architecture, about the relationship between museums and artworks, and between museums and the city itself. Dunn distilled all of it into a single drawing and a single line.
20260729-neri-alan-dunn-a-close-up
Against Heritage - In a nutshell
Lily Kelting
Culinary "heritage" isn't really the past — it's a product, something bought, sold, and traded on in the present. Comparing food revivals from the American South to the New Nordic kitchens of Noma to the traditional ingredients of India, this is a polemical argument that our nostalgia for old foods is bound up with regressive politics and a looming ecological reckoning. What if the truest way to honor the past is to go back more honestly?
20260728-lily-kelting-against-heritage-in-a-nutshell
Voices in Stone - In a nutshell
Paul Brummell
The genesis of Voices in Stone lay in the realisation that this debate on the destruction of monuments is an unsatisfactory starting point to understand them. It recalls G. K. Chesterton's caution that before deciding to remove a fence, it would be well to ensure that you understand why it was put up in the first place.
20260727-brummell-voices-in-stone-in-a-nutshell
SimPolitics - In a nutshell
Fenwick McKelvey
Every election night, the experts ask the same question: what will the voters do? Listen to the grammar. Millions of people, treated as a system you can predict, model, run. Politics was supposed to be the one thing we insisted stayed irreducibly human. Somewhere it quietly became a computation.
20260727-mckelvey-simpolitics-in-a-nutshell
Cold-Blooded Murder - The wide angle
Craig Stanford
He wrote me this lovely letter, an actual letter, answering all my questions, and I'm sure he got many letters from kids. I wrote him back, and we had this correspondence that went on for a couple of years. Eventually he would write the answers in the margins of my letters
20260725-stanford-cold-blooded-murder-the-wide-angle
The Sleepless Ape - A close-up
David R. Samson
You have to have a big brain for sleep to really matter. Circadian rhythms, though — the first eukaryotes and prokaryotic life on the planet — had to time their behaviors adaptively. So the framing of the book is: why do we do what we do? Why do we experience the kinds of symptoms we do in the modern world? And the answer is a 1.5-billion-year-old answer. It goes back to the first life on this planet
20260724-david-samson-the-sleepless-ape-a-close-up
Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy - A close-up
Daisuke Miyao
From a historical and transnational viewpoint, Ozu's ambiguous and mysterious camera movements allow us multi-directional reading, which I think is an example of the ethics of indeterminacy. By way of discussing Ozu films, I want to foster readers' historical awareness and political consciousness.
20260723-miyao-ozu-and-the-ethics-of-indeterminacy-a-close-up
A Kitchenette to Fit Your Needs - In a nutshell
Amani C. Morrison
How did a single, cramped style of apartment come to reshape an entire city's identity? This conversation traces how mid-century Chicago's subdivided "kitchenette" apartments moved from real estate boards and housing policy into fiction, drama, and the daily lives of Black families arriving during the Great Migration. It's a story about how a building type became a way of understanding a city — and the people priced into its smallest rooms.
20260722-morrison-a-kitchenette-to-fit-your-needs-in-a-nutshell
The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese - The wide angle
Karima Moyer-Nocchi
The hard problem of food history is telling a true story without flattening it into gastromythology. Following macaroni and cheese from Cato's Rome through medieval mobility, English Macaroni Fashion, and the Jefferson–Hemings myth, she uses Restorative History to recover the African American women written out of the dish's American story—right up to the yellow box of Kraft Dinner.
20260721-moyer-nocchi-epic-history-macaroni-and-cheese-the-wide-angle
How We Think - A close-up
Meredith F. Small
I do indeed talk to everyone—the barista, the salesclerk, the Uber driver (I once almost missed a meeting because the Uber driver, who was from Morocco, and I were having an in-depth chat about Moroccan sheep, and he had photographs to show me). I am drawn to what other people think and do.
20260720-meredith-small-how-we-think-a-close-up
Nostalgic Futures - In a nutshell
Max Dosser
What I'm looking at is less what the media itself is saying and more how people get attached to it — how they begin to police it and say, this is the way it has to be. When The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power comes out, and there are Black elves and Black dwarfs, and people throw a fit — well, why do you care? What is it about your vision of this imagined world that has you so opposed to the presence of diversity?
20260719-dosser-nostalgic-futures-in-a-nutshell
Springsteen Fandom - A close-up
Nicolas Pethes
I try to make scenes and experiences like these accessible to readers, even though it's difficult to fully capture the joy and intensity they create in words. But I think it is important because it gives us a chance to challenge the sociological idea that the interaction between artists and fans is merely "parasocial." There are simply too many examples showing that these relationships are experienced as meaningful and real.
20260718-pethes-springsteen-fandom-a-close-up
City on the Edge - A close-up
Jonathan Weber
In terms of the smaller stories, I'm a little biased because some of them are my story. The chapter three about The Industry Standard — how good is that? I don't know, but I think it's pretty good. So I would say The Industry Standard story is one of my favorites. Another one I would point to is the story of the Google buses.
20260717-jonathan-weber-city-on-the-edge-a-close-up
THE AGE OF TOMATO - Η ΕΠΟΧΗ ΤΗΣ ΤΟΜΑΤΑΣ
Georgia Kotretsos
What resists this condition is the private, the silent, the unknown, the unread, the unseen, the unspoken, the untouched, the unsmelled, the unheard—those dimensions that require time to be expressed. All life, in its material and immaterial form, demands duration that is stretched, slow, and unedited.
20260716-kotretsos-the-age-of-the-tomato-in-a-nutshell
How Deeply Human Is Language? A close-up
Yosef Grodzinsky
The computer metaphor permeates our lives for good reasons, but we need to be mindful of how we harness it to enhance our thoughts, and beware of hurdles and pitfalls along the path. This is what I've been trying to do, and I truly hope that the specifics of my view would be apparent to each and every reader.
20260713-grodzinsky-how-deeply-human-is-language-a-close-up
The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese - In a nutshell
Karima Moyer-Nocchi
Tasty is not enough to become an icon. Plenty of delicious things vanish. The ones that endure survive because they do cultural work — signaling refinement to one era, feeding families cheaply in the next, and quietly becoming "comfort" in a third. The staying power was never in the flavor.
20260714-moyer-nocchi-epic-history-macaroni-and-cheese
Le Samouraï - A close-up
Daisuke Miyao
Equity, diversity, and inclusion should be the top priority in society. There is no doubt about that. They are a basic human right. However, are we sometimes becoming too defensive to avoid being offensive? Is it becoming difficult to critique others' thoughts? I think there is a clear difference between critiquing and criticizing.
20260713-miyao-le-samourai-a-close-up
Cats: A History - In a nutshell
Rod Phillips
But it was not until after World War II that pet cats became common. In this sense, pet cats on a mass scale occupy only one per cent of the time that cats and humans have had relationships. That's why it's so important for a history of cats to cover not only pet cats, but also the more numerous feral and street cats. They have longer histories.
20260712-roderick-phillips-cats-a-history-in-a-nutshell
Springsteen Fandom - The wide angle
Nicolas Pethes
So the book also became a document of my own journey as a fan. On the larger scale, it looks back across more than forty years to the moment when I first heard "No Surrender" and realized that I really could learn more from a three-minute record than I would ever learn in school.
20260711-pethes-springsteen-fandom-the-wide-angle
Alan Dunn: The Cartoonist as Architectural Critic - The wide angle
Gabriele Neri
In Australia, the construction of the Sydney Opera House — today the country's most iconic monument — was accompanied by an endless stream of cartoons mocking the building. Were these merely jokes? Far from it. Behind many of these seemingly playful images lay complex editorial, political, and economic agendas.
20260710-neri-alan-dunn-the-wide-angle
City on the Edge - The wide angle
Jonathan Weber
The book is pretty personal, more than most books like this. I'm a character in the book. I show up in chapter three, which is about the dot-com bubble of the late 90s. I was the editor of a magazine called The Industry Standard, which was the Bible of the dot-com boom. As journalists, we covered the dot-com boom, and obviously that was super interesting, and I had a front-row seat for all that stuff.
20260709-jonathan-weber-city-on-the-edge-the-wide-angle
Film Diplomacy - A close-up
Ayşehan Jülide Etem
That scene condenses the logic of film diplomacy. Turkey gives America images of itself. America gives Turkey the apparatus for producing images. Turkey offers history, landscape, friendship, and civilizational depth. America offers technology, mobility, and the future. A political alliance becomes a childhood friendship. A Cold War relationship becomes a handshake.
20260708-aysehan-julide-etem-film-diplomacy
The Sleepless Ape - The wide angle
David R. Samson
So interestingly, the modern mind thinks of the social condition as one that reduces sleep. Oh, I've got to sleep alone, in this sleep cell, this prison, so that nothing interferes with my sleep. But ironically, it was the social evolution of our species that made us such high-efficiency sleepers. Weird and beautiful sleepers in the first place.
20260707-david-samson-the-sleepless-ape-the-wide-angle
The Coffee Can Investor - A close-up
Neeraj Khemlani
Matt Ankrum heard that story and decided he wanted to focus on those companies that multiplied 100 times, like Xerox. He started his research on 100-baggers and brought the coffee can concept together with it. Readers will like the metaphor of the coffee can story, and the power of exponential compounding, as well as the power of a relationship…
20260706-khemlani-coffee-can-investor-a-close-up
How Deeply Human Is Language? The wide angle
Yosef Grodzinsky
You could say that my work on this book began at the very onset of my academic life. I started out as a medical student, with an interest in linguistics, neurophysiology, and the philosophy of mind. Unable to decide which path to take, I found a reasonable solution in doing many things in parallel, which meant doing both linguistics and medicine.
20260705-grodzinsky-how-deeply-human-is-language-the-wide-angle
Abraham Lincoln and little Ms. Bedell
Robert P. Watson
In her letter, with the audacity of a child, she tells him “You are unattractive. Your face, it's too thin, it's too narrow, you...
20260704-robert-watson-lincoln-bedell
Freedom Round the Globe - A close-up
Sarah M.S. Pearsall
This demolition of the private property of the EIC was audacious, horrifying many in England and even in Massachusetts itself. It also put at least some of the American colonies on a collision course with the British government, leading…
20260703-pearsall-freedom-round-the-globe-close-up
Le Samouraï - The wide angle
Daisuke Miyao
I think the question of the animal, or the thought of the nonhuman to decenter the human, is a crucial area for film theory in the twenty-first century. I would say Melville, as a cat person, tried to cross a border between the human and the nonhuman. Also, Cinema Is a Cat was my attempt to communicate with non-academics, cinephiles, and my fellow researchers and students.
20260702-miyao-le-samourai-the-wide-angle
How We Think - The wide angle
Meredith F. Small
Academics from several disciplines observe monkeys and apes, such as animal behaviorists, psychologists, and ecologists, but anthropologists do it for a specific reason—we want to know if we can trace some patterns of human behavior to our evolutionary cousins. What do we share with nonhuman primates? What makes humans different, if anything?
20260701-meredith-small-how-we-think-the-wide-angle
King PONG - A close-up
Raiford Guins
What PONG did, and what Atari did that was so successful — the takeaway here is that Atari radically changed the way the coin-operated amusement industry functioned. Games have very limited locations. What Atari did was got its product into those locations — let's call them markets — but it also created new ones.
20260630-guins-king-pong-a-close-up
How to Win the World Cup - In a nutshell
Chris Evans
A World Cup brings this together in a way that no other sporting event does. Everybody plays the same sport, but has different goals and national environments to work in - and it's the people who tell this story best.
20260629-chris-evans-how-to-win-the-world-cup
Springsteen Fandom - In a nutshell
Nicolas Pethes
Many of Springsteen's songs are built around characters caught in situations where it's difficult to know what the right decision is. These aren't "big" heroic stories — they're stories about failure, exclusion, disappointment, and hope that often goes nowhere, all grounded in very concrete everyday situations. Just listen to any song on "Nebraska" or "The Ghost of Tom Joad", and you will immediately be drawn into these emotions.
20260628-pethes-springsteen-fandom-in-a-nutshell
Public Acoustics - A close-up
Ellen R. Welch
Welch zooms in on Claude Perrault — physician, architect, music theorist — and an unpublished preface in which he describes overhearing a debate between two music connoisseurs at a Paris opera. Perrault's defense of contrapuntal music doubles as a defense of complex listening, reframing social noise as intelligible complexity. There is, he implies, pleasure to be found in tuning into the many voices of society.
20260627-ellen-welch-public-acoustics-a-close-up
The Coffee Can Investor - In a nutshell
Neeraj Khemlani
Matt is an advocate of investing in companies for the long term, not trading stocks. He has studied companies that have multiplied in value 100 times. They're called hundred baggers and the process usually takes 30 years.
20260626-khemlani-coffee-can-investor-in-a-nutshell
How Deeply Human Is Language? In a nutshell
Yosef Grodzinsky
Who, if anyone, is right, and how can we tell? Do we learn everything from scratch, or could some knowledge be innate? Is our brain one big network, or is it built out of modules, language being one of them?
20260625-grodzinsky-how-deeply-human-is-language-in-a-nutshell
Freedom Round the Globe - The wide angle
Sarah M.S. Pearsall
Iconic moments of the American Revolution (such as the Boston Massacre, the establishment of Valley Forge, the Yorktown surrender) look different by starting outside the thirteen colonies. We see things we did not see before. Such iconic moments become more interesting…
20260624-pearsall-freedom-round-the-globe-the-wide-angle
Le Samouraï - In a nutshell
Daisuke Miyao
Melville's obsessive use of close-ups of the protagonist's face in Le Samouraï also emphasizes the protagonist's subjective viewpoint. These close-ups not only function to represent his psychological state but also reject the viewer's identification with his emotions.
20260623-miyao-le-samourai-in-a-nutshell
The Sleepless Ape - In a nutshell
David R. Samson
"Not only do humans sleep the least of any primate, but we have the most REM, proportionally. So we have this really special, unique kind of sleep architecture relative to other primate species."
20260622-david-samson-the-sleepless-ape-in-a-nutshell
Film Diplomacy - The wide angle
Ayşehan Jülide Etem
Missionaries form the earlier layer of this story. American Protestant missionaries in Turkey used film in schools, churches, hospitals, prisons, and villages. They screened science films, agricultural films, health films, Disney films, and religious films.
20260621-aysehan-julide-etem-film-diplomacy
City on the Edge - In a nutshell
Jonathan Weber
The internet, if you think about what a website is — the engineering is underneath it, but it's really about the design, and the creative expression, and the writing. So it's a different thing. And relatedly, the people who were interested in the culture of Burning Man were also the people who were interested in the design end of technology. That became central, much more than the kind of hard engineering part of it.
20260620-jonathan-weber-city-on-the-edge-in-a-nutshell
Profit vs. Progress - In a nutshell
Brad Swanson
The reality is that sustainable (also called "socially responsible") investing mostly supports the status quo. Corporations are happy to receive sustainable investments, but they don’t let it change their course. They have one objective: produce value for shareholders.
20260619-brad-swanson-profit-vs-progress-in-a-nutshell
King PONG - The wide angle
Raiford Guins
The argument I always make as an educator and a historian is that I hope game developers today are looking at older games to see, one, what's been done — don't do it again, think differently. I don't know how much history is active in game design programs.
20260618-guins-king-pong-the-wide-angle
How We Think - In a nutshell
Meredith F. Small
We humans are so proud of our big brains because it "feels" like brain size must be an advantage, but is it? As some of the essays in this book suggest, a lot of bad behavior and negative thoughts come out of those big brains as well. We feel superior to other animals who are doing just fine in their particular habitat, and we often feel it is our "right" to rule everything on the planet. Our big brains might, in the end, be our downfall
20260617-meredith-small-how-we-think-in-a-nutshell
The Virtual Universe - The wide angle
Andreas Kaplan
Virtual worlds and the Metaverse are no longer at the center of media attention, as one has to admit, unlike a few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta to signal the growing importance of virtual reality for business and society. It was during that period that I decided to return to researching virtual worlds, despite having once sworn that I never would.
20260616-andreas-kaplan-unlocking-the-possibilities-of-the-metaverse
A Little More Social - A close-up
Nick Epley
Once you see that your own beliefs are a little bit misplaced, it’s that sense of empowerment that I hope people get out of the book. I hope the book encourages you to look for those places, and to test your beliefs. You don't have to believe me about the results here. They provide an opportunity or encouragement to go out and test them yourself...
20260614-nick-epley-little-more-social
Moonment - A close-up
Sizhu Li
My aluminum sheets are alive to me. They bend and shift with their surroundings—delicate yet strong, protective yet vulnerable. Aluminum is originally used for roofing, a material designed to adapt to environmental forces such as heat, wind, and rain. In my work it becomes something more sensitive, almost like skin. I also see a kind of femininity in this material—resilient and powerful yet refusing inappropriate control.
20260613-sizhu-li-moonment
Cold-Blooded Murder - In a nutshell
Craig Stanford
Reptiles and amphibians are in trouble for a variety of reasons. Most are connected to habitat loss and degradation because of human activities. Many animals, including some reptiles, are eaten. They are items in the diet, especially in Asia.
20260612-stanford-cold-blooded-murder-in-a-nutshell
Work Looks Back
Lee Albert Hill
A work is built through a set of formal relationships—proportion, alignment, adjacency, interval—but those relationships don’t settle into a single reading. Edges register, then slip. Intervals hold, then open. The composition remains slightly in play.
20260611-lee-albert-hill-work-looks-back
Mathematics and Creativity - A close-up
Paulina Rowińska
Math is still being made. This thread pushes back against the idea that mathematics is a closed body of old knowledge, showing instead how new work is constantly emerging—and how badly our classrooms fail to convey the subject’s vitality, reach, and inventiveness.
20260610-paulina-rowinska-mapmatics
Ultrafinitism
Doron Zeilberger
The belief that both the physical and the mathematical universes are finite. Of course, they are enourmously large, but still finite. The so-called infinity is completely unnecessary, and is due to a superstitious belief in something transcendental, analogous to the belief in God.
20260609-doron-zeilberger-ultrafinism
Alan Dunn: The Cartoonist as Architectural Critic - In a nutshell
Gabriele Neri
What did ordinary people think when confronted with a house shaped like a cube? How did city dwellers feel, a century ago, surrounded by forests of skyscrapers? What relationship existed between the human body — especially the female body, so often confined to domestic space during the twentieth century — and architecture itself?
20260608-neri-alan-dunn-in-a-nutshell
Why Start-Ups Fail - The wide angle
Bernie Bulkin
There is a temptation to think that what startups need most is a sense of wonder — the ability to wander in the mind, to think about things other people thought were impossible. But I think it's actually the opposite problem that brings most of them down. Startups fail more often because of lack of focus. Too much wandering. Generally, you need to focus.
20260607-bernie-bulkin-why-start-ups-fail
A Little More Social - The wide angle
Nick Epley
It supports this idea that our sense of worth comes from our beliefs about others. When self-esteem is low, when we're not feeling good about ourselves, that's our body's and mind's way of signaling to us that things aren't going great in our relationships. It's an alarm...
20260606-nick-epley-little-more-social-kjkv2
The Ultraview Effect - A close-up
Deana L. Weibel
He began to realize -- based on vision, not just imagination -- just how many stars there were, a number too large for his brain to adequately process. In that moment, he realized that the universe was far bigger than he had ever understood and became certain that there was other intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
20260605-deana-weibel-ultraview-effect
Moonment - The wide angle
Sizhu Li
Instead of forcing material into a fixed form, I began asking a different question: what if sculpture could move and respond to the world around it? That question gradually evolved into Moonment. Over time, the project expanded into a series of site-specific installations in different cities, each responding to its environment while remaining connected to the larger idea of shared time and perception.
20260604-sizhu-li-moonment
Declaration - A close-up
Robert P. Watson
The genius is to realize that America was born out of this idea of free will and self-actualization—the notion that you can be whatever you want...
20260603-robert-watson-declaration-closeup
Marked by Time - The wide angle
Robert J. Sampson
History, in other words, is baked into criminal records. In this case, it generates a systematic gap between actual and predicted arrest patterns across birth cohorts. This bias appears in all major racial groups and among youth who were arrested as juveniles, so it is not the usual form of bias we worry about. It also shows up for both absolute and relative risk. A prediction tool can correctly rank who is riskier ...
20260602-sampson-robert-j-marked-by-time
The Friend Machine - In a nutshell
Victoria Hetherington
I found that synthetic intimacy is not emerging in a vacuum; it is meeting a real, unmet need, or perhaps more cynically speaking, entering and widening a wound that was already there, exacerbated by elements like the loneliness epidemic. That is why it is so powerful, and also why it is so complicated.
02182-hetherington
Seeing Is Not Immediate
Lee Albert Hill
I’m interested in how those frameworks can be made visible through form. Each decision of proportion, alignment, interval and edge is intentional. The aim isn’t to complicate the image, but to make its internal structure legible over time – revealed. What I’d want a reader to notice first is that sense of intention. The work doesn’t resolve all at once; it unfolds as relationships begin to register.
20260530-lee-albert-hill
The Cries of Evil Times
Agron Bytyçi
The first encounter with this painting may not be beautiful in an aesthetic sense, but it is true to my feeling. I have always believed that humanity is capable of peace, and peace is the opposite of everything that is depicted here...
20260529-agron-bytyci
A Little More Social - In a nutshell
Nick Epley
Another big reason is that people underestimate how positively the other person will respond when we reach out to connect with them. People are reluctant to engage a stranger in conversation. If they think the other person doesn't want to talk to them, they often underestimate how interested the other person is in talking to them. We're reluctant to engage in deep conversation ...
20260528-nick-epley-little-more-social
King PONG - In a nutshell
Raiford Guins
Raiford Guins on King PONG, his history of Atari's launch product as a masterclass in market creation. Three engineers with no business background reinvented coin-op amusement, then pivoted into consumer electronics via Sears — becoming the engine behind ubiquitous gaming today.
20260527-guins-king-pong-in-a-nutshell
Freedom Round the Globe - In a nutshell
Sarah M.S. Pearsall
When street protests prompt controversy and violence, a complex and colorful history of global resistance to tyranny has much to teach us. We see how ordinary people—from enslaved pregnant women to suffering soldiers to Indigenous grandmothers—navigated extraordinary, conflict-ridden times. We learn about quiet acts of resistance,
20260526-pearsall-freedom-round-the-globe-in-a-nutshell
Bicentennial - In a nutshell
Marc Stein
First, it offers new historical perspectives on the 1970s, treating the bicentennial as one of the decade’s most significant events and arguing that the decade has been misrepresented as a mere interlude between the liberal 1960s and the conservative 1980s. Instead we see the bicentennial as a critical moment in a ...
20260525-marc-steinbicentennial
Why Q Needs U - A close-up
Danny Bate
This single letter so nicely demonstrates the development of the alphabet, through both its enduring similarities and later differences with its bovine prototype. The letter A has lost much of the complexity...
20260524-danny-bates-on-why-q-needs-u
Mathematics vs Arithmetic - A close-up
Edward Scheirneman
Arithmetic may be the foundation, but it is not the heart of mathematics. This thread examines the difference—and why proof and reasoning matter so much.
02128-scheirneman-edward-mathematics-vs-arithmetic
Film Diplomacy - In a nutshell
Ayşehan Jülide Etem
This history comes into focus when we take both the films and their audiences seriously. Educational films were not marginal relics, and viewers were not passive recipients. Sponsors, translators, censors, researchers, projectionists, and audiences all shaped meaning. Viewers did not simply take what institutions gave them.
20260522-aysehan-julide-etem-film-diplomacy
The Ultraview Effect - In a nutshell
Deana L. Weibel
What we tend to underestimate, though, is the importance of spirituality or religious belief in human life. As an anthropologist of religion, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how religion provides a lens for understanding everything from politics to food to gender roles to economics.
20260521-deana-l-weibel-ultraview-effect
Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See - A close-up
Anthony Gomez III
There’s something so powerful about artists who are simply willing to be artists, to create to create, without [a demand for social presence]. To put their world out there and let us sink into it...
20260520-anthony-gomez-mazzy-star
Moonment - In a nutshell
Sizhu Li
There is a line from the Chinese poet Zhang Jiuling that has always stayed with me: “A bright moon rises above the sea; though far apart, we share this moment.” That idea of sharing the same moment across distance is central to the project.
20260519-sizhu-li-moonment
Experiencing Reality - A close-up
Rory Noble-Turner
In that sense, the dunes of the north coast remain my quiet collaborators; endlessly reshaping the ground beneath my feet and reminding me that the role of design is not to escape reality, but to help us experience it more deeply.
20260518-rory-noble-turner-experiencing-reality
Marked by Time - In a nutshell
Robert J. Sampson
Most research on children’s development follows a group of people born around the same time—a single birth cohort. But as children grow up, the world around them is also changing. Individual development and social change are intertwined; you cannot really understand one without the other.
20260517-robert-j-sampson
How Film Became History - A close-up
Thomas Doherty
In good Marxist fashion, two dialectical forces squared off: the Stalinists, who supported the Soviet regime with the fervor of religious zealots, and the Trotskyites, who looked upon Stalin’s dictatorship as a betrayal of the true faith. In the USSR, the suppression of the one by the other
20260516-thomas-doherty
Mapmatics - In a nutshell
Paulina Rowińska
Many people are aware that if you look at a graph, maybe you should consider what's in this graph. Well, maps, I think, we take for granted. When we use the word ‘manipulate,’ people often think it's some bad person trying to manipulate what we think, which absolutely happens with maps. But there's also the point that we cannot show everything.
20260515-paulina-rowinska
The Apothecary’s Wife - A close-up
Karen Bloom Gevirtz
It shows that medical history is inextricably entwined with social history, and that history depends as much on words as on events...
20260514-karen-bloom-gevirtz-the-apothecarys-wife
War Became Visual Memory
Agron Bytyçi
Over time, my art and my creative consciousness have developed in parallel, growing together and responding to historical, social, and spiritual circumstances.
20260513-agron-bytyci-war-became-visual-memory
The Last Titans - A close-up
Richard Vinen
National greatness is always a bit of a fairy tale. Sometimes it's necessary, but you're unwise if you completely buy into it. These are very strange and exciting lives...
20260512-richard-vinen-on-last-titans
Declaration - The wide angle
Robert P. Watson
Franklin understood the Declaration was not just for the American people of that time. Because of the hypocrisy and the long way we had to go, it was an aspirational gift to humanity...
20260511-robert-watson-declaration-wide-angle
The Revenge of Reason - A close-up
Peter Wolfendale
The idea that the brain is hardware and the mind is software is a bad metaphor drawn from computers and physical devices that we're familiar with, rather than the mathematical theory of computation...
20260510-peter-wolfendale-revenge-reason
The Virtual Universe - In a nutshell
Andreas Kaplan
It connects economics, technology, and ethics, while also exploring practical implications for business functions such as marketing, human resources, and supply chain management. At the same time, it looks beyond the corporate world to broader fields such as education, healthcare, and sustainability.
20260509-andreas-kaplan-virtual-universe
The Devil’s Castle - The wide angle
Susanne Paola Antonetta
My history holds a mirror to U.S. psychiatry over the last half decade—its promises and its perils, particularly for females. At the same time my story is used insofar as it supports the research, always...
20260508-susanne-paola-antonetta-the-devils-castle
DeKonstructing the Kardashians - In a nutshell
MJ Corey
My work aims to make postmodern and media theory more accessible by using the Kardashian family as the ultimate exemplar. I also aim to utilize postmodern and media theory to help explain how the Kardashians managed to make such a massive, inescapable cultural impact. Some people view my project as parasocial. Others view it as pretentious.
20260507-mj-corey-kardashians
Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant - A close-up
Artan R. Hoxha
The metamorphosis Enver Hoxha underwent: from a materialist and pragmatist dictator who wanted to modernize his country, he became a dogmatic tyrant, blind to his people’s suffering, obsessed with pursuing at all costs ideological purity...
20260506-artan-hoxha-on-enver-hoxha
Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome - In a nutshell
Martha Feldman
Castrati, I argue, assumed the function of a latency that haunted Moreschi and his predecessors, especially after about 1830. By then, they had departed from European opera stages and soon ended up exclusively in papal Rome. Since then, castrati have continued haunting our present..
20260505-martha-feldman-castrato-phantoms
Death in the Strike Zone - In a nutshell
Thomas W. Gilbert
Like a detective investigating a cold criminal case, to find answers I had to blow the dust off of ancient case files, open them up and look at them with new eyes. All of my witnesses are long dead, and making new discoveries about someone who died 160 years ago would seem to be unlikely – yet I managed to make a few.
20260504-thomas-gilbert
Public Space as Art
Filippo Minelli
I was more interested in actions and public interventions, but I use those methods less and less, since neoliberalism has found a way to appropriate dissent—at least its most superficial forms—and turn it into propaganda for its own ends as well...
20260503-filippo-minelli-public-space-as-art
Cultural Mavericks - In a nutshell
Zheng Liu
I develop the concept of ‘culturally adapted strategy’ to explain how they creatively engage with political narratives, draw moral legitimacy, and harness cultural resources to carve out a unique identity, one that affords them an..
20260502-zheng-liu-business-and-politics
Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant - A close-up
Robert C. Austin
I was doing research on museums, and I had this feeling that I wouldn’t be back. I like Albania, but it’s not my Albania anymore. I thought my time had passed...
20260501-robert-austin-on-enver-hoxha
Creativity in Mathematics
Edward Scheirneman
Mathematics often appears fixed and timeless, yet many of its most powerful ideas—from negative numbers to infinite dimensions—are human creations born from imagination and experimentation.
02127-scheirneman-edward-creativity-in-mathematics
The Nature of Nurture - A close-up
Jay Belsky
Thus, knowing how a person develops does not tell you whether nature or nurture were principally responsible because the same way...
20260429-jay-belsky-nature-of-nurture
Print Day in May - The wide angle
Robynn Smith
It is our belief that people long for connection and positivity. People rarely take the time out of their busy lives to do something positive for themselves that does not involve a transactional agreement or a financial component.
20260428-robynn-smith-printday
Why Start-Ups Fail - In a nutshell
Bernie Bulkin
At the center of everything is building best teams, because that’s what successful people do. They really build a team, and they bring different things together, and they make it a team, not just a collection of people. And of course, ensuring alignment. That is, getting people to move in the same direction, even though they each have different things to do, they’re aligned with the vision of where we’re trying to go. That’s a bit about what competencies are, and I think you can see that they’re different from skills.
