Bøger udgivet af Northwestern University Press

From the primordial soup to meteorite impact zones, the Manhattan Project to the latest research, this book is the first full history of the scientists who strive to explain the genesis of life. How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervor, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life's genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way, the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life's family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life's beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

Through interviews, close readings, and archival research, Bettina Judd draws on the fields of affect studies and Black studies to analyze the creative processes and contributions of Black women artists.

Originally pubished: New York: Mysterious Press, 2006.

Patricia Smith's unrivaled dexterity with dramatic monologue and poetic form reanimates these countenances, staring back from such yesterdays, and the stories they may have told. This is one of American literature's finest wordsmiths doing what she does best--unreeling history to find its fierce and formidable lyric.

"The latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The Shared World imagines motherhood-with and without children-and the common space between families, lovers, and strangers"--

Sailor, painter, doctor, lawyer, polyglot, and writer, Dmitri Bystrolyotov (1901-75) led a life that might seem far-fetched for a spy novel, yet here the truth is stranger than fiction. The result of a thirty-five-year journey that started with a private meeting between the author and Bystrolyotov in 1973 Moscow and continued through the author's subsequent research in international archives, Stalin's Romeo Spy: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB's Most Daring Operative pieces together a life lived in the shadows of the twentieth century's biggest events. One of the "Great Illegals," a team of outstanding Soviet spies operating in Western countries between the world wars, Bystrolyotov was mthe response to Sidney Reilly, the British prototype for James Bond. A dashing man, his modus operandi was the seduction of women-among them a French embassy employee, a German countess, the wife of a British official, and a Gestapo officer-which enabled Stalin to look into diplomatic pouches of many European countries. Risking his life, Bystrolyotov also stole military secrets from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. A man of extraordinary physical courage, he twice crossed the Sahara Desert and the jungles of Congo. But his success as a spy didn't save him from Stalin's purges, at the height of which he was arrested and tortured until he falsely confessed to selling out to the enemy. Sentenced to twenty years of hard labor in the Gulag, Bystrolyotov risked more severe punishment by documenting the regime's crimes against humanity in unpublished and suppressed memoirs that rival those of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The first full-length biography in any language, at once a real-life spy thriller, a drama of desire, and a prison memoir, Stalin's Romeo Spy is the true account of a flawed yet extraordinary man.

Arguing with Tradition is the first book to explore language and interaction within a contemporary Native American legal system. Grounded in Justin Richland's extensive field research on the Hopi Indian Nation of northeastern Arizona--on whose appellate court he now serves as Justice Pro Tempore--this innovative work explains how Hopi notions of tradition and culture shape and are shaped by the processes of Hopi jurisprudence. Like many indigenous legal institutions across North America, the Hopi Tribal Court was created in the image of Anglo-American-style law. But Richland shows that in recent years, Hopi jurists and litigants have called for their courts to develop a jurisprudence that better reflects Hopi culture and traditions. Providing unprecedented insights into the Hopi and English courtroom interactions through which this conflict plays out, Richland argues that tensions between the language of Anglo-style law and Hopi tradition both drive Hopi jurisprudence and make it unique. Ultimately, Richland's analyses of the language of Hopi law offer a fresh approach to the cultural politics that influence indigenous legal and governmental practices worldwide.

India's folklore and classical literature abound with stories of parents who sacrifice their children. In The Hungry God, David Shulman examines one set of such tales - Hindu texts that bear similarities to the biblical aqedah, the account of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. In all the stories that Shulman explores, the sacrifice proceeds from a divine command and has no utilitarian explanation or rationale. Both the biblical and Indian aqedah texts are central to their cultures: later texts resume the narrative, rework its premises, and develop its paradigmatic character so that it comes to function as a "root metaphor" for its civilization. Shulman traces this history by unraveling the cumulative and sometimes conflicting meanings of the Hindu aqedah texts. Three Hindu tales figure most prominently in The Hungry God. First, there is the South Indian story of Ciruttontar (Siriyala), who kills and cooks his son to feast the god Siva. Shulman traces the development of this story through the medieval Telugu sources, which are often openly hostile to both the god and his murderous devotee. He then turns to the story of Sunahsepa, nearly slaughtered by his cruel father. Shulman studies this most famous Indian tale of child sacrifice in both its ancient Vedic form and in later epic and mythological versions. The third tale is that of Suka, who learns yoga from his father and then - to his father's infinite grief - disappears into the Absolute. Throughout, Shulman is sensitive to the tones and overtones of each text. In his final chapter he contrasts the Hindu tales of child sacrifice and their counterparts in Hebrew and Greek. At the heart of The Hungry God lies a series of fundamentalquestions: Why does God make such horrific demands on those he loves? Why do his followers obey? Is the meeting between human beings and their God inherently pregnant with ultimate pain?

The only quantitative deforestation study to focus on one country, this case analysis of the Philippines since 1946 yields more concrete data than previous cross-national studies. David Kummer's close examination of the interactions among political, economic, and cultural factors and their environmental consequences sheds light on similar situations in other countries.

Research physicians face intractable dilemmas when they consider introducing new medical procedures. Innovations carry the promise of preventing or curing life-threatening diseases, but they can also lead to injury or even death. How have clinical scientists made high-stakes decisions about undertaking human tests of new medical treatments? In "Lesser Harms," Sydney Halpern explores this issue as she examines vaccine trials in America during the early and mid-twentieth century. Today's scientists follow federal guidelines for research on human subjects developed during the 1960s and 1970s. But long before these government regulations, medical investigators observed informal rules when conducting human research. They insisted that the dangers of natural disease should outweigh the risks of a medical intervention, and they struggled to accurately assess the relative hazards. Halpern explores this logic of risk in immunization controversies extending as far back as the eighteenth century. Then, focusing on the period between 1930 and 1960, she shows how research physicians and their sponsors debated the moral quandaries involved in moving vaccine use from the laboratory to the clinic. This probing work vividly describes the efforts of clinical investigators to balance the benefits and dangers of untested vaccines, to respond to popular sentiment about medical hazards, and to strategically present risk laden research to sponsors and the public. "Concise and extremely well-written. . . . A fascinating synthesis of sociology, history, and institutional theory."--Samuel C. Blackman, "Journal of the American Medical Association "

The first major piece of unpublished work by Leo Strauss to appear in more than thirty years, Leo Strauss On Plato's "Symposium" offers the public the unprecedented experience of encountering this renowned scholar as his students did. Given as a course in autumn 1959 under the title "Plato's Political Philosophy," at the University of Chicago, these transcripts previously had circulated in samizdat fashion, passed down from one generation of students to the next. They show Strauss at his best, in his subtle and sometimes indirect style of analysis, which has attracted almost as much commentary as has the content of his thought. Strauss presents a coherent and complete interpretation of the Symposium, proceeding by a meticulous reading from beginning to end. Operating on the once common hypothesis that commentary is an excellent method of expounding the truth, Strauss sheds light not only on the meaning of the dialogue and its place in the Platonic corpus, but also on a host of important topics, including the nature of eros and its place in the overall economy of human life; the perennial quarrel between poetry and philosophy, and the relation of both to piety, politics, and morality; the character of Socrates and the questions of his trial; and many other matters. As provocative as they were a half century ago, these important lectures will be welcomed by students of classics, philosophy, politics, psychology, and political philosophy.

One of the most popular and enduring legacies of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Project Head Start continues to support close to one million young children of low-income families annually by providing a range of developmental and educational services. Yet as Head Start reaches its fortieth anniversary, debates over the function and scope of this federal program persist. Although the program's importance is unquestioned across party lines, the direction of its future-whether to focus more on school readiness and literacy or to continue its holistic approach-remains a point of contention. Policymakers proposing to reform Head Start often invoke its origins to justify their position, but until now no comprehensive political history of the program has existed. Maris A. Vinovskis here provides an in-depth look at the nation's largest and best known-yet politically contested-early education program. The Birth of Head Start sets the record straight on the program's intended aims, documenting key decisions made during its formative years. It brings to light the previously neglected contributions of key participants, such as federal education officials and members of Congress, and offers the first sustained consideration of how politics and policymaking have shaped the program. This thorough and incisive book will be essential for policymakers and legislators interested in prekindergarten education, and it will inform future discussions on early intervention services for disadvantaged children.

Who were the first people to inhabit North America? Does the West Bank belong to the Arabs or the Jews? Why are racists so obsessed with origins? Is a seventh cousin still a cousin? Why do some societies name their children after dead ancestors? As Eviatar Zerubavel demonstrates in Time Maps, we cannot answer burning questions such as these without a deeper understanding of how we envision the past. In a pioneering attempt to map the structure of our collective memory, Zerubavel considers the cognitive patterns we use to organize the past in our minds and the mental strategies that help us string together unrelated events into coherent and meaningful narratives, as well as the social grammar of battles over conflicting interpretations of history. Drawing on fascinating examples that range from Hiroshima to the Holocaust, from Columbus to Lucy, and from ancient Egypt to the former Yugoslavia, Zerubavel shows how we construct historical origins; how we tie discontinuous events together into stories; how we link families and entire nations through genealogies; and how we separate distinct historical periods from one another through watersheds, such as the invention of fire or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most people think the Roman Empire ended in 476, even though it lasted another 977 years in Byzantium. Challenging such conventional wisdom, Time Maps will be must reading for anyone interested in how the history of our world takes shape.

