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How the great political thinkers have persistently warned against the dangers of economic inequality Economic inequality is one of the most daunting challenges of our time, with public debate often turning to questions of whether it is an inevitable outcome of economic systems and what, if anything, can be done about it. But why, exactly, should inequality worry us? The Greatest of All Plagues demonstrates that this underlying question has been a central preoccupation of some of the most eminent political thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition. David Lay Williams shares bold new perspectives on the writings and ideas of Plato, Jesus, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. He shows how they describe economic inequality as a source of political instability and a corrupter of character and soul, and how they view unchecked inequality as a threat to their most cherished values, such as justice, faith, civic harmony, peace, democracy, and freedom. Williams draws invaluable insights into the societal problems generated by what Plato called "the greatest of all plagues," and examines the solutions employed through the centuries. An eye-opening work of intellectual history, The Greatest of All Plagues recovers a forgotten past for some of the most timeless books in the Western canon, revealing how economic inequality has been a paramount problem throughout the history of political thought.

An important new examination of Islamic themes in the art of Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer's depictions of Muslim figures and subjects are considered by many to be among his most perplexing images. This confusion arises from the assumption that the artist and his northern European contemporaries regarded the Muslim Levant as an exotic faraway land inhabited by hostile adversaries, not a region of neighboring empires affiliated through political and mercantile networks. Susan Dackerman casts Dürer's art in an entirely new light, focusing on prints that portray cooperation between the Muslim and Christian worlds rather than conflict and war, enabling us to better understand early modern Europe through its visual culture. In this beautifully illustrated book, Dackerman provides new readings of three of the artist's most enigmatic print projects--Sea Monster, Knots, and Landscape with Cannon--situating them within historical contexts that reflect productive collaborations between Christendom and Islam, from the artistic and commercial to the ideological and political. Dackerman notes how Gutenberg's development of printing shares an inextricable relationship to the 1453 Ottoman siege of Constantinople. While Gutenberg's workshop produced a call to crusade and other publications antagonistic to the Muslim East, Dürer's prints, she shows, instead emphasize instances of affiliation between Christendom and Islam. A breathtaking work of scholarship, Dürer's Knots shows how the artist's prints of Muslim subjects give expression to the interconnectedness of Christian Europe and the Islamic East.

The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free marketsOriginally published in 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America's founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith's ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention.Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith's original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher.Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith's America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

A world-renowned physicist seeks gravity's true nature and finds wisdom in embracing its force in her life Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth's pull. And as a physicist, discovering new sides to gravity's irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein's general theory of relativity. In The Beauty of Falling, de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity, to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life's pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics. While many of us presume to know gravity quite well, the brightest scientists in history have yet to fully answer the simple question: what exactly is gravity? De Rham reveals how great minds--from Newton and Einstein to Stephen Hawking, Andrea Ghez, and Roger Penrose--led her to the edge of knowledge about this fundamental force. She found hints of a hidden side to gravity at the particle level where Einstein's theory breaks down, leading her to develop a new theory of "massive gravity." De Rham shares how her life's path turned from a precipitous fall to an exquisite flight toward the discovery of something entirely new about our surprising, gravity-driven universe.

How the specter of climate has been used to explain history since antiquity Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate traces the history of this idea and its pervasive influence over how we interpret world events and make sense of the human condition, from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations to the afflictions of the modern psyche. Taking readers from the time of Hippocrates to the unfolding crisis of global warming today, David Livingstone reveals how climate has been critically implicated in the politics of imperial control and race relations; been used to explain industrial development, market performance, and economic breakdown; and served as a bellwether for national character and cultural collapse. He examines how climate has been put forward as an explanation for warfare and civil conflict, and how it has been identified as a critical factor in bodily disorders and acute psychosis. A panoramic work of scholarship, The Empire of Climate maps the tangled histories of an idea that has haunted our collective imagination for centuries, shedding critical light on the notion that everything from the wealth of nations to the human mind itself is subject to climate's imperial rule.

Timely and provocative reflections on the future of the wild in an increasingly human world The Heart of the Wild brings together some of today's leading scientists, humanists, and nature writers to offer a thought-provoking meditation on the urgency of learning about and experiencing our wild places in an age of rapidly expanding human impacts. These engaging essays present nuanced and often surprising perspectives on the meaning and value of "wildness" amid the realities of the Anthropocene. They consider the trends and forces--from the cultural and conceptual to the ecological and technological--that are transforming our relationship with the natural world and sometimes seem only to be pulling us farther away from wild places and species with each passing day. The contributors make impassioned defenses of naturalism, natural history, and nature education in helping us to rediscover a love for the wild at a time when our connections with it have frayed or been lost altogether. Charting a new path forward in an era of ecological uncertainty, The Heart of the Wild reframes our understanding of nature and our responsibility to learn from and sustain it as the human footprint sinks ever deeper into the landscapes around us. With contributions by Bill Adams, Joel Berger, Susan Clayton, Eileen Crist, Martha L. Crump, Thomas Lowe Fleischner, Harry W. Greene, Hal Herzog, Jonathan B. Losos, Emma Marris, Ben A. Minteer, Kathleen Dean Moore, Gary Paul Nabhan, Peter H. Raven, Christopher J. Schell, Richard Shine, and Kyle Whyte.

A kaleidoscopic history of how the 1960s and 1970s changed London foreverWaterloo Sunrise is a panoramic and multifaceted account of modern London during the transformative years of the sixties and seventies, when a city still bearing the scars of war emerged as a vibrant yet divided metropolis. John Davis paints lively and colorful portraits of life in the British capital, covering topics as varied as the rise and fall of boutique fashion, Soho and the sex trade, eating out in London, cabbies and tourists, gentrification, conservation, suburbia and the welfare state.With vivid and immersive scene-setting, Davis traces how 'swinging London' captured the world's attention in the mid-sixties, discarding postwar austerity as it built a global reputation for youthful confidence and innovative music and fashion. He charts the slow erosion of mid-sixties optimism, showing how a newly prosperous city grappled with problems of deindustrialisation, inner-city blight and racial friction. Davis reveals how London underwent a complex evolution that reflected an underlying tension between majority affluence and minority deprivation. He argues that the London that had taken shape by the time of Margaret Thatcher's election as prime minister in 1979 already displayed many of the features that would come to be associated with 'Thatcher's Britain' of the eighties.Monumental in scope, Waterloo Sunrise draws on a wealth of archival evidence to provide an evocative, engrossing account of Britain's ever-evolving capital city.

A fresh and original introduction to the Odyssey--and how it continues to shape literature, film, art and even the ways we make sense of our lives Reading the Odyssey is an introduction to Homer's masterpiece like no other. It combines a cultural and intellectual history of the epic with an in-depth exploration of its unique and influential narrative structure and the ways it continues to inform issues of identity, meaning and experience. Reading the Odyssey begins with a broad history of the epic's reception and interpretation, its place in cultural and intellectual history and its influence today on literature, film and art. After introducing the literary form of the Odyssey, the book turns to its main focus: the layered narrative that lies at the heart of the poem. Taking readers on a tour of the epic, Jonas Grethlein shows the nuanced ways the Odyssey uses a wide variety of narrative forms and functions. At the same time, he highlights how we all rely on narratives, first used by Homer, to form identities, forge communities and make sense of our lives. The result is a compelling guide to the Odyssey that demonstrates why it continues to speak so powerfully to so many readers today.

Fifty easy-to-deploy active learning exercises for teaching academic writing in any field The Pocket Instructor: Writing offers fifty practical exercises for teaching students the core elements of successful academic writing. The exercises--created by faculty from a broad range of disciplines and institutions--are organized along the arc of a writing project, from brainstorming and asking analytical questions to drafting, revising, and sharing work with audiences outside traditional academia. They present students with engaging intellectual challenges to work through together, arriving at generalizable lessons that transfer well across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students will learn to articulate a thoughtful question, develop a persuasive thesis, analyze complex evidence, and engage responsibly with sources. The Pocket Instructor: Writing offers teachers concrete ideas about how to cultivate habits of radical revision and create a classroom community with an ethos of trust where students learn to give meaningful feedback. Written for both novice and veteran instructors, this essential guide will benefit faculty in any field who hope to improve student writing in their courses. Key features: - Exercises by experienced faculty from a wide range of disciplines and institutions- Step-by-step instructions with instructor insights for each exercise- A "Writing Lexicon" for terms such as motive, thesis, analysis, evidence, and method- Guidance for avoiding plagiarism- Index and cross-references to aid in course planning

Fifty easy-to-deploy active learning exercises for teaching academic writing in any field The Pocket Instructor: Writing offers fifty practical exercises for teaching students the core elements of successful academic writing. The exercises--created by faculty from a broad range of disciplines and institutions--are organized along the arc of a writing project, from brainstorming and asking analytical questions to drafting, revising, and sharing work with audiences outside traditional academia. They present students with engaging intellectual challenges to work through together, arriving at generalizable lessons that transfer well across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students will learn to articulate a thoughtful question, develop a persuasive thesis, analyze complex evidence, and engage responsibly with sources. The Pocket Instructor: Writing offers teachers concrete ideas about how to cultivate habits of radical revision and create a classroom community with an ethos of trust where students learn to give meaningful feedback. Written for both novice and veteran instructors, this essential guide will benefit faculty in any field who hope to improve student writing in their courses. Key features: - Exercises by experienced faculty from a wide range of disciplines and institutions- Step-by-step instructions with instructor insights for each exercise- A "Writing Lexicon" for terms such as motive, thesis, analysis, evidence, and method- Guidance for avoiding plagiarism- Index and cross-references to aid in course planning

"When we think of animal sound we tend to think about birds or other highly sonic animals. However, scientists are learning that a much wider range of animals, and even plants, use sound, and they are figuring this out with the help of AI and other digital technologies. This book tells the stories of scientists who are using these digital technologies to decode the hidden world of nonhuman sound. Bakker shows how digital technology, so often associated with our alienation from nature, is offering an opportunity to listen to plants and animals in powerful new ways, changing our understanding of nonhuman communication and reviving our connection to the natural world. Beautifully written and deeply researched, the book is a story of discovery. Early chapters describe early 20th-century discoveries about whale noise, while subsequent chapters describe how digital technologies have revealed the surprising sonic worlds of elephants, turtles, corals, and plants. Through these stories we learn that many more plants and animals can make and sense sound and that these sounds are linked to complex communication and social behavior. But, as we learn, this science is not merely about listening to nature in new ways; it also creates new possibilities for both conservation and interspecies communication. In the book's later chapters, Bakker describes fascinating breakthroughs -- aided by robotics and AI -- that may enable people to communicate with other species. She ends the book by exploring how conservationists are using bioacoustics to protect endangered species, address the threat of noise pollution, and create innovative responses to biodiversity loss and climate change. Throughout the book, Bakker describes the research of a diverse range of scientists, with a particular emphasis on female and indigenous scientists. And while she ultimately champions the potential of digital technology, she is not naive to its limitations and is careful throughout to highlight the limits of technology. Ultimately, we see that bioacoustics, aided by digital tech, offers humanity a powerful new window into the nonhuman world"--

"An intellectual history of the late Roman Republic-and the senators who fought both scholarly debates and a civil war. In The Roman Republic of Letters, Katharina Volk explores a fascinating chapter of intellectual history, focusing on the literary senators of the mid-first century BCE who came to blows over the future of Rome even as they debated philosophy, history, political theory, linguistics, science, and religion. It was a period of intense cultural flourishing and extreme political unrest-and the agents of each were very often the same people. Members of the senatorial class, including Cicero, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Cato, Varro, and Nigidius Figulus, contributed greatly to the development of Roman scholarship and engaged in a lively and often polemical exchange with one another. These men were also crucially involved in the tumultuous events that brought about the collapse of the Republic, and they ended up on opposite sides in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey in the early 40s. Volk treats the intellectual and political activities of these "senator scholars" as two sides of the same coin, exploring how scholarship and statesmanship mutually informed one another-and how the acquisition, organization, and diffusion of knowledge was bound up with the question of what it meant to be a Roman in a time of crisis. By revealing how first-century Rome's remarkable "republic of letters" was connected to the fight over the actual res publica, Volk's riveting account captures the complexity of this pivotal period"--

