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Authors, Publishers and Politicians
The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1815-1854
James J. Barnes
The Ohio State University Press, 1900

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Body Messages
The Quest for the Proteins of Cellular Communication
Giamila Fantuzzi
Harvard University Press, 2016

Whether classified as regulators of inflammation, metabolism, or other physiological functions, a distinctive set of molecules enables the human body to convey information from one cell to another. An in-depth primer on the molecular mediators that coordinate complex bodily processes, Body Messages provides fresh insight into how biologists first identified this special class of molecules and the consequences of their discovery for modern medicine.

Focusing on proteins that regulate inflammation and metabolism—including the cytokines and adipokines at the core of her own research—Giamila Fantuzzi examines the role body messages play in the physiology of health as well as in the pathology of various illnesses. Readers are introduced to different ways of conceptualizing biomedical research and to the advantages and pitfalls associated with identifying molecules beginning with function or structure. By bringing together areas of research usually studied separately, Fantuzzi stresses the importance of investigating the body as a whole and affirms the futility of trying to separate basic from clinical research. Drawing on firsthand interviews with researchers who made major contributions to the field, Body Messages illustrates that the paths leading to scientific discovery are rarely direct, nor are they always the only routes available.

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Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones
The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils
Ken McNamara
Reaktion Books, 2020
For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few seventeenth-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead, and adorned bodies. What triggered such curious behavior was the belief that some fossils could cure illness, protect against being poisoned, ease the passage into the afterlife, ward off evil spirits, and even kill those who were just plain annoying. But above all, to our early prehistoric ancestors, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration. Drawing on archaeology, mythology, and folklore, Ken McNamara takes us on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and he explores humankind’s unending quest for the meaning of fossils.
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In Search of Dreamtime
The Quest for the Origin of Religion
Tomoko Masuzawa
University of Chicago Press, 1993
In this pioneering work of discourse analysis, Tomoko Masuzawa observes that the modern study of religion is peculiarly ambivalent toward the question of origin. Today's historians of religion maintain that they have abandoned speculative quests for the origin of religion; at the same time, they allege that concepts of absolute beginnings are fundamental to religion itself. By renouncing the desire for origins that they claim religious peoples embrace, historians can vicariously participate in the forbidden quest—so it seems—without forfeiting the authority accruing from their objectivist position.

This ambivalence of contemporary scholars echoes their ambivalence toward the ancestral "giants" of the discipline: Durkheim, Müller, and Freud. Masuzawa shows that the speculations of these three men on the origins of religion render the very notion of time and history problematic and contain powerful instruments for dislodging the position of "Western man" as the keeper of knowledge. Her critical rereading of these forefathers is framed by a compelling discussion of the postmodernist subversion of absolute origins in the works of Walter Benjamin and Rosalind Krauss and a comparison of Mircea Eliade and Nancy Munn's accounts of the Australian aboriginal "dreamtime." Engaging a number of critical issues within the burgeoning field of cultural studies, Masuzawa's book will have far-reaching implications not only for religious studies but throughout the human sciences.
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Latinos in Chicago
Quest for a Political Voice
Wilfredo Cruz
Southern Illinois University Press, 2022
WINNER, 2023 Illinois State Historical Society Certificate of Excellence in “Books, Scholarly”!

The path to political power for Latinos in Chicago

In the Midwest’s largest city, Latinos have been fighting for political representation for more than half a century. In this exploration of urban politics in Chicago, Wilfredo Cruz shows for the first time how Latinos went from being ignored by the Irish-controlled political machine to becoming a respected constituency.

Beginning with the Latino community’s first attempt to acquire a political voice in Chicago politics in 1911 and continuing through Latino officeholders of the early twenty-first century, Cruz surveys not only the struggles of this community—specifically the two largest Latino groups in the city, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans—but also the ways in which Chicago’s Latinos overcame those challenges to gain their political voice.

For most of the twentieth century, Chicago politicians ignored the growing Latino community. This disregard changed with the 1983 election of Mayor Harold Washington, an African American who defied the political machine and actively recruited Latinos to his administration and helped them win city and statewide political offices. His actions opened the doors of government for Latinos in Chicago. Subsequent mayors, seeing the political success of Washington’s move, continued his policies.

