Books published by Oxford University Press, USA

Democracy is struggling in an age of populism and post-truth. In a world swirling with competing political groups stating conflicting facts, citizens are left unsure whom to trust and which facts are true. The role of honesty in civic life is in jeopardy. When we lose sight of the importance of honesty, it hampers our ability to solve pressing problems. Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era asserts that to better enable young citizens to successfully engage in civic inquiry, the role of honesty must be foregrounded within education. The book posits that honesty is a key component of a well-functioning democracy. Building upon this foundation, Sarah M. Stitzlein defines what honesty is, how it is connected to truth, and why both are important to and at risk in democracies today. Furthermore, the chapters offer guidance on how honesty and truth should be taught in schools. Situated within the philosophical perspective of pragmatism, the book examines the relationships between honesty, truth, trust, and healthy democratic living and provides recommendations for improving citizenship education and our ability to engage in civic reasoning. Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era offers an improved path forward within our schools by detailing how to cultivate habits of truth-seeking and truth-telling. Such honesty will better enable citizens to navigate our difficult political moment and increase the likelihood that citizens can craft long-term solutions for democratic life together.

The practice of "gender training" has gained widespread popularity among numerous professions in the last few decades. Designed to address a range of problems--from corporate advancement, to sexual assault, to economic development--gender training is reliably presented as a solution to gendered disparities. Gender training has even become a requirement for soldiers and police officers deploying overseas as peacekeepers. But what happens when the concept of gender, the analytical purchase of which we owe to feminist activism and scholarship, is taken up by martial institutions shaped by hegemonic masculinity? How is gender training made to work in and for military and police organisations? Is it a normative good from the point of view of intersectional feminist politics? Through an ethnographic study of gender training practices in peacekeeping institutions, Aiko Holvikivi examines how gender is conceptualised, taught, and learned in these settings, and with what political effects. She finds that this training constitutes a deeply ambivalent practice from the point of view of intersectional feminist political commitments. On the one hand, it reinscribes the logic that martial force is an appropriate solution to gendered insecurities, and it affirms attachments to normative heterosexuality. On the other hand, this training simultaneously exposes contradictions that inhere to the logics of martiality, coloniality, and heteronormativity that structure the peacekeeping enterprise. Drawing on queer and postcolonial feminist thought, Fixing Gender examines the contradictory politics of gender training, arguing that we need to develop the analytical tools to grapple with paradoxical practices that are simultaneously good and bad feminist politics.

Why are conspiracy theories, extremist rhetoric, and acts of antagonism by fringe elements of society so much more visible today than in years past? The Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the surge of medical skepticism during the global COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the challenge of extreme rhetoric in global society, with increasing attention paid to the enabling role of the Internet. But beyond the ways in which the Internet allows for connection, how do fringe ideas travel into the mainstream to become more significant movements? In Subversion 2.0, Christopher Whyte describes the transformation of societal subversion in the digital age. Whyte makes the case that "leaderlessness"--characterized by an evolving and uneven feedback loop linking fringe spaces to mainstream elite rhetoric and popular discourse--has emerged in recent years as the default format of subversive activity. Through case explorations and novel data, Whyte shows how extreme narratives that originate in conspiratorial, restrictive virtual spaces are rapidly filtered into mainstream settings due to a series of socio-technological conditions present in the Web 2.0 era. As a result, fringe narratives and symbols often become the lens through which social and political elites interpret information that they then spread through public speech, which is projected back to subversive spaces and used to perpetuate fringe narratives. By examining the uneven feedback loop of leaderlessness, Whyte argues that social Internet platforms act as a vehicle for transmitting and amplifying extreme rhetoric but often fail to moderate extremism in turn. He ultimately shows how societal subversion, an activity that is about degrading existing power structures without directly attacking them, has taken on a new, dynamic form in the digital age.

