Books published by Harvard University Press

Greek mathematics from the sixth century BCE to the fourth century CE is represented by the work of, e.g., Pythagoras; Proclus; Thales; Democritus; Hippocrates of Chios; Theaetetus; Plato; Eudoxus of Cnidus; Aristotle; Euclid; Eratosthenes; Apollonius; Ptolemy; Heron of Alexandria; Diophantus; and Pappus.

Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE) is the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms. Seven of his eighty or so plays survive complete, including the Oresteia trilogy and the Persians, the only extant Greek historical drama. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE) is the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms. Seven of his eighty or so plays survive complete, including the Oresteia trilogy and the Persians, the only extant Greek historical drama. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

This book uses broad synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea in Roman Palestine. It explores the dialectic between intellectual history and history of the book and expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship.

Posner explores the causes of Europe's emergence as a global financial power, addressing classic and new questions about the origins of markets and their relationship to politics and bureaucracy.

Eric Rentschler argues that cinema in the Third Reich emanated from a Ministry of Illusion and not from a Ministry of Fear. His analysis of the sophisticated media culture of this period demonstrates in an unprecedented way the potent and destructive powers of fascination and fantasy.

Sartre has written a long overdue and comprehensive history of the Semitic Near East (modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel) from the eve of the Roman conquest to the end of the third century C.E. and the rise of Christianity. His perspective takes in all aspects of this history-political, military, economic, social, cultural, and religious.

Sternberg explores the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety, or instill peace.

Gibbard considers how our actions, and our realities, emerge from the questions and decisions we form for ourselves. He investigates the very nature of the questions we ask ourselves when we ask how we should live, and clarifies the concept of "ought" by understanding the patterns of normative concepts involved in beliefs and decisions.

As the driving force behind the Allied effort in World War I, France willingly shouldered the heaviest burden. In this masterful book, Robert Doughty explains how and why France assumed this role and offers new insights into French strategy and operational methods.

Morrison brings her genius to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a perspective sure to alter conventional notions about American literature.

As Hegel famously noted, the goddess Minerva's owl brought back wisdom only at dusk, when it was too late to shine light on actual politics. Abramson provides a guide for discovering the tradition of political thought that dates back to Socrates and Plato, with contemporary examples that illustrate the enduring nature of political dilemmas.

Accident law, if properly designed, is capable of reducing the incidence of mishaps by making people act more cautiously. Since the 1960s, a group of legal scholars and economists have focused on identifying the effects of accident law on people's behavior. Steven Shavell's book is the definitive synthesis of research to date in this new field.

In this book, Casanova shows us the state of world literature behind the stylistic refinements-a world of letters relatively independent from economic and political realms, and in which language systems, aesthetic orders, and genres struggle for dominance.

Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask.

Drawing on recently opened archives, ethnography, and oral interviews that were unavailable a decade ago, A Biography of No Place reveals Stalinist and Nazi history from the perspective of the remote borderlands, thus bringing the periphery to the center of history.

A mere "symbol" of medicine the placebo nonetheless sometimes produces "real" results. Medical science has largely discounted the placebo effect, but Harrington argues that the phenomenon is a "real" entity in its own right, one that has much to teach us about how symbols, settings, and human relationships literally get under our skin.

In this widely acclaimed work, now revised and expanded, Edward N. Luttwak unveils the peculiar logic of strategy level by level, from grand strategy down to combat tactics. In the tradition of Carl von Clausewitz, Strategy goes beyond paradox to expose the dynamics of reversal at work in the crucible of conflict.

Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Attacking "political correctness" in all forms, Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure.

This lively account of the foundations of quantum mechanics is at once elementary and deeply challenging. It is an introduction accessible to anyone with high school mathematics and, at the same time, a rigorous discussion of the most important recent advances in our understanding of quantum physics, a number of them made by the author himself.

Hadot shows how the schools, trends, and ideas of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy strove to transform the individual's mode of perceiving and being in the world. For the ancients, philosophical theory and the philosophical way of life were inseparably linked. Hadot asks us to consider whether and how this connection might be reestablished today.

Stern's research into mother-infant interaction has had an enormous impact on psychotherapy and developmental psychology. Now a noted authority on early development, Stern first reviewed his methods and observations in this book. Intended for parents, therapists, and researchers, it offers a lucid, nontechnical overview of the author's key ideas.

Richly illustrated and delightfully written, Journey to the Ants combines autobiography and scientific lore to convey the excitement and pleasure the study of ants can offer. The authors interweave their personal adventures with the social lives of ants, building a remarkable account of these abundant insects' evolutionary achievement.

In this book, 20 religionists and environmentalists examine Buddhism's understanding of life's web. In noting the cultural diversity of Buddhism, they highlight aspects of the tradition that may help formulate an effective environmental ethics, citing examples from Asia and the U.S. of socially engaged Buddhist projects to protect the environment.

In a masterly commentary on the possibilities of education, Bruner reveals how education can usher children into their culture, though it often fails to do so. Bruner looks past the issue of achieving individual competence to the question of how education equips individuals to participate in the culture on which life and livelihood depend.

If contemporary culture were a school, with all the tasks and expectations meted out by modern life as its curriculum, would anyone graduate? In the spirit of a sympathetic teacher, Robert Kegan guides us through this tricky curriculum, assessing the fit between its complex demands and our mental capacities.

The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter focuses on the challenge posed by the isolated child to teachers and classmates alike in the unique community of the classroom. It is the dramatic story of Jason-the loner and outsider-and of his ultimate triumph and homecoming into the society of his classmates.

The great Athenian philosopher Plato was born in 427 BCE and lived to be eighty. Acknowledged masterpieces among his works are the Symposium, which explores love in its many aspects, from physical desire to pursuit of the beautiful and the good, and the Republic, which concerns righteousness and also treats education, gender, society, and slavery.