20260427-bernie-bulkin-why-start-ups-fail
Caribbean Blood Pacts - The wide angle
Aaron Coy Moulton
The biggest surprise was recovering those dictators’ goals. The region’s dictatorships denounced any opposition to their regimes as some communist conspiracy led by the Soviet Union...
20260426-aaron-moulton-caribbean-blood-pacts
The Devil’s Castle - In a nutshell
Susanne Paola Antonetta
So while I am looking at things historically, I also bring them into the present, to interrogate the concept of “madness” and other states, and to ask how we can do better with mind care.
20260425-susanne-paola-antonetta-devils-castle
The Apothecary’s Wife - The wide angle
Karen Bloom Gevirtz
To my shock, when I opened Elizabeth Blackwell’s (1707-59) stunningly beautiful, massive two-volume set of medicinal plants entitled A Curious Herbal, I realized that as late as the 1730s, apothecaries and physicians saw ordinary housewives as competition: economic competition, no less...
20260423-karen-bloom-gevirtz-the-apothecarys-wife
Music, Place, and the Moment - Reverb Series
John Scanlan
Our authors might of course be fans of the subject, but they are also - with one or two exceptions - academics who are interested in broader social, historical or cultural trends. Another important aspect in this was the focus on creativity...
20260422-john-scanlan-reverb-series
The Nature of Nurture - The wide angle
Jay Belsky
For me it was a matter of seeing in color what had otherwise only been viewed in black and white...
20260419-jay-belsky-nature-of-nurture
American Peril - In a nutshell
Scott Kurashige
A look at the long, often erased history of anti-Asian racism in the United States—from nineteenth-century violence to the surge of hate during the COVID-19 pandemic—and why these histories remain widely misunderstood.
20260418-scott-kurashige-american-peril
The Diversity Principle - A close-up
David B. Oppenheimer
[W]e should seek opportunities to enrich our lives, our families, our communities, and our country by embracing diversity in its many forms...
20260417-david-oppenheimer-diversity-principle
Painting as My Most Honest Language
Agron Bytyçi
Painting is my most natural language and the most honest way for me to communicate with the world. Many of the themes I explore arise from everyday life, but above all from profound personal experiences and memories...
20260416-agron-bytyci-painting-as-my-most-honest-language
Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant - The wide angle
Artan R. Hoxha
Such a phenomenon is not isolated but related to the advancement of the extreme-left agendas, which attack all the pillars of liberal democracy. We can draw important lessons from Enver Hoxha’s...
20260415-hoxha-artan-on-enver-hoxha
Breathing Space - A close-up
Tim Altenhof
At its core, Breathing Space asks what kinds of buildings we want to inhabit as consciously breathing beings: permeable structures embedded in the atmosphere, or sealed containers...
20260414-tim-altenhof-on-breathing-space
The Revenge of Reason - The wide angle
Peter Wolfendale
Liberals think freedom is just not being interfered with, right? But that means they don't understand what the positive conditions that enable choice are...
20260413-peter-wolfendale-revenge-reason
The Ethics of AI Are the Ethics of You
EP Pajo
Higher education has been especially eager to host this debate, which should not surprise. A system dependent on controlling the transmission of knowledge has every incentive to place itself at the center of any grand moral reckoning about a technology that threatens to route around it...
20260411-ep-pajo-ethics-of-ai-are-the-ethics-of-you
How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World - The wide angle
Richard Vinen
De Gaulle is very tall, socially awkward, quite cold, extraordinarily austere in his personal tastes. Churchill is short, very charming, not always entirely trustworthy...
20260411-richard-vinen-on-the-last-titans
Why Q Needs U - The wide angle
Danny Bate
Consequently, English has at a glance never seemed more united – but a glance only reveals half the story. What the eye misses the ear picks up: the spoken language...
20260409-danny-bates-on-why-q-needs-u
Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See - The wide angle
Anthony Gomez III
And at the end of the day, having grown up in LA, having grown up with Mazzy Star as the soundtrack of my life, I just wanted to do something that blended the personal with the research...
20260408-anthony-gomeziii-mazzy-star-wide-angle
Reaching for the Extreme - A close-up
Ian Stewart
A mathematical proof is a type of story. It has a beginning (statement of the theorem), an end (QED), and a middle (the proof itself). The better the story, the better the proof...
20260410-ian-stewart-reaching-for-the-extreme
Random dot product graphs
Edward Scheirneman
How do connections form in complex networks? One elegant answer comes from the random dot product graph, a model that imagines every individual as a vector of interests and uses their dot product to reveal the hidden structure of social worlds.
20260406-scheirneman-edward-random-dot
The Musical Lives of Charles Manson - The wide angle
Nicholas Tochka
Yet as an academic historian, I learned to approach the stories that people tell about the world as participating in larger projects to “invent” or “produce” or “construct” that world in some way...
20260405-nicholas-tochka-on-musical-lives-wide-angle
The Musical Lives of Charles Manson - A close-up
Nicholas Tochka
To really understand a piece of writing, you must grasp its unity. And that unity can be grasped only by discovering how a work is one—and in that same moment, many...
20260516-nicholas-tochka-on-musical-lives-charles-mansion
Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant - The wide angle
Robert C. Austin
This is the challenge for historians, especially when you're teaching. It is to explain to students why an idea that obviously ended so badly was so attractive...
20260404-robert-austin-enver-hoxha-wide-angle
Declaration - In a nutshell
Robert P. Watson
Thomas Jefferson spent seventeen days in a second-story loft at the Graff House in Philadelphia working on the draft. He gets all the credit, but a good chunk of the Declaration was removed or added largely by Ben Franklin...
20260403-robert-watson-declaration
The Apothecary’s Wife - In a nutshell
Karen Bloom Gevirtz
First, Abandon Binaries All Ye Who Enter Here. Lived life and therefore history are more complicated than simple oppositions...
20260402-karen-bloom-gevirtz-the-apothecarys-wife
Breathing Space - The wide angle
Tim Altenhof
Yet this is essentially what our lungs do: they blur the boundary between inside and outside and, although they are internal organs, maintain a constant connection to the external world. I began to see an analogy...
20260401-altenhof-tim-on-breathing-space
Lipstick - A close-up
Eileen G’Sell
The Object Lessons series excels at connecting objects to larger implications. Ultimately, I hope my readers will become more curious about how something as banal as lipstick connects to sexuality, power, gender identity, and class...
20260331-gsell-eileen-lisptick-closeup
Post-Digital Humanism
Rory Noble-Turner
Post-Digital Humanism is the idea that digital tools should ultimately deepen our physical, emotional, and sensory relationship with the real world rather than detach us from it. Post-digital Humanism doesn’t mean after technology...
20260330-rory-noble-turner-post-digital-humanism
The Diversity Principle - In a nutshell
David B. Oppenheimer
That old aphorism that great minds think alike is completely wrong; great minds think differently, and when they work together make great decisions and discoveries...
20260329-david-oppenheimer-diversity-principle
Picky - The wide angle
Helen Zoe Veit
Pleasure matters. Pickiness reduces pleasure for kids and parents. Parents are stressed because they don’t want picky kids and fear doing the wrong thing. I want to be part
20260328-helen-zoe-veit-picky
Caribbean Blood Pacts - In a nutshell
Aaron Coy Moulton
These forces built the very foundations of the CIA’s operations. The first plot, Operation PBFORTUNE, was started by the dictators and backed by United Fruit..
20260327-aaron-moulton-caribbean-blood-pacts
A Four-Eyed World - A close-up
David King Dunaway
I’m particularly fond of the part where I look at how glasses are portrayed in books. When eyewear first began to appear in literature, a whiff of sulfur or mystery hung over it; if glasses helped people see, what other powers might they possess? Besides sharpening vision, writers have imagined glasses revealing secrets...
20260326-david-king-dunaway-four-eyed-world-closeup
Prince’s Minneapolis - In a nutshell
Rashad Shabazz
One of the main ideas in this book is that music is connected to geography; it originates from a specific place. The social factors shaping that place...are reflected in the music...
20260325-rashad-shabazz-prince-place-sound
The Nature of Nurture - In a nutshell
Jay Belsky
Almost all discourse about nature and nurture only focuses on genetics when it comes to the nature side of things, ignoring natural selection, adaptation, and the fundamental goal of all living things...
20260324-jay-belsky-nature-of-nurture
Neuroethics - In a nutshell
Walter Glannon
Deep brain stimulation can restore motor control in people with Parkinson’s disease. Yet access to information about a person’s brain from neuroimaging...
20260323-walter-glannon-neuroethics
Reaching for the Extreme - The wide angle
Ian Stewart
Most applications of mathematics are hidden behind the scenes. No one wants to have to learn spherical trigonometry to use their car’s satellite navigation...
20260322-ian-stewart-reaching-extreme
Friction - The wide angle
Jennifer R. Vail
...we instinctively manipulate friction all the time. We use carts with wheels to help move heavy objects. We buy new tires when our treads wear out so our cars grip the road better...
20260321-vail-jennifer-on-friction
The Revenge of Reason - In a nushell
Peter Wolfendale
What’s important about reason is not building up from certain foundations, but our ability to continually revise the rules that govern the way in which we think, and indeed how we live...
20260320-peter-wolfendale-on-revenge-of-reason
Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See - In a nutshell
Anthony Gomez III
They’re a band that never wanted fame, and I mean that quite literally. They were with independent labels, they’re publishing stuff on their own, and they’re refusing to rush...
20260319-anthony-gomez-on-mazzys-star
How to Read a Wedding Dress - A close-up
Lydia Edwards
Although the book covers such iconic examples as Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy and Beatle wife Pattie Boyd, I would perhaps hope that it would first fall open on pages covering the choices of ordinary women who had to be inventive to be fashionable. A favourite example can be found on page 61, where a glamorous fashion...
20260224-edwards-lydia-how-to-read-a-wedding-dress-3
Magic Is Made of Statistics and Marketing
EP Pajo
Some people have genuinely not recovered emotionally from the shock of a machine mimicking human language so fluently. We believed that language was uniquely ours...
20260317-ep-pajo-magic-is-made-of-statistics-and-marketing
The Last Titans - In a nutshell
Richard Vinen
I'm tempted to say one of the unique things about my book is that there's less of it. There are a lot of very long biographies of Churchill and de Gaulle, and what I hoped, in a funny kind of way, by putting the two men together,
20260316-richard-vinen-on-last-titans
Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant - In a nutshell
Artan R. Hoxha
Communism was one of the most alluring alternatives to becoming modern, especially in countries with poor financial resources and lacking social capital. Dictatorships are a response to insecurity and the crisis of self-confidence...
20260314-hoxha-artan-on-enver-hoxha
Why Q Needs U - In a nutshell
Danny Bate
But another benefit comes from an appreciation of how the alphabet works (or sometimes doesn’t work), because we today are a chapter in its long story. The alphabet is a testament to innovation, and every population...
20260313-bate-danny-why-q-needsu
The Musical Lives of Charles Manson - In a nutshell
Nicholas Tochka
I try to understand how the different genres that emerged or entered maturity in the late 1960s – including rock music criticism, true crime, gonzo journalism, science fiction...
20260311-nicholas-tochka-on-musical-lives-manson
Artificial Intelligence Is Intelligence That Is Built, Not Born
EP Pajo
Artificial intelligence is an act of mimicry. We design systems we fully and deliberately control to reproduce our own ability to purposefully manipulate matter. What we build has no soul. What we build has no biological intent...
20260309-ep-pajo-artificial-intelligence
Picky - In a nutshell
Helen Zoe Veit
So the argument that pickiness is natural and inevitable doesn’t hold up. That’s extremely hard for parents to hear. I try to understand mass pickiness as a historical phenomenon that has shaped...
20260308-veit-helen-picky
Lipstick - The wide angle
Eileen G’Sell
For me to explore the fraught nature of femininity within academia—and which persists within the professional realm more broadly—is something I do not take for granted. It’s something I have been preoccupied by personally and intellectually for at least the last 30 years. I was very lucky...
20260307-eileen-gsell-lipstik-wide-angle
Friction - In a nutshell
Jennifer R. Vail
From the DNA in our bodies to the formation of planets in the universe, friction is present and that’s what makes it such an intriguing force. However, friction is arguably the most underappreciated force in our lives...
20260305-vail-jennifer-on-friction
A Four-Eyed World - The wide angle
David King Dunaway
I’m extremely near-sighted. I’ve worn glasses since childhood. If I misplaced them, I’d need glasses to find my glasses. My vision is so bad that I need them to cross the street. But I’m embarrassed to say that, for most of my life, I didn’t give them much thought. When I was kicking around the idea...
20260304-david-dunaway-four-eyed-world
Reaching for the Extreme - In a nutshell
Ian Stewart
If you want financial reasons for the importance of mathematics, that’s a pretty clear answer. But there are other reasons too, which I think are more important — among them the subject’s intrinsic beauty, the element of surprise....
20260303-stewart-ian-on-reaching-for-the-extreme
Enver Hoxha - In a nutshell
Robert C. Austin
What’s unique about the Enver Hoxha: Twentieth-Century Tyrant is that we don’t actually have a decent scholarly biography of Enver Hoxha. There is some work—Blendi Fefziu has a book, which is fairly standard, even in its title...
20260301-robert-austin-on-enver-hoxha
Charlotte Brontë's Life Through Clothes - A close-up
Eleanor Houghton
Clothes are, and always have been, a vital part of our daily lives. Few things walk with us so closely. The garments that we wear literally mould themselves to our bodies, even becoming imbued with our DNA...
20260227-eleanor-houghton-charlotte-brontes-life-through-clothes
Lipstick - In a nutshell
Eileen G’Sell
Lipstick is really a metonym for larger systems of adornment, especially feminine adornment. Though it’s part of the Object Lessons series, the book, Lipstick, is not a comprehensive history of the object. Other books have done that quite well...
20260216-eileen-gsell-on-lipstick
Mura Dehn - In a nutshell
Kim Chandler Vaccaro
Mura Dehn is this fascinating woman. When I first came in contact with her, nobody knew who she was. I did my dissertation on her, and in the 30 years since, she has become very famous in some circles. When Bloomsbury approached me I had just retired, and I had a list, as long as my leg, of things that I was gonna do...
02060-vacarro
Swiftynomics - A close-up
Misty L. Heggeness
“In My Cowboy Era” is a great subsection to stumble upon in the “Our Economic Power Era” introduction. My hope is that readers would naturally open the book to this page. In addition to giving a flavor of the entirety of the book, it encourages readers to think about their own best gritty, hard-working era ...
20260215-heggenness-misty-swiftonomics
Opera Wars - The wide angle
Caitlin Vincent
I’ve been living with opera since I was fourteen. I trained as a classical vocalist, went to a music conservatory, and was a freelance opera singer for a decade in the United States. Around the same time, I started a small opera company producing shows, and I began writing lyrics and libretti...
20260214-caitlin-vincent-on-opera-wars
One Public - In a nutshell
Kevin Landis
One Public explores the contemporary story of one of the most influential theatres in America. While the study covers the colorful history of The Public from its founding by Joseph Papp, the focus of the manuscript is the trajectory of a theatrical impulse, and how the Public nurtures plays from the workshop phase...
20260213-kevin-landis-one-public
Who is Conscious? In a nutshell
Marian Stamp Dawkins
Many people are fully convinced that animals such as dogs, cats and other mammals are conscious, but what about all the others? What about, birds, fish, octopuses and even crabs and insects? If a dog is conscious, what about the fleas living in the dog’s fur?
202602211-dawkins-marian-who-is-conscious
The Alchemy of the Stutter - In a nutshell
Gina Waggott
In the 1990s, a middle-aged, stuttering jazz pianist unexpectedly became the best-selling male artist in Europe, outselling even Michael Jackson. His name was John Paul Larkin. But the world knew him as Scatman John. John was a lifelong stutterer...
20260210-gina-waggott-scattman-john
Charlotte Brontë's Life Through Clothes - In a nutshell
Eleanor Houghton
In a nutshell, this richly illustrated biography explores Charlotte Brontë’s life through the garments she left behind, pieces that, until now, had remained largely unexplored.Collectively, these material witnesses...
02052-houghton
When Harry Met Sally... - The wide angle
Tamar Jeffers McDonald
The book relates to now-traditional ideas within the discipline of Film Studies, that there are significant insights as well as pleasures to be gleaned by the very close analysis of...
20260206-mcdonald-tamar-on-when-harry-met-sally-2
Clouds - The wide angle
Edward Graham
The main concept that we are trying to express is the inner character of clouds, their inherent transient behaviour, that they are not singular independent “snapshots” (such as photos on Instagram), but that they exist as part of a “flux”. Clouds are in constant..
20260205-graham-edward-clouds-nature-fleeting-form
A Guide to Infinity - The wide angle
Edward Scheirneman
This tour of mathematical infinities was inspired by my granddaughter Shlomit who, some years ago, called me to ask: What is the number before infinity? A fantastic question!
20260204-scheinerman-edward-guide-to-infinity
Futurism - In a nutshell
Ara H. Merjian
This book offers a synthetic account of the Futurist movement, founded in 1909 by the poet and impresario F.T. Marinetti. Exasperated by Italy’s association with ancient ruins and Renaissance masterpieces – at the expense of a truly contemporary culture – Marinetti called for a radical tabula rasa. Artistic treasures and literary canon ...
20260203-merjian-ara-futurism
Radical Romanticism - A close-up
Mark S. Cladis
So, you’re at the bookstore. You come upon Radical Romanticism and, flipping through its opening pages, you read a passage on a dream in Wordsworth’s Prelude. A man awakens in a desert, is handed a shell shaped like a book, and hears within it “a loud prophetic...
20260202-mark-cladis-radical-romanticism-democracy-religion
Entropy - The wide angle
James Jeffrey Binney
Entropy is both a property of matter and a device for selecting probability distributions in light of data. Hence it's an enormously useful tool that should be widely understood. The book explains how entropy gives insight into several aspects of the energy transition...
20260121-binney-james-on-entropy-very-short-introduction-2
The Ghosts of Mark Twain - The wide angle
Ann M. Ryan
Many of us have been shocked by the brazen denials and revisions of racial and racist history that have been occurring all over the country. However, this whitewashing of American culture is nothing new. In fact, Toni Morrison suggests, in her seminal book on the intersections of race and metaphor in America, Playing in the Dark
20260130-ryan-ann-ghosts-mark-twain-memory-masculinity-and-race
Exemplary Things - In a nutshell
Christine M. E. Guth
Exemplary Things investigates the history of a Japanese cultural keyword, meibutsu, and the pervasive influence it has had in shaping consumption practices in Japan. It's a term that has no exact anglophone equivalent. Japanese commodity culture developed in the 15th century, and in Exemplary Things, I show how
20260129-guth-christine-exemplary-things
Rebels at the Gates - In a nutshell
Robert P. Watson
Rebels at the Gates is about the United States Civil War in the 1860s. Of course, entire forests have been filled with pages of books on the American Civil War, and rightfully so. It was clearly one of the defining events in American history. However, my angle is new and unexplored...
20260126-robert-watson-rebels-at-the-gates
Swiftynomics - In a nutshell
Misty L. Heggeness
Swiftynomics is about understanding women as economic agents of change. Taylor Swift is its muse. The book highlights the often-ignored economic activities that women contribute to their families, communities, and the economy through economic growth. I delve into themes of reinvention and masterminding to explain how we grow, advance, and continue...
20260127-heggenness-misty-swiftonomics
Manga's First Century - In a nutshell
Andrea Horbinski
Manga’s First Century is about the history of manga. It says 1905 to 1989 in the subtitle, but actually it jumps back immediately to the 1860s, when periodicals first emerged in Japan. It is about 125 years, give or take, which is a long time for a modern history. I am making the argument that manga is a modern thing that emerges out of modernity in Japan. Exploring where periodicals started in Japan, and what ...
20260125-horbinski-andrea-manga-first-century
Close Encounters of the Third Kind - In a nutshell
Dana Polan
This book is about Steven Spielberg's 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A lot of people assume this is special effects driven film and about “wow” and “wonder”—which it is—but it's also about alienated lost masculinity. Part of what I argue—and I think this is the new angle to the book—is that in the beginning of the 70s films by Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, Kubrick and others...
20260123-dana-polan-close-encounters-third-kind
A Guide to Infinity - Challenge Problem
Edward Scheirneman
Challenge Problem - A rectangle has 4 edges and a cube has 12 edges. How many edges does a four-dimensional hypercube have?
20260124-edward-scheinerman-guide-to-infinity-ten-mathematical-journeys
Entropy - In a nutshell
James Jeffrey Binney
Entropy is a concept that's almost as important as energy, but far less widely understood. The book explains how until the 1850s the two concepts were confused, and that a clear understanding of what entropy really is was reached only in 1947...
20260121-james-binney-entropy-very-short-introduction
The Dialectic of Cosmopolitan Time - The wide angle
Shaj Mathew
The first two words of the book are Edward Said. His body of work continues to inspire debate within postcolonial studies almost 50 years after the publication of his 1978 hit, Orientalism. I’m less interested in that specific text than in the misunderstandings or scholarly lacunae it generated. A focus on Orientalism also obscures his incredible range, which included classical music...
20260119-mathew-shaj-on-dialectic-cosmopolitan-time-2
Kanpai - In a nutshell
Eric C. Rath
Kanpai, the History of Sake is about Japan's traditional alcoholic beverage, sake, which is often called rice wine, because it's made out of rice, but it's really not made like wine. When you make wine, you have fruit, typically grapes, and those already have sugar in them. You can let nature run its course, and those will naturally ferment. But with rice, you need to use a special mold called 'koji'...
20260117-eric-rath-on-kanpai-history-of-sake-1
Wired for Words - The wide angle
Gregory Hickok
In its broadest scope, the book addresses the age-old mind-body problem: how does the 3-pound hunk of meat in our heads give rise to our ability to perceive the world, understand it, and act within it successfully? Although this problem falls under the broad umbrella of cognitive neuroscience, language is a unique testbed in that it involves many aspects of cognition within ...
20260115-hickok-gregory-wired-for-words-the-neural-architecture-of-language-2
The Uses of Diversity - In a nutshell
Jonathan Kahn
This book examines the blurring of the distinction between social understandings of race and biological understandings of genetic variation, showing how the concept of diversity is often deployed in ways that threaten to biologize race or undermine efforts to address racial injustice. Diversity serves a special role here precisely because, over the past half century, it has become ...
20260113-jonathan-kahn-uses-of-diversity-how-race-has-become-entangled-in-law-politics-and-biology-2
Rolling Stone and the Rise of Hip Capitalism - In a nutshell
Charles L. Ponce de Leon
This book is about a seemingly crazy idea that turned into one of the most remarkable publishing successes of the twentieth century. In 1967, Jann Wenner, a 20-year-old Berkeley dropout, and Ralph J. Gleason, a 50-year...
20260111-poncedeleon-charles-rolling-stone
If I Am Right, and I Know I Am - In a nutshell
Hanne Strager
If I Am Right, and I Know I Am is the story of a woman who changed our understanding of the planet but never received the recognition she deserved. It is the first biography of Inge Lehmann, the Danish geophysicist who discovered Earth’s solid inner core in 1936.I didn’t want to write a traditional scientific biography. I wanted to write a book...
20250109-strager-hanne-inge-lehman-earth
Unsilencing - In a nutshell
Lilia Topouzova
Unsilencing is the first comprehensive study of the Bulgarian gulag— a network of forced-labor camps and prisons that operated throughout the communist era from 1945 to 1989. Referred to as “Little Siberia,” these camps interned thousands without trial, subjected them to inhumane conditions, and silenced them for decades. Drawing on two decades of archival research, oral history interviews...
20260107-lilia-topouzova-unsilencing-legacy-bulgarian-gulag
Radical Thinking - In a nutshell
Peter Lamont
Radical Thinking is a book about how we make sense of the world, and how we can make more sense of it. But it’s not a typical ‘critical thinking’ book. It’s ‘radical’ (from the Latin radic, meaning ‘root’) because it’s about the roots - the foundations - of what we think. In other words, it’s about the things that shape our thoughts...
20260105-lamont-peter-radical-thinking
England’s Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought‍ - A close-up
Meirav Jones
Pages 53-54 frame Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, usually read as a work of secular political thought, as an intervention in the theological-political of his time:Hobbes was explicit, in his autobiography, about...
20260103-jones-meirav-englands-israel-and-the-foundations-of-modern-political-thought-3
The Invention of Rum - In a nutshell
Jordan B. Smith
The Invention of Rum is my attempt to answer how people living in the Atlantic world invented rum and subsequently wrestled with the wide-ranging implications of its production and …
20260101-jordan-smith-invention-rum
Rethinking American Art - In a nutshell
Theodore E. Stebbins Jr.
Rethinking American Art: Collectors, Critics, and the Changing Canon is about the real history of art. Most books on art history are written from the point of view of the author…
20260102-theodore-stebbins-rethinking-american-art
Good Vibrations - In a nutshell
Stefan Kölsch
Good Vibrations builds on a scientific and cultural shift in how we understand music. For a long time, music was considered “just entertainment”: pleasant, but biologically unimportant. In the book,...
20251227-koelsch-stefan-on-good-vibrations-2
The Art of Tennis - The wide angle
Nicholas Fox Weber
War is in our genes. Humans are “hard wired” to divide the world into “us” versus “them.” Men have a penchant for rape. We have all encountered claims like these...
20251224-nicholas-fox-weber-on-the-art-of-tennis-2
Nicholas Fox Weber
Perfect Communities - The wide angle
Edward Berenson
A key point of the book is to show that it was once possible to build affordable housing on an enormous scale, and that we can still learn something from...
20251218-berenson-edward-perfect-communities-levitt-levittown-and-the-dream-of-white-suburbia-2
Bankers' Trust - In a nutshell
Aditi Sahasrabuddhe
As the title suggests, this book is about the personal and social relationships that govern the global economy. I wanted to tell a story of global finance that focuses not...
20251215-sahasrabuddhe-aditi-on-bankers-trust-how-social-relations-avert-global-financial-collapse-1-1
By Touch Alone - The wide angle
Vanessa Warne
The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney opens a new door into understanding the dynamics between the president’s office and the vice president’s office. Material for the book was gathered over...
20251211-warne-vanessa-on-by-touch-alone-blindness-and-reading-2
Vanessa Warne
Reclaiming Modernity - In a nutshell
Larry Bennett
Reclaiming Modernity explores a pervasive but largely unexamined mental attitude, Americans’ fond recollection of the not-so-distant past, and elements of material culture associated with that near past. I call this...
20251208-bennett-larry-on-reclaiming-modernity-essays-paradoxical-nostalgia-1-1
Dress, Dreams, and Desire - In a nutshell
Valerie Steele
Dress, Dreams, and Desire is a book on the cultural history of fashion and psychoanalysis. It traces how psychoanalytic ideas have influenced fashion and how we interpret fashion. On the one hand, you have Freud's writings, where he barely mentions clothing or fashion at all. Just tiny little intriguing slivers, like the libido for looking, or the attraction of concealment. And yet, when you look at his ...
20251206-steele-valerie-dress-dreams-desire-history-fashion-psychoanalysis-1-1
Valerie Steele
Phenomenal Moments - In a nutshell
Felice Frankel
The main point I am trying to make in this book is to introduce the idea that science is everywhere. Everything we see. Everything we touch. Everything we look at....
20251204-frankel-felice-on-phenomenal-moments-1-1
Signs from the Future - A close-up
Santiago Zabala
I hope that readers who are simply browsing the book will immediately recognize the difference between “philosophical warnings” and “trigger warnings.” While the latter aims to alert students and viewers...
20251201-zabala-santiago-signs-from-the-future-philosophy-of-warnings-3
Santiago Zabala
Unseparate - The wide angle
Steven Henry Madoff
Network theory is described in the structural relationship of things quite familiar to all of us now, as terms we hear all the time: hubs, nodes, dropped signals, latency, software...
20251128-madoff-steven-on-unseparate-modernism-interdisciplinary-art-and-network-aesthetics-2
Steven Henry Madoff
Planetary Eating - In a nutshell
Gidon Eshel
Planetary Eating is a very rigorous examination of the mechanisms of human–planet interactions, agriculture and food production, and consumption set in motion. While other books address the environmental problems associated...
20251126-eshel-gidon-on-planetary-eating-1-1
Nashville - In a nutshell
Heather Hendershot
This book is about Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville, which is a quintessential 1975 film, but also relevant for the present moment of political cynicism, polarization, and violence. While the...
20251121-heather-hendershot-on-her-nashville-1-1
Dog Economics - The wide angle
Aidan R. Vining
I’ve been interested in education, and attending school board meetings, for more than half of my life. I began in high school when, as editor of my high school newspaper,...
20251124-vining-aidan-on-dog-economics-2
Dog Economics - In a nutshell
David L. Weimer
People and dogs share thousands of years of co-evolution. The nature of their relationship has also evolved, moving largely from dogs as workmates to dogs as pets. Especially in contemporary...
20251119-david-weimer-on-dog-economics-1
The Disunited States - In a nutshell
Ryan D. Griffiths
The book is about secession in America. There is a growing interest in secession, or what some refer to as a national divorce between Red and Blue America. There is...
20251117-griffiths-ryan-disunited-states-1-1
The Idealized Mind - A close-up
Michael D. Kirchhoff
All computational models of the brain and cognitive activity produced so far are either idealizations, making the models hypothetical, or approximations, making the models inexact descriptions of their target phenomena,...
20251113-kirchhoff-michael-on-the-idealized-mind-3
Trading Locomotives - The wide angle
Naofumi Nakamura
Let me share my personal perspective on my research journey. My interest began with the fascinating question of Japan's industrialization. How did Japan, a small island nation viewed by the...
20251110-nakamura-naofumi-on-trading-locomotives-2
Naofumi Nakamura
Partisan Policy Networks - In a nutshell
Zachary Albert
This book examines how many policy research organizations, like think tanks, have transformed from non-partisan information producers into partisan allies pursuing ideological policy goals. Most policymaking today is structured by...
20251106-albert-zachary-on-partisan-policy-networks-1-1
Tales of Militant Chemistry - In a nutshell
Alice Lovejoy
This book asks what happens when we take something we’re familiar with and consider it in an unfamiliar light. The “thing” in question is film: not films, the things we...
