front cover of America's Neighborhood Bats
America's Neighborhood Bats
Understanding and Learning to Live in Harmony with Them
By Merlin D. Tuttle
University of Texas Press, 2005

Since its first publication in 1988, America's Neighborhood Bats has changed the way we look at bats by underscoring their harmless and beneficial nature. In this second revised edition, Merlin Tuttle offers bat aficionados the most up-to-date bat facts, including a wealth of new information on bat house design and current threats to bat survival.

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Aztec Philosophy
Understanding a World in Motion
James Maffie
University Press of Colorado, 2014
In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought.
 
Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. 

Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.
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Building for Life
Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection
Stephen R. Kellert
Island Press, 2005

Sustainable design has made great strides in recent years; unfortunately, it still falls short of fully integrating nature into our built environment. Through a groundbreaking new paradigm of "restorative environmental design," award-winning author Stephen R. Kellert proposes a new architectural model of sustainability.

In Building For Life, Kellert examines the fundamental interconnectedness of people and nature, and how the loss of this connection results in a diminished quality of life.

This thoughtful new work illustrates how architects and designers can use simple methods to address our innate needs for contact with nature. Through the use of natural lighting, ventilation, and materials, as well as more unexpected methodologies-the use of metaphor, perspective, enticement, and symbol-architects can greatly enhance our daily lives. These design techniques foster intellectual development, relaxation, and physical and emotional well-being. In the works of architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Cesar Pelli, Norman Foster, and Michael Hopkins, Kellert sees the success of these strategies and presents models for moving forward. Ultimately, Kellert views our fractured relationship with nature as a design problem rather than an unavoidable aspect of modern life, and he proposes many practical and creative solutions for cultivating a more rewarding experience of nature in our built environment.

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The Business Francis Means
Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy
Martin Schlag
Catholic University of America Press, 2017
Pope Francis, generally speaking, has thus far chosen to concentrate his papacy on social justice issues, as opposed to doctrinal or liturgical issues. This has led to Francis being hailed as a hero to many on the left, while it has made some conservative supporters of St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI disappointed and uncomfortable, even as they love and appreciate his person and gestures of mercy and compassion. Some find his teachings difficult to embrace, especially those concerning business and the economy. Pope Francis has spoken of building bridges as part of what it is to be Christian, but aspects of his message seem to be just constructing walls between the Holy Father and groups of the faithful.

The Business Francis Means aims to break through these walls, showing that Pope Francis has something to say to all Christians. His message, taken as a whole, keeps us from dividing the “seamless garment” of Christ: he reminds the conservatives of the problems of inequality and poverty, and the liberals that social justice is not enough – the Church is the bride of Christ, not a social institution or an NGO.

Monsignor Martin Schlag summarizes and explains the message of Pope Francis on business and the economy in this compact volume. The Business Francis Means will be of great interest to the Catholic layperson, especially one involved in political or economic life.
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Centering Anishinaabeg Studies
Understanding the World through Stories
Jill Doerfler
Michigan State University Press, 2013
For the Anishinaabeg people, who span a vast geographic region from the Great Lakes to the Plains and beyond, stories are vessels of knowledge. They are bagijiganan, offerings of the possibilities within Anishinaabeg life. Existing along a broad narrative spectrum, from aadizookaanag (traditional or sacred narratives) to dibaajimowinan (histories and news)—as well as everything in between—storytelling is one of the central practices and methods of individual and community existence. Stories create and understand, survive and endure, revitalize and persist. They honor the past, recognize the present, and provide visions of the future. In remembering, (re)making, and (re)writing stories, Anishinaabeg storytellers have forged a well-traveled path of agency, resistance, and resurgence. Respecting this tradition, this groundbreaking anthology features twenty-four contributors who utilize creative and critical approaches to propose that this people’s stories carry dynamic answers to questions posed within Anishinaabeg communities, nations, and the world at large. Examining a range of stories and storytellers across time and space, each contributor explores how narratives form a cultural, political, and historical foundation for Anishinaabeg Studies. Written by Anishinaabeg and non-Anishinaabeg scholars, storytellers, and activists, these essays draw upon the power of cultural expression to illustrate active and ongoing senses of Anishinaabeg life. They are new and dynamic bagijiganan, revealing a viable and sustainable center for Anishinaabeg Studies, what it has been, what it is, what it can be.
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Centering Anishinaabeg Studies
Understanding the World through Stories
Jill Doerfler
University of Manitoba Press, 2013

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Cultural Divides
Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict
Deborah Prentice
Russell Sage Foundation, 1999
Thirty years of progress on civil rights and a new era of immigration to the United States have together created an unprecedented level of diversity in American schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. But increased contact among individuals from different racial and ethnic groups has not put an end to misunderstanding and conflict. On the contrary, entrenched cultural differences raise vexing questions about the limits of American pluralism. Can a population of increasingly mixed origins learn to live and work together despite differing cultural backgrounds? Or, is social polarization by race and ethnicity inevitable? These are the dilemmas explored in Cultural Divides, a compendium of the latest research into the origins and nature of group conflict, undertaken by a distinguished group of social psychologists who have joined forces to examine the effects of culture on social life. Cultural Divides shows how new lines of investigation into intergroup conflict shape current thinking on such questions as: Why are people so strongly prone to attribute personal differences to group membership rather than to individual nature? Why are negative beliefs about other groups so resistent to change, even with increased contact? Is it possible to struggle toward equal status for all people and still maintain separate ethnic identities for culturally distinct groups? Cultural Divides offers new theories about how social identity comes to be rooted in groups: Some essays describe the value of group membership for enhancing individual self-esteem, while others focus on the belief in social hierarchies, or the perception that people of different skin colors and ethnic origins fall into immutably different categories. Among the phenomena explored are the varying degrees of commitment and identification felt by many black students toward their educational institutions, the reasons why social stigma affects the self-worth of some minority groups more than others, and the peculiar psychology of hate crime perpetrators. The way cultural boundaries can impair our ability to resolve disputes is a recurrent theme in the volume. An essay on American cultures of European, Asian, African, and Mexican origin examines core differences in how each traditionally views conflict and its proper methods of resolution. Another takes a hard look at the multiculturalist agenda and asks whether it can realistically succeed. Other contributors describe the effectiveness of social experiments aimed at increasing positive attitudes, cooperation, and conflict management skills in mixed group settings. Cultural Divides illuminates the beliefs and attitudes that people hold about themselves in relation to others, and how these social thought processes shape the formation of group identity and intergroup antagonism. In so doing, Cultural Divides points the way toward a new science of cultural contact and confronts issues of social change that increasingly affect all Americans.
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Códice Maya de México
Understanding the Oldest Surviving Book of the Americas
Andrew D. Turner
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2022
An in-depth exploration of the history, authentication, and modern relevance of Códice Maya de México, the oldest surviving book of the Americas.
 
Ancient Maya scribes recorded prophecies and astronomical observations on the pages of painted books. Although most were lost to decay or destruction, three pre-Hispanic Maya codices were known to have survived, when, in the 1960s, a fourth book that differed from the others appeared in Mexico under mysterious circumstances. After fifty years of debate over its authenticity, recent investigations using cutting-edge scientific and art historical analyses determined that Códice Maya de México (formerly known as Grolier Codex) is in fact the oldest surviving book of the Americas, predating all others by at least two hundred years.
 
This volume provides a multifaceted introduction to the creation, discovery, interpretation, and scientific authentication of Códice Maya de México. In addition, a full-color facsimile and a page-by-page guide to the iconography make the codex accessible to a wide audience. Additional topics include the uses and importance of sacred books in Mesoamerica, the role of astronomy in ancient Maya societies, and the codex's continued relevance to contemporary Maya communities.
 
This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from October 18, 2022, to January 15, 2023.
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Dangerous Writing
Understanding the Political Economy of Composition
Tony Scott
Utah State University Press, 2009
Building on recent work in rhetoric and composition that takes an historical materialist approach, Dangerous Writing outlines a political economic theory of composition. The book connects pedagogical practices in writing classes to their broader political economic contexts, and argues that the analytical power of students’ writing is prevented from reaching its potential by pressures within the academy and without, that tend to wed higher education with the aims and logics of “fast-capitalism.”

Since the 1980s and the “social turn” in composition studies and other disciplines, scholars in this field have conceived writing in college as explicitly embedded in socio-rhetorical situations beyond the classroom. From this conviction develops a commitment to teach writing with an emphasis on analyzing the social and political dimensions of rhetoric.

Ironically, though a leftist himself, Tony Scott’s analysis finds the academic left complicit with the forces in American culture that tend, in his view, to compromise education. By focusing on the structures of labor and of institutions that enforce those structures, Scott finds teachers and administrators are too easily swept along with the inertia of a hyper-commodified society in which students---especially working class students---are often positioned as commodities, themselves. Dangerous Writing, then, is a critique of the field as much as it is a critique of capitalism. Ultimately, Scott’s eye is on the institution and its structures, and it is these that he finds most in need of transformation.
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Dynamic Conceptual Semantics
A Logico-Philosophical Investigation into Concept Formation and Understanding
Renate Bartsch
CSLI, 1998
Presented in this book is a theory of concept formation and understanding that does not make use of a notion of an innate mental language as a means of concept representation. Instead, experimental concepts are treated semantically as stabilising structuring of growing sets of data, which are sets of experienced satisfaction situations for expressions, and theoretical concepts are based on coherent sets of general sentences held true. There are two kinds of structures to be established: general concepts by means of similarity sets under perspectives and historical concepts. This gives rise to a theory of understanding new situations and expressions by integrating new data into established sets of data salva stability, or by extending the conceptual structure in a metaphorical or metonymical way. The theory provides a way to understand what identity between propositional attitudes amounts to, especially how people can have more or less the same belief.
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Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason
How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding
Mark Johnson
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Mark Johnson is one of the great thinkers of our time on how the body shapes the mind. This book brings together a selection of essays from the past two decades that build a powerful argument that any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of  mind and thought must ultimately explain how bodily perception and action give rise to cognition, meaning, language, action, and values.
 
A brief account of Johnson’s own intellectual journey, through which we track some of the most important discoveries in the field over the past forty years, sets the stage. Subsequent chapters set out Johnson’s important role in embodied cognition theory, including his cofounding (with George Lakoff) of conceptual metaphor theory and, later, their theory of bodily structures and processes that underlie all meaning, conceptualization, and reasoning. A detailed account of how meaning arises from our physical engagement with our environments provides the basis for a nondualistic, nonreductive view of mind that he sees as most congruous with the latest cognitive science. A concluding section explores the implications of our embodiment for our understanding of knowledge, reason, and truth. The resulting book will be essential for all philosophers dealing with mind, thought, and language.
 
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Everyday Streets
Inclusive Approaches to Understanding and Designing Streets
Edited by Agustina Martire, Birgit Hausleitner, and Jane Clossick
University College London, 2023
A comparative look at everyday streets in contemporary cities and how they could be more inclusively used.

Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together people of different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities, and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we move through and interact in but also urban blocks, interiors, depths, and hinterlands, which are integral to streets’ nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday Streets offers an inclusive approach to understanding and designing these streets through an analysis of them as found in cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the carefully regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives, and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive.
 
 
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Fish Conservation
A Guide to Understanding and Restoring Global Aquatic Biodiversity and Fishery Resources
Gene S. Helfman
Island Press, 2007
Fish Conservation offers, for the first time in a single volume, a readable reference with a global approach to marine and freshwater fish diversity and fishery resource issues. Gene Helfman brings together available knowledge on the decline and restoration of freshwater and marine fishes, providing ecologically sound answers to biodiversity declines as well as to fishery management problems at the subsistence, recreational, and commercial levels. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book:
considers the value of preserving aquatic biodiversity
offers an overview of imperiled fishes on a taxonomic and geographic basis
presents a synthesis of common characteristics of imperiled fishes and their habitats
details anthropogenic causes of decline
examines human exploitation issues
addresses ethical questions surrounding exploitation of fishes
The final chapter integrates topics and evaluates prospects for arresting declines, emphasizing the application of evolutionary and ecological principles in light of projected trends. Throughout, Helfman provides examples, explores case studies, and synthesizes available information from a broad taxonomic, habitat, and geographic range.

Fish Conservation summarizes the current state of knowledge about the degradation and restoration of diversity among fishes and the productivity of fishery resources, pointing out areas where progress has been made and where more needs to be done. Solutions focus on the application of ecological knowledge to solving practical problems, recognizing that effective biodiversity conservation depends on meeting human needs through management that focuses on long term sustainability and an ecosystem perspective.
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Gates of Understanding
Shaarei Bina - Vol. II: Appreciating the Days of Awe
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1977
A religious commentary to help High Holy Days worshipers unlock the message behind the liturgy. Covers the history and tradition of the prayers, music in the service, synagogue poetry, the role of God, sin and repentance and much more. Also includes comprehensive notes to Gates of Repentance and a thorough index.
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The Great Paleolithic War
How Science Forged an Understanding of America's Ice Age Past
David J. Meltzer
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Following the discovery in Europe in the late 1850s that humanity had roots predating known history and reaching deep into the Pleistocene era, scientists wondered whether North American prehistory might be just as ancient. And why not? The geological strata seemed exactly analogous between America and Europe, which would lead one to believe that North American humanity ought to be as old as the European variety. This idea set off an eager race for evidence of the people who might have occupied North America during the Ice Age—a long, and, as it turned out, bitter and controversial search.
           
In The Great Paleolithic War, David J. Meltzer tells the story of a scientific quest that set off one of the longest-running feuds in the history of American anthropology, one so vicious at times that anthropologists were deliberately frightened away from investigating potential sites. Through his book, we come to understand how and why this controversy developed and stubbornly persisted for as long as it did; and how, in the process, it revolutionized American archaeology.
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Heritage Dynamics
Understanding and Adapting to Change in Diverse Heritage Contexts
Kalliopi Fouseki
University College London, 2022
A systemic reconsideration of the formation and preservation of heritage.

As a sociocultural concept, heritage flows through cycles of emergence, change, disappearance, and revival. These lifecycles are influenced by heritage environments such as museums, landscapes, cities, and intangible networks of cultural circulation. In Heritage Dynamics, Kalliopi Fouseki develops a new theoretical and methodological framework that will enable heritage scholars and practitioners to unpack the ways and conditions under which heritage changes. Under the contexts of urban cities, residential buildings, museum collections, and subjects of intangible heritage especially concerning flamenco, this work re-orients the consideration of heritage as an object, process, or discourse, towards a more systemic thinking that captures the complexity of this historical-cultural force.
 
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In Sheep's Clothing
Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
George K. Simon, Ph.D.
Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2010

Dr. George Simon knows how people push your buttons.  Your children--especially teens--are expert at it, as is your mate.  A co-worker may quietly undermine your efforts while professing to be helpful, or your boss may prey on your weaknesses.  Manipulative people have two goals: to win and to look good doing it.  Often those they abuse are only vaguely aware of what is happening to them.  In this eye-opening book, you'll also discover...

* 4 reasons why victims have a hard time leaving abusive relationships

* Power tactics manipulators use to push their own agendas and justify their behavior

*Ways to redefine the rules of engagement between you and an abuser

* How to spot potential weaknesses in your character that can set you up for manipulation.