A highly original reinterpretation of how race and class shaped the entirety of Southern history through the experience of four interconnected family lines. The Southern Fault Line explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mindsets were in continual tension from the 1800s to the 1960s, when the adherents of the more democratic side of the struggle capitulated to the oligarchical side in response to the Civil Rights movement. Bryan Jones draws from his own family's centuries-old history in the region to explore the rise and fall of the "two minds" of the South. Through a comparison of the experiences of a slaveholding line in his family with three non-slaveholding lines, Jones provides a rich history of the politics of both class and race in the region from the Founding era to the present. The slaveholding side of his family settled in Black Belt Alabama, while ancestral members of the other side of his family were poorer uplanders. In the 1890s, the latter supported the burgeoning populist movement, which for a short window of time tried to unite poor Blacks and poor whites against the patrician planter class and industrialists. After a series of close elections, the planter class was able to stanch the populist tide. They did this in large part by sowing racial division among populism's supporters. Indeed, one of Jones' ancestors helped draft the 1901 Alabama constitution that made Jim Crow the law of the state. Throughout, Jones shows how deep the political differences were between the two regions, with oligarchy characterizing the slaveholding region and a more democratic ethos shaping the non-slaveholding areas. Jones serves as the final observer, a white boy observing not only the demise of the Jim Crow South, but--in the wake of the Civil Rights movement--the demise of the mountain democratic South as well. Today, the vast majority of Southern whites regardless of class support an oligarchical Republican Party.

An authoritative account of Xi Jinping's worldview and how it drives Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage.In his new book, On Xi Jinping, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provides an authoritative account of the ideological worldview driving Chinese behaviour both domestically and on the world stage--that of President Xi Jinping, who now hold near-total control over the Chinese Communist Party and is now, in effect, president-for-life. Rudd argues that Xi's worldview differs significantly from those of the leaders who preceded him, and that this ideological shift is reflected in the real world of Chinese policy and behaviour. Focusing on China's domestic politics, political economy, and foreign policy, Rudd characterises Xi Jinping's ideological framing of the world as "Marxist-Leninist nationalism." According to Rudd, Xi's notion of Leninism has taken the party and Chinese politics further to the left in comparison to his predecessors. Also, his Marxism has also taken Chinese economic thinking to the left-in a more decisively more statist direction and away from the historical dynamism of the private sector. However, Chinese nationalism under Xi has moved further to the right- towards a much, harder-edged, foreign policy vision of China and a new determination to change the international status quo. Xi's worldview is an integrated one, where his national ideological vision for China's future is ultimately inseparable from his view on China's position in the region and the world. These changes in worldview are also reflected in Xi's broader rehabilitation of the concept of "struggle" as a legitimate concept for the conduct of both Chinese domestic and foreign policy--a struggle that need not necessarily always be peaceful. Finally, Xi's ideological worldview also exhibits a new level of nationalist self-confidence about China's future--derived from China's historical and civilizational strengths but reinforced by his Marxist-Leninist concept of historical determinism and the belief that the tides of history are now on firmly China's side. A powerful analysis of the worldview of arguably the most consequential world leader of our era, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in how Xi is transforming both China and the international order, and, most importantly, why?

Suppressed for centuries, the ideas of French philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet's are ever relevant today... Just as the Enlightenment was gaining momentum throughout Europe, philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in French. Within a few short years, she became famous: she was read and debated from Russia to Prussia, from Switzerland to England, from up north in Sweden to down south in Italy. This was not just remarkable because she was a woman, but because of the substance of her contributions. While the men in her milieu like Voltaire and Kant sought disciples to promote their ideas, Du Châtelet promoted intellectual autonomy. She counselled her readers to read the classics, but never to become a follower of another's ideas. Her proclamation that a true philosopher must remain an independent thinker, rather than a disciple of some supposedly "great man" like Isaac Newton or René Descartes, posed a threat to an emerging consensus in the Enlightenment. And that made her dangerous. After all, if young women took Du Châtelet's advice to heart, if they insisted on thinking for themselves, they might demand a proper education--the exclusion of women from the colleges and academies of Europe might finally end. And if young women thought for themselves, rather than listening to the ideas of the men around them, that might rupture the gender-based social order itself. Because of the threat that she posed, the men who created the modern philosophy canon eventually wrote Du Châtelet out of their official histories. After she achieved immense fame in the middle of the eighteenth century, her ideas were later suppressed, or attributed to the men around her. For generations afterwards, she was forgotten. Now we can hear her voice anew when we need her more than ever. Her lessons of intellectual independence and her rejection of hero worship remain ever relevant today.

