Spanning evolutionary science from its inception to its latest findings, from discoveries and data to philosophy and history, this book is the most complete, authoritative, and inviting one-volume introduction to evolutionary biology available. Clear, informative, and comprehensive in scope, Evolution opens with a series of major essays dealing with the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology, with major empirical and theoretical questions in the science, from speciation to adaptation, from paleontology to evolutionary development (evo devo), and concluding with essays on the social and political significance of evolutionary biology today.

A second encyclopedic section travels the spectrum of topics in evolution with concise, informative, and accessible entries on individuals from ­Aristotle and Linneaus to Louis Leakey and Jean Lamarck; from T. H. Huxley and E. O. Wilson to Joseph Felsenstein and Motoo Kimura; and on subjects from altruism and amphibians to evolutionary psychology and Piltdown Man to the Scopes trial and social Darwinism. Readers will find the latest word on the history and philosophy of evolution, the nuances of the science itself, and the intricate interplay among evolutionary study, religion, philosophy, and ­society.

Appearing at the beginning of the Darwin Year of 2009—the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species—this volume is a fitting tribute to the science Darwin set in motion.

At a time of unprecedented expansion in the life sciences, evolution is the one theory that transcends all of biology. Any observation of a living system must ultimately be interpreted in the context of its evolution. Evolutionary change is the consequence of mutation and natural selection, which are two concepts that can be described by mathematical equations. Evolutionary Dynamics is concerned with these equations of life. In this book, Martin A. Nowak draws on the languages of biology and mathematics to outline the mathematical principles according to which life evolves. His work introduces readers to the powerful yet simple laws that govern the evolution of living systems, no matter how complicated they might seem.

Evolution has become a mathematical theory, Nowak suggests, and any idea of an evolutionary process or mechanism should be studied in the context of the mathematical equations of evolutionary dynamics. His book presents a range of analytical tools that can be used to this end: fitness landscapes, mutation matrices, genomic sequence space, random drift, quasispecies, replicators, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, games in finite and infinite populations, evolutionary graph theory, games on grids, evolutionary kaleidoscopes, fractals, and spatial chaos. Nowak then shows how evolutionary dynamics applies to critical real-world problems, including the progression of viral diseases such as AIDS, the virulence of infectious agents, the unpredictable mutations that lead to cancer, the evolution of altruism, and even the evolution of human language. His book makes a clear and compelling case for understanding every living system—and everything that arises as a consequence of living systems—in terms of evolutionary dynamics.

The People’s Republic of China has experienced numerous challenges and undergone tremendous structural changes over the past four decades. The party-state now faces a fundamental tension in its pursuit of social stability and regime durability. Repressive state strategies enable the Chinese Communist Party to maintain its monopoly on political power, yet the quality of governance and regime legitimacy are enhanced when the state adopts more inclusive modes of engagement with society.

Based on a dynamic typology of state–society relations, this volume adopts an evolutionary framework to examine how the Chinese state relates with non-state actors across several fields of governance. Drawing on original fieldwork, the authors identify areas in which state–society interactions have shifted over time, ranging from more constructive engagement to protracted conflict. This evolutionary approach provides nuanced insight into the circumstances wherein the party-state exerts its coercive power versus engaging in more flexible responses or policy adaptations.

Biology was forged into a single, coherent science only within living memory. In this volume the thinkers responsible for the “modern synthesis” of evolutionary biology and genetics come together to analyze that remarkable event.

In a new Preface, Ernst Mayr calls attention to the fact that scientists in different biological disciplines varied considerably in their degree of acceptance of Darwin’s theories. Mayr shows us that these differences were played out in four separate periods: 1859 to 1899, 1900 to 1915, 1916 to 1936, and 1937 to 1947. He thus enables us to understand fully why the synthesis was necessary and why Darwin’s original theory—that evolutionary change is due to the combination of variation and selection—is as solid at the end of the twentieth century as it was in 1859.

How Intellectuals and Global Publics Viewed the Relationship between Evolution and Diverse Religious Traditions

This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms.

To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium.

The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.

Creation versus evolution: What seems like a cultural crisis of our day, played out in courtrooms and classrooms across the county, is in fact part of a larger story reaching back through the centuries. The views of both evolutionists and creationists originated as inventions of the Enlightenment--two opposed but closely related responses to a loss of religious faith in the Western world.

