700+ Scholars, Artists, Creators
Heaven’s Bride tells for the first time the story of Ida C. Craddock’s life, death, and afterlife.A woman “very clever but queer,” as one contemporary described her, Craddock was a...
In the decades after World War II, the United States experienced an unprecedented boom in higher education. This boom altered the demographics of American society, creating a growing, educated middle...
The early twentieth century changed the ways people in China talked about what’s funny. The Age of Irreverence is about how and why.Part of the focus is historical: What changed?...
‘The bloody truth about France’ was the heading of the London Sunday Times review of this book. For those who think France is about camembert and surrender, here is another...
Slaves to Fashion is a cultural history of the politics of black fashion and dress since the creation of the black diaspora, from the slave trade to the present. Dress...
People are often skeptical about the possibility of impartial deliberation. Yet while the demands of impartial deliberation are high, they are demands that we can satisfy, at least so long...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I hope they would start with the prologue, where I talk about my first experiences as a Rolling Stone reader back in the 1970s and how it contributed to my intellectual awakening and influenced my subsequent career.It foregrounds one of the book’s main points—that Rolling Stone was far more...
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...
One chapter of the book, for which I have a particular liking, bears the title “Humanists on Laxatives.” It tells the story of the reception of Arabic pharmacology in the...
I think the most interesting and surprising chapter in the book is the one on the role of public disclosure in environmental legislation. What is detailed, especially on pp. 205-219,...
I hope you read the introduction first, as this would clarify my own stake in car crash films. I am constantly surprised that I have written a book on cinematic...
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...
The Prometheus Bomb is an account of the building of the atomic bomb that ended combat in the Pacific theater of World War II. The book focuses on how breakthroughs...
The prologue of Birthright is the portion to which I devoted the most energy. If it does not capture the reader’s imagination, chances are that the rest of the book...
Edward Bancroft’s story offers new perspectives on a variety of topics: the history of espionage, French involvement in the American Revolution, the operation of the British government, and the character...
When the Arab Spring began, I had an unusual vantage point. Living in the United Arab Emirates as a visiting professor, I was teaching one of the first human rights...
As of 2010, perhaps more than half of the world’s population lives in polities where religion not only has remained public but also has been playing a key role in...
I think that the six scenarios in my book are all compelling and dramatic. I hope that they draw the reader in, and inspire him or her to delve into...
Here is an excerpt from the first chapter. I hope readers think of it as a true-crime, historical CSI.On Halloween, 1828, sometime before 11 pm, Hugh Alston, a grocer in...
I first became interested in this topic because of a few long-standing interests: French history, Jewish history, and the past and present of the struggle between Jews and Arabs in...
I wrote the book’s preface in the expectation that it would draw a potential reader into a deceptively familiar subject. The global shutdown in 2020 exposed all sorts of odd...
This book is intended to help social scientists make sense of the fact that our relation to the world is one of concern. The concern needn’t take the form of...
The book’s title is drawn from a late nineteenth century case—which is also the focus of the second chapter.Four men were shipwrecked in the mid-Atlantic. After over three weeks at...
The first paragraph in the Introduction is about a family memory which prompted the book in the first place.On page 11 I discuss fairytales looking at the problem of maturation...
The book considers issues of class, politics and waiting through reference to a lower middle class of Jats in Meerut district, Uttar Pradesh, especially students from this caste studying in...
It seems pretty clear that none of those whose skulls wound up on museum shelves imagined their body parts cleaned, measured and put on display. To figure out what nasty...
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