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Creating Capitals
The Rationale, Construction, and Function of the Imperial Capitals of Assyria
Aris Politopoulos
Leiden University Press, 2020
An archaeological history of the Assyrian Empire’s four capitals.

The Assyrian Empire moved and rebuilt its capital city three times—at Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, Kalhu, Dur-Šarruken, and Nineveh. Creating Capitals explores why and how Assyria constructed these capitals as well as how they functioned within the empire. Drawing on extensive research, Aris Politopoulos offers a sweeping comparative analysis of these four ancient cities and proposes a new framework for understanding the construction of capitals in human history.
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The Cult of the Saints
Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
Peter Brown
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the cult of the saints was the dominant form of religion in Christian Europe. In this elegantly written work, Peter Brown explores the role of tombs, shrines, relics, and pilgrimages connected with the sacred bodies of the saints. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the merciful intercession of the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and to find new ways to accept their fellows. Challenging the common treatment of the cult as an outbreak of superstition among the lower classes, Brown demonstrates how this form of religiousity engaged the finest minds of the Church and elicited from members of the educated upper classes some of their most splendid achievements in poetry, literature, and the patronage of the arts.

"Brown has an international reputation for his fine style, a style he here turns on to illuminate the cult of the saints. Christianity was born without such a cult; it took rise and that rise needs chronicling. Brown has a gift for the memorable phrase and sees what the passersby have often overlooked. An eye-opener on an important but neglected phase of Western development."—The Christian Century

"Brilliantly original and highly sophisticated . . . . [The Cult of the Saints] is based on great learning in several disciplines, and the story is told with an exceptional appreciation for the broad social context. Students of many aspects of medieval culture, especially popular religion, will want to consult this work."—Bennett D. Hill, Library Journal
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The Cult of the Saints
Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, Enlarged Edition
Peter Brown
University of Chicago Press, 2014
In this groundbreaking work, Peter Brown explores how the worship of saints and their corporeal remains became central to religious life in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, earthly remnants served as a heavenly connection, and their veneration is a fascinating window into the cultural mood of a region in transition.

Brown challenges the long-held “two-tier” idea of religion that separated the religious practices of the sophisticated elites from those of the superstitious masses, instead arguing that the cult of the saints crossed boundaries and played a dynamic part in both the Christian faith and the larger world of late antiquity. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and power, and how a single sainted hair could inspire great thinkers and great artists.

An essential text by one of the foremost scholars of European history, this expanded edition includes a new preface from Brown, which presents new ideas based on subsequent scholarship.
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Dialogue, Dialectic and Conversation
A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing
Gregory Clark. Foreword by Robert J. Connors
Southern Illinois University Press, 1990

This book articulates an ethics for reading that places primary responsibility for the social influences of a text on the response of its readers.

We write and read as participants in a process through which we negotiate with others whom we must live or work with and with whom we share values, beliefs, and actions. Clark draws on current literary theory, rhetoric, philosophy, communication theory, and composition studies as he builds on this argument.

Because reading and writing are public actions that address and direct matters of shared belief, values, and action, reading and writing should be taught as public discourse. We should teach not writing or reading so much as the larger practice of public discourse—a discourse that sustains the many important communities of which students are and will be active members.

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Everything Man
The Form and Function of Paul Robeson
Shana L. Redmond
Duke University Press, 2020
From his cavernous voice and unparalleled artistry to his fearless struggle for human rights, Paul Robeson was one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and polymaths. In Everything Man Shana L. Redmond traces Robeson's continuing cultural resonances in popular culture and politics. She follows his appearance throughout the twentieth century in the forms of sonic and visual vibration and holography; theater, art, and play; and the physical environment. Redmond thereby creates an imaginative cartography in which Robeson remains present and accountable to all those he inspired and defended. With her bold and unique theorization of antiphonal life, Redmond charts the possibility of continued communication, care, and collectivity with those who are dead but never gone.
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Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture
A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 7th and 8th October 1994
Stephen D. Houston
Harvard University Press, 1998

Investigations of Maya architecture have been among the chief vehicles for contemplating a great art tradition, the hieroglyphic writing system, and evaluating issues of comparative sociology. The powerful attraction of Maya architecture as an evocation of lost worlds, as a medium for the carved glyph and idol, and as a yardstick for measuring evolutionary complexity, makes it appropriate that attention be given to the buildings themselves, rather than simply treating them as media for the investigation of other issues, as valuable as these might be. The articles in this volume are of special value and importance in making architecture itself the focus of attention. At the same time that they give appropriate attention to the great architectural achievements of the Maya, they do not ignore the often evanescent residences of commoners. Rather than privileging cross-cultural comparisons or the anthropology of prehistoric peoples, however, structures remain at the forefront. In this, we reaffirm Maya architecture as one of the world’s great building traditions, allow for meaningful interdisciplinary exchange between archaeology, art history, and anthropology, and provide new ways of appreciating Maya culture, from a unique perspective.