In his latest book, Michael Ruse, a preeminent authority on Darwinian evolutionary thought and a leading participant in the ongoing debate, uncovers surprising similarities between evolutionist and creationist thinking. Exploring the underlying philosophical commitments of evolutionists, he reveals that those most hostile to religion are just as evangelical as their fundamentalist opponents. But more crucially, and reaching beyond the biblical issues at stake, he demonstrates that these two diametrically opposed ideologies have, since the Enlightenment, engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values, and the nature of reality.

Highlighting modern-day partisans as divergent as Richard Dawkins and Left Behind authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Ruse's bracing book takes on the assumptions of controversialists of every stripe and belief and offers to all a new and productive way of understanding this unifying, if often bitter, quest.

Illuminating continuity and change in Supreme Court decisions

Evolving Constitutional Rights: The Roberts Court and Criminal Justice offers a compelling and in-depth analysis of how the U.S. Supreme Court has reshaped constitutional protections under Chief Justice John Roberts. Authors Christopher E. Smith, Michael A. McCall, and Madhavi M. McCall examine the Court’s significant decisions from 2005 to Justice Breyer’s retirement in 2022, revealing a complex judicial landscape where traditional doctrines are revised and fundamental rights are redefined.

The Roberts Court played a decisive role in some of the most contentious issues in American law. Due to several justices’ application of originalist interpretations, its rulings have reconfigured key constitutional protections—often in ways that expand the authority of law enforcement while constraining legislative power over criminal statutes. The trajectory of the Court’s conservative supermajority raises pressing questions about the future of constitutional rights.

Taking a rigorous yet accessible approach, Evolving Constitutional Rights breaks down the Court’s influence across the full spectrum of criminal justice issues, from sentencing and trial rights to search-and-seizure protections, Miranda warnings, and corrections policies. Using both legal and empirical analysis, the authors track patterns in judicial ideology, uncovering how the Roberts Court has not only reinforced conservative principles but also unexpectedly broadened rights in areas such as digital privacy and defense counsel obligations.

This timely and insightful book goes beyond historical rulings to offer a forward-looking perspective on the Supreme Court’s role in shaping public safety, legal precedent, and the balance of power in American government. Essential reading for legal scholars, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the future of constitutional rights, this new volume provides a clear and authoritative examination of the Roberts Court’s lasting impact on American law.

Jews have always played an important role in the generation of culture in Latin America, despite their relatively small numbers in the overall population. In the early days of cinema, they served as directors, producers, screenwriters, composers, and broadcasters. As Latin American societies became more religiously open in the later twentieth century, Jewish characters and themes began appearing in Latin American films and eventually achieved full inclusion. Landmark films by Jewish directors in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, which are home to the largest and most influential Jewish communities in Latin America, have enjoyed critical and popular acclaim.

Evolving Images is the first volume devoted to Jewish Latin American cinema, with fifteen critical essays by leading scholars from Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Israel. The contributors address transnational and transcultural issues of Jewish life in Latin America, such as assimilation, integration, identity, and other aspects of life in the Diaspora. Their discussions of films with Jewish themes and characters show the rich diversity of Jewish cultures in Latin America, as well as how Jews, both real and fictional, interact among themselves and with other groups, raising the question of how much their ethnicity may be adulterated when adopting a combined identity as Jewish and Latin American. The book closes with a groundbreaking section on the affinities between Jewish themes in Hollywood and Latin American films, as well as a comprehensive filmography.

Evolving Iran presents an overview of how the politics and policy decisions in the Islamic Republic of Iran have developed since the 1979 revolution and how they are likely to evolve in the near future. Despite the fact that the revolution ushered in a theocracy, its political system has largely tended to prioritize self-interest and pragmatism over theology and religious values, while continuing to reinvent itself in the face of internal and international threats.

The author also examines the prospects for democratization in Iran. Since the early years of the twentieth century, Iranians have attempted to make their political system more democratic, yet various attempts to produce a system where citizens have a meaningful voice in political decisions have failed. This book argues that greater democratization is unlikely to occur in the short term, especially in light of increased threats from the international community.

This accessible overview of Iran’s political system covers a broad array of subjects, including foreign policy, human rights, women’s struggle for equality, the development and evolution of elections, and the institutions of the political system including the Revolutionary Guards and Assembly of Experts. It will appeal to undergraduates and the general public who seek to understand a country and regime that has mystified Westerners for decades.

