January 8th, 2012

Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986-2011 (Hardcover)

By Martha Craven Nussbaum
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780199777853
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Published: Oxford University Press, USA, 1/2012
This volume collects the notable published book reviews of Martha C. Nussbaum is an acclaimed philosopher who is also a professor of law and a public intellectual. Her academic work focuses on questions of moral and political philosophy and on the nature of the emotions. But over the past 25 years she has also written many book reviews for a general public, in periodicals such as The New Republic and The New York Review of Books. Dating from 1986 to the present, these essays engage, constructively and also critically, with authors like Roger Scruton, Allan Bloom, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, Richard Posner, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Moller Okin, and other prominent intellectuals of our time. Throughout, her views defy ideological predictability, heralding valuable work from little-known sources, deftly criticizing where criticism is due, and generally providing a compelling picture of how philosophy in the Socratic tradition can engage with broad social concerns. For this volume, Nussbaum provides an intriguing introduction that explains her selection and provides her view of the role of the public philosopher.

Demystifying the Chinese Economy (Paperback)

By Justin Yifu Lin
$27.99
ISBN-13: 9780521181747
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Published: Cambridge University Press, 11/2011
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China was the largest and one of most advanced economies in the world before the eighteenth century, yet declined precipitately thereafter and degenerated into one of the world's poorest economies by the late nineteenth century. Despite generations' efforts for national rejuvenation, China did not reverse its fate until it introduced market-oriented reforms in 1979. Since then it has been the most dynamic economy in the world and is likely to regain its position as the world's largest economy before 2030. Based on economic analysis and personal reflection on policy debates, Justin Yifu Lin provides insightful answers to why China was so advanced in premodern times, what caused it to become so poor for almost two centuries, how it grew into a market economy, where its potential is for continuing dynamic growth and what further reforms are needed to complete the transition to a well-functioning, advanced market economy.

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Hardcover)

By John M. Barry
$35.00
ISBN-13: 9780670023059
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Published: Viking Adult, 1/2012
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A revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America.

For four hundred years, Americans have wrestled with and fought over two concepts that define the nature of the nation: the proper relation between church and state and between a free individual and the state. These debates began with the extraordinary thought and struggles of Roger Williams, who had an unparalleled understanding of the conflict between a government that justified itself by "reason of state"-i.e. national security-and its perceived "will of God" and the "ancient rights and liberties" of individuals.

This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill."

Acclaimed historian John M. Barry explores the development of these fundamental ideas through the story of the man who was the first to link religious freedom to individual liberty, and who created in America the first government and society on earth informed by those beliefs. The story is essential to the continuing debate over how we define the role of religion and political power in modern American life.

Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (Hardcover)

By Norman Davies
$40.00
ISBN-13: 9780670022731
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Published: Viking Adult, 10/2011
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An evocative account of fourteen European kingdoms-their rise, maturity, and eventual disappearance.

There is something profoundly romantic about lost civilizations. Europe's past is littered with states and kingdoms, large and small, that are scarcely remembered today, and while their names may be unfamiliar-Aragon, Etruria, the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies-their stories should change our mental map of the past. We come across forgotten characters and famous ones-King Arthur and Macbeth, Napoleon and Queen Victoria, right up to Stalin and Gorbachev-and discover how faulty memory can be, and how much we can glean from these lost empires. Davies peers through the cracks in the mainstream accounts of modern-day states to dazzle us with extraordinary stories of barely remembered pasts, and of the traces they left behind.

This is Norman Davies at his best: sweeping narrative history packed with unexpected insights. Vanished Kingdoms will appeal to all fans of unconventional and thought-provoking history, from readers of Niall Ferguson to Jared Diamond.

Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority (Paperback)

By Tim Wise
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780872865211
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Published: City Lights Publishers, 1/2012
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"Sparing neither family nor self . . . he considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor. . . . His candor is invigorating."—Publishers Weekly

"One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation."—Michael Eric Dyson

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation’s diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call to "take our country back." By means of a racialized nostalgia for a mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its campaign for reactionary social and economic policies.