The contributions presented here will surely mark a significant stage in the study of Maya architecture and the society that built it. These articles represent the advances that have been achieved in our understandings of the past, point toward avenues for further studies, and note the distance we have yet to travel in fully appreciating and understanding this ancient American culture and its material remains.

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Function Of Criticism
Problems and Exercises
Yvor Winters
Ohio University Press, 1957

The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises brings together five essays by Yvor Winters: “Problems for the Modern Critic of Literature,” “The Audible Reading of Poetry,” “The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” “Robert Frost, Or the Spiritual Drifter as Poet,” and “English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.”

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The Function of Mimesis and Its Decline
John D. S.J.Boyd
Harvard University Press

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The Insects
Structure and Function, Third Edition
R. F. Chapman
Harvard University Press

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Interpreting State Constitutions
A Jurisprudence of Function in a Federal System
James A. Gardner
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Interpreting State Constitutions examines and proposes a solution to a problem central to contemporary debates over the enforcement of civil liberties: how courts, government officials, and lawyers should go about interpreting the constitutions of the American states.

With the Supreme Court's retreat from the aggressive protection of individual rights, state courts have begun to interpret state constitutions to provide broader protection of liberties. This development has reversed the polarity of constitutional politics, as liberals advocate unimpeded state power while conservatives lobby for state subordination to a constitutional law controlled centrally by the Supreme Court.

James A. Gardner here lays out the first fully developed theory of subnational constitutional interpretation. He argues that states are integral components of a national system of overlapping and mutually checking authority and that the purpose of this system is to protect liberty and defend against federal domination. The resulting account provides valuable prescriptive advice to state courts, showing them how to fulfill their responsibilities to the federal system in a way that strengthens American constitutional discourse.
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The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories
Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy
Robert G. Colodny
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971
The six essays in this volume discuss philosophical thought on scientific theory including: a call for a realist, rather than instrumentalist interpretation of science; a critique of one of the core ideas of positivism concerning the relation between observational and theoretical languages; using aerodynamics to discuss the representational aspect of scientific theories and their isomorphic qualities; the relationship between the reliability of common sense and the authenticity of the world view of science; removing long-held ambiguities on the theory of inductive logic; and the relationship between the actuality of conceptual revolutions in the history of science and traditional philosophical pictures of scientific theory-building.
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The Pathway for Oxygen
Structure and Function in the Mammalian Respiratory System
Ewald R. Weibel, M.D.
Harvard University Press, 1984

It is rare indeed for one book to be both a first-rate classroom text and a major contribution to scholarship. The Pathway for Oxygen is such a book, offering a new approach to respiratory physiology and morphology that quantitatively links the two. Professionalism in science has led to a compartmentalization of biology. Function is the domain of the physiologist, structure that of the morphologist, and they often operate with vastly disparate concepts and procedures. Yet the performance of the respiratory system depends both on structural and on functional properties that cannot be separated.

The first chapter of The Pathway for Oxygen engages the student with the design and function of the vertebrate respiratory organs from a comparative viewpoint. The second chapter adds to that foundation the link between cell energetics and oxygen needs of the whole animal. With Chapter 3 the excitement begins—new ideas, fresh attacks on old problems, and a fuller account of the power of the quantitative approach Dr. Ewald Weibel has pioneered.

The Pathway for Oxygen will be read eagerly by medical students, graduate students, advanced undergraduates in zoology—and by their professors.

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Plant Biomechanics
An Engineering Approach to Plant Form and Function
Karl J. Niklas
University of Chicago Press, 1992
In this first comprehensive treatment of plant biomechanics, Karl J. Niklas analyzes plant form and provides a far deeper understanding of how form is a response to basic physical laws. He examines the ways in which these laws constrain the organic expression of form, size, and growth in a variety of plant structures, and in plants as whole organisms, and he draws on the fossil record as well as on studies of extant species to present a genuinely evolutionary view of the response of plants to abiotic as well as biotic constraints. Well aware that some readers will need an introduction to basic biomechanics or to basic botany, Niklas provides both, as well as an extensive glossary, and he has included a number of original drawings and photographs to illustrate major structures and concepts.