* 12 tools for personal empowerment to help you maintain greater strength in all relationships

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James Watt, Chemist
Understanding the Origins of the Steam Age
David Phillip Miller
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
In the Victorian era, James Watt became an iconic engineer, but in his own time he was also an influential chemist. Miller examines Watt’s illustrious engineering career in light of his parallel interest in chemistry, arguing that Watt’s conception of steam engineering relied upon chemical understandings.

Part I of the book—"Representations"—examines the way James Watt has been portrayed over time, emphasizing sculptural, pictorial and textual representations from the nineteenth century. As an important contributor to the development of arguably the most important technology of industrialization, Watt became a symbol that many groups of thinkers were anxious to claim. Part II—"Realities"—focuses on reconstructing the unsung "chemical Watt" instead of the lionized engineer.
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Listening Deeply
An Approach to Understanding and Consulting in Organizational Culture, Second Edition
Howard F. Stein
University of Missouri Press, 2017
Listening deeply is the foundation of all effective organizational management, research, and consulting. This book explores the many aspects of attentive listening through storytelling and includes examples of organizational case studies. In Stein’s practice, listening deeply is an attitude evoked by the psychoanalytic concept of hovering attention—a careful attending to the person or group one is trying to help and an equally careful attending to how one is hearing these others. The listener’s own feelings are as crucially diagnostic as what the consultant observes in other people.

This new edition of Listening Deeply updates historical context, theory, method, and organizational stories. A psychodynamic orientation informs much of the book and the language Stein uses is direct. His lessons are useful to the manager in any kind of organization, as well as practitioners of psychology, sociology, business management, medicine, and education.
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The Living Ocean
Understanding and Protecting Marine Biodiversity
Boyce Thorne-Miller; Foreword by Sylvia Earle
Island Press, 1999
The first edition of The Living Ocean, published in 1991 by Island Press in association with Friends of the Earth, was widely praised by scientists, policymakers, instructors, and general readers as a useful and accessible introduction to the science and policy of biological diversity in marine environments. Since that time, much new research has been conducted and numerous national and international policy initiatives have been undertaken.With 1998 designated by the United Nations as the International Year of the Ocean, this new, revised and expanded, edition is a welcome and much-needed addition to the literature.This edition brings the volume up-to-date, and re-establishes it as an essential primer for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of marine biodiversity and how it can be protected. It provides an overview of basic concepts and principles and a review of relevant policy issues and existing instruments. The author:defines biological diversity and discusses the importance of threats to marine biodiversity reviews the current status of scientific knowledge describes the major coastal and oceanic ecosystem types and addresses the major threats in each presents a general discussion of the ways in which government and the public can protect marine biological diversity provides specific examples of national and international policies, legal instruments, programs, and institutions addresses how social, economic, political, and ethical considerations affect decisions to conserve marine biological diversity considers the involvement of citizens in developing ocean policy The book also includes a useful glossary that provides information about basic biological concepts, and a comprehensive bibliography. Throughout, the author emphasizes the relationship of human societies and governments to the living ocean, and the need to implement programs that will protect ecosystems and species.
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The Madrid Codex
New Approaches to Understanding an Ancient Maya Manuscript
Gabrielle Vail
University Press of Colorado, 2004
This volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D. Some scholars have recently argued that the Madrid Codex originated in the Petén region of Guatemala and postdates European contact. The contributors to this volume challenge that view by demonstrating convincingly that it originated in northern Yucatán and was painted in the Pre-Columbian era. In addition, several contributors reveal provocative connections among the Madrid and Borgia group of codices from Central Mexico.

Contributors include: Harvey M. Bricker, Victoria R. Bricker, John F. Chuchiak IV, Christine L. Hernández, Bryan R. Just, Merideth Paxton, and John Pohl. Additional support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.

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Moralizing Technology
Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things
Peter-Paul Verbeek
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Technology permeates nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Cars enable us to travel long distances, mobile phones help us to communicate, and medical devices make it possible to detect and cure diseases. But these aids to existence are not simply neutral instruments: they give shape to what we do and how we experience the world. And because technology plays such an active role in shaping our daily actions and decisions, it is crucial, Peter-Paul Verbeek argues, that we consider the moral dimension of technology.
 
Moralizing Technology offers exactly that: an in-depth study of the ethical dilemmas and moral issues surrounding the interaction of humans and technology. Drawing from Heidegger and Foucault, as well as from philosophers of technology such as Don Ihde and Bruno Latour, Peter-Paul Verbeek locates morality not just in the human users of technology but in the interaction between us and our machines. Verbeek cites concrete examples, including some from his own life, and compellingly argues for the morality of things. Rich and multifaceted, and sure to be controversial, Moralizing Technology will force us all to consider the virtue of new inventions and to rethink the rightness of the products we use every day.
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More Guns, Less Crime
Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Second Edition
John R. Lott, Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Does allowing people to own or carry guns deter violent crime? Or does it simply cause more citizens to harm each other? Directly challenging common perceptions about gun control, legal scholar John Lott presents the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever done on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws. This timely and provocative work comes to the startling conclusion: more guns mean less crime. In this paperback edition, Lott has expanded the research through 1996, incorporating new data available from states that passed right-to-carry and other gun laws since the book's publication as well as new city-level statistics.

"Lott's pro-gun argument has to be examined on the merits, and its chief merit is lots of data. . . . If you still disagree with Lott, at least you will know what will be required to rebut a case that looks pretty near bulletproof."—Peter Coy, Business Week

"By providing strong empirical evidence that yet another liberal policy is a cause of the very evil it purports to cure, he has permanently changed the terms of debate on gun control. . . . Lott's book could hardly be more timely. . . . A model of the meticulous application of economics and statistics to law and policy."—John O. McGinnis, National Review

"His empirical analysis sets a standard that will be difficult to match. . . . This has got to be the most extensive empirical study of crime deterrence that has been done to date."—Public Choice

"For anyone with an open mind on either side of this subject this book will provide a thorough grounding. It is also likely to be the standard reference on the subject for years to come."—Stan Liebowitz, Dallas Morning News

"A compelling book with enough hard evidence that even politicians may have to stop and pay attention. More Guns, Less Crime is an exhaustive analysis of the effect of gun possession on crime rates."—James Bovard, Wall Street Journal

"John Lott documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go to denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful, scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue."—Milton Friedman
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More Guns, Less Crime
Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, Third Edition
John R. Lott, Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2010

On its initial publication in 1998, John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime drew both lavish praise and heated criticism. More than a decade later, it continues to play a key role in ongoing arguments over gun-control laws: despite all the attacks by gun-control advocates, no one has ever been able to refute Lott’s simple, startling conclusion that more guns mean less crime. Relying on the most rigorously comprehensive data analysis ever conducted on crime statistics and right-to-carry laws, the book directly challenges common perceptions about the relationship of guns, crime, and violence. For this third edition, Lott draws on an additional ten years of data—including provocative analysis of the effects of gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C—that brings the book fully up to date and further bolsters its central contention.

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Predator Effect
Understanding the Past, Present and Future of Deceptive Academic Journals
Simon Linacre
Against the Grain, LLC, 2022

The Predator Effect concerns predatory publishing — it is the first to chart both the rise and impact of deceptive publishing. The author — a scientific communications expert with 20 years’ experience — looks at how predatory journals had become an accepted part of scholarly publishing, reviewing in turn the history, development and impact of predatory journals. The book also puts their rise in context of wider issues such as Open Access and publication ethics. Other issues it addresses include: defining predatory journals, the history of predatory publishing practices, Beall’s List, authors’ motivations and the future of predatory publishing practices. 

