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Action versus Contemplation
Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters
Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule
University of Chicago Press, 2018
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654. But then there’s Walt Whitman, in 1856: “Whoever you are, come forth! Or man or woman come forth! / You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house.”
 
It is truly an ancient debate: Is it better to be active or contemplative? To do or to think? To make an impact, or to understand the world more deeply? Aristotle argued for contemplation as the highest state of human flourishing. But it was through action that his student Alexander the Great conquered the known world. Which should we aim at? Centuries later, this argument underlies a surprising number of the questions we face in contemporary life. Should students study the humanities, or train for a job? Should adults work for money or for meaning? And in tumultuous times, should any of us sit on the sidelines, pondering great books, or throw ourselves into protests and petition drives? 
 
With Action versus Contemplation, Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule address the question in a refreshingly unexpected way: by refusing to take sides. Rather, they argue for a rethinking of the very opposition. The active and the contemplative can—and should—be vibrantly alive in each of us, fused rather than sundered. Writing in a personable, accessible style, Summit and Vermeule guide readers through the long history of this debate from Plato to Pixar, drawing compelling connections to the questions and problems of today. Rather than playing one against the other, they argue, we can discover how the two can nourish, invigorate, and give meaning to each other, as they have for the many writers, artists, and thinkers, past and present, whose examples give the book its rich, lively texture of interplay and reference.
 
This is not a self-help book. It won’t give you instructions on how to live your life. Instead, it will do something better: it will remind you of the richness of a life that embraces action and contemplation, company and solitude, living in the moment and planning for the future. Which is better? Readers of this book will discover the answer: both.
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The Age of Scientific Wellness
Why the Future of Medicine Is Personalized, Predictive, Data-Rich, and in Your Hands
Leroy Hood and Nathan Price
Harvard University Press, 2023

“If you want to understand how the latest advances in genomics and AI can completely transform your health, and to translate this promise into practical tools that you can apply today, read this book!”—Mark Hyman, author of Young Forever

Taking us to the cutting edge of the new frontier of medicine, a visionary biotechnologist and a pathbreaking researcher show how we can optimize our health in ways that were previously unimaginable.


We are on the cusp of a major transformation in healthcare—yet few people know it. At top hospitals and a few innovative health-tech startups, scientists are working closely with patients to dramatically extend their “healthspan”—the number of healthy years before disease sets in. In The Age of Scientific Wellness, two visionary leaders of this revolution in health take us on a thrilling journey to this new frontier of medicine.

Today, most doctors wait for clinical symptoms to appear before they act, and the ten most commonly prescribed medications confer little or no benefit to most people taking them. Leroy Hood and Nathan Price argue that we must move beyond this reactive, hit-or-miss approach to usher in real precision health—a form of highly personalized care they call “scientific wellness.” Using information gleaned from our blood and genes and tapping into the data revolution made possible by AI, doctors can catch the onset of disease years before symptoms arise, revolutionizing prevention. Current applications have shown startling results: diabetes reversed, cancers eliminated, Alzheimer’s avoided, autoimmune conditions kept at bay.

This is not a future fantasy: it is already happening, but only for a few patients and at high cost. It’s time to make this gold standard of care more widely available. Inspiring in its possibilities, radical in its conclusions, The Age of Scientific Wellness shares actionable insights to help you chart a course to a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.

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American Property
A History of How, Why, and What We Own
Stuart Banner
Harvard University Press, 2011

In America, we are eager to claim ownership: our homes, our ideas, our organs, even our own celebrity. But beneath our nation’s proprietary longing looms a troublesome question: what does it mean to own something? More simply: what is property?

The question is at the heart of many contemporary controversies, including disputes over who owns everything from genetic material to indigenous culture to music and film on the Internet. To decide if and when genes or culture or digits are a kind of property that can be possessed, we must grapple with the nature of property itself. How does it originate? What purposes does it serve? Is it a natural right or one created by law?

Accessible and mercifully free of legal jargon, American Property reveals the perpetual challenge of answering these questions, as new forms of property have emerged in response to technological and cultural change, and as ideas about the appropriate scope of government regulation have shifted. This first comprehensive history of property in the United States is a masterly guided tour through a contested human institution that touches all aspects of our lives and desires.

Stuart Banner shows that property exists to serve a broad set of purposes, constantly in flux, that render the idea of property itself inconstant. Despite our ideals of ownership, property has always been a means toward other ends. What property signifies and what property is, we come to see, has consistently changed to match the world we want to acquire.

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American School Reform
What Works, What Fails, and Why
Joseph P. McDonald and the Cities and Schools Research Group
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Dissecting twenty years of educational politics in our nation’s largest cities, American School Reform offers one of the clearest assessments of school reform as it has played out in our recent history. Joseph P. McDonald and his colleagues evaluate the half-billion-dollar Annenberg Challenge—launched in 1994—alongside other large-scale reform efforts that have taken place in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. They look deeply at what school reform really is, how it works, how it fails, and what differences it can make nonetheless.
             
McDonald and his colleagues lay out several interrelated ideas in what they call a theory of action space. Frequently education policy gets so ambitious that implementing it becomes a near impossibility. Action space, however, is what takes shape when talented educators, leaders, and reformers guide the social capital of civic leaders and the financial capital of governments, foundations, corporations, and other backers toward true results. Exploring these extraordinary collaborations through their lifespans and their influences on future efforts, the authors provide political hope—that reform efforts can work, and that our schools can be made better.   
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The Art of Military Coercion
Why the West's Military Superiority Scarcely Matters
Rob de Wijk
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And Western nations in general spend far more than developing nations around the globe. Yet when Western nations have found themselves in conflicts in recent decades, their performance has been mixed at best. In his fully updated new edition of The Art of Military Coercion, Rob de Wijk presents a theory on the use of force. He argues that the key is a failure to use force decisively, to properly understand the dynamics of conflict and balance means and ends. Without that ability, superiority of dollars, numbers, and weaponry won't necessarily translate to victory.
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The Catholic Church and American Culture
Why the Claims of Dan Brown Strike a Chord
Eric A. Plumer
University of Scranton Press, 2009

More than fifty books debunking the religious claims of The Da Vinci Code have been published.  Thisis the first book devoted to the fundamentally more interesting question: if those claims are so unfounded and erroneous, why have they resonated so strongly with millions of intelligent readers and filmgoers?

From the sexual abuse scandal that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that cast a cloud over a troubled nation, Eric Plumer’s The Catholic Church and American Culture: Why the Claims of the DaVinci Code Struck a Chord investigates the contemporary events, ideas, and movements that fostered Dan Brown’s unprecedented dominance of best-seller lists and dinner-table conversation. This ambitious book considers the feminist movement, radical individualism, twelve-step programs, the authority of science and psychology, and other cultural developments that paved the way for The Da Vinci Code craze. It also reflects on the recent publication of the Gnostic Gospels, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Plumer’s engaging book is sure to stimulate further discussion about the role of religion in contemporary life.

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Cheap Threats
Why the United States Struggles to Coerce Weak States
Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain
Georgetown University Press

Why do weak states resist threats of force from the United States, especially when history shows that this superpower carries out its ultimatums? Cheap Threats upends conventional notions of power politics and challenges assumptions about the use of compellent military threats in international politics.