In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a finger at whites’ race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an agenda will only do harm to the nation’s people, including most whites. In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present and future.

Tim Wise is one of the most prominent antiracist essayists, educators, and activists in the United States. He is regularly interviewed by A-list media, including CNN, C-SPAN, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Michael Eric Dyson's radio program, and many more. His most recent books include Colorblind and Between Barack and a Hard Place.

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (Hardcover)

By Vivian Maier, John Maloof, Geoff Dyer
$39.95
ISBN-13: 9781576875773
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Published: powerHouse Books, 11/2011

A good street photographer must be possessed of many talents: an eye for detail, light, and composition; impeccable timing; a populist or humanitarian outlook; and a tireless ability to constantly shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot and never miss a moment. It is hard enough to find these
qualities in trained photographers with the benefit of schooling and mentors and a community of fellow artists and aficionados supporting and rewarding their efforts. It is incredibly rare to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.

Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things, a professional nanny, who from the 1950s until the 1990s took over 100,000 photographs worldwide—from France to New York City to Chicago and dozens of other countries—and yet showed the results to no one. The photos are amazing both for the breadth of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.

It wasn’t until local historian John Maloof purchased a box of Maier’s negatives from a Chicago auction house and began collecting and championing her marvelous work just a few years ago that any of it saw the light of day. Presented here for the first time in print, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer collects the best of her incredible, unseen body of work.

The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb (Hardcover)

By Philip Taubman
$29.99
ISBN-13: 9780061744006
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Published: Harper, 1/2012
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Offering a clear analysis of the danger of nuclear terrorism and how it can be prevented, The Partnership sheds light on one of the most divisive security issues facing Washington today. Award-winning New York Times journalist Philip Taubman illuminates our vulnerability in the face of this pressing terrorist threat—and the unlikely efforts of five key Cold War players to eliminate the nuclear arsenal they helped create. Bob Woodward calls The Partnership a “brilliant, penetrating study of nuclear threats, present and past,” and David Kennedy writes that it is “indispensable reading for all who would understand the desperate urgency of containing the menace of nuclear proliferation.”

Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World (Hardcover)

By Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, Izumi Tsuji
$35.00
ISBN-13: 9780300158649
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Published: Yale University Press, 1/2012
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In recent years, otaku culture has emerged as one of Japan’s major cultural exports and as a genuinely transnational phenomenon. This timely volume investigates how this once marginalized popular culture has come to play a major role in Japan’s identity at home and abroad. In the American context, the word otaku is best translated as “geek”—an ardent fan with highly specialized knowledge and interests. But it is associated especially with fans of specific Japan-based cultural genres, including anime, manga, and video games. Most important of all, as this collection shows, is the way otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organize around niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. In this collection of essays, Japanese and American scholars offer richly detailed descriptions of how this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture created its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media. By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, this groundbreaking collection provides fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age.

The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)

By Richard Curt Kraus
$11.95
ISBN-13: 9780199740550
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Published: Oxford University Press, USA, 1/2012
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China's decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shook the politics of China and the world. Even as we approach its fiftieth anniversary, the movement remains so contentious that the Chinese Communist Party still forbids fully open investigation of its origins, development, and conclusion. Drawing upon a vital trove of scholarship, memoirs, and popular culture, this Very Short Introduction illuminates this complex, often obscure, and still controversial movement. Moving beyond the figure of Mao Zedong, Richard Curt Kraus links Beijing's elite politics to broader aspects of society and culture, highlighting many changes in daily life, employment, and the economy. Kraus also situates this very nationalist outburst of Chinese radicalism within a global context, showing that the Cultural Revolution was mirrored in the radical youth movement that swept much of the world, and that had imagined or emotional links to China's red guards. Yet it was also during the Cultural Revolution that China and the United States tempered their long hostility, one of the innovations in this period that sowed the seeds for China's subsequent decades of spectacular economic growth.

