front cover of Anthropometric Standards for the Assessment of Growth and Nutritional Status
Anthropometric Standards for the Assessment of Growth and Nutritional Status
A. Roberto Frisancho
University of Michigan Press, 1990
Compiles the largest database of material on anthropometric standards from National Health Examination surveys
[more]

front cover of Apes, Monkeys, Children, and the Growth of Mind
Apes, Monkeys, Children, and the Growth of Mind
Juan Carlos Gomez
Harvard University Press, 2006

What can the study of young monkeys and apes tell us about the minds of young humans? In this fascinating introduction to the study of primate minds, Juan Carlos Gómez identifies evolutionary resemblances—and differences—between human children and other primates. He argues that primate minds are best understood not as fixed collections of specialized cognitive capacities, but more dynamically, as a range of abilities that can surpass their original adaptations.

In a lively overview of a distinguished body of cognitive developmental research among nonhuman primates, Gómez looks at knowledge of the physical world, causal reasoning (including the chimpanzee-like errors that human children make), and the contentious subjects of ape language, theory of mind, and imitation. Attempts to teach language to chimpanzees, as well as studies of the quality of some primate vocal communication in the wild, make a powerful case that primates have a natural capacity for relatively sophisticated communication, and considerable power to learn when humans teach them.

Gómez concludes that for all cognitive psychology’s interest in perception, information processing, and reasoning, some essential functions of mental life are based on ideas that cannot be explicitly articulated. Nonhuman and human primates alike rely on implicit knowledge. Studying nonhuman primates helps us to understand this perplexing aspect of all primate minds.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Arthur Hugh Clough
The Growth of a Poet's Mind
Evelyn Greenberger
Harvard University Press, 1970

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), poet, skeptic, friend of Emerson and of Matthew Arnold, was a man concerned with the religious, political, and social issues of the turbulent times in which he lived. In this fresh examination of Clough, Greenberger traces the intellectual development of a poet who was considered a brilliant failure in his own day, a reputation that still persists despite the fact that Clough is now attracting considerable critical attention. Her study contradicts this traditional view of him as ineffectual and uncommitted and reveals instead a complex figure whose varied interests enriched his prose and poetry.

Greenberger has made a thorough study of all of Clough's prose on contemporary issues written between 1837 and 1853. These largely neglected writings, many of which remain unpublished, enable her to follow the poet's development through religious doubts and conflicts and to trace his political metamorphosis from naive idealism through radicalism to a final disenchantment with utopias. Having placed the poet's work in its proper historical context, the author goes on to reveal the great extent to which Clough succeeded in making the issues of his day viable subjects for poetry.

Greenberger, thoroughly versed in the intellectual history of the Victorian period, vividly depicts the English social and economic scene and contemporary life at unreformed Oxford. She suggests new insights into Clough's relations with Emerson, the influence of Carlyle upon the poet, and his reactions to the America of the early 1850's.

The author concludes that the techniques Clough developed for presenting his ideas in poetic form and the concerns that pervaded his thinking make him a precursor of twentieth-century literature. In the last chapter she relates her findings to Clough's three major poems. She includes in an appendix a number of new poems and other material by Clough found in manuscript during her research.

[more]

front cover of Austin, Cleared for Takeoff
Austin, Cleared for Takeoff
Aviators, Businessmen, and the Growth of an American City
By Kenneth B. Ragsdale
University of Texas Press, 2004

Austin, Texas, entered the aviation age on October 29, 1911, when Calbraith Perry Rodgers landed his Wright EX Flyer in a vacant field near the present-day intersection of Duval and 45th Streets. Some 3,000 excited people rushed out to see the pilot and his plane, much like the hundreds of thousands who mobbed Charles A. Lindbergh and The Spirit of St. Louis in Paris sixteen years later. Though no one that day in Austin could foresee all the changes that would result from manned flight, people here—as in cities and towns across the United States—realized that a new era was opening, and they greeted it with all-out enthusiasm.

This popularly written history tells the story of aviation in Austin from 1911 to the opening of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in 1999. Kenneth Ragsdale covers all the significant developments, beginning with military aviation activities during World War I and continuing through the barnstorming era of the 1920s, the inauguration of airmail service in 1928 and airline service in 1929, and the dedication of the first municipal airport in 1930. He also looks at the University of Texas's role in training pilots during World War II, the growth of commercial and military aviation in the postwar period, and the struggle over airport expansion that occupied the last decades of the twentieth century. Throughout, he shows how aviation and the city grew together and supported each other, which makes the Austin aviation experience a case study of the impact of aviation on urban communities nationwide.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter