Richard Caves analyzes the market structure, conduct, and performance of the United States domestic passenger airlines. A unique aspect of the industry is the close regulation of its daily business functioning by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Although this influence affects every managerial decision, Caves finds that the economic elements in the industry's market structure still play a vital role in determining performance and conduct. He shows that the airline industry has structural characteristics that would ensure market performance of reasonable quality with less extensive economic regulation.

His book is more than a comprehensive evaluation of the air-transport industry; it is concerned with the basic question of governmental control. Questions of regulation, already materially affecting the American economy, are often before the public. Such industry studies as this clarify the net effect on the general economic welfare of industrial controls—how they work, where they work best, and the advantages of increasing or decreasing them.

This book explores the organization of creative industries, including the visual and performing arts, movies, theater, sound recordings, and book publishing. In each, artistic inputs are combined with other, "humdrum" inputs. But the deals that bring these inputs together are inherently problematic: artists have strong views; the muse whispers erratically; and consumer approval remains highly uncertain until all costs have been incurred.

To assemble, distribute, and store creative products, business firms are organized, some employing creative personnel on long-term contracts, others dealing with them as outside contractors; agents emerge as intermediaries, negotiating contracts and matching creative talents with employers. Firms in creative industries are either small-scale pickers that concentrate on the selection and development of new creative talents or large-scale promoters that undertake the packaging and widespread distribution of established creative goods. In some activities, such as the performing arts, creative ventures facing high fixed costs turn to nonprofit firms.

To explain the logic of these arrangements, the author draws on the analytical resources of industrial economics and the theory of contracts. He addresses the winner-take-all character of many creative activities that brings wealth and renown to some artists while dooming others to frustration; why the "option" form of contract is so prevalent; and why even savvy producers get sucked into making "ten-ton turkeys," such as Heaven's Gate. However different their superficial organization and aesthetic properties, whether high or low in cultural ranking, creative industries share the same underlying organizational logic.

Media critics invariably disparage the quality of programming produced by the U.S. television industry. But why the industry produces what it does is a question largely unasked. It is this question, at the crux of American popular culture, that Switching Channels explores.

In the past twenty-five years, the expansion of cable and satellite systems has transformed television. Richard Caves examines the economics of this phenomenon--and the nature and logic of the broadcast networks' response to the incursion of cable TV, especially the shift to inexpensive unscripted game and "reality" shows and "news" magazines. An explanation of these changes, Caves argues, requires an understanding of two very different sectors: the "creative industry," which produces programs; and the commercial channels, which bring them to viewers. His book shows how distributors' judgment of profitability determines the quality and character of the programs the creative industry produces. This determination, writes Caves, depends on the number and types of viewers that various programs can attract and advertisers' willingness to pay for their attention, as well as the organization of the networks that package programs, the distributors that transmit them, and the deals these parties strike with one another.

With the nations of the world becoming more interdependent, it is imperative to take international influences into account in understanding the organization of industry within a country. This book extends the structure/conduct/performance framework of analysis to present a fully specified simultaneous equation model of an open economy—Canada.

By estimating a system of equations of all the major variables, the authors can identify which variables are dependent and which are independent. They are thus able to assess the relative importance of such factors as seller concentration, import competition, retailing structure, advertising expenditure, research and development spending, and technical and allocative efficiency in shaping the organization of industry in Canada. In addition, using both industry-level and firm-level data, the authors develop methods for assessing the effect of structural variables on diversification strategies and the consequences for market performance. They also study the effects of such variables on firms’ access to capital markets. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for government policy.

Between 1951 and 1962 nearly ten billion dollars in long-term capital (both direct investment and purchase of securities) flowed into Canada. This massive amount represented one third of all long-term capital moving among industrial nations. Its transfer marked the first time since before World War I that the world witnessed such a large-scale international movement of capital motivated primarily by a prospect of higher rates of return.

In Capital Transfers and Economic Policy the authors test the theory of the causes and effects of international capital movements against the evidence drawn from Canada's experience. They explore Canada's adjustment to capital flows and show how the operation of her economic policy is affected by the sensitivity of capital flows to the country's interest rates and foreign-exchange rate.

Their brilliant analysis is particularly valuable in light of current trends in capital flows among industrial nations and the June 1970 return of the Canadian dollar to a flexible exchange rate, which put the economy in a working situation similar to that of the fifties.

For Mary Ann Caws—noted translator of surrealist poetry—the most appealing translations are also the oddest; the unexpected, unpredictable, and unmimetic turns that translations take are an endless source of fascination and instruction. Surprised in Translation is a celebration of the occasional and fruitful peculiarity that results from some of the most flavorful translations of well-known authors. These translations, Caws avers, can energize and enliven the voice of the original.