Many up-and-coming Latino politicians making strides in Chicago, including state representative Aarón Ortíz, Alderman Andre Vasquez, and Alderman Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, contribute their takes on the struggle for political power and the challenges facing the rising new generation of elected officials. With this book, Cruz asks and answers this question: What does the future hold for Latinos politically in Chicago?
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Logic and the Art of Memory
The Quest for a Universal Language
Paolo Rossi
University of Chicago Press, 2001
The mnemonic arts and the idea of a universal language that would capture the essence of all things were originally associated with cryptology, mysticism, and other occult practices. And it is commonly held that these enigmatic efforts were abandoned with the development of formal logic in the seventeenth century and the beginning of the modern era. In his distinguished book, Logic and the Art of Memory Italian philosopher and historian Paolo Rossi argues that this view is belied by an examination of the history of the idea of a universal language.

Based on comprehensive analyses of original texts, Rossi traces the development of this idea from late medieval thinkers such as Ramon Lull through Bruno, Bacon, Descartes, and finally Leibniz in the seventeenth century. The search for a symbolic mode of communication that would be intelligible to everyone was not a mere vestige of magical thinking and occult sciences, but a fundamental component of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Seen from this perspective, modern science and combinatorial logic represent not a break from the past but rather its full maturity.

Available for the first time in English, this book (originally titled Clavis Universalis) remains one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas ever written. In addition to his eagerly anticipated translation, Steven Clucas offers a substantial introduction that places this book in the context of other recent works on this fascinating subject. A rich history and valuable sourcebook, Logic and the Art of Memory documents an essential chapter in the development of human reason.
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My Many Selves
The Quest for a Plausible Harmony
Wayne C. Booth
Utah State University Press, 2006

In his autobiography, My Many Selves, Wayne C. Booth is less concerned with his professional achievements---though the book by no means ignores his distinguished career---than with the personal vision that emerges from a long life lived thoughtfully. For Booth, even the autobiographical process becomes part of a quest to harmonize the diverse, often conflicting aspects of who he was. To see himself clearly and whole, he broke the self down, personified the fragments, uncovered their roots in his experience and background, and engaged those selves and experiences in dialogue. Basic to his story and to its lifelong concern with ethics and rhetoric was his Mormon youth in rural Utah. In adulthood he struggled with that background, abandoning most Mormon doctrines, but he retained the identity, ethical questions, and concern with communication that this upbringing gave him.

The uncommon wisdom and careful attention that empower Wayne Booth's many other books cause My Many Selves to transcend its genre, as the best memoirs always do. The book becomes a window through which we who read it will see our own conflicts, our own ongoing struggle to live honestly and ethically in the world.

Wayne Booth died in October 2005, soon after completing work on this autobiography.

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Quest for a Christian America, 1800–1865
A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, Volume 1
David Edwin Harrell Jr.
University of Alabama Press, 2003

The definitive social history of the Disciples of Christ in the 19th century

The Disciples of Christ, led by reformers such as Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, was one of a number of early-19th-century primitivist religious movements seeking to “restore the ancient order of things.” The Disciples movement was little more than a loose collection of independent congregations until the middle of the 19th century, but by 1900 three clear groupings of churches had appeared. Today, more than 5 million Americans—members of the modern-day Disciples of Christ (Christian Church), Independent Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ, among others—trace their religious heritage to this “Restoration Movement.”
 

