700+ Scholars, Artists, Creators
Why do all cultures have verse? Why nevertheless, is poetry a minority taste, unlike stories, even among keen readers of literature? And why, all the same, does some verse succeed...
I would hope that a reader would start with the introduction. It frames the issues and activities that develop in the book, sets the geographical scene, and explains quite why...
The close-upIf a reader finds The Art of Tennis in a bookstore, I hope, first of all, that they look at the cover, and they realize that this should be...
For more than a generation, the conservative counterrevolution in America blurred the distinction between the invisible hand of the market and the all-powerful hand of God. In the “culture wars”...
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...
The Apartment Plot argues for the dominance and centrality of the apartment plot from 1945 to 1975.What I am calling “the apartment plot” are narratives in which the apartment figures...
It might come as a bit of a surprise that there is so much in the book about friendship. Perhaps because I know so little, I find some of the...
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...
My book is about that loosely defined cultural phenomenon known as “the recovery movement”—an agglomeration of self-help groups and practices that have grown out of Alcoholics Anonymous since its founding...
GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln is a dual biography of the two preeminent self-made men in American history. Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less...
Perfect Communities tells the story of Levittown, America’s iconic postwar suburb. It’s really the story of Levittowns, plural, because there were four in the United States, eight in France, and...
Once Before Time explores questions about the nature of time and space, and whether or not they have a definite beginning.Developments in physical theories (General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and attempts...
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...
I got to Le Corbusier through his letters. It took me a long time to get him. When I began the book it was like facing a vault wall in...
If a just-browsing reader were to open the book I would like them to begin reading the Introduction. The Introduction seeks to explain why the animus concept is so important,...
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...
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...
Animal Characters studies the place of nonhuman animals in Renaissance writing.Between 1400 and 1700, written and visual records tell us, Europeans began to experience the animal world in new ways....
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...
I decided to write this book after a personal incident that took place more than a decade ago—with which I begin the introductory chapter.I was living in Seattle at the...
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...
My book examines how and why East Asia is so often associated with technology and futurity in contemporary Hollywood film. Examples I discuss include the dystopic cities of Blade Runner,...
From cave paintings to the anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, the movement of animals has long fascinated people. Now there is an explosion of new interest and understanding in...
I’m challenging a way of thinking about politics common in fields like sociology and political science—the one in which people have interests based on their jobs, their levels of education,...
The book offers, using a cartographic metaphor, a ‘map’ of wellbeing. In that respect, I don’t have a particular preference for which ‘region’ I would hope a reader first encounters....
Looking at paintings and reading books, I suggest, are abilities to “penetrate,” culturally informed and culturally transformed by our mastery of language and our sense of the practices and history...
I would hope that readers would flip to chapter two, titled “Speak About Destruction.” In the mid-1980s, a band called “Time Zone,” featuring former Sex Pistols lead singer Johnny Rotten...
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...
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...
If one were to open Inventing Tomorrow somewhere, where should that be? If you are drawn to the big story and to the argument with modernism, read the Introduction. The...
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