Between c. 700-300 BCE, the ancient Greeks developed a vivid imaginary of the world's peoples. Ranging from the light-skinned, "gray-eyed Thracians" of the distant north to the "dark-skinned Ethiopians" of the far south, as the poet Xenophanes described them around 540 BCE, Greeks envisioned a world populated by human groups with distinct physiognomies. Racialized Commodities traces how Greece's "racial imaginary"--a confluence of thinking about cultural geography, commodity production, and human physiognomy--emerged from cross-cultural trade between Greece and its Mediterranean neighbors during the Archaic and Classical Periods. It adopts the model of a "commodity biography" to investigate how trade led to the entanglement of cultures, bodies, and things in Archaic and Classical Greece. For merchants, the racial imaginary might be used to play up the "exotic" provenance of their goods to consumers. It might also circulate practical information about customs, pricing, navigation, and doing business in foreign ports. Archaic Greek attempts to explain foreign bodies were rarely pejorative, and Racialized Commodities begins with some of their earliest images of African peoples, described by Greeks as Egyptians or Ethiopians, before seeking to explain what changed in the early Classical Period. As the Persian Empire loomed and Greek cities became increasingly dependent on enslaved labor, negative stereotypes of Thracians and Scythians became widespread and coalesced into the charged idea of the barbarous--the "barbarian."

Learn to become a great writer and master modern grammar rules with the U.S. Supreme Court justices as your guide. In The Supreme Guide to Writing, law professor Jill Barton cuts through competing advice to detail definitive grammar rules based on the nation's unequivocal authority: the U.S. Supreme Court. The book details a revolution in legal writing, with the justices progressing beyond the drab and technical for the deft and lyrical. With the first-ever analysis of 10,000 pages of Court opinions, the book pinpoints grammar and style rules that the justices follow--and describes the outdated rules they leave behind. Today's Court casts aside formality in favor of pop-culture references, contractions, and approachable language. In addition to establishing grammar and style rules, the book illustrates best practices with hundreds of examples of the justices' most brilliant sentences from the past several years. With step-by-step instructions, the book describes how to emulate the justices' writing styles by breaking down their strategies and techniques. It shows how Justice Elena Kagan lands amusing quips and weaves together down-to-earth analogies, how Justice Neil Gorsuch executes witty retorts, and how Chief Justice John Roberts pens unforgettable lines with understated style and humor. The best writing appears effortless, but it also takes tremendous effort. Legal writing even more so. The Supreme Guide to Writing provides a nonpartisan look at how the justices present their words to the world.

Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human destructiveness. Until now, however, little has been known about the extent to which Fromm's personal experience of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust shaped his outlook and work. In Edge of Catastrophe, Roger Frie introduces for the first time the unpublished Holocaust correspondence in Fromm's family. The letters provide insight into Fromm's life as a German-Jewish refugee and help us to understand the effect of Nazi Germany's racial terror on Fromm and his German-Jewish family. In the aftermath of the genocide, Fromm returned again and again to the themes of responsibility, social justice, and human solidarity, yet without revealing his own experience. As this book powerfully shows, Fromm's social, political, and psychological writings take on new meaning in light of the traumas and tragedies that he and his family experienced. The image of Fromm that emerges from this book enriches our understanding of what it means to be both a social critic and practicing psychologist. In light of the racial hatred and antisemitism we see today, Frie demonstrates that a politics of engagement and a psychology of well-being go hand in hand. Frie suggests that there is much to be learned from the urgency in Fromm's writings as we seek to respond to the social crises and the renewed threat of fascism in our present age.

Scholars have sometimes maintained that the study of the history of African religions is an impossible endeavor. Some have contended that African religions do not have a history unto themselves, apart from their interaction with the newer religious traditions of Islam and Christianity. Others concede that such a history exists, but believe the source materials are insufficient to reconstruct such a history. This book speaks directly to these critics. The history of African religions becomes in many ways like a pentathlon, expecting the scholar who conducts such research to work with written texts, to learn African languages, to live within a community where these religious traditions are practiced, to study material culture, both sacred and mundane, and a variety of archaeological sources from tree rings to stone circles and gravesites. By relying on the existing corpus of written texts, oral traditions, linguistic analyses, descriptions based on participant observation, and various types of archaeology, Robert M. Baum demonstrates that African religious history is nearly as old as humanity itself. Baum has spent his entire academic career focused on the historical study of African religious traditions, as far back as accessible sources will permit. This volume traces the history of African religions beginning with early hominids and their ritual and burial sites through ancient Egypt, North and Northeast Africa, and Africa south of the Sahara from the Fourth Millennium BCE to the birth of Islam in the Seventh Century.

