Society & Social Sciences

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...

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...

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize...

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...

When the Soviet Union collapsed, many hoped that Russia's centuries-long history of autocratic rule might finally end. Yet today's Russia appears to be retreating from democracy, not progressing toward it. Ruling Russia is the only book of its kind to...

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...

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 United States witnessed an unprecedented failure of its political system in the mid-nineteenth century, resulting in a disastrous civil war that claimed the lives of an estimated 750,000 Americans. In his other acclaimed books about the American...

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...

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 love of books in the Jewish tradition extends back over many centuries, and the ways of interpreting those books are as myriad as the traditions themselves. Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers the first full survey of Jewish illuminated...

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 Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four...

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us--it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and...

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...

The American racial order--the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation's races and ethnicities--is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look...

Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. Slot machines, revamped by ever more compelling digital and video technology, have...

In Grimm Legacies, esteemed literary scholar Jack Zipes explores the legacy of the Brothers Grimm in Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. Zipes reveals how the Grimms came to play a pivotal and unusual role in the...

Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the nineteenth century thought just the opposite. Drawing on...

The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s,...

As countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn't there a way we can use this...

Autism has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, thanks to dramatically increasing rates of diagnosis, extensive organizational mobilization, journalistic coverage, biomedical research, and clinical innovation. Understanding Autism, a...

Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how...

Political science and sociology increasingly rely on mathematical modeling and sophisticated data analysis, and many graduate programs in these fields now require students to take a "math camp" or a semester-long or yearlong course to acquire the...

Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John...

Which way will Egypt go now that Husni Mubarak's authoritarian regime has been swept from power? Will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy? Egypt after Mubarak reveals that Egypt's...