Society & Social Sciences Books

When it comes to politics, we often perceive our own beliefs as fair and socially beneficial, while seeing opposing views as merely self-serving. But in fact most political views are governed by self-interest, even if we usually don't realize it...

Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly...

Political Islam has often been compared to ideological movements of the past such as fascism or Christian theocracy. But are such analogies valid? How should the Western world today respond to the challenges of political Islam? Taking an original...

Turkish republicanism is commonly thought to have originated with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, and understood exclusively in terms of Kemalist ideals, characterized by the principles of secularism, nationalism,...

An incisive history of the controversial Google Books project and the ongoing quest for a universal digital libraryLibraries have long talked about providing comprehensive access to information for everyone. But when Google announced in 2004 that it...

How Jewish responses during the Holocaust shed new light on the dynamics of genocide and political violence Focusing on the choices and actions of Jews during the Holocaust, Ordinary Jews examines the different patterns of behavior of civilians targeted...

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In...

A comprehensive history of one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups Boko Haram is one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups. It has killed more than twenty thousand people and displaced more than two million in a campaign of terror that began in...

A fundamentally new approach to the history of science and technologyThis book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor...

How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth centuryAfter Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military...

The Europeanization of the World puts forward a defense of Western civilization and the unique gifts it has bequeathed to the world-in particular, human rights and constitutional democracy-at a time when many around the globe equate the West with hubris...

For any market to work properly, certain key elements are necessary: competition, pricing, rules, clearly defined offers, and easy access to information. Without these components, there would be chaos. Orderly Fashion examines how order is maintained in...

Sophie Germain taught herself mathematics by candlelight, huddled in her bedclothes. Ada Byron Lovelace anticipated aspects of general-purpose digital computing by more than a century. Cora Ratto de Sadosky advanced messages of tolerance and equality...

In economics, the emergence of New Growth Theory in recent decades has directed attention to an old and important problem: what are the forces of economic growth and how can public policy enhance them? This book examines major forces of growth--including...

Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners. Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor...

The controversial Jewish thinker whose tortured path led him into the heart of twentieth-century intellectual lifeScion of a distinguished line of Talmudic scholars, Jacob Taubes (19231987) was an intellectual impresario whose inner restlessness led him...

A comprehensive look at the world of illicit trade Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, recent technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both legitimate and illegal economies. In the past three decades, the most advanced...

One of the greatest political advisers of all time, Niccolo Machiavelli thought long and hard about how citizens could identify great leaders--ones capable of defending and enhancing the liberty, honor, and prosperity of their countries. Drawing on the...

For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one...

The Islamic State has stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. What explains the rise of ISIS, and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? In this book, one of the world's leading...

The Revealer, Winter Reading RecommendationsA revealing look at Jewish men and women who secretly explore the outside world, in person and online, while remaining in their ultra-Orthodox religious communities.What would you do if you questioned your...

As a child growing up in Manhattan, William Helmreich played a game with his father called "Last Stop." They would pick a subway line, ride it to its final destination, and explore the neighborhood. Decades later, his love for exploring the city is as...

Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass...

Americans are taught to believe that upward mobility is possible for anyone who is willing to work hard, regardless of their social status, yet it is often those from affluent backgrounds who land the best jobs. Pedigree takes readers behind the closed...

From David Card, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2021, and Alan Krueger, a provocative challenge to conventional wisdom about the minimum wageDavid Card and Alan B. Krueger have already made national news with their pathbreaking research on the...

A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work.Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights...

A sociologist and former fashion model takes readers inside the elite global party circuit of 'models and bottles' to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men Million-dollar birthday parties, megayachts on...

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts,...

How the conflict between political Islamists and secular nationalists has shaped the history of the modern Middle East In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically...

Why some of Asia's authoritarian regimes have democratised as they have grown richer and why others haven't.Over the past century, Asia has been transformed by rapid economic growth, industrialisation, and urbanisation a spectacular record of development...

In the age of search, keywords increasingly organize research, teaching, and even thought itself. Inspired by Raymond Williams's 1976 classic Keywords, the timely collection Digital Keywords gathers pointed, provocative short essays on more than two...

A textbook that lays down the foundational principles for understanding social neuroscienceHumans, like many other animals, are a highly social species. But how do our biological systems implement social behaviors, and how do these processes shape the...

Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth...

A one-of-a-kind walking guide to Manhattan, from the man who walked every block in New York CityBill Helmreich walked every block of New York City-six-thousand miles in all-to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Later, he re-walked most of...

Bill Helmreich walked every block of New York City--6,000 miles in all--to write the award-winning The New York Nobody Knows. Now he has re-walked Brooklyn--some 816 miles--to write this one-of-a-kind walking guide to the city's hottest borough. Drawing...

The Global Commonwealth of Citizens critically examines the prospects for cosmopolitan democracy as a viable and humane response to the challenges of globalization. Arising after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decisive affirmation of...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman PrizeFrom acclaimed diplomat and historian George Kennan, a landmark history of the crucial months in 19171918 that forged the pattern of Soviet-American...

This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been...

In the wake of modern genocide, we tend to think of violence against minorities as a sign of intolerance, or, even worse, a prelude to extermination. Violence in the Middle Ages, however, functioned differently, according to David Nirenberg. In this...

A definitive biography of the U.S. diplomat and prize-winning historian George F. Kennan.The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (19042005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy - and one of its most complex. Drawing...

Biblical in origin, the expression "eclipse of God" refers to the Jewish concept of hester panim, the act of God concealing his face as a way of punishing his disobedient subjects. Though this idea is deeply troubling for many people, in this book Martin...

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern worldFor all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the...

The hard work required to make god real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people-as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see...

A fun and stunningly illustrated introduction to the art of linear optimizationLinear optimization is a powerful modeling method for discovering the best solution to a problem among a set of available alternatives. It is one of today's most important...

The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most...

A history of how political philosophy was recast by the rise of postwar liberalism and irrevocably changed by John Rawls's A Theory of JusticeIn the Shadow of Justice tells the story of how liberal political philosophy was transformed in the second half...

The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. The Bankers' New Clothes examines this claim and the...

Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the...