Bøker utgitt av Columbia University Press

Living is a balancing act. Ordinary activities like walking, running, or riding a bike require the brain to keep the body in balance. A dancer's poised elegance and a tightrope walker's breathtaking performance are feats of balance. Language abounds with expressions and figures of speech that invoke balance. People fret over work-life balance or try to eat a balanced diet. The concept crops up from politics-checks and balances, the balance of power, balanced budgets-to science, in which ideas of equilibrium are crucial. Why is balance so fundamental, and how do physical and metaphorical balance shed light on each other?Paul Thagard explores the physiological workings and metaphorical resonance of balance in the brain, the body, and society. He describes the neural mechanisms that keep bodies balanced and explains why their failures can result in nausea, falls, or vertigo. Thagard connects bodily balance with leading ideas in neuroscience, including the nature of consciousness. He analyzes balance metaphors across science, medicine, economics, the arts, and philosophy, showing why some aid understanding but others are misleading or harmful. Thagard contends that balance is ultimately a matter of making sense of the world. In both literal and metaphorical senses, balance is what enables people to solve the puzzles of life by turning sensory signals or an incongruous comparison into a coherent whole.Bridging philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Balance shows how an unheralded concept's many meanings illuminate the human condition.

With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world's densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds-and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers.This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America's first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

Featuring contributions from practitioners, researchers, and academics, this volume synthesizes and analyzes current trends in rural social work practice and considers the most effective ways to serve rural communities. Contributors consider the history and development of rural social work from its beginnings to the present day, addressing the value of the Internet and other new information technologies in helping clients. They also examine the effects of nonprofit organizations and welfare reform on poor rural areas. Coverage of specific client populations and fields of practice includes services for rural mental healthcare; the chronically mentally ill; healthcare for minorities; and the challenges faced by the elderly in rural areas. The contributors also consider issues affecting gays and lesbians living in rural communities and the role of religiosity and social support in the well-being of HIV/AIDS clients. The book concludes with a consideration of the unique issues associated with educating social workers for rural practice.

This new collection focuses on the impact of sprawl on biodiversity and the measures that can be taken to alleviate it. Leading biological and social scientists, conservationists, and land-use professionals examine how sprawl affects species and alters natural communities, ecosystems, and natural processes. The contributors integrate biodiversity issues, concerns, and needs into the growing number of anti-sprawl initiatives, including the "e;smart growth"e; and "e;new urbanist"e; movements.

Growing up in Bulgaria, Julia Kristeva was warned by her father not to read Dostoyevsky. "e;Of course, and as usual,"e; she recalls, "e;I disobeyed paternal orders and plunged into Dosto. Dazzled, overwhelmed, engulfed."e; Kristeva would go on to become one of the most important figures in European intellectual life-and she would return over and over again to Dostoyevsky, still haunted and enraptured by the force of his writing.In this book, Kristeva embarks on a wide-ranging and stimulating inquiry into Dostoyevsky's work and the profound ways it has influenced her own thinking. Reading across his major novels and shorter works, Kristeva offers incandescent insights into the potent themes that draw her back to the Russian master: God, otherness, violence, eroticism, the mother, the father, language itself. Both personal and erudite, the book intermingles Kristeva's analysis with her recollections of Dostoyevsky's significance in different intellectual moments-the rediscovery of Bakhtin in the Thaw-era Eastern Bloc, the debates over poststructuralism in 1960s France, and today's arguments about whether it can be said that "e;everything is permitted."e; Brilliant and vivid, this is an essential book for admirers of both Kristeva and Dostoyevsky. It also features an illuminating foreword by Rowan Williams that reflects on the significance of Kristeva's reading of Dostoyevsky for his own understanding of religious writing.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLERThe internet was supposed to connect us to endless possibilities. So why do we keep ending up browsing the same old sites and best-seller lists? When sellers don't offer potential customers a compelling digital experience, consumers miss out on great products-and businesses miss a vital opportunity to grow.Raj K. De Datta, the founder of a company that powers digital-commerce experiences for many of the world's biggest brands, offers an actionable playbook for companies looking to deliver better digital experiences. His key insight is that exceptional digital experiences are much more than marketplaces. They don't just serve customers' transactional needs but rather address the deeper problems for which they seek solutions. They are built on a digital-experience platform that provides agile, personalized, scalable performance. And they are created by product-centric digital teams, not traditional organizations.The Digital Seeker distills key lessons from the compelling stories of innovative businesses: not just tech companies but companies spanning a wide range of industries, including amusement parks, fashion, sports, health care, distribution, and the public sector. De Datta defines and explains the power of the seeker-centric philosophy-translating it into a core operational playbook for digital teams to achieve transformative results.Importantly, this book also offers crucial insights into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our digital lives and the long-term effects it will have on digital experiences of the future.