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Recycling Land
Understanding the Legal Landscape of Brownfield Development
Elizabeth Glass Geltman
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Older--and often economically depressed--industrial cities generally have a number of well located but abandoned industrial sites. Too frequently these sites are heavily polluted by the residue of toxic wastes dumped when old factories were still in use. These "brownfield" sites must be cleaned up under existing law before they can be redeveloped. And yet the question of who will bear the cost of this cleanup frequently stymies efforts to return these sites to productive use. A complicated net of federal, state and local regulations can involve several generations of owners in potential liability for the cleanup, frequently resulting only in extended litigation, not often in the cleanup of the site. In this book, Elizabeth Glass Geltman surveys the laws on both the federal and state level with regard to the cleanup of brownfield sites. The author makes valuable suggestions for reforming these laws that will help encourage land reuse and the accompanying redevelopment of the industrial base of many American cities both large and small.
Elizabeth Glass Geltman is Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School and is the author of many books on environmental law, including Modern Environmental Law: Policy and Practice.
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Russia's Hostile Measures
Understanding the Threat
Cohen
RAND Corporation, 2019
This report examines current Russian hostile measures in Europe and forecasts how Russia might threaten Europe using these measures over the next few years. This report observes that Russia has the most strategic interest in influencing western Europe, but it has the most leverage over countries of eastern Europe, and offers a range of recommendations for the U.S. government and for the U.S. Army on countering hostile measures.
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Siblings
Love, Envy, and Understanding
Judy Dunn and Carol Kendrick
Harvard University Press, 1982

The birth of a younger sibling can be a traumatic event for the older child. Unquestionably it places increased demands on parents and causes important changes in the inner balance of the family. Childrearing manuals are full of advice about how to get through this difficult time. But until now such advice has been based more on clinical guesswork than on direct observation of what really happens to families when a sibling is born.

With the arrival of Siblings, this gap in our knowledge is admirably filled. Judy Dunn and Carol Kendrick studied forty families for a period of approximately one year starting shortly before the birth of a second child. Some families, they found, weather the storm much better than others, and their book examines the full catalog of factors that can make the difference. There are, for instance, parenting styles that ease the impact on the older child, improve relations between siblings, and generally make life easier for the entire family. But there are also differences among children in such characteristics as sex, age, and temperament, all of which have a major influence totally beyond parental control.

Despite the undeniable stress involved, Dunn and Kendrick demonstrate that the advent of a sibling can be a stimulus for real cognitive and emotional growth on the part of the older child. No longer "the baby," the child must try to deal with a newcomer whose attempts to communicate are necessarily rudimentary. Siblings shows how the elder child's efforts to understand the baby can form the basis for a loving bond of extraordinary durability.

A sensitive and informative book, Siblings takes psychology into an area of family life and child development that has long received too little attention.

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Sign Language Archaeology
Understanding the Historical Roots of American Sign Language
Ted Supalla
Gallaudet University Press, 2014
This engrossing study investigates the infancy of American Sign Language (ASL). Authors Ted Supalla and Patricia Clark highlight the major events in ASL history, revealing much of what has not been clearly understood until now. According to tradition, ASL evolved from French Sign Language. The authors analyze the metalinguistic assumptions of these early accounts and also examine in depth a key set of films made by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) between 1910 and 1920. Designed by the NAD to preserve classic ASL, the films feature 15 sign masters, the model signers of that time. In viewing these films, the authors discovered that the sign masters signed differently depending on their age. These variations provide evidence about the word formation process of early ASL, further supported by data collected from dictionaries of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

     By tracing the writings of selected individuals, this study reconstructs the historical context for early ASL grammar. It describes the language used in each century and how it changed, and focuses on the rediscovery of the literary legacy of the Deaf American voice. Sign Language Archaeology reveals the contrast between folk etymology and scientific etymology and allows readers to see ASL in terms of historical linguistics.
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Stratigraphic Paleobiology
Understanding the Distribution of Fossil Taxa in Time and Space
Mark E. Patzkowsky and Steven M. Holland
University of Chicago Press, 2012
Whether the fossil record should be read at face value or whether it presents a distorted view of the history of life is an argument seemingly as old as many fossils themselves. In the late 1700s, Georges Cuvier argued for a literal interpretation, but in the early 1800s, Charles Lyell’s gradualist view of the earth’s history required a more nuanced interpretation of that same record. To this day, the tension between literal and interpretive readings lies at the heart of paleontological research, influencing the way scientists view extinction patterns and their causes, ecosystem persistence and turnover, and the pattern of morphologic change and mode of speciation.
 
With Stratigraphic Paleobiology, Mark E. Patzkowsky and Steven M. Holland present a critical framework for assessing the fossil record, one based on a modern understanding of the principles of sediment accumulation. Patzkowsky and Holland argue that the distribution of fossil taxa in time and space is controlled not only by processes of ecology, evolution, and environmental change, but also by the stratigraphic processes that govern where and when sediment that might contain fossils is deposited and preserved. The authors explore the exciting possibilities of stratigraphic paleobiology, and along the way demonstrate its great potential to answer some of the most critical questions about the history of life: How and why do environmental niches change over time? What is the tempo and mode of evolutionary change and what processes drive this change? How has the diversity of life changed through time, and what processes control this change? And, finally, what is the tempo and mode of change in ecosystems over time?
 
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Success and Understanding
Jean Piaget
Harvard University Press, 1978

Jean Piaget has spent a major part of his life work showing how thought is fundamentally derived from action. In Success and Understanding, this master psychologist inverts the question for the first time and considers how action is controlled by thought.

In a series of ingenious experiments, children are presented with physical puzzles just difficult enough to challenge their emerging skills. Under these conditions, Piaget reveals how the child comes to use his developing conceptual system to design strategies that result in successful actions. According to Piaget, it takes time for thought and action to enter into their familiar partnership. The young child has trouble using his ideas to guide his actions and must pass through several interesting stages before he can routinely coordinate idea and act.

Success and Understanding completes the Piagetian scheme for relating thought to action that was so brilliantly initiated in The Grasp of Consciousness (Harvard, 1976). Together, the two books form a major episode in the history of Piaget's remarkable career.

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Traditional Arid Lands Agriculture
Understanding the Past for the Future
Edited by Scott E. Ingram and Robert C. Hunt
University of Arizona Press, 2015
Traditional Arid Lands Agriculture is the first of its kind. Each chapter considers four questions: what we don’t know about specific aspects of traditional agriculture, why we need to know more, how we can know more, and what research questions can be pursued to know more. What is known is presented to provide context for what is unknown.

Traditional agriculture, nonindustrial plant cultivation for human use, is practiced worldwide by millions of smallholder farmers in arid lands. Advancing an understanding of traditional agriculture can improve its practice and contribute to understanding the past. Traditional agriculture has been practiced in the U.S. Southwest and northwest Mexico for at least four thousand years and intensely studied for at least one hundred years. What is not known or well-understood about traditional arid lands agriculture in this region has broad application for research, policy, and agricultural practices in arid lands worldwide.

The authors represent the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, art, botany, geomorphology, paleoclimatology, and pedology. This multidisciplinary book will engage students, practitioners, scholars, and any interested in understanding and advancing traditional agriculture. 
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The Transport of Reading
Text and Understanding in the World of Tao Qian (365–427)
Robert Ashmore
Harvard University Press, 2010

For centuries, readers of Tao Qian have felt directly addressed by his poetic voice. This theme in the reception of Tao Qian, moreover, developed alongside an assumption that Tao was fundamentally misunderstood during his own age.

This book revisits Tao’s approach to his readers by attempting to situate it within the particular poetics of address that characterized the Six Dynasties classicist tradition. How would Tao Qian have anticipated that his readers would understand him? No definitive answer is knowable, but this direction of inquiry suggests closer examination of the cultures of reading and understanding of his period. From this inquiry, two interrelated groups of problems emerge as particularly pressing both for Tao Qian and for his contemporaries: first, problems relating to understanding authoritative texts, centered on the relation between meanings and the outward “traces” of those meanings’ expression; second, problems relating to understanding human character, centered on the unworldly scholar—the emblematic figure for the set of values often termed “eremitic.”

