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In recent years, bioaesthetics has used the latest discoveries in evolutionary studies and neuroscience to provide new ways of looking at art and aesthetics. Carsten Strathausen’s remarkable exploration of this emerging field is the first comprehensive account of its ideas, as well as a timely critique of its limitations. 

Strathausen familiarizes readers with the basics of bioaesthetics, grounding them in its philosophical underpinnings while articulating its key components. Importantly, he delves into the longstanding problem of the “two cultures” that separate the arts and the sciences. Seeking to make bioaesthetics a more robust way of thinking, Strathausen then critiques it for failing to account for science’s historical and cultural assumptions. At its worst, he says, biologism reduces artworks to mere automatons that rubber-stamp pre-established scientific truths. 

Written with a sensitive understanding of science’s strengths, and willing to refute its best arguments, Bioaesthetics helps readers separate the sensible from the specious. At a time when humanities departments are shrinking—and when STEM education is on the rise—Bioaesthetics makes vital points about the limitations of science, while lodging a robust defense of the importance of the humanities.

The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment. Outside observers found it difficult to evaluate the highly polarized official statements and proclamations issued by the two governments in conflict.

Brothers at War presents important, contextual aspects to explain the growing discord between the two formerly friendly governments. It looks at the historical relations between the two countries since the late nineteenth century, the historical border issues from local perspectives, and the complicated relations between the former liberation fronts that subsequently formed the current governments of the two countries.

Making Sense of Evolution explores contemporary evolutionary biology, focusing on the elements of theories—selection, adaptation, and species—that are complex and open to multiple possible interpretations, many of which are incompatible with one another and with other accepted practices in the discipline. Particular experimental methods, for example, may demand one understanding of “selection,” while the application of the same concept to another area of evolutionary biology could necessitate a very different definition.

Spotlighting these conceptual difficulties and presenting alternate theoretical interpretations that alleviate this incompatibility, Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan intertwine scientific and philosophical analysis to produce a coherent picture of evolutionary biology. Innovative and controversial, Making Sense of Evolution encourages further development of the Modern Synthesis and outlines what might be necessary for the continued refinement of this evolving field.

In this commonsense approach to the fundamental issues involved in understanding and evaluating literary works, John Reichert examines the method and structure of rational critical argument and its relationship to the nature of reading. With clarity and vigor, he shows how we can cut through competing critical languages to sort right readings from wrong ones, better from worse. His incisive analyses are augmented by illustrations from distinguished critics writing about major literary works.

Reichert considers criticism broadly as the imparting of one's understanding of a poem or play or novel to another reader. When the rhetorical function of critical language is recognized, seemingly distinct approaches to literature can be seen as different though often compatible means to a single end. He contends that the critic's job is not to report a personal response but to describe how a reader—any reader—ought to respond to a particular work. This necessitates postulating the author's intention at every turn, so that criticism becomes an account of what the author does to the reader by means of the work.

Taking off from recent developments in the philosophy of language, Reichert proposes answers to questions such as: What is involved in the understanding of metaphor, irony, and fiction? What knowledge must the reader bring to the text to understand it? And in what ways may the meaning of the text be regarded as stable? He sets out to refute attempts by Beardsley, Peckham, Kermode, Culler, and Ellis, among others, to define the essential nature or function of literature. Finally, with a simple account of how the everyday assessments we make of people and actions apply to literary works, Reichert demonstrates that full evaluative arguments are never purely formal or "literary," but always, in a broad sense, moral.

The Social Security Act of 1935 must be counted among the most monumental pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. Today, sixty-five years after its enactment, public support for Social Security remains extremely strong. At the same time, there have been reports that Social Security is in grave danger of financial collapse, and numerous groups across the political spectrum have agitated for its reform. The president has put forward proposals to rescue Social Security, conservatives argue for its privatization, and liberals advocate increases in its funding from surplus tax revenues.

But what is the average person to make of all this? How many Americans know where the money for Social Security benefits really comes from, or who wins and loses from the system's overall operations? Few people understand the current Social Security system in even its broadest outlines. And yet Social Security reform is ranked among the most important social issues of our time.

With Making Sense of Social Security Reform, Daniel Shaviro makes an important contribution to the public understanding of the issues involved in reforming Social Security. His book clearly and straightforwardly describes the current system and the pressures that have been brought to bear upon it, before dissecting and evaluating the various reform proposals. Accessible to anyone who has an interest in the issue, Shaviro's new work is unique in offering a balanced, nonpartisan account.

From anti-Reagan riots in West Berlin to pictures of revolutionary Nicaragua, it is impossible to examine global social protest movements of the 1970s and ’80s without addressing how these movements imagined the Americas. By examining historical representations of the United States and Latin America among Western European protesters and how these symbols were utilized by these movements, this book offers a fresh and compelling look at protest in the second half of the twentieth century. Contributions focus primarily on the anti-Euromissile peace protests and the solidarity movement with Latin America to shed light both on how European protestors built networks with the Americas and how American activists conceived of Europe and European protest. Looking east to west, north to south, this book reveals that we cannot understand the groundswell of 1980s protest movements in Europe without unraveling European representations of the Americas.

This book, published jointly by the Institute of Historical Research and The National Archives, updates the earlier work, 'A Clearer Sense of the Census' (1996). It now includes material relating to the recently released 1901 census returns and to the pre-1841 censuses. It includes details of the structure and geography of the census, and has comprehensive information on the houses, households, individuals and occupations that appear in the returns. There are also chapters on using the censuses, the skills required (and how you acquire them), and the various reference tools and finding aids available, online and in print. This is an invaluable guide to an important source for the history of the 19th century. 'This is an invaluable and very welcome book. It will be widely used for reference and in teaching. No-one should use the printed or manuscript records with any seriousness without having a copy' R J Morris (Edinburgh University) The author, Edward Higgs, is Reader in History at the University of Essex.

Readers of Making Sense of the College Curriculum expecting a traditional academic publication full of numeric and related data will likely be disappointed with this volume, which is based on stories rather than numbers. The contributors include over 185 faculty members from eleven colleges and universities, representing all sectors of higher education, who share personal, humorous, powerful, and poignant stories about their experiences in a life that is more a calling than a profession. Collectively, these accounts help to answer the question of why developing a coherent undergraduate curriculum is so vexing to colleges and universities. Their stories also belie the public’s and policymakers’ belief that faculty members care more about their scholarship and research than their students and work far less than most people.  

In Making Sense of the Constitution: A Primer on the Supreme Court and Its Struggle to Apply Our Fundamental Law, Walter Frank tackles in a comprehensive but lively manner subjects rarely treated in one volume.

Aiming at both the general reader and students of political science, law, or history, Frank begins with a brief discussion of the nature of constitutional law and why the Court divides so closely on many issues. He then proceeds to an analysis of the Constitution and subsequent amendments, placing them in their historical context. Next, Frank shifts to the Supreme Court and its decisions, examining, among other things, doctrinal developments, the Court’s decision making processes, how justices interact with each other, and the debate over how the Constitution should be interpreted.

The work concludes with a close analysis of Court decisions in six major areas of continuing controversy, including abortion, affirmative action, and campaign finance.


Outstanding by the University Press Books for Public and Secondary Schools

“This is a book about nature and culture,” Eric T. Freyfogle writes, “about our place and plight on earth, and the nagging challenges we face in living on it in ways that might endure.” Challenges, he says, we are clearly failing to meet. Harking back to a key phrase from the essays of eminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold, Our Oldest Task spins together lessons from history and philosophy, the life sciences and politics, economics and cultural studies in a personal, erudite quest to understand how we might live on—and in accord with—the land.

Passionate and pragmatic, extraordinarily well read and eloquent, Freyfogle details a host of forces that have produced our self-defeating ethos of human exceptionalism. It is this outlook, he argues, not a lack of scientific knowledge or inadequate technology, that is the primary cause of our ecological predicament. Seeking to comprehend both the multifaceted complexity of contemporary environmental problems and the zeitgeist as it unfolds, Freyfogle explores such diverse topics as morality, the nature of reality (and the reality of nature), animal welfare, social justice movements, and market politics. The result is a learned and inspiring rallying cry to achieve balance, a call to use our knowledge to more accurately identify the dividing line between living in and on the world and destruction. “To use nature,” Freyfogle writes, “but not to abuse it.”

In a work that synthesizes crucial developments in international relations at the close of the twentieth century, Bruce Cumings—a leading historian of contemporary East Asia—provides a nuanced understanding of how the United States has loomed over the modern history and culture of East Asia. By offering correctives to widely held yet largely inaccurate assessments of the affairs of this region, Parallax Visions shows how relations between the United States, Japan, Vietnam, North and South Korea, China, and Taiwan have been structured by their perceptions and misperceptions of each other.

Using information based on thirty years of research, Cumings offers a new perspective on a wide range of issues that originated with the cold war—with particular focus on the possibly inappropriate collaboration between universities, foundations, and intelligence agencies. Seeking to explode the presuppositions that Americans usually bring to the understanding of our relations with East Asia, the study ranges over much of the history of the twentieth century in East Asian–American relations—Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War, and more recent difficulties in U.S. relations with China and Japan. Cumings also rebuts U.S. media coverage of North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy in the 1990s and examines how experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism have had varying effects on economic development in each of these countries. Positing that the central defining experience of twentieth-century East Asia has been its entanglement first with British and Japanese imperialism, and then with the United States, Cumings ends with a discussion of how the situation could change over the next century as the economic and political global clout of the United States declines.

Illuminating the sometimes self-deluded ideology of cold war America, Parallax Visions will engage historians, political scientists, and students and scholars of comparative politics and social theory, as well as readers interested in questions of modernity and the role of the United States in shaping the destinies of modernizing societies in Asia.

Winner of FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize

A grand tour of the edges of our lives, where glory and significance riot against the logic of living and the pall of tragedy.

The Making Sense of Things is a collection of twelve stories that pulse with memory, magic, and myth—all our favorite ways of trying to make sense of things.

Readers are treated to vivid and unforgettable characters. A fiercely independent woman puts the man who loves her to unconscionable tests, never guessing that arson, suicide, and canine obesity will yield a magical kind of happiness. A honeymooner in Venice, addled by fever and second thoughts, commits by dumb error a double murder. A brisk lawyer founders when a car wreck claims his son and ex-wife, then discovers that the desperation of grief is a kind of hope.