A fast-food chain once tried to compete with McDonald's quarter-pounder by introducing a third-pound hamburger-only for it to flop when consumers thought a third pound was less than a quarter pound because three is less than four. Separately, a rash of suicides by teenagers who played Dungeons and Dragons caused a panic in parents and the media. They thought D&D was causing teenage suicides-when in fact teenage D&D players died by suicide at a much lower rate than the national average. Errors of this type can be found from antiquity to the present, from the Peloponnesian War to the COVID-19 pandemic. How and why do we keep falling into these traps?James C. Zimring argues that many of the mistakes that the human mind consistently makes boil down to misperceiving fractions. We see slews of statistics that are essentially fractions, such as percentages, probabilities, frequencies, and rates, and we tend to misinterpret them. Sometimes bad actors manipulate us by cherry-picking data or distorting how information is presented; other times, sloppy communicators inadvertently mislead us. In many cases, we fool ourselves and have only our own minds to blame. Zimring also explores the counterintuitive reason that these flaws might benefit us, demonstrating that individual error can be highly advantageous to problem solving by groups. Blending key scientific research in cognitive psychology with accessible real-life examples, Partial Truths helps readers spot the fallacies lurking in everyday information, from politics to the criminal justice system, from religion to science, from business strategies to New Age culture.

In Broken Ground, William Logan explores the works of canonical and contemporary poets, rediscovering the lushness of imagination and depth of feeling that distinguish poetry as a literary art. The book includes long essays on Emily Dickinson's envelopes, Ezra Pound's wrestling with Chinese, Robert Frost's letters, Philip Larkin's train station, and Mrs. Custer's volume of Tennyson, each teasing out the depths beneath the surface of the page.Broken Ground also presents the latest run of Logan's infamous poetry chronicles and reviews, which for twenty-five years have bedeviled American verse. Logan believes that poetry criticism must be both adventurous and forthright-and that no reader should settle for being told that every poet is a genius. Among the poets under review by the "e;preeminent poet-critic of his generation"e; and "e;most hated man in American poetry"e; are Anne Carson, Jorie Graham, Paul Muldoon, John Ashbery, Geoffrey Hill, Louise Gluck, John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Frederick Seidel, Les Murray, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Johnny Cash, James Franco, and the former archbishop of Canterbury.Logan's criticism stands on the broken ground of poetry, soaked in history and soiled by it. These essays and reviews work in the deep undercurrents of our poetry, judging the weak and the strong but finding in weakness and strength what endures.

What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons, stimulating and sometimes exploiting the ways people make friends, gossip with neighbors, and grow intimate with lovers. Sex robots present the humanoid face of this technological revolution-yet although it is easy to gawk at their uncanniness, more familiar technologies based in artificial intelligence and virtual reality are insinuating themselves into human interactions. Digital lovers, virtual friends, and algorithmic matchmakers help us manage our feelings in a world of cognitive overload. Will these machines, fueled by masses of user data and powered by algorithms that learn all the time, transform the quality of human life?Artificial Intimacy offers an innovative perspective on the possibilities of the present and near future. The evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider the interaction of new technologies and fundamental human behaviors. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs-and are getting better at what they do. Brooks combines an understanding of core human traits from evolutionary biology with analysis of how cultural, economic, and technological contexts shape the ways people express them. Beyond the technology, he asks what the implications of artificial intimacy will be for how we understand ourselves.

When the world reemerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems likely that it will have transformed irrevocably. Can societies already reeling from climate change, income inequality, and structural racism change for the better? Does the shock of the pandemic offer an opportunity to pivot to a more sustainable way of life?Early in the crisis, a global volunteer collaboration called Pivot Projects was formed to rethink how the world works. Some members are experts in the sciences and the humanities; others are environmental activists or regular people who see themselves as world citizens. In The Pivot, the journalist Steve Hamm-who embedded in the enterprise from the start-explores their efforts and shows how their approach provides a model for achieving systemic change. Chronicling the group's progress along an uncharted path, he shows how people with a variety of skills and personalities collaborate to get things done. Through their work, Hamm examines some of today's most important technologies and concepts, such as systems thinking and modeling, complexity theory, artificial intelligence, and new thinking about resilience. The book features vivid, informal profiles of a number of the group's members and brings to life the excitement and energy of dynamic, smart people trying to change the world.Part journal of a plague year and part call to action, The Pivot tells the remarkable story of a collaborative experiment seeking to make the world more sustainable and resilient.

