Was the Civil War preordained to last four years or were there reasons why neither side could land a knockout punch? From the outset, both North and South had anticipated a brief conflict but despite more than 50 bloody battles neither could force a decisive conclusion. For most of the war, these battles followed a pattern: the victors claimed the field and the vanquished retreated to rest, resupply and fight another day.Some generals began to realize that pursuit to capture or des...

In the rugged and unforgiving Riverina region of Australia, a group of Scottish immigrants struggle to carve out a life for themselves. Led by the indomitable Lachlan Macquarie, they face adversity with courage and determination. But as the years pass, their dreams are tested by drought, floods, and the harsh realities of the Australian bush. Through their trials and tribulations, the Scots of the Riverina forge an unbreakable bond, their resilience and spirit unyielding. Their story is a ...

The essays in this volume on the subject of equality are the work of scholars at Bard College and West Point. Their research falls within the areas of history, religion, legal theory, social science, ethics and philosophy. The regions covered include the Middle and Far East, Europe, and America; the time periods studied are both contemporary and historical. Each essay is a well-detailed exploration which assumes the reader has no prior acquaintance with the topic.Together, the stud...

Math has a reputation for being inaccessible. People think that it requires a special gift or that comprehension is a matter of genes. Yet the greatest mathematicians throughout history, from René Descartes to Alexander Grothendieck, have insisted that this is not the case. Like Albert Einstein, who famously claimed to have "no special talent," they said that they had accomplished what they did using ordinary human doubts, weaknesses, curiosity, and imagination.David Bessis guides ...

Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines reveals the extraordinary breadth of the intellectual movement toward self-inclusive scholarship. Presenting exemplary works of criticism incorporating personal narratives, this volume brings together twenty-seven essays from scholars in literary studies and history, mathematics and medicine, philosophy, music, film, ethnic studies, law, education, anthropology, religion, and biology. Pioneers in the development of the hybrid genre o...

We are inundated with game play today. Digital devices offer opportunities to play almost anywhere and anytime. No matter our age, gender, social, cultural, or educational background—we play. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 is the first book-length work to explore how the modern discourse of play was first shaped during this pivotal period (approximately 1770-1830). The eleven chapters illuminate critical developments in the philo...

Reporting on cutting-edge advances in economics, this book presents a selection of commentaries that reveal the weaknesses of several core economics concepts. Economics is a vigorous and progressive science, which does not lose its force when particular parts of its theory are empirically invalidated; instead, they contribute to the accumulation of knowledge.By discussing problematic theoretical assumptions and drawing on the latest empirical research, the authors question specific...

Film and Faith: Modern Cinema and the Struggle to Believe explores religious themes in contemporary film with a focus on recent depictions of religion’s continuing manifestations in a secularizing age. The contributors are students of philosophy, political theory, and theology; examine religious and philosophical ideas in commercially and artistically important modern films. They offer a scholarly yet accessible considerations of contemporary films exploring the problem of faith i...

How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attentionOur democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason ...

Economists have a bad reputation. Not only do they assume that everyone is self-interested and amoral, they are almost always cheerleaders for the free market. As a result, most people who do not already share their beliefs ignore everything that economists have to say. This is a problem. Even among the highly educated, economics is a minefield of fallacies and errors. Among those who know little about the subject—a group that includes the average taxpayer and consumer, as well as most jou...

James M. McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom, and arguably the finest Civil War historian in the world, walks us through the site of the bloodiest and perhaps most consequential battle ever fought by Americans: the Battle of Gettysburg.The events that occurred at Gettysburg are etched into our collective memory, as they served to change the course of the Civil War and with it the course of history. More than any other plac...

C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills ca...