The Evolving Self focuses upon the most basic and universal of psychological problems—the individual’s effort to make sense of experience, to make meaning of life. According to Robert Kegan, meaning-making is a lifelong activity that begins in earliest infancy and continues to evolve through a series of stages encompassing childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The Evolving Self describes this process of evolution in rich and human detail, concentrating especially on the internal experience of growth and transition, its costs and disruptions as well as its triumphs.

At the heart of our meaning-making activity, the book suggests, is the drawing and redrawing of the distinction between self and other. Using Piagetian theory in a creative new way to make sense of how we make sense of ourselves, Kegan shows that each meaning-making stage is a new solution to the lifelong tension between the universal human yearning to be connected, attached, and included, on the one hand, and to be distinct, independent, and autonomous on the other. The Evolving Self is the story of our continuing negotiation of this tension. It is a book that is theoretically daring enough to propose a reinterpretation of the Oedipus complex and clinically concerned enough to suggest a variety of fresh new ways to treat those psychological complaints that commonly arise in the course of development.

Kegan is an irrepressible storyteller, an impassioned opponent of the health-and-illness approach to psychological distress, and a sturdy builder of psychological theory. His is an original and distinctive new voice in the growing discussion of human development across the life span.

In the 150 years since Darwin, evolutionary biology has proven as essential as it is controversial, a critical concept for answering questions about everything from the genetic code and the structure of cells to the reproduction, development, and migration of animal and plant life. But today, as David P. Mindell makes undeniably clear in The Evolving World, evolutionary biology is much more than an explanatory concept. It is indispensable to the world we live in. This book provides the first truly accessible and balanced account of how evolution has become a tool with applications that are thoroughly integrated, and deeply useful, in our everyday lives and our societies, often in ways that we do not realize.

When we domesticate wild species for agriculture or companionship; when we manage our exposure to pathogens and prevent or control epidemics; when we foster the diversity of species and safeguard the functioning of ecosystems: in each of these cases, Mindell shows us, evolutionary biology applies. It is at work when we recognize that humans represent a single evolutionary family with variant cultures but shared biological capabilities and motivations. And last but not least, we see here how evolutionary biology comes into play when we use knowledge of evolution to pursue justice within the legal system and to promote further scientific discovery through education and academic research.

More than revealing evolution's everyday uses and value, The Evolving World demonstrates the excitement inherent in its applications--and convinces us as never before that evolutionary biology has become absolutely necessary for human existence.

In this compelling and comprehensive look at the rise of Evo Morales and Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl offer a thoughtful evaluation of the transformations ushered in by the western hemisphere’s first contemporary indigenous president. Accessible to all readers, Evo’s Bolivia not only charts Evo’s rise to power but also offers a history of and context for the MAS revolution’s place in the rising “pink tide” of the political left. Farthing and Kohl examine the many social movements whose agendas have set the political climate in Bolivia and describe the difficult conditions the administration inherited. They evaluate the results of Evo’s policies by examining a variety of measures, including poverty; health care and education reform; natural resources and development; and women’s, indigenous, and minority rights. Weighing the positive with the negative, the authors offer a balanced assessment of the results and shortcomings of the first six years of the Morales administration.

At the heart of this book are the voices of Bolivians themselves. Farthing and Kohl interviewed women and men in government, in social movements, and on the streets throughout the country, and their diverse backgrounds and experiences offer a multidimensional view of the administration and its progress so far. Ultimately the “process of change” Evo promised is exactly that: an ongoing and complicated process, yet an important example of development in a globalized world.

Precision is necessary in the field of architecture, and new technologies have increased demands for accuracy, particularly when the smallest errors can have outsized consequences. However, the importance of precision, or exactitude, has not received the consideration it merits. While themes of sustainability, performance, and formal innovation have been at the forefront of architectural scholarship for the past twenty years, this book moves beyond these concerns to explore the theoretical and practical demands exactitude makes on architecture as a field.

The eleven essays collected here investigate the possibilities and shortcomings of exactitude and delve into current debates about the state of contemporary architecture as both a technological craft and artistic creation. Featuring new work by leading theorists, historians, editors, architects, and scholars, this volume brings theory and practice into insightful and productive conversations. In addition to the editors, contributors include Mark Wigley, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Eric Höweler, Christopher Benfey, Sunil Bald, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano with Thomas de Monchaux, Alicia Imperiale, Francesca Hughes, Teresa Stoppani, and Cynthia Davidson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Situated roughly midway between the great cities of the Indus Valley and those of the Mesopotamian plains, Tepe Yahya occupies a special place in our conceptions of relations between these distant territories during the early Bronze Age. Its third-millennium levels, dating from 3000 to 2100 BC, are particularly important.

