"Knot theory is a fascinating mathematical subject, with multiple links to theoretical physics. This enyclopedia is filled with valuable information on a rich and fascinating subject."– Ed Witten, Recipient of the Fields Medal"I spent a pleasant afternoon perusing the Encyclopedia of Knot Theory. It’s a comprehensive compilation of clear introductions to both classical and very modern developments in the field. It will be a terrific resource for the accompl...

Scholarship on the role of religion in American public life has taken on a new urgency in the increasingly contentious wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. This volume brings together an impressive group of scholars to build on past work and broaden the scope of this crucial inquiry in two respects: by exploring aspects of the religion-politics nexus in the United States that have been neglected in the past, and by examining traditional questions concerning the religious tincture of ...

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may be difficult, isn’t it?Then, you've probably known - all your life - that you're different.As girls, we learn which behaviors, thinking, learning, and working styles are preferred, which are accepted and tolerated, and which are frowned upon. These preferences are communicated in innumerable ways - from media and books to our first-grade classroom to conversations with our classmates and parents....

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism--and certain minority group rights in particular--make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there ...

A leading intellectual historian traces the origins of Barack Obama’s ideasDerided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democrati...

THE GOOD SOCIETY examines how many of our institutions- from the family to the government itself- fell from grace, and offers concrete proposals for revitalizing them.

Michael Ignatieff draws on his extensive experience as a writer and commentator on world affairs to present a penetrating account of the successes, failures, and prospects of the human rights revolution. Since the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, this revolution has brought the world moral progress and broken the nation-state's monopoly on the conduct of international affairs. But it has also faced challenges. Ignatieff argues that human rights acti...

This is a wholly new and compelling answer to one of the most persistent dilemmas in both law and moral philosophy: If rights are "natural"-if, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is "self-evident that all men are endowed . . . with certain inalienable rights"-where do these rights come from? Does natural law really exist outside the formal structure of humanly enacted law? On the other hand, if rights are nothing more than the product of human law, what argument is there f...

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus ...

"If reconciliation is the takeaway point for the civil rights story we usually tell, then the takeaway point for the more complex, more truthful civil rights story contained in Dear White Christians is reparations." — from the preface to the second editionWith the troubling and painful events of the last several years—from the killing of numerous unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville—it is clearer than e...

With same-sex marriage igniting a firestorm of controversy in the press and in the courts, in legislative chambers and in living rooms, Andrew Sullivan, a pioneering voice in the debate, has brought together two thousand years of argument in an anthology of historic inclusiveness and evenhandedness. Among the selections included here:- The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in support of same-sex marriage- Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Scalia’s...

Culturism is the opposite of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism says that western nations have no core culture; our lands are just neutral spaces where random cultures assemble. Culturism acknowledges that we have a core culture rooted in Athens and Jerusalem.Culturism defies globalism. Islamic nations and China do not believe in rights, the relative separation of church and state, democracy, or free speech. These are not universal values; they are western values. To protect them, ...