'Information wants to be free' says influential technologist Stewart Brand at a 1984 hacker convention. These words became the mantra that shaped the Internet, and the conflict he predicted has led to a revolution in the way that our culture is funded and consumed.We have come to demand free content online, mistaking the packaging of physical products for what we were actually paying for- the creative content. Newspapers are being pressurised to give their content away for free onl...

It is easy to believe God has abandoned us.In atrocities from Hitler's Germany to today's Darfur, the meek and the poor are left to fend for themselves. In the United States, we are menaced by violent terrorists who claim to act in God's name. Our own neighbors threaten us with an absolute choice between faith and a fiery path to hell.Robert Levine steps into the fray with What God Can Do For You Now. A leading American clergyman, he asks us to commit to a ...

This new edition of Culture, Behavior, and Personality is organized into ve parts. Part I de nes the eld of inquiry, Part II presents a critical review of existing theories and methods, Part III expounds LeVine's unique Darwinian model of culture and personality, Part IV deals with the strategies and methods with which to study individual dispositions within the sociocultural matrix, Part V concludes with two essays on cultural and personality research including new advances and avenues of...

"Icouldn't imagine a finer or livelier guide through the world of opera. . . . [Levine] distills a lifetime of passion and insight into this immenselyenjoyable survey, and with the right comic touch to make you wonder how operaever seemed intimidating." —Thomas May, author of Decoding WagnerDespitethe popular success of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” series, opera’s grandworld of soaring sopranos and breathtaking baritones—of tragic Rigoletto, triumphal Sigmund, and desperat...

Who are we? Where is the boundary between us and everything else? Are we all multiple personalities? And how can we control who we become?From distinguished psychologist Robert Levine comes this provocative and entertaining scientific exploration of the most personal and important of all landscapes: the physical and psychological entity we call our self.Using a combination of case studies and cutting-edge research in psychology, biology, neuroscience, virtu...

Ex-pat turned mercenary John Bishop is mortally wounded, but spared from Hell by a renegade demon seeking redemption.  The price of Johns salvation?  Hes reborn as the demons personal assassin and charged with ridding humanity of our worst criminals, sadists, and murderers...with a seven-day deadline for each kill. Redemption can take a lifetime. John Bishop only has 7 days.

In Do Parents Matter? anthropologists (and grandparents) Robert & Sarah LeVine investigate the diversity of parenting practices across the world - from the USA to Africa, Japan to Mexico - and come away with a reassuring conclusion: children tend to turn out to be the same well-adjusted adults all around the world no matter the parenting style.Japanese children sleep with their parents well into primary school, women of the Hausa tribe (largely based in Ni...

Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the country was on the precipice of radical change. Johnson, seemingly more progressive than Lincoln, looked like the ideal person to lead the country. He had already cast himself as a “Moses”...

The differences between Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany have historically been reduced to a simple binary pronouncement: assimilationist versus separatist. Now Robert S. Levine restores the relationship of these two important nineteenth-century African American writers to its original complexity. He explores their debates over issues like abolitionism, emigration, and nationalism, illuminating each man’s influence on the other’s political vision. He also examines Delany and Douglass’s...

In syntactic analysis, as in linguistics generally, the skills required to first identify, and then make sense of, complex patterns in linguistic data involve a certain specific kind of reasoning, where various alternatives are entertained and modified in light of progressively broader empirical coverage. Rather than focus on transmitting the details of complex theoretical superstructures, this textbook takes a practical, analytical approach, starting from a small set of powerful analytic ...

American literary nationalism is traditionally understood as a cohesive literary tradition developed in the newly independent United States that emphasized the unique features of America and consciously differentiated American literature from British literature. Robert S. Levine challenges this assessment by exploring the conflicted, multiracial, and contingent dimensions present in the works of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and African American writers. Conflict and unc...

The extraordinary activism of towering literary figure and great American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, after publishing the novel that changed American history.Alone among American novels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin forever changed the social fabric of the United States. It sold more than a million copies, energized abolitionism, and helped to spark the Civil War—but the book also transformed its author. After Uncle Tom’s Cabin follows Harriet Beecher Stowe beyond her monumental first novel...