In this definitive study, D. T. Potts describes the stratigraphy, architecture, ceramics, and chronology of the site and presents a full inventory of the small finds. Holly Pittman contributes comprehensive illustrations and a discussion of the seals and sealings, and Philip Kohl provides an analysis of the carved chlorite industry. In a foreword and afterword, project director C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky tells the story of the archaeological expedition and reflects on the contributions of the Tepe Yahya project.

Tepe Yahya provides a stratigraphic sequence that stretches some 6,000 years, from the Neolithic period to the early centuries AD. As a result, the site is critical for understanding cultural processes in southeastern Iran.

In this volume of results of the excavations at Tepe Yahya, Peter Magee presents evidence from the Iron Age occupation of the site. Looking beyond the epigraphic and historical data and examining the insights provided by the artifactual record, Magee describes how a small settlement, located some distance from the main centers of power, came into being and was affected by the emergence of the Achaemenid imperial system, which stretched from Pakistan to Libya.

This comprehensive study of the Proto-Elamite language (ca. 3000 BC) is based on a small archive recovered from the site of Tepe Yahya in southeastern Iran. The authors, two of the leading specialists on the most ancient written texts of the Near East, illuminate the structure of the texts, the numerical sign systems used, and the relation of Proto-Elamite to other protocuneiform writing systems. A computer-generated sign list compares the written archive from Tepe Yahya with those of other archaeological sites from which Proto-Elamite texts have been recovered.

The volume offers a new understanding of the language and culture of the Proto-Elamites as well as important insights into the economic structure of the earliest literate civilizations. With a new preface by the authors.

"Excellence for all" might, at first glance, appear to be nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. Who, after all, would oppose the idea of a great education for every student? Yet it is hardly a throwaway phrase. Rather, it represents a surprising fusion of educational policy approaches that had been in tense opposition throughout the twentieth centurythose on the right favoring social efficiency, and those on the left supporting social justice.

This book seeks to understand why the "excellence for all" vision took hold at the time it did, unpacks the particular beliefs and assumptions embedded in it, and details the often informal coalition building that produced this period of consensus. Examining the nation's largest urban school districts (Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York), the author details three major reform efforts in chapters titled "The Right Space: The Small Schools Movement"; "The Right Teachers: Teach for America"; and "The Right Curriculum: Expanding Advanced Placement."

How perceptions of Mormonism from 1830 to the present reveal the exclusionary, racialized practices of the U.S. nation-state
 

Are Mormons really so weird? Are they potentially queer? These questions occupy the heart of this powerful rethinking of Mormonism and its place in U.S. history, culture, and politics. K. Mohrman argues that Mormon peculiarity is not inherent to the Latter-day Saint faith tradition, as is often assumed, but rather a potent expression of U.S. exceptionalism. 

Exceptionally Queer scrutinizes the history of Mormonism starting with its inception in the early 1830s and continuing to the present. Drawing on a wide range of historical texts and moments—from nineteenth-century battles over Mormon plural marriage; to the LDS Church’s emphases on “individual responsibility” and “family values”; to mainstream media’s coverage of the LDS Church’s racist exclusion of Black priesthood holders, its Native assimilation programs, and vehement opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment; and to much more recent legal and cultural battles over same-sex marriage and on-screen Mormon polygamy—Exceptionally Queer evaluates how Mormonism has been used to motivate and rationalize the biased, exclusionary, and colonialist policies and practices of the U.S. nation-state.

Mohrman explains that debates over Mormonism both drew on and shaped racial discourses and, in so doing, delineated the boundaries of whiteness and national belonging, largely through the consolidation of (hetero)normative ideas of sex, marriage, family, and economy. Ultimately, the author shows how discussions of Mormonism in this country have been and continue to be central to ideas of what it means to be American. 

Yury Trifonov took a turn toward the controversial, and a leap toward greatness, with the publication of the two novellas included in this collection. "The Exchange" and "The Long Goodbye" depict the complex dilemmas and compromises of Russian life after World War II. These works, along with the short stories "Games at Dusk" and "A Short Stay in the Torture Chamber," detail the moral and spiritual decline in Russia that resulted from the growing distance between the theoretical idealism of the Soviet state and the actual materialism and careerism that increasingly marked society.
 