20251104-lovejoy-alice-on-tales-of-militant-chemistry-1-1
Colonization - A close-up
Ryan D. Griffiths
Page 6, which shows the difference between the number of states that are included in the data that underpin our book, compared to the number of states identified in existing...
20251103-ryan-griffiths-before-colonizaion-nonwestern-states-systems-nineteenth-century-3
Selective Solidarity - The wide angle
Chelsie Yount
Signs from the Future originates from my earlier works—Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (2017), and Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of...
20251030-chelsie-yount-selective-solidarity-children-middle-class-moralities-senegal-2
Before Colonization - In a nutshell
Charles R. Butcher
This book corrects a Eurocentric picture of International Relations (IR) that has dominated the study of international relations over the past decades, and especially the statistical study of IR. If...
20251027-charles-butcher-before-colonization-nonwestern-states-and-systems-1-1
Tech - The wide angle
Olivier Alexandre
My previous research was about the French movie industry. In 2014, Netflix was just arriving in France, opening up an office in Paris. I got funding for studying this company...
20251023-alexandre-olivier-tech-when-silicon-valley-remakes-the-world-2
Learning to Hear - In a nutshell
Sarah Maslen
My book examines the tricks of the trade and forms of collective support for crafting our largely unconscious practices of hearing. As we live our daily lives, our hearing generally...
20251020-maslen-sarah-learning-to-hear-1-1
Sarah Maslen
Death to Order - The wide angle
Simon Ball
The study of assassination is akin to running a razor blade down the history of international politics: the cut is narrow but long and deep. Assassination reveals statesmen and their...
20251016-ball-simon-on-death-to-order-history-of-assassination-2
The Universal Timekeepers - In a nutshell
David J. Helfand
This book is about nothing. Or at least 99.999999999999% bits of nothingness. And yet it is about everything – all that you can touch, see, taste, smell, and feel, and...
20251013-david-helfand-universal-timekeepers
Spice - The wide angle
Roger Crowley
What started as a contest for spices between Portugal and Spain had many consequences. It hugely expanded European understanding of the world and allowed people, through the resulting medium of...
20251009-crowley-roger-on-spice-16th-century-contest-that-shaped-the-world-2
A Flood of Pictures - A close-up
Michael Leja
I imagine that a curious reader browsing through the book would first be intrigued by the pictures. Identifying, gathering, and preserving pictures important to the early history of mass visual...
20251006-michael-leja-on-flood-of-pictures-3
Fire Craft - In a nutshell
Erin E. O'Connor
Fire Craft is a story about the meaning of making, of glassblowing, which is simultaneously a more general story about the human condition. It documents my experience learning to blow...
20251003-oconnor-erin-on-fire-craft-art-body-and-world-among-glassblowers-1-1
Speaking, Stammering, Singing, Shouting - In a nutshell
Josephine Hoegaerts
Speaking, Stammering, Singing, Shouting is about what people sounded like in the nineteenth century. It doesn’t spotlight the brilliant voices of the stage or the famous voices of public figures....
20250929-josephine-hoegaerts-on-speaking-stammering-singing-shouting-1-1
Coffee Nation - In a nutshell
Michelle Craig McDonald
While Coffee Nation is about the history of one of the world’s most popular commodities, I use it to consider how North America fit into a world governed by empires...
20250926-mcdonald-craig-michelle-on-coffee-nation-1-1
Michelle Craig McDonald
How the World Became a Book in Shakespeare's England - In a nutshell
Jonathan P. Lamb
Human beings think, speak, and write in metaphors. Those metaphors change as cultures do; people use them to respond to and reshape the world. Indeed, neuroscientists and literary scholars alike...
20250922-lamb-jonathan-on-how-the-world-became-a-book-in-shakespeare-england-1-1
Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination - The wide angle
Mark Vernon
The greatest challenge in writing a cultural history is that its primary object of study is incredibly hard to pin down. The focus should not only be on the materiality...
www-rorotoko-com-11-20250919-vernon-mark-on-awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-imagination-2
Mark Vernon
Psychopathy Unmasked - In a nutshell
Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen
Psychopathy Unmasked is a book about “psychopaths.” But it’s not your ordinary run-of-the-mill account that repeats the well-worn story of violent people naturally disposed to wreak havoc in our society.Instead,...
20250915-larsen-rasmus-on-psychopathy-unmasked-1-1
Postcolonial Opera - In a nutshell
Juliana M. Pistorius
What comes to mind when you think of opera? For most people, the word summons some variation on belting ladies, black tie, red velvet seats, opulent theatres, and diamond-encrusted snobbery...
20250912-pistorius-juliana-on-postcolonial-opera-1-1
Native America - The wide angle
Kenneth L. Feder
Let's get something straight right at the outset; I am not an Indigenous person. My ancestors arrived in America in the late nineteenth century, fleeing poverty and oppression in Europe....
20250908-feder-kenneth-on-native-america-the-story-of-the-first-peoples-2
AI Versus IP - In a nutshell
Robin Feldman
The United States Constitution laid the groundwork for the intellectual property regime—giving Congress the power: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to...
20250905-feldman-robin-on-ai-versus-ip-1-1
Robin Feldman
No Adult Left Behind - The wide angle
Vladimir Kogan
All scholarship involves being diligent in seeking and finding of patterns. It doesn’t matter what the field is. We might be considering cultural studies, anthropology, botany, chemistry, linguistics: It doesn’t...
20250901-kogan-no-adult-left-behind
Vladimir Kogan
Unhomed - In a nutshell
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Unhomed examines America’s ambivalent and shifting attitude toward placelessness through marginalized figures of mobility in film. The book examines films that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than...
20161012-wojcik-pamela-on-fantasies-neglect-imagining-urban-child-american-film-fiction-1-1
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
The Mirror and the Mind - In a nutshell
Katja Guenther
The Mirror and the Mind traces the history of the mirror self-recognition test—the experiment of placing subjects in front of a mirror and looking for signs of self-recognition—showing how it...
20240418-guenther-katja-on-book-mirror-and-mind-history-self-recognition-human-sciences-1-1-1
Dissident Practices - A close-up
Claudia Calirman
I believe the reader would find interest in browsing Chapter 1, especially the passage on how the Right, the Church, and the Left disdained women’s personal experiences, as they adopted...
20240314-calirman-claudia-on-book-dissident-practices-brazilian-women-artists-1960s-2020s-3-1
Wonder Confronts Certainty - The wide angle
Gary Saul Morson
Russians are famous for taking ideas to the extreme and then acting on them. That is why they created totalitarianism. Russian thinkers before Communism also tended to take ideas to...
20240229-gary-morson-wonder-confronts-certainty-2-1
Fearless Women - The wide angle
Elizabeth Cobbs
As a novelist and historian, I craft stories in intimate ways that allow readers to feel events of the past: from the experience of the enslaved woman who hid in...
20240215-cobbs-elizabeth-on-book-fearless-women-feminist-patriots-from-abigail-adams-to-beyonce-2-1
The Pecking Order - In a nutshell
Niko Kolodny
Much in our interior mental lives and in our exterior social structures presupposes that we, human beings, are conscious of social hierarchy, of differences in rank and status. This book,...
20240201-kolodny-niko-on-book-pecking-order-social-hierarchy-philosophical-problem-1-1-1
The Weaponisation of Everything - In a nutshell
Mark Galeotti
Even as shooting wars are raging in Ukraine, Gaza and Yemen, and may yet be sparked over Taiwan, there is much talk about the ways in which modern states face...
20240118-galeotti-mark-on-book-weaponisation-everything-field-guide-new-way-war-1-1-1
Sustainable Utopias - The wide angle
Jennifer L. Allen
In some ways, a history of late twentieth-century utopianism fits neatly into histories of the twentieth century. Many scholars have emphasized that efforts to realize sweeping revisions to the structure...
20231005-allen-jennifer-on-book-title-sustainable-utopias-art-politics-hope-germany-2-1
Analog - In a nutshell
Robert Hassan
Analog is about how we live our lives today—with digital technology. The book is about analog; but it is also about digital because both technological forms are inextricably conjoined in...
2023921-hassan-robert-on-book-analog-1-1-1
The Culture Transplant - In a nutshell
Garett Jones
The Culture Transplant is about the fact that on average, immigrants never fully assimilate. Europeans who violently migrated to North America usually didn’t assimilate to Native American culture and levels...
20230913-jones-garett-on-book-culture-transplant-how-migrants-make-economies-they-move-to-a-lot-like-the-ones-they-left-1-1-1
The Parrot in the Mirror - In a nutshell
Antone Martinho-Truswell
My book is called The Parrot in the Mirror: How Evolving to Be Like Birds Makes Us Human. This book initially grew out of a single conversation as I was...
20230907-martinho-antone-on-book-parrot-mirror-how-evolving-to-be-like-birds-makes-us-human-1-1-1
A Theory of Assembly - The wide angle
Kyle Parry
There are a bunch of really good books that take up the “What’s changed?” question at a big scale. When I first started working on this project, I didn’t think...
20230830-parry-kyle-on-book-theory-assembly-from-museums-to-memes-2-1
Tyrants on Twitter - In a nutshell
David L. Sloss
What is this book all about?Tyrants on Twitter makes three main points. The first point is that we’ve been experiencing a period globally for about the last 15 years of...
20230802-sloss-david-on-book-tyrants-twitter-protecting-democracies-from-information-warfare-1-1-1
Loath to Print - The wide angle
Nicole Howard
Loath to Print considers a brief moment in the much longer history of knowledge production and dissemination; specifically, the book addresses ideas of scientific elitism. With the advent of print,...
20230719-howard-nicole-on-book-loath-to-print-reluctant-scientific-author-1500-1750-2-1
Keeping Family Secrets - A close-up
Margaret K. Nelson
Each of the chapters begins with a case study, the first-person story of an individual who held, or discovered, a family secret. A close friend of mine browsed through the...
20230705-nelson-margaret-on-book-title-keeping-family-secrets-shame-silence-memoirs-1950s-3-1
Desperate Remedies - The wide angle
Andrew Scull
AsylumsIn the early nineteenth century, America, like much of Europe in the same period, embraces the idea that the proper response to serious forms of mental disorder is to put...
20161214-scull-andrew-on-madness-civilization-cultural-history-insanity-2-1
Black Culture, Inc. - A close-up
Patricia Banks
“The Racial Return,” chapter 2 in the book, reveals, through the lens of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, how strategic partnerships between organizations in the nonprofit...
20230524-banks-patricia-on-book-black-culture-inc-how-ethnic-community-support-pays-corporate-america-3-1
Immaterial - The wide angle
Sherri Irvin
During an early professional experience writing about artworks for a large public art museum, I had access to files containing fascinating correspondence between artists and the museum. I found diagrams, instructions...
20230517-irvin-sherri-on-book-immaterial-rules-contemporary-art-2-1
Africa’s Struggle for Its Art - In a nutshell
Bénédicte Savoy
From the 1960s onwards, European museum directors managed to hold off restitution claims from African countries for cultural property looted during the colonial era by strategically closing ranks and relying...
20230510-savoy-benedicte-on-book-africas-struggle-for-its-art-history-of-postcolonial-defeat-1-1-1
The Week - In a nutshell
David M. Henkin
This is a book about how we experience and imagine time. Although treatments of that subject often focus on the clock, modern time consciousness is organized around calendars as well....
20230503-henkin-david-on-book-week-history-unnatural-rhythms-that-made-us-who-we-are-1-1-1
Killer Instinct - A close-up
Nadine Weidman
The decade-long, vituperative debate about the aggression instinct is the subject of chapter 5. The earlier chapters, 1 through 4, provide the lead-up, introducing the characters and the stakes on...
20230426-weidman-nadine-on-book-killer-instinct-popular-science-human-nature-twentieth-century-america-3-1
Nadine Weidman
The World Before Us - A close-up
Tom Higham
In modern day life, often people look at archaeology and they think, you know that’s interesting, but it’s not relevant to me. But actually, archaeology does have a great deal...
20230419-higham-tom-on-book-world-before-us-new-science-behind-our-human-origins-3-1
How We Became Sensorimotor - In a nutshell
Mark Paterson
The book is a social history of the science of the body’s inner senses. We think we know about the five senses that Aristotle had identified and placed into a...
20230412-paterson-mark-on-book-how-we-became-sensorimotor-movement-1-1-1
City on the Edge - In a nutshell
Ho-fung Hung
The world suddenly paid a lot of attention to Hong Kong during the uprising in 2019 and the subsequent crackdown in 2020 and after. My book offers a long historical...
20230405-hung-ho-fung-on-book-city-on-edge-hong-kong-under-chinese-rule-1-1-1
Autopsy of a Crime Lab - A close-up
Garrett L. Brandon
Consider the 1982 “bite mark case” in Newport News, Virginia, that resulted in a murder conviction and death sentence for Keith Allen Harward, who was incarcerated for 33 years before...
20171009-garrett-brandon-on-book-end-rope-killing-death-penalty-revive-criminal-justice-3-1
Terms of Exchange - In a nutshell
Ian Merkel
Terms of Exchange is about Brazilian and French intellectuals and the dialogues between them that were foundational to the emergence of the modern social sciences. The book examines the interactions...
20230322-merkel-ian-on-book-terms-exchange-brazilian-intellectuals-french-1-1-1
Parallel Public - In a nutshell
Sara Blaylock
Parallel Public examines experimental art from the final years of East Germany in relation to state power. In the book, I argue that these artists did not practice their art...
20230315-blaylock-sara-on-book-parallel-public-experimental-art-late-east-1-1-1
The Lives of Literature - The wide angle
Arnold Weinstein
As an historian I have always been interested in the problem of defining historical periods and understanding the transitions between them.How, for example, did the Middle Ages, with its religious,...
20230308-weinstein-arnold-on-book-lives-literature-reading-teaching-knowing-2-1
The Rise and Demise of World Communism - The wide angle
George W. Breslauer
In the course of presenting this narrative interpretation of the rise and demise of world communism, I address some of the key questions that animate debate among both advocates and...
20230301-breslauer-george-on-book-rise-demise-world-communism-2-1
Market Maoists - The wide angle
Jason M. Kelly
So much of the public discussion about China today concerns the question of where the nation is headed. What are China’s intentions in the world? Part of this debate draws...
20230222-kelly-jason-on-book-market-maoists-communist-origins-chinas-2-1
The Wretched Atom - The wide angle
Jacob Darwin Hamblin
A lot of people assume it’s an antinuclear book. When you put “wretched” in the title, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s interpreted that way. I’ve even gotten...
20230215-hamblin-jacob-on-book-wretched-atom-americas-global-gamble-2-1
Fake It - In a nutshell
Mark Osteen
Fake It investigates a set of fictional literary and art forgeries and hoaxes alongside their real-life inspirations that range from the 1660s to the twenty-first century. In the prologue, I...
20230208-osteen-mark-on-book-fake-it-fictions-forgery-1-1-1
Not Exactly Lying - The wide angle
Andie Tucher
The Austrian-American novelist Vicki Baum once wrote that what people have done to rubber is fascinating, but what is more fascinating yet is what rubber has done to people. That,...
20230201-tucher-andie-on-book-not-exactly-lying-fake-news-fake-journalism-2-1
Genomic Politics - A close-up
Jennifer Hochschild
Readers who seek a taste of Genomic Politics might want to read chapter 1 (which presents the controversies around each case and the typology for understanding the controversies) and chapter...
20230125-hochschild-jennifer-on-book-genomic-politics-how-revolution-3-1
The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts - The wide angle
Alison Peck
After years of teaching courses about immigration and administrative law and thinking out loud with my students about the structure of the executive branch, I could not explain why the...
20230118-peck-alison-on-book-accidental-history-us-immigration-courts-2-1
Making Monsters - In a nutshell
David Livingstone Smith
Making Monsters is about the phenomenon of dehumanization, a phenomenon that is implicated in the most hideous acts that human beings have inflicted upon one another. Perpetrators of mass violence...
20230111-smith-david-on-book-making-monsters-uncanny-power-dehumanization-1-1-1
Émigrés - In a nutshell
Richard Scholar
George W. Bush is said to have claimed that “the problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” Whether or not it is true, that...
20210714-scholar-richard-on-book-emigres-french-words-that-turned-english-1-1-1
Richard Scholar
The Scientific Method - The wide angle
Henry M. Cowles
Relevance can be an accident. When I started working on this project in 2010, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway had just published Merchants of Doubt, their account of organized science...
20210707-cowles-henry-on-book-scientific-method-evolution-thinking-darwin-2-1
Discomfort Food - In a nutshell
Marni Reva Kessler
In Discomfort Food, I argue that representations of food are profoundly evocative, able to convey material and immaterial possibilities that are inconsistent with their seemingly mundane subject matter. Depictions of...
20210630-kessler-marni-on-book-discomfort-food-culinary-imagination-late-1-1-1
Veblen - The wide angle
Charles Camic
I came to write Veblen out of years of skepticism about the “outsider thesis.” Added to this was my frustration, at once theoretical and methodological, with the tendency of intellectual...
20210623-camic-charles-on-book-veblen-making-economist-who-unmade-economics-2-1
Fears of a Setting Sun - A close-up
Dennis C. Rasmussen
One of the highlights of the book, I think, comes in the chapter on Jefferson and slavery. The Missouri crisis of 1819-21, which revolved around whether Missouri would be admitted...
20210616-rasmussen-dennis-on-book-fears-setting-sun-disillusionment-america-3-1
Justice Rising - A close-up
Patricia Sullivan
Some readers will probably turn to the images first—and that is a good place to start. There are two inserts that tell the story in pictures. We see Kennedy on...
20210609-sullivan-patricia-on-book-justice-rising-robert-kennedys-america-3-1
Patricia Sullivan
On the Judgment of History - The wide angle
Joan Wallach Scott
The book examines three cases: the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-6, at the end of the Second World War; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa at...
20210602-scott-joan-on-book-on-judgment-history-2-1
An Aristocracy of Critics - A close-up
Stephen Bates
Part of the backdrop to the Commission on Freedom of the Press is the acrimonious relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and the press. I knew a bit about...
20210526-bates-stephen-on-book-aristocracy-critics-luce-hutchins-niebuhr-3-1
Songbooks - In a nutshell
Eric Weisbard
Songbooks is a book about books on American popular music. It’s a vast subject, and my book covers books from a 1770 collection of psalmody by a tanner in revolutionary...
20210519-weisbard-eric-on-book-songbooks-literature-american-popular-music-1-1
The Man of the Crowd - The wide angle
Scott Peeples
At an American Literature conference about eight years ago, I presented a paper with the title “No Place Like Home”, which proposed that what the field of Poe biography had...
20210512-peeples-scott-on-book-man-crowd-edgar-allan-poe-city-2-1
Scott Peeples
Global Jihad - The wide angle
Glenn E. Robinson
There are two main audiences for this book. First, anyone interested in the history of the global jihad movement, including its intellectual precursors, its development, its ideologies, and its structural...
20210505-robinson-glenn-on-book-global-jihad-history-2-1
Winston Churchill - A close-up
Richard Toye
I have to say the first pages in the book should be read first because I deliberately wrote them in order to draw the reader in. They tell of an...
20210428-toye-richard-on-book-winston-churchill-life-news-3-1
Richard Toye
Music, Math, and Mind - In a nutshell
David Sulzer
Music, Math, and Mind is written for musicians and music lovers, and will take them through a journey that uncovers the science of music and sound. Because artists and art...
20210421-sulzer-david-on-book-music-math-mind-physics-neuroscience-music-1-1
Project Europe - A close-up
Kiran K. Patel
By studying the history of the European Union, the book argues that the current crises are not as unique as we might think. Even Brexit is not as singular and...
20210414-patel-kiran-on-book-project-europe-history-3-1
How Schools Really Matter - In a nutshell
Douglas B. Downey
This book is about understanding how schools influence achievement gaps. The traditional story is that schools are part of the problem and that large differences in school quality make achievement...
20210407-downey-douglas-on-book-how-schools-really-matter-why-assumption-1-1-1
The Human Factor - In a nutshell
Archie Brown
What is your new book all about?It’s about the biggest political event of the second half of the twentieth century—the end of the Cold War. Linked to that was the...
20210331-brown-archie-on-book-human-factor-gorbachev-reagan-thatcher-end-1-1-1
Göring's Man in Paris - In a nutshell
Jonathan Petropoulos
Göring’s Man in Paris is about three things: first, it is a detailed portrait of a Nazi art plunderer (Dr. Bruno Lohse); second, it tells the story of what happened...
20210324-petropoulos-jonathan-on-book-goerings-man-paris-story-nazi-art-1-1-1
God in Gotham - In a nutshell
Jon Butler
Max Weber, the German sociologist, and his wife Marianne weren’t impressed with Manhattan’s spirituality when they visited New York City during their 1904 trip to the United States. They probed...
20210317-butler-jon-on-book-god-gotham-miracle-religion-modern-manhattan-1-1-1
Unending Capitalism - In a nutshell
Karl Gerth
My book reconsiders the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949 from a novel perspective: the spread of consumerism in a self-proclaimed communist country.The book title, Unending...
20210310-gerth-karl-on-book-unending-capitalism-how-consumerism-negated-1-1-1
The Sports Revolution - A close-up
Frank A. Guridy
When first readers pick up The Sports Revolution, they might assume that it is yet another book about football in Texas, and with good reason. H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights,...
20210303-guridy-frank-on-book-sports-revolution-how-texas-changed-culture-3-1
Isolationism - In a nutshell
Charles A. Kupchan
This is the first book to tell the fascinating story of American isolationism across the full arc of U.S. history. The United States that we know today has dominated global...
20210224-kupchan-charles-on-book-isolationism-history-americas-efforts-1-1-1
Life After Privacy - A close-up
Firmin DeBrabander
Chapter 1 of Life After Privacy is an ideal first look for the average reader. This chapter examines our curious, conflicted relationship to privacy. We may say that privacy is...
20210217-debrabander-firmin-on-book-life-after-privacy-reclaiming-democracy-3-1
The Future of Change - A close-up
Ray Brescia
I hope readers would start with the first few pages of the book. In the introduction, I recount the story of how the American Legion advocated for passage of the...
20210210-brescia-ray-on-book-future-change-technology-shapes-social-3-1
A Synthesizing Mind - In a nutshell
Howard Gardner
A Synthesizing Mind is my intellectual memoir. It’s a ‘memoir’ in the sense that I reflect on my life; it’s ‘intellectual’ in that it focuses chiefly on my life as...
20210203-gardner-howard-on-book-synthesizing-mind-memoir-creator-multiple-intelligences-theory-1-1-1
What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times - The wide angle
Ruth DeFries
The motivation for the book comes from the uncertain future that faces humanity. The twentieth century, as I wrote in my previous book, The Big Ratchet, was an extraordinary time...
20210127-defries-ruth-on-book-what-would-nature-do-guide-our-uncertain-time-2-1
Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience - The wide angle
Jack N. Rakove
Many studies of religious liberty follow one of two paths. One essentially involves a study of ideas, and tries to explain how great thinkers, like St. Augustine, either justified the...
20210120-rakove-jack-on-book-beyond-belief-beyond-conscience-radical-2-1
The Cuban Hustle - In a nutshell
Sujatha Fernandes
The Cuban Hustle documents the myriad ways in which ordinary Cubans have sought to survive, hustle, and invent alternative cultures in the twenty-year period following the collapse of the Soviet...
20210113-fernandes-sujatha-on-book-cuban-hustle-culture-politics-everyday-1-1-1
The Man in the Dog Park - In a nutshell
Cathy A. Small
The Man in the Dog Park describes the experience of homelessness from a homeless point of view. Co-authored with a homeless man, the book is based on scores of interviews...
20210106-small-cathy-on-book-man-dog-park-coming-close-homelessness-1-1-1
On Task - A close-up
David Badre
Curious readers who start with the first chapter are introduced to a puzzle that seems trivial yet is such a mystery that science still doesn’t have a full answer to...
20201216-badre-david-on-book-on-task-how-brain-gets-things-done-3-1
Copy This Book! What Data Tells Us about Copyright and the Public Good - The wide angle
Paul J. Heald
Most of us don’t understand the profound impact copyright law has on our lives. Most have a sense that copyright protection should be designed to incentivize new creations, but we...
20201202-heald-paul-on-book-copy-this-book-what-data-tells-us-copyright-2-1
Blood Royal - A close-up
Robert Bartlett
A “just browsing” feminist could turn to the chapter on female sovereigns to find out about how some countries, at some times, were ruled by women. I counted 27 examples....
20201118-bartlett-robert-on-book-blood-royal-dynastic-politics-medieval-3-1
The Angel in the Marketplace - In a nutshell
Ellen Wayland-Smith
The Angel in the Marketplace is a biography of Jean Wade Rindlaub, a mid-century adwoman widely recognized on Madison Avenue for her success in marketing household products to American housewives,...
20201028-wayland-smith-ellen-on-book-marketplace-adwoman-jean-wade-rindlaub-1-1
The Rise of Climate Science - A close-up
Gerald R. North
The book is full of stories connected with each of these segments of my life. I hope different browsers will first look at the table of contents, then open to...
20201014-north-gerald-on-book-rise-climate-science-memoir-3-1
Catastrophic Thinking - A close-up
David Sepkoski
In a case study comes in the book’s fifth chapter, I discuss how paleontological studies of extinction intersected with political debates about nuclear proliferation in the 1970s and 1980s.A variety...
20200927-sepkoski-david-on-book-catastrophic-thinking-extinction-value-3-1
Foretelling the End of Capitalism - In a nutshell
Francesco Boldizzoni
This book seeks to explain the persistence of capitalism despite all the trouble it has created. For several years now, every crisis—even crises not directly caused by capitalism, such as...
20200916-boldizzoni-francesco-on-book-foretelling-end-capitalism-1-1-1
The Chemical Age - In a nutshell
Frank A. von Hippel
The Chemical Age is the story of intense famines, ceaseless wars, ravaging diseases, and ecological disasters, told through the personal lives of the scientists who strove to either halt calamity...
20200902-von-hippel-frank-on-book-chemical-age-how-chemists-fought-famine-1-1
Theory of the Gimmick - The wide angle
Sianne Ngai
Theory of the Gimmick continues the effort undertaken in my previous books, Our Aesthetic Categories (2012) and Ugly Feelings (2005) to get people to take “minor,” trivial, or everyday affective...
20200819-ngai-sianne-on-book-theory-gimmick-aesthetic-judgment-capitalist-2-1
Sianne Ngai
Hinduism Before Reform - In a nutshell
Brian A. Hatcher
This is an ambitious book that grew out of a rather simple question. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, two Hindu leaders on either side of the subcontinent created...
20200812-hatcher-brian-on-book-hinduism-before-reform-1-1-1
Overthrowing the Queen - A close-up
Tom Mould
For a book that touts the power of storytelling, I would be remiss not to recommend that casual readers flip to pages of aid recipients telling stories from their own...
20200805-mould-tom-on-book-overthrowing-queen-telling-stories-welfare-3-1
Tom Mould
Being Property Once Myself - The wide angle
Joshua Bennett
My book elaborates upon the ongoing, centuries-long reality of anti-blackness as a structure of feeling; the recent ecological turn in black studies as an inter-institutional, intracommunal response to the fact...
20200729-bennett-joshua-on-book-being-property-once-myself-blackness-end-2-1
Rethinking Readiness - The wide angle
Jeff Schlegelmilch
When I first endeavored to write this book, I was thinking about what I would tell an elected official who asked what they needed to know about disasters. Or if...
20200722-schlegelmilch-jeff-on-book-rethinking-readiness-brief-guide-twenty-first-century-megadisasters-2-1
The Mental Life of Modernism - In a nutshell
Samuel Jay Keyser
I don’t believe in coincidences, at least not big ones. That’s why the sea change the sister arts of poetry, painting, and music underwent at the turn of the 20th...
20200715-keyser-samuel-on-book-mental-life-modernism-poetry-painting-music-1-1-1
The Arab Winter - A close-up
Noah Feldman
To me the heart of the book is my argument (in chapter two) about the two major Egyptian movements that centered on Tahrir Square: The January 25 movement or revolution,...
20200527-feldman-noah-on-book-arab-winter-tragedy-3-1
The Coevolution - The wide angle
Edward Ashford Lee
I am an engineer. I design and build things that never before existed (mostly software, these days). For most of my life, I thought these things were my personal creations,...
20200520-lee-edward-on-book-coevolution-entwined-futures-humans-machines-2-1
The Idealist - The wide angle
Samuel Zipp
These broad questions of authenticity and displacement challenge the political, cultural, and economic habits of city dwellers all over the world. But Naked City is also a very specific book...
20200513-zipp-samuel-on-book-idealist-wendell-willkies-wartime-quest-build-2-1
Samuel Zipp
Comics and Stuff - The wide angle
Henry Jenkins
I wrote this book because on a good day, I see myself as a collector or a pack rat and on a bad day, as a hoarder. I am increasingly...
20200506-jenkins-henry-on-book-comics-stuff-2-1
Just Like Us - A close-up
Thomas Borstelmann
I would—of course, I did—start with the Preface. It aims to draw the reader directly into the problem of Americans and foreigners, and how I see the development of this...
20200429-borstelmann-thomuas-on-book-just-like-us-american-struggle-3-1
The Sketch, the Tale, and the Beginnings of American Literature - The wide angle
Lydia G. Fash
The long and short of short fiction is that it’s been mostly ignored in literary history. We literary critics have a distinct bias towards novels. The genre is supposedly narratively...
20200422-fash-lydia-on-book-sketch-tale-beginnings-american-2-1
The Industrialists - A close-up
Jennifer Delton
I would urge the reader to look at the Reagan chapter first. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I suggest the Reagan era was a low point for NAM. During the 1980s,...
20200415-delton-jennifer-on-book-industrialists-national-association-3-1
Relations - In a nutshell
Marilyn Strathern
How do anthropologists describe their own practices? Their working concepts would have to be part of it. Nothing could be more diffuse or ubiquitous than the English-language use of relation,...
20200408-strathern-marilyn-on-book-relations-anthropological-account-1-1
Einstein in Bohemia - A close-up
Michael D. Gordin
If you were to flip through the book in a bookstore, you might land somewhere around pages 85-90, or if not there somewhere else in chapter 3: “Anti-Prague.” The chapter...
20200401-gordin-michael-on-book-einstein-bohemia-3-1
Pure Adulteration - In a nutshell
Benjamin R. Cohen
Pure Adulteration is about the origins of manufactured food. More centrally, it is about the struggles people had with the introduction of new foods in the later 1800s. The book...