This volume emphasizes not only methods of biomechanical analysis but also the ways in which it allows one to ask, and answer, a host of interesting questions. As Niklas points out in the first chapter, "From the archaic algae to the most derived multicellular terrestrial plants, from the spectral properties of light-harvesting pigments in chloroplasts to the stacking of leaves in the canopies of trees, the behavior of plants is in large part responsive to and intimately connected with the physical environment. In addition, plants tend to be exquisitely preserved in the fossil record, thereby giving us access to the past." Its biomechanical analyses of various types of plant cells, organs, and whole organisms, and its use of the earliest fossil records of plant life as well as sophisticated current studies of extant species, make this volume a unique and highly integrative contribution to studies of plant form, evolution, ecology, and systematics.
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Private Sectors in Higher Education
Structure, Function, and Change in Eight Countries
Roger L. Geiger
University of Michigan Press, 1986
Private Sectors in Higher Education examines how the tasks of higher education have been divided between public and private institutions, and with what consequences. In doing so, the author analyzes both the comparative structures of educational systems and their social relations. Besides correcting the widespread misperception that private higher education is predominately an American phenomenon, this study should enlarge the range of experience that can be brought to bear on issues currently facing public policy and private higher education. It constitutes the first scholarly treatment of private higher education outside the United States. Case studies of private sectors in seven countries—Belgium, France, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Sweden—form the core of this work. This material provides a perspective for probing several underlying rationales for private higher education in the United States. And finally, the author analyzes the issue of government financial support for private higher education. This book should significantly contribute to enlarging the framework of discussion of this question by broadening the understanding of the social and political underpinnings of public/private division in higher education.
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Spider Webs
Behavior, Function, and Evolution
William Eberhard
University of Chicago Press, 2020
In this lavishly illustrated, first-ever book on how spider webs are built, function, and evolved, William Eberhard provides a comprehensive overview of spider functional morphology and behavior related to web building, and of the surprising physical agility and mental abilities of orb weavers. For instance, one spider spins more than three precisely spaced, morphologically complex spiral attachments per second for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Spiders even adjust the mechanical properties of their famously strong silken lines to different parts of their webs and different environments, and make dramatic modifications in orb designs to adapt to available spaces. This extensive adaptive flexibility, involving decisions influenced by up to sixteen different cues, is unexpected in such small, supposedly simple animals.

As Eberhard reveals, the extraordinary diversity of webs includes ingenious solutions to gain access to prey in esoteric habitats, from blazing hot and shifting sand dunes (to capture ants) to the surfaces of tropical lakes (to capture water striders). Some webs are nets that are cast onto prey, while others form baskets into which the spider flicks prey. Some aerial webs are tramways used by spiders searching for chemical cues from their prey below, while others feature landing sites for flying insects and spiders where the spider then stalks its prey. In some webs, long trip lines are delicately sustained just above the ground by tiny rigid silk poles.

Stemming from the author’s more than five decades observing spider webs, this book will be the definitive reference for years to come.
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The Suit
Form, Function and Style
Christopher Breward
Reaktion Books, 2016
A beautifully tailored history of this fashion staple—at once a garment of tradition, power, and subversion.
 
The Suit unpicks the story of this most familiar garment, from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition, masculinity, power, and respectability, but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women, artists, musicians, and social revolutionaries through the decades—from dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smoking—the suit is also a device for challenging the status quo. For all those interested in the history of menswear, this beautifully illustrated book offers new perspectives on this most mundane, and poetic, product of modern culture.
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Symmorphosis
On Form and Function in Shaping Life
Ewald R. Weibel M.D.
Harvard University Press, 2000

This book addresses a simple question: Are animals designed economically? The pronghorn can run at speeds of up to 60 kilometers an hour and can maintain this speed for nearly a full hour. Clearly, the form of this elegant animal is beautifully matched to the function it needs to perform.

This is symmorphosis. The theory of symmorphosis predicts that the size of the parts in a system must be matched to the overall functional demand. Moreover, it predicts that animals must provide their complex systems with a functional capacity that can cope with the highest expected functional demands, possibly including some safety margin to prevent the system from failing when it is overloaded. In Symmorphosis, Ewald Weibel tests these predictions by working out the quantitative relations between form and function.

Physiologists will value this book because Weibel shows them that morphological information can be as quantitative as physiological data. Anatomists will value the book for its demonstration that advanced integrative physiology crucially depends on adequate but rigorously quantitative and testable information on structural design. Finally, anyone interested in the origins of the diverse forms of animals will be fascinated by Weibel's demonstrations that show how animals as different as shrews, pronghorns, dogs, goats--even humans--all develop from essentially the same blueprint by variation of design. This is a hidden beauty of the animal kingdom, which can be uncovered by a rigorous investigation of the quantitative relations of form and function.

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Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling
The Function of Avowal in Justice
Michel Foucault
University of Chicago Press, 2014

Three years before his death, Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures at the Catholic University of Louvain that until recently remained almost unknown. These lectures—which focus on the role of avowal, or confession, in the determination of truth and justice—provide the missing link between Foucault’s early work on madness, delinquency, and sexuality and his later explorations of subjectivity in Greek and Roman antiquity.

Ranging broadly from Homer to the twentieth century, Foucault traces the early use of truth-telling in ancient Greece and follows it through to practices of self-examination in monastic times. By the nineteenth century, the avowal of wrongdoing was no longer sufficient to satisfy the call for justice; there remained the question of who the “criminal” was and what formative factors contributed to his wrong-doing. The call for psychiatric expertise marked the birth of the discipline of psychiatry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as its widespread recognition as the foundation of criminology and modern criminal justice.
 
Published here for the first time, the 1981 lectures have been superbly translated by Stephen W. Sawyer and expertly edited and extensively annotated by Fabienne Brion and Bernard E. Harcourt. They are accompanied by two contemporaneous interviews with Foucault in which he elaborates on a number of the key themes. An essential companion to Discipline and Punish, Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling will take its place as one of the most significant works of Foucault to appear in decades, and will be necessary reading for all those interested in his thought.
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