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Everyone knows that research costs money, of course. But I think for many of us it is surprising just how much research costs—and just how expensive “small scale” science can...

How Economics Shapes Science - A close-up

George Saliba

This book started almost ten years ago. Initially, I wanted to know what were the conditions under which a civilization could produce science afresh.I was trained in ancient Semitics, and...

Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance - In a nutshell

Susanne Freidberg

The chapter on eggs shows how and why refrigeration used to be controversial, which these days many people will find hard to imagine. It also contains a good story about...

Fresh - A close-up

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...

BELZONI - 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...

The American 1930s - In a nutshell

Stuart Banner

Chapter 7, “Owning Fame,” is about the rise of property rights in the names and images of famous people. I bookend the chapter with the stories of two celebrities, Jenny...

American Property - A close-up

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....

No Right Turn - 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...

Endangered Economies - The wide angle

Keith E. Whittington

Speak Freely provides a succinct, accessible explanation of the principles of free speech and their relationship to the workings of a modern university. In contrast to wide-spread polemics about the...

Speak Freely - In a nutshell

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...

The potential for large bank failures remains

Lilia Topouzova

I would begin with the preface where I describe my first meeting with Krum Horozov, one of the most candid survivors I interviewed. In the late spring of 2006, I stood at the door of his apartment not yet knowing that this encounter would define the years to come. Horozov, an eighty-one-year-old former political prisoner, had spent eleven years in camps and prisons...

Unsilencing - A close-up

William H. Galperin

In the “Prelude” I draw an analogy between what literature discovers in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries and what other (then) versions of art turned up. In the large circular...

The History of Missed Opportunities - A close-up

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...

CO2 Rising - In a nutshell

Susan S. Fainstein

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...

The Just City - 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...

Mobility Justice - In a nutshell

Harriet Ritvo

The essays collected in Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras share a focus on animals but within that general topic, they vary greatly. So a reader most interested in contemporary issues...

Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras - A close-up

Jonathan S. Burgess

The Death and Afterlife of Achilles looks at all types of ancient evidence about Achilles to reconstruct the basic outlines of his death and afterlife. For literary evidence, the Homeric...

The Death and Afterlife of Achilles - The wide angle

Richard Arum

Over the last three decades, many social scientists have written books examining learning in elementary and secondary education. But little has been written exploring similar questions empirically in higher education.The...

Academically Adrift - 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...

Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods - The wide angle

Kevin W. Saunders

This book attempts to place hate speech into a context of long lineage.While hate speech has almost undoubtedly been around for as long as people have been able to recognize...

Degradation - In a nutshell

Frances Guerin

What lead me to this research? I have always been interested in the visual documentation of the Holocaust, and at one point had considered writing my doctoral dissertation on the...

Through Amateur Eyes - The wide angle

David M. Struthers

With regard to the larger picture, my book chronicles moral and legal conflicts, political intrigue, retribution, and drastic consequences—all of which were unintended.There is a dark evil here, smoldering under...

The World in a City - The wide angle

Norman M. Naimark

Some of the newest and most interesting material in the book illuminates the issue of Stalin’s use of the “special settlements” to punish his alleged opponents and to eliminate groups...

Stalin’s Genocides - A close-up

Teofilo F. Ruiz

This book is mostly inspired by almost forty years of teaching, by experiencing a loss of faith in my 20s and my understanding of the whole sweep of western history...

The Terror of History - The wide angle

Carolyn Bronstein

In Battling Pornography, I locate the roots of anti-pornography sentiment in a series of interrelated social and political conditions that shaped women’s lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s....

Battling Pornography - The wide angle

Valerie Steele

The appearance of a book is very important to me. I was playing with different images, but none of them were quite right. I wanted a fashion image, but I also wanted it to say psychoanalysis. We hired a graphic designer to do things for the museum exhibitions, and we have a very good one who works under the name Sarko (Steven Sarkowski). He came up with this wild graphic lettering, which really...

Dress, Dreams, and Desire - A close-up

David Webber

I am never quite sure of the meaning of the word “context.” One can talk about the context of history, in which case you would read a lot about Le...

The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder - The wide angle

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,...

Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity - In a nutshell

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,...

Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times - A close-up

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...

The Great Delusion - In a nutshell

Toby Talbot

In the section On Location, I recount the opening of the New Yorker Book Store with Pete Martin and Austen Laber. Pete was the co-founder, with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, of the...

The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies - A close-up

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...

The Disappearance of Objects - In a nutshell

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...

Genomic Politics - A close-up

Markus Krajewski

Paper Machines outlines the story of the card index in manifold ways: as a library catalogue, as a collection for thinkers, and as a tool for office efficiency. And yet...

Paper Machines - The wide angle

Darrell Duffie

As a financial economist at Stanford University, I was naturally led to this project. Among other topics, I study capital markets, risk management, derivatives, credit risk, bond markets, and over...

How Big Banks Fail and What to Do about It - The wide angle

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...

Thirtyfour Campgrounds - In a nutshell

Bruce Gordon

After five hundred years John Calvin remains the object of admiration and loathing. For some he is revered as the great reformer of the sixteenth century whose legacy embraces both...

Calvin - In a nutshell

Samuel Zipp

Willkie’s trip around the world is at the heart of The Idealist. The journey is unjustly forgotten today, but at the time it was heralded as a major political event....

The Idealist - A close-up

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...

Hinduism Before Reform - In a nutshell

Peter Y. Paik

From Utopia to Apocalypse is a study of political upheaval and revolutionary change, as they are portrayed in works of speculative and science fiction. It is my contention that science...

From Utopia to Apocalypse - In a nutshell

Laurie Maguire

This is a literary biography of Helen of Troy. It is not a historical life of a Bronze Age princess or a study of mythology; it is not an account...

Helen of Troy - 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...

Heroes of Empire - In a nutshell

Dan Reiter

The chapter on the American Civil War describes what may have been Lincoln’s finest moment as president. During the summer of 1864, Northern public support for the war was collapsing....

How Wars End - A close-up

Alan Taylor

Between 1792 and 1812, about 30,000 Americans left the republic to seek land in Upper Canada. They became known as the “Late Loyalists,” but most were just looking for the...

The Civil War of 1812 - A close-up

Frank L. Cioffi

One thing I ask often is this: what is the value of “correct” grammar? It seems to me that correctness has gotten a bad reputation: most people think it’s an...

One Day in the Life of the English Language - The wide angle

Garrett L. Brandon

Turn to page 17 and read the story of two young brothers, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, who were convicted and sentenced to death in North Carolina in 1984. They...

End of Its Rope - A close-up

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...

Tales of Militant Chemistry - In a nutshell

Charlie Hailey

When I last flipped through Camps, I paused at three moments that give a sense of the range of possibilities, realities, and complexities in the book. Each stopping point includes...

Camps - A close-up

Hobson Woodward

Philip II of Macedonia did not conquer on the scale Alexander did. And so Philip is not the household name that Alexander is. But Philip changed the course of Greek...

A Brave Vessel - The wide angle

Henry Petroski

This book relates to the nature and to the practice of research and development. I write as an engineer who has been involved with many aspects of the profession, including...