The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things Off and Start Getting Stuff Done (Paperback)

By Ph.D. Steel, Piers
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780061703621
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Published: Harper Paperbacks, 1/2012
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Using a mix of psychology, science, self-help, and a decade of groundbreaking research, Dr. Piers Steel, internationally recognized as the foremost authority on procrastination, explains why procrastination is dangerously on the rise and tells us how to overcome the destructive patterns that affect our health and happiness to create more positive lives.

If you think you are not one of the 95 percent of those of us who procrastinate, take Dr. Steel's test in The Procrastination Equation. Or if you think you procrastinate because you're a perfectionist—you're wrong. So, why do we surf the Web instead of finishing overdue projects? Why do we say we'll start that diet—tomorrow? Why do we stay up late watching television instead of going to bed? And how do we overcome these bad habits that we know work against our best intentions? Based on more than a decade of research, and written with humor, humanity, and solid science, The Procrastination Equation explains why we do what we do—or, in this case, don't—offering answers to such questions as:

  • Are we biologically hardwired to procrastinate? If so, why?
  • How does procrastination cost us?
  • What tricks do we play on ourselves when we procrastinate at work, school, and home?
  • If visualizing our dreams isn't enough to make them real, then what steps must we take?

Along the way, Dr. Steel dispels the myths and misunderstandings of motivation and procrastination, replacing them with a clear explanation of why we put off until tomorrow what we should be doing today. He then offers specific techniques we can use to tame and prevent the bad habits that adversely affect our health, happiness, and careers, all the while celebrating the very human foibles that make us who we are. The Procrastination Equation is the definitive and accessible guide for anyone who struggles with this age-old dilemma.

The Revolutionary Constitution (Hardcover)

By David J. Bodenhamer
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780195378337
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Published: Oxford University Press, USA, 2/2012
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The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union--not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, we no longer operate under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791--because we are no longer the same nation.

In The Revolutionary Constitution, David J. Bodenhamer provides a comprehensive new look at America's basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, he notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. Bodenhamer explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, he takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts--and Congress--redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power.

With up-to-the-minute legal expertise and a broad grasp of the social and political context, this book is a tour de force of Constitutional history and analysis.

Muslim Families in Global Senegal: Money Takes Care of Shame (Paperback)

By Beth A. Buggenhagen
$24.95
ISBN-13: 9780253223678
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Published: Indiana University Press, 2/2012
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Senegalese Murid migrants have circulated cargo and currency throughofficial and unofficial networks in Africa and the world. Muslim Families in GlobalSenegal focuses on trade and the transmission of enduring social value though cloth, videos of life-cycle rituals, and religious offerings. Highlighting women'sparticipation in these networks and the financial strategies they rely on, BethBuggenhagen reveals the deep connections between economic profits and ritual andsocial authority. Buggenhagen discovers that these strategies are not responses to adispersed community in crisis, but rather produce new roles, wealth, and worth forSenegalese women in all parts of the globe.

The Artist and the Warrior: Military History through the Eyes of the Masters (Hardcover)

By Theodore K. Rabb
$45.00
ISBN-13: 9780300126372
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Published: Yale University Press, 11/2011
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How have artists across the millennia responded to warfare? In this uniquely wide-ranging book, Theodore Rabb blends military history and the history of art to search for the answers. He draws our attention to masterpieces from the ancient world to the twentieth century—paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, engravings, architecture, and photographs—and documents the evolving nature of warfare as artists have perceived it. 

The selected works represent landmarks in the history of art and are drawn mainly from the western tradition, though important examples from Japan, India, and the Middle East are also brought into the discussion. Together these works tell a story of long centuries during which warfare inspired admiration and celebration. Yet a shift toward criticism and condemnation emerged in the Renaissance, and by the end of the nineteenth century, glorification of the warrior by leading artists had ceased. Rabb traces this progression, from such works as the Column of Trajan and the Titian "Battle of Lepanto", whose makers celebrated glorious victories, to the antiwar depictions created by Brueghel, Goya, Picasso, and others. Richly illustrated and accessibly written, this book presents a study of unprecedented sweep and multidisciplinary interest.

Sanctuary (Paperback)

By William Faulkner
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780679748144
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Published: Vintage, 12/1993
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First published in 1931, this classic psychological melodrama has been viewed as more of a social document in his tragic legend of the South than mere story. From Popeye, a moonshining racketeer with no conscience and Temple Drake, beautiful, bored and vulnerable, to Harace Benbow, a lawyer of honor and decency wishing for more in his life, and Gowan Stevens, college student with a weakness for drink, Faulkner writes of changing social values and order. A sinister cast peppered with social outcasts and perverts perform abduction, murder, and mayhem in this harsh and brutal story of sensational and motiveless evil.

Students of Faulkner have found an allegorical interpretation of "Sanctuary" as a comment on the degradation of old South's social order by progressive modernism and materialistic exploitation. Popeye and his co-horts represent this hurling change that is corrupting the historic traditions of the South, symbolized by Horace Stevens, which are no longer able to protect the victimized Negro and poor white trash due to middle-class apathy and inbred violence.

Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul?: A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity (Paperback)

By J. R. Daniel Kirk
$21.99
ISBN-13: 9780801039102
Availability: Not Currently In Stock at Our Stores
Published: Baker Academic, 1/2012
Readers of the Bible are often drawn to Jesus's message and ministry, but they are not as positively inclined toward Paul. What should people who love Jesus do with Paul? Here Pauline scholar J. R. Daniel Kirk offers a fresh and timely engagement of the debated relationship between Paul's writings and the portrait of Jesus contained in the Gospels. He integrates the messages of Jesus and Paul both with one another and with the Old Testament, demonstrating the continuity that exists between these two foundational figures. After laying out the narrative contours of the Christian life, Kirk provides fresh perspective on challenging issues facing today's world, from environmental concerns to social justice to homosexuality.

The Jefferson Bible (Hardcover)

By Thomas Jefferson
$10.00
ISBN-13: 9781585429165
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Published: Tarcher, 1/2012
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A uniquely attractive, compact edition of Thomas Jefferson's classic abridgment of the Bible, in which Jefferson sculpted the words and ideas of Christ into a resounding moral philosophy.

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself." -Thomas Jefferson, 1803

With these words, written to a personal friend, Thomas Jefferson began one of the most audacious religious experiments in American history. On and off for the next seventeen years (including his term in the White House), Jefferson cut and pasted the philosophy of Jesus Christ, as recorded in Scripture, into one compact statement. He purposefully omitted any references to the virgin birth, miraculous healings, demonic possession, or supernatural events of any kind. His aim was to distinguish the moral philosophy of Christ from the religion that was later created around Christ.

This hardcover replica of The Jefferson Bible

The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins (Paperback)

By Peter Enns
$17.99
ISBN-13: 9781587433153
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Published: Brazos Press, 1/2012
Can Christianity and evolution coexist? Traditional Christian teaching presents Jesus as reversing the effects of the Fall of Adam. However, an evolutionary view of beginnings doesn't allow for a historical Adam, making evolution seemingly incompatible with what Genesis and the apostle Paul say about him. For Christians who accept evolution and want to take the Bible seriously, this presents a faith-shaking tension.Peter Enns, an expert in biblical interpretation, offers a way forward by explaining how this tension is caused not by the discoveries of science but by false expectations about the biblical texts. Focusing on key biblical passages in the discussion, Enns demonstrates that the author of Genesis and the apostle Paul wrote to ask and answer ancient questions for ancient people; the fact that they both speak of Adam does not determine whether Christians can accept evolution. This thought-provoking book helps readers reconcile the teachings of the Bible with the widely held evolutionary view of beginnings and will appeal to anyone interested in the Christianity-evolution debate.

The Last Nude (Hardcover)

By Ellis Avery
$25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594488139
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Published: Riverhead Hardcover, 1/2012
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A stunning story of love, sexual obsession, treachery, and tragedy, about an artist and her most famous muse in Paris between the world wars.

Paris, 1927. In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.

Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished-and coveted-works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.

Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Ellis Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, this is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.

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