Drawing on an original dataset of US compellence from 1945 to 2007 and four in-depth case studies—the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 2011 confrontation with Libya, and the 1991 and 2003 showdowns with Iraq—Dianne Pfundstein Chamberlain finds that US compellent threats often fail because threatening and using force became comparatively “cheap” for the United States after the Cold War. Becoming the world’s only superpower and adopting a new light-footprint model of war, which relied heavily on airpower and now drones, have reduced the political, economic, and human costs that US policymakers face when they go to war. Paradoxically, this lower-cost model of war has cheapened US threats and fails to signal to opponents that the United States is resolved to bear the high costs of a protracted conflict. The result: small states gamble, often unwisely, that the United States will move on to a new target before achieving its goals.

Cheap Threats resets the bar for scholars and planners grappling with questions of state resolve, hegemonic stability, effective coercion, and other issues pertinent in this new era of US warfighting and diplomacy.

[more]

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Children Draw
A Guide to Why, When and How Children Make Art
Marilyn Js Goodman
Reaktion Books, 2021
Children Draw is a concise, richly illustrated book, aimed at parents, teachers, and caretakers, that explores why children draw and the meaning and value of drawing for youngsters—from toddlers aged two to pre-adolescents aged twelve. Informed by psychology and practical teaching with children, it guides readers through the progressive stages and characteristics of drawing development as children grow and change mentally, physically, socially, emotionally, and creatively. It offers parents tips about encouraging children to express their ideas visually, age-appropriate art materials, workspaces, and different media, as well as suggestions for making an art museum visit more meaningful—not to mention more fun—for both parents and kids. Packed with many delightful examples of children’s art, Children Draw is an essential book for parents interested in their child’s art activities.
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The Color of Mind
Why the Origins of the Achievement Gap Matter for Justice
Derrick Darby and John L. Rury
University of Chicago Press, 2018
American students vary in educational achievement, but white students in general typically have better test scores and grades than black students. Why is this the case, and what can school leaders do about it? In The Color of Mind, Derrick Darby and John L. Rury answer these pressing questions and show that we cannot make further progress in closing the achievement gap until we understand its racist origins.

Telling the story of what they call the Color of Mind—the idea that there are racial differences in intelligence, character, and behavior—they show how philosophers, such as David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and American statesman Thomas Jefferson, contributed to the construction of this pernicious idea, how it influenced the nature of schooling and student achievement, and how voices of dissent such as Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and W. E. B. Du Bois debunked the Color of Mind and worked to undo its adverse impacts.

Rejecting the view that racial differences in educational achievement are a product of innate or cultural differences, Darby and Rury uncover the historical interplay between ideas about race and American schooling, to show clearly that the racial achievement gap has been socially and institutionally constructed. School leaders striving to bring justice and dignity to American schools today must work to root out the systemic manifestations of these ideas within schools, while still doing what they can to mitigate the negative effects of poverty, segregation, inequality, and other external factors that adversely affect student achievement. While we cannot expect schools alone to solve these vexing social problems, we must demand that they address the dignitary injustices associated with how we track, discipline, and deal with special education that reinforce long-standing racist ideas. That is the only way to expel the Color of Mind from schools, close the racial achievement gap, and afford all children the dignity they deserve.
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Dealing with Risk
Why the Public and the Experts Disagree on Environmental Issues
Howard Margolis
University of Chicago Press, 1996
For decades, policymakers and analysts have been frustrated by the stubborn and often dramatic disagreement between experts and the public on acceptable levels of environmental risk. Most experts, for instance, see no severe problem in dealing with nuclear waste, given the precautions and safety levels now in place. Yet public opinion vehemently rejects this view, repudiating both the experts' analysis and the evidence.

In Dealing with Risk, Howard Margolis moves beyond the usual "rival rationalities" explanation proffered by risk analysts for the rift between expert and lay opinion. He reveals the conflicts of intuition that undergird those concerns, and proposes a new approach to the psychology of persuasion and belief. Examining the role of intuition, mental habits, and cognitive frameworks in the construction of public opinion, this compelling account bridges the public policy impasse that has plagued controversial environmental issues.
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Education Behind the Wall
Why and How We Teach College in Prison
Edited by Mneesha Gellman
Brandeis University Press, 2022

An edited volume reflecting on different aspects of teaching in prison and different points of view.

This book seeks to address some of the major issues faced by faculty who are teaching college classes for incarcerated students. Composed of a series of case studies meant to showcase the strengths and challenges of teaching a range of different disciplines in prison, this volume brings together scholars who articulate some of the best practices for teaching their expertise inside alongside honest reflections on the reality of educational implementation in a constrained environment. The book not only provides essential guidance for faculty interested in developing their own courses to teach in prisons, but also places the work of higher education in prisons in philosophical context with regards to racial, economic, social, and gender-based issues. Rather than solely a how-to handbook, this volume also helps readers think through the trade-offs that happen when teaching inside, and about how to ensure the full integrity of college access for incarcerated students.

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Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits
Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight For
Robert Menasse
Seagull Books, 2016
In 2010, Robert Menasse journeyed to Brussels to begin work on a novel centered on the European Union. His extended stay resulted in a completely different book—Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits, a work of nonfiction examining the history of the European project and the evolving politics of nation-states.

Spanning from the beginning of the transnational idea with 1951’s Montanunion—the European Coal and Steel Community—to the current financial crisis, Menasse focuses on the institutional structures and forces both advancing and obstructing the European project. Given the internal tensions among the European Commission, Parliament, and Council, Menasse argues that current problems that are frequently misunderstood as resulting from the financial crisis are, in fact, political. Along the way, he makes the bold claim that either the Europe of nation-states will perish—or the project of transcending the nation-states will.

A provocative book, Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits deftly analyzes the financial and bureaucratic structures of the European Union and sheds much-needed light on the state of the debt crisis. Menasse brings his considerable literary expertise to the unraveling of the real state of the Union, along the way weaving an intriguing tale of one continent’s efforts to become a truly postnational democracy.
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Fully Grown
Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success
Dietrich Vollrath
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Vollrath challenges our long-held assumption that growth is the best indicator of an economy’s health.

Most economists would agree that a thriving economy is synonymous with GDP growth. The more we produce and consume, the higher our living standard and the more resources available to the public. This means that our current era, in which growth has slowed substantially from its postwar highs, has raised alarm bells. But should it? Is growth actually the best way to measure economic success—and does our slowdown indicate economic problems?

The counterintuitive answer Dietrich Vollrath offers is: No. Looking at the same facts as other economists, he offers a radically different interpretation. Rather than a sign of economic failure, he argues, our current slowdown is, in fact, a sign of our widespread economic success. Our powerful economy has already supplied so much of the necessary stuff of modern life, brought us so much comfort, security, and luxury, that we have turned to new forms of production and consumption that increase our well-being but do not contribute to growth in GDP.

In Fully Grown, Vollrath offers a powerful case to support that argument. He explores a number of important trends in the US economy: including a decrease in the number of workers relative to the population, a shift from a goods-driven economy to a services-driven one, and a decline in geographic mobility. In each case, he shows how their economic effects could be read as a sign of success, even though they each act as a brake of GDP growth.  He also reveals what growth measurement can and cannot tell us—which factors are rightly correlated with economic success, which tell us nothing about significant changes in the economy, and which fall into a conspicuously gray area.

