China and the vocation of history in the Twentieth Century

a personal memoir

Frederick Mote, one of the twentieth century's most prominent Sinologists, has written a historian's memoir that uses observation and personal experiences to understand the intellectual and social transformation of China. Mote's thought-provoking narrative distills his reflections on modern China and details change ...

Climate change justice

Climate change and justice are so closely associated that many people take it for granted that a global climate treaty should - indeed, must - directly address both issues together. But, in fact, this would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on ...

Awakening giants, feet of clay

assessing the economic rise of China and India

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention - and justifiably so. Together, the two countries account for one-fifth of the global economy and are projected to represent a full third of the world's income by 2025. Yet ...

Portfolio risk analysis

Portfolio risk forecasting has been and continues to be an active research field for both academics and practitioners. Almost all institutional investment management firms use quantitative models for their portfolio forecasting, and researchers have explored models' econometric foundations, relative performance, and implications for capital market ...

New Faces, New Voices

the Hispanic Electorate in America

'This innovative book deals with a large and understudied area: Latino political behavior. Its argument regarding the diversity of the Latino community is important and the authors' attention to generational differences in the community is a rarity. Significant and original, this book covers more ground ...

Empire for liberty

a history of America Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowtitz

How could the United States, a nation founded on the principles of liberty and equality, have produced Abu Ghraib, torture memos, Plamegate, and warrantless wiretaps? Did America set out to become an empire? And if so, how has it reconciled its imperialism - and in some ...

Not for profit

why democracy needs the humanities

In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have rightly been seen as essential for creating competent ...

Japan transformed

political change and economic restructuring

With little domestic fanfare and even less attention internationally, Japan has been reinventing itself since the 1990s, dramatically changing its political economy, from one managed by regulations to one with a neoliberal orientation. Rebuilding from the economic misfortunes of its recent past, the country retains ...

The company of strangers

a natural history of economic life

"The Company of Strangers" shows us the remarkable strangeness, and fragility, of our everyday lives. This completely revised and updated edition includes a new chapter analyzing how the rise and fall of social trust explain the unsustainable boom in the global economy over the past ...

Early Modern jewry

a new cultural history

"Early Modern Jewry" boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest ...

Balancing the banks

global lessons from the financial crisis

The financial crisis that began in 2007 in the United States swept the world, producing substantial bank failures and forcing unprecedented state aid for the crippled global financial system. Bringing together three leading financial economists to provide an international perspective, "Balancing the Banks" draws critical ...

The known, the unknown, and the unknowable in financial risk management

measurement and theory advancing practice

Eds. Francis X. Diebold, Neil A. Doherty, Richard J. Herring. A clear understanding of what we know, don't know, and can't know should guide any reasonable approach to managing financial risk, yet the most widely used measure in finance today - Value at Risk ...

Labor markets and business cycles

"Labor Markets and Business Cycles" integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The ...

Reputation and power

organizational image and pharmaceutical regulation at the FDA

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the most powerful regulatory agency in the world. How did the FDA become so influential? And how exactly does it wield its extraordinary power? "Reputation and Power" traces the history of FDA regulation of pharmaceuticals, revealing how ...

Working together

collective action, the commons, and multiple methods in practice

Advances in the social sciences have emerged through a variety of research methods: field-based research, laboratory and field experiments, and agent-based models. However, which research method or approach is best suited to a particular inquiry is frequently debated and discussed. "Working Together" examines how different ...

Economic sociology

a systematic inquiry

The sociological study of economic activity has witnessed a significant resurgence. Recent texts have chronicled economic sociology's nineteenth-century origins while pointing to the importance of context and power in economic life, yet the field lacks a clear understanding of the role that concepts at ...

Understanding the process of economic change

In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of ...

Prudes, perverts, and tyrants

Plato's Gorgias and the politics of shame

In recent years, most political theorists have agreed that shame shouldn't play any role in democratic politics because it threatens the mutual respect necessary for participation and deliberation. But Christina Tarnopolsky argues that not every kind of shame hurts democracy. In fact, she makes ...

The zodiac of Paris

how an improbable controversy over an Ancient Egyptian artifact provoked a modern debate between religion and science

The Dendera zodiac - an ancient bas-relief temple ceiling adorned with mysterious symbols of the stars and planets - was first discovered by the French during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, and quickly provoked a controversy between scientists and theologians. Brought to Paris in 1821 and ultimately ...

The symptom and the subject

the emergence of the physical body in Ancient Greece

"The Symptom and the Subject" takes an in-depth look at how the physical body first emerged in the West as both an object of knowledge and a mysterious part of the self. Beginning with Homer, moving through classical-era medical treatises, and closing with studies of ...

Rational theory of international politics

the logic of competition and cooperation

Within the realist school of international relations, a prevailing view holds that the anarchic structure of the international system invariably forces the great powers to seek security at one another's expense, dooming even peaceful nations to an unrelenting struggle for power and dominance. "Rational ...

Fault lines

how hidden fractures still threaten the world economy

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the ...