20200325-cohen-benjamin-on-book-pure-adulteration-cheating-nature-age-1-1-1
The Alchemy of Meth - In a nutshell
Jason Pine
The Alchemy of Meth, to me, is really about the second part of the title, A Decomposition. It is steeped in the materials of meth making, but it is also...
20200318-pine-jason-on-book-alchemy-meth-decomposition-1-1-1
Peace on Our Terms - A close-up
Mona L. Siegel
It is difficult to crack open this book to a particular page and get a strong sense of the whole. Individual chapters highlight the activism of varying groups of women...
20200311-siegel-mona-on-book-peace-our-terms-global-battle-womens-rights-3-1
Mona L. Siegel
Escape from Rome - A close-up
Walter Scheidel
It is always a good idea to start at the end. The epilogue of my book takes its cue from the famous question in the Monty Python movie The Life...
20200304-scheidel-walter-on-book-escape-rome-failure-empire-road-prosperity-3-1
Walter Scheidel
Inventing Tomorrow - In a nutshell
Sarah Cole
Inventing Tomorrow sets out to tell a story of 20th century literary culture that follows an entirely different path from the one that has dominated academia for the last fifty...
20200226-cole-sarah-on-book-inventing-tomorrow-hg-wells-twentieth-century-1-1-1
The Levant Express - A close-up
Micheline R. Ishay
An accomplished artist, Brooke VanDevelder, worked with me to create customized illustrations that serve as frontispieces for each of the book’s three sections. If a potential reader is just browsing,...
20200219-ishay-micheline-on-book-levant-express-arab-uprisings-human-rights-3-1
Break On Through - In a nutshell
Lucas Richert
A half century ago a “radical caucus” formed in the American Psychiatric Association. The group, while somewhat small, felt that mental medicine needed to change in the US. The caucus...
20200212-richert-lucas-on-book-break-on-through-radical-psychiatry-american-1-1-1
Altered Inheritance - A close-up
Françoise Baylis
If someone were fanning through the pages of this book at a local bookstore or library, I would encourage them to peruse the first chapter “Targeting a Single Gene: Huntington’s...
20200205-baylis-francoise-on-book-altered-inheritance-crispr-ethics-human-3-1
City on a Hill - In a nutshell
Alex Krieger
The book’s primary intent is to portray the American inclination to experiment with forms of settlement, evident in both utopian and pragmatic efforts at reconceiving how and in what shape...
20200129-krieger-alex-on-book-city-hill-urban-idealism-america-puritans-1-1-1
The World in a City - In a nutshell
David M. Struthers
The near-continuous movements of people and of ideas are two themes that flow through the work. Migration from within the United States and across international boundaries increased the population of...
20191211-struthers-david-on-book-world-city-multiethnic-radicalism-early-1-1
The Age of Addiction - In a nutshell
David T. Courtwright
Vice and addiction have always been with us. The Age of Addiction shows how entrepreneurs melded vices and addictions into a global economic system of limbic capitalism, outmaneuvering reformers determined...
20191204-courtwright-david-on-book-age-addiction-bad-habits-big-business-1-1-1
Emancipation After Hegel - A close-up
Todd McGowan
The first chapter of Emancipation After Hegel lays out the argument of the entire book in detail, so this is a good starting point. Starting at the beginning would give...
20191127-mcgowan-todd-on-book-emancipation-after-hegel-achieving-contradictory-revolution-3-1
Todd McGowan
Thomas Mann's War - A close-up
Tobias Boes
Most readers browsing through the book in a bookstore will probably end up lingering over the fourth chapter, which has not only a catchy title (“Hitler’s Most Intimate Enemy”), but...
20191120-boes-tobias-on-book-thomas-manns-war-literature-politics-world-3-1
Plastic Capitalism - In a nutshell
Amanda Boeztkes
Waste occupies a paradoxical position today: it is made to be disposable, and we want to get rid of it, but we cannot. Where at other times in history, we’ve...
20191113-boetzkes-amanda-on-book-plastic-capitalism-contemporary-art-drive-1-1-1
Crack - A close-up
David Farber
While Crack is, as books go, on the slim side, it covers a lot of ground. While I hope the chapters on the history of cocaine, the lure of crack,...
20191106-farber-david-on-book-crack-rock-cocaine-street-capitalism-decade-3-1
The Cult of the Constitution - The wide angle
Mary Anne Franks
The book opens with the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, because it so dramatically illustrates the consequences of constitutional fundamentalism. In Charlottesville, we saw the collision of...
20191030-franks-maryanne-on-book-cult-of-constitution-2-1
Stone Men - The wide angle
Andrew Ross
Why did I wrote the book? I was surprised to find that there is no published study of this stone industry, which is the largest private sector employer in the...
20191023-ross-andrew-on-stone-men-palestinians-who-built-israel-2-1
Permanent Revolution - In a nutshell
James Simpson
Protestants won in Northern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The narrative produced by the winners was and largely remains triumphalist: Protestantism won because it foreshadowed the liberal order....
20191016-simpson-james-on-book-permanent-revolution-reformation-illiberal-1-1-1
Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can - The wide angle
Herbert S. Terrace
It is perhaps already trite, these days, to observe that we live in a world chiefly defined by interdependencies. But it wasn’t always so.Until the “age of ecology,” ushered in...
20191002-terrace-herbert-on-book-chimpanzees-cant-learn-language-humans-2-1
Where Are We Heading? The Evolution of Humans and Things - In a nutshell
Ian Hodder
In this book I grapple with a problem: Is human development directional? Does human evolution move in a particular direction? In recent decades the dominant view in the various sciences...
20190925-hodder-ian-on-book-where-are-we-heading-evolution-humans-things-1-1-1
High Crimes and Misdemeanors - In a nutshell
Frank O. Bowman III
Some book titles are mysterious or allegorical, providing no obvious clue of what the darn things are about. No danger of that here. I’ve written a book about the long...
20190918-bowman-frank-on-book-high-crimes-misdemeanors-history-impeachment-1-1-1
Living on Campus - The wide angle
Carla Yanni
The book is located, in its theory and methods, at the intersections of linguistic and economic anthropology. Inverting the classic concept of “moral economy,” Selective Solidarity develops a theory of...
20190911-yanni-carla-on-book-living-campus-architectural-history-american-2-1
Gods and Robots - The wide angle
Adrienne Mayor
As a folklorist and historian of ancient science, I investigate the crossroads of classical antiquity, literature and art, archaeology, and history. My goal is uncovering historical and scientific realities embedded...
20190904-mayor-adrienne-on-book-gods-robots-myths-machines-ancient-dreams-2-1
The Embattled Vote in America - In a nutshell
Allan J. Lichtman
The Embattled Vote explains why Americans have fought and died for the right to vote. The book is more relevant than ever after the Supreme Court sanctioned partisan gerrymandering in...
20190821-lichtman-allan-on-book-embattled-vote-america-founding-present-1-1-1
Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves - In a nutshell
George C. Galster
Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves presents a holistic analysis of the origins, nature, and consequences of neighborhood change and offers strategies for making a more socially desirable palette of...
20190807-galster-george-on-book-making-our-meighborhoods-making-our-selves-1-1-1
Equipping James Bond - In a nutshell
André Millard
This is a book about the equipment that James Bond uses: its origins, function, and the essential role it plays in Bond’s missions. The book also describes the role these...
20190724-millard-andre-on-book-equipping-james-bond-guns-gadgets-1-1-1
Slab City - The wide angle
Charlie Hailey
A starting premise for our work was that camps, like Slab City, accommodate conditions that might otherwise remain without space. Camps are also bellwethers—early indicators of change and registers of...
20190710-hailey-charlie-on-book-slab-city-dispatches-last-free-place-2-1
A History of America in 100 Maps - The wide angle
Susan Schulten
I have a longstanding interest in old maps. My last book, Mapping the Nation, traced a sea change in the way that Americans and Europeans thought about and used maps...
20190626-schulten-susan-on-book-history-america-100-maps-2-1
Susan Schulten
A Rosenberg by Any Other Name - In a nutshell
Kirsten Fermaglich
Despite the prevalence of name changing in American Jewish culture, few historians have studied the actual practice of name changing in the United States. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name...
20190612-fermaglich-kirsten-on-book-rosenberg-any-other-name-history-jewish-1-1-1
Inventing Edward Lear - In a nutshell
Sara Lodge
Edward Lear, the author of ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’ and ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat,’ is rightly beloved as a nonsense poet. But few people know that he was also...
20190530-lodge-sara-on-book-inventing-edward-lear-1-1-1
Animal Ethos - In a nutshell
Lesley A. Sharp
Animal Ethos is framed by efforts to unearth and decipher moral thought and action in experimental forms of laboratory science. More specifically, as an ethnographic project, it attends to the...
20190515-sharp-lesley-on-book-animal-ethos-morality-human-animal-encounters-1-1-1
The Story of Silver - A close-up
William L. Silber
I would urge the reader to start with the Introduction, called Obsession, which provides a bird’s eye view of how silver has seduced investors and politicians throughout the ages, and...
20190508-silber-william-on-book-story-silver-how-white-metal-shaped-america-3-1
William L. Silber
Copycats and Contrarians - The wide angle
Michelle Baddeley
Copycats and Contrarians explores our instincts to follow others from a uniquely multidisciplinary perspective. It draws on insights and evidence from economics, finance, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral ecology....
20190501-baddeley-michelle-on-book-copycats-contrarians-why-we-follow-2-1
Mobility Justice - In a nutshell
Mimi Sheller
Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of the contemporary world. We are currently experiencing a series of crises related to how we move. As cities...
20190424-sheller-mimi-on-book-mobility-justice-politics-movement-age-1-1-1
Mimi Sheller
Civilizing Torture - The wide angle
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
My interest in these historical events is a product of our times. Prior to 2004 it is unlikely that I would have written a book about torture in the United...
20190417-brundage-fitzhugh-on-book-civilizing-torture-american-tradition-2-1
The Genius Checklist - In a nutshell
Dean Keith Simonton
The Genius Checklist addresses the most essential questions about identifying, developing, and manifesting creative genius. Some of these questions have been examined by thinkers for centuries. These recurrent issues include:...
20190410-simonton-dean-on-book-genius-checklist-nine-paradoxical-tips-1-1-1
The Missing Pages - A close-up
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh
When I first heard about the lawsuit, it resonated with me in many ways. I am an art historian, I had been a Getty Fellow, and the Armenian Genocide is...
20190403-watenpaugh-heghnar-on-book-missing-pages-modern-life-medieval-3-1
How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls - A close-up
David L. Hu
The cover of the book is a water strider—an insect that stands on water as if it were land. As the animal rows, it generates waves on the water surface,...
20190327-hu-david-on-book-how-walk-water-climb-walls-animal-movement-robots-3-1
Presidents and Parties in the Public Mind - A close-up
Gary C. Jacobson
At the heart of the book are the data. A look at chapter 3 would be a good way to get a feel for my approach. The material in this...
20190320-jacobson-gary-on-book-presidents-parties-public-mind-3-1
See It Feelingly - The wide angle
Ralph James Savarese
I think of my book as a kind of literary ethnography. It roughly resembles the sort of work that made the late neurologist-writer Oliver Sacks famous. In the preface to...
20190313-savarese-ralph-on-book-see-feelingly-classic-novels-autistic-2-1
Ralph James Savarese
Feats of Strength - The wide angle
Simon Lailvaux
Even more than it is about performance, this book is about evolution. What really draws me to performance is how central it is to a variety of areas in evolutionary...
20190306-lailvaux-simon-on-book-feats-strength-how-evolution-shapes-animal-2-1
Translating Happiness - In a nutshell
Tim Lomas
Translating Happiness celebrates the idea that untranslatable words – terms without an exact equivalent in our own language – can expand our emotional, intellectual, and even experiential horizons. Such words...
20190227-lomas-tim-on-book-translating-happiness-cross-cultural-lexicon-1-1-1
Beyond the Map - The wide angle
Alastair Bonnett
In the early 1990s I got involved with one of the more outré forms of geography, known as psychogeography. This involved a lot of unplanned, drifting walks and purposely getting...
20190220-bonnett-alastair-on-book-beyond-map-unruly-enclaves-ghostly-places-2-1
The Rise of the Right to Know - In a nutshell
Michael Schudson
This book examines the history of a set of transparency-related reforms that came to fruition in the 1960s and 1970s. The term “transparency” was not in general use in politics...
20190213-schudson-michael-on-book-rise-right-know-politics-culture-1-1-1
A Future in Ruins - In a nutshell
Lynn Meskell
A Future in Ruins tells the story of UNESCO and its efforts to save the cultural wonders of the world, largely through its famous World Heritage program. I wanted to...
20190206-meskell-lynn-on-book-future-ruins-unesco-world-heritage-dream-1-1-1
The Law of Good People - In a nutshell
Yuval Feldman
We have a misconstrued perception of who the “bad guys” are. In reality, (almost) all of us are violators of laws, regulations, contracts, and ethical norms. Various studies on the...
20190130-feldman-yuval-on-book-law-good-people-challenging-states-ability-1-1-1
My Life as a Spy - In a nutshell
Katherine Verdery
This book is about how surveillance functioned in communist Romania from 1973 to 1988, the period during which I was one of its subjects. The text contains many verbatim quotations...
20190123-verdery-katherine-on-book-my-life-as-spy-investigations-secret-1-1
The Fall of the Wild - In a nutshell
Ben A. Minteer
The Fall of the Wild is a book about the ethical challenges of conservation in a time of accelerating wildlife losses and growing scientific and technological power. In an age...
20190116-minteer-ben-on-book-fall-wild-extinction-de-extinction-ethics-1-1-1
Indoor America - In a nutshell
Andrea Vesentini
There is no question that suburbs are one of the defining features of the U.S. urban landscape, as well as the place where most Americans have spent their lives since...
20190109-vesentini-andrea-on-indoor-america-interior-landscape-postwar-1-1
Speak Freely - The wide angle
Keith E. Whittington
After teaching jazz history for years, several independent observations led me to the concept of a book on jazz icons.I began to see how the behaviour of musicians was tied...
20190102-whittington-keith-on-book-speak-freely-universities-must-defend-2-1
Into the Extreme - The wide angle
Valerie Olson
I was a graduate student at Rice University in Houston Texas when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated overhead as it was returning to Earth. I watched communities in and around...
20180625-olson-valerie-on-book-into-extreme-us-environmental-systems-2-1
Valerie Olson
Genetics in the Madhouse - A close-up
Theodore M. Porter
While diligent readers who behave according to the plan should recognize the coherence of this project, it has, I admit, an inescapably far-flung character. The long chapter titles attest to...
20180618-porter-theodore-on-book-madhouse-unknown-history-human-heredity-3-1
Theodore M. Porter
The New Chimpanzee - The wide angle
Craig Stanford
My own involvement with chimpanzees came about fortuitously. In the late 1980s, I was conducting my doctoral research in Bangladesh on a previously little-known monkey called the capped langur. I...
20180611-stanford-craig-on-book-new-chimpanzee-twenty-first-century-portrait-2-1
The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder - A close-up
David Webber
My book begins with a largely forgotten California strike that took place at Safeway supermarkets in 2003-04. At first glance, the basic arc of that story is a familiar confrontation...
20180604-webber-david-on-book-working-class-shareholder-labors-last-best-3-1
Political Vocabularies - In a nutshell
Mary E. Stuckey
Political Vocabularies is about how Americans can agree on general political principles such as freedom and equality and at the same time disagree so vehemently about how to put those...
20180528-stuckey-mary-on-book-political-vocabularies-fdr-clergy-letters-1-1
Mary E. Stuckey
Four Metaphors of Modernism - A close-up
Jenny Anger
I hope that a potential reader would flip through the book and find unexpected images or startling juxtapositions thereof. He might ask why a more familiar modernist painting by Kandinsky...
20180521-anger-jenny-on-book-four-metaphors-modernism-sturm-societe-anonyme-3-1
The Muslim Brotherhood and the West - In a nutshell
Martyn Frampton
This book examines the history of the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood—the world’s most important Islamist movement—and the Western powers that have dominated the Middle East over the last century—the...
20180514-frampton-martyn-on-book-muslim-brotherhood-west-history-enmity-1-1-1
Life on Mars - In a nutshell
David A. Weintraub
Life on Mars is about both the astronomers who have made claims about the existence of past or present life on Mars and about those discoveries themselves. It is about...
20180507-weintraub-david-on-book-life-mars-what-know-before-we-go-1-1
When the State Meets the Street - The wide angle
Bernardo Zacka
While searching for answers to Hamsun’s support for the Third Reich, I was struck by several things. First, I felt that the critical texts about Hamsun were too narrowly focused...
20180430-zacka-bernardo-on-book-when-state-meets-street-public-service-2-1
Designs for the Pluriverse - A close-up
Arturo Escobar
I would recommend that readers potentially interested in the book start by looking at the Preface. Why? Because besides giving a straightforward idea about the book’s main argument, it also...
20180423-escobar-arturo-on-book-designs-pluriverse-radical-interdependence-3-1
The Tyranny of Metrics - The wide angle
Jerry Z. Muller
I came to the subject as an outsider to the field of management: as an historian with a broad interest in the social sciences and in public policy. I was...
20180416-muller-jerry-on-book-tyranny-metrics-2-1
The Known Citizen - In a nutshell
Sarah E. Igo
Privacy—I probably need convince no one—looms large in the United States today, sparked by concerns about NSA spying as well as social media profiling, facial recognition software as well as...
20180409-igo-sarah-on-book-known-citizen-history-privacy-modern-america-1-1-1
A Nation Like All Others - The wide angle
Warren I. Cohen
I have spent my entire adult life studying and writing about the United States in world affairs. Much of my work, especially the essays, but also many of the books,...
20180402-cohen-warren-on-book-nation-like-all-others-brief-history-american-2-1
Broke and Patriotic - In a nutshell
Francesco Duina
America’s poorest citizens are among its most patriotic. Their love of country – and indeed, their sense that the United States is superior to other countries in the world –...
20180326-duina-francesco-on-book-broke-patriotic-why-poor-americans-love-1-1-1
Work - A close-up
Andrea Komlosy
For a first encounter with the book that would hopefully encourage further reading I recommend the chapter on work discourses (chapter 2). In this chapter, I contrast voices that seek...
20180319-komlosy-andrea-on-book-work-last-1000-years-3-1
Work - In a nutshell
Andrea Komlosy
In contrast to earlier, more inclusive ideas about work, the Western conception of work was, by the end of the nineteenth century, reduced to gainful employment. Labor studies from liberal,...
20180319-komlosy-andrea-on-book-work-last-1000-years-1-1-1
Brothers Apart - The wide angle
Maha Nassar
Most of the existing scholarship on Palestinian citizens of Israel revolves around Israeli policies and majority-minority relations. This approach reflects in part the dominance of anthropologists and sociologists and social...
20180312-nassar-maha-on-book-brothers-apart-palestinian-citizens-israel-2-1
Exploiting the Wilderness - The wide angle
Greg L. Warchol
To explore blind people’s experiences of reading in nineteenth-century Britain and America and to better understand sighted people’s reception of the advent of raised-print books, I draw on a wide...
20180305-warchol-greg-on-book-exploiting-wilderness-analysis-wildlife-crime-2-1
WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird - A close-up
Peter T. Leeson
At each exhibit, you’ll learn about a different seemingly insane ritual used to organize human life and learn a different lesson about how to use economic logic to find its...
20180226dd-leeson-peter-on-book-wtf-economic-tour-weird-3-1
Saving the Security State - The wide angle
Inderpal Grewal
Security is often thought of as a topic for international relations or law and limited to topics such as policing, militarism or terrorism. Over the last decade, there has been...
20180219-grewal-inderpal-on-book-saving-security-state-exceptional-citizens-2-1
The Nature of Spectacle - A close-up
Jim Igoe
I would like a “just browsing” reader to turn to one of the personal stories that open some of the chapters, such as my childhood fascination with nature shows and...
20180212-igoe-jim-on-book-nature-spectacle-images-money-conserving-3-1
The Procrastination Economy - The wide angle
Ethan Tussey
I approach the Gulf Stream as a nexus that links many strands from both the scientific and cultural worlds. While plenty of mysteries remain about the Gulf Stream, much more...
20180205-tussey-ethan-on-book-procrastination-economy-big-business-downtime-2-1
Measuring Tomorrow - The wide angle
Éloi Laurent
Measuring Tomorrow is essentially a guide to the well-being and sustainability transition and as such aims to make four contributions. First, while we have several insightful historical accounts of GDP’s...
20180129-laurent-eloi-on-book-measuring-tomorrow-accounting-well-being-2-1
The Theory That Changed Everything - A close-up
Philip Lieberman
The first chapter, “Strawberries,” presents the formative experience: the voyage of HMS Beagle that formed Darwin’s views on the common humanity of all people and set the stage for his...
20180122-lieberman-philip-on-book-theory-changed-everything-origin-species-3-1
Recomposing Ecopoetics - The wide angle
Lynn Keller
The concept of the “self-conscious Anthropocene,” introduced in the book’s title, is one of the book’s innovations and points to its larger significance. The term Anthropocene was introduced in 2000...
20180115-keller-lynn-on-book-recomposing-ecopoetics-north-american-poetry-2-1
A Taste for the Beautiful - In a nutshell
Michael J. Ryan
Stunning beauty abounds in nature. We see it everywhere we look. The brilliant colors and dances of butterflies and fishes, the songs of crickets, frogs, and birds, and even the...
20180108-ryan-michael-on-book-taste-beautiful-evolution-attraction-1-1-1
Technosystem - The wide angle
Andrew Feenberg
Technosystem should be read as a attempt to link up several different traditions of social thought in an innovative theory of modernity. The big question to which Technosystem is addressed...
20171218-feenberg-andrew-on-book-technosystem-social-life-reason-2-1
Taking Back Philosophy - A close-up
Bryan W. Van Norden
There is much to interest readers in my book beyond a debate about narrow academic curriculum. In one chapter, “Trump’s Philosophers,” I explore how educational demands to “preserve our Western...
20171211-van-norden-bryan-on-book-taking-back-philosophy-multicultural-3-1
I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took On the Fast Food Giants and Won - A close-up
Susan L. Marquis
Jump into Chapter 4: Has anyone talked with these guys? It gives a sense of what a great, and encouraging, story this is. The Prologue gives a short but comprehensive...
20171204-marquis-susan-on-book-tractor-how-florida-farmworkers-took-on-fast-3-1
Susan L. Marquis
Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution - A close-up
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
I would hope readers pay close attention to Chapter 5, An Epidemics of Mob Justice, pp. 167-191, especially the graphic cases, 170–177. Also, I would like readers to pay attention...
20171127-hasegawa-tsuyoshi-on-book-crime-punishment-russian-revolution-mob-3-1
The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management - A close-up
J.C. Sharman
Of the four host countries I studied—the US, Britain, Switzerland, and Australia—the last one seems like the odd one out. Aside from the fact that I am from there, Australia...
20171120-sharman-jc-on-book-despots-guide-wealth-management-international-3-1
Creatures Born of Mud and Slime - The wide angle
Daryn Lehoux
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see...
20171113-lehoux-daryn-on-book-creatures-born-mud-slime-wonder-complexity-2-1
Making Sense of the Alt-Right - In a nutshell
George Hawley
This book traces the antecedents, origins, major figures, and tactics of the white nationalist movement commonly known as the Alt-Right. Although the Alt-Right’s ideology is not new, it is much...
20171106-hawley-george-on-book-making-sense-alt-right-1-1-1
The Word on the Streets - A close-up
Brooks E. Hefner
The best entry point for the book is probably the introduction. I use that rather lengthy section to demonstrate the permeability of modernist boundaries and to lay out my argument...
20171030-hefner-brooks-on-book-word-streets-american-language-vernacular-3-1
Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods - The wide angle
E. Fuller Torrey
Although it is a book about one person it is also about the development of the media over a period of nine decades. It is very intriguing to consider how...
20171023-torrey-fuller-on-book-evolving-brains-emerging-gods-early-humans-2-1
True Sex - In a nutshell
Emily Skidmore
True Sex discusses the lives of eighteen individuals who were assigned female at birth but who lived as male in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. By...
20171016-skidmore-emily-on-book-true-sex-lives-trans-men-turn-twentieth-1-1-1
End of Its Rope - In a nutshell
Garrett L. Brandon
End of its Rope explores why the death penalty in America unexpectedly faded away.Twenty years ago, death sentencing was at its modern height. Across the Southern “death belt,” death sentences...
20230329-garrett-brandon-on-book-autopsy-crime-lab-exposing-flaws-forensics-1-1-1
The Code Economy - In a nutshell
Philip E. Auerswald
The Code Economy is a book about the past and likely future of human progress. My aim in writing it was to combine history with economics to explain how human...
20171002-auerswald-philip-on-book-code-economy-forty-thousand-year-history-1-1-1
Power at Ground Zero - A close-up
Lynne Sagalyn
Chapter 10 relates a particularly compelling episode of how the idea of integrating culture at Ground Zero exposed the tension inherent in accommodating the dual mandate to remember and rebuild.Many...
20170925-sagalyn-lynne-on-book-power-ground-zero-politics-money-remaking-3-1
Starving for Justice - In a nutshell
Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval
Starving for Justice examines three hunger strikes that took place in the 1990s on university campuses. Twenty years ago, Chicana/o, Latina/o students at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and Stanford stopped...
20170918-armbruster-sandoval-ralph-on-book-starving-for-justice-hunger-1-1-1
Speculation - In a nutshell
Stuart Banner
Speculation is about a dilemma that has troubled the legal system for a long time. For centuries, there has been a consensus that investment is necessary and ought to be...
20170911-banner-stuart-on-book-speculation-history-fine-line-1-1-1
“I Love Learning; I Hate School” - The wide angle
Susan D. Blum
The topic of this book is connected to everything! (Okay, maybe not directly to geology or health insurance. But to a gazillion other things that matter.) It’s connected to the...
20170904-blum-susan-on-book-i-love-learning-i-hate-school-anthropology-2-1
One Nation Undecided - In a nutshell
Peter H. Schuck
One Nation Undecided (Princeton University Press, 2017) is a natural sequel to my last book, Why Government Fails So Often, and How It Can Do Better (Princeton University Press, 2014).Why...
20170726-schuck-peter-on-book-one-nation-undecided-clear-thinking-five-1-1-1
Peter H. Schuck
Masters of Craft - A close-up
Richard E. Ocejo
If a reader were to casually pick up the book, I would hope they would flip to Chapter 7, which is called “Service Teaching.” This chapter focuses on the three...
20170719-ocejo-richard-on-book-masters-craft-old-jobs-new-urban-economy-3-1
Richard E. Ocejo
Quarks to Culture - In a nutshell
Tyler Volk
Quarks to Culture involves a new, big picture perspective of the universe. Now, by universe I do not mean the astronomical cosmos that the word usually refers to. I mean...
20170712-volk-tyler-on-book-quarks-culture-how-we-came-to-be-1-1
Tyler Volk
Body Modern - A close-up
Michael Sappol
Before Body Modern, I had mostly focused on the earlier history and cultural politics of anatomy. In A Traffic of Dead Bodies (2002) I argued that, in the 19th century,...
20170705-sappol-michael-on-book-body-modern-fritz-kahn-scientific-3-1
Michael Sappol
The History of Missed Opportunities - In a nutshell
William H. Galperin
The History of Missed Opportunities explores an unrecognized, certainly an unappreciated, development in Romantic-era Britain: the discovery of everyday life as a world that had been overlooked or, as Maurice...
20170628-galperin-william-on-history-missed-opportunities-british-1-1-1
Numbers and the Making of Us - In a nutshell
Caleb Everett
Numbers, words, and other symbols for precise quantities, are a human invention that had a broad impact on our cognitive and behavioral lives. This claim is based on extensive findings...
20170621-everett-caleb-on-numbers-making-us-counting-course-human-cultures-1-1-1
Animus - In a nutshell
William D. Araiza
This book explores the concept of “animus” in the law of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Over the last thirty years, the Supreme Court has decided several important equal protection...
20170614-araiza-william-on-animus-short-introduction-bias-law-1-1-1
Adcreep - A close-up
Mark Bartholomew
Chapter 4, “From Market Share to Mindshare,” is about the new discipline of neuromarketing. The ability to monitor consumers’ biological responses to commercials in real time has led to more...
20170607-bartholomew-mark-on-adcreep-case-against-modern-marketing-3-1
A Most Enterprising Country - The wide angle
Justin V. Hastings
My first book, No Man’s Land, showed how and when geography and the technologies that we generally associate with globalization—cheap and fast transportation, containing shipping, the Internet, mobile phones, and...
20170531-hastings-justin-on-most-enterprising-country-north-korea-global-2-1
The Arab Imago - In a nutshell
Stephen Sheehi
Arab Imago has a dual personality. It explores the undiscovered history of indigenista, or indigenous, photography of the Arab world. I am particularly interested in the earliest decades of photography,...
20170524-sheehi-stephen-on-arab-imago-social-history-portrait-photography-1-1-1
Stephen Sheehi
The Gnostic New Age - A close-up
April D. DeConick
The first page starts with my encounter as an 18-year old college student with the Gospel of Thomas and its unconventional Jesus––an encounter that was utterly transforming for me. It...
20170517-deconick-april-on-gnostic-new-age-countercultural-spirituality-3-1
A Nice Place to Visit - The wide angle
Aaron Cowan
As a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, I recall walking around the city’s downtown at the time and thinking how much of the central city around me –...
20170510-cowan-aaron-on-nice-place-visit-tourism-urban-revitalization-2-1
Endangered Economies - The wide angle
Geoffrey Heal
I’ve identified four reasons why our economic system doesn’t support the natural world. All four of these problems can be fixed by straightforward institutional or policy reforms.In fact, there are...
20170503-heal-geoffrey-on-endangered-economies-neglect-nature-threatens-2-1
The Fifth Beginning - In a nutshell
Robert L. Kelly
I’m what is known in my field as a “dirt archaeologist.” I’ve been excavating archaeological sites in various places for 43 years, and I’m not ready to quit. Why do...
20170426-kelly-robert-on-fifth-beginning-six-million-years-human-history-1-1-1
New World A-Coming - In a nutshell
Judith Weisenfeld
New World A-Coming examines a set of religious movements founded in the early twentieth-century urban north whose members refused the racial category of Negro and rejected Christianity in favor of...