Sure to be controversial, Fully Grown will reset the terms of economic debate and help us think anew about what a successful economy looks like.
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Gamers…in the Library?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages
Eli Neiburger
American Library Association, 2007

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How and Why to Read and Create Children's Digital Books
A Guide for Primary Practitioners
Natalia Kucirkova
University College London, 2018
How and Why to Read and Create Children’s Digital Books outlines effective ways of using digital books in early years and primary classrooms, and specifies the educational potential of using digital books and apps in physical spaces and virtual communities. With a particular focus on apps and personalized reading, Natalia Kucirkova combines theory and practice to argue that personalized reading is only truly personalized when it is created or cocreated by reading communities. Part I suggests criteria to evaluate the educational quality of digital books and practical strategies for their use in the classroom. Specific attention is paid to the ways in which digital books can support individual children’s strengths and difficulties, digital literacies, and language and communication skills . Part II explores digital books created by children, caregivers, teachers, and librarians and offers insights into how smart toys can likewise enrich children’s reading for pleasure.
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Music as Biology
The Tones We Like and Why
Dale Purves
Harvard University Press, 2017

The universality of musical tones has long fascinated philosophers, scientists, musicians, and ordinary listeners. Why do human beings worldwide find some tone combinations consonant and others dissonant? Why do we make music using only a small number of scales out of the billions that are possible? Why do differently organized scales elicit different emotions? Why are there so few notes in scales? In Music as Biology, Dale Purves argues that biology offers answers to these and other questions on which conventional music theory is silent.

When people and animals vocalize, they generate tonal sounds—periodic pressure changes at the ear which, when combined, can be heard as melodies and harmonies. Human beings have evolved a sense of tonality, Purves explains, because of the behavioral advantages that arise from recognizing and attending to human voices. The result is subjective responses to tone combinations that are best understood in terms of their contribution to biological success over evolutionary and individual history. Purves summarizes evidence that the intervals defining Western and other scales are those with the greatest collective similarity to the human voice; that major and minor scales are heard as happy or sad because they mimic the subdued and excited speech of these emotional states; and that the character of a culture’s speech influences the tonal palette of its traditional music.

Rethinking music theory in biological terms offers a new approach to centuries-long debates about the organization and impact of music.

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No Way to Run an Economy
Why the System Failed and How to Put It Right
Graham Turner
Pluto Press, 2009

In The Credit Crunch, Graham Turner predicted that banks would be nationalised and interest rates would be reduced too slowly to halt the crisis. His predictions were correct. His new book, No Way to Run an Economy, is the essential guide to the turbulent times ahead.

Turner recommended radical measures, such as quantitative easing, in early 2008 but argues that action has been taken too late and been too timid to make a real difference. He dissects the policy mistakes of the last 12 months including Obama's doomed market-led response to the crisis and the obsession of central banks with the red herring of inflation.

There is no doubt the economy is still in serious trouble, but Turner shows that learning from the mistakes made so far can prevent a situation worse than that of the 1930s crisis.

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Nonprofit Governance
The Why, What, and How of Nonprofit Boardship
John Tropman and Thomas J. Harvey
University of Scranton Press, 2009

This thorough volume offers up-to-date information and practical guidelines for board members and executives of nonprofit organizations large and small. Among the topics addressed are the historical roots of the voluntary sector in America, a complete discussion of the key responsibilities of nonprofit boards, suggestions for board organization, appropriate protocol for meetings, legal issues affecting nonprofit groups, and useful tools for self-assessment. This guide will be indispensable to the almost two million nonprofit organizations existing in the United States today.

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Patterns in Nature
Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does
Philip Ball
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs.

Unlike the patterns we create in technology, architecture, and art, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form – spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals, say—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. That’s because, as Patterns in Nature shows, at the most basic level these patterns can often be described using the same mathematical and physical principles: there is a surprising underlying unity in the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea.
 
By exploring similarities such as those between a snail shell and the swirling stars of a galaxy, or the branches of a tree and those of a river network, this spectacular visual tour conveys the wonder, beauty, and richness of natural pattern formation.
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The Political Origins of Inequality
Why a More Equal World Is Better for Us All
Simon Reid-Henry
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Inequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem for the rich world. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the world’s wealth—the true measure of our age of inequality. In this historical tour de force, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the usual story of globalization and development as a story of the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century and around the globe, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrounds the political turning points and decisions behind the making of today’s uneven societies. As it weaves together insights from the Victorian city to the Cold War, from US economic policy to Europe’s present migration crisis, a true picture emerges of the structure of inequality itself.   

The problem of inequality, Reid-Henry argues, is a problem that manifests between places as well as over time. This is one reason why it cannot be resolved by the usual arguments of left versus right, bound as they are to the national scale alone. Most of all, however, it is why the level of inequality that confronts us today is indicative of a more general crisis in political thought. Modern political discourse has no place for public reason or the common good. Equality is yesterday’s dream. Yet the fact that we now accept such a world—a world that values security over freedom, special treatment over universal opportunity, and efficiency over fairness—is ultimately because we have stopped even trying in recent decades to build the political architecture the world actually requires.

Our politics has fallen out of step with the world, then, and at the every moment it is needed more than ever. Yet it is within our power to address this. Doing so involves identifying and then meeting our political responsibilities to others, not just offering them the selective charity of the rich. It means looking beyond issues of economics and outside our national borders. But above all it demands of us that we reinvent the language of equality for a modern, global world: and then institute this. The world is not falling apart. Different worlds, we all can see, are colliding together. It is our capacity to act in concert that is falling apart. It is this that needs restoring most of all.
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Political Tone
How Leaders Talk and Why
Roderick P. Hart, Jay P. Childers, and Colene J. Lind
University of Chicago Press, 2013
It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Solving problems with words is the essence of politics, and finding the right words for the moment can make or break a politician’s career. Yet very little has been said in political science about the elusive element of tone.

In Political Tone, Roderick P. Hart, Jay P. Childers, and Colene J. Lind analyze a range of texts—from speeches and debates to advertising and print and broadcast campaign coverage— using a sophisticated computer program, DICTION, that parses their content for semantic features like realism, commonality, and certainty, as well as references to religion, party, or patriotic terms. Beginning with a look at how societal forces like diversity and modernity manifest themselves as political tones in the contexts of particular leaders and events, the authors proceed to consider how individual leaders have used tone to convey their messages: How did Bill Clinton’s clever dexterity help him recover from the Monica Lewinsky scandal? How did Barack Obama draw on his experience as a talented community activist to overcome his inexperience as a national leader? And how does Sarah Palin’s wandering tone indicate that she trusts her listeners and is open to their ideas?

By focusing not on the substance of political arguments but on how they were phrased, Political Tone provides powerful and unexpected insights into American politics.
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Polka Heartland
Why the Midwest Loves to Polka
Rick March
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015

"Polka Heartland" captures the beat that pulses in the heart of Midwestern culture--the polka--and offers up the fascinating history of how "oompah-pah" came to be the sound of middle America. From the crowded dance tent at Pulaski Polka Days to an off-the-grid Mexican polka dance in small-town Wisconsin, "Polka Heartland" explores the people, places, and history behind the Midwest's favorite music.

From polka's surprising origin story as a cutting-edge European fad to an exploration of the modern-day polka scene, author Rick March and photographer Dick Blau take readers on a joyful romp through this beloved, unique, and richly storied genre. "Polka Heartland" describes the artists, venues, instruments, and music-makers who have been pivotal to polka's popularity across the Midwest and offers six full-color photo galleries to immerse readers in today's vibrant polka scene.

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The Seven Deadly Virtues
18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell
Jonathan V. Last
Templeton Press, 2014
An all-star team of eighteen conservative writers offers a hilarious, insightful, sanctimony-free remix of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues—without parental controls. The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.
 
The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Mollie Hemingway, Rita Koganzon, Matt Labash, James Lileks, Rob Long, Larry Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Joe Queenan, Christine Rosen, and Andrew Stiles. Jonathan V. Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, editor of the collection, is also a contributor. All eighteen essays in this book are appearing for the first time anywhere.
 
