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Drawing on Art - The wide angle

Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company builds on the implications of my earlier work in Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit (1995). The focus is no longer on Duchamp alone but...

Dalia Judovitz

Science and religion are not incompatible

The view that the findings of science are incompatible with claims of revealed religion per se is widespread—but mistaken.In the first chapter of The Unintended Reformation I explain why many intellectuals today think that science...

Brad Gregory

Casualties of Credit - The wide angle

In a letter of June 29, 1940, Max Horkheimer eloquently developed one of the metaphors that became central to the history of Critical Theory in America. Writing to the actress...

Carl Wennerlind

The Alchemy of Meth - A close-up

If a potential reader were to simply browse the book, I hope they would quickly find a page from one of the meth cooks’ stories. They are sensitive, wounded people...

Jason Pine

A Most Enterprising Country - A close-up

North Korean restaurants are tourist attractions in many cities, and are often the closest the average person will ever get to North Koreans. And indeed, they were one of the...

Justin V. Hastings

Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras - In a nutshell

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...

Harriet Ritvo

The Muslim Brotherhood and the West - The wide angle

In examining the evolving relationship between the West and the Brotherhood from the perspective of both sides, I was conscious of the fact that my subject did not fit easily...

Martyn Frampton

Loneliness as a Way of Life - A close-up

The book’s epilogue is entitled “Writing.” It is short, about seven pages, but it tells a story about a trip I made to Ethiopia with my older brother, right before...

Thomas Dumm

Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods - In a nutshell

Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods argues that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors. Using data ranging...

E. Fuller Torrey

Saving the Security State - A close-up

Readers encountering my book might first turn to the chapter on Hurricane Katrina, which captures the context of the book, both with regard to the problems of a retreating welfare...

Inderpal Grewal

America's Army - In a nutshell

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...

Beth Bailey

Climatopolis - The wide angle

I am an academic economist and most of my research has focused on the quality of life of cities.Most economists agree that the key for long run city sustainability is...

Matthew E. Kahn

The Ghosts of Mark Twain - In a nutshell

Mark Twain didn’t believe in ghosts—at least, not the sort that rattle chains or float down darkened corridors. This fact, however, appears to carry no weight in the afterlife. Only a few years after his death, a number of psychics and mediums began to conjure the ghost of Mark Twain. And with an impressive regularity, the ghostly Twain appeared on cue, keen to perform and willing to offer advice...

Ann M. Ryan

Andean Cocaine - The wide angle

I like to think of Andean Cocaine as a hidden chapter in the history of globalization. Today, cocaine, as part of a colossal global criminal enterprise, is the most valuable...

Paul Gootenberg

The Muslim Brotherhood and the West - In a nutshell

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...

Martyn Frampton

Loath to Print - The wide angle

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,...

Nicole Howard

Africa’s Struggle for Its Art - In a nutshell

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...

Bénédicte Savoy

Starving for Justice - In a nutshell

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...

Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval

The Universal Timekeepers - The wide angle

The United Nations has declared 2025 the Year of Quantum Science and Technology to mark the 100th anniversary of our foundational model of the atomic world, quantum mechanics. This model...

David J. Helfand

The Procrastination Economy - The wide angle

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...

Ethan Tussey

Signs from the Future - A close-up

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...

Santiago Zabala

The Creation and Destruction of Value - A close-up

One of the most dramatic bubbles of the 2000s occurred in the art market, above all in contemporary art. For fine art overall, the most widely quoted index, the Mei...

Harold James

The Disordered Police State - A close-up

Schloss Friedenstein, the seventeenth-century palace that Ernst the Pious of Gotha built, is a good place to do research: on one side, in the east wing, the old research library;...

Andre Wakefield

The Market as God - A close-up

I would hope that the bookstore browser would look at the introduction. It sums up what the book is about. I would also recommend the chapters on holidays, on the...

Harvey Cox

On the Side of the Angels - In a nutshell

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...

Nancy L. Rosenblum

The Cuban Hustle - A close-up

I hope readers who encounter the book at a bookstore might flip to the back of the book and see the ingenious and creative projects Cubans are creating, even in...

Sujatha Fernandes

The Scientific Method - A close-up

I think a lot of these points come together in Chapter 6, which is called “Animal Intelligence.” The title gives a pretty good sense of what’s in there: scientists trying...

Henry M. Cowles

Piracy - In a nutshell

Piracy is about how today’s world of intellectual property came into being through half a millennium of conflict.Beginning in early modern Europe, the book traces the emergence of the laws...

Adrian Johns

The Death of a Prophet - The wide angle

One of the main goals of this book is to narrow the divide that exists between the study of religion in the late ancient Mediterranean and the study of Islamic...

Stephen J. Shoemaker

Dance of the Furies - A close-up

I tried as much as possible to let the people of 1914 speak for themselves. I also tried to juxtapose words written by people from opposing sides on roughly the...

Michael S. Neiberg

2073 Micro Interviews