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A Treasure to be Shared
Understanding Anglicanorum coetibus
Walter Oxley
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
A Treasure to Be Shared is intended to promote a more widespread knowledge of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. The Apostolic Constitution provided for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution, an academic symposium in the year 2019 sponsored by the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, provided historical, liturgical, canonical and ecumenical perspectives on the fruits of the Apostolic Constitution for the wider Church. The hope is that the reader will see the Personal Ordinariates of The Chair of Saint Peter in the United States and Canada, Our Lady of Walsingham in Great Britain and Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia as a gift to the Church, and a treasure to be shared by all.
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Understanding and Teaching American Slavery
Edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, Foreword by Ira Berlin
University of Wisconsin Press, 2016
Perhaps no topic in U.S. history is as emotionally fraught as the nation’s centuries-long entanglement with slavery. How can teachers get students to understand the racist underpinnings of that institution—and to acknowledge its legacies in contemporary America? How can they overcome students’ shame, anger, guilt, or denial? How can they incorporate into the classroom important primary sources that may contain obsolete and racist terms, images, and ideas? This book, designed for college and high school teachers, is a critical resource for understanding and teaching this challenging topic in all its complexity.
            Opening with Ira Berlin’s reflections on ten elements that are essential to include in any course on this topic, Understanding and Teaching American Slavery offers practical advice for teaching specific content, utilizing sources, and getting students to think critically. Contributors address, among other topics, slavery and the nation’s founders, the diverse experiences of the enslaved, slavery’s role in the Civil War, and the relationship between slavery and the northern economy. Other chapters offer ideas for teaching through slave narratives, runaway ads, spirituals, films, and material culture. Taken together, the essays in the volume help instructors tackle problems, discover opportunities, and guide students in grappling with the ugliest truths of America’s past.
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Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History since Reagan
Kimber M. Quinney Amy L. Sayward
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History since Reagan is designed for teachers looking for new perspectives on teaching the recent past, the period of US history often given the least attention in classrooms. Less of a traditional textbook than a pedagogical Swiss Army knife, the volume offers a diversity of voices and approaches to teaching a field that, by its very nature, invites vigorous debate and puts generational differences in stark relief. Older history is likely to feel removed from the lived experiences of both teachers and students, allowing for a certain dispassion of perspective. By contrast, contemporary history creates unique challenges, as individual teachers and students may think they know “what really happened” by virtue of their personal experiences.

The volume addresses a wide swath of topics, from social movements around identity and representation to the Supreme Court, law enforcement, migration, climate change, and international relations. Emphasizing critical thinking and primary-source analysis, it will aid teachers in creating an invigorating and democratizing classroom experience. Intended for use in both secondary and postsecondary classrooms, the book’s structure allows for a variety of applications and invites a broad audience.
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Understanding and Teaching Native American History
Edited by Kristofer Ray and Brady DeSanti
University of Wisconsin Press, 2023
Understanding and Teaching Native American History is a timely and urgently needed remedy to a long-standing gap in history instruction. While the past three decades have seen burgeoning scholarship in Indigenous studies, comparatively little of that has trickled into classrooms. This volume is designed to help teachers effectively integrate Indigenous history and culture into their lessons, providing richly researched content and resources across the chronological and geographical landscape of what is now known as North America.
 
Despite the availability of new scholarship, many teachers struggle with contextualizing Indigenous history and experience. Native peoples frequently find themselves relegated to historical descriptions, merely a foil to the European settlers who are the protagonists in the dominant North American narrative. This book offers a way forward, an alternative framing of the story that highlights the ongoing integral role of Native peoples via broad coverage in a variety of topics including the historical, political, and cultural.
 
With its scope and clarity of vision, suggestions for navigating sensitive topics, and a multitude of innovative approaches authored by contributors from multidisciplinary backgrounds, Understanding and Teaching Native American History will also find use in methods and other graduate courses. Nearly a decade in the conception and making, this is a groundbreaking source for both beginning and veteran instructors.
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Understanding and Teaching Religion in US History
Edited by Karen J. Johnson and Jonathan M. Yeager
University of Wisconsin Press, 2024
Religion is deeply embedded in American history, and one cannot understand American history’s broad dynamics without accounting for it. Without detailing the history of religions, teachers cannot properly explain key themes in US survey courses, such as politics, social dynamics, immigration and colonization, gender, race, or class. From early Native American beliefs and practices, to European explorations of the New World, to the most recent presidential elections, religion has been a significant feature of the American story. In Understanding and Teaching Religion in US History, a diverse group of eminent historians and history teachers provide a practical tool for teachers looking to improve history instruction at the upper-level secondary and undergraduate level. 

This book offers a breadth of voices and approaches to teaching this crucial part of US history. Religion can be a delicate topic, especially in public education, and many students and teachers bring strongly held views and identities to their understanding of the past. The editors and contributors aim to help the reader see religion in fresh ways, to present sources and perspectives that may be unfamiliar, and to suggest practical interventions in the classroom that teachers can use immediately.
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Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions
Edited by Ben Marsh and Mike Rapport
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
To learn about the "Age of Revolutions" in Europe and the Americas is to engage with the emergence of the modern world. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nations were founded, old empires collapsed, and new ones arose. Struggles for emancipation—whether from royal authority, colonial rule, slavery, or patriarchy—inspired both hopes and fears. This book, designed for university and secondary school teachers, provides up-to-date content and perspectives, classroom-tested techniques, innovative ideas, and an exciting variety of pathways to introduce students to this complex era of history.

The volume includes chapters on sources and methods for stimulating student debate and learning, including Tom Paine's Common Sense, the Haitian Declaration of Independence, and other key documents; role-playing games; visual arts and culture; and music, including opera and popular songs. Other chapters delve into specific themes, including revolution and riot, revolutionary terror, enlightenment, gender, slavery, nationalism, environment and climate, and the roles of politically excluded groups. Collectively, the contributions ensure a broad Atlantic scope, discussing the revolutions in Britain's North American colonies, Haiti, and Latin America, and European revolutions including France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
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Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
Hasan Kwame Jeffries
University of Wisconsin Press, 2019
The civil rights movement transformed the United States in such fundamental ways that exploring it in the classroom can pose real challenges for instructors and students alike. Speaking to the critical pedagogical need to teach civil rights history accurately and effectively, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on iconic leaders of the 1950s and 1960s to examine the broadly configured origins, evolution, and outcomes of African Americans' struggle for freedom. Essays provide strategies for teaching famous and forgotten civil rights people and places, suggestions for using music and movies, frameworks for teaching self-defense and activism outside the South, a curriculum guide for examining the Black Panther Party, and more.
Books in the popular Harvey Goldberg Series provide high school and introductory college-level instructors with ample resources and strategies for better engaging students in critical, thought-provoking topics. By allowing for the implementation of a more nuanced curriculum, this is history instruction at its best. Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement will transform how the United States civil rights movement is taught.
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Understanding and Teaching the Cold War
Edited by Matthew Masur
University of Wisconsin Press, 2016
For nearly a half century, from 1945 to 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union maneuvered to achieve global hegemony. Each forged political alliances, doled out foreign aid, mounted cultural campaigns, and launched covert operations. The Cold War also deeply affected the domestic politics, cultures, and economic policies of the two superpowers, their client states, and other nations throughout the world.
            Teaching the Cold War is both necessary and challenging. Understanding and Teaching the Cold War is designed to help collegiate and high school teachers navigate the complexity of the topic, integrate up-to-date research and concepts into their classes, and use strategies and tools that make this important history meaningful to students.
            The volume opens with Matthew Masur’s overview of models for approaching the subject, whether in survey courses or seminars. Two prominent historians, Carole Fink and Warren Cohen, offer accounts of their experience as longtime scholars and teachers of the Cold War from European and Asian perspectives. Sixteen essays dig into themes including the origins and end of the conflict, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, propaganda, fear, popular culture, and civil rights, as well as the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the nonaligned nations. A final section provides practical advice for using relevant, accessible primary sources to implement the teaching ideas suggested in this book.
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Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust
Edited by Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope. Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust provides a starting point for teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials—from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews—the contributors demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts.
Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.
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Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East
Edited by Omnia El Shakry
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Many students learn about the Middle East through a sprinkling of information and generalizations deriving largely from media treatments of current events. This scattershot approach can propagate bias and misconceptions that inhibit students’ abilities to examine this vitally important part of the world. Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East moves away from the Orientalist frameworks that have dominated the West’s understanding of the region, offering a range of fresh interpretations and approaches for teachers. The volume brings together experts on the rich intellectual, cultural, social, and political history of the Middle East, providing necessary historical context to familiarize teachers with the latest scholarship. Each chapter includes easy- to-explore sources to supplement any curriculum, focusing on valuable and controversial themes that may prove pedagogically challenging, including colonization and decolonization, the 1979 Iranian revolution, and the US-led “war on terror.” By presenting multiple viewpoints, the book will function as a springboard for instructors hoping to encourage students to negotiate the various contradictions in historical study.
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Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War
Edited by John Day Tully, Matthew Masur, and Brad Austin
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Just as the Vietnam War presented the United States with a series of challenges, it presents a unique challenge to teachers at all levels. The war had a deep and lasting impact on American culture, politics, and foreign policy. Still fraught with controversy, this crucial chapter of the American experience is as rich in teachable moments as it is riddled with potential pitfalls—especially for students a generation or more removed from the events themselves.
            Addressing this challenge, Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War offers a wealth of resources for teachers at the secondary and university levels. An introductory section features essays by eminent Vietnam War scholars George Herring and Marilyn Young, who reflect on teaching developments since their first pioneering classes on the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. A methods section includes essays that address specific methods and materials and discuss the use of music and film, the White House tapes, oral histories, the Internet, and other multimedia to infuse fresh and innovative dimensions to teaching the war. A topical section offers essays that highlight creative and effective ways to teach important topics, drawing on recently available primary sources and exploring the war's most critical aspects—the Cold War, decolonization, Vietnamese perspectives, the French in Vietnam, the role of the Hmong, and the Tet Offensive. Every essay in the volume offers classroom-tested pedagogical strategies and detailed practical advice.
            Taken as a whole, Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War will help teachers at all levels navigate through cultural touchstones, myths, political debates, and the myriad trouble spots enmeshed within the national memory of one of the most significant moments in American history.

Honorable Mention, Franklin Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials, Association for Asian Studies and the Committee for Teaching about Asia
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Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History
Edited by Leila J. Rupp and Susan K. Freeman
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
Taking into account recent historic changes, this second edition updates the essays on the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, the Right, and trans history. Authors of several other essays have taken the opportunity to add new material and references where warranted.
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Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice
Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and Chronicling
Adler, Nanci
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Since the 1980s, an array of legal and non-legal practices—labeled Transitional Justice—has been developed to support post-repressive, post-authoritarian, and post-conflict societies in dealing with their traumatic past. In Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice, the contributors analyze the processes, products, and efficacy of a number of transitional justice mechanisms and look at how genocide, mass political violence, and historical injustices are being institutionally addressed. They invite readers to speculate on what (else) the transcripts produced by these institutions tell us about the past and the present, calling attention to the influence of implicit history conveyed in the narratives that have gained an audience through international criminal tribunals, trials, and truth commissions. Nanci Adler has gathered leading specialists to scrutinize the responses to and effects of violent pasts that provide new perspectives for understanding and applying transitional justice mechanisms in an effort to stop the recycling of old repressions into new ones.  
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Understanding the Arizona Constitution
Toni McClory
University of Arizona Press, 2010
Arizona became the nation’s 48th state in 1912 and since that time the Arizona constitution has served as the template by which the state is governed. Toni McClory’s Understanding the Arizona Constitution has offered insight into the inner workings and interpretations of the document—and the government that it established—for almost a decade.

Since the book’s first publication, significant constitutional changes have occurred, some even altering the very structure of state government itself. There have been dramatic veto battles, protracted budget wars, and other interbranch conflicts that have generated landmark constitutional rulings from the state courts. The new edition of this handy reference addresses many of the latest issues, including legislative term limits, Arizona’s new redistricting system, educational issues, like the controversial school voucher program, and the influence of special-interest money in the legislature. A total of 63 propositions have reached the ballot, spawning heated controversies over same-sex marriage, immigration, and other hot-button social issues.

This book is the definitive guide to Arizona government and serves as a solid introductory text for classes on the Arizona Constitution. Extensive endnotes make it a useful reference for professionals within the government. Finally, it serves as a tool for any engaged citizen looking for information about online government resources, administrative rules, and voter rights. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book belongs on every Arizonan’s bookshelf.
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Understanding the Arizona Constitution
Toni McClory
University of Arizona Press, 2001

An authoritative guide to Arizona government— written in plain language!
How do laws make their way through the state legislature?
What are the specific powers of the governor?
How do the courts make public policy?
Can citizens change the constitution?
A leading lawyer and college educator who was an assistant attorney general through six governors, Toni McClory has written a definitive guide to Arizona government that is as comprehensive as it is easy to understand. It provides a thorough explanation of the state's constitution and shows the impact that its unique features have had on the everyday operation of the state's political system. Thoroughly up to date and clearly written, this book belongs on every Arizonan's shelf. Much of the information it contains is based on original research compiled by the author from primary sources and draws on her direct experience with government processes, officials, and events. - For concerned citizens, it offers topics of special interest to voters—including facts about initiatives and referenda and a chapter on local government—and contains references to online government resources.
- For lawyers and business people, it makes available a brief yet sophisticated synopsis of state government along with a wealth of citations and supporting detail.
- For students and teachers, it offers an exceptionally readable introductory text that relies heavily on primary sources and features "pro and con" passages-examining both sides of important issues-that are designed to stimulate critical thinking. From administrative rules to water law, Understanding the Arizona Constitution is your complete guide to the inner workings of the state. It is an essential reference for today's citizens and tomorrow's leaders.
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Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States
Cherbo, Joni Maya
Rutgers University Press, 2008
The arts and creative sector is one of the nation's broadest, most important, and least understood social and economic assets, encompassing both nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, for-profit creative companies, such as advertising agencies, film producers, and commercial publishers, and community-based artistic activities. The thirteen essays in this timely book demonstrate why interest in the arts and creative sector has accelerated in recent years, and the myriad ways that the arts are crucial to the social and national agenda and the critical issues and policies that relate to their practice. Leading experts in the field show, for example, how arts and cultural policies are used to enhance urban revitalization, to encourage civic engagement, to foster new forms of historic preservation, to define national identity, to advance economic development, and to regulate international trade in cultural goods and services.

Illuminating key issues and reflecting the rapid growth of the field of arts and cultural policy, this book will be of interest to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to arts educators and management professionals, government agency and foundation officials, and researchers and academics in the cultural policy field.
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Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion
Modernist Visions and the Invisible Indian
By Nicholas P. Higgins
University of Texas Press, 2004

To many observers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico appeared to be a modern nation-state at last assuming an international role through its participation in NAFTA and the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development). Then came the Zapatista revolt on New Year's Day 1994. Wearing ski masks and demanding not power but a new understanding of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Subcomandante Marcos and his followers launched what may be the first "post" or "counter" modern revolution, one that challenges the very concept of the modern nation-state and its vision of a fully assimilated citizenry.