In the book’s opening essay, P. J. O’Rourke observes: “Virtue has by no means disappeared. It’s as much in public view as ever. But it’s been strung up by the heels. Virtue is upside down. Virtue is uncomfortable. Virtue looks ridiculous. All the change and the house keys are falling out of Virtue’s pants pockets.”
 
Here are the virtues everyone (including the book’s contributors) was taught in Sunday school but have totally forgotten about until this very moment.  In this sanctimony-free zone:
 
• Joe Queenan observes: “In essence, thrift is a virtue that resembles being very good at Mahjong. You’ve heard about people who can do it, but you’ve never actually met any of them.”
• P. J. O’Rourke notes: “Fortitude is quaint. We praise the greatest generation for having it, but they had aluminum siding, church on Sunday, and jobs that required them to wear neckties or nylons (but never at the same time). We don’t want those either.”
• Christine Rosen writes: “A fellowship grounded in sociality means enjoying the company of those with whom you actually share physical space rather than those with whom you regularly and enthusiastically exchange cat videos.”
• Rob Long offers his version of modern day justice: if you sleep late on the weekend, you are forced to wait thirty minutes in line at Costco.
• Jonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.”
• Sonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984 is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks, in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature—is virtually impossible to call off.”
 
By the time readers have completed The Seven Deadly Virtues, they won’t even realize that they’ve just been catechized into an entirely different—and better—moral universe.
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Spirituality in Patient Care
Why, How, When, and What
Harold G Koenig
Templeton Press, 2013
Praise for the previous edition:
“I highly recommend this book as reading for all physicians and would certainly recommend it for any course on medical ethics and/or required reading for any medical student.”—Journal of the National Medical Association
 
Since the publication of the first edition of Spirituality in Patient Care in 2002, the book has earned a reputation as the authoritative introduction to the subject for health professionals interested in identifying and addressing the spiritual needs of patients. The body of research on religion, spirituality, and health continues to grow at a dramatic rate, creating an urgent need for a new edition of this landmark work. In this, the third edition, Harold G. Koenig, M.D., updates every chapter by incorporating the newest research and introducing sensible ways of translating that research into caring for patients.
 
Like previous editions, this new one addresses the whys, hows, whens, and whats of patient-centered integration of spirituality into patient care so that health professionals, including physicians in primary care and the medical and surgical specialties, can utilize this information in clinical practice. Whole chapters are also included offering profession-specific information for nurses, clergy, mental health professionals, social workers, and occupational and physical therapists. Other chapters address topics like culturally and spiritually sensitive care for each major religious group, potential limitations or barriers to application, and even what may happen when research on spirituality and health is misapplied. Throughout these chapters, readers will find new case histories and clinical examples on how to integrate spirituality into patient care depending on their particular circumstances. A ten-session model course curriculum on spirituality and health care for medical students and residents is also provided, with suggestions on how to adapt it for nursing, social work, physical and occupational therapy, and mental health training programs.
 
For more than ten years Spirituality in Patient Care has offered sound guidance to anyone wishing to do more than simply treat their patients’ physical symptoms. Treating the whole patient often requires becoming something more than just a skilled technician. With this new edition, Dr. Koenig once again shows the way for any health professional seeking to bridge this gap and help patientsregain their lives by finding hope, meaning, and healing.
 

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Spirituality in Patient Care
Why, How, When, and What
Harold G Koenig
Templeton Press, 2007
This landmark handbook for health professionals interested in identifying and addressing the spiritual needs of patients has been significantly revised and expanded. Over the past five years, since the first edition was written, there has been increased research on the relationships among religion, spirituality, and health, and further discussions on the application of these findings to clinical practice. Every section of the book has been rewritten and updated with current research. "I think this version will be my most important contribution to the field of spirituality and health," says Dr. Koenig. "Every bit of what I know about the integration of spirituality into clinical practice, learned over twenty years, is contained in this book."
Koenig addresses the whys, hows, whens, and whats of patient-centered integration of spirituality into patient care, including details on the health-related sacred traditions for each major religious group. He provides health care professionals with the training necessary to screen patients sensitively and competently for spiritual needs, begin to communicate with patients about these issues, and learn when to refer patients to trained spiritual-care professionals who can competently address spiritual needs.
New sections specifically address mental-health professionals, nurses, chaplains and pastoral counselors, social workers, and occupational and physical therapists.
A ten-session model course curriculum on spirituality and health care for medical students and residents is provided, with suggestions on how to adapt it for the training of nurses, social workers, and rehabilitation specialists.
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Teaching Vocabulary Is the Writing Teacher's Job
Why and How
Keith S. Folse
University of Michigan Press, 2020
While most teachers acknowledge the importance of vocabulary in learning a new language, many assume a reading class or other teacher will cover vocabulary. Yet vocabulary plays an essential role in good writing, especially academic writing. Teaching Vocabulary Is the Writing Teacher’s Job explores the serious nature of ESL students’ lexical plight and looks at vocabulary in relation to reading, speaking, listening, and writing proficiency. It also examines the role of vocabulary in ESL writing assessment. In the conclusion, author Keith Folse discusses eight research-based suggestions for writing teachers, including encouraging students to become vocabulary detectives, teaching collocations, testing vocabulary, and teaching paraphrasing and summarizing.
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The Three R’s Plus
What Today’s Schools are Trying to Do and Why
Robert H. Beck
University of Minnesota Press, 1956

The Three R's Plus was first published in 1956. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Do the schools still teach the three R's or are they neglecting these fundamentals? Should boys and girls be made to study things that don't interest them? What's happened to the report card? Have drill and memorization a place in today's teaching methods? What are the basic ideas behind modern education?

Questions like these are constantly being asked by parents and other responsible citizens in a sincere effort to learn more about what the public schools are doing and why. Such questions deserve thoughtful and thorough answers that will provide a basis for realistic understanding and constructive thinking about present-day schools. In this book, educators themselves explain, in understandable terms, the concepts, the methods, and the aims that underlie our public school teaching today.

Thirty-one experts contribute chapters about their particular fields. The chapters are arranged in sections on Changed and Changing Conceptions, Subjects and Services, and Issues and Interest. The book explains modern educational philosophy and describes the methods of teaching, as applied to specific subject fields, that are based on these theories. The final section discusses such controversial problems as the financial support of the schools and the role of religion in the public school.

The majority of the contributors are members of the faculty of the University of Minnesota but among the authors are included also several administrators in the Minneapolis and St. Paul public school systems.

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Trusted Platform Modules
Why, when and how to use them
Ariel Segall
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2017
Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) are small, inexpensive chips which provide a limited set of security functions. They are most commonly found as a motherboard component on laptops and desktops aimed at the corporate or government markets, but can also be found on many consumer-grade machines and servers, or purchased as independent components. Their role is to serve as a Root of Trust - a highly trusted component from which we can bootstrap trust in other parts of a system. TPMs are most useful for three kinds of tasks: remotely identifying a machine, or machine authentication; providing hardware protection of secrets, or data protection; and providing verifiable evidence about a machine's state, or attestation.
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Turkey's July 15th Coup
What Happened and Why
Edited by M. Hakan Yavuz and Bayram Balci
University of Utah Press, 2018

Utah Series in Middle East Studies

On July 15, 2016, a faction of the Turkish military attempted to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish government blamed the unsuccessful coup attempt on Gülenists, adherents of an Islamist movement led by Fethullah Gülen. They had helped elect Erdoğan and his AK Party, with the goal of bringing an ostensibly “soft” version of Islam into the secular Turkish government. In alliance with the AK Party, Gülenists steadfastly increased their representation in various government institutions, including the military, the police, and the judiciary. This volume focuses on the historical and sociopolitical contexts of the Gülen Movement’s origins and political ascendancy along with its possible role in the failed coup.
 