What can teachers in British and American inner-city schools learn from each other about literacy training? To explore this question, Sarah Warshauer Freedman and her British colleagues set up a writing exchange that matched classes from four middle and high schools in the San Francisco Bay area with their London equivalents.

Exchanging Writing, Exchanging Cultures offers concrete lessons to school reformers, policymakers, and classroom teachers about the value and effectiveness of different approaches to teaching writing. Freedman goes beyond the specific subject matter of this study, looking anew at Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories of social interaction and addressing the larger questions of the relationship between culture and education.

Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Last American Soldier Who Paid the Ultimate Price for Desertion
A New Edition of the Acclaimed Investigative Story 

In August 1944, a drab convoy of raw recruits destined to join the 28th Division lumbered along a windy French road strewn with dead animals, shattered bodies, and burning equipment. One of those draftees was 24-year-old Eddie Slovik, a petty thief from Detroit who had spent his youth in and out of reform schools. Eddie's luck had recently changed, however, with a steady factory job and marriage to a beautiful girl who gave Eddie hope and security for the first time in his life. But their honeymoon—like that of many other wartime newlyweds—was interrupted by the call to service. The convoy came under intense artillery fire, and in the confusion Slovik became separated from his unit. He joined a Canadian outfit and traveled with them before finally reporting to the 28th Division. He carried a rifle but no ammunition. He was assigned to a platoon but walked away. Refusing to kill, Slovik was arrested, court martialed, and condemned to death. Hundreds of soldiers were tried for desertion during World War II and sentenced to die, but only Eddie Slovik paid the price, supposedly as a deterrent, yet word of the nature of his death was never officially released to the public.

In The Execution of Private Slovik, considered to be among the best investigative books ever written, journalist and author William Bradford Huie reconstructs this entire story with the full cooperation of the U.S. Army in order to find out what made Eddie Slovik an unlikely pacifist and why the affair was covered up. Through interviews with those who knew him and the hundreds of letters to his wife, the author reveals a hard luck depression-era kid who when faced with the reality of war realized that he simply could not kill another human being. Throughout, Huie reveals how Eddie Slovik's death has much to tell us about life and duty to one's country. This edition marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the sentence being carried out, contains a new introduction by the author's daughter.

Praise for The Execution of Private Slovik:

"In the hands of an expert, who writes both passionately and with an almost transparent effort to be fair to all concerned, the story raises questions to which our wisest leaders still lack satisfying answers."
—New York Times

"A remarkable story reported by a master."—W. E. B. Griffin 

"Recommended reading for all military historians."—Military Affairs

"Tremendously moving."—The Atlantic

"It is very likely that William Bradford Huie's The Execution of Private Slovikwill long survive the official histories of World War II. It is a big book and Mr. Huie deserves some sort of rich reward for this unburying of an incident of the war which must disturb us all. For Slovik was more than a 'coward.' He not only did not want to die but he did not want to kill, and one must look far in literature for a figure so moving as Private Slovik wandering about Europe not with bullets in his cartridge belt but with writing paper. The question is not 'How might we improve military procedures?' The question is, 'What has happened to love in our world when he who would rather love than kill must die?'"—from a letter to the New York Times

Executives today encounter social, psychological, and technical problems undreamed of by their predecessors. To help meet these challenges, Harry Levinson has written a thorough and timely revision of his acknowledged classic, The Exceptional Executive.

In Executive the author has added new material emphasizing the need for executive flexibility the ability to work with multiple constituencies, to mitigate tensions between middle and top management, to comprehend the social context within which business operates and to understand the needs of women and minorities. He has also added fourteen case studies that illuminate these major themes and problems.

A quiet revolution came to corporate America during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Large shareholders—pension funds, insurance companies, money manages, and commercial banks—exercised new-found muscle, pressuring senior managers to improve disappointing financial results by reshaping their organization. Michael Useem reveals how those investor pressures have transformed the inside structures of many corporations, better aligning them with shareholder interest.

Useem draws on numerous sources, including interviews with senior managers and intensive studies of seven large corporations representing a range of restructuring experiences and industries—including pharmaceuticals, transportation, chemicals, retailing, electronics, and financial services. He shows that organizational changes have affected many areas of corporate life: headquarters staffs have been reduced authority has filtered down to operating units, and compensation has become more closely tied to performance. Change also extends to corporate governance, where managers have fought back by seeking legal safeguards against takeovers and by staggering board terms. They’ve also put significant resources into building more effective relations with shareholders.

