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The Great Delusion - The wide angle

I first became interested in the phenomenon of conscience through my work in corporate law.Some readers may find this odd: the business world is often described as a place where...

Steven Stoll

Europe’s Promise - A close-up

If a browsing reader were to encounter Europe’s Promise in the bookstore, I would like her or him to read the final few pages, and contemplate the final scene and...

Steven Hill

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

The Urban Spectator - The wide angle

I started writing this book as part of my graduate work in media studies. I was interested in cities and found myself attracted to how cities were represented in films....

Eric Gordon

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

Break On Through - The wide angle

Break on Through examines the US-based mental health profession, activism, and the American mind in the 1970s. It’s quite a large canvas. I wanted readers to get a handle on...

Lucas Richert

Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity - A close-up

I would like to highlight the subsections on “Indian Portraits” and “Zuni Perspectives,” in Chapter 3 (pages 191-212 in the book). On those pages, I discuss a remarkable 1895 portrait...

Alan C. Braddock

Living through the End of Nature - A close-up

I would want a casual reader to focus on the last chapter, “Being an Environmentalist: Decisive Uncertainty and the Future of American Environmentalism.”Here I explain that, without nature, environmentalism becomes...

Paul Wapner

City on the Edge - A close-up

I hope any browsing reader will spend time with the many figures showing Hong Kong’s financial centrality in the Chinese economy that can be found in the chapter about Hong...

Ho-fung Hung

Where Are We Heading? The Evolution of Humans and Things - In a nutshell

In this book I grapple with a problem: Is human development directional? Does human evolution move in a particular direction? In recent decades the dominant view in the various sciences...

Ian Hodder

The Tibetan Book of the Dead - The wide angle

As someone who went to college in the 1970s and was interested in “Eastern Philosophy” as it used to be called, I read The Tibetan Book of the Dead and...

Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Greek Sport and Social Status - A close-up

My ideal reader would begin reading at the end of the book. (Maybe I ought to have written it in Hebrew.) The final chapter explores the ways the modern Olympic...

Mark Golden

Technosystem - In a nutshell

Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason is a philosophical reflection on the technified world in which we live. Ours is a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical...

Andrew Feenberg

Carl Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainments - In a nutshell

This book tells the story of one of the greatest showmen in the history of zoos and circuses. Carl Hagenbeck (1844-1913) may not be well-known today, but his name was...

Eric Ames

Constitutional Cliffhangers - The wide angle

This book came from a combination of two streams.The first is my interest in constitutional oddities. When I was a law student, we were discussing presidential pardons and I asked...

Brian C. Kalt

Clouds - In a nutshell

The book is principally about the science of clouds but its unique and distinctive feature - one that differentiates it from any other book ever published on weather and clouds – is our use of classic 18th and 19th century impressionist art to illustrate the clouds...

Edward Graham

Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights - A close-up

Two sections of the book exemplify its arguments and their significance—and it would be wonderful if, in the hands of a reader, the volume serendipitously fell open at them, preferably...

Roland Burke

Total Cure - In a nutshell

The current policy environment is one in which we must come to grips with the unsustainable increases in health care costs, the unconscionable proportion of the population without insurance, and...

Harold S. Luft

The Tyranny of Metrics - The wide angle

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...

Jerry Z. Muller

Making Sense of the Alt-Right - A close-up

I think my chapter on the Alt-Right and the 2016 presidential election is especially important. There has been a lot of talk about Donald Trump being an Alt-Right president. I...

George Hawley

The Arab Imago - In a nutshell

Arab Imago has a dual personality. It explores the undiscovered history of indigenista, or indigenous, photography of the Arab world. I am particularly interested in the earliest decades of photography,...

Stephen Sheehi

Crises and Opportunities - In a nutshell

As the world’s political and economic leaders struggle with the aftermath of the financial debacle of 2008, this book asks: Have financial crises presented opportunities to rebuild the financial systems?Given...

Youssef Cassis

Lost to the Collective - The wide angle

I first became interested in the problem of Soviet suicide after reading a footnote about a dramatic spike in suicides among Bolsheviks (or Communists) during the 1920s. Such an outburst...

Kenneth M. Pinnow

New World A-Coming - A close-up

I begin the book with the stories of a number of men who were members of the Moorish Science Temple, the Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, and Father Divine’s Peace...

Judith Weisenfeld

Fire Craft - In a nutshell

Fire Craft is a story about the meaning of making, of glassblowing, which is simultaneously a more general story about the human condition. It documents my experience learning to blow...

Erin E. O'Connor

Children’s Literature - A close-up

I’d like the browsing reader to come, first, to the general introduction to my book – here I outline the principles and scope, the personal experiences that led me to...

Seth Lerer

Ad Women - The wide angle

Although books on advertising history examine representations of gender, advertising history is a gendered narrative reflecting mostly men’s rather than women’s experience in advertising. To retell the history of advertising,...

Juliann Sivulka

Civitas by Design - A close-up

I am particularly intrigued with the story of public housing, where one would least expect to encounter “communities of citizens.”The early history of the movement to provide decent shelter at...

Howard Gillette Jr.

Mainland Passage - A close-up

In the book’s introduction I explain Puerto Rico’s state in relation to other commonwealth states.Chapter One, “State and Artifice,” examines the eighteenth-century paintings of José Campeche and the nineteenth-century painting...

Ramón E. Soto-Crespo

Gods and Robots - In a nutshell

Who first imagined robots?Most historians believe that automatons were first developed in the Middle Ages. Some philosophers of science claim that it was impossible for anyone in ancient times to...

Adrienne Mayor

2134 Micro-Interviews