James Beard Foundation Book Award Nominee - Winner of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Book Award, Association of Black Sociologists - Winner of the C. Wright Mills Award, the Society for the Study of Social Problems A vivid portrait of African American life in today's urban South that uses food to explore the complex interactions of race and class Getting Something to Eat in Jackson uses food--what people eat and how--to explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. examines how "foodways"--food availability, choice, and consumption--vary greatly between classes of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi, and how this reflects and shapes their very different experiences of a shared racial identity. Ewoodzie spent more than a year following a group of socioeconomically diverse African Americans--from upper-middle-class patrons of the city's fine-dining restaurants to men experiencing homelessness who must organize their days around the schedules of soup kitchens. Ewoodzie goes food shopping, cooks, and eats with a young mother living in poverty and a grandmother working two jobs. He works in a Black-owned BBQ restaurant, and he meets a man who decides to become a vegan for health reasons but who must drive across town to get tofu and quinoa. Ewoodzie also learns about how soul food is changing and why it is no longer a staple survival food. Throughout, he shows how food choices influence, and are influenced by, the racial and class identities of Black Jacksonians. By tracing these contemporary African American foodways, Getting Something to Eat in Jackson offers new insights into the lives of Black Southerners and helps challenge the persistent homogenization of blackness in American life.

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas. In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea. She focuses on Chaozhou, a region in the great maritime province of Guangdong, whose people shared a repertoire of ritual, cultural, and economic practices. Macauley traces how Chaozhouese at home and abroad reaped many of the benefits of an overseas colonial system without establishing formal governing authority. Their power was sustained instead through a mosaic of familial, fraternal, and commercial relationships spread across the ports of Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Swatow. The picture that emerges is not one of Chinese divergence from European modernity but rather of a convergence in colonial sites that were critical to modern development and accelerating levels of capital accumulation. A magisterial work of scholarship, Distant Shores reveals how the transoceanic migration of Chaozhouese laborers and merchants across a far-flung maritime world linked the Chinese homeland to an ever-expanding frontier of settlement and economic extraction.

"A look into the Golden Age of African merchants at the end of the nineteenth century, through case studies in Lagos"--

A fun, pocket-sized A-Z treasury about sharks, featuring fascinating, little-known facts and captivating illustrations Sharkpedia is an entertaining and enlightening celebration of sharks featuring close to 100 entries, based on the latest knowledge and enriched by original illustrations. Avoiding tired factoids, shark authority Daniel Abel gives new bite to essential information about sharks, including their adaptations as top predators, 450-million-year evolution, behavioral complexity, ecological importance, existential threats, and often sensationalized appearances in popular culture, from Jaws to Shark Week. The notion that sharks are insatiable killing machines is a toothless myth--yet the fear of shark attacks still holds onto many people like a set of locked jaws. Sharkpedia reveals that sharks are much less to be feared--and much more interesting, complicated, and important--than many realize. Filled with compelling stories, Sharkpedia debunks shark myths (for example, that sharks are large and coastal when in fact most are small and inhabit the deep sea), describes their lives (where and how long they live, how many offspring they have, what they eat, and how their bodies function), introduces a variety of iconic and obscure species (such as the Happy Eddie Shyshark), explores our love/hate relationship with sharks, and much more. With charming drawings by leading shark artist Marc Dando, Sharkpedia is a scientific and cultural treasure trove that will leave you with new insights about these remarkable animals. Dive in!Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

We can repair our democracy by rebuilding the mechanisms that power it What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to different constituencies? What's the least distorted way to draw voting districts? Not the way we do things now. Democracy is mathematical to its very foundations. Yet most of the methods in use are a historical grab bag of the shortsighted, the cynical, the innumerate, and the outright discriminatory. Making Democracy Count sheds new light on our electoral systems, revealing how a deeper understanding of the mathematics is the key to creating civic infrastructure that works for everyone. In this timely guide, Ismar Volic empowers us to use mathematical thinking as an objective, nonpartisan framework that rises above the noise and rancor of today's divided public square. Examining our representative democracy using powerful clarifying concepts, we see why our current voting system stifles political diversity, why the size of the House of Representatives contributes to its paralysis, why gerrymandering is a sinister instrument that entrenches partisanship and disenfranchisement, and why we must rethink the Electoral College--and we also understand what can work better and why. Volic also discusses the legal and constitutional practicalities involved and proposes a road map for repairing the mathematical structures that undergird representative government. Making Democracy Count gives us the concrete knowledge and the confidence to advocate for a more just, equitable, and inclusive democracy.

An English-language edition of selected correspondence and papers of Albert Einstein A translation of selected non-English texts included in Volume 17 is available in paperback. Since this supplementary paperback includes only select portions of Volume 17, it is not recommended for purchase without the main volume. Every document in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein appears in the language in which it was written, and this supplementary paperback volume presents the English translations of select portions of non-English materials in Volume 17. This translation does not include notes or annotations of the documentary volume and is not intended for use without the original language documentary edition, which provides the extensive editorial commentary necessary for a full historical and scientific understanding of the documents.

An illustrated mini-encyclopedia about the weird and wonderful world of lichens Lichenpedia is a delightfully entertaining and beautifully illustrated A-Z treasury about the strange, obscure, and remarkable world of lichens, from their unique and essential roles in nature and the ways they are used in dyeing, brewing, and drug-making--to how they have inspired writers and artists, from Henry David Thoreau to modern painters. In 100 brief entries written in a vivid, lively style, Kay Hurley introduces key aspects of lichen biology, environmental roles, emerging uses, scientific history, and myth. She describes the variety of forms that lichens take, from leafy to filamentous to things reminiscent of skin diseases, with imaginative names like witch's hair. She explains the surprising ways that birds and beasts--from reindeer and moose down to tiny tardigrades--use lichens, and how lichens survive in extreme environments, from deserts to Antarctica to outer space. Hurley also introduces some of the innovators who have advanced the knowledge of lichens, from the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus to today's professional lichenologists. With charming drawings by Susan Adele Edwards, Lichenpedia promises to put you in touch with the natural world in a new way by opening your eyes to these vital organisms, which are all around us, hidden in plain sight.Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

A sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn't it always been so? When evolutionary science came along, it rubber-stamped this venerable division of labor: mammalian males evolved to compete for status and mates, while females were purpose-built to gestate, suckle, and otherwise nurture the victors' offspring. But come the twenty-first century, increasing numbers of men are tending babies, sometimes right from birth. How can this be happening? Puzzled and dazzled by the tender expertise of new fathers around the world--several in her own family--celebrated evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be "normal." In Father Time, Hrdy draws on a wealth of research to argue that this ongoing transformation in men is not only cultural, but profoundly biological. Men in prolonged intimate contact with babies exhibit responses nearly identical to those in the bodies and brains of mothers. They develop caring potential few realized men possessed. In her quest to explain how men came to nurture babies, Hrdy travels back through millions of years of human, primate, and mammalian evolution, then back further still to the earliest vertebrates--all while taking into account recent economic and social trends and technological innovations and incorporating new findings from neuroscience, genetics, endocrinology, and more. The result is a masterful synthesis of evolutionary and historical perspectives that expands our understanding of what it means to be a man--and what the implications might be for society and our species.

"This book is a historical consideration of how poor posture became a dreaded pathology in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. It opens with the "outbreak" of the poor posture epidemic, which began with turn-of-the-century paleoanthropologists: If upright posture was the first of all attributes that separated human from beasts - and importantly a precondition for the development of intellect and speech - what did it mean that a majority of Americans slouched? By World War I, public health officials claimed that 80% of Americans suffered from postural abnormalities. Panic spread, setting into motion initiatives intended to stem the slouching epidemic, as schoolteachers, shoe companies, clothing manufacturers, public health officials, medical professionals, and the popular press exhorted the public toward detection. Wellness programs stigmatized disability while also encouraging the belief that health and ableness could be purchased through consumer goods. What makes this epidemic unique is that, in the absence of a communicable contagion, it was largely driven by a cultural intolerance of disabled bodies, with notions of "ableness" taking hold for much of the twentieth century. The author traces this history through its consequential demise, as social movements of the 1960s prompted people to push back against invasive and discriminatory standards. Large-scale physical fitness assessments designed to weed out defective bodies relied on compliant participants, and the Civil Rights and Women's Movement, as well as the anti-Vietnam war protests and Disability Rights Movements eventually halted that supply, and in the 1990s a public outcry destroyed many of the archives and materials collected. Nevertheless, anxiety over posture persists to this day"--

An inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world-one small change at a time"e;A book as urgent as the moment that produced it."e;-Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism SchoolLong before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father's premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother's experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

How Social Security has shaped American politics-and why it faces insolvencySince its establishment, Social Security has become the financial linchpin of American retirement. Yet demographic trends-longer lifespans and declining birthrates-mean that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Without reforms, 83 million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of 20 percent in 2034. How did we get here and what is the solution? In Fixing Social Security, R. Douglas Arnold explores the historical role that Social Security has played in American politics, why Congress has done nothing to fix its insolvency problem for three decades, and what legislators can do to save it.What options do legislators have as the program nears the precipice? They can raise taxes, as they did in 1977, cut benefits, as they did in 1983, or reinvent the program, as they attempted in 2005. Unfortunately, every option would impose costs, and legislators are reluctant to act, fearing electoral retribution. Arnold investigates why politicians designed the system as they did and how between 1935 and 1983 they allocated-and reallocated-costs and benefits among workers, employers, and beneficiaries. He also examines public support for the program, and why Democratic and Republican representatives, once political allies in expanding Social Security, have become so deeply polarized about fixing it.As Social Security edges closer to crisis, Fixing Social Security offers a comprehensive analysis of the political fault lines and a fresh look at what can be done-before it is too late.

A revealing look at the covert and institutionalized racism lurking in the congressional workplace Racism continues to infuse Congress's daily practice of lawmaking and shape who obtains congressional employment. In this timely and provocative book, James Jones reveals how and why many who work there call Congress the "Last Plantation." He shows that even as the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s and anti-discrimination laws were implemented across the nation, Congress remained exempt from federal workplace protections for decades. These exemptions institutionalized inequality in the congressional workplace well into the twenty-first century. Combining groundbreaking research and compelling firsthand accounts from scores of congressional staffers, Jones uncovers the hidden dynamics of power, privilege, and resistance in Congress. He reveals how failures of racial representation among congressional staffers reverberate throughout the American political system and demonstrates how the absence of diverse perspectives hamper the creation of just legislation. Centering the experiences of Black workers within this complex landscape, he provides valuable insights into the problems they face, the barriers that hinder their progress, and the ways they contest entrenched inequality. A must-read for anyone concerned about social justice and the future of our democracy, The Last Plantation exposes the mechanisms that perpetuate racial inequality in the halls of Congress and challenges us to confront and transform this unequal workplace that shapes our politics and society.

A concise illustrated history of one of art's most important and elusive elements Over the millennia, humans have used pigments to decorate, narrate, and instruct. Charred bone, ground earth, stones, bugs, and blood were the first pigments. New pigments were manufactured by simple processes such as corrosion and calcination until the Industrial Revolution introduced colors outside the spectrum of the natural world. Pigments brings together leading art historians and conservators to trace the history of the materials used to create color and their invention across diverse cultures and time periods. This richly illustrated book features incisive historical essays and case studies that shed light on the many forms of pigments--the organic and inorganic; the edible and the toxic; and those that are more precious than gold. It shows how pigments were as central to the earliest artforms and global trade networks as they are to commerce, ornamentation, and artistic expression today. The book reveals the innate instability and mutability of most pigments and discusses how few artworks or objects look as they did when they were first created. From cave paintings to contemporary art, Pigments demonstrates how a material understanding of color opens new perspectives on visual culture and the history of art.

Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden's National Book Award-winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readers The Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden's most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles's shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences--"Bucolics" and "Horae Canonicae"--that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden's collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work. As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden's collection "is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged." Describing the book's formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden's most central poetic statements--a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.

A definitive new history of the origins, evolution, and scope of the ancient Greek city-state The Greek polis, or city-state, was a resilient and adaptable political institution founded on the principles of citizenship, freedom, and equality. Emerging around 650 BCE and enduring to 350 CE, it offered a means for collaboration among fellow city-states and social bargaining between a community and its elites--but at what cost? Polis proposes a panoramic account of the ancient Greek city-state, its diverse forms, and enduring characteristics over the span of a millennium. In this landmark book, John Ma provides a new history of the polis, charting its spread and development into a common denominator for hundreds of communities from the Black Sea to North Africa, and from the Near East to Italy. He explores its remarkable achievements as a political form offering community, autonomy, prosperity, public goods, and spaces of social justice for its members. He also reminds us that behind the successes of civic ideology and institutions lie entanglements with domination, empire, and enslavement. Ma's sweeping and multifaceted narrative draws widely on a rich store of historical evidence while weighing in on lively scholarly debates and offering new readings of Aristotle as the great theoretician of the polis. A monumental work of scholarship, Polis transforms our understanding of antiquity while challenging us to grapple with the moral legacy of an idea whose very success centered on the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others.