20170419-weisenfeld-judith-on-new-world-a-coming-black-religion-1-1
Democracy's Muse - In a nutshell
Andrew Burstein
Democracy’s Muse examines why it is that Thomas Jefferson has come to represent American ideals for all modern generations, why the most emotive figure of the founding era appeals to...
20170412-burstein-andrew-on-democracy-muse-thomas-jefferson-fdr-reagan-1-1-1
Success and Suppression - In a nutshell
Dag Nikolaus Hasse
If you were asked to name some famous figures of Renaissance culture, you would probably name Leonardo, Michelangelo or Erasmus. But you could have mentioned some Arabic names too. There...
20170405-hasse-dag-on-success-suppression-arabic-sciences-philosophy-1-1-1
The Madhouse Effect - In a nutshell
Tom Toles
Different Backgrounds, Joint TakeAs co-authors, each of us two has experience on the front lines of the battle to communicate the risks of climate change to the public.I am an...
20170330-toles-tom-on-madhouse-effect-climate-change-denial-1-1
Tom Toles
The Madhouse Effect - A close-up
Michael E. Mann
The Madhouse Effect is, by design, a book that readers can just pick up, skim through, and find a page that both engages and informs. If a reader were to...
20120314-mann-michael-on-hockey-stick-climate-wars-3-1
Michael E. Mann
The Singing Turk - In a nutshell
Larry Wolff
The Singing Turk explores the huge cultural phenomenon of European operas about Turks, flourishing especially during the eighteenth century, in the European age of Enlightenment. Though most people interested in...
20170322-wolff-larry-on-singing-turk-ottoman-power-operatic-emotions-europe-1-1
Free Speech Beyond Words - In a nutshell
Mark V. Tushnet
The First Amendment says that “freedom of speech” shall not be abridged. The Supreme Court has said that the First Amendment unquestionably covers Jackson Pollock’s paintings, Arnold Schoenberg’s music, and...
20170315-tushnet-mark-on-free-speech-beyond-words-1-1
The Market as God - In a nutshell
Harvey Cox
The global capitalist=consumerist economy has an entire faith system, which has its own hierarchy, its own institutions, its own marble palaces. It has its own mythology, doctrine of the creation,...
20170308-cox-harvey-on-market-as-god-1-1-1
Just around Midnight - In a nutshell
Jack Hamilton
Just around Midnight is about the entanglements of popular music and racial thought during the 1960s, and particularly the question of how rock and roll music “became white.” By the...
20170301-hamilton-jack-on-just-around-midnight-rock-roll-racial-imagination-1-1-1
Natural Interests - The wide angle
Caroline Ford
This book challenges some of the prevailing perspectives in the field of environmental history. First, there is a widely held view that concern about the protection of the natural environment...
20170222-ford-caroline-on-natural-interests-contest-environment-france-2-1
Beyond Timbuktu - The wide angle
Ousmane Oumar Kane
Among the contemporary debates to which this book seeks to contribute, African historiography and cosmopolitanism are paramount. In his Philosophy of History lectures, German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel claimed...
20170215-kane-ousmane-on-beyond-timbuktu-intellectual-history-muslim-2-1
Living with Alzheimer’s - The wide angle
Renée L. Beard
I’ve always had an affinity for older people. My first job as a teenager was working in a nursing home where I met a woman who had what was then...
20170208-beard-renee-on-living-with-alzheimers-2-1
Istanbul Exchanges - A close-up
Mary Roberts
I hope a reader who stumbles across this book might initially be drawn to the visual richness of this art and then engaged by their cross-cultural narratives. These images are...
20170201-roberts-mary-on-istanbul-exchanges-ottomans-orientalists-3-1
Mary Roberts
The Prometheus Bomb - A close-up
Neil J. Sullivan
A fairly standard practice – a look at the introduction and the last chapter – should give the reader a sense of the book. The introduction provides an overview of...
20170125-sullivan-neil-on-prometheus-bomb-manhattan-project-government-dark-3-1
Neil J. Sullivan
Fungible Life - The wide angle
Aihwa Ong
We tend to view cosmopolitan science as a universal form that is practiced in many places. But, does modern knowledge itself become transformed in the midst of its peregrinations? Relatedly,...
20170118-ong-aihwa-on-fungible-life-experiment-asian-city-life-2-1
Vanishing America - The wide angle
Miles A. Powell
When I commenced research for this book, I planned to focus predominantly on understandings of, and responses to, species endangerment and extinction. Yet archival materials and other primary sources revealed...
20170111-powell-miles-on-vanishing-america-species-extinction-racial-peril-2-1
Miles A. Powell
Fabricating an Educational Miracle - A close-up
Jinting Wu
It is early May 2009, only a few days before the impending school inspection by the provincial delegate. The Dong village of Longxing has been selected as one of the...
20170104-wu-jinting-on-book-fabricating-educational-miracle-3-1
Program Earth - The wide angle
Jennifer Gabrys
One of the key objectives in Program Earth is to rework theories of sensing by decentering the human subject that is meant to be the key locus through which sensation...
20161228-gabrys-jennifer-on-program-earth-environmental-sensing-technology-2-1
Eating the Ocean - A close-up
Elspeth Probyn
I would hope readers open the book at the introduction where I describe the following:Imagine a sparkling day on Sydney’s Harbour... eating creamy Sydney rock oysters and drinking a glass...
20161221-probyn-elspeth-on-eating-ocean-3-1
Madness in Civilization - A close-up
Andrew Scull
If a reader wanted to browse my book, a number of strategies suggest themselves. The introductory chapter is quite brief, but sets out the range of topics I plan to...
20230531-scull-andrew-on-book-desperate-remedies-psychiatrys-turbulent-quest-cure-mental-illness-3-1
One Day in the Life of the English Language - A close-up
Frank L. Cioffi
Picking up a book in a bookstore, a lot of readers look at a book’s opening and closing pages. From these they can get a sense of the basic idea...
20161207-cioffi-frank-on-one-day-life-english-language-microcosmic-usage-3-1
The Rule of Logistics - A close-up
Jesse LeCavalier
The book includes a 16-page color section that is a kind of visual overture of the project. This section uses a series of drawings and diagrams to address the main...
20161130-lecavalier-jesse-on-rule-logistics-walmart-architecture-fulfill-3-1
Heart of Europe - A close-up
Peter W. Wilson
If the casual reader or bookshop-browser were to follow my grandfather’s advice, they would start at the end to see whether my book was worth reading. In this case, they...
20161123-wilson-peter-on-heart-europe-history-holy-roman-empire-3-1
Peter W. Wilson
The Burdens of Brotherhood - In a nutshell
Ethan B. Katz
Today, headlines from France depict the country’s Muslims and Jews as ever, inevitably in conflict. Numerous commentators suggest Muslim attacks against Jews are the newest chapter in an age-old anti-Jewish...
20161116-katz-ethan-on-burdens-brotherhood-jews-muslims-north-africa-france-1-1-1
Organizing Organic - The wide angle
Michael A. Haedicke
C. Wright Mills argued that sociological research often springs from the intersection of personal biography and history. My book is no exception.I come from a family that bought organic foods...
20161109-haedicke-michael-on-organic-conflict-compromise-market-2-1
Thirtyfour Campgrounds - In a nutshell
Martin Hogue
Thirtyfour Campgrounds examines the standardization and modernization of the contemporary campground as a familiar setting in the American landscape.Campgrounds celebrate a unique form of American ingenuity in which intersecting narratives...
20161102-hogue-martin-on-thirtyfour-campgrounds-34-campgrounds-1-1-1
The Age of Irreverence - The wide angle
Christopher Rea
E.B. White said that “humorists fatten on trouble,” and in modern China there’s been plenty of that to go around. One of the broad concerns of my book is to...
20161026-rea-christopher-on-age-irreverence-new-history-laughter-china-2-1
Orderly Anarchy - A close-up
Robert L. Bettinger
The discussion and arguments are generally easy to follow. Even so, my guess is that the casual reader will most likely turn first to the graphics, which were chosen to...
20161019-bettinger-robert-on-orderly-anarchy-evolution-aboriginal-californi-3-1
Fantasies of Neglect - The wide angle
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Of course, homelessness is one of the major problems facing society today. Part of the impetus for this project was to think historically about representations of homelessness to see how...
20240425-wojcik-pamela-on-book-unhomed-cycles-mobility-placelessness-american-cinema-2-1
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
The Politics and Ethics of Identity - The wide angle
Richard Ned Lebow
Encouraged by therapists, people search for their inner selves. Groups and corporations develop “identities,” to which their members are “invited” to internalize. Political leaders encourage us to distinguish ourselves from...
20130215-lebow-richard-ned-on-politics-ethics-identity-search-ourselves-2-1
Casualties of Credit - A close-up
Carl Wennerlind
While chapter four, dealing with the debates surrounding the use of the death penalty for counterfeiting crimes, offers some revealing examples of how contemporaries understood money politically, I would steer...
20121206-wennerlind-carl-on-casualties-of-credit-3-1
Cruel Optimism - In a nutshell
Lauren Berlant
Cruel Optimismis a book about living within crisis, and about the destruction of our collective genres of what a “life” is; it is about dramas of adjustment to the pressures...
20120605-berlant-lauren-on-cruel-optimism-1-1-1
The New Asian City - A close-up
Jini Kim Watson
The final three chapters of The New Asian City each examine in detail one national site and one aesthetic form: Singaporean city poetry, Taiwanese New Cinema, and Korean minjung (people’s...
20120529-watson-jini-kim-on-asian-city-fictions-space-urban-form-3-1
Before Fiction - In a nutshell
Nicholas D. Paige
On the face of it, my title is silly: there is no “before fiction” for humans, for we are, from the start of recorded history and from the start of...
20120521-paige-nicholas-on-before-fiction-ancien-regime-novel-1-1-1
Nicholas D. Paige
Through Amateur Eyes - A close-up
Frances Guerin
I would hope that the browser who picked up Through Amateur Eyes in a bookstore would turn to the image section in the middle of the book.The archival images that...
20120514-guerin-frances-on-amateur-eyes-film-photography-nazi-germany-3-1
The Statue of Liberty - The wide angle
Edward Berenson
My intellectual trajectory in coming to this book stems from my longstanding interest in France.I’m an American who has studied France and its history for the past 30 years. I...
20120507-berenson-edward-on-statue-of-liberty-transatlantic-2-1
The World in Play - The wide angle
Matthew Kaiser
My motivations for writing this book were largely historical and aesthetic. I wanted to explain the proliferation of various tropes of play in Victorian literary representations of modern life. Even...
20120501-kaiser-matthew-on-world-in-play-portraits-victorian-concept-2-1
The Death of a Prophet - In a nutshell
Stephen J. Shoemaker
This book is an effort at the “quest for the historical Muhammad” that uses methods and perspectives borrowed from biblical and early Christian studies to investigate the beginnings of Islam....
20120424-shoemaker-stephen-on-death-prophet-end-muhammad-life-begin-islam-1-1-1
Stephen J. Shoemaker
How Economics Shapes Science - In a nutshell
Paula Stephan
How Economics Shapes Science focuses on how costs and incentives—core concepts in economics—shape the practice of science, especially the practice of science at universities.Costs matter: they play a role in...
20120418-stephan-paula-on-how-economics-shapes-science-1-1
Paula Stephan
The Storytelling Animal - In a nutshell
Jonathan Gottschall
You might not realize it, but you are a creature of an imaginative realm called Storyland. Storyland is your home and before you die you will spend decades there. If...
20120416-gottschall-jonathan-on-storytelling-animal-how-stories-make-human-1-1-1
The Interface - In a nutshell
John Harwood
In 1956 the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr., hired the industrial designer and architect Eliot Noyes, charging him with reinventing IBM’s corporate image at every level, from the logo...
20120411-harwood-john-on-interface-ibm-transformation-corporate-design-1-1-1
Sexuality in Europe - The wide angle
Dagmar Herzog
The book arcs from the waning of Victorianism to the collapse of Communism and the rise of European Islam. Throughout, it investigates the shifting fortunes of prostitution and marriage, of...
20120409-herzog-dagmar-on-sexuality-in-europe-2-1
Why Lyrics Last - The wide angle
Brian Boyd
In On the Origin of Stories I asked why we are storytelling and especially fiction-making animals. It’s a fat book, a fairly comprehensive book. But to be truly comprehensive about...
20111108-boyd-brian-on-stalking-nabokov-2-1
The Scandal of Reason - A close-up
Albena Azmanova
Although the Enlightenment, at the dawn of Modernity, raised the beacon of Reason and thus raised humanity’s hopes for a right answer to complex issues, doubts about that promise emerged...
20120328-azmanova-albena-on-the-scandal-of-reason-3-1
Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia - A close-up
Iftikhar Dadi
Chapter 3 is devoted to the celebrated artist Sadequain (1930–1987) who introduced calligraphic motifs in his modernist paintings and drawings. Sadequain’s residence in Paris during the 1960s is of fundamental...
20120326-dadi-iftikhar-on-modernism-art-muslim-south-asia-3-1
Why Things Matter to People - The wide angle
Andrew Sayer
My book examines the role of values, reason and ethics, and concern with dignity in everyday life. It’s about everyday morality and immorality—banal goodness as well as banal evil. While...
20120321-sayer-andrew-on-why-things-matter-to-people-2-1
Long Shot - A close-up
Kendall Hoyt
I think the casual reader might be surprised to discover that the military made significant contributions to over half of the vaccines developed in the twentieth century.Just as military interest...
20120319-hoyt-kendall-on-vaccines-for-national-defense-3-1
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - A close-up
Michael E. Mann
In the beginning of the prologue I draw upon a specific recent event: the theft of thousands of scientists’ emails, including many of mine. This is the world in which...
20170329-mann-michael-on-madhouse-effect-climate-change-denial-3-1
Michael E. Mann
Science and religion are not incompatible
Brad Gregory
Instead, the Reformation influenced the eventual emergence of closed-universe atheism because of the unending doctrinal controversies that followed in its wake. The controversies unintentionally sidelined explicitly Christian claims about the...
20120125-gregory-brad-on-the-unintended-reformation-2-1
Betting on Biotech - A close-up
Joseph Wong
Chapter 5 opens with an anecdote, a true story.A few years back I was giving a talk in Taiwan about the state of the biotech sector there. The government had...
20120307-wong-joseph-on-betting-on-biotech-3-1
Tropes of Transport - The wide angle
Katrin Pahl
I am trained in philosophy and literary analysis. My particular take on the intersection of philosophy and literature consists in using the tools of a literary scholar to analyze a...
20120305-pahl-katrin-on-tropes-transport-hegel-emotion-2-1
Savonarola - The wide angle
Donald Weinstein
Life on Mars is a history book that is about the future. Mars is in our future, probably the very near future. What we already know and what we likely...
20120229-weinstein-donald-on-girolamo-savonarola-biography-2-1
The Anatomy Murders - The wide angle
Lisa Rosner
The Burke and Hare anatomy murders were a sensation in their own day, the first serial killings to be reported in the popular press. The story traveled wherever newspapers were...
20120227-rosner-lisa-on-the-anatomy-murders-2-1
In a Sea of Bitterness - A close-up
R. Keith Schoppa
If a browsing reader picked up a copy of the book, I would hope that the Introduction entitled “The Thousand-Person Pit” would hook him or her. An account of an...
20120223-schoppa-keith-on-in-sea-of-bitterness-refugees-sino-japanese-war-3-1
R. Keith Schoppa
That’s Disgusting - A close-up
Rachel Herz
I would hope someone stumbling upon That’s Disgusting in a bookstore either first thumbed through the chapter on horror and perverse pleasures (Chapter 6, “Horror Show”), or the chapter on...
20120221-herz-rachel-on-thats-disgusting-3-1
The Stalin Cult - A close-up
Jan Plamper
Socialist realism was arguably the 20th century’s most successful artistic phenomenon, especially if measured in terms of quantitative output and geographical reach. Yet socialist realism remains notoriously difficult to define....
20120215-plamper-jan-on-the-stalin-cult-3-1
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman - In a nutshell
William J. Cook
You wake up in the morning and find that you need to visit a number of cities or towns before returning in the evening. What is the shortest possible route...
20120213-cook-william-on-in-pursuit-of-traveling-salesman-1-1-1
A Kingdom of Stargazers - In a nutshell
Michael A. Ryan
In A Kingdom of Stargazers I analyze the nebulous and tendentious practice that astrology occupied within the culture of the later Middle Ages, a period characterized by profound and multiple...
20120208-ryan-michael-on-kingdom-stargazers-astrology-authority-medieval-1-1-1
Michael A. Ryan
Why Don't American Cities Burn? - A close-up
Michael B. Katz
If you come across this book in a bookstore, I hope you will browse the Prologue, “The Death of Shorty,” and that it will draw you in to the rest...
20120206-katz-michael-on-american-cities-3-1
All the Missing Souls - A close-up
David Scheffer
Pages 2 through 5 state what the book is about, its objectives, the historical significance of the story, and my role in it. Allow me to stitch together some of...
20120201-scheffer-david-on-all-the-missing-souls-3-1
Paper Machines - In a nutshell
Markus Krajewski
Today, on just about every desk there is a gray box emitting a range of wires. Eighty years ago, this data processing box was less conspicuous, non-electronic, and made from...
20120130-krajewski-markus-on-paper-machines-1-1-1
The Unintended Reformation - In a nutshell
Brad Gregory
The Unintended Reformation is a wide-ranging revisionist history that concerns the present as much as the past. It argues that in central respects, North American and European life in the...
20120312-gregory-brad-science-religion-not-incompatible-1-1-1
Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores - In a nutshell
Elaine Forman Crane
Witches, Wife Beaters, and Whores combines people, history, and law. The book is composed of six stories about early Americans and how brushes with the law affected everyday life.If the...
20120123-crane-elaine-on-witches-wife-beaters-whores-common-law-1-1-1
The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800 - The wide angle
E. William Monter
I have tried to make this investigation extremely wide. The rarity of documented female rulers in large, well-organized states makes it necessary to find them wherever one can, and as...
20120119-monter-william-on-rise-of-female-kings-in-europe-2-1
Law, Language, and Empire in the Roman Tradition - The wide angle
Clifford Ando
The book attempts to keep its feet firmly planted in two different worlds. On the one hand, it is a work of history. Moreover, it is a work of history...
20120116-ando-clifford-on-law-language-empire-roman-tradition-2-1
Cultivating the Masses - The wide angle
David L. Hoffmann
The Russian Revolution seemed to promise human liberation and equality. But instead it produced a Stalinist dictatorship, with extreme interventionism and unprecedented state violence. Why did a government purportedly dedicated...
20120113-hoffmann-david-on-cultivating-the-masses-2-1
On the Two Faces of the Euro Coins
Mabel Berezin
Normalization of the right is the term that I develop to capture the twin phenomena of the electoral surge of the European right and the mainstreaming of nationalist ideas and...
20120111-berezin-mabel-on-two-faces-euro-coins-2
Constitutional Cliffhangers - In a nutshell
Brian C. Kalt
Constitutional Cliffhangers is about six situations in which the Constitution’s provisions for selecting, replacing, and punishing presidents are seriously vulnerable.Each chapter starts out with a fictional scenario that dramatizes one...
20120109-kalt-brian-on-constitutional-ciffhangers-1-1-1
The Age of Equality - In a nutshell
Richard Pomfret
This book is about adopting a longer-term perspective to understand the world we live in.In the 1800s a handful of countries, initially in western Europe and lands settled by Europeans,...
20120105-pomfret-richard-on-the-age-of-equality-1-1-1
Richard Pomfret
On the continued appeal of disease eradication
Nancy Leys Stepan
One of the strange things about eradication is how it repeatedly arises, phoenix-like, from its setbacks.Fred Lowe Soper paradoxically embraced the cause of disease eradication in the 1930s, just as...
20111116-stepan-nancy-on-eradication-1-1
Nancy Leys Stepan
States of War - In a nutshell
David W. Bates
States of War examines an age-old conflict within constitutional legal states—to what extent can political authorities violate the law in times of crisis, emergency, or war?This question has haunted modern...
20111229-bates-david-on-states-of-war-1-1
BELZONI - In a nutshell
Ivor Noël Hume
Giovanni Batista Belzoni was a towering figure at the beginning of archaeology in Egypt, not for his recognized talents but for his 6’6” height.Nearly 200 years later he is still...
20111226-hume-ivor-noel-on-belzoni-1-1
Ralph Tailor’s Summer - The wide angle
Keith Wrightson
Between 2009 and 2010, I spent 16 months conducting intensive fieldwork in a Miao and a Dong minority village-town in Qiandongnan Prefecture, Guizhou Province. Situated closely above the southwest border...
20111223-wrightson-keith-on-ralph-tailor-summer-2
What's on my mind?
Philip G. Cerny
My Rutgers-Newark colleague Frank Fischer sent me a couple of articles from the New York Times issue of November 14, 2011. They are about the bitterness of the current generation...
20111017-philip-cerny-on-rethinking-world-politics-theory-transnational-neopluralism-1-1
A Dream Interpreted within a Dream - A close-up
Elliot R. Wolfson
I do not think I can privilege one part of the book over another, but the Preface would be sufficient to draw the reader into the book, since it gives...
20111219-wolfson-elliot-on-dream-interpreted-within-a-dream-3
Why understanding science is hard and seduction by the humanities is easy
Alex Rosenberg
Unfortunately, we are all suckers for a good story—a narrative that strings events into a plot with characters driven by motives. If information doesn’t come in story form, we have...
20111107-rosenberg-alex-on-the-atheist-guide-to-reality-2
The Justice Cascade - In a nutshell
Kathryn Sikkink
The Justice Cascadeprovides an overview and an evaluation of one of the most important changes in global politics: the rise of individual criminal accountability for human rights violations. In it,...
20111212-sikkink-kathryn-on-the-justice-cascade-1-1
Lost Colony - In a nutshell
Tonio Andrade
In 1997, Jared Diamond published his wonderful book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, which asked why it was that some societies become rich and powerful and others don’t.His explanation was geographical—it...
20111209-andrade-tonio-on-lost-colony-china-victory-over-west-1-1
On the ultimate causes of various kinds of homicide
Randolph Roth
The relationship between violence and feelings about government has often tracked separately by race in this country. In the last five decades, the black homicide rate peaked between 1971 and...
20111207-roth-randolph-on-ultimate-causes-of-homicide-2
Randolph Roth
The Bodhisattva’s Brain - A close-up
Owen Flanagan
The “Introduction” is a paean, a song in praise of comparative philosophy.Some think that studying ancient wisdom traditions involves anachronism and ethnocentrism. One talks across too much time and one...
20111205-flanagan-owen-on-bodhisattva-brain-3
Dropping Out - The wide angle
Russell W. Rumberger
The book is related to and draws on a wide range of theories and research in education and related social science fields, including economics, sociology, demography, political science, and criminology....
20111202-rumberger-russell-on-dropping-out-of-high-school-2
Russell W. Rumberger
Yellow Future - The wide angle
Jane Chi Hyun Park
I started writing this book in a period when the political position of Asian Americans seemed to be oscillating between appearing either as threats to middle America or tokens of...
20111130-park-jane-on-yellow-future-oriental-style-hollywood-cinema-2
Bombshell - The wide angle
Mia Bloom
The book relates to the changing nature of terrorism and how different groups are either being forced or recruited into these deadly organizations.I address several underlying theories about the nature...
20111128-bloom-mia-on-bombshell-women-terrorism-2
Inventing Iron Man - The wide angle
E. Paul Zehr
The main concept under the surface of Becoming Batman is that of stress and adaptation. All responses of the body to exercise, training, and skill learning involve the principle that...
20111119-zehr-e-paul-on-inventing-iron-man-possibility-human-machine-2
Indra's Net and the Midas Touch - In a nutshell
Leslie Paul Thiele
Sustainability is all the rage these days. It is espoused by government agencies from the local to the national, by international bodies, and by proliferating citizens’ groups and non-governmental organizations....
20111123-thiele-leslie-on-indras-net-midas-touch-1
The First Pop Age - A close-up
Hal Foster
I would be happy for the reader to land anywhere in the book; it is written to engage him or her at any point.But any reader might as well begin...
20111121-foster-hal-on-first-pop-age-painting-subjectivity-3
Will poor nations suffer greatly from climate change?
Matthew E. Kahn
My critics have “granted me” the point that developed free market cities have the ability and the capacity to cope with many aspects of climate change. But they have countered...
20111118-kahn-matthew-will-poor-nations-suffer-from-climate-change-1-1
Eradication - A close-up
Nancy Leys Stepan
I think I would like your “browsing reader” to first open the book at p. 12, and read through to p. 17—to get a quick introduction to Fred Lowe Soper,...
20120102-stepan-nancy-on-appeal-disease-eradication-3
Nancy Leys Stepan
Memory, Trauma, and History - The wide angle
Michael S. Roth
Memory Trauma and History intersects with the history of medicine, with trauma studies and psychoanalysis, with questions concerning postmodernism and politics, and with issues concerning photography and historical consciousness.The final...
20111114-roth-michael-on-memory-trauma-history-2
Michael S. Roth
The Terror of History - In a nutshell
Teofilo F. Ruiz
This book is, first and foremost, a reflection on the human condition and on the manner in which we attempt to explain the world and make meaning of our lives....
20111109-ruiz-teofilo-on-the-terror-of-history-1-1
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Stalking Nabokov - In a nutshell
Brian Boyd
Stalking Nabokovfocuses always on Vladimir Nabokov and occasionally also on me in persistent pursuit, wielding a variety of nets, in different seasons and terrains, panting with effort while he flutters...
20120404-boyd-brian-on-why-lyrics-last-1-1
The Atheist's Guide to Reality - In a nutshell
Alex Rosenberg
Most people think of atheism as one big negative. But there is much more to atheism than knockdown arguments that there is no God.There is the whole rest of the...
20111214-rosenberg-alex-understand-science-seduction-humanities-1-1
The roots of mental pathologies
Richard J. McNally
The standard view of medicine holds that observant clinicians discover diseases in nature. Accordingly, psychiatrists are no different from other doctors. They, too, discern forms of pathology arising from dysfunctions...
20111104-mcnally-richard-on-roots-mental-pathologies-1-1
Richard J. McNally
Ecological economics
Joe Roman
When the Endangered Species Act was passed, in 1973, traditional economics, which looked to self-interest and endless growth as the predominant drivers of the economy, was pretty much the only...
20110928-roman-joe-on-listed-endangered-species-act-1-1
Breaking the Devil’s Pact - The wide angle
James B. Jacobs
Throughout my career, my specialty has been criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminology.My interest in labor racketeering began in the mid 1980s when I served as a consultant for...
20111031-jacobs-james-on-breaking-devil-pact-battle-free-teamster-mob-2
Loving Animals - In a nutshell
Kathy Rudy
Animal exploitation is rampant in American culture today. In factory farms, shelters, zoos, puppy mills, science labs, and many other sites, animals are often treated as senseless commodities. Loving Animals...
20111028-rudy-kathy-on-loving-animals-new-animal-advocacy-1-1
The potential for large bank failures remains
Darrell Duffie
It has been strongly asserted by some regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, that the Dodd-Frank Act now permits the safe resolution of any systemically important financial institution that...
20111026-duffie-darrell-potential-large-bank-failures-remains-2-1-1
Unlikely Collaboration - In a nutshell
Barbara Will
Unlikely Collaboration is a study of the unlikely attraction of modernist intellectuals and artists to fascist and authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. Its focus is on the particular experience...
20111024-will-barbara-on-unlikely-collaboration-gertrude-stein-bernard-fay-vichy-dilemma-1
A Book Forged in Hell - In a nutshell
Steven Nadler
A Book Forged in Hell is about one of the most important and controversial books in Western history, one that continues to be vitally relevant today.Writing in May, 1670, the...
20111021-nadler-steven-on-a-book-forged-in-hell-spinoza-treatise-1-1
Steven Nadler
Inventing the Enemy - In a nutshell
Wendy Z. Goldman
Inventing the Enemy is about the period known as the “Great Terror” in the Soviet Union. At the height of the terror in 1937–38, the Soviet secret police under the...
20111019-wendy-goldman-on-inventing-enemy-denunciation-terror-stalin-russia-1-1
Rethinking World Politics - In a nutshell
Philip G. Cerny
Our understanding of world politics in the “modern” world (i.e. the past couple of centuries) has been dominated by the “inside/outside distinction.”On the one hand, “domestic” politics, the inside, involves...
20111221-cerny-phil-what-is-on-my-mind-1-1
On the future of religious moderation
William Egginton
Moderation is not, as some secularist firebrands would have us believe, just a watered down version of more committed beliefs. Rather, it is a way of believing that is different...
20111014-egginton-william-on-future-of-religious-moderation-2
Calexico - In a nutshell
Peter Laufer
Calexico takes the reader to a border unlike the stereotypes.The lawlessness of some border flashpoints dominates border news. The bulk of Americans, those of us living far from the 2,000...
20111012-laufer-peter-on-calexico-true-lives-borderlands-1-1
In the Company of Strangers - In a nutshell
Barry McCrea
In the Company of Strangers is about how different ideas of the family affect the deep narrative structure of novels.The principles of marriage and reproduction seem to be fundamental to...
20111010-mccrea-barry-on-company-strangers-family-narrative-dickens-conan-doyle-joyce-proust-1-1
More Beautiful and More Terrible - A close-up
Imani Perry
If a person were randomly opening the book I think I’d want them to flip to page 177, the beginning of Chapter Six, “Exceptionally Yours: Racial Escape Hatches in the...
20111007-perry-imani-on-more-beautiful-terrible-embrace-transcendence-racial-inequality-united-states-3
The City As Campus - The wide angle
Sharon Haar
For someone who felt passionately about cities from a very young age, my formal education actually took place away from them. Early on I was aware of the ways in...
20111005-haar-sharon-on-city-as-campus-urbanism-higher-education-chicago-2
Art of the Deal - In a nutshell
Noah Horowitz
The business of contemporary art has changed immeasurably over the last half century. What was essentially a small, insider trade clustered in a few key avant-garde capitals has expanded into...
20111003-horowitz-noah-on-art-deal-contemporary-art-global-financial-market-1-1
Listed - The wide angle
Joe Roman
I started Listed when I was working in Washington, DC, as a policy fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At the time the Endangered Species Act...