This book offers a new way of understanding the Zapatista conflict as a counteraction to the forces of modernity and globalization that have rendered indigenous peoples virtually invisible throughout the world. Placing the conflict within a broad sociopolitical and historical context, Nicholas Higgins traces the relations between Maya Indians and the Mexican state from the conquest to the present—which reveals a centuries-long contest over the Maya people's identity and place within Mexico. His incisive analysis of this contest clearly explains how the notions of "modernity" and even of "the state" require the assimilation of indigenous peoples. With this understanding, Higgins argues, the Zapatista uprising becomes neither surprising nor unpredictable, but rather the inevitable outcome of a modernizing program that suppressed the identity and aspirations of the Maya peoples.

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Understanding the Courses We Teach
Local Perspectives on English Language Teaching
John Murphy and Patricia Byrd, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2001
Understanding the Courses We Teach is a collection of pieces by teachers about actual teaching situations. This volume provides current and prospective ESL teachers with the opportunity to examine experienced teachers' ways of addressing locally situated issues of teaching and learning within ESL and EFL classrooms. By focusing on individual teachers' discussions of instructional plans, decisions, and experiences in specific courses, this collection complements other training and development resources, such as methods-course textbooks.
Individual chapters are rich in descriptive details and resonate with the contributor-teachers' personal investment in teaching. John Murphy and Patricia Byrd have arranged these chapters in four thematic clusters, the first dealing with general purposes instruction, including workplace literacy, community-based ESL, and courses designed for rich recent immigrants; the second with the teaching of English as a foreign language; the third with university credit-bearing courses focused on the teaching of English for academic purposes; and the fourth with noncredit university-affiliated courses offered through intensive English programs.
The contributors represent a variety of educational settings and many different countries and include many of the most well-known researchers in the field.
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Understanding the Current International Order
[Building a Sustainable International Order series]
Michael J. Mazarr
RAND Corporation, 2016
In the first report of a series on the emerging international order, RAND researchers examine the liberal order in effect since World War II, including the mechanisms by which the order affects state behavior, the engines that drive states to participate, and the U.S. approach to the order since 1945.
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Understanding the Diaconate
Historical, Theological, and Sociological Foundations
W. Shawn McKnight
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
What is a deacon? More than fifty years since the restoration of the permanent diaconate by the Second Vatican Council, the office of deacon is still in need of greater specificity about its purpose and place within the mission and organizational structure of the Church. While the Church is more than a social reality, the Church nonetheless has a social reality. Our understanding of the diaconate therefore benefits from a theological discussion of the divine element of the Church and a sociological examination of the human element. Understanding the Diaconate adds the resources of sociology and anthropology to the theological sources of scripture, liturgy, patristic era texts, theologians, and magisterial teachings to conclude that the deacon can be understood as “social intermediary and symbol of communitas” who serves the participation of the laity in the life and mission of the Church. This research proposes the deacon as a servant of the bond of communion within the Church (facilitating the relationship between the bishop/priest and his people), and between the People of God and the individual in need. Thus authentic diaconal ministry includes a vast array of many concrete contexts of pastoral importance where one does more than simply serve at Mass.
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Understanding the Infinite
Shaughan Lavine
Harvard University Press, 1998
How can the infinite, a subject so remote from our finite experience, be an everyday tool for the working mathematician? Blending history, philosophy, mathematics, and logic, Shaughan Lavine answers this question with exceptional clarity. Making use of the mathematical work of Jan Mycielski, he demonstrates that knowledge of the infinite is possible, even according to strict standards that require some intuitive basis for knowledge.
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Understanding the Language of Science
By Steven Darian
University of Texas Press, 2003

2004 — A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

From astronomy to zoology, the practice of science proceeds from scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to classroom teachers and professional scientists.

In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor. He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine patterns—defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing, quantifying, and comparing—and shows how they interact in practice. He also traces how these thought modes developed historically from Pythagoras through Newton.

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Understanding the Little Rock Crisis
An Exercise in Remembrance and Reconciliation
Elizabeth Jacoway
University of Arkansas Press, 1999
In the fall of 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit nine black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School. In the fall of 1997, the "Little Rock Nine" returned to Central High, this time escorted by President Bill Clinton. In the forty years that had intervened, the United States witnessed substantial changes in American race relations, but the city of Little Rock had not overcome its legacy of strife. The two-year crisis, once over, left behind confusion and misunderstanding. Racial and class-based mistrust lingers in the city of Little Rock, and, nationally and internationally, perceptions of Arkansas are still tied to the decades-old images of hatred and strife that marked the Little Rock crisis. In 1997, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock sponsored a gathering of scholars who traced the origins and addressed the legacy of the Central High crisis. Elizabeth Jacoway and C. Fred Williams commissioned a series of original and insightful papers that discussed economic, constitutional, historical, and personal aspects of the crisis and of segregation. Jacoway and Williams have collected the best of these papers, by such authors as Sheldon Hackney, Joel Williamson, and James Cobb and offer them here in the hope of enhancing understanding of, and creating a dialogue about, this defining moment in American history. This collection of accessible and provocative essays on a signal event in civil rights in this nation will resonate broadly and appeal to a diverse audience.
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Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent
Augustine, Anselm, Boethius and Dante
Robert McMahon
Catholic University of America Press, 2006
Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meanings in these works. Clearly written in nontechnical language, its account of their literary structures and of the hidden meanings they generate will inform nonspecialist and specialist alike.
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Understanding the National Debt
What Every American Needs to Know
Carl Lane
Westholme Publishing
The staggering United States debt has a direct impact on every American, yet few are aware of where the debt came from and how it affects their lives
The United States has a debt problem—we owe more than $18 trillion while our gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in America, is only $17.5 trillion. To pay down the debt, some recommend austerity, cutting federal expenditures. Others suggest increasing taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans. In Understanding the National Debt: What Every American Needs to Know, economic historian Carl Lane urges that the national debt must be addressed in ways beyond program cuts or tax increase alternatives, but change can only occur when more Americans understand what constitutes our debt and the problems it causes. The gross national debt is composed of two elements: the public debt and “intragovernment holdings.” The public debt consists of bonds, bills, and notes purchased by individuals, banks, insurance companies, hedge and retirement funds, foreign governments, and university endowments. Intragovernment holdings refers to money that the U.S. Treasury borrows from other parts of the government, principally Social Security and Medicare. This accounts for approximately a quarter of the gross national debt, but that is money that we owe to ourselves, not another entity. The more the government borrows, the less is available for private sector investment, creating a “squeeze” effect that inhibits economic growth. The most burdensome problem is the interest due each year on the debt. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar less for other purposes. Those elements of the federal budget which are termed “discretionary” suffer. The mandatory elements of the budget—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the interest on the debt—must be provided for, but defense and national security, education, energy, infrastructure repair and development, and other needs wind up with less. By understanding the national debt we have an opportunity to address our real debt challenge—its principal and interest.
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Understanding the Religious Priesthood
History, Controversy, Theology
Christian, OSB Raab
Catholic University of America Press, 2020
Most contemporary theologies of Holy Orders consider priesthood mainly in its diocesan context and most contemporary theologies of religious life do not consider how ordained ministry functions when it is internal rather than external to religious life. Understanding the Religious Priesthood provides a history and theology of religious priesthood that contributes to our understanding of this vocation’s identity and mission. It uncovers what religious priesthood shares with diocesan priesthood and non-ordained religious life and what makes it different from both those other vocations. Christian Raab begins by tracing the history of religious priesthood from its origins in the early Church to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. He demonstrates that religious priests often faced questions about how to reconcile their two callings, but that they also provided answers in their theologies and spiritualities of priesthood and religious life. Meanwhile, they made key contributions to the Church’s life and mission. Raab then investigates the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on priesthood and religious life. Observing that the Council presented priesthood according to a diocesan typology and presented religious life without sacerdotal associations, he argues that the lack of imagery of religious priesthood contributed to a post-conciliar vocational identity crisis among religious priests. He then seeks to remedy this lacuna by appealing to the biblical images for religious priesthood Hans Urs von Balthasar offered in his theology of vocations. Raab argues that Balthasar’s imagery is a promising way forward for understanding the identity and mission of religious priesthood. In a final part, Raab provides a substantial theological articulation of religious priesthood which illuminates its liturgical signification, ecclesial mediation and mission, and ministerial identity. Here he draws not only from Balthasar but also from Pope John Paul II, Yves Congar, Jean-Marie Tillard, Brian Daley, and Guy Mansini to construct his profile.
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Understanding the Sick and the Healthy
A View of World, Man, and God, With a New Introduction by Hilary Putnam
Franz RosenzweigTranslated and with an Introduction by Nahum GlatzerWith a New Introduction by Hilary Putnam
Harvard University Press, 1999

