“Blood,” Goethe observed in Faust, “is a very special juice.” How special it is and how complex as well is revealed in Douglas Surgenor’s Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry.

As Surgenor aptly shows, what began as a modest program in basic research at the Harvard Medical School in 1920 with the establishment of a small laboratory for the study of the physical chemistry of proteins, suddenly and quite unexpectedly took on immensely practical proportions twenty years later when the onset of World War II made requisite new sophisticated blood techniques and blood substitutes for the treatment of military casualties.

The knowledge and expertise gained by Edwin Cohn and his laboratory associates in the study of proteins, amino acids, and peptides in blood after 1920 put them in a unique position to carry out the search for new blood products. Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry discloses how the wartime emergency called into play Cohn’s talents as a leader who drew together chemists, clinicians, pathologists, immunologists, and others in the attainment of a complex goal. The revolution Cohn started has still not run its course.

In this volume, prominent Buddhist scholar Donald Swearer posits that the future requires a radical shift toward living in recognition of the interdependence of all life forms and the consequent ethic of communality and a life style of moderation or “enoughness” that flows from that recognition, which he calls “an ecology of human flourishing.” Swearer has assembled world-class thinkers to explore and imagine several dimensions of an ecology of human flourishing: economic, sociological, religious, ethical, environmental, historical, literary; how notions of human flourishing, quality of life, and common good have been constructed; and, in the contemporary world, how they are illuminated or are challenged by issues of distributive justice, poverty and economic inequality, global health, and environmental sustainability.

With contributors ranging from ecoactivist Bill McKibben and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, to transformative theologian Sallie McFague and Malaysian critic of global injustice Chandra Muzzafar, this book expresses ethical and religious aspirations to remake the world in the midst of the contradictions, injustices, and problems of our daily lives and today's global economic and climate crises.

The Ethereal Aether is a historical narrative of one of the great experiments in modern physical science. The fame of the 1887 Michelson-Morley aether-drift test on the relative motion of the earth and the luminiferous aether derives largely from the role it is popularly supposed to have played in the origins, and later in the justification, of Albert Einstein’s first theory of relativity; its importance is its own.

As a case history of the intermittent performance of an experiment in physical optics from 1880 to 1930 and of the men whose work it was, this study describes chronologically the conception, experimental design, first trials, repetitions, influence on physical theory, and eventual climax of the optical experiment. Michelson, Morley, and their colleague Miller were the prime actors in this half-century drama of confrontation between experimental and theoretical physics.

The issue concerned the relative motion of “Spaceship Earth” and the Universe, as measured against the background of a luminiferous medium supposedly filling all interstellar space. At stake, it seemed, were the phenomena of astronomical aberration, the wave theory of light, and the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time.

James Clerk Maxwell’s suggestion for a test of his electromagnetic theory was translated by Michelson into an experimental design in 1881, redesigned and reaffirmed as a null result with Morley in 1887, thereafter modified and partially repeated by Morley and Miller, finally completed in 1926 by Miller alone, then by Michelson’s team again in the late 1920s.

Meanwhile Helmholtz, Kelvin, Rayleigh, FitzGerald, Lodge, Larmor, Lorentz, and Poincaré—most of the great names in theoretical physics at the turn of the twentieth century—had wrestled with the anomaly presented by Michelson’s experiment. As the relativity and quantum theories matured, wave-particle duality was accepted by a new generation of physicists. The aether-drift tests disproved the old and verified the new theories of light and electromagnetism. By 1930 they seemed to explain Einstein, relativity, and space-time. But in historical fact, the aether died only with its believers.

The work of Overton H. Taylor is here made available within the covers of a single volume. More than twenty years of study and reflection have taken shape in the previously scattered short writings, which, chronologically presented, amount almost to intellectual autobiography.

Taylor is not simply an “economist” in the present-day meaning of the term. He is a political philosopher and a political economist—a scholar whose interests extend beyond economics into the surrounding areas of social science, philosophy, ethics, political thought, and intellectual history. Taylor’s search into the basic questions of social science has led him repeatedly—as the papers show—to new and fresh appraisals.

The writings here collected cover a wide range of subjects. Some of them are concerned with large segments of the general history of ideas in Western civilization. Other are extended, critical reviews of the books or the thoughts of contemporary thinkers such as R. H. Tawney, A. G. B. Fisher, and Joseph Schumpeter. Still others discuss modern problems of social philosophy and public policy. In all of them, the reader will find a creative and thought-provoking investigation of the foundations of the liberal conservative position.

After World War II, and particularly in the early 1950s, Brazil’s major industrial region suffered a chronic electric power shortage resulting from the inadequate expansion of the Brazilian Traction, Light, and Power Company, the most important utility in the country. “The Light,” as it is called in Brazil, was reluctant to commit itself to continuing investment because of the impossibility of securing a satisfactory price for its product. The intractability of the rate problem, and the consequent insufficiency of supply, stemmed primarily from the foreign ownership of the company. The Light was the classic case of a foreign utility enjoying monopoly privileges to supply a public service. Proposed rate increases, construed as predatory by the public and the host government, met with strong popular resistance.

Throughout this period of stalemate, however, power production grew at a pace that was high by any standards. This impressive growth was to some extent the result of the government’s entry into the power sector as producer, coexisting with the foreign utility. State-controlled companies were gradually taking over the function of power generation while the Light began to recede into distribution, an activity more suited to its reluctance to make heavy financial commitments.

Judith Tendler, taking as her point of departure the different technological and administrative characteristics of power generation and distribution, illustrates how a modus vivendi was finally established which allowed the industry as a whole to expand in spite of strong antagonism between the private and public sectors. In this topical case study, the author sharpens our vision of the development scene by pointing up opportunities for progress that are embedded in seemingly trivial properties of technology.

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

Seibal is a major ruin of the southern Maya lowlands, its vast ceremonial center covering several high hills on the banks of the Pasión River in the Guatemalan Department of Petén. In five volumes published over a 15-year period, the archaeological team headed by Gordon R. Willey presents a comprehensive review of their fieldwork from 1964 to 1968 and the results of many years of subsequent data analysis.

The volumes also report on explorations in the peripheral settlements outside of the Seibal center and provide a regional view of the evolution of lowland Maya culture from the Middle and Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods.