Society and culture: general Books

A groundbreaking logic-based approach to bridging the scientific-constructivist divide in social science.The Logic of Social Science offers new principles for designing and conducting social science research. James Mahoney uses set-theoretic analysis to...

On Belonging and Not Belonging provides a sophisticated exploration of how themes of translation, migration, and displacement shape an astonishing range of artistic works. From the possibilities and limitations of translation addressed by Jhumpa Lahiri...

In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the...

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracyHitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian...

A compelling book that casts the Qur'anic encounter with Jews in an entirely new light.In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Meir Bar-Asher examines how Jews and Judaism are depicted in the Qur'an and later Islamic literature, providing needed context...

Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights-glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth-embedded in myth, legends, and...

Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings of Philo and...

From the acclaimed author of Unfinished Business, a story of crisis and change that can help us find renewed honesty and purpose in our personal and political lives.Like much of the world, America is deeply divided over identity, equality, and history...

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human "nature" but has to be for allFor centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural...

Why society's expectation of economic growth is no longer realistic Economic growth - and the hope of better things to come - is the religion of the modern world. Yet its prospects have become bleak, with crashes following booms in an endless...

The first investigation of how race and gender shaped the presentation and marketing of Modernist decor in postwar America.In the world of interior design, mid-century Modernism has left an indelible mark still seen and felt today in countless...

Computational models of urbanism - smart cities that use data-driven planning and algorithmic administration - promise to deliver new urban efficiencies and conveniences. Yet these models limit our understanding of what we can know about a city. A City...

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub vividly describe how, before 1900, a woman who...

Mashable's 20 Books from 2020 That Make Great GiftsIn the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees, aid workers,...

A War on Global Poverty provides a fresh account of U.S. involvement in campaigns to end global poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. From the decline of modernisation programs to the rise of microcredit, Joanne Meyerowitz looks beyond familiar histories of...

How populism is fueled by the demise of the industrial order and the emergence of a new digital society ruled by algorithms.In the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s, young people around the world called for a radical shift away from the old...

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers - from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie...

Why 'aporophobia' - rejection of the poor - is one of the most serious problems facing the world today, and how we can fight it.In this revelatory book, acclaimed political philosopher Adela Cortina makes an unprecedented assertion: the...

The brilliant but turbulent life of a public intellectual who transformed the social sciencesRobert Bellah (19272013) was one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. Trained as a sociologist, he crossed disciplinary boundaries...

Hate crimes. Misinformation and conspiracy theories. Foiled white-supremacist plots. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us, and communities across America and around the globe are struggling to understand how so many people are being...

The lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American SouthDespite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to...

The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China's visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion. New ideologies of creativity and creative practices have reshaped the training of a new generation of...

Antiques & Arts Weekly Holiday Books Round-up 2020 How artists created an aesthetic of 'positive barbarism' in a world devastated by World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb.In Brutal Aesthetics, leading art historian and...

A compelling interpretation of a foundational concept of Jewish religious lifeThe love of God is arguably the most essential element in Judaism-but also one of the most confounding. In biblical and rabbinic literature, the obligation to love God appears...

A feminist biography of the only woman to become prime minister of IsraelIn this authoritative and empathetic biography, Pnina Lahav reexamines the life of Golda Meir (18981978) through a feminist lens, focusing on her recurring role as a woman standing...

The exorbitant costs of urban housing and the widening gap in income inequality are fueling a combative new movement in cities around the world. A growing number of influential activists aren't waiting for new public housing to be built. Instead, they're...

Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the...

Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts- and, in repressing it, ended up burning...

In the growing body of work on democracy, little attention has been paid to its links with migration. Migration and Democracy focuses on the effects of worker remittances-money sent by migrants back to their home countries-and how these resources shape...

Gripping tales that abound with fantastic characters and astonishing twists and turns, Greek myths confront what it means to be mortal in a world of powerful forces beyond human control. Little wonder that they continue to fascinate readers thousands of...

How a controversial biblical tale of conquest and genocide became a founding story of modern IsraelNo biblical text has been more central to the politics of modern Israel than the book of Joshua. Named after a military leader who became the successor to...

A reexamination of Austen's unpublished writings that uncovers their continuity with her celebrated novels-and that challenges distinctions between her "early" and "late" workJane Austen's six novels, published toward the end of her short life, represent...

For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and...

A rich history of underwater filmmaking and how it has profoundly influenced the aesthetics of movies and public perception of the oceans.In The Underwater Eye, Margaret Cohen tells the fascinating story of how the development of modern diving equipment...

How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in IndiaDuring the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian...

From two of the world's leading authorities on dogs, an imaginative journey into a future of dogs without peopleWhat would happen to dogs if humans simply disappeared? Would dogs be able to survive on their own without us? A Dog's World imagines a...

An innovative and accessible guide to doing social research in the digital ageThe rapid spread of social media, smartphones, and other digital wonders enables us to collect and process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable,...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceWhy the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrong.The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either...

Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"-a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and...

A history of modern European cultural pluralism, its current crisis, and its uncertain futureIn 2010, the leaders of Germany, Britain, and France each declared that multiculturalism had failed in their countries. Over the past decade, a growing consensus...

The first biography of Kierkegaard's literary muse, from the author of the definitive life of the philosopherKierkegaard's Muse-the first biography of Regine Olsen (1822-1904), the inspiration and one-time fiancee of Danish philosopher Soren...

A groundbreaking new theory of religionReligion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes...

Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual's period as useless, and some doctors still believe it's unsafe for a...

An international collection of the traditional tales that inspired some of Shakespeare's greatest playsShakespeare knew a good story when he heard one, and he wasn't afraid to borrow from what he heard or read, especially traditional folktales. The...

A compelling account of the threat immigration control poses to the citizens of free societies. Immigration is often seen as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine their fundamental values, most notably freedom and...

The first study of album-making in the Ottoman empire during the seventeenth century, demonstrating the period's experimentation, eclecticism, and global outlookThe Album of the World Emperor examines an extraordinary piece of art: an album of paintings,...

A wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking since the seventeenth century on the purpose of the Jewish people in the past, present, and futureWhat is the purpose of Jews in the world? The Bible singles out the Jews as God's "chosen people,"...

A gripping biography that brings together the most recent research to shed provocative new light on the life of Saint PatrickSaint Patrick was, by his own admission, a controversial figure. Convicted in a trial by his elders in Britain and hounded by...