Editors Yavuz and Balcı are among the first international scholars to have studied the movement from its nascent stages in Turkey. The volume's contributors include scholars who have researched the movement in Turkey, Central Asia, and the Balkans. The result is a comprehensive, timely assessment of numerous dimensions of Gülenist activities, including its social and political networks and the institutions that supported the movement as it became a major economic and educational force in Turkey and elsewhere. This volume reflects exchanges among scholars who having studied the Gülenists, assembled to discuss how and why the movement became belligerent opponents of Erdoğan’s government, and it addresses questions such as how this major, still continuing disruption in Turkey’s politics will affect not only the future of the movement but also that of Turkey's embattled democracy as well.

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Twenty Years of Life
Why the Poor Die Earlier and How to Challenge Inequity
Suzanne Bohan
Island Press, 2018
In Twenty Years of Life, Suzanne Bohan exposes the disturbing flip side of the American dream: your health is largely determined by your zip code. The strain of living in a poor neighborhood, with sub-par schools, lack of parks, fear of violence, few to no healthy food options, and the stress of unpaid bills is literally taking years off people’s lives. The difference in life expectancy between wealthy and distressed neighborhoods can be as much as twenty years.

Bohan chronicles a bold experiment to challenge this inequity. The California Endowment, one of the nation’s largest health foundations, is upending the old-school, top-down charity model and investing $1 billion over ten years to help distressed communities advocate for their own interests. This new approach to community change draws on the latent political power of residents and is driving reform both locally and in the state’s legislative chambers. If it can work in fourteen of California’s most challenging and diverse communities, it has the potential to work anywhere in the country.

Bohan introduces us to former street shooters with official government jobs; kids who convinced their city council members to build skate parks; students and parents who demanded fairer school discipline policies to keep kids in the classroom; urban farmers who pushed for permits to produce and sell their food; and a Native American tribe that revived its traditional forest management practices. Told with compassion and insight, their stories will fundamentally change how we think about the root causes of disease and the prospects for healing.
 
 
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Urban Exodus
Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed
Gerald Gamm
Harvard University Press, 2001

Across the country, white ethnics have fled cities for suburbs. But many have stayed in their old neighborhoods. When the busing crisis erupted in Boston in the 1970s, Catholics were in the forefront of resistance. Jews, 70,000 of whom had lived in Roxbury and Dorchester in the early 1950s, were invisible during the crisis. They were silent because they departed the city more quickly and more thoroughly than Boston's Catholics. Only scattered Jews remained in Dorchester and Roxbury by the mid-1970s.

In telling the story of why the Jews left and the Catholics stayed, Gerald Gamm places neighborhood institutions--churches, synagogues, community centers, schools--at its center. He challenges the long-held assumption that bankers and real estate agents were responsible for the rapid Jewish exodus. Rather, according to Gamm, basic institutional rules explain the strength of Catholic attachments to neighborhood and the weakness of Jewish attachments. Because they are rooted, territorially defined, and hierarchical, parishes have frustrated the urban exodus of Catholic families. And because their survival was predicated on their portability and autonomy, Jewish institutions exacerbated the Jewish exodus.

Gamm shows that the dramatic transformation of urban neighborhoods began not in the 1950s or 1960s, but in the 1920s. Not since Anthony Lukas's Common Ground has there been a book that so brilliantly explores not just Boston's dilemma but the roots of the American urban crisis.

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Using Qualitative Methods in Action Research
How Librarians Can Get to the Why of Data
Douglas Cook
Assoc of College & Research Libraries, 2011

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Wake
Why the Battle over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters
Karey Alison Harwood
Rutgers University Press, 2024
The Wake County Public School System was once described as a beacon of hope for American school districts. It was both academically successful and successfully integrated. It accomplished these goals through the hard work of teachers and administrators, and through a student assignment policy that made sure no school in the countywide district became a high poverty school. Although most students attended their closest school, the “diversity policy” modified where some students were assigned to make sure no school had more than 40% of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch or more than 25% performing below grade level. When the school board election of 2009 swept into office a majority who favored “neighborhood schools,” the diversity policy that had governed student assignment for years was eliminated. Wake: Why the Battle Over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters tells the story of the aftermath of that election, including the fierce public debate that ensued during school board meetings and in the pages of the local newspaper, and the groundswell of community support that voted in a pro-diversity school board in 2011. What was at stake in those years was the fundamental direction of the largest school district in North Carolina and the 14th largest in the U.S. Would it maintain a commitment to diverse schools, and if so, how would it balance that commitment with various competing interests and demands? Through hundreds of published opinion articles and several in depth interviews with community leaders, Wake examines the substance of that debate and explores the community’s vision for public education. Wake also explores the importance of knowing the history of a place, including the history of school segregation. Wake County’s example still resonates, and the battle over diverse public schools still matters, because owning responsibility for the problem of segregated schools (or not) will shape the direction of America’s future.
 
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Web Writing
Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning
Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O'Donnell, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2015
Teaching writing across the curriculum with online tools
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What Deters and Why
Exploring Requirements for Effective Deterrence of Interstate Aggression
Michael J. Mazarr
RAND Corporation, 2018
The challenge of deterring territorial aggression is taking on renewed importance, yet discussion of it has lagged in U.S. military and strategy circles. The authors aim to provide a fresh look, with two primary purposes: to review established concepts about deterrence, and to provide a framework for evaluating the strength of deterrent relationships. They focus on a specific type of deterrence: extended deterrence of interstate aggression.
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What Is Good and Why
The Ethics of Well-Being
Richard Kraut
Harvard University Press, 2007

What is good? How can we know, and how important is it? In this book Richard Kraut, one of our most respected analytical philosophers, reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish--that is, what is good for us. Observing that we can sensibly talk about what is good for plants and animals no less than what is good for people, Kraut advocates a general principle that applies to the entire world of living things: what is good for complex organisms consists in the maturation and exercise of their natural powers.

Drawing on the insights of ancient Greek philosophy, Kraut develops this thought into a good-centered moral philosophy, an "ethics of well-being" that requires all of our efforts to do some good. Even what is good of a kind--good poems no less than good people--must be good for someone. Pleasure plays a key role in this idea of flourishing life, but Kraut opposes the current philosophical orthodoxy of well-being, which views a person's welfare as a construct of rational desires or plans, actual or ideal.

The practical upshot of Kraut's theory is that many common human pursuits--for riches, fame, domination--are in themselves worthless, while some of the familiar virtues--justice, honesty, and autonomy--are good for every human being.

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Why I Am Not a Secularist
William E. Connolly
University of Minnesota Press, 2000

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Why I Burned My Book
Paul Longmore
Temple University Press, 2003
This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Americans with disabilities.Whether writing about the social critic Randolph Bourne, contemporary political activists, or media representations of people with disabilities, Longmore demonstrates that the search for heroes is a key part of the continuing struggle of disabled people to gain a voice and to shape their destinies. His essays on bioethics and public policy examine the conflict of agendas between disability rights activists and non-disabled policy makers, healthcare professionals, euthanasia advocates, and corporate medical bureaucracies. The title essay, which concludes the book, demonstrates the necessity of activism for any disabled person who wants access to the American dream.
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Why I Buy
Self, Taste, and Consumer Society in America
Rami Gabriel
Intellect Books, 2013
Why do we buy? How do our acts of—and ideas about—consumption impact our selves, our institutions, and our societies? An incisive response to these questions, Why I Buy explains how consumption came to give meaning and value to social and personal life.
 
Balancing psychological, conceptual, and historical analyses with examples drawn from popular culture and mass media, Rami Gabriel traces the ways in which beliefs about the self—including dualism, individualism, and expressivism—influence consumer behavior. These understandings of the self, Gabriel argues, structure the values that Americans seek and find in consumer society; they therefore have structural consequences for our cultural, political, and economic lives. For example, Gabriel describes how imbalances in the institutions of participatory politics have directly resulted from a consumer society centered on powerful nongovernmental institutions and a scattered body of disengaged citizens whose social and individual needs are not primarily satisfied through civic involvement. By exploring the relationship between our individual needs and our institutions, Gabriel ultimately points the way toward transformations that could lead to a more sustaining and sustainable society.
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Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays
A Tribal Voice
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996

This provocative collection of essays reveals the passionate voice of a Native American feminist intellectual. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a poet and literary scholar, grapples with issues she encountered as a Native American in academia. She asks questions of critical importance to tribal people:  who is telling their stories, where does cultural authority lie, and most important, how is it possible to develop an authentic tribal literary voice within the academic community?
    In the title essay, “Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner,” Cook-Lynn objects to Stegner’s portrayal of the American West in his fiction, contending that no other author has been more successful in serving the interests of the nation’s fantasy about itself. When Stegner writes that “Western history sort of stopped at 1890,” and when he claims the American West as his native land, Cook-Lynn argues, he negates the whole past, present, and future of the native peoples of the continent. Her other essays include discussion of such Native American writers as Michael Dorris, Ray Young Bear, and N. Scott Momaday; the importance of a tribal voice in academia, the risks to American Indian women in current law practices, the future of Indian Nationalism, and the defense of the land.
    Cook-Lynn emphasizes that her essays move beyond the narrowly autobiographical, not just about gender and power, not just focused on multiculturalism and diversity, but are about intellectual and political issues that engage readers and writers in Native American studies. Studying the “Indian,” Cook-Lynn reminds us, is not just an academic exercise but a matter of survival for the lifeways of tribal peoples. Her goal in these essays is to open conversations that can make tribal life and academic life more responsive to one another.

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Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka
William Wilson
University of Alabama Press, 2002
In a 1978 New York Times book review, Kenneth Baker described Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka as: "...the most powerful New American fiction I have encountered in years. A demanding, exhilarating work." Nearly 25 years later, FC2 is proud to reissue this classic collection of short fiction by William S. Wilson that seems even more relevant today. It touches on controversies over the role of science in our lives and deals with cosmetic surgery and the medical uses of human embryos, heart transplants, and regenerated genitalia. And that's only the beginning. The story "Metier: Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka," implies that Kafka responded in his fiction to questions that no longer need to be asked in fiction. The epistolary story, "Conveyance: The Story I Wouldn't Want Bill Wilson to Read," is an intimate letter from a woman who had wanted to write fiction and who now challenges Wilson's reaction to her report of a tragedy. "Interim" chronicles the imaginary reforestation of Scotland and "Anthropology" turns on the actual moment in Structuralism when Claude Levi-Strauss relocates the ear to the back of the head in order to interpret a myth. Written with cool precision and a subtle touch, these meditations and metafictions will continue to reverberate for decades to come.
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Why I Left the Amish
A Memoir
Saloma Miller Furlong
Michigan State University Press, 2011

There are two ways to leave the Amish—one is through life and the other through death. When Saloma Miller Furlong’s father dies during her first semester at Smith College, she returns to the Amish community she had left twenty four years earlier to attend his funeral. Her journey home prompts a flood of memories. Now a mother with grown children of her own, Furlong recalls her painful childhood in a family defined by her father’s mental illness, her brother’s brutality, her mother’s frustration, and the austere traditions of the Amish—traditions Furlong struggled to accept for years before making the difficult decision to leave the community. In this personal and moving memoir, Furlong traces the genesis of her desire for freedom and education and chronicles her conflicted quest for independence. Eloquently told, Why I Left the Amish is a revealing portrait of life within—and without—this frequently misunderstood community.

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Why I Stay 2
The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints
Robert A. Rees
Signature Books, 2021
One’s religious affiliation may be determined, at least, initially, by family and culture, but the ultimate choice to stay is, in the end, personal. This second volume of Why I Stay touches on the weighty decisions and complex issues people ponder in a faith journey and which fork in the road to take once they face them. 

Twenty-one women and men discuss what it is about Mormonism that keeps them part of the fold. Their deep, unique experiences make their individual travels even more compelling. Kimberly Applewhite Teitter, growing up in the South as a Black Latter-day Saint, often encountered well-meaning Latter-day Saints whose words messaged the idea that she was at some level an outsider or perhaps not as authentically Mormon as others in her congregation. Thus, she writes, “At the end of the day I’m still Black—still have felt the weight of proving that I represent the church I’ve fought so hard for my entire life.” Yet the very episodes that could have driven her from the church became lessons on the meaning of discipleship. 

For Carol Lynn Pearson, staying boiled down to two reasons: “I find a great deal of love in this church,” and “where I do not find love, I have an opportunity to help create love.” The stories she shares illuminate that mantra. Mitch Mayne, an openly gay man, has faced many challenges by his decision to stay. “Most days, it seems I can’t be Mormon enough for my LDS community, and I can’t be gay enough for my LGBT fellows.” In his essay, he answers the question many have asked: “Why don’t you just leave the church?” 
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Why I Stay
The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons
Robert A. Rees
Signature Books, 2012

Mormonism is a community with two faces: progressive and conservative. This is true of nearly all faith traditions, which can be alternately open or defensive, traditional or innovative, accepting or judgmental. In the case of the LDS Church, it continues, a century after having shaken off the stigma of polygamy, three decades after embracing blacks as equals, and in the face of international growth, to wrestle with freeing itself from its past insularity. In doing so, it will find its place within the larger religious world and its accommodation to the challenges of modernism.

This all represents a challenge for individual members, especially for artists, scholars, and independent thinkers. The poet Robert Haas has made a distinction between religion, which is “communal worship centered on shared ideas of the sacred,” and spirituality, which “has to do with the individual soul’s struggle with its own meaning.” In this anthology, sixteen Latter-day Saints explain how they balance the demands of religion and spirituality in the modern Church. It brings to mind the example of LDS educator Lowell Bennion who offered the image of carrying water on both shoulders to explain the binary nature of balancing faith with reason, institutional commitment with individual integrity, obedience with love.

It is encouraging to discover so many Latter-day saints who, the editor writes, “neither stay with their faith blindly nor leave it rebelliously, but rather choose to struggle with challenges and strive for a more mature discipleship.” The contributors to this anthology are Lavina Fielding Anderson, Mary Bradford, William Bradshaw, Claudia L. Bushman, Fred Christensen, Lael Littke, Armand Mauss, Chase Peterson, Grethe Peterson, J. Frederick “Toby” Pingree, Gregory Prince, Robert A. Rees, Tom Rogers, William D. Russell, Cherry Bushman Silver, and Morris Thurston.

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Why I Write?
The Early Prose from 1945 to 1952
Bohumil Hrabal
Karolinum Press, 2019
“Glimmers in anticipation of Hrabal’s later virtuosity.”
New Yorker

 
“A collection of formative fiction from a writer whose work has earned comparison with Joyce and Beckett. . . . Early work from a writer who merits a larger readership.”
Kirkus Reviews


This collection of the earliest prose by one of literature’s greatest stylists captures, as scholar Arnault Maréchal put it, “the moment when Hrabal discovered the magic of writing.” Taken from the period when Bohumil Hrabal shifted his focus from poetry to prose, these stories—many written in school notebooks, typed and read aloud to friends, or published in samizdat—often showcase raw experiments in style that would define his later works. Others intriguingly utilize forms the author would never pursue again. Featuring the first appearance of key figures from Hrabal’s later writings, such as his real-life Uncle Pepin, who would become a character in his later fiction and is credited here as a coauthor of one piece, the book also contains stories that Hrabal would go on to cannibalize for some of his most famous novels. All together, Why I Write? offers readers the chance to explore this important nascent phase of Hrabal’s writing.

Expertly interpreted by award-winning Hrabal translator David Short, this collection comprises some of the last remaining prose works by Hrabal to be translated into English. A treasure trove for Hrabal devotees, Why I Write? allows us to see clearly why this great prose master was, as described by Czech writer and publisher Josef Škvorecký, “fundamentally a lyrical poet.”
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The Why of Music
Dialogues in an Unexplored Region of Appreciation
Donald N. Ferguson
University of Minnesota Press, 1969

The Why of Music was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In his many tears of teaching and writing about music Professor Ferguson has given much thought to the question of the why of music — why does music affect us as it does, why are we deeply moved by some music by not by other music, what is it about music that "sends" us, and where does it send us? In this book he explores such questions in depth and provides intriguing answers. The discussions are presented in the form of dialogues between the author and several friends.

As Professor Ferguson explains, the book is intended to take the reader on a guided tour, a tour which follows, in part, the familiar roads of formal music appreciation but which leads more often into byways where, almost hidden by the brilliant Hows that line the more familiar roads, lurks the essential Why of music. He describes this Why as the fertilizing commerce between music and human experience—a portrayal, not of the tangible facts of experience, but of the concern aroused by our encounter with those facts. He explains that while avant-garde abstractionism is concerned only with music as art—a concern too specialized for the general music lover to grasp and too narrow to sustain interest—the Why of enduring music lies in its endeavor to portray experience as it lives in Everyman's mind.

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Why the American Century?
Olivier Zunz
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Reinterpreting our country's rise to world power, Olivier Zunz shows how American elites appropriated the twentieth century. Policymakers, corporate managers, engineers, scientists, and social scientists promoted a social contract of abundance and a controversial theory of pluralism. Their efforts created a model of middle class behavior for America and for the rest of the world.

"It should certainly be the task of historians to explain the nation's triumphs as effectively as they have explained its failures, and Zunz in this intelligent, learned and ambitious book suggests a valuable new model for doing so."—Alan Brinkley, Times Literary Supplement

"Zunz is evenhanded in his judgments. . . . His thesis is both imaginative and well grounded in the appropriate sources."—David M. Oshinsky, New York Times Book Review

"Zunz is an innovative and perceptive social critic. He crosses disciplinary boundaries with ease and felicity, and is particularly adept at illustrating large themes with unusual but telling details."—Kent Blaser, American Studies

"An eye-opening introduction to the shaping of modern America."—Foreign Affairs
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Why the Beach Boys Matter
By Tom Smucker
University of Texas Press, 2018

Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and summer pop and their later hippie, counterculture, and ambitious rock. No other group can claim the Ronettes and the Four Seasons as early 1960s rivals; the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash as later 1960s rivals; and the Beatles and the Temptations as decade-spanning counterparts.

This is the first book to take an honest look at the themes running through the Beach Boys’ art and career as a whole and to examine where they sit inside our culture and politics—and why they still grab our attention.

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Why the Chisholm Trail Forks and Other Tales of the Cattle Country
By Andy Adams
University of Texas Press, 1956

This sparkling collection of tales told around Western campfires, written by the master chronicler of the range, is a literary find of great interest and genuine importance.

Andy Adams is remembered chiefly as the author of The Log of a Cowboy. Among the most charming features of the Log are the stories the cowhands told around the fires at night when the day's work was done. Similar and equally delightful stories are scattered throughout several other less successful novels, long out of print, while others that never saw publication were found by the editor among Adams' papers.

In the present book, Wilson M. Hudson has gathered together these tales of the trail and camp into one volume that surely will delight the hearts of all readers who are interested in the old West.

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Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown
The Transformation of the Rust Belt
Sean Safford
Harvard University Press, 2009
In this book, Sean Safford compares the recent history of Allentown, Pennsylvania, with that of Youngstown, Ohio. Allentown has seen a noticeable rebound over the course of the past twenty years. Facing a collapse of its steel-making firms, its economy has reinvented itself by transforming existing companies, building an entrepreneurial sector, and attracting inward investment. Youngstown was similar to Allentown in its industrial history, the composition of its labor force, and other important variables, and yet instead of adapting in the face of acute economic crisis, it fell into a mean race to the bottom.Challenging various theoretical perspectives on regional socioeconomic change, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown argues that the structure of social networks among the cities’ economic, political, and civic leaders account for the divergent trajectories of post-industrial regions. It offers a probing historical explanation for the decline, fall, and unlikely rejuvenation of the Rust Belt. Emphasizing the power of social networks to shape action, determine access to and control over information and resources, define the contexts in which problems are viewed, and enable collective action in the face of externally generated crises, this book points toward present-day policy prescriptions for the ongoing plight of mature industrial regions in the U.S. and abroad.
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Why the Grateful Dead Matter
Michael Benson
University Press of New England, 2016
In Why the Grateful Dead Matter, veteran writer and lifelong Deadhead Michael Benson argues that the Grateful Dead are not simply a successful rock-and-roll band but a phenomenon central to American culture. He defends the proposition that the Grateful Dead are, in fact, a musical movement as transformative as any -ism in the artistic history of this century and the last. And a lot more fun than most. From the street festivals of Haight-Ashbury to the cross-country acid tests with the Merry Pranksters, and from the sound-and-light show at the Great Pyramid at Giza to the ecstatic outpouring of joy at Soldier Field in the summer of ’15, the Grateful Dead have been at the center of American life, music, and karmic flow for fifty years. In Why the Grateful Dead Matter, Michael Benson brings it all back to life and makes a compelling case for the band’s lasting cultural importance.
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Why the Humanities Matter
A Commonsense Approach
By Frederick Luis Aldama
University of Texas Press, 2008

Is there life after postmodernism? Many claim that it sounded the death knell for history, art, ideology, science, possibly all of Western philosophy, and certainly for the concept of reality itself. Responding to essential questions regarding whether the humanities can remain politically and academically relevant amid this twenty-first-century uncertainty, Why the Humanities Matter offers a guided tour of the modern condition, calling upon thinkers in a variety of disciplines to affirm essential concepts such as truth, goodness, and beauty.

Offering a lens of "new humanism," Frederick Aldama also provides a liberating examination of the current cultural repercussions of assertions by such revolutionary theorists as Said, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida, as well as Latin Americanists such as Sommer and Mignolo. Emphasizing pedagogy and popular culture with equal verve, and writing in colloquial yet multifaceted prose, Aldama presents an enlightening way to explore what "culture" actually does—who generates it and how it shapes our identities—and the role of academia in sustaining it.