Once a blue-collar outpost, Seattle, home to Microsoft, Amazon, and hundreds of startups, transformed into one of the world's major innovation hubs in less than twenty years. As other cities try to solve the riddle of creating vibrant economies, many have looked to Seattle as a model for tech-driven urban renaissance. However, that success comes with skyrocketing housing costs, increasing homelessness, public safety concerns, persistent racial inequality, and a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. Against that backdrop, big tech has become a popular target.Tom Alberg, a venture capitalist who was one of the first investors in Amazon, draws on his experience in Seattle's tech boom to offer a vision for how cities and businesses can build a brighter future together. He explores ways that cities can soar to prosperity by creating the conditions that encourage innovation. Like flywheels, livable cities generate momentum by drawing creative citizens who launch businesses. Success attracts more talent, energizing local economies and accelerating further innovation. Alberg emphasizes the importance of city governments and tech companies partnering to address civic challenges. He reflects on why the benefits of the tech boom have not been distributed equally and what business and government leaders must do differently to ensure inclusive growth. The book also examines success stories from smaller cities and their lessons for other up-and-coming tech hubs. Demonstrating the need for innovative thinking that encourages livability alongside economic growth, Flywheels is timely reading for everyone from mayors to business leaders to engaged citizens.

Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice-or can our beliefs help change our luck?What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people-who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy-as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can-fingers crossed-help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

Storms, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other disasters seem not only more frequent but also closer to home. As the world faces this onslaught, we have placed our faith in "e;sustainable development,"e; which promises that we can survive and even thrive in the face of climate change and other risks. Yet while claiming to "e;go green,"e; we have instead created new risks, continued to degrade nature, and failed to halt global warming.Unnatural Disasters offers a new perspective on our most pressing environmental and social challenges, revealing the gaps between abstract concepts like sustainability, resilience, and innovation and the real-world experiences of people living at risk. Gonzalo Lizarralde explains how the causes of disasters are not natural but all too human: inequality, segregation, marginalization, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, and unrestrained capitalism. He tells the stories of Latin American migrants, Haitian earthquake survivors, Canadian climate activists, African slum dwellers, and other people resisting social and environmental injustices around the world. Lizarralde shows that most reconstruction and risk-reduction efforts exacerbate social inequalities. Some responses do produce meaningful changes, but they are rarely the ones powerful leaders have in mind.This book reveals how disasters have become both the causes and consequences of today's most urgent challenges and proposes achievable solutions to save a planet at risk, emphasizing the power citizens hold to change the current state of affairs.

The Best American Magazine Writing 2020 brings together outstanding writing, from in-depth reporting to incisive criticism. The anthology features excerpts from major projects that challenge American certitudes: the Washington Post Magazine's "e;Prison"e; issue, detailing the scope of mass incarceration, and the New York Times Magazine's "e;The 1619 Project,"e; which recenters the nation's history around slavery and its legacies. It includes extraordinary globe-spanning journalism, including pieces on the genocide against the Rohingya (New York Times Magazine) and the unintended consequences of a dengue fever vaccine (Fortune). Pamela Colloff details prosecutors' reliance on an untrustworthy jailhouse informant (New York Times Magazine in partnership with ProPublica), and a ProPublica series investigates the disaster that befell the USS Fitzgerald.The anthology showcases the work of remarkable stylists, including Jia Tolentino's cultural commentary (New Yorker) and Ligaya Mishan's columns on food and culture (T: The New York Times Style Magazine). Columns by s.e. smith consider disability (Catapult), and the DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark writes about art he can touch (Poetry). Jordan Kisner visits a Martha Washington-themed debutante ball in Texas near the Mexican border for The Believer, and Jacob Baynham offers a moving portrait of his father-in-law (Georgia Review). Arundhati Roy excoriates the increasing authoritarianism of Modi's India (The Nation in partnership with Type Media Center). The anthology concludes with Jonathan Escoffery's short story of homesickness for Jamaica, "e;Under the Ackee Tree"e; (Paris Review).