20111102-roman-joe-on-ecological-economics-2
Battling Pornography - In a nutshell
Carolyn Bronstein
Battling Pornography chronicles the formation and development of an American feminist anti-pornography movement from 1976 to 1986. The book emphasizes the internal movement dynamics and external structural factors that supported...
20110926-carolyn-bronstein-on-battling-pornography-american-feminist-anti-pornography-movement-1976-1986-1-1
Rethinking the Other in Antiquity - In a nutshell
Erich S. Gruen
How do nations, peoples, and ethnic groups fashion their own collective identities? For antiquity as well as for the modern era, one general answer has prevailed: societies shape their self-consciousness...
20110921-gruen-erich-on-rethinking-other-antiquity-1-1
Eurolegalism - The wide angle
R. Daniel Kelemen
In a sense, Eurolegalism is a book about how the EU attempts to govern and what impact it has on its member countries.Critics like to rail against the EU’s supposedly...
20110919-kelemen-daniel-on-eurolegalism-transformation-law-european-union-2
Walled States, Waning Sovereignty - In a nutshell
Wendy Brown
The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall was an internationally celebrated event, and was also the occasion for numerous proclamations, across the political spectrum, of a dawning unbordered world. Yet,...
20110915-brown-wendy-on-walled-states-waning-sovereignty-1-1
Cairo - The wide angle
Nezar AlSayyad
Cairo has fascinated me since I was first exposed to the city’s Islamic heritage in 1973, and it has continued to keep me under its spell. This love affair began...
20110831-nezar-alsayyad-book-interview-cairo-histories-of-a-city-2
Zoot Suit - In a nutshell
Kathy Peiss
Zoot Suit is a history of one of the most famous “street styles” of the 20<sup id="">th</sup> century. With its broad shoulders, tapered long jacket, pegged pants, and swinging key...
20110829-peiss-kathy-zoot-suit-enigmatic-career-extreme-style-1-1
Dance of the Furies - The wide angle
Michael S. Neiberg
I wrote this book to help me work my way out of a teaching problem.I simply could not explain the outbreak of the war to my students in one or...
20110822-michael-neiberg-on-dance-furies-europe-outbreak-world-war-i-2
Michael S. Neiberg
The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets - The wide angle
Keith Roberts
Each chapter deals with similar questions. What were the main forces that shaped business and its role in the economy? What new businesses emerged? How did they operate? What was...
20110817-roberts-keith-on-the-origins-business-money-markets-2
Twilight of the Idols - In a nutshell
Mark Lynn Anderson
Twilight of the Idols is ultimately a book about the central importance of deviance to the formation of American mass culture during the 1920s.Given our current media obsessions with unusual...
20110815-anderson-mark-lynn-twilight-idols-hollywood-human-sciences-1920s-1-1
Kissing Architecture - In a nutshell
Sylvia Lavin
This book is about image-architecture and the surprising apperceptive shifts that take place when today’s culture of ephemeral images and the stolid material traditions of architecture choose to embrace.Could you...
20110810-lavin-sylvia-on-kissing-architecture-1-1
Crises and Opportunities - The wide angle
Youssef Cassis
The financial crisis of 2007-2008 triggered a huge demand for history, an unprecedented urge to place the event in a historical perspective.Two questions came up time and time again. How...
20110808-cassis-youssef-on-crises-opportunities-shaping-modern-finance-2
The Real Real Thing - The wide angle
Wendy Steiner
The Real Real Thing shows early 21st</sup>-century culture wrestling with new media, technology, and science. The book is the third in a loose trilogy that began with The Scandal of...
20110803-steiner-wendy-the-real-real-thing-model-mirror-art-2
Wendy Steiner
The Invention of Ecocide - In a nutshell
David Zierler
The Invention of Ecocide traces the rise and fall of herbicidal warfare in Vietnam from the origins of plant physiology, in Charles Darwin’s laboratory, to the apex of the global...
20110801-zierler-david-ecocide-agent-orange-vietnam-scientists-environment-1
How Big Banks Fail and What to Do about It - A close-up
Darrell Duffie
The book’s story line carries, I hope, some dramatic interest. And it demands relatively little background knowledge. A reader whose curiosity is piqued will hopefully go further and cover the...
20110727-darrell-duffie-how-big-banks-fail-what-to-do-about-it-3
The Quest for the Cure - The wide angle
Brent R. Stockwell
Given the declining number of new drugs, and the crisis in the pharmaceutical industry, many are asking what can be done.The Obama administration has proposed a new initiative to help...
20110725-stockwell-brent-on-quest-for-cure-science-next-generation-medicine-2
Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras - In a nutshell
Harriet Ritvo
Disciplines like zoology and veterinary medicine have always taken animals seriously as the subject of research. In the humanities and social sciences, the field sometimes known as “animal studies” began...
20110720-ritvo-harriet-noble-cows-hybrid-zebras-animals-history-1-1
Violette Nozière - In a nutshell
Sarah Maza
Violette Nozière tells the story of a high-profile criminal case that took place in Paris in 1933-34.An eighteen-year-old girl, the only child of a striving lower-middle-class couple, carefully devised and...
20110718-sarah-maza-violette-noziere-story-murder-1930s-paris-1-1
Sarah Maza
The Controversy of Renaissance Art - The wide angle
Alexander Nagel
The Italian Renaissance has always been understood as the foundation of European art. The entire artistic tradition through Picasso stems from the extraordinary achievements of early 16th century artists.Traditionally, this...
20110713-nagel-alexander-controversy-renaissance-art-2
In Defense of Religious Moderation - In a nutshell
William Egginton
The current debate around religion in America has been dominated by fundamentalists and atheists.The fundamentalists have managed to set a tone for political discourse in America in which no one...
20091228-william-egginton-on-theater-truth-ideology-neobaroque-aesthetic-1-1
To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art - A close-up
Rachel Weiss
Juan Francisco Elso’s “Por América” is one of the many remarkable works that I write about. An effigy of José Martí, it is an exquisitely painful portrait, depicting the Cuban...
20110704-weiss-rachel-to-and-from-utopia-in-the-new-cuban-art-3
Rachel Weiss
Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection - The wide angle
Niobe Way
I found Jean Wade Rindlaub’s archive at the Schlesinger Library in the course of researching my first book, Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table. In that book...
20110629-way-niobe-deep-secrets-boys-friendships-crisis-connection-2
Niobe Way
Big-Time Sports in American Universities - The wide angle
Charles T. Clotfelter
Like many Americans who grew up following football and basketball, I simply took it for granted that athletic teams sponsored by universities would compete in highly publicized games and that...
20110627-clotfelter-charles-big-time-sports-american-universities-2
Gravity’s Ghost - In a nutshell
Harry Collins
How do physicists decide that some data might constitute a discovery?The way to find out is to watch. For 18 months I watched physicists arguing about a burst of data...
20110622-collins-harry-gravity-ghost-scientific-discovery-in-the-twenty-first-century-1-1
Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation - In a nutshell
Seo-Young Chu
The main purpose of Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? is to offer a science-fictional theory of representation.Most people think of science fiction as a genre devoted not to the...
20110620-chu-seo-young-do-metaphors-dream-literal-sleep-science-fictional-1-1
Separated by their Sex - In a nutshell
Mary Beth Norton
Separated by their Sex examines the origins of a crucial concept: the notion that the world is divided into realms we call public and private.A gendered public-private divide—in which the...
20110615-norton-mary-separate-sex-women-public-private-colonial-atlantic-1-1
Mary Beth Norton
The Freudian Robot - The wide angle
Lydia H. Liu
As someone who trained in comparative literature, I have been taught to focus on literary text and ignore science and technology. I was among the first generation of graduate students...
20110613-liu-lydia-freudian-robot-digital-media-future-unconscious-2
Edward Bancroft - In a nutshell
Thomas J. Schaeper
Edward Bancroft was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1745 and died in England in 1821. He is most famous (or infamous) today because from 1777 to 1783 he lived in...
20110608-schaeper-thomas-edward-bancroft-scientist-author-spy-1-1
Thomas J. Schaeper
American Property - In a nutshell
Stuart Banner
When Richard Newman died in Los Angeles in 1997, his body was taken to the county coroner’s office for a routine autopsy. Two years later, Newman’s father learned that the...
20110606-banner-stuart-american-property-history-of-how-why-what-we-own-1-1
Exceptional People - In a nutshell
Ian Goldin
Discussions about migration in the media and elsewhere are limited by a lack of perspective of international migration’s historical role, contemporary impacts, and future prospects. Exceptional People addresses these gaps....
20110601-goldin-ian-exceptional-people-how-migration-shaped-world-future-1-1
Modernist America - In a nutshell
Richard Pells
Modernist America is a history of American culture in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It focuses on literature, painting, architecture, advertising and design, classical music, jazz, Broadway musicals, movies,...
20110530-pells-richard-modernist-america-art-music-movies-global-culture-1-1
Richard Pells
Is Eating People Wrong? Great Legal Cases and How They Shaped the World - In a nutshell
Allan C. Hutchinson
This book makes a strong argument against the widespread perception, inside and outside the legal profession, that law is somehow an inanimate set of abstract rules which are the product...
20110523-hutchinson-allan-is-eating-people-wrong-legal-cases-shaped-world-1-1
Gallatin - A close-up
Nicholas Dungan
I wrote this book for the reader—I wanted the reader to be able to participate in a good story, and for Albert Gallatin to come alive in the pages.But I...
20110518-dungan-nicholas-on-gallatin-america-swiss-founding-father-3
Cinema in an Age of Terror - The wide angle
Michael F. O’Riley
I became interested in this topic because of previous research I had done on postcolonial theory. The book engages deeply with postcolonial theory and the interest in that discipline in...
20110516-oriley-michael-cinema-age-terror-africa-victimization-colonial-his-2
Michael F. O’Riley
The Tibetan Book of the Dead - In a nutshell
Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Princeton University Press has started a new series entitled “Lives of Great Religious Books,” and my book is one of the three inaugural volumes.The idea behind the series is that...
20090313-donald-lopez-on-buddhism-science-guide-perplexed-1-1
Fantasies of the New Class - The wide angle
Stephen Schryer
As a Canadian who specializes in American literature, I’ve always been fascinated by the weakness of the U.S. welfare state compared to that of other first world nations. The reasons...
20110509-stephen-schryer-on-fantasies-new-class-ideologies-professionalism-2
Stephen Schryer
Money Games - In a nutshell
David M. Carter
Money Games chronicles how sports and entertainment have continued to converge throughout history. The pace at which this convergence has been happening is covered in the book’s nine chapters. My...
20110504-carter-david-money-games-profiting-convergence-sports-entertainmen-1-1
Treason on the Airwaves - In a nutshell
Judith Keene
Traitors in wartime have a long history. During World War Two, both Allied and Axis governments used enemy nationals to broadcast propaganda. When the war ended, the victors prosecuted a...
20110502-keene-judith-treason-airwaves-allied-broadcasters-axis-radio-world-1-1
Remaking the Heartland - In a nutshell
Robert Wuthnow
Remaking the Heartland examines the profound social transformation that has taken place in the middle of the United States during the past half century. This is a region known for...
20110427-wuthnow-robert-remaking-heartland-middle-america-since-1950s-1
Robert Wuthnow
Political Theology - A close-up
Paul W. Kahn
A browser, who simply starts at the beginning and reads through the initial discussion of American exceptionalism, will see how our most familiar political practices and beliefs include a distinctive...
20110425-kahn-paul-political-theology-four-new-chapters-concept-sovereignty-3
Memos from the Besieged City - The wide angle
Djelal Kadir
The migration of intellectuals and academics made refugees by the politics and wars of mid-twentieth-century Europe consolidated the emergence of comparative literature as a field in the American university system...
20110420-kadir-djelal-memos-besieged-city-lifelines-cultural-sustainabilit-2
The Devil’s Milk - The wide angle
John Tully
Our questions here are not terribly practical ones in the United States. No one really advocates for regulating art or music as such. True, Nazi Germany did suppress “degenerate” art...
20110418-john-tully-on-devil-milk-social-history-rubber-2
Sublime Dreams of Living Machines - In a nutshell
Minsoo Kang
Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is about the millennia-long fascination in the West with the self-moving machine that mimics living beings, better known today by the word “robot.”There are works...
20110413-minsoo-kang-sublime-dreams-living-machines-automaton-europe-imagin-1-1
Human Trafficking - In a nutshell
Louise Shelley
There is more than one business model of human trafficking and there are enormous variations in human trafficking in different regions of the world. This book examines all forms of...
20110411-louise-shelley-on-human-trafficking-global-perspective-1-1
Under the Hammer - The wide angle
James Simpson
Under the Hammer begins by looking outward to non-Western practice, but very quickly turns inward to my own culture.I begin with the experience of horror the world shared as the...
20110406-simpson-james-under-hammer-iconoclasm-anglo-2
The Will of the People - In a nutshell
Barry Friedman
Most people who think about it, no doubt, consider the US Supreme Court to be the protector of minority and constitutional rights against majority oppression.But is that right?In The Will...
20110404-friedman-barry-will-people-public-opinion-influence-supreme-court-1-1
Age of Fracture - A close-up
Daniel T. Rodgers
Each chapter of Age of Fracture brings its readers into a different facet of the age’s great debates.The opening chapter shows how the social vocabulary of the Cold War slipped...
20110330-daniel-rodgers-on-age-of-fracture-3
Degradation - The wide angle
Kevin W. Saunders
My interest in the concept of obscenity grew out of a law school course on the topic of the rhetoric, law and culture. One of the readings was Sophocles’ play...
20110328-saunders-kevin-on-degradation-history-obscenity-tells-hate-speech-2
Timepass - In a nutshell
Craig Jeffrey
My book, Timepass, examines the lives of middle class young men in India who have spent long periods in education but cannot find secure salaried work.Joblessness growth is a major...
20110323-jeffrey-craig-on-timepass-youth-class-politics-waiting-india-1-1
Creating the Nazi Marketplace - The wide angle
S. Jonathan Wiesen
This book emerged out of a sense of uncertainty as to how to understand the years that Gertrude Stein spent in Vichy, France, from 1940 through 1944.My previous book on...
20110321-wiesen-jonathan-on-creating-nazi-marketplace-commerce-consumption-2
What Is Mental Illness? - The wide angle
Richard J. McNally
Today’s approach to conceptualizing mental illness, embodied in DSM-IV, is subject to intensifying criticism from multiple quarters. How did such a presumably flawed approach become so immensely influential? The answer...
20110316-mcnally-richard-on-what-is-mental-illness-2
Richard J. McNally
The Interethnic Imagination - In a nutshell
Caroline Rody
The Interethnic Imagination raises to view an important shift in the contemporary literature Americans have been reading. It claims that since the last quarter of the twentieth century, in the...
20110314-rody-caroline-interethnic-imagination-roots-contemporary-asian-ame-1-1
Once Before Time - A close-up
Martin Bojowald
This book contains a chapter on cosmology from a wide perspective. Before the scientific method was used to understand the universe, various cultures across the globe developed their own theories...
20110309-bojowald-martin-on-once-before-time-whole-story-universe-3
A Vast Machine - The wide angle
Paul N. Edwards
I went to graduate school in the 1980s, at the height of the Carter-Reagan Cold War. It was a very scary time, and not only because the risk of nuclear...
20110307-edwards-paul-on-computer-models-climate-data-politics-global-warmi-2
Living through the End of Nature - The wide angle
Paul Wapner
I discovered many interesting issues in my research into the illegal wildlife trade and will just mention three here. The German and British colonial governments in east Africa established the...
20110302-wapner-paul-on-living-end-nature-future-american-environmentalism-2
Paul Wapner
Crash - In a nutshell
Karen Beckman
Crash explores the role of the car crash in film history and contemporary art practice.I begin by recognizing that the histories of cinema and the automobile, born at the same...
20110228-beckman-karen-on-crash-cinema-politics-speed-stasis-1-1
Academically Adrift - In a nutshell
Richard Arum
This book is based on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)—a project in which my coauthor Josipa Roksa and I followed several thousand students across 24 diverse U.S. four-year colleges and...
20110223-arum-richard-academically-adrift-limited-learning-college-campuses-1-1
Nazi Empire - In a nutshell
Shelley Baranowski
As German nationalists conceived it, the German “nation” was for most of its history an empire. It was first embodied in the Holy Roman Empire; later in the “second” empire,...
20110221-baranowski-shelley-nazi-empire-german-colonialism-imperialism-bism-1-1
The Just City - The wide angle
Susan S. Fainstein
Beginning in the 1960s, scholars of urban politics have criticized urban decision makers for imposing policies that exacerbated the disadvantages suffered by low-income, female, gay, and minority residents. In particular,...
20110216-fainstein-susan-on-the-just-city-2
The Victims Return - The wide angle
Stephen F. Cohen
While I focus on individuals, The Victims Return has a wide angle or broad context.The book begins with a short overview of Stalin’s mass terror, from 1929 to 1953, and...
20090710-cohen-stephen-on-soviet-fates-lost-alternatives-new-cold-war-2
Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque - In a nutshell
Mark Driscoll
This book is the first comprehensive treatment of Japan’s imperialism that emphasizes the crucial aspects of sexuality, desire and labor beginning around 1880 and ending with the nuclear terrorism of...
20110209-driscoll-mark-on-absolute-erotic-grotesque-living-dead-japan-imper-1-1
Enduring Success - In a nutshell
Christian Stadler
In Enduring Success I address a key question in business today: How can companies succeed over time?I argue that companies are able to adapt to a constantly changing environment by...
20110207-stadler-christian-on-enduringuccess-what-learn-history-outstanding-1-1
Aversion and Erasure - In a nutshell
Carolyn J. Dean
This book is about how the idea that the Holocaust of European Jews represents the most radical evil of our time shapes discussions of victims in general.The book shows how...
20110202-dean-carolyn-on-aversion-erasure-fate-victim-after-holocaust-1-1
A Prehistory of Ordinary People - In a nutshell
Monica L. Smith
Multitasking isn’t something new to the twenty-first century: our species was designed for it! On the cognitive, linguistic, and social level, humans are highly adapted to doing and thinking about...
20110131-smith-monica-on-prehistory-ordinary-people-1-1
Monica L. Smith
Woman Lawyer - The wide angle
Barbara Babcock
Clara Foltz was a leader of two great movements: for women’s rights and for public defense. The book conceptualizes these two as connected in her person as well as in...
20110126-babcock-barbara-on-woman-lawyer-trials-clara-foltz-2
East Asia Before the West - In a nutshell
David C. Kang
My book set out to answer one general and seemingly simple question: How did international relations function in East Asia from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth, before the arrival...
20110124-kang-david-east-asia-before-west-five-centuries-trade-tribute-1-1
The Food Axis - The wide angle
Elizabeth Collins Cromley
Although my training in architectural history was very traditional—I studied the history of architects, their patrons, and buildings produced with high budgets and aesthetic ambitions—I became interested in how people...
20110119-cromley-elizabeth-on-food-axis-cooking-eating-architecture-houses-2
Heaven’s Bride - The wide angle
Leigh Eric Schmidt
The retrieval of Craddock’s life from the vaults of vice suppression offers an entryway into major religious, cultural, and political issues of her day—and, often enough, of our own as...
20110117-schmidt-leigh-on-unprintable-ida-craddock-mystic-scholar-sexologis-2
The Insurgent Barricade - In a nutshell
Mark Traugott
Although it was only in the course of the nineteenth century that the barricade emerged as the preeminent symbol of the modern revolutionary tradition, its origins can be traced as...
20110112-traugott-mark-on-the-insurgent-barricade-1
Mark Traugott
Animal Ethics in Context - The wide angle
Clare Palmer
Animal Ethics in Context attempts to offer something both to theoretical debates in animal ethics and to more practical concerns about animal treatment.Theoretically, animal ethicists have focused on the importance...
20110110-palmer-clare-on-animal-ethics-in-context-2
Song of Wrath - The wide angle
J. E. Lendon
It was as a child living in Japan that I first began to wonder about the connection between culture and foreign affairs. In the 70s and 80s China kept exploding...
20110105-lendon-john-on-song-wrath-peloponnesian-war-begins-2
Beauty Imagined - In a nutshell
Geoffrey Jones
This book tells the story of how a small, often morally dubious, craft industry in the nineteenth century grew to be the $330 billion global powerhouse.There are many books written...
20110103-jones-geoffrey-on-beauty-imagined-history-global-beauty-industry-1-1
The Performance of Politics - The wide angle
Jeffrey C. Alexander
We need to move away from a mechanistic, materialist, interest-based view of political struggles. Every class, every ethnicity, every gender—and every political campaign—has a fair amount of free space to...
20101229-jeffrey-alexander-on-performance-politics-obama-victory-democratic-2
Weyward Macbeth - The wide angle
Ayanna Thompson
Unsilencing belongs to the global conversation about how societies remember—or refuse to remember—state violence. It speaks to the legacy of the gulag but also to the aftermath of authoritarianism everywhere,...
20101227-scott-newstok-ayanna-thompson-on-weyward-macbeth-race-performance-2
Beauty or Beast? In a nutshell
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
This book examines the huge number of artistic representations of women warriors that exist in German from the Renaissance to the present—on the stage, in the opera house, on the...
20101222-helen-watanabe-okelly-on-beauty-beast-woman-warrior-german-imagina-1
Constitutional Theocracy - In a nutshell
Ran Hirschl
Religion and the belief in God have made a major comeback. From the fundamentalist turn in predominantly Islamic polities to the spread of Catholicism and Pentecostalism in the global south,...
20101220-ran-hirschl-on-constitutional-theocracy-1-1
The Skull Collectors - The wide angle
Ann Fabian
When I began working on The Skull Collectors, human remains seemed to be causing trouble everywhere. In the 1990s, new states in Eastern Europe unburied and sorted out the Soviet...
20101215-ann-fabian-on-skull-collectors-race-science-america-unburied-dead-2
Heroes of Empire - In a nutshell
Edward Berenson
Heroes of Empire tells the story of five colonial figures, two British and three French, who made imperial conquest exciting, even exhilarating, for millions of ordinary citizens.Most British and French...
20101213-edward-berenson-heroes-empire-five-charismatic-men-conquest-africa-1-1
Death of a Pirate - The wide angle
Adrian Johns
Death of a Pirate tells a story about the politics of media from the 1920s to the present.Broadcasting was something radically new when it arrived after World War I, and...
20100510-johns-adrian-on-piracy-intellectual-property-wars-gutenberg-gates-2
Conservatism and Racism and Why in America They Are the Same - The wide angle
Robert C. Smith
This is first a book about ideas and how they can have consequences in politics, if they are linked to powerful, well-financed movements.I excavate the ideas on race of the...
20101206-smith-robert-on-conservatism-racism-why-america-they-are-same-2
Robert C. Smith
The Third City - The wide angle
Larry Bennett
I have lived in, observed, and written about Chicago for approximately 30 years.My academic home is the Political Science Department at DePaul University. I earned my Ph.D. in Urban Planning...
20101201-bennett-larry-on-third-city-chicago-american-urbanism-2
Bloodlands - In a nutshell
Timothy Snyder
Between 1933 and 1945, when both Hitler and Stalin were in power, their two regimes murdered some fourteen million people in the lands between Berlin and Moscow, which I call...
20101129-snyder-timothy-on-bloodlands-europe-between-hitler-stalin-1-1
Timothy Snyder
Primitive Selves - In a nutshell
E. Taylor Atkins
Primitive Selves offers a different take on the history of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. Whereas most studies focus on specific policies—such as economic exploitation, compulsory education, assimilation directives, military...
20101124-atkins-taylor-on-primitive-selves-koreana-japanese-colonial-gaze-1-1
Manhood Factories - The wide angle
Paula Lupkin
The American Young Men’s Christian Association, which began as a Protestant evangelical voluntary association in the 1850s, built hundreds of buildings in the years between the Civil War and the...
20101122-lupkin-paula-on-manhood-factories-ymca-architecture-modern-urban-2
Paula Lupkin
Cultivating Conscience - In a nutshell
Lynn Stout
This book deals with a basic question: What’s the best way to get people to behave themselves?Modern legal, policy, and management experts often assume human beings are selfish creatures who...
20101117-stout-lynn-on-cultivating-conscience-how-good-law-make-good-people-1
The Civil War of 1812 - In a nutshell
Alan Taylor
This book examines the War of 1812 between the American republic, the British empire, and their Indian allies.Most of the fighting took place in the hotly contested region between Montreal,...
20101115-taylor-alan-on-war-1812-american-citizen-british-subject-irish-reb-1
In Praise of Copying - In a nutshell
Marcus Boon
What you’re reading right now is a copy. I’m using only words taken and recycled from other places.You probably do it too. Even the questions you’re asking are copies, repetitions.You...
20101110-boon-marcus-on-in-praise-of-copying-1-1
The Apartment Plot - The wide angle
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
On the one hand, this book addresses the well-known literature on Orientalism, and argues that singing Turks were not understood as simply exotic “others” on the European stage. On the...
20101108-wojcik-pamela-on-apartment-plot-urban-living-americ-film-1945-1975-2
Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Stalin’s Genocides - In a nutshell
Norman M. Naimark
The book—really an extended essay—argues that Stalin’s mass killings in the 1930s should be classified as “genocide.”The book suggests that the definition of genocide, as taken from the work of...
20101103-naimark-norman-on-stalin-genocides-1-1
Norman M. Naimark
No Right Turn - The wide angle
David T. Courtwright
When American historical writing entered its Humpty Dumpty phase, sometime around 1970, political and social history flew off in separate directions. In No Right Turn I bring them back together....
20101101-courtwright-david-on-no-right-turn-conservativ-politics-liberal-am-2
The Puzzle of Modern Economics - In a nutshell
Roger E. Backhouse
Is economics the key to everything or do we need to look for completely new ways of explaining what is going on in the world?By “economics” I mean the discipline...
20101027-backhouse-roger-on-puzzle-modern-economics-science-ideology-1-1
The Last Utopia - The wide angle
Samuel Moyn
I originally got started on this topic as a young idealist then as a neophyte teacher. While in law school, I interned in the United States government, out of the...
20101025-moyn-samuel-on-the-last-utopia-human-rights-in-history-2
Samuel Moyn
Mao’s Great Famine - In a nutshell
Frank Dikötter
My goal was to write a detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history that is much speculated about, but has never before been fully documented.Between 1958 and 1962, Mao...
20090605-dikotter-frank-age-of-openness-china-before-mao-1-1
Transatlantic Fascism - The wide angle
Federico Finchelstein
Fascism was a cross-regional civic religion in its most extreme form. In certain Catholic countries fascism reoccupied places previously held by institutional religion but also let itself be invested by...
20101018-federico-finchelstein-transatlantic-fascism-ideolog-argentin-italy-2
Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan - In a nutshell
George R. Packard
This is a book about one American’s lifelong mission to explain the real Japan to the rest of the world. Edwin O. Reischauer, born in Japan in 1910 to Presbyterian...
20101013-george-packard-on-edwin-o-reischauer-american-discovery-japan-1-1
Crisis on Campus - The wide angle
Mark C. Taylor
The book started as an attempt on my part to combine my interests in modern American and European history. I was trained in both fields but didn’t want to write...
20091030-mark-taylor-on-field-notes-from-elsewhere-reflections-dying-living-2
Icons of Life - The wide angle
Lynn M. Morgan
It was a beautiful day in June on the campus of Mount Holyoke College. I had planned to go strawberry picking, but I found myself instead in the basement of...
20101006-morgan-lynn-on-icons-of-life-cultural-history-human-embryos-2
Why Nations Fight - A close-up
Richard Ned Lebow
The Iraq invasion of 2003 was justified by the Bush administration on the grounds of national security. But all of the principal advisors of the administration of president George W....
20100407-lebow-richard-on-forbidden-fruit-counterfactuals-intl-relations-3
Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism - The wide angle
John Calvert
All too often scholars understand Islamism as a channel for material discontent, or else in terms of rational choice theory, which holds that most, if not all, forms of human...
20100927-john-calvert-on-sayyid-qutb-origins-radical-islamism-2
Innocent Until Interrogated - In a nutshell
Gary Stuart
My book is a stark but comprehensive look at what really happened following the discovery of two seemingly unrelated cases of murder near Phoenix, Arizona, in 1991.The first case involved...
20100920-gary-stuart-innocent-interrogated-buddhist-temple-tuscon-massacre-1
Fashioning Faces - In a nutshell
Elizabeth A. Fay
Fashioning Faces, a cross-disciplinary study, looks at how literary and visual portraiture in the British Romantic era embodied a newly commercial culture.I consider the Romantic era as a transitional period...
20100913-fay-elizabeth-fashioning-faces-portraitive-mode-british-romanticis-1-1
A Global Green New Deal - In a nutshell
Edward B. Barbier
They both indicate that the current economic recovery from the global recession is inherently unsustainable.In 2008, the world was confronted with multiple crises—fuel, food and financial—and by December the result...
20100906-edward-barbier-global-green-new-deal-rethinking-economic-recovery-1-1
American Homicide - In a nutshell
Randolph Roth
No matter where Americans live, their risk of being murdered is higher than it is in any other first-world democracy.From 1965 to 1992, the homicide rate in the United States...
20100830-roth-randolph-on-american-homicide-1-1
Randolph Roth
Consequential Strangers - The wide angle
Melinda Blau
Throughout my career, I wrote books and articles about intimate relationships. When I made a move from New York City to Northampton, Massachusetts in 1990, I left all my everyday...
20100823-blau-melinda-on-consequential-strangers-turn-everyday-connections-2
The Idea of Galicia - A close-up
Larry Wolff
A fascinating cast of characters populate the pages of the book—individuals who contributed to shaping the idea of Galicia over the course of two centuries.I write about Habsburg emperors like...
20100816-wolff-larry-idea-galicia-history-fantasy-habsburg-politic-culture-3
Jazz Icons - The wide angle
Tony Whyton
I came to this subject through an earlier project concerning business complicity under National Socialism.Companies such as Siemens (electronics), Krupp (steel), and the automotive firms BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler Benz,...
20100809-whyton-tony-on-jazz-icons-heroes-myths-jazz-tradition-2
Tony Whyton
Violence Taking Place - In a nutshell
Andrew Herscher
What if the destruction of architecture was understood to be just as complicated, just as culturally resonant, and just as open to interpretation as architecture itself—or, indeed, as any other...