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Why the Law Is So Perverse
Leo Katz
University of Chicago Press, 2011

Conundrums, puzzles, and perversities: these are Leo Katz’s stock-in-trade, and in Why the Law Is So Perverse, he focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation. First, legal decisions are essentially made in an either/or fashion—guilty or not guilty, liable or not liable, either it’s a contract or it’s not—but reality is rarely as clear-cut. Why aren’t there any in-between verdicts? Second, the law is full of loopholes. No one seems to like them, but somehow they cannot be made to disappear. Why? Third, legal systems are loath to punish certain kinds of highly immoral conduct while prosecuting other far less pernicious behaviors. What makes a villainy a felony? Finally, why does the law often prohibit what are sometimes called win-win transactions, such as organ sales or surrogacy contracts?

           

Katz asserts that these perversions arise out of a cluster of logical difficulties related to multicriterial decision making. The discovery of these difficulties dates back to Condorcet’s eighteenth-century exploration of voting rules, which marked the beginning of what we know today as social choice theory. Condorcet’s voting cycles, Arrow’s Theorem, Sen’s Libertarian Paradox—every seeming perversity of the law turns out to be the counterpart of one of the many voting paradoxes that lie at the heart of social choice. Katz’s lucid explanations and apt examples show why they resist any easy resolutions.

           

The New York Times Book Review called Katz’s first book “a fascinating romp through the philosophical side of the law.” Why the Law Is So Perverse is sure to provide its readers a similar experience.

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Why the Poor Get Richer and the Rich Slow Down
Essays in the Marshallian Long Period
By W. W. Rostow
University of Texas Press, 1980

Bearing on fundamental issues of economic theory, history, and public policy, this volume elaborates and goes beyond themes enunciated in W. W. Rostow's previous works. The eight essays presented here are unified by the author's insistence that neo-Keynesian and neoclassical theory are an inadequate basis for economic analysis and policy prescription. Changes in technology and in the supply of energy, food, and raw materials, he contends, must be taken into account. The scale and character of the investments required to respond to these changes link his analysis back to conventional income analysis. Rostow outlines in several contexts the framework for a general, disaggregated theory of production and prices that meets this criterion.

The theoretical and historical essays include a review and unification of various long-cycle theories; a formal mathematical model of the Kondratieff cycle; a review of theories relating technology and the price system, including Rostow's own formulation of the appropriate linkage; a lengthy analysis of the pre-1914 relation between money and prices, including a detailed critique of modern monetarist interpretations; and an analysis of the proposition that economic growth assumes an S-shaped path of acceleration and deceleration.

The policy essays include an examination of the links between energy-related investment, full employment, and patterns of regional development in the United States; the discussion of an appropriate framework and procedure for North-South international economic negotiations; and the text of a 1965 talk on inflation that touches on the relations among economics, economists, and the performance of societies as a whole.

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Why the Ramones Matter
By Donna Gaines
University of Texas Press, 2018

The central experience of the Ramones and their music is of being an outsider, an outcast, a person who’s somehow defective, and the revolt against shame and self-loathing. The fans, argues Donna Gaines, got it right away, from their own experience of alienation at home, at school, on the streets, and from themselves. This sense of estrangement and marginality permeates everything the Ramones still offer us as artists, and as people. Why the Ramones Matter compellingly makes the case that the Ramones gave us everything; they saved rock and roll, modeled DIY ethics, and addressed our deepest collective traumas, from the personal to the historical.

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Why the Science and Religion Dialogue Matters
Voices from the International Society for Science and Religion
Fraser Watts
Templeton Press, 2006
Each world faith tradition has its own distinctive relationship with science, and the science-religion dialogue benefits from a greater awareness of what this relationship is. In this book, members of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) offer international and multi-faith perspectives on how new discoveries in science are met with insights regarding spiritual realities.The essays reflect the conviction that “religion and science each proceed best when they’re pursued in dialogue with each other, and also that our fragmented and divided world would benefit more from a stronger dialogue between science and religion.”
In Part One, George F. R. Ellis, John C. Polkinghorne, and Holmes Rolston III, each a Templeton Prize winner, discuss their views on why the science and religion dialogue matters. They are joined in Part Two by distinguished theologians Fraser Watts and Philip Clayton, who place the dialogue in an international context; John Polkinghorne’s inaugural address to the ISSR in 2002 is also included. In Part Three, five members of the ISSR look at the distinctive relationships of their faiths to science:
•Carl Feit on Judaism
•Munawar Anees on Islam
•B.V. Subbarayappa on Hinduism
•Trinh Xuan Thuan on Buddhism
•Heup Young Kim on Asian Christianity
George Ellis, the recently elected second president of ISSR, summarizes the contributions of his colleagues. Ronald Cole-Turner then concludes the book with a discussion of the future of the science and religion dialogue.
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Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma
Karyn Forner
Duke University Press, 2017
In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement —a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton farming to cattle raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.
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Why the Wheel Is Round
Muscles, Technology, and How We Make Things Move
Steven Vogel
University of Chicago Press, 2016
There is no part of our bodies that fully rotates—be it a wrist or ankle or arm in a shoulder socket, we are made to twist only so far. And yet there is no more fundamental human invention than the wheel—a rotational mechanism that accomplishes what our physical form cannot. Throughout history, humans have developed technologies powered by human strength, complementing the physical abilities we have while overcoming our weaknesses. Providing a unique history of the wheel and other rotational devices—like cranks, cranes, carts, and capstans—Why the Wheel Is Round examines the contraptions and tricks we have devised in order to more efficiently move—and move through—the physical world.

Steven Vogel combines his engineering expertise with his remarkable curiosity about how things work to explore how wheels and other mechanisms were, until very recently, powered by the push and pull of the muscles and skeletal systems of humans and other animals. Why the Wheel Is Round explores all manner of treadwheels, hand-spikes, gears, and more, as well as how these technologies diversified into such things as hand-held drills and hurdy-gurdies.  Surprisingly, a number of these devices can be built out of everyday components and materials, and Vogel’s accessible and expansive book includes instructions and models so that inspired readers can even attempt to make their own muscle-powered technologies, like trebuchets and ballista.

Appealing to anyone fascinated by the history of mechanics and technology as well as to hobbyists with home workshops, Why the Wheel Is Round offers a captivating exploration of our common technological heritage based on the simple concept of rotation. From our leg muscles powering the gears of a bicycle to our hands manipulating a mouse on a roller ball, it will be impossible to overlook the amazing feats of innovation behind our daily devices.
 
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Why the Wild Things Are
Animals in the Lives of Children
Gail F. Melson
Harvard University Press, 2005

Whether they see themselves as King of the Wild Things or protector of Toto, children live in a world filled with animals--both real and imaginary. From Black Beauty to Barney, animal characters romp through children's books, cartoons, videos, and computer games. As Gail Melson tells us, more than three-quarters of all children in America live with pets and are now more likely to grow up with a pet than with both parents. She explores not only the therapeutic power of pet-owning for children with emotional or physical handicaps but also the ways in which zoo and farm animals, and even certain purple television characters, become confidants or teachers for children--and sometimes, tragically, their victims.

Yet perhaps because animals are ubiquitous, what they really mean to children, for better and for worse, has been unexplored territory. Why the Wild Things Are is the first book to examine children's many connections to animals and to explore their developmental significance. What does it mean that children's earliest dreams are of animals? What is the unique gift that a puppy can give to a boy? Drawing on psychological research, history, and children's media, Why the Wild Things Are explores the growth of the human-animal connection. In chapters on children's emotional ties to their pets, the cognitive challenges of animal contacts, animal symbols as building blocks of the self, and pointless cruelty to animals, Melson shows how children's innate interest in animals is shaped by their families and their social worlds, and may in turn shape the kind of people they will become.

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