As Useem demonstrates, this revolution has reached beyond the corporation, influencing American politics and law. As increasing ownership concentration has caused companies to focus more attention on shareholders, corporate political agendas have shifted from fighting government regulation to resisting shareholder intrusion.

Exegesis--interpretation and explanation of sacred texts--is the quintessence of rabbinic thought. Through such means and methods, the written words of Hebrew Scripture have been extended since antiquity, and given new voices for new times. In this lucid and often poetic book, Michael Fishbane delineates the connections between biblical interpretation and Jewish religious thought.

How can a canon be open to new meanings, given that it is believed to be immutable? Fishbane discusses the nature and rationale of this interpretative process in a series of studies on ancient Jewish speculative theology. Focusing on questions often pondered in Midrash, he shows how religious ideas are generated or justified by exegesis. He also explores the role exegesis plays in liturgy and ritual. A striking example is the transfer of speculative interpretations into meditation in prayer. Cultivation of the ability to perceive many implicit meanings in a text or religious practice can become a way of living--as Fishbane shows in explaining how such notions as joy or spiritual meditations on death can be idealized and the ideal transmitted through theological interpretation. The Exegetical Imagination is a collection of interrelated essays that together offer new and profound understanding of scriptural interpretation and its central role in Judaism.

Should laws apply equally to everyone, or should some individuals and organizations be granted exemptions because of conflicting religious or moral convictions? In recent years, this question has become intensely controversial in America. The Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage, in particular, has provoked barbed debates about legal exemptions. At the core of these debates lies the question of whether basic values of equality and nondiscrimination are at odds with the right to live according to one’s religious beliefs.

In Exemptions: Necessary, Justified, or Misguided? Kent Greenawalt draws on his extensive expertise to place same-sex marriage and other controversies within a broader context. Avoiding oversimplification and reflecting a balanced consideration of competing claims and harms, he offers a useful overview of various types of exemptions and the factors that we should take into account when determining the justice of a particular exemption.

Through a close study of several cases, from doctors who will not perform abortions to institutions that do not pay taxes, Greenawalt demonstrates how to weigh competing values without losing sight of practical considerations like the difficulty of implementing a specific law. This thoughtful guide to exemptions will prove an invaluable resource as America struggles to come to terms with Obergefell v. Hodges, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, and similar controversies. Exemptions shows how to reach the most just and desirable legal conclusions by respecting those who wish to live according to different fundamental values.

Life in a provincial capital is the subject of this study of Exeter during the Elizabethan and early Stuart ages. The author offers new insight into the way the English middle-class lived and the way in which Tudor policy achieved its aims in the provinces. During this period, Exeter was characterized by its self-sufficiency and by an oligarchical control over every aspect of its civic life. Wallace MacCaffrey describes a semi-autonomous world in itself, in which a small interlocked group of merchant families, related by marriage, kept tight control over the economy, politics, religion, education and social activities.

Taking the inclinations and actions of the local figures as his points of departure, the author discusses such great issues of the age as the Reformation, the war with Spain, and the monarchy, and examines how often they were pushed aside or subordinated to local affairs. Although the local citizen body had no part in national policy making, it was called upon to participate in carrying out the directives which came from London; it did carry out these policies, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.

In writing this detailed study, MacCaffrey has drawn on hitherto unused files from the records of the city.

Recent agricultural reforms in the People's Republic of China have generated great interest in the ability of the Chinese state, traditional and modern, to accommodate rapid economic change. Exhausting the Earth examines an earlier period—from the late Ming to the mid-Qing era marked by tremendous population growth, extension of the market, and increases in agricultural productivity.

Peter C. Perdue describes the relationship between agricultural production and state policies toward taxation, land clearance, dike-building; property rights, and agriculture in Hunan. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Hunan changed from a peripheral, sparsely populated region into a crowded, highly commercialized, grain-exporting province. State policies had stimulated this growth, but by the early nineteenth century serious signs of overpopulation, social conflict, and ecological exhaustion had surfaced. Local officials were conscious of these dangers, but the influence of the state on the economy was so weakened that they could not alter the ominous trends. The stage was set for the disintegration and rebellion of the nineteenth century. This in-depth study of official policies in one region over a long stretch of time illuminates the dynamics of official initiatives and local response.

Religion is a subject often overlooked or ignored by public historians. Whether they are worried about inadvertent proselytizing or fearful of contributing to America’s ongoing culture wars, many heritage professionals steer clear of discussing religion’s formative role in the past when they build collections, mount exhibits, and develop educational programming. Yet religious communities have long been active contributors to the nation’s commemorative landscape.

András Koerner is the author of a number of critically acclaimed, award-winning CEU Press titles on the cultural history of Hungarian Jews and Jewish cuisine. This volume continues that tradition by discussing the phenomenon of exhibits on Jewish culinary culture in museums and galleries around the world.
The first part of the book provides an overview of the cultural history of "foodism" and the proliferation of Jewish museums. In addition, it examines the role of cuisine in Jewish identity. It offers an analysis of the history and recent examples of exhibitions on Jewish culinary culture, a subject that has not received scholarly attention until now.
The second part complements this by offering a detailed case study of the book’s subject. It showcases a 2022 exhibition in Budapest on the History of Hungarian Jewish Culinary Culture. András Koerner was the co-curator of the show, thus he is able to offer an insider’s account of its implementation – concept, scope, goals, audience, and design. He also openly discusses the compromises made and mistakes committed in the exhibition’s preparatory work.
This subjective account, quite different from the dry objectivity of catalogues, offers an unusual, behind-the-scenes look at how a complex exhibition like this is prepared. At the same time, the book’s appendix includes images of the display boards and some of the exhibited objects – thus it can also stand for a valuable ex-post catalogue.

Bronka Schneider and her husband, Joseph, were two of the thirty thousand Austrian Jews admitted as refugees to Great Britain between March 1938 and 2 September 1939. It was not until 1960, however, that Schneider wrote her memoir about the year she spent as a housekeeper, with Joseph as a butler, in a Scottish castle.

Schneider tells of daily encounters—with her employers, the English lady and her husband, a retired British civil servant who had spent many years in India; the village locals; other refugees; and a family of evacuees from the slums of Glasgow.

The editors have divided this memoir into chapters, adding headlines from the London Times as epigraphs. These headlines, reporting the escalating events of World War II, are in stark contrast to daily activities of the residents of this isolated region of Scotland. A commentary by Erika Bourguignon provides historical, political, and cultural background of this period.

Honorable Mention, Hamid Naficy Iranian Studies Book Award from the Association of Iranian Studies

Tracing the cultural and intellectual exchange between Iranian nationalists and the Parsi community during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Exile and the Nation shows how this interchange led to the collective reimagining of Parsi and Iranian national identity—and the influence of antiquity on modern Iranian nationalism, which previously rested solely on European forms of thought. Iranian nationalism, Afshin Marashi argues, was also the byproduct of the complex history resulting from the demise of the early modern Persianate cultural system, as well as one of the many cultural heterodoxies produced within the Indian Ocean world. Crossing the boundaries of numerous fields of study, this book reframes Iranian nationalism within the context of the connected, transnational, and global history of the modern era.

As sustainability and eco-responsibility become a part of our everyday cultural conversation, we’re finally being forced to acknowledge that what we consume matters. What we fail to realize is that we unconsciously, continually, and at times violently consume much more than just food—including celebrities. The Exile of Britney Spears takes the ubiquitous pop star of its title as its primary example, explaining that we have consumed, digested, and eliminated Britney Spears in a process uniquely characteristic of American popular culture. In Christopher Smit’s provocative account of the sociological, aesthetic, and political outcomes of this new mediated cannibalism, he offers the idea of exile as a new metaphor for the outcome of popular consumption. By investigating the psychological, personal, and social matrix of Britney’s rise and fall, he outlines the process of her inevitable exile from global taste and favor.

Brian Aldiss is one of the great figures in science fiction. Classics in the genre, his books serve as portals to other worlds, captivating readers with strange and shocking narratives that have been a force for further experimentation within the genre. In addition to a highly successful career as a writer of both fiction and science fiction, Aldiss is also an accomplished artist and literary critic.

Offering a new perspective on Zionism, Exiled in the Homeland draws on memoirs, newspaper accounts, and archival material to examine closely the lives of the men and women who immigrated to Palestine in the early twentieth century. Rather than reducing these historic settlements to a single, unified theme, Donna Robinson Divine's research reveals an extraordinary spectrum of motivations and experiences among these populations.