Franz Rosenzweig, one of the century’s great Jewish thinkers, wrote his gem of a book in 1921 as a more accessible précis of his famous Star of Redemption. An elegant introduction to Rosenzweig’s “new thinking,” Understanding the Sick and the Healthy was written for a lay audience and takes the form of an ironic narrative about convalescence. With superb simplicity and beauty, it puts forth an important critique of the nineteenth-century German Idealist philosophical tradition and expresses a powerful vision of Jewish religion. Harvard’s Hilary Putnam provides a new introduction to this classic work for a contemporary audience.

“Today, more than three-quarters of a century after it was written, the critique of philosophy in this book is what makes it of such great interest. Critique of philosophy has been a central theme of twentieth-century philosophy, and many philosophers have attacked some of the targets that Rosenzweig attacked in his little book. Yet this early attack by a profound religious thinker is far more powerful and far more interesting than most.”—From the new Introduction by Hilary Putnam

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Understanding The Simpsons
Animating the Politics and Poetics of Participatory Culture
Moritz Fink
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Another book on The Simpsons? you might wonder. Isn’t the yellow cartoon troupe around the eponymous chaotic family somewhat worn-out? Perhaps you even ask yourself whether that nineties’ show is still on the air anyhow. Accolades such as "the best TV show of the twentieth century" or "the longest-running scripted series on American prime-time television" have elevated The Simpsons to the pop culture pantheon, while also suggesting the very vintage character of the program. But the label "The Simpsons" refers not just to a show that seems to belong to a bygone television era, it implies a rich narrative universe, including a set of iconic figures, familiar across continents and generations. Through lens of a transmedia studies, Understanding The Simpsons traces the franchise’s trajectory, from its original conception shaped by alternative media traditions to its astounding, long-lived impact as a cult phenomenon in popular culture. Examining the legacy of online fan forums and bootleg T-shirts from the show’s heyday in the early 1990s, as well as the meaning of The Simpsons in contemporary digital culture, this book demonstrates how one of the most popular comedy series of all time has redefined the intersections between the corporate media and participatory culture – and is alive indeed.
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Understanding the Somalia Conflagration
Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding
Afyare Abdi Elmi
Pluto Press, 2010

Somalia has been devastated by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion and years of civil war, and it has long been without a central government. Against this background of violence, Somali academic Afyare Abdi Elmi, attempts to explain the multiple dimensions of the conflict and find a peace-building consensus.

Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort.

This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.

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We Will Always Be Here
A Guide to Exploring and Understanding the History of LGBTQ+ Activism in Wisconsin
Jenny Kalvaitis
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2021
This inspiring and educational book presents examples of LGBTQ+ activism throughout Wisconsin’s history for young people to explore and discuss. Drawing from a rich collection of primary sources—including diary entries, love letters, zines, advertisements, oral histories, and more—the book provides a jumping-off point for readers who are interested in learning more about LGBTQ+ history and activism, as well as for readers who want to build on the work of earlier activists.

We Will Always Be Here shines a light on powerful and often untold stories from Wisconsin’s history, featuring individuals across a wide spectrum of identities and from all corners of the state. The LGBTQ+ people, allies, and activists in this guide changed the world by taking steps that young people can take today—by educating themselves, telling their own stories, being true to themselves, building communities, and getting active. The aim of this celebratory book is not only to engage young people in Wisconsin’s LGBTQ+ history, but also to empower them to make positive change in the world.
 
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When Media Are New
Understanding the Dynamics of New Media Adoption and Use
John Carey and Martin C. J. Elton
University of Michigan Press, 2010

"John Carey and Martin Elton are among the most skilled and insightful researchers studying the dynamic changes in technology and the impacts on consumer attitudes and behaviors. Their comprehensive and actionable observations make this a must read for anyone interested in understanding the current (and future) media environment."
---Alan Wurtzel, President, Research and Media Development, NBC Universal

"When Media Are New should be read by every media manager faced with disruptive change brought on by new technology. The book transcends the fashionable topics and themes that are here today and gone tomorrow and instead places emphasis on those areas of research and implementation where fatal mistakes are made. They capture something universal, and therefore highly useful, by stripping away the hype and focusing relentlessly on consumers and the ways they adopt or fail to adopt new media products and technologies into their lives."
---Martin Nisenholtz, Senior Vice President, Digital Operations, The New York Times Company

"The burgeoning development of the Internet has deflected attention from a wider history of new media innovations that has shaped its success. John Carey and Martin Elton demonstrate that earlier initiatives to launch videophones, two-way interactive cable systems, videotext and other media innovations can teach us much about the present state and future course of information and communication technologies. This is a key reference on the new media, and must reading for students of the Internet---the platform for continuing the new media revolution."
---Professor William H. Dutton, Director, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

The world of communication media has undergone massive changes since the mid-1980s. Along with the extraordinary progress in technological capability, it has experienced stunning decreases in costs; a revolutionary opening up of markets (a phenomenon exemplified by but not limited to the rise of the Internet); the advent of new business models; and a striking acceleration in the rate of change. These technological, regulatory, and economic changes have attracted the attention of a large number of researchers, from industry and academe, and given rise to a substantial body of research and data. Significantly less attention has been paid to the actual and intended users of new media. When Media Are New addresses this research and publishing gap by investigating the human side of the technological changes of the last 50 years and the implications for current and future media. It will find a broad audience ranging from media scholars to policymakers to industry professionals.

John Carey is Professor of Communications and Media Management at Fordham Business School and has extensive experience in conducting research about new media for companies such as AT&T, Cablevision, NBC Universal, and the New York Times (among many others) as well as foundations and government agencies. His extensive publications have focused on user adoption of new media and how consumers actually use new technologies.

Martin C. J. Elton was Director of the Communication Studies Group in the UK, which pioneered in the study of user behavior with new media technologies, and founded the Interactive Telecommunication Program at New York University. He has published widely on user research, forecasting, and public policy and has conducted extensive research for many prominent foundations, companies, and government agencies in the USA and Europe.

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front cover of You've Always Been There for Me
You've Always Been There for Me
Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents
Dunifon, Rachel E
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Today, approximately 1.6 million American children live in what social scientists call “grandfamilies”—households in which children are being raised by their grandparents. In You’ve Always Been There for Me, Rachel Dunifon uses data gathered from grandfamilies in New York to analyze their unique strengths and distinct needs. Though grandfamilies can benefit from the accumulated wisdom of mature adults raising children for a second time, Dunifon notes, such families also face high rates of health problems as well as parenting challenges related to a large generation gap. Grandfamilies are also largely hidden in American society, flying under the radar of social service agencies, policymakers, and family researchers. This book gives family researchers a greater understanding of a unique family form, and also offers service providers, policymakers and the general public important information about the lives of an important group of American families.  
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