God and the atom / by Victor J. Stenger In this history of...

God and the atom / by Victor J. Stenger In this history of atomism from Democritus, considered by many to be the father of modern science, to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson physicist Victor J. Stenger chronicles one of the most successful scientific hypotheses ever devised. Originating separately in both Greece and India, the concept of the atom persisted for centuries, despite often running afoul of conventional thinking. Until the 20th century, no direct evidence for atoms existed.

Dance with me : ballroom dancing and the promise of instant...

Dance with me : ballroom dancing and the promise of instant intimacy / Julia Ericksen Rumba music starts and a floor full of dancers alternate clinging to one another and turning away. Rumba is an erotic dance, and the mood is hot and heavy; the women bend and hyperextend their legs as they twist and turn around their partners. Amateur and professional ballroom dancers alike compete in a highly gendered display of intimacy, romance and sexual passion.

Alone in America : the stories that matter / Robert A....

Alone in America : the stories that matter / Robert A. Ferguson With more people living alone today than at any time in U.S. history, Ferguson investigates loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. Ferguson shows that we can learn, from our literature, how to live alone.

Cult pop culture : how the fringe became mainstream / Bob...

Cult pop culture : how the fringe became mainstream / Bob Batchelor, editor Though not focusing on religious zealots, Batchelor (journalism and mass communication, Kent State U.) applies “cult” in its connotation of someone or something that has a deeply-held or enduring popular following. Volume 1, which includes a timeline since 1900, presents essays analyzing the attraction of cult figures, themes, technology, and genre related to film (e.g., Star Wars) and television (e.g., Oprah, serial killers, reality TV shows).

Crazy-proofing high school sports / John E. Tufte Schools have...

Crazy-proofing high school sports / John E. Tufte Schools have everything needed to accomplish great feats via high school sports participation, and now is the time for our educators to be the experts in their field…Crazy-Proofing High School Sports offers real solutions to the real problems hurting high school student athletes.

The strange career of Porgy and Bess  : race, culture, and...

The strange career of Porgy and Bess  : race, culture, and America’s most famous opera / Ellen Noonan Examines the opera Porgy and Bess’s long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of 20th-century American expectations about race, culture and the struggle for equality.

The unbearable lightness of being / Milan Kundera A young woman...

The unbearable lightness of being / Milan Kundera A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover—these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel “the unbearable lightness of being” not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the t...

Exorbitant privilege : the rise and fall of the dollar and...

Exorbitant privilege : the rise and fall of the dollar and the future of the international monetary system / Barry Eichengreen For more than half a century, the U.S. dollar has been not just America’s currency but the world’s. It is used globally by importers, exporters, investors, governments and central banks alike. Nearly three-quarters of all $100 bills circulate outside the United States. The dollar holdings of the Chinese government alone come to more than $1,000 per Chinese resident. This dependence on dollars, by banks, corporations and governments around the world, is a source of...

Quack medicine  : a history of combating health fraud in...

Quack medicine  : a history of combating health fraud in twentieth-century America / Eric W. Boyle Boyle (University of Maryland; National Museum of Health and Medicine) offers an illustrated history of quack medicine in the US and concludes that despite attempts to counter it, questionable medicines and medical services are still as popular as ever. Placing medical quackery in America within a broader social and cultural context, the author examines the roles of various players involved in fighting health fraud in the US, including government agencies, medical groups, journalists, and consu...

In pursuit of the traveling salesman : mathematics at the...

In pursuit of the traveling salesman : mathematics at the limits of computation / William J. Cook What is the shortest possible route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit each city on a list exactly once and return to his city of origin? It sounds simple enough, yet the traveling salesman problem is one of the most intensely studied puzzles in applied mathematics—and it has defied solution to this day. In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman’s trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, an...

A tale for the time being / Ruth Ozeki "A time being is someone...

A tale for the time being / Ruth Ozeki "A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be." In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. Butbefore she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

War play : video games and the future of armed conflict /...

War play : video games and the future of armed conflict / Corey Mead How does the U.S. military train its soldiers for new forms of armed conflict, all within the constraints of diminished defense budgets? Increasingly, the answer is cutting-edge video game technology. Corey Mead shows us training sessions where soldiers undertake multiplayer “missions” that test combat skills, develop unit cohesion, and teach cultural awareness. He immerses himself in 3-D battle simulations so convincing that they leave his heart racing. And he shows how the military, which has shaped American education ...

Triumphs of experience : the men of the Harvard Grant Study...

Triumphs of experience : the men of the Harvard Grant Study / George E. Vaillant Based on his landmark longitudinal study of male Harvard alumni now officially known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, Vaillant (psychiatry, Harvard Medical School) presents the study’s history, theoretical underpinnings (including Erikson’s stages of development), insights drawn from interviews, and narratives of selected participants with their scores on rewarding late-life outcomes. The interview protocol, childhood and adult personality and adjustment scales, and a study bibliography are appended...

The world through Arab eyes : Arab public opinion and the...

The world through Arab eyes : Arab public opinion and the reshaping of the Middle East / Shibley Telhami Having been convinced of the crucial role of Arab public opinion in the development of Middle East politics from before the Arab uprisings that began in late 2010, at a time when many others were dismissing the “Arab street” as unimportant because of the domination of authoritarian rulers, Telhami (peace and development, U. of Maryland) has carried out a decade’s worth of political polling studies on urban public opinion in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Unite...

The undivided past : humanity beyond our differences /...

The undivided past : humanity beyond our differences / David Cannadine Investigating the six most salient categories of human identity, difference, and confrontation—religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization—David Cannadine questions just how determinative each of them has really been. For while each has motivated people dramatically at particular moments, they have rarely been as pervasive, as divisive, or as important as is suggested by such simplified polarities as “us versus them,” “black versus white,” or “the clash of civilizations.”

Testing wars in the public schools : a forgotten history /...

Testing wars in the public schools : a forgotten history / William J. Reese When educational testing was first developed in the mid-1800s, educational reformers believed that competitive testing, enlightened pedagogy, and humane forms of discipline would replace rote memorization and corporal punishment. In this history of written tests in American public schools, Reese (educational policy studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) offers educators, teachers, and scholars a context for understanding modern controversies on testing.

All good books are Catholic books : print culture,...

All good books are Catholic books : print culture, censorship, and modernity in twentieth-century America / Una M. Cadegan Until the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward the social, cultural, economic, and political developments of the twentieth century was largely antagonistic. Naturally opposed to secularization, skeptical of capitalist markets indifferent to questions of justice, confused and appalled by new forms of high and low culture, and resistant to the social and economic freedom of women—in all of these ways the Catholic Chur...

Consciousness and the social brain / Michael S.A. Graziano What...

Consciousness and the social brain / Michael S.A. Graziano What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X. In Graziano’s theory,...