In eight elegant chapters Caws reflects on translations that took her by surprise. Caws shows that the elimination of certain passages from the original—in the case of Stéphane Mallarmé translating Tennyson, Ezra Pound interpreting the troubadours, or Virginia Woolf rendered into French by Clara Malraux, Charles Mauron, and Marguerite Yourcenar—often produces a greater and more coherent art. Alternatively, some translations—such as Yves Bonnefoy’s translations of Shakespeare, Keats, and Yeats into French—require more lines in order to fully capture the many facets of the original. On other occasions, Caws argues, a swerve in meaning—as in Beckett translating himself into French or English—can produce a new text, just as true as the original. 

Imbued with Caws’s personal observations on the relationship between translators and the authors they translate, Surprised in Translation will interest a wide range of readers, including students of translation, professional literary translators, and scholars of modern and comparative literature.

An extraordinarily gifted athlete, Babe Didrikson Zaharias starred in track and field and won three Olympic medals in 1932. She picked up golf late yet quickly dominated the women's sport. She also competed in baseball, bowling, basketball, and tennis. 

Interviews with members of Babe's family, peers, and others inform Susan E. Cayleff’s story of the athlete and the difficulties she faced as a woman trying to be her own person. The American public was smitten with Babe’s wit, frankness, and "unladylike" bravado. But members of the press insinuated that her femininity, even her femaleness, were suspect. Cayleff looks at how Babe used her androgyny and athleticism to promote herself before crafting a more marketable female persona for golf. She also explores Babe’s role as a cofounder of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA); her marriage to George Zaharias and their partnership in shaping her career; her romantic relationship with fellow golfer Betty Dodd; and her courageous public fight against cancer.

The American Revolutionary War began when Massachusetts militiamen and British troops clashed at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Two months later, a much larger engagement occurred at Bunker Hill in Boston. The conflict then expanded into a continent-wide war for independence from Great Britain. Or so we are taught. A closer look at events in the South in the eighteen months following Lexington and Concord tells different story. The practice of teaching the Revolutionary War as one generalized conflict between the American colonies and Great Britain assumes the South’s support for the Revolutionary War was a foregone conclusion. However, once shots were fired, it was not certain that the southern colonies would support the independence movement. What is clear is that both the fledgling American republic and the British knew that the southern colonies were critical to any successful prosecution of the war by either side.
In March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775–1776, historian Michael Cecere, consulting primary source documents, examines how Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia ended up supporting the colonies to the north, while East Florida remained within the British sphere. South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida all retained their royal governors through the summer of 1775, and no military engagements occurred in any of the southern colonies in the six months following the battles in Massachusetts. The situation changed significantly in the fall, however, with armed clashes in Virginia and South Carolina; by early 1776 the war had spread to all of the southern colonies except East Florida. Although their march to independence did not follow the exact route as the colonies to the north, events in the South pulled the southern colonists in the same direction, culminating with a united Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This book explores the crucial events in the southern colonies that led all but East Florida to support the American cause.
 

In the preface to her memoir, Ercenia "Alice" Cedeño recalls the secrecy and turmoil that marked her youth: "I spent most of my growing years mad at my mother and wanting her to change to fit in with the rest of the world," she writes. "When my sisters and I wanted her to visit our friends' mothers, she would say, 'Why do people need to know other peoples' lives?' Looking back, I wonder if she was really saying, 'I don't want them to know our business.' There was so much to hide."

Now bringing those hidden memories to light, Amá, Your Story Is Mine traces the hardship, violence, deceit, and defiance that shaped the identity of two generations of women in Alice's family. Born in the mountains of northern Mexico, Alice's mother married at age 14 into a family rife with passion that often turned to anger. After losing several infant children to disease, the young couple crossed into the United States seeking a better life.

Unfolding in a series of powerful vignettes, Amá, Your Story Is Mine describes in captivating detail a daring matriarch who found herself having to protect her children from their own father while facing the challenges of cultural discrimination. By turns wry and tender, Alice's recollections offer a rare memoir that fully encompasses the Latina experience in the United States.

“Machiavellian”—used to describe the ruthless cunning of the power-obsessed and the pitiless—is never meant as a compliment. But the man whose name became shorthand for all that is ugly in politics was more engaging and nuanced than his reputation suggests. Christopher S. Celenza’s Machiavelli: A Portrait removes the varnish of centuries to reveal not only the hardnosed political philosopher but the skilled diplomat, learned commentator on ancient history, comic playwright, tireless letter writer, and thwarted lover.

