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 How We See the Sky: A Naked-Eye Tour of Day and Night
Gazing up at the heavens from our backyards or a nearby field, most of us see an undifferentiated mess of stars—if, that is, we can see anything at all through the glow of light pollution. Today’s casual observer knows far less about the sky than did our ancestors, who depended on the sun and the moon to tell them the... | | The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments
Most of the time, we believe our daily lives to be governed by structures determined from above: laws that dictate our behavior, companies that pay our wages, even climate patterns that determine what we eat or where we live. In contrast, social organization is often a feature of local organization. While those forces may seem beyond... | | Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreak in Music Making
David Rowell is a professional journalist and an impassioned amateur musician. He’s spent decades behind a drum kit, pondering the musical relationship between equipment and emotion. In Wherever the Sound Takes You, he explores the essence of music’s meaning with a vast spectrum of players, trying to understand... |
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Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution
Nothing is as elemental, as essential to human life, as the air we breathe. Yet around the world, in rich countries and poor ones, it is quietly poisoning us.
Air pollution prematurely kills seven million people every year, including more than one hundred thousand Americans. It is strongly linked to... | | Catastrophizing: Materialism and the Making of Disaster
When we catastrophize, we think the worst. We make too much of too little, or something of nothing. Yet what looks simply like a bad habit, Gerard Passannante argues, was also a spur to some of the daring conceptual innovations and feats of imagination that defined the intellectual and cultural history of the early modern... | | |
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Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success
Most economists would agree that a thriving economy is synonymous with GDP growth. The more we produce and consume, the higher our living standard and the more resources available to the public. This means that our current era, in which growth has slowed substantially from its postwar highs, has raised alarm bells. But should it?... | | | | Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution since 1929
The music industry’s ongoing battle against digital piracy is just the latest skirmish in a long conflict over who has the right to distribute music. Starting with music publishers’ efforts to stamp out bootleg compilations of lyric sheets in 1929, Barry Kernfeld’s Pop Song Piracy details nearly a... |
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Women Drug Traffickers: Mules, Bosses, and Organized Crime (Diálogos Series)
In the flow of drugs to the United States from Latin America, women have always played key roles as bosses, business partners, money launderers, confidantes, and couriersâwork rarely acknowledged. Elaine Carey’s study of women in the drug trade offers a new understanding of this intriguing subject, from women drug smugglers in the... | | How to Lie with MapsOriginally published to wide acclaim, this lively, cleverly illustrated essay on the use and abuse of maps teaches us how to evaluate maps critically and promotes a healthy skepticism about these easy-to-manipulate models of reality. Monmonier shows that, despite their immense value, maps lie. In fact, they must.
| | Beyond Nature and Culture
Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and... |
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