Why is American politics so intense and emotionally competitive today, and how did we get here? In The Fundamental Voter, John H. Aldrich, Suhyen Bae, and Bailey K. Sanders explain why the notion that we are divided into tribal loyalties is, at best, only partially correct, and discuss how the divisions rest on much more substantive politics than they once did. In the 1950s and 1960s, the American public based voting primarily on partisan loyalties. Landslide presidential elections were once common, but over the last forty years, they have converged to very closely contested elections. Congressional elections were increasingly incumbent centered before 1984 and decreasingly so afterward. These changes reflect the changing nature of fundamental forces that shape the public's electoral opinions and voting behavior. From a single such fundamental, partisan identification, the electorate now rests on five fundamental forces: party, ideology, issues, race, and economics. Since the 1980s, these fundamentals have grown increasingly important and increasingly aligned, such that voters are now sorted into two increasingly bitterly divided sides. Believing that the other side is on the wrong side of nearly everything of political relevance, voters, like officials, have come to deeply dislike the opposition, a state of affairs that threatens to undermine the stability of democratic institutions in the United States.

What does a sanctuary for Hawaiian crows have in common with a troop of robots programmed to perform the Māori haka, or recreations of World Heritage Sites built in Minecraft?A family heirloom. An endangered species. An ancient piece of pottery. A threatened language. These things differ in myriad ways, but they are tied together by a common thread: they are all examples of things that call out to be saved. The world is brimming with things worth saving, and we have limited time and resources. How do we decide what to save? Why do we make these choices? Philosopher Erich Hatala Matthes explores these questions as they surface in radically diverse contexts--from museums to TikTok, and from National Parks to the corner of your attic. Matthes illustrates the deep relationship between the things we might save and our sense of self. If our cares and concerns are a fundamental part of our identity, then what we care for and preserve will play a significant role in shaping and maintaining our understanding of who we are. In a world in which everything that we care about is subject to powerful forces of change--from climate disturbance and armed conflict, to social transformation and the wear and tear of time--the terms on which we confront change will be key to whether and how we can save the things we care about in the ways that really matter to us. Will change be foisted upon us? Or is there a role for us to play in rejecting, influencing, or managing change? As he explores these questions, Matthes tackles related themes such as authenticity, agency, and appropriation: Who exactly should be responsible for saving things, and on whose behalf should such efforts be pursued? These are all essential elements to a fuller understanding of what to save and why.

Growing Songwriting is a groundbreaking book on the pedagogy of songwriting that starts with the essential question: How do I begin to write songs myself and with my students? In this book, Randles suggests that we start with cover songs, then explore the middle ground of remixes and sampling, and finally, jump into the world of lyric writing and the musical world of original songs. A growing metaphor also features throughout: lesson "seeds" are presented along with "water" in the form of stories of how people have written songs in the past and "sunlight" in the shape of ideas for continuation and inspiration. It is all about growing! In this book, you will be inspired by stories of how riffs were created, how lines were penned, and how songwriters capture their ideas in journals. Original music making is part inspiration and mostly hard work. This book gives you a window into the world of craft that surrounds the working lives of professional songwriters and pulls you into that world in small manageable steps. In looking to the metaphor of nature for pedagogical answers--answers that may very well usher in the most profound curricular growth period in the history of music education--Growing Songwriting aims to sow the seeds of songwriting in your life so that it can also flourish in the lives of your students.