Disruptive digital technologies are poised to reshape world energy markets. A new wave of industrial innovation, driven by the convergence of automation, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics, is remaking energy and transportation systems in ways that could someday end the age of oil. What are the consequences-not only for the environment and for daily life but also for geopolitics and the international order?Amy Myers Jaffe provides an expert look at the promises and challenges of the future of energy, highlighting what the United States needs to do to maintain its global influence in a post-oil era. She surveys new advances coming to market in on-demand travel services, automation, logistics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, and 3-D printing and explores how this rapid pace of innovation is altering international security dynamics in fundamental ways. As the United States vacillates politically about its energy trajectory, China is proactively striving to become the global frontrunner in a full-scale global energy transformation. In order to maintain its leadership role, Jaffe argues, the United States must embrace the digital revolution and foster American achievement. Bringing together analyses of technological innovation, energy policy, and geopolitics, Energy's Digital Future gives indispensable insight into the path the United States will need to pursue to ensure its lasting economic competitiveness and national security in a new energy age.

In daylong hackathons, design thinking seems deceptively easy. On the surface, it involves a set of seemingly simple activities such as gathering data, identifying insights, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimentation. But practiced at a superficial level, even great design tools don't go deep enough to create the shifts in mindset and skillset that are required to achieve transformational impact. Going deep with design requires more than changing the activities of innovators; it involves creating the conditions that shape who they become. Individuals become design thinkers by experiencing design.Drawing on decades of researching design thinking and teaching it to people not trained in design, Jeanne Liedtka, Karen Hold, and Jessica Eldridge offer a guide for how to create these deep experiences at each stage of the design thinking journey, whether for an individual, a team, or an organization. For each experience phase, they specify the mindset shifts and competencies that need to be achieved, describe how different personality types experience different kinds of journeys, and show how to fully leverage the diversity of teams. Experiencing Design explores both the science and practicalities of design and includes two assessment instruments for individual and organizational development.Ultimately, innovators need to be someone new to create something new. This book shows you how to use design thinking to make this happen.

In an increasingly experience-driven economy, companies that deliver great experiences thrive, and those that do not die. Yet many organizations face difficulties implementing a vision of delivering experiences beyond the provision of goods and services. Because experience design concepts and approaches are spread across multiple, often disconnected disciplines, there is no book that succinctly explains to students and aspiring professionals how to design them.J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden present a comprehensive and accessible introduction to experience design. They synthesize the fundamental theories and methods from multiple disciplines and lay out a process for designing experiences from start to finish. Rossman and Duerden challenge us to reflect on what makes a great experience from the user's perspective. They provide a framework of experience types, explaining people's engagement with products and services and what makes experiences personal and fulfilling. The book presents interdisciplinary research underlying key concepts such as memory, intentionality, and dramatic structure in a down-to-earth style, drawing attention to both the macro and micro levels. Designing Experiences features detailed instructions and numerous real-world examples that clarify theoretical principles, making it useful for students and professionals. An invaluable overview of a growing field, the book provides readers with the tools they need to design innovative and indelible experiences and to move their organizations into the experience economy.Designing Experiences features a foreword by B. Joseph Pine II.

By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed to be approaching a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate would not last forever was far from anyone's mind.Yet, in that year, an anonymous samurai author completed one of the most detailed critiques of Edo society known today. Writing as Buyo Inshi, "e;a retired gentleman of Edo,"e; he expresses a profound despair with the state of the realm and with people's behavior and attitudes. He sees decay wherever he turns and believes the world will soon descend into war.Buyo shows a familiarity with many corners of Edo life that one might not expect in a samurai. He describes the corruption of samurai officials; the suffering of the poor in villages and cities; the operation of brothels; the dealings of blind moneylenders; the selling and buying of temple abbotships; and the dubious strategies townspeople use in the law courts. Perhaps the frankness of his account, which contains a wealth of concrete information about Edo society, made him prefer to remain anonymous.This volume contains a full translation of Buyo's often-quoted but rarely studied work by a team of specialists on Edo society. Together with extensive annotation of the translation, the volume includes an introduction that situates the text culturally and historically.

The social psychologist Peter T. Coleman explores how conflict resolution and complexity science provide guidance for dealing with seemingly intractable political differences. The Way Out is a vital and timely guide to breaking free from the cycle of mutual contempt in order to better our lives, relationships, and country.

Examining the canon of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American stamps, Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler show how postal iconography and material culture offer a window into the contested meanings and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship.