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3 books match the query '1930-2014'

cover of Human Capital for Humans: An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of People

Human Capital for Humans

An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of People

Pablo A. Peña

University of Chicago Press, 2025

An accessible introduction to the most consequential science of modern life.

University of Chicago economist Gary Becker won the Nobel Prize largely for his advancement of human capital theory—the idea that investing in a person’s knowledge and skills has a wide range of economic effects. Becker’s writing on the subject was technical, but his teaching, especially in his famous doctoral course at Chicago, remains legendary for its accessibility, brilliance, and applications to everyday life.

In Human Capital for Humans, economist and former Becker student Pablo A. Peña channels this classroom approach to produce an accessible, essential guide to understanding the science that has become synonymous with modern life and the economy. With an illustrative and immersive style, Peña unpacks the human capital approach to domains such as parenting, aging, marriage, health, and household labor. The result is not only intellectually elevated, but an essential introduction for learners and teachers of this subject across business, management, economics, policy, and beyond.
 
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cover of Robert Ashley

Robert Ashley

Kyle Gann

University of Illinois Press, 2012

This book explores the life and works of the pioneering opera composer Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s when he, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that toured extensively in the 1960s.During his tenure as its director, the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed "performance novels." These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical structures.
 
Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, Kyle Gann chronicles the life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central. Gann examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera librettos.
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cover of Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism

Uncommon Sense

Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism

Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner

University of Chicago Press, 2009

On December 5, 2004, the still-developing blogosphere took one of its biggest steps toward mainstream credibility, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary S. Becker and renowned jurist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner announced the formation of the Becker-Posner Blog.

In no time, the blog had established a wide readership and reputation as a reliable source of lively, thought-provoking commentary on current events, its pithy and profound weekly essays highlighting the value of economic reasoning when applied to unexpected topics. Uncommon Sense gathers the most important and innovative entries from the blog, arranged by topic, along with updates and even reconsiderations when subsequent events have shed new light on a question. Whether it’s Posner making the economic case for the legalization of gay marriage, Becker arguing in favor of the sale of human organs for transplant, or even the pair of scholars vigorously disagreeing about the utility of collective punishment, the writing is always clear, the interplay energetic, and the resulting discussion deeply informed and intellectually substantial.

To have a single thinker of the stature of a Becker or Posner addressing questions of this nature would make for fascinating reading; to have both, writing and responding to each other, is an exceptionally rare treat. With Uncommon Sense, they invite the adventurous reader to join them on a whirlwind intellectual journey. All they ask is that you leave your preconceptions behind.

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