Machiavelli’s hometown was the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century, a place of unparalleled artistic and intellectual attainments. But Florence was also riven by extraordinary violence. War and public executions were commonplace—Machiavelli himself was imprisoned and brutally tortured at the behest of his own government. These experiences left a deep impression on this keen observer of power politics, whose two masterpieces—The Prince and The Discourses—draw everywhere on the hard-won wisdom gained from navigating a treacherous world. But like many of Machiavelli’s fellow Florentines, he also immersed himself in the Latin language and wisdom of authors from the classical past. And for all of Machiavelli’s indifference to religion, vestiges of Christianity remained in his thought, especially the hope for a redeemer—a prince who would provide the stability so rare in Machiavelli’s worldly experience.

Professor Juan Manuel Barrientos prefers footsteps to footnotes. Fighting a hangover, he manages to keep his appointment to lead a group of students on a walking lecture among the historic buildings of downtown Mexico City. When the students fail to show up, however, he undertakes a solo tour that includes more cantinas than cathedrals. Unable to resist either alcohol itself or the introspection it inspires, Professor Barrientos muddles his personal past with his historic surroundings, setting up an inevitable conclusion in the very center of Mexico City.

First published in Mexico in the late 1990s, And Let the Earth Tremble at Its Centers was immediately lauded as a contemporary masterpiece in the long tradition of literary portraits of Mexico City. It is a book worthy of its dramatic title, which is drawn from a line in the Mexican national anthem.

Gonzalo Celorio first earned a place among the leading figures of Mexican letters for his scholarship and criticism, and careful readers will recognize a scholar's attention to accuracy within the novel's dyspeptic descriptions of Mexico City. The places described are indeed real (this edition includes a map that marks those visited in the story), though a few have since closed or been put to new uses. Dick Gerdes's elegant translation now preserves them all for a new audience.

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Celsus is in three volumes.

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Celsus is in three volumes.

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Celsus is in three volumes.

Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly's primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Why are these "Razabillies" partaking in a visibly "un-Latino" subculture that's thought of as a white person's fixation everywhere else?

As a Los Angeles Rockabilly insider, Nicholas F. Centino is the right person to answer this question. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.

Blending ethnography with a fascinating personal story, A Future for Amazonia is an account of a political movement that arose in the early 1990s in response to decades of attacks on the lands and peoples of eastern Ecuador, one of the world’s most culturally and biologically diverse places. After generations of ruin at the hands of colonizing farmers, transnational oil companies, and Colombian armed factions, the indigenous Cofán people and their rain forest territory faced imminent jeopardy. In a surprising turn of events, the Cofán chose Randy Borman, a man of Euro-American descent, to lead their efforts to overcome the crisis that confronted them.

Drawing on three years of ethnographic research, A Future for Amazonia begins by tracing the contours of Cofán society and Borman’s place within it. Borman, a blue-eyed, white-skinned child of North American missionary-linguists, was raised in a Cofán community and gradually came to share the identity of his adoptive nation. He became a global media phenomenon and forged creative partnerships between Cofán communities, conservationist organizations, Western scientists, and the Ecuadorian state. The result was a collective mobilization that transformed the Cofán nation in unprecedented ways, providing them with political power, scientific expertise, and a new role as ambitious caretakers of more than one million acres of forest. Challenging simplistic notions of identity, indigeneity, and inevitable ecological destruction, A Future for Amazonia charts an inspiring course for environmental politics in the twenty-first century.

Oil is one of the world’s most important commodities, but few people know how its extraction affects the residents of petroleum-producing regions. In the 1960s, the Texaco corporation discovered crude in the territory of Ecuador’s indigenous Cofán nation. Within a decade, Ecuador had become a member of OPEC, and the Cofán watched as their forests fell, their rivers ran black, and their bodies succumbed to new illnesses. In 1993, they became plaintiffs in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that aims to compensate them for the losses they have suffered. Yet even in the midst of a tragic toxic disaster, the Cofán have refused to be destroyed. While seeking reparations for oil’s assault on their lives, they remain committed to the survival of their language, culture, and rainforest homeland.

Life in Oil presents the compelling, nuanced story of how the Cofán manage to endure at the center of Ecuadorian petroleum extraction. Michael L. Cepek has lived and worked with Cofán people for more than twenty years. In this highly accessible book, he goes well beyond popular and academic accounts of their suffering to share the largely unknown stories that Cofán people themselves create—the ones they tell in their own language, in their own communities, and to one another and the few outsiders they know and trust. Their words reveal that life in oil is a form of slow, confusing violence for some of the earth’s most marginalized, yet resilient, inhabitants.