How can we agree to disagree in today’s pluralistic society, one in which individuals and groups are becoming increasingly polarized by fierce convictions that are often at odds with the ideas of others? Civil Disagreement: Personal Integrity in a Pluralistic Society shows how we can cope with diversity and be appropriately open toward opponents even while staying true to our convictions. This accessible and useful guide discusses how our conversations and arguments can respect differences and maintain personal integrity and civility even while taking stances on disputed issues. The author examines an array of illustrative cases, such as debates over slavery, gay marriage, compulsory education for the Amish, and others, providing helpful insights on how to take firm stands without denigrating opponents. The author proposes an approach called “perspective pluralism” that honors the integrity of various viewpoints while avoiding the implication that all reasonable views are equally acceptable or true.

Civil Disagreement offers a concise yet comprehensive guide for students and scholars of philosophical or religious ethics, political or social philosophy, and political science, as well as general readers who are concerned about the polarization that often seems to paralyze national and international politics.

Innovating with Integrity presents a comprehensive portrait of the local heroes—front-line public servants and middle managers—who are reinventing state and local government, and it offers practical recommendations for innovating successfully.

Based on a study of more than 200 successful government innovations, this book is the first large-scale, systematic analysis of innovation in American government. Sandford Borins identifies the components of integrity that he finds in successful innovators, including the intellectual discipline to plan rigorously and to establish measurable goals; the ability to collaborate with others and accommodate criticism; and a willingness to mobilize both the private sector and the community. In addition to analyzing the common traits driving new initiatives, Borins shows the distinctive differences among six areas of innovation: information technology, organizational redesign, environmental and energy management, policing and community development, social services, and education. This trenchant analysis of what initiatives actually work and why contributes to both the practice and theory of public management. Its practical advice will be especially valuable for front-line government workers, public managers, union leaders, agency heads, politicians, and all concerned with reforming government.

Geneticists and biochemists, particularly, have realized the special potentialities of antibodies as biologically labeled proteins that help to throw light on the process whereby genetic information carried in the chromosomes is eventually manifested in the synthesis of the proteins needed for the functioning of the organism. There are in addition many specialized applications of immunology in the other biological sciences.

F. M. Burnet describes with characteristic vividness the kinds of problems with which immunology is concerned today and the methods by which it seeks answers to them. Although he gives particular emphasis to the clonal-selection theory of immunity, of which he is the originator, he frankly says that “because it is so inherently simple, it is probably wrong.” He explains other theories of immunity as well. He discusses both nonmedical and medical applications of immunology and devotes several chapters to allergic disease and autoimmune disease. He concludes with some personal speculations into the deeper problems of biology—for instance, a somatic mutation theory of aging, in which immunology may be expected eventually to be of service.