Since the dawn of the republic, faith in social equality, religious freedom, and the right to engage in civic activism have constituted our national creed. In this bracing history, Kathleen D. McCarthy traces the evolution of these ideals, exploring the impact of philanthropy and volunteerism on America from 1700 to 1865. What results is a vital reevaluation of public life during the pivotal decades leading up to the Civil War. The market revolution, participatory democracy, and voluntary associations have all been closely linked since the birth of the United States. American Creed explores the relationships among these three institutions, showing how charities and reform associations forged partnerships with government, provided important safety valves for popular discontent, and sparked much-needed economic development. McCarthy also demonstrates how the idea of philanthropy became crucially wedded to social activism during the Jacksonian era. She explores how acts of volunteerism and charity became involved with the abolitionist movement, educational patronage, the struggle against racism, and female social justice campaigns. What resulted, she contends, were heated political battles over the extent to which women and African Americans would occupy the public stage. Tracing, then, the evolution of civil society and the pivotal role of philanthropy in the search for and exercise of political and economic power, this book will prove essential to anyone interested in American history and government.

In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.

As the globalization of financial markets continues, we urgently need to understand the crises that have plagued these markets and the policies best suited to preventing such crises in the future. In this book, a prominent group of economists and policymakers blend conceptual analysis and policy discussion in seven well-integrated papers, analyzing the nature of capital flows, alternative exchange-rate regimes, and the roles of international financial institutions. After a guided tour by the editor and a historical exploration, some of the world's leading theorists and policy analysts examine the benefits and pitfalls of capital movements and controls. In the second portion, papers examine the recent experiences of Argentina and Mexico, with Charles Calomiris--whose proposals for a new world financial architecture have elicited wide attention--contributing a response. The volume concludes with a roundtable discussion of the report of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission, in which the chair of the commission, Allan H. Meltzer, both comments on the report and responds to questions about it. The material presented here will become a standard reference for analysts, policymakers, and the interested general public. Contributors: Leonardo Auernheimer, Matthew Bishop, Michael D. Bordo, Charles Calomiris, Guillermo A. Calvo, Augustin Carstens, Michael P. Dooley, Pablo E. Guidotti, T. Britton Harris, John P. Lipsky, Guillermo Ortiz Martinez, Allan H. Meltzer, Andrew Powell, Rene Stulz, Carl E. Walsh

How can we effectively manage a so-called "renewable" resource--such as ocean fish--when we don't know how renewable it really is? In 1962, James A. Crutchfield and Arnold Zellner drew om extensive data from Pacific halibut fisheries to develop a dynamic and highly successful economic approach to solving this problem. While report on thier findings was published by the U.S. Department of the Interior, it had very limited distrubition and quickly went out of print, leaving an essential study unavailable even as the problems addressed began to seem more urgent.This book presents a complete reprint of Crutchfield and Zellner's pioneering study, together with a new introduction by the authors and four new papers by other scholars. These new studies cover the history of the Pacific halibut industry as well as the general and specific contributions of the original work--such as price-oriented conservation policy--to the fields of resource economics and management. The resulting volume integrates theory and practice in a clear, well-contextualized case study that will be important not just for environmental and resource economists, but also for leaders of industries dependent on any natural resource.

Part of every legend is true. Or so argues Jody Enders in this fascinating look at early French drama and the way it compels us to consider where the stage ends and where real life begins. This ambitious and bracing study explores fourteen tales of the theater that are at turns dark and dangerous, sexy and scandalous, humorous and frightening--stories that are nurtured by the confusion between truth and fiction, and imitation and enactment, until it becomes impossible to tell whether life is imitating art, or art is imitating life. Was a convicted criminal executed on stage during a beheading scene? Was an unfortunate actor driven insane while playing a madman? Did a theatrical enactment of a crucifixion result in a real one? Did an androgynous young man seduce a priest when portraying a female saint? Enders answers these and other questions while presenting a treasure trove of tales that have long seemed true but are actually medieval urban legends. On topics ranging through politics, religion, marriage, class, and law, these tales, Enders argues, do the cultural work of all urban legends: they disclose the hopes, fears, and anxieties of their tellers. Each one represents a medieval meditation created or dramatized by the theater with its power to blur the line between fiction and reality, engaging anyone who watches, performs, or is represented by it. Each one also raises pressing questions about the medieval and modern world on the eve of the Reformation, when Europe had never engaged more anxiously and fervently in the great debate about what was real, what was pretend, and what was pretense. Written with elegance and flair, and meticulously researched, Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends will interest scholars of medieval and Renaissance literature, history, theater, performance studies, and anyone curious about urban legends.

H. Jefferson Powell offers a powerful new approach to one of the central issues in American constitutional thinking today: the problem of constitutional law's historicity, or the many ways in which constitutional arguments and outcomes are shaped both by historical circumstances and by the political goals and commitments of various actors, including judges. The presence of such influences is often considered highly problematic: if constitutional law is political and historical through and through, then what differentiates it from politics per se, and what gives it integrity and coherence? Powell argues that constitutional theory has as its (sometimes hidden) agenda the ambition of showing how constitutional law can escape from history and politics, while much constitutional history seeks to identify an historically true meaning of the constitutional text that, once uncovered, can serve as a corrective to subsequent deviations from that truth. Combining history and theory, Powell analyzes a series of constitutional controversies from 1790 to 1944 to demonstrate that constitutional law from its very beginning has involved politically charged and ideologically divisive arguments. Nowhere in our past can one find the golden age of apolitical constitutional thinking that a great deal of contemporary scholarship seeks or presupposes. Viewed over time, American constitutional law is a history of political dispute couched in constitutional terms. Powell then takes his conclusions one step further, claiming that it is precisely this historical tradition of argument that has given American constitutional law a remarkable coherence and integrity over time. No matter what the particular political disputes of the day might be, constitutional argument has provided a shared language through which our political community has been able to fight out its battles without ultimately fracturing. A Community Built on Words will be must reading for any student of constitutional history, theory, or law.

Irreverent, provocative, and engaging, Desperately Seeking Certainty attacks the current legal vogue for grand unified theories of constitutional interpretation. On both the Right and the Left, prominent legal scholars are attempting to build all of constitutional law from a single foundational idea. Dan Farber and Suzanna Sherry find that in the end no single, all-encompassing theory can successfully guide judges or provide definitive or even sensible answers to every constitutional question. Their book brilliantly reveals how problematic foundationalism is and shows how the pragmatic, multifaceted common law methods already used by the Court provide a far better means of reaching sound decisions and controlling judicial discretion than do any of the grand theories.

In Black Visions, Michael Dawson brings us the most comprehensive analysis to date of the complex relationship of black political thought to black political identity and behavior. Combining a historical perspective with conceptual sophistication and empirical evidence, Dawson identifies which political ideologies are supported by blacks, then traces their historical roots and examines their effects on black public opinion, not only among intellectuals and activists, but also at the grassroots level. Although many (mostly white) commentators have argued that black political thought falls within the realm of American liberalism, many black commentators regard black political thought as a rejection of this liberalism. Here, Dawson argues that black visions are more varied and complex. Black ideologies, such as radical egalitarianism, disillusioned liberalism, and black conservatism do criticize American liberalism while still accepting its basic tenets. But other ideologies-black nationalism, black feminism, and black Marxism--challenge one or more of the premises of American liberalism. Ultimately, Dawson provocatively argues that the rise of a black counterpublic in the nineteenth century made the development of distinctive currents of black political thought possible. Based on the most extensive study of black public opinion to date, Dawson shows how each ideology still affects blacks' views on such issues as their position in American society, the nature of whites, and separatism. Ranging from Frederick Douglass to rap artist Ice Cube, Dawson brilliantly illuminates the history and current role of black political thought in shaping political debate in America.

In Signifying God, Sarah Beckwith explores the most lavish, long-lasting, and complex form of collective theatrical enterprise in English history: the York Corpus Christi plays. First staged as early as 1376, the plays were performed annually until the late 1500s and involved as much as a tenth of the city in multiple performances at a dozen or more locations. Introducing a radical new understanding of these plays as "sacramental theater," Beckwith shows how organizing the plays served as a political mechanism for regulating labor, and how theater and sacrament combined in them to do important theological work. She argues, for instance, that the theology of Corpus Christi in the resurrection plays can only be understood as a theatrical exploration of eucharistic absence and presence. In analyzing the ending of these performances during the Reformation, she demonstrates in fascinating detail how one culture becomes opaque to another, and shows how the costs and implications of this mutual incomprehension affected England as it became a Protestant nation. Beckwith frames her study with discussions of twentieth-century manifestations of sacramental theater in Barry Unsworth's novel Morality Play and Denys Arcand's film Jesus of Montreal, and the connections between contemporary revivals of the York Corpus Christi plays and England's heritage culture. Bringing together theater history, ritual and performance studies, religious history, theology, and the literary history of both the Middle Ages and the Reformation, Signifying God will engage scholars working in these disciplines, as well as all those who seek to explore the relations between them.

Avant-garde poet Henri Michaux boarded a steamship bound for Ecuador in December 1927 as "a man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal." He set out to record a journey, but his vivid descriptions, his unexpected leaps of thought, provide a narrative unlike any other. The result, Ecuador: A Travel Journal, is a work of pointed observation and sensual, even hallucinogenic, poetry and prose.>