Books published by Columbia University Press

The Great Polarization brings together contributors from disparate perspectives to examine the causes and consequences of skyrocketing inequality. Contributors reconsider the data on inequality, examine the policies that have led to this predicament, and outline potential ways forward.

Derek Lidow delves into the deep history of innovation to deliver essential new insights into how entrepreneurs create value and bring about change. Telling the captivating stories of people from many different cultures over thousands of years, he shows how entrepreneurs transform the world through relentless innovation.

Paleontology is one of the most visible yet most misunderstood fields of science. Children dream of becoming paleontologists when they grow up. Museum visitors flock to exhibits on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. The media reports on fossil discoveries and new clues to mass extinctions. Nonetheless, misconceptions abound: paleontologists are assumed only to be interested in dinosaurs, and they are all too often imagined as bearded white men in battered cowboy hats.Roy Plotnick provides a behind-the-scenes look at paleontology as it exists today in all its complexity. He explores the field's aims, methods, and possibilities, with an emphasis on the compelling personal stories of the scientists who have made it a career. Paleontologists study the entire history of life on Earth; they do not only use hammers and chisels to unearth fossils but are just as likely to work with cutting-edge computing technology. Plotnick presents the big questions about life's history that drive paleontological research and shows why knowledge of Earth's past is essential to understanding present-day environmental crises. He introduces readers to the diverse group of people of all genders, races, and international backgrounds who make up the twenty-first-century paleontology community, foregrounding their perspectives and firsthand narratives. He also frankly discusses the many challenges that face the profession, with key takeaways for aspiring scientists. Candid and comprehensive, Explorers of Deep Time is essential reading for anyone curious about the everyday work of real-life paleontologists.

The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films-including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment-Billy Wilder earned acclaim as American cinema's greatest social satirist. Though an influential fixture in Hollywood, Wilder always saw himself as an outsider. His worldview was shaped by his background in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and work as a journalist in Berlin during Hitler's rise to power, and his perspective as a Jewish refugee from Nazism lent his films a sense of the peril that could engulf any society.In this critical study, Joseph McBride offers new ways to understand Wilder's work, stretching from his days as a reporter and screenwriter in Europe to his distinguished as well as forgotten films as a Hollywood writer and his celebrated work as a writer-director. In contrast to the widespread view of Wilder as a hardened cynic, McBride reveals him to be a disappointed romantic. Wilder's experiences as an exile led him to mask his sensitivity beneath a veneer of wisecracking that made him a celebrated caustic wit. Amid the satirical barbs and exposure of social hypocrisies, Wilder's films are marked by intense compassion and a profound understanding of the human condition.Mixing biographical insight with in-depth analysis of films from throughout Wilder's career as a screenwriter and director of comedy and drama, and drawing on McBride's interviews with the director and his collaborators, this book casts new light on the full range of Wilder's rich, complex, and distinctive vision.

Well-meaning Westerners want to find ways to help the less fortunate. Today, many are not just volunteering abroad and donating to international nonprofits but also advancing innovations and launching projects that aim to be socially transformative. However, often these activities are not efficient ways of helping others, and too many projects cause more harm than good.Reimagining Global Philanthropy shares the journey of a conservative banker and a progressive professor to find a better way forward. Kirk S. Bowman and Jon R. Wilcox explain the boom in the global compassion industry, revealing the incentives that produce inefficient practices and poor outcomes. Instead of supporting start-up projects with long-shot hopes for success, they argue, we can dramatically improve results by empowering local leaders.Applying lessons from the success of community banks, Bowman and Wilcox develop and implement a new model that significantly raises philanthropic efficacy. Their straightforward and rigorously tested approach calls for community members to take the lead while outside partners play a supporting role. Bowman and Wilcox recount how they tested the model in Brazil, demonstrating the value of giving people in marginalized communities the opportunity to innovate. In a time of widespread social reckoning, this book shows how global philanthropy can confront its blind spots and failures in order to achieve truly transformative outcomes.Readers can access five of the documentary films discussed in the book on a companion website. In addition to the films, chapter discussion questions and other supplemental materials are also available at the site.

Today, Americans are some of the world's biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the trans-Pacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries.Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The influx of Japanese imports democratized green tea: Americans of all classes, particularly Midwesterners, made it their daily beverage-which they drank hot, often with milk and sugar. In the 1920s, socioeconomic trends and racial prejudices pushed Americans toward black teas from Ceylon and India. Facing a glut, Japanese merchants aggressively marketed sencha on their home and imperial markets, transforming it into an icon of Japanese culture.Featuring lively stories of the people involved in the tea trade-including samurai turned tea farmers and Hellyer's own ancestors-Green with Milk and Sugar offers not only a social and commodity history of tea in the United States and Japan but also new insights into how national customs have profound if often hidden international dimensions.

This book provides a groundbreaking analysis of how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. It argues that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group's future course and examines how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change.

This book develops a new theory of the novel for the twenty-first century. In the works of writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk, James Kelman, W. G. Sebald, and Zadie Smith, Timothy Bewes identifies a mode of thought that he calls "free indirect," in which the novel's refusal of prevailing ideologies can be found.

Through poignant and sometimes painful stories from their personal and professional lives, three practicing psychoanalysts demonstrate the richness of psychodynamic thinking. Each chapter offers an illustrative and powerful personal vignette followed by an analytical reflection that explicates key psychodynamic concepts.

John Brooks examines a range of abstractionist, experimental, and genre-defying works by Black writers and artists that challenge how audiences perceive and imagine race. He argues that literature and visual art that exceed the confines of familiar conceptions of Black identity can upend received ideas about race and difference.

In this book, artist Marisa Moran Jahn and architect Rafi Segal converse about the transformative potential of mutualism and design with leading thinkers and practitioners. From these dialogues emerge powerful visions of futures guided by communal self-determination and collective well-being.

Sylvain Parasie examines how data journalists and news organizations have navigated the tensions between traditional journalistic values and new technologies. Offering an in-depth analysis of how computing has become part of the daily practices of journalists, this book proposes ways for journalism to evolve in order to serve democratic societies.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jack Miles and Mark C. Taylor embarked on an extended conversation about living and dying in an imperiled world. A Friendship in Twilight is their plague journal. In raw and searching letters, written daily from the first lockdowns through the Capitol riot, they reflect on life during overlapping crises.

David C. Rapoport, a preeminent scholar of political violence, identifies and analyzes four distinct waves of global terrorism. He examines the dynamics of each wave, contrasting their tactics, targets, and goals and placing them in the context of the much longer history of terrorism.