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The Quest for the Golden Trout
Environmental Loss and America’s Iconic Fish
Douglas M. Thompson
University Press of New England, 2013
The angler’s dream of fishing pristine waters in unspoiled country for sleek, healthy trout has turned fishing into a form of theater. It is a manufactured experience—much to the detriment of our rivers and streams. Americans’ love of trout has reached a level of fervor that borders on the religious. Federal and state agencies, as well as nongovernmental lobbying groups, invest billions of dollars on river restoration projects and fish-stocking programs. Yet, their decisions are based on faulty logic and risk destroying species they are tasked with protecting. River ecosystems are modified with engineered structures to improve fishing, native species that compete with trout are eradicated, and nonnative invasive game fish are indiscriminately introduced, genetically modified, and selectively bred to produce more appealing targets for anglers—including the freakishly contrived “golden trout.” The Quest for the Golden Trout is about looking at our nation’s rivers with a more critical eye—and asking more questions about both historic and current practices in fisheries management.
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A Quest for the Historical Christ
Scientia Christi and the Modern Study of Jesus
Anthony Giambrone, OP
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
A Catholic Quest for the Historical Christ brings together a collection of interrelated essays on the historical Jesus and primitive Christology. Sensitive to the diverse, but traditionally Protestant assumptions and perspectives of the "Quest" as well as to the widely lamented disconnect between New Testament exegesis and classical dogmatic theology, an alternative approach is proposed in these pages. Ecumenical and conciliar reference points, along with non-confessional historical methods (e.g. archeology) shape the basic project, which nevertheless assumes some distinctive and important Catholic contours. This particular synthesis injects the voice of a missing interlocutor into an established conversation that has not infrequently been both historically confused and dogmatically (and philosophically) numb. The book is divided into three sections: Historical Foundations, Theological Perspectives, and Jesus and the Scriptures. While the individual chapters represent independent probes, the cumulative argument and arc of the study drives in clear and concerted directions. After a first approach to the Gospel data, attentive at once to historiographical and historical questions, a series of interventions reorienting the present scholarly discussion are suggested. These various, foundational essays lead, finally, to a sustained mediation on the mind of Christ, considered as a unique reader of the Scriptures: a meditation having its proper reflex and reflection in the way Christians themselves, as readers of the Gospels, participate in the Lord's own encounter with the living Word.
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The Quest for the Historical Israel
Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel
Israel Finkelstein
SBL Press, 2007
Three decades of dialogue, discussion, and debate within the interrelated disciplines of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, ancient Israelite history, and Hebrew Bible over the question of the relevance of the biblical account for reconstructing early Israel’s history have created the need for a balanced articulation of the issues and their prospective resolutions. This book brings together for the first time and under one cover, a currently emerging “centrist” paradigm as articulated by two leading figures in the fields of early Israelite archaeology and history. Although Finkelstein and Mazar advocate distinct views of early Israel’s history, they nevertheless share the position that the material cultural data, the biblical traditions, and the ancient Near Eastern written sources are all significantly relevant to the historical quest for Iron Age Israel. The results of their research are featured in accessible, parallel syntheses of the historical reconstruction of early Israel that facilitate comparison and contrast of their respective interpretations. The historical essays presented here are based on invited lectures delivered in October of 2005 at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in Detroit, Michigan.
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The State of the Nation
Government and the Quest for a Better Society
Derek Bok
Harvard University Press

Never before have Americans been so anxious about the future of their society. But rarely has anyone offered a clear statement about why, in a nation so prosperous, free, and stable, we tend to assume that the country is in dire straits and that the government can do little to help. This book is just such a statement, an eloquent assessment of where America stands, how our society has changed in the past half-century, and who or what is responsible for our current frustrations.

Derek Bok examines the nation's progress in five areas that Americans generally consider to be of paramount importance: economic prosperity, quality of life, opportunity, personal security, and societal values. He shows that although we are better off today in most areas than we were in 1960, we have performed poorly overall compared with other leading industrial nations. And when it comes to providing adequate health care at a reasonable cost, educating our young people for high-skilled jobs, alleviating poverty and urban blight, and reducing crime, our record has been dismal. Comparing the United States with other leading industrial nations on more than sixty key indicators, Bok shows that we rank below average in more than two-thirds of the cases and at the bottom in more than half.

What has caused this decline, and what can be done about it? In virtually all important areas of American life, Bok concludes, government policies have played a significant, often decisive role in accounting for our successes as well as our failures. But whereas others call for downsizing the federal government, Bok argues that government is essential to achieving America's goals. In short, Ronald Reagan was only half right. Government is the problem. But it is also the most important part of the solution. By assessing the state of the nation and identifying the reasons for its current condition, this book helps set the agenda for improving America's performance in the future.

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When Wall Street Met Main Street
The Quest for an Investors' Democracy
Julia C. Ott
Harvard University Press, 2011

The financial crisis that began in 2008 has made Americans keenly aware of the enormous impact Wall Street has on the economic well-being of the nation and its citizenry. How did financial markets and institutions-commonly perceived as marginal and elitist at the beginning of the twentieth century-come to be seen as the bedrock of American capitalism? How did stock investment-once considered disreputable and dangerous-first become a mass practice?

Julia Ott tells the story of how, between the rise of giant industrial corporations and the Crash of 1929, the federal government, corporations, and financial institutions campaigned to universalize investment, with the goal of providing individual investors with a stake in the economy and the nation. As these distributors of stocks and bonds established a broad, national market for financial securities, they debated the distribution of economic power, the proper role of government, and the meaning of citizenship under modern capitalism.

By 1929, the incidence of stock ownership had risen to engulf one quarter of American households in the looming financial disaster. Accordingly, the federal government assumed responsibility for protecting citizen-investors by regulating the financial securities markets. By recovering the forgotten history of this initial phase of mass investment and the issues surrounding it, Ott enriches and enlightens contemporary debates over economic reform.

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