20100802-herscher-andrew-violence-taking-place-architecture-kosovo-conflict-1-1
Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights - The wide angle
Roland Burke
This book originated in the search for the origins of contemporary skepticism on the universality of human rights—a skepticism exemplified by the 1990s controversy on “Asian Values,” and more recent...
20100726-burke-roland-on-decolonization-evolution-international-human-right-2
Supernormal Stimuli - A close-up
Deirdre Barrett
Most people don’t try to parse cuteness. Like pornography, we know it when we see it. With a bit of examination, however, cuteness has easily quantifiable aesthetics. Take a moment...
20100719-barrett-deirdre-on-supernormal-stimuli-primal-urges-evolutionary-3
Civitas by Design - In a nutshell
Howard Gillette Jr.
For more than a century city planners have aspired not only to improve the physical living conditions of urban residents but to strengthen civic ties through better design of built...
20100712-gillette-howard-civitas-by-design-build-communities-new-urbanism-1-1
Inventing the Israelite - The wide angle
Maurice Samuels
Nineteenth-century French Jews have often received bad press. Denounced by antisemites at the time as the new feudal lords of capitalism, they were also seen as nefarious agents of communist...
20100705-samuels-maurice-on-invent-israelit-jewish-fiction-19century-france-2
Maurice Samuels
Animal Characters - The wide angle
Bruce Thomas Boehrer
The treatment of beasts in Renaissance literature tells us something about their evolving place in European culture more generally. It also tells us how early modern society understood the difference...
20100628-boehrer-bruce-on-animal-character-nonhuman-being-modern-literature-2
Great Books, Bad Arguments - In a nutshell
W. G. (Garry) Runciman
Great Books, Bad Arguments looks at three of the most famous texts in Western political thought and asks whether the proposals advanced by Plato, Hobbes, and Marx for the avoidance...
20100621-runciman-garry-on-bad-arguments-republic-leviathan-communist-manif-1-1
W. G. (Garry) Runciman
Capitalism and the Jews - A close-up
Jerry Z. Muller
The book’s introduction is titled “Thinking about Jews and Capitalism.”Capitalism has been the most important force in shaping the fate of the Jews in the modern world. Of course, one...
20100614-muller-jerry-on-capitalism-and-the-jews-3
Wounded Knee - The wide angle
Heather Cox Richardson
Since the 1970s, there has been a tendency in America to see inequalities in society solely through the lens of race. Our understanding of the Wounded Knee massacre has reflected...
20100607-richardson-heather-on-wounded-knee-party-politic-american-massacre-2
Pen of Iron - In a nutshell
Robert Alter
Pen of Iron traces the varying ways in which the language of the King James Version became an enriching element in the prose style of a line of American novelists...
20100531-alter-robert-on-pen-of-iron-american-prose-king-james-bible-1-1
The Speed Handbook - The wide angle
Enda Duffy
In a 1931 essay, Aldous Huxley asked a brilliant question: “Has modernity, with all its stress on progress, on inventiveness and on the new, actually give humankind any truly new...
20100524-duffy-enda-on-speed-handbook-velocity-pleasure-modernism-2
Children’s Literature - In a nutshell
Seth Lerer
My book is about the making of the literate imagination in the history of children’s literature. More than just a survey of books and authors, Children’s Literature is a critical...
20100517-lerer-seth-children-literature-reader-history-aesop-harry-potter-1-1
Piracy - The wide angle
Adrian Johns
Piracy today is often presented as the definitive transgression of the information age. There are pirate movies and pirate music, obviously, but there are also pirate pharmaceuticals and seeds, pirate...
20101208-johns-adrian-on-death-pirate-british-radio-making-information-age-2
King of the Lobby - The wide angle
Kathryn Allamong Jacob
Lamentations that special interests, spending obscene amounts of money, strangle the voice of “the people”? More lobbyists than Corinthian columns in the halls of Congress? These sound familiar today in...
20100507-kathryn-allamong-jacob-on-king-lobby-life-sam-ward-washington-gild-2
Drawing on Art - A close-up
Dalia Judovitz
The idea that the meaning of art may not be exhausted by its visual manifestations and the desire to look is examined as a response to the pressures of commodification...
20100505-dalia-judovitz-on-drawing-on-art-duchamp-company-3
Morality's Muddy Waters - The wide angle
George Cotkin
As an historian, everything I do is anchored in a concern with the past presented in what I hope is a lively narrative. In walking along that path in this...
20100503-cotkin-george-on-morality-muddy-water-ethical-quandar-modern-ameri-2
The Ecological Thought - In a nutshell
Timothy Morton
All life forms are interconnected. We share our DNA with chimps (98%) but also with daffodils (35%). We drive cars that burn crushed dinosaurs. The oxygen we breathe is the...
20100430-morton-timothy-on-the-ecological-thought-1-1
Timothy Morton
Empire for Liberty - In a nutshell
Richard H. Immerman
Empire for Liberty tells a story the broad outline of which will be familiar to many readers: the growth of the American empire from its inception to the present. But...
20100428-immerman-richard-empire-liberty-benjamin-franklin-paul-wolfowitz-1-1
Made in America - In a nutshell
Claude S. Fischer
Made in America asks whether, how, and in what ways Americans of today are culturally and psychologically different from Americans of the past.The book reaches back to the nation’s colonial...
20100426-fischer-claude-on-made-in-america-social-history-culture-character-1-1
The Thirty Years War - A close-up
Peter W. Wilson
When browsing in a shop or library, my grandfather would always turn to the last few pages of a book. If he liked the end, then it was worth a...
20100423-wilson-peter-on-europe-tragedy-history-thirty-years-war-3
Peter W. Wilson
Calvin - The wide angle
Bruce Gordon
The biography seeks to capture the dynamic nature of Calvin’s character; to illuminate how heady interaction with influential friends and enemies, unexpected events, and spiritual and intellectual growth shaped the...
20100421-gordon-bruce-on-calvin-2
The Art and Craft of International Environmental Law - A close-up
Daniel Bodansky
My favorite chapter concerns the nature of international environmental norms. This may sound like an abstruse topic, but international environmental norms are closer to home than most people realize. In...
20100419-bodansky-daniel-art-craft-international-environmental-law-3
Fractured Rebellion - The wide angle
Andrew G. Walder
Venice in the 1610s and 1620s was the first European state to undertake systematic surveillance of private individuals, and to entrust the supervision of such surveillance to a permanent committee,...
20100416-walder-andrew-fractured-rebellion-beijing-red-guard-movement-2
Relationscapes - In a nutshell
Erin Manning
Relationscapes attempts to develop a theory of the incipiency of movement. Initially, my main concern was to continue a line of questioning developed in my previous book, Politics of Touch,...
20100414-manning-erin-relationscapes-movement-arts-philosophy-1-1
On the Trail of the D.C. Sniper - The wide angle
Jack R. Censer
I was drawn to a new topic—I am an historian of the press of eighteenth-century and revolutionary France.But I can trace my interest in contemporary media to my belief that...
20100412-censer-jack-on-the-trail-of-the-dc-sniper-fear-media-2
A Brave Vessel - In a nutshell
Hobson Woodward
A Brave Vessel is a story of two Williams: William Strachey, a poet and would-be chronicler of the New World in 1609 London; and William Shakespeare, a playwright of uncommon...
20100409-woodward-hobson-brave-vessel-castaways-jamestown-shakespeare-1
Forbidden Fruit - In a nutshell
Richard Ned Lebow
Counterfactuals are “what-ifs.” They change a feature of the past in the expectation of changing the present. The antecedent (the change introduced in the past) is connected to the consequent...
20101004-lebow-richard-ned-on-why-nations-fight-past-future-motives-war-1-1
The Disappearance of Objects - In a nutshell
Joshua Shannon
New York’s artists around 1960 were living in the shadows of the city’s deindustrialization—moving among demolition sites, abandoned factories, and decrepit hardware stores, while all around them new highways, sleek...
20100405-shannon-joshua-on-disappear-objects-new-york-art-postmodern-city-1-1
Culinary Nostalgia - In a nutshell
Mark Swislocki
Culinary Nostalgia focuses on Shanghai and identifies the importance of regional food culture at pivotal moments in the city’s history. Taking foodways as a window onto urban change, the book...
20100402-swislocki-mark-on-culinary-nostalgia-regional-food-shanghai-urban-1
Europe’s Promise - In a nutshell
Steven Hill
While Europe is considered the “old world,” it is the United States that is actually far older. The European Union in its current configuration of 27 member states and 500...
20100331-hill-steven-europe-promise-why-european-way-is-hope-insecure-age-1-1
The Essential Engineer - In a nutshell
Henry Petroski
The Essential Engineer is about the similarities and differences between scientists and engineers, and between science and engineering, and how they relate to contemporary technological issues. The book provides historical...
20090102-henry-petroski-toothpick-technology-culture-1-1
Italy in Early American Cinema - In a nutshell
Giorgio Bertellini
Italy in Early American Cinema traces the formal and ideological history of an aesthetic tradition, the Picturesque, from its original association with Italian landscapes to its deployment in early American...
20100324-bertellini-giorgio-italy-american-cinema-race-landscape-picturesqu-1-1
America's Army - In a nutshell
Beth Bailey
America’s Army is military history of a different kind: it uses the story of the making of the all-volunteer army as a window into the history of American society over...
20100319-bailey-beth-on-america-army-making-all-volunteer-force-1-1
Helen of Troy - The wide angle
Laurie Maguire
This book took me many years to write—longer than the Trojan War itself took. At Oxford University, where I teach, students study every period of English Literature from 800 CE...
20100317-maguire-laurie-on-helen-of-troy-from-homer-to-hollywood-2
Mark Twain’s Other Woman - In a nutshell
Laura Skandera Trombley
An enduring mystery in Mark Twain’s life concerns the events of his last decade, 1900 to 1910.Despite a multitude of published biographies, no one has determined exactly what took place...
20100315-trombley-laura-on-mark-twain-other-woman-hidden-story-final-years-1
Lost to the Collective - In a nutshell
Kenneth M. Pinnow
Lost to the Collective is an exploration into both the history of suicide and the elusive promises of Soviet socialism and the modern social sciences.Suicide unsettled the Soviets because it...
20100312-pinnow-kenneth-on-lost-collective-suicide-promise-soviet-socialism-1-1
American Modernism and Depression Documentary - In a nutshell
Jeff Allred
When you hear the words “Great Depression,” certain images pop up: a mother hugging her child on a windswept plain, a hand clutching a tin plate, unemployed men standing in...
20100310-allred-jeff-on-american-modernism-depression-documentary-1-1
The Urban Spectator - In a nutshell
Eric Gordon
In The Urban Spectator, I look at how practices of media spectatorship, from the handheld camera to radio and television and the digital computer, have influenced the way Americans have...
20100308-gordon-eric-on-urban-spectator-american-concept-cities-kodak-googl-1-1
The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair - In a nutshell
Moshik Temkin
My book, as is probably obvious from its title, is a history of the Sacco-Vanzetti affair, which began in 1920 as a local criminal case in which two Italian-born resident...
20100305-temkin-moshik-on-sacco-vanzetti-affair-america-on-trial-1
Moshik Temkin
Monument Wars - The wide angle
Kirk Savage
Washington, D.C. may be the most studied national capital in the world. There are dozens of guidebooks to Washington’s monuments and countless specialized studies of individual projects, landscape plans, and...
20100303-savage-kirk-on-monument-wars-washington-dc-national-mall-memorial-2
Angel of Vengeance - In a nutshell
Ana Siljak
In the simplest terms, this book is about Russia’s first female terrorist. On January 24, 1878, a young woman named Vera Zasulich posed as an ordinary petitioner to gain admission...
20100301-siljak-ana-angel-vengeance-girl-shot-governor-petersburg-age-assas-1-1
The Conservatives - In a nutshell
Patrick Allitt
“Conservative” means different things in different times and places. This book describes and explains the different types of conservatism in American history, from the Constitution to the end of the...
20100226-allitt-patrick-conservatives-ideas-personalities-american-history-1-1
1989 - In a nutshell
Joshua Clover
The book is about the experience of the historical moment called “1989,” lasting somewhere between an instant and a few years. More specifically, it’s about a set of feelings, intuitions,...
20100224-clover-joshua-on-1989-bob-dylan-did-not-have-this-to-sing-about-1-1
Clash of Extremes - In a nutshell
Marc Egnal
Clash of Extremes presents a new interpretation of the causes of the Civil War. If the prevailing explanation can be summarized in one word, “slavery,” the argument in my book...
20100222-egnal-marc-clash-extremes-economic-origins-civil-war-1-1
Le Corbusier and the Occult - The wide angle
Jan Kenneth Birksted
I have had some enraged responses from knee-jerk modernists. Their reaction relates to the actual ideas that this book is about, which is that in order to understand Jeanneret we...
20100219-birksted-jan-on-le-corbusier-occult-2
Political Affect - In a nutshell
John Protevi
In Political Affect I address human nature as bio-cultural. Each one of us is a “body politic” that connects the social and the somatic. I avoid the extremes of social...
20100217-protevi-john-on-political-affect-connecting-social-somatic-1-1
Investing in Protection - In a nutshell
Mark S. Manger
One of the most notable developments in international trade after the end of the Cold War has been the explosion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In 1990, there were about...
20100215-mark-manger-on-investing-protection-preferential-trade-agreements-1-1
Performing South Africa's Truth Commission - In a nutshell
Catherine M. Cole
Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission is about the messy, uncertain process of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, and the quasi-judicial ritual that South Africa used to help accomplish such...
20100212-cole-catherine-performing-south-africa-truth-commision-1-1
The Tyranny of Opinion - In a nutshell
Pablo Piccato
Mexico emerged as a modern nation in the 1860s, after half a century of civil war, foreign invasion and political instability. In a new nation divided by ethnicity, class, religion...
20100210-pablo-piccato-on-tyranny-opinion-honor-construction-mexican-public-1-1
Pablo Piccato
What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President? In a nutshell
Kevin Mattson
I want a reader to enter a truly bizarre world: America in 1979. It was a period of disco and disco demolition, cocaine and divorce, an Iranian revolution and oil...
20100208-kevin-mattson-on-jimmy-carter-malaise-speech-change-america-1-1
Coyote at the Kitchen Door - The wide angle
Stephen DeStefano
In much of the world, cities are expanding and growing to astronomical sizes. Along with the growth of cities comes the spread of suburbs. Suburban areas now dominate the perimeter...
20100205-stephen-destefano-on-coyote-kitchen-door-wildlife-suburbia-2
Pistols! Treason! Murder! The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy - In a nutshell
Jonathan Walker
Pistols! Treason! Murder! describes the short, disturbing and unprecedented career of a Venetian spy, Gerolamo Vano, who was executed for perjury in 1622.In the years immediately preceding his death, Vano...
20100203-jonathan-walker-on-pistols-treason-murder-rise-fall-master-spy-1
Animals as Persons - The wide angle
Gary L. Francione
Animals as Persons can be understood as a reaction to and rejection of the paradigm of animal welfare that has dominated our thinking about the moral status of nonhuman animals...
20100201-gary-francione-on-animals-as-persons-abolition-animal-exploitation-2
Macaulay - In a nutshell
Robert E. Sullivan
Macaulay: The Tragedy of Power is a cultural biography of Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). The eclipse of his reputation may suggest that there’s nothing deader than a dead empire....
20100129-sullivan-robert-macaulay-tragedy-power-1
Robert E. Sullivan
The Language of the Heart - The wide angle
Trysh Travis
Mark Twain biography remains rooted in an outworn tradition that too often rewards pedantry and tortured prose. In the beginning, Twain biography featured politically savvy scholars who avoided controversial topics...
20100127-travis-trysh-language-heart-cultural-history-recovery-movement-2
Trysh Travis
Birthright - In a nutshell
Roger Ekirch
Birthright sets out to recount, for the first time, the real-life saga of James Annesley, which not only captivated eighteenth-century Britain but inspired five novels, most famously Robert Louis Stevenson’s...
20100125-roger-ekirch-birthright-true-story-inspired-kidnapped-1-1
Lenin's Brother - The wide angle
Philip Pomper
Lenin’s Brother follows my earlier work on Lavrov, Nechaev, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. The book allowed me to revisit Lenin’s entry into the revolutionary movement—a fateful moment. Most historians agree...
20100122-philip-pomper-lenin-brother-origins-october-revolution-2
Philip Pomper
Animal Lessons - The wide angle
Kelly Oliver
Animal Lessons engages with, yet radically departs from, discussions of animal rights and animal welfare that dominate philosophical conversations about animals. I move away from the framework of animal rights...
20100119-oliver-kelly-on-animal-lessons-how-they-teach-us-be-human-2
Everything but the Coffee - In a nutshell
Bryant Simon
Obviously, this isn’t the first book about Starbucks. But Everything but the Coffee is first to examine the company’s rise and fall and look ahead to its uncertain future in...
20100118-bryant-simon-on-everything-but-coffee-learning-america-starbucks-1-1
Transforming Toxic Leaders - The wide angle
Alan Goldman
I argue that a single-minded concentration on positive leadership alone is one-sided, skewed, and unable to address the psychology of high-level leaders and extremely complex organizational systems. A failure in...
20100115-alan-goldman-on-transforming-toxic-leaders-2
Aging by the Book - The wide angle
Kay Heath
I became interested in writing about age as a “non-traditional” graduate student in my early forties. Not just self-conscious about being older than my classmates, I also couldn’t help but...
20100113-kay-heath-on-aging-by-book-emergence-midlife-victorian-britain-2
The Arts and the Definition of the Human - In a nutshell
Joseph Margolis
I show how looking at paintings and reading literature depend on how sensory perception and understanding are formed and transformed by the way in which we ourselves are first formed,...
20100111-joseph-margolis-on-arts-definition-human-philosophical-anthropolog-1-1
Youth in a Suspect Society - In a nutshell
Henry A. Giroux
In many ways, Youth in a Suspect Society is motivated by a sense of outrage and a sense of hope.While youth have always represented an ambiguous category, they have within...
20100108-giroux-henry-on-youth-suspect-society-democracy-disposability-1-1
The Relentless Revolution - A close-up
Joyce Appleby
I’d like my fresh reader to read the introduction carefully because it lays out my argument and makes the assertions that the text must back up. Many believe that capitalism...
20100106-appleby-joyce-on-relentless-revolution-history-capitalism-3
Chicago 1890 - The wide angle
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Although I was trained as a professional architect, I am principally an architectural historian, drawn especially to the social and political context of architecture and urbanism in nineteenth and early...
20100104-merwood-salisbury-joanna-on-chicago-1890-skyscraper-modern-city-2
How Wars End - The wide angle
Dan Reiter
I started thinking about this book in the early 2000s. On the policy side, in 2002 the George W. Bush administration announced the National Security Strategy, sometimes called the Bush...
20100104-reiter-dan-on-how-wars-end-2
Socrates in the Boardroom - In a nutshell
Amanda Goodall
Socrates in the Boardroom argues that it is experts, not managers that make the better leaders. This is a message that, recently, has been almost unfashionable. I go a step...
20091230-goodall-amanda-socrates-boardroom-research-universities-lead-1-1
The Theater of Truth - In a nutshell
William Egginton
The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)baroque Aesthetics argues that seventeenth-century baroque and twentieth-century neobaroque aesthetics have to be understood as part of the same complex.Rather than a return...
20110711-william-egginton-on-in-defense-of-religious-moderation-1-1
Shoot an Iraqi - A close-up
Wafaa Bilal
Here in the U.S. we read and watch the news of countless deaths in Iraq and other war-torn countries around the world. We briefly take note of the incidents, sometimes...
20091225-bilal-wafaa-on-shoot-an-iraqi-art-life-resistance-under-gun-lyders-3
Knut Hamsun - In a nutshell
Monika Zagar
Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance explains how and why the extraordinary Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun supported, enthusiastically and to the bitter end, the German occupation of Norway...
20091223-zagar-monika-on-knut-hamsun-dark-side-literary-brilliance-1
Monika Zagar
The History of Islam in German Thought - The wide angle
Ian Almond
My book takes issue with a number of positions, the first of which being that a complete and coherent history of European thought can be written without reference to non-Europe....
20090428-almond-ian-two-faiths-one-banner-muslims-christians-europe-2
True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China - The wide angle
Robert E. Hegel
The history of China’s interactions with Western cultures is fraught with misunderstandings, especially on the part of the West. Based on information supplied by pioneering Jesuit missionaries in China at...
20091218-hegel-robert-on-true-crimes-18th-century-china-case-histories-2
Naked City - The wide angle
Sharon Zukin
20091216-zukin-sharon-on-naked-city-death-life-authentic-urban-places-2
Sharon Zukin
Radical, Religious, and Violent - The wide angle
Eli Berman
My book offers a fresh way of understanding insurgency and terrorism. I outline a constructive approach to confronting localized insurgencies like those in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the international terrorism...
20091214-berman-eli-on-radical-religious-violent-new-economics-of-terrorism-2
The Tactile Eye - In a nutshell
Jennifer M. Barker
In Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep (2006), Gael García Bernal plays a frustrated artist with a penchant for quirky handmade objects and stop-motion animation who falls in love with...
20091211-barker-jennifer-on-tactile-eye-touch-cinematic-experience-1-1
Household Gods - In a nutshell
Deborah Cohen
Household Gods is a history of the British love-affair with the domestic interior from the age of mass manufacture to modernism. In no other country was domesticity so celebrated and...
20091209-cohen-deborah-on-household-gods-british-possessions-1-1
On Civic Friendship - In a nutshell
Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach
Historically speaking, theorizing the nature of the political state from a feminist point of view is in its earliest stages. So my book offers a novel feminist account of the...
20091207-schwarzenbach-sibyl-on-civic-friendship-including-women-state-1-1
At Home in the Law - In a nutshell
Jeannie Suk
At Home in the Law argues that the past 40 years have witnessed important transformations in the legal idea of what the home is. For centuries the familiar adage, a...
20091204-suk-jeannie-on-at-home-law-domestic-violence-revolution-transform-1
The Frankfurt School in Exile - The wide angle
Thomas Wheatland
Picturing American Modernity is concerned with understanding how new (and old) forms of mass entertainment such as moving pictures, world’s fairs and expositions, electric light displays, live reenactments such as...
20091202-wheatland-thomas-on-the-frankfurt-school-in-exile-2
Thomas Wheatland
Theology of Money - In a nutshell
Philip Goodchild
While the paradigm frequently offered for understanding our society is freedom of the market, the reality of most people’s experience of economic life is one of constraint. Why is this?It...
20091130-goodchiled-philip-on-theology-of-money-1-1
The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies - In a nutshell
Toby Talbot
This memoir is an inside account of the New Yorker Theater that my husband Dan and I opened on March 17, 1960. An Art Deco relief of Diana the Huntress...
20091127-talbot-toby-new-yorker-theater-other-scenes-life-movies-1
Toby Talbot
Others in Mind - A close-up
Philippe Rochat
I hold that to be ignored and rejected by others means psychological death. Around page 225 in the book, I illustrate this idea by what I understand to be the...
20091125-philippe-rochat-on-others-mind-social-origins-self-3
Philippe Rochat
Living Weapons - The wide angle
Gregory D. Koblentz
Biological weapons are the least well understood of the so-called weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs. Despite the growing awareness of the threat posed by biological weapons, the history of...
20091123-koblentz-gregory-on-living-weapons-biological-warfare-security-2
The Merchant Houses of Mocha - In a nutshell
Nancy Um
Most people associate the word mocha with coffee. For some it may be a type of coffee bean with a rich deep taste, usually from Yemen or the Horn of...
20091120-um-nancy-merchant-houses-mocha-trade-architecture-indian-ocean-1
Nancy Um
Accident Prone - In a nutshell
John C. Burnham
Everybody knows the idea, now usually humorous, that some people have more accidents than other people. Accident proneness was once a technical term, used to separate some people, identified as...
20091118-burnham-john-accident-prone-history-technology-psychology-misfits-1-1
Science in Environmental Policymaking - In a nutshell
Ann Campbell Keller
In this book, I examine the awkward position that scientists find themselves in when they enter environmental policy debates. In such debates experts try to square their appeal as objective,...
20091116-keller-ann-on-science-environmental-policymaking-politics-advice-1-1
The Disordered Police State - In a nutshell
Andre Wakefield
The narcissistic present forever seeks itself in the past. Though the living try to winnow meaning from the chaos of history, they often discover only themselves among the dead generations....
20091113-wakefield-andre-on-the-disordered-police-state-german-cameralism-1
Thinking in Place - The wide angle
Carol Becker
The book really does reflect my years of thinking and training as an intellectual—as a public intellectual. Each of the essays evolved in response to a place and then to...
20091111-becker-carol-on-thinking-in-place-art-action-cultural-production-2
The Creation and Destruction of Value - The wide angle
Harold James
Ten years ago, I began writing a book on the phenomenon of globalization, in part in order to try to understand the bitter debate which pitted globalization protesters against international...
20091109-james-harold-on-creation-destruction-value-globalization-cycle-2
A Tragedy of Democracy - In a nutshell
Greg Robinson
My book offers a new look at a familiar subject, Executive Order 9066 and the removal and confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II (commonly called the...
20091106-robinson-greg-tragedy-democracy-japanese-confinement-america-1-1
To Serve God and Wal-Mart - The wide angle
Bethany Moreton
Histories of the long, prosperous liberal consensus in the middle of the twentieth century looked back to the specific experience of the industrial North. The people and institutions of the...
20091104-moreton-bethany-serve-god-wal-mart-christian-free-enterprise-2
The Perils of Global Legalism - In a nutshell
Eric A. Posner
The book criticizes an attitude I call “global legalism,” the faith or hope that international law can solve the word’s problems even though the world is a largely anarchical place,...
20091102-posner-eric-perils-global-legalism-1-1
Field Notes from Elsewhere - A close-up
Mark C. Taylor
Field Notes lends itself to browsing, starting and stopping here and there. One of the interesting things about early responses to the book is that people’s interests and concerns draw...
20101011-mark-taylor-on-crisis-campus-plan-reform-colleges-universities-3
Barbarians to Angels - The wide angle
Peter S. Wells
Ever since enrolling in a PhD-program in Economics, I have been troubled by the excessive abstraction whereby economists treat money. While past thinkers, from Aristotle and Plato to Karl Marx...
20091028-wells-peter-on-barbarians-to-angels-dark-ages-reconsidered-2
Peter S. Wells
Buying Power - A close-up
Lawrence B. Glickman
This morning, October 1, 2009, I picked up the New York Times to notice a full-page ad on the back of the news section. It was prepared and paid for...
20091026-glickman-lawrence-on-buying-power-history-consumer-activism-3
Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance - The wide angle
George Saliba
The first two chapters of the book propose a completely new reading of this period. I don’t believe that things drop from heaven. That all of a sudden one caliph...
20091023-saliba-george-on-islamic-science-making-european-renaissance-2
Follow the Money - The wide angle
Lynne A. Weikart
Just as importantly, who was responsible for those decisions? I became a fiscal analyst and eventually put those tools to work in government and then in academia...
20091021-weikart-lynne-follow-money-who-controls-new-york-city-mayors-2
Prosperity for All - In a nutshell
Matthew Hilton
At its broadest level, Prosperity for All is about the changing meaning of consumer society over the past half century. I argue that whereas access to the benefits of consumer...
20091019-hilton-matthew-prosperity-for-all-consumer-activism-globaliz-1-1
Slaves to Fashion - A close-up
Monica L. Miller
In order to illustrate the way that a black dandy can embody complex and even competing notions of blackness, meet “Dandy Jim, from Carolina,” a theatrical figure made famous by...
20091016-miller-monica-on-slaves-fashion-black-dandyism-styling-black-ident-3
Monica L. Miller
Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity - In a nutshell
William V. Harris
From the Iliad onwards, via Aristophanes and the gospel of Matthew, to Augustine and beyond, Greek and Latin texts in many genres are constellated with dream-descriptions. The best ancient minds,...
20091014-harris-william-on-dreams-experience-classical-antiquity-1-1
Boulevard of Broken Dreams - The wide angle
Josh Lerner
The financial crisis opened the door to massive public interventions in the Western economies. In many nations, governments responded to the threats of illiquidity and insolvency by making huge investments...
20091012-lerner-josh-boulevard-broken-dreams-public-venture-capital-entrepr-2
Why We Disagree About Climate Change - A close-up
Mike Hulme
Towards the end of the book I put forward four myths about climate change. I would hope people may recognise the truths about our relationship with climate change that each...
20091009-hulme-mike-disagree-climate-change-controvers-inaction-opportunity-3
Leonard Bernstein - The wide angle
Barry Seldes
My interests in cultural politics include a project I had started before the Bernstein project—a study of the joint work by the Soviet artists Vladimir Mayakovsky and El Lissitzky, their...
20091007-seldes-barry-leonard-bernstein-political-life-american-musician-2
Questioning the Veil - In a nutshell
Marnia Lazreg
This book started out as a reflection on why it is that in the past two decades a re-veiling trend has swept over the Muslim world and Muslim communities in...
20091005-lazreg-marnia-questioning-veil-open-letters-muslim-women-1-1
Dangerous Economies - The wide angle
Serena R. Zabin
We are constantly thinking about what it is that the state ought to do—what sorts of policies it should pursue. But policy implementation gives rise to another, equally important question:...
20091002-zabin-serena-dangerous-economies-status-commerce-imperial-new-york-2
Serena R. Zabin
Hip-Hop Revolution - In a nutshell
Jeffrey G. Ogbar
Hip-Hop Revolution explores the current cultural and political landscape of hip-hop by providing a broad based historical context for the art. Beginning with the emergence of popular culture in the...
20090930-ogbar-jeffrey-hip-hop-revolution-culture-politics-rap-1-1
Newlyweds on Tour - In a nutshell
Barbara Penner
Newlyweds on Tour is the first historical study to trace the origins and growth of the American honeymoon from 1820 to 1900. Rather than treating the honeymoon as a simple...
20090928-penner-barbara-newlywed-tour-honeymoon-19-century-america-1-1
Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times - A close-up
Mabel Berezin
Illiberal Politics is a serious book on a serious topic. But it is also a lively book to read.The French story, which occupies the 140-page middle section of the book,...
