archive

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

The Age of Addiction - A close-up

Not everyone is happy with all the talk of expanding addiction. It bothers clinicians who fear stigmatization, libertarians who smell an excuse for indiscipline, social scientists who fear neuroscientific reductionism...

David T. Courtwright

Stalin’s Genocides - The wide angle

This study grew out of a long-term preoccupation with the history of genocide and the way Stalin and his crimes should be viewed in the context of that history.More often...

Norman M. Naimark

Violette Nozière - In a nutshell

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...

Sarah Maza

Children’s Literature - In a nutshell

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...

Seth Lerer

Betting on Biotech - The wide angle

I discovered the story of the Sea Venture while I was researching the life of Pocahontas, whose future husband was one of the Bermuda castaways. Soon after learning the broad...

Joseph Wong

The Just City - In a nutshell

For more than 30 years, cities in America and Europe have moved toward greater inequality—in line with the ideology of neo-liberalism, which urges privatization, limits on social welfare, and low...

Susan S. Fainstein

Philip II of Macedonia - In a nutshell

Alexander the Great of Macedonia is one of the most exciting and controversial figures of antiquity. Probably only Jesus Christ is more famous from the ancient world. Alexander was only...

Ian Worthington

Dissident Practices - The wide angle

The book is organized thematically in four chapters on different kinds of “dissident practices:” Political Practices, Discursive Practices, Transgressive Practices, and Practices of the Self. The selection of the artists...

Claudia Calirman

Hinduism Before Reform - In a nutshell

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...

Brian A. Hatcher

Brothers Apart - The wide angle

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...

Maha Nassar

The Genius Checklist - The wide angle

Three points need to be made about how this book covers the subject.First, although the overview is restricted to creative genius—and thus ignores genius in politics, war, and religion—the coverage...

Dean Keith Simonton

Unending Capitalism - The wide angle

At the heart of Unending Capitalism (and my two other books) is the concept of consumerism. Consumerism—especially compared to identity, race, ethnicity, gender, and class—is underappreciated as a driving force...

Karl Gerth

Febris Erotica - In a nutshell

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...

Valeria Sobol

Calexico - A close-up

I cannot pick out a single page where I would want your browsing reader to go first.One of the joys for me of this project is that the book is...

Peter Laufer

The Birthright Lottery - In a nutshell

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...

Ayelet Shachar

The Law of Good People - In a nutshell

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...

Yuval Feldman

The Civil Contract of Photography - The wide angle

I began work on this book at the beginning of the second intifada. In hindsight, I can say that observing the unbearable sights presented in photographs from the Occupied Territories...

Ariella Azoulay

If I Am Right, and I Know I Am - In a nutshell

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...

Hanne Strager

Civilizing Torture - The wide angle

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...

W. Fitzhugh Brundage

Andean Cocaine - In a nutshell

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...

Paul Gootenberg

What Is Mental Illness? - The wide angle

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...

Richard J. McNally

Leonard Bernstein - The wide angle

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...

Barry Seldes

Slab City - In a nutshell

Slab City is known as the “last free place.” This remote settlement in the southern California desert occupies a decommissioned World War II military camp. Only its slabs and tank-rutted...

Charlie Hailey

Savonarola - A close-up

I would like your browsing reader to begin with the Prologue. There they will look back from the scaffold on which the fallen prophet and his two lieutenants met their...

Donald Weinstein

Unseparate - A close-up

There are key quotes in the book that signal this idea of radical unity. For example, even though you might not think about Paul Cézanne’s paintings in terms of the...

Steven Henry Madoff

Becoming Batman - In a nutshell

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...

E. Paul Zehr

How We Became Sensorimotor - In a nutshell

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...

Mark Paterson

What is a Number? Mathematical Concepts and Their Origins - A close-up

Due to the historical scope of this book there are several themes that weave through the entire narration. Take, for example, the attempts of various writers to understand the concept...

Robert Tubbs

Bombshell - The wide angle

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...

Mia Bloom

Einstein in Bohemia - A close-up

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...

Michael D. Gordin

2073 Micro Interviews