Though British rule and the yearning for a Jewish national home contributed to a foundation of solidarity, Exiled in the Homeland presents the many ways in which the message of emigration settled into the consciousness of the settlers. Considering the benefits and costs of their Zionist commitments, Divine explores a variety of motivations and outcomes, ranging from those newly arrived immigrants who harnessed their ambition for the goal of radical transformation to those who simply dreamed of living a better life. Also capturing the day-to-day experiences in families that faced scarce resources, as well as the British policies that shaped a variety of personal decisions on the part of the newcomers, Exiled in the Homeland provides new keys to understanding this pivotal chapter in Jewish history.

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Mexico was the only country to offer open refuge to the thousands of Republican emigrés who fled from Spain in 1939–1940. Exiles and Citizens is a study of these political exiles, especially those with intellectual and professional backgrounds and ambitions. It focuses on their adjustment to Mexico, on their continued ties to Spain, and on their impact on Mexican development.

The critical dilemma faced by the Spanish exiles was that, despite having fought for their political and social ideals in Spain, they forfeited in exile their active role in Spanish history. In Mexico they found a political and social system that seemed to include many of the ideals that had inspired the Spanish Republic; moreover, they were able to incorporate themselves economically, professionally, and intellectually into Mexican national life. Yet, because they were not native-born citizens, they had little or no creative part to play in the politics of their adopted country.

For Mexico, the impact of the refugees from Spain was enormous. Integrated from the first into nearly all intellectual, professional, and cultural fields, their skills proved an important catalyst to Mexican development. Yet, outside these fields, Mexico was never an effective "melting pot." The Republicans themselves were divided in their loyalties, and the Mexicans, from the beginning, were reluctant to encourage the full participation of their guests in national affairs.

Two goals were shared by most of the exiles: to ensure that the world would remember the liberal, creative, and open Spain they had created and thus reject Franco; to show their gratitude by working for the benefit and progress of Mexico. These goals, although frequently contradictory, sustained the emigration and gave meaning to exile. The refugees tried to maintain their identity by coming together in formal and informal associations that were intended either to act on behalf of the homeland or to re-create the Spanish Republican structures and values in exile. To maintain a Spanish identity, however, proved difficult, and for the second and third generations in Mexico, the initial goals had already lost their meaning. For them, economic and professional, as well as familial, ties were strongly Mexican.

Spanish Republicans in Mexico represented a fairly rare phenomenon: a large group of skilled, relatively well educated immigrants to a country where persons of their attainments and status were not numerous. Moreover, as political exiles, they approached the problems of acculturation differently from economic emigrants. Patricia Fagen's study thus offers a further understanding of an important exile community and the characteristics that set it apart from other examples of immigrant experiences. In addition, the study sheds new light on the intellectual history of Mexico and the far-reaching effects of the Spanish civil war.

Tales of risk and danger, suffering, disease, horror, and death. Tales, also, of courage and dignity, hard work, and human endurance in the face of hostile nature and the frequent brutality of men. And tales flavored with piquant touches of humor and bemused irony.

These are the stories of the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, here presented in an important compilation of thirteen of his most compelling tales, sensitively selected and translated by J. David Danielson. Author of some two hundred pieces of fiction, often compared to the works of Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Allan Poe, Quiroga set many of his stories in the territory of Misiones in northeastern Argentina, the subtropical jungle region where he spent much of his life.

Included here are stories from Los desterrados (1926) often said to be his best book, as well as others from Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1917), Anaconda (1921), and El Desierto (1924). The publication of this selection marks the first appearance in English of all but two of the thirteen stories.

Quiroga here presents a wide range of characters: parents and children, servant girls and prostitutes, landowners and lumber barons, foremen and laborers, natives and immigrants, in stories pervaded by a vision of life that is elemental, incisive, and essentially tragic. The Exiles and Other Stories shows the versatility and skill that have made him a classic Spanish American writer. It complements and illumines The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, selected and translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, also published by the University of Texas Press.

New Orleans has always captured our imagination as an exotic city in its racial ambiguity and pursuit of les bons temps. Despite its image as a place apart, the city played a key role in nineteenth-century America as a site for immigration and pluralism, the quest for equality, and the centrality of self-making.

In both the literary imagination and the law, creoles of color navigated life on a shifting color line. As they passed among various racial categories and through different social spaces, they filtered for a national audience the meaning of the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and de jure segregation.

Shirley Thompson offers a moving study of a world defined by racial and cultural double consciousness. In tracing the experiences of creoles of color, she illuminates the role ordinary Americans played in shaping an understanding of identity and belonging.