20090925-berezin-mabel-illiberal-politic-neoliberal-security-populism-europ-3
On the Origin of Stories - The wide angle
Brian Boyd
We love the arts but can consider them an indulgence. We need not do so. Art not only reshapes individual minds. Because art facilitates shared attention and emotional contagion, it...
20090923-boyd-brian-on-origin-of-stories-evolution-cognition-fiction-2
Sorry States - In a nutshell
Jennifer Lind
In order for countries to reconcile after terrible wars, must they apologize, pay reparations, and otherwise “come to terms with the past”?A powerful conventional wisdom, based on the postwar experiences...
20090921-lind-jennifer-on-sorry-states-apologies-international-politics-1-1
The Three Cultures - The wide angle
Jerome Kagan
The birth of this manuscript was the need for a summer writing project married to the accidental spotting of C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures near the shelf where I was...
20090918-kagan-jerome-three-cultures-natural-science-social-humanities-snow-2
Febris Erotica - In a nutshell
Valeria Sobol
This book is about the cultural connection between love and illness—a connection often referred to in the everyday use as “lovesickness” and all too often automatically assumed. As a specialist...
20090916-sobol-valeria-febris-erotica-lovesickness-russian-literary-imagina-1-1
Valeria Sobol
Mainland Passage - In a nutshell
Ramón E. Soto-Crespo
Mainland Passage is a historical and cultural study of the Puerto Rican mass migration to New York City in the 1940s and how this migration ultimately created a Puerto Rican...
20090914-soto-crespo-ramon-on-mainland-passage-cultural-anomaly-puerto-rico-1-1
Ramón E. Soto-Crespo
The Conservative Turn - The wide angle
Michael Kimmage
The Conservative Turn began, alas, as a dissertation, which is one reason why it’s based on archival research. I had entered graduate school with an interest in the Russian Revolution...
20090911-kimmage-michael-trilling-chambers-anti-communism-conservative-tur-2
Firestorm - A close-up
Stephen Prince
The chapter entitled “Ground Zero in Focus” examines several documentaries composed of candid, amateur footage shot by witnesses in Manhattan and New Jersey as the World Trade Center burned and...
20090909-prince-stephen-on-firestorm-american-film-age-terrorism-3
Stephen Prince
The Program Era - In a nutshell
Mark McGurl
As recently as the 1930s there were no creative writing programs, and now there are hundreds. My book The Program Era is a literary history of postwar America that puts...
20090907-mcgurl-mark-on-program-era-postwar-fiction-creative-writing-1-1
Muhammad is Not the Father of any of Your Men - The wide angle
David S. Powers
Professional path I began the study of Arabic during my senior year at Yale. After receiving my B.A., I spent two years (1973-75) at the Hebrew University in the Department...
20090904-powers-david-muhammad-not-father-any-your-men-making-last-prophet-2
Camps - The wide angle
Charlie Hailey
In the book, I argue that camp spaces are an inexorable environment – one that is unique because it is always being built or rebuilt, always becoming. With this in...
20090902-hailey-charlie-camps-guide-21st-century-space-2
Frantic Panoramas - In a nutshell
Nancy Bentley
My book looks at what happened to American literary culture when a new world of mass culture—tabloid newspapers, amusement parks, early cinema, Wild West shows—began to dominate public life. Most...
20090831-bentley-nancy-frantic-panoramas-american-literature-mass-culture-1-1
The Birthright Lottery - In a nutshell
Ayelet Shachar
The Birthright Lottery proposes a new way of thinking about the intergenerational transfer of citizenship as a special kind of property inheritance. It emphasizes the significance of citizenship – perhaps...
20090828-shachar-ayelet-birthright-lottery-citizenship-global-inequality-1-1
Mystery of the Night Café - In a nutshell
Cliff Edwards
This is my third book on the spiritual journey of the artist Vincent Van Gogh. I began with an overview of his life, Van Gogh and God, then focused on...
20090826-edwards-cliff-mystery-night-cafe-spirituality-vincent-van-gogh-1-1
Essaying Shakespeare - In a nutshell
Karen Newman
Essaying Shakespeare, as its title suggests, is a collection of essays about Shakespeare.To” essay” means both to try or attempt, and to put to the test. Written and published over...
20090824-karen-newman-on-essaying-shakespeare-1-1
Embodied Visions - In a nutshell
Torben Grodal
Embodied Visions is a pathbreaking explanation of how films are crafted to activate innate features of our brains and bodies. The book is based on cutting edge neuropsychology and evolutionary...
20090821-grodal-torben-embodied-visions-evolution-emotions-culture-film-1-1
Painted Palaces - In a nutshell
Anne Dunlop
Painted Palaces is essentially an argument against a tenacious idea in art history – that one day around 1500, artists woke up, threw off the oppression of religion, and invented...
20090819-dunlop-anne-painted-palaces-secular-art-renaissance-italy-1-1
Behind the Development Banks - In a nutshell
Sarah Babb
This book is about how American politics affects the multilateral development banks—or “the banks,” for short. The best known of these is the World Bank, but several regional banks that...
20090817-babb-sarah-behind-development-banks-washington-world-poverty-1-1
The Fun Factory - The wide angle
Rob King
The French philosopher Henri Bergson famously described laughter as a “social gesture.” It’s a quote that has been a watchword in my own thinking about comedy. Why people laugh, who...
20090814-king-rob-fun-factory-keystone-film-company-emergence-mass-culture-2
Pineapple Culture - The wide angle
Gary Y. Okihiro
Places are human geographies of space. They name and attribute natures to spaces, marking them and frequently ranking them as self or other, desirable or undesirable, masculine or feminine. “Home”...
20090812-okihiro-gary-pineapple-culture-history-tropical-temperate-zones-2
On Tarzan - A close-up
Alex Vernon
Most likely someone flipping through On Tarzan at a bookstore will first notice the photographs introducing each chapter and the epigraphs. I hope this potential reader sees the humor here.There’s...
20090810-vernon-alex-on-tarzan-3
Slumming - A close-up
Chad Heap
Although I hesitated to put a Harlem image on the cover of Slumming, precisely because I wanted to challenge the almost exclusive association of that neighborhood with my book’s topic,...
20090805-heap-chad-slumming-sexual-racial-encounters-american-nightlife-3
The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent - The wide angle
Lynne A. Isbell
The idea of Snake Detection actually took me by surprise. I wasn’t looking for it. I was instead pursuing answers to questions that were more consistent with my academic background...
20090807-isbell-lynne-fruit-tree-serpent-why-we-see-well-snake-detection-2
Slumming - The wide angle
Chad Heap
Over the past couple of decades, scholars have begun to investigate the social construction of race and sexuality in the United States. Noting the absence of any fixed biological or...
20090805-heap-chad-slumming-sexual-racial-encounters-american-nightlife-2
Cars for Comrades - In a nutshell
Lewis H. Siegelbaum
I set out to write a book not so much about the varieties and comparative deficiencies of cars in the Soviet Union as what these objects meant to Soviet citizens....
20090803-siegelbaum-lewis-on-cars-for-comrades-life-soviet-automobile-1-1
On the Side of the Angels - In a nutshell
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Distaste of parties and partisanship is palpable and widespread. While party activists battle one another each claiming they are on side of the angels, critics demonize them all and praise...
20090731-rosenblum-nancy-on-side-angels-appreciation-parties-partisanship-1-1
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Mysteries of Sex - In a nutshell
Mary P. Ryan
Mysteries of Sex invites the reader to suspend the belief that men are men and women are women and explore two intertwined phenomena. The book asks first of all just...
20090729-ryan-mary-mysteries-sex-tracing-women-men-american-history-18530-1-1
Mary P. Ryan
Making Sense of Pakistan - In a nutshell
Farzana Shaikh
The main idea of my book, Making Sense of Pakistan, is that we need first and foremost to make sense of the country’s identity crisis.This crisis, I argue, is rooted...
20090727-shaikh-farzana-making-sense-pakistan-1-1
Exemplarity and Mediocrity - The wide angle
Paul Fleming
Were a browsing reader to open my book at random, he or she could do worse than opening up to the third chapter, which deals with the average artist. Here...
20090724-fleming-paul-exemplarity-mediocrity-art-average-bourgeois-tragedy-2
The Next Justice - A close-up
Christopher L. Eisgruber
Justice Stevens permitted me to include in the book an anecdote that illustrates how differently judges and legislators behave when dealing with politically controversial issues. While I was clerking for...
20090722-eisgruber-chris-next-justice-repair-supreme-court-appoint-process-3
The Once and Future New York - The wide angle
Randall Mason
We relate to the past (partly) through things. People and societies keep and create attachments to the past by keeping, collecting, preserving, recreating and otherwise interpreting a whole range of...
20090720-mason-randall-once-future-new-york-historic-preservation-city-mode-2
Randall Mason
The Balance of Nature - In a nutshell
John Kricher
The existence of a balance of nature has been a dominant part of Western philosophy since before Aristotle. But the science of ecology and evolutionary biology together demonstrate that there...
20090717-kricher-john-balance-nature-ecology-enduring-myth-1-1
Protest Politics in Germany - In a nutshell
Roger Karapin
Protest Politics in Germany is about the interactions between protest groups, their allies, and their opponents. The settings are conflicts that have dominated German politics in the last quarter of...
20090715-karapin-roger-protest-politics-germany-movements-left-right-1-1
The Lie Detectors - In a nutshell
Ken Alder
I did not write this book to “debunk” the lie detector. Eminent psychologists have been trying to do that for eighty years, ever since interrogators first re-purposed some basic physiological...
20090713-alder-ken-lie-detectors-history-american-obsession-1-1
Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives - In a nutshell
Stephen F. Cohen
I begin with the fact that, along with the United States, no country was more important in the twentieth century than was the Soviet Union. And it may also be...
20110214-cohen-stephen-on-victims-return-survivors-gulag-after-stalin-1-1
Invented Knowledge - The wide angle
Ronald H. Fritze
I first became interested in pseudo-history during the late 1980s when I was a faculty member at Lamar University. The five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas...
20090708-fritze-ronald-invented-knowledge-false-history-fake-science-pseudo-2
On Location in Cuba - The wide angle
Ann Marie Stock
In Cuba, the prominence of culture and its centrality to political and economic forces can surprise those unfamiliar with it. I recall one consulting trip early in this century, when...
20090706-stock-ann-marie-on-location-in-cuba-street-filmmaking-transition-957df-2
Composing the Citizen - In a nutshell
Jann Pasler
Composing the Citizen explores how and why music is deeply valuable to society, how music helps people fulfill their human potential as individuals and members of communities.The Third Republic in...
20090703-pasler-jann-composing-citizen-music-public-utility-third-republic-1-1
Higher Learning, Greater Good - In a nutshell
Walter W. McMahon
Higher Learning, Greater Good is the first book to systematically identify and develop the evidence necessary to measure comprehensively the benefits of higher education and to estimate their economic value.The...
20090701-mcmahon-walter-higher-learning-private-social-benefits-education-1-1
Walter W. McMahon
Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda - The wide angle
Mary E. Stuckey
The image of the home as a place of coercion and abuse has gained ground in our culture. The notion that the home shields subordination within its walls is becoming...
20090629-stuckey-mary-jimmy-carter-human-rights-national-agenda-2
Mary E. Stuckey
Andean Cocaine - In a nutshell
Paul Gootenberg
Andean Cocaine is cocaine’s first full-length biography. The book is, I hope, a more “serious” than usual history of the infamous drug, covering more than a century from cocaine’s birth...
20090626-gootenberg-paul-andean-cocaine-making-global-drug-1-1
Foreclosed - In a nutshell
Dan Immergluck
Foreclosed describes the evolution of U.S. mortgage markets from the early twentieth century through to the subprime crisis of the late 2000s. The book details the highly mixed-economy nature of...
20090624-immergluck-foreclosed-high-risk-lending-deregulation-mortgage-mark-1-1
The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney - In a nutshell
Shirley Anne Warshaw
The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney explores the extraordinary depth of Cheney’s influence in the Bush administration – and how Cheney built that influence.Cheney’s role was so pervasive in policy...
20090622-warshaw-shirley-anne-co-presidency-bush-cheney-1
Shirley Anne Warshaw
Civil Passions - In a nutshell
Sharon R. Krause
Civil Passions is about how we deliberate about justice, and specifically about the role the passions play in this process. The dominant views of deliberation rightly emphasize the importance of...
20090619-krause-sharon-civil-passions-moral-sentiment-deliberation-1-1
Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity - In a nutshell
Alan C. Braddock
My book is about a historic change that occurred a century ago in the way people view human differences, illustrated through the work and life of a major artist. Today,...
20090617-braddock-alan-thomas-eakins-cultures-modernity-1-1
Corrupt Circles - In a nutshell
Alfonso W. Quiroz
Corruption has existed since the earliest civilizations but documenting and writing its history has not been easy. In the case of Peru, tackling through detailed research the challenges to writing...
20090615-quiroz-alfonso-corrupt-circles-history-unbound-graft-peru-1-1
The American 1930s - In a nutshell
Peter Conn
With the exception only of the Civil War, Americans faced in the Depression of the 1930s the most wrenching and divisive domestic crisis in their history. An economic structure that...
20090612-conn-peter-american-1930s-literary-history-1-1
Your Brain on Latino Comics - In a nutshell
Frederick Luis Aldama
The study of mind through cognitive science and the findings of neurobiology have shed very interesting light on the way comic books are produced and read. I find this fascinating...
20090610-luis-frederick-aldama-your-brain-on-latino-comics-1-1
Global California - The wide angle
Abraham F. Lowenthal
Global California discusses what Californians can do to identify and promote their own interests in a rapidly changing world. It takes up such thorny issues as globalization, trade, infrastructure, immigration,...
20090608-lowenthal-abraham-global-california-rising-cosmopolitan-challenge-2
The Age of Openness - The wide angle
Frank Dikötter
During the recent Olympic Games a common cliché was to talk about China’s “coming out party,” meaning that China was finally opening out to the world. The key point of...
20101020-dikotter-frank-mao-great-famine-history-china-most-devastating-cat-2
Mathematics in 10 Lessons - In a nutshell
Jerry P. King
Mathematicians know two things that others do not. They know first that all mathematics flows from a few fundamental principles. Second, they know that aesthetic considerations provide both the motivation...
20090603-king-jerry-mathematics-10-lessons-grand-tour-1-1
The Death of the American Trial - In a nutshell
Robert P. Burns
Despite what TV dramas may suggest, the American trial has become an endangered species. In 2002, less than 2 percent of civil cases ended at trial, down from 12 percent...
20090601-burns-robert-death-american-trial-1-1
Bad Girls Go Everywhere - The wide angle
Jennifer Scanlon
Bad Girls Go Everywhere is a biography and a cultural history. It charts a woman’s life through several significant eras in American history: the deprivations of the Great Depression, the...
20090529-scanlon-jennifer-bad-girls-go-everywhere-helen-gurley-brown-2
Becoming Batman - In a nutshell
E. Paul Zehr
Becoming Batman is an examination of a superhero. I was trying to answer a simple question: Is it actually possible for any human to attain the skills and abilities of...
20090527-zehr-paul-becoming-batman-the-possibility-of-a-superhero-1
Famine - A close-up
Cormac Ó Gráda
The book ranges from describing the horrors of famine in some detail to musing, with tempered hope, about the prospects of eliminating famine, at least in peacetime. I would hope...
20090525-ograda-cormac-famine-short-history-3
The Romantic Economist - The wide angle
Richard Bronk
The Romantics understood what scientists often forget: that, as Wordsworth put it, we ‘half-create’ the world we see. Any particular observation is the joint product of sense data our minds...
20090522-bronk-richard-romantic-economist-imagination-economics-2
Animals and the Moral Community - In a nutshell
Gary Steiner
More than fifty-three billion animals are killed worldwide for human consumption every year, and yet we give little thought to the inner subjective lives of animals and the remarkable extent...
20090520-steiner-gary-animals-moral-community-mental-moral-kinship-1-1
Public Housing That Worked - In a nutshell
Nicholas Dagen Bloom
Public Housing That Worked is one of the few upbeat histories of one of the most reviled aspects of the American welfare state: tower block public housing. Some years ago...
20090518-bloom-nicholas-public-housing-that-worked-new-york-1-1
The Crisis of the Twelfth Century - The wide angle
Thomas N. Bisson
The Crisis of the Twelfth Century was conceived in 1987 when, upon moving from Berkeley to Harvard, I was invited to offer a course in Harvard’s undergraduate core curriculum. I...
20090515-bisson-thomas-crisis-12th-century-power-lordship-european-governme-2
The Quantum Frontier - The wide angle
Don Lincoln
We have come to understand that all the matter we have ever observed is made of a scant hundred chemical elements. The past century has shown that the atomic elements...
20090513-lincoln-don-quantum-frontier-large-hadron-collider-2
The Rape of Mesopotamia - In a nutshell
Lawrence Rothfield
The Rape of Mesopotamia is about the series of missteps, missed opportunities, and miscommunications that led to the massive looting of Iraq’s cultural heritage after the U.S. invasion in 2003....
20090511-rothfield-lawrence-rape-mesopotamia-looting-iraq-museum-1-1
Global Lives - A close-up
Miles Ogborn
The nature of this book is that it is full of close-ups. It is made of the details of people’s lives, and the ways that they shaped and were shaped...
20090508-ogborn-miles-global-lives-britain-world-1550-3
Miles Ogborn
Greek Sport and Social Status - The wide angle
Mark Golden
My earliest publications, on childhood in ancient Greece, grew out of my involvement with the movement to force the University of Toronto to provide day-care for the children of its...
20090506-golden-mark-greek-sport-and-social-status-2
Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments - In a nutshell
Eric Ames
This book tells the story of one of the greatest showmen in the history of zoos and circuses. Carl Hagenbeck (1844-1913) may not be well-known today, but his name was...
20090504-ames-eric-carl-hagenbeck-empire-entertainments-1-1
Trucking Country - In a nutshell
Shane Hamilton
Trucking Country shows how the social history of long-haul truckers was enmeshed with the political history of America’s transition from the New Deal era to the conservative counter-revolution of the...
20090501-shane-hamilton-on-trucking-country-road-america-wal-mart-economy-1-1
Two Faiths, One Banner - In a nutshell
Ian Almond
In many ways, Two Faiths, One Banner reveals how the history of Islam and the history of Europe are profoundly intertwined. In an age obsessed with Muslim-Christian so-called civilizational conflict,...
20091221-almond-ian-on-history-islam-german-thought-leibniz-nietzsche-1-1
Philip II of Macedonia - The wide angle
Ian Worthington
In researching and writing this book I did not set out to test any particular theory or promote any particular historical interpretation. The project began with the accidental discovery of...
20090424-worthington-ian-philip-ii-of-macedonia-2
Israeli Culture between the Two Intifadas - In a nutshell
Yaron Peleg
The book examines Israeli culture in the 1990s between the two popular Palestinian uprisings, the intifadas, in 1987 and 2000, respectively. By looking at popular media and literature, I highlight...
20090421-peleg-yaron-israeli-culture-between-intifadas-brief-romance-1-1
Yaron Peleg
Fresh - The wide angle
Susanne Freidberg
Beneath the stories of individual foods lies a larger story about the ambivalent appetites borne of life in a modern industrial society. This is less abstract than it sounds. As...
20090417-freidberg-susanne-fresh-perishable-history-2
Selling the American Way - In a nutshell
Laura A. Belmonte
Selling the American Way is about the ways that the U.S. government defined and disseminated official narratives about American society, politics, and culture during the early Cold War. Using radio...
20090414-belmonte-laura-selling-american-way-us-propaganda-cold-war-1-1
Weather Matters - The wide angle
Bernard Mergen
Weather Matters is a history of all these phenomena. It explores the questions why and how we talk about the weather in science, the media, popular culture, and the arts....
20090410-mergen-bernard-weather-matters-american-cultural-history-2
The Gulf Stream - In a nutshell
Stan Ulanski
The book explores the fascinating story of the Gulf Stream, a powerful Atlantic Ocean current with a force 300 times that of the mighty Amazon. During Europe’s dominance in the...
20090407-ulanski-stan-gulf-stream-plankton-bluefin-river-atlantic-1
Stan Ulanski
Reading Orientalism - The wide angle
Daniel Martin Varisco
The book is highly relevant to contemporary life, in which forms of surveillance have become ubiquitous, although they differ from the ones I describe. It encourages readers to ask how...
20090403-martin-daniel-varisco-reading-orientalism-edward-said-unsaid-2
Cuba in Revolution - In a nutshell
Antoni Kapcia
Essentially this book was written in an attempt to explain to the interested lay reader why a curious phenomenon still called 'the Cuban Revolution' had managed to survive for so...
20090331-kapcia-antoni-cuba-revolution-history-since-fifties-1-1
More - In a nutshell
Robert Engelman
More offers a new narrative of the human story that highlights the importance of intentional reproduction—wanting a child, and then having one—in the evolution of civilization and in light of...
20090327-engelman-robert-more-population-nature-what-women-want-1-1
What is a Number? Mathematical Concepts and Their Origins - In a nutshell
Robert Tubbs
I find that non-mathematicians often perceive mathematics as a self-contained, inaccessible, body of knowledge that was essentially completed sometime in the distant past. Mathematics is seen as being isolated from...
20090324-tubbs-robert-what-is-number-mathematical-concepts-origins-1
Robert Tubbs
Art and the City - The wide angle
Sarah Schrank
My interest in the topic of public art and modernism in Los Angeles grew out of a lifelong concern with artistic and literary censorship. Early in my career, I learned...
20090320-schrank-sarah-art-city-imagination-authority-los-angeles-2
Sarah Schrank
Control and Freedom - In a nutshell
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
The Internet is a technology based on control systems, yet it is also a mass medium celebrated as fostering personal and political freedom. How? Why? What dreams and desires drove...
20090317-chun-wendy-control-freedom-power-paranoia-age-fiber-optics-1-1
Buddhism and Science - The wide angle
Donald S. Lopez Jr.
I am a scholar of Buddhism—we call ourselves Buddhologists—focusing on late Indian Buddhism (roughly from the fifth to twelfth centuries) and on Tibetan Buddhism. My early work was on Indian...
20110511-donald-lopez-on-tibetan-book-of-dead-biography-2
The Death and Afterlife of Achilles - In a nutshell
Jonathan S. Burgess
In ancient myth, Achilles is killed by Paris as he tries to invade the gates of Troy. After being buried in a magnificent mound by the sea, his shade enjoys...
20090310-burgess-jonathan-death-afterlife-achilles-1-1
Dreaming the English Renaissance - In a nutshell
Carole Levin
Throughout history people have taken their dreams very seriously. Dreams themselves, and the way we interpret them, take us into the deepest part of our individual as well as cultural...
20090306-levin-carole-dreaming-english-renaissance-politics-desire-court-1-1
Cuba in the American Imagination - In a nutshell
Louis A. Perez, Jr.
Cuba in the American Imagination examines the emergence of the idea of Cuba in the United States from the early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. The book...
20090303-perez-louis-cuba-american-imagination-1-1
The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer - A close-up
Louis Kaplan
For a quick zoom, I refer the reader to Mumler’s most famous spirit photograph and to the passages where he recounts this strange visitation in his memoirs, The Personal Experiences...
20090227-kaplan-louis-strange-case-william-mumler-spirit-photographer-3
Eve of Destruction - In a nutshell
Thomas M. Nichols
I wrote Eve of Destruction hoping to get people to understand that the previous era of warfare—one in which there were at least some rules about when and why states...
20090224-nichols-thomas-eve-of-destruction-1-1
Thomas M. Nichols
Beautiful Monsters - In a nutshell
Michael Long
Beautiful Monsters explores how “classical music,” and the idea of “the classic” itself, found a home in the American popular imagination. Concerns about the apparent cultural demise of classical music...
20090220-long-michael-beautiful-monsters-imagining-classic-musical-media-1-1
Ad Women - In a nutshell
Juliann Sivulka
For most of the twentieth century advertising portrayed women in narrow roles — as dim-witted sex objects, as perky young things in search of a man, or as one-dimensional homemakers...
20090217-sivulka-juliann-ad-women-how-they-impact-what-we-need-want-buy-1-1
A Women’s Berlin - In a nutshell
Despina Stratigakos
Around the turn of the twentieth century, women began to claim Berlin as their own, expressing a vision of the German capital that embraced their feminine modernity, both culturally and...
20090213-stratigakos-despina-women-berlin-building-modern-city-1
Crossing Hitler - In a nutshell
Benjamin C. Hett
Crossing Hitler is a biography of Hans Litten, a German lawyer who devoted his legal practice to fighting Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the late 1920s and 1930s, as...
20090210-hett-benjamin-crossing-hitler-hans-litten-put-nazis-witness-stand-1-1
Adam’s Ancestors - In a nutshell
David N. Livingstone
The idea that all human beings are descended from Adam has been a long-standing conviction in the West. Indeed it’s been a central doctrine among the monotheistic religions more generally....
20090206-livingstone-david-adam-ancestors-race-religion-politics-human-orig-1-1
Sustainability by Design - The wide angle
John R. Ehrenfeld
The germ of this book sprouted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I had returned in my mid-50s to start an academic career, after spending some 35 years working...
20090203-ehrenfeld-john-sustainability-by-design-2
The Best of All Possible Worlds - In a nutshell
Steven Nadler
This book is about three philosophers – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Antoine Arnauld, and Nicolas Malebranche – who happened to be together in Paris in the 1670s and their great debate...
20090130-nadler-steven-book-best-of-all-possible-worlds-1-1
Steven Nadler
The Future of Education - In a nutshell
Kieran Egan
The Future of Education is an attempt to do precisely what its subheading suggests—reimagine our schools from the ground up. The book begins with a scenario in which a priestess...
20090127-egan-kieran-book-future-education-1-1
The Civil Contract of Photography - In a nutshell
Ariella Azoulay
The Civil Contract of Photography is about the relations between photography and citizenship in disaster contexts. The book proposes a historical and theoretical analysis of the relation between photography and...
20090123-azoulay-ariella-book-civil-contract-photography-1-1
Conspiracy Theories - In a nutshell
Mark Fenster
I make two basic claims in the book. First, I argue that the dominant mode of understanding conspiracy theory is flawed. Academics and journalists have wrongly assumed that conspiracy theories...
20090120-fenster-mark-on-conspiracy-theories-secrecy-power-american-culture-1-1
Six-Legged Soldiers - The wide angle
Jeffrey A. Lockwood
Among the scientific, historical, and military themes in Six-Legged Soldiers, the reader will find three “big picture” ideas, all of which are cause for curiosity and concern.Using insects as weapons...
20090116-lockwood-jeffrey-six-legged-soldiers-2
Le Corbusier - In a nutshell
Nicholas Fox Weber
There are hundreds of books about Le Corbusier’s architecture, but very little knowledge about the man himself. This book is an attempt to reveal Le Corbusier’s personality, his motivations, give...
20090113-weber-nicholas-le-corbusier-1
Nicholas Fox Weber
Picturing American Modernity - In a nutshell
Kristen Whissel
Picturing American Modernity is about how the early American cinema represented major changes taking place in American society, politics, and culture in the early twentieth century, particularly changes that were...
20090109-kristen-whissel-picturing-american-modernity-1
Total Cure - The wide angle
Harold S. Luft
I am an economist who spent the last 35 years in a medical school training a wide range of post-doctoral fellows and undertaking applied research in an interdisciplinary setting. My...
20090106-luft-harold-total-cure-2
The Toothpick - In a nutshell
Henry Petroski
The Toothpick is a technical and cultural history of what is arguably the simplest of manufactured things. A wooden toothpick consists of a single part made of a single material...
20100326-petroski-henry-essential-engineer-science-solve-global-problems-1-1
The Great Delusion - In a nutshell
Steven Stoll
The Great Delusion is about the unrealistic expectations we all have about what this tired and picked-over planet can provide us. It is about economic growth, the belief that a...
20081230-stoll-steven-great-delusion-inventor-tropics-utopian-economic-grow-1
Steven Stoll
Hotter Than That - The wide angle
Krin Gabbard
The basic thesis of Hotter Than That is that the trumpet has been associated, rightly or wrongly, with masculinity. The men who have played it have jealously guarded their exclusive...
20081226-gabbard-krin-hotter-than-that-trumpet-jazz-american-culture-2
Bad for Democracy - The wide angle
Dana Nelson
As I finished my last book, National Manhood, a historical look at how notions of middle-class manhood and citizenship developed in the early United States, two movies about fictional presidents...
20081223-nelson-dana-bad-for-democracy-how-presidency-undermines-power-peop-2
Children of the Revolution - The wide angle
Robert Gildea
This is not just a political story, because that only tells part of what is fascinating about France in this period. What are the images we have of France in...
20081219-gildea-robert-children-of-revolution-the-french-1799-1914-2
Loneliness as a Way of Life - The wide angle
Thomas Dumm
I first approached this study as an intellectual history of individualism. From early on in my life as a political theorist, I have been interested in those large forces that...
20081216-dumm-thomas-on-loneliness-as-a-way-of-life-2
GIANTS - The wide angle
John Stauffer
It’s often said that biographies reveal as much about their biographers as their subject. I plead guilty, for I was born in Lincoln (Nebraska) and fell in love with the...
20081205-stauffer-john-giants-parallel-lives-frederick-douglass-abraham-lin-2
The American Lie - The wide angle
Benjamin Ginsberg
In more than thirty years of teaching politics, I have observed that students’ natural healthy cynicism is constantly criticized by the press and by their teachers. I want to assure...
20081205-ginsberg-benjamin-american-lie-government-by-people-political-fabl-2
Secular Devotion - The wide angle
Timothy Brennan
A great deal of what I am saying depends on the claim that black musical genres and belief-systems are part of a single, unified complex in the Americas from Brazil...
20081205-brennan-timothy-secular-devotion-afro-latin-music-imperial-jazz-2
CO2 Rising - In a nutshell
Tyler Volk
When fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are combusted they release CO2. This greenhouse gas is no ordinary pollutant but an inherent waste byproduct of the energy conversion. The CO2 is...
20081205-volk-tyler-co2-rising-world-greatest-environmental-challenge-1
Tyler Volk
The Lolita Effect - In a nutshell
M. Gigi Durham
The Lolita Effect addresses the media sexualization of young girls. In the book, I draw a distinction between healthy, age-appropriate concepts of sexuality that should develop as children mature, and...
20081205-durham-meenakshi-gigi-lolita-effect-media-sexualization-young-girl-1-1