The dramatic story of a mutiny aboard an eighteenth-century British ship and how its owners effectively rallied the power of the British Crown to protect their investment and expand their wealth and political power across multiple generations. In 1768, the British slave ship Black Prince, departed the port of Bristol, bound for West Africa. It never arrived. Before reaching Old Calabar, the crew mutinied, murdering the captain and his officers. The mutineers renamed the ship Liberty, elected new officers, and set out for Brazil. By the time the ship arrived there, the crew had disintegrated into a violent mob and fired into the port city. After the Black Prince wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola, the rebels fled to outposts around the Atlantic world. An eight-year manhunt ensued. This book follows the crew's turn to piracy and the merchant-owners' response to the uprising. At the very moment that the American Revolution unfolded in North America, the Black Prince's owners conducted a "shadow" revolution, mobilizing the power of the British Crown to seek justice and restitution on their behalf. These private merchants used state surveillance, policing, extradition, capital punishment, international diplomacy, and even warfare in order to protect their wealth. During an era of professed liberty and freedom, the privatization of state power was already emerging, replacing monarchies with corporate oligarchies, presaging a new kind of political power in the Atlantic world. The eighteenth-century Bristol slave merchants and subsequent generations of their families accrued great fortunes from the trade and invested it in early British banks, railroads, insurance companies, industrial manufacturing, and even the Anglican Church. Mutiny on the Black Prince narrates the dramatic story of the events onboard and the merchant owners' efforts to capture the rebels from around the Atlantic world, as well as the way that British slavery shaped the industrializing Atlantic economy and the evolution of the modern corporate state.

Lupus, a disease of the immune system, can be quite deadly, claiming the lives of thousands of patients yearly. Dr. Daniel J. Wallace is one of the world's leading authorities on this disorder, an eminent clinician who has treated over 3,000 lupus patients, the largest such practice in America. His The Lupus Book, originally published in 1995, immediately established itself as the most readable and helpful book on the disease. Now Dr. Wallace has once again completely revised The Lupus Book, incorporating a wealth of new information. This book discusses new drug information and newly discovered information about the pathology of the disease all laid out in user-friendly language that any patient could understand. In particular, Wallace discusses the first drug for lupus to be approved by the FDA--belimumab (Benlysta)--as well as other drugs in clinical trials. Readers will also discover sections on the science of lupus and breakthroughs in research including: genetics, microbiome, and clinical trial methodology. And as in past editions, the book provides absolutely lucid answers to such questions as: What causes lupus? How and where is the body affected? Can a woman with lupus have a baby? And how can one manage this disease? Indeed, Dr. Wallace has distilled his extensive experience, providing the most up-to-date information on causes, prevention, cure, exercise, diet, and many other important topics. There is also a glossary of terms and an appendix of lupus resource materials compiled by Dr. Wallace. This new seventh edition discusses new treatments, review of pathogenesis, new laboratory tests

Practicing is an essential part of every musician's life, but we are rarely taught how to practice in the most effective and efficient way. Many of us find ourselves frustrated when we sound good in the practice room only to embarrass ourselves on stage or in front of our teachers. We feel overwhelmed by the amount of music we have to learn, unsure how to balance everything. Playing from memory can feel terrifying and an insurmountable challenge, and overcoming bad habits can seem impossible at times. Molly Gebrian applies the science of learning and memory to practicing and performing, giving musicians the tools to learn music more effectively and experience greater confidence on stage. Researchers working in the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience have discovered many important principles about how the brain learns new information, retains this information both short- and long-term, and how to make this learning reliable in high-pressure situations like performances. Musicians often choose practice strategies that don't align well with the optimal ways in which the brain learns, leading to frustration while practicing and inconsistency in performance. The author offers a practical guide, using accessible language for non-scientists and non-academics, to help musicians get more out of their practicing by applying this research. Gebrian starts with general principles of learning and how the brain works, and then progresses through increasingly specific topics. Throughout the book, the science behind the various topics is explained in layman's terms, accompanied by practical, actionable advice that can be implemented immediately, to give musicians of all levels better tools while practicing and greater confidence on stage.

In Activating Youth as Change Agents: Integrating Youth Participatory Action Research in School Counseling, editors Amy L. Cook and Ian P. Levy aim to reshape the way school counselors work with youth by shifting the power dynamic to allow young people to tell their stories and uncover the hidden inequities and power structures that disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as well as other marginalized groups. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is an action-oriented research and group approach that encourages critical examination of experiences and knowledge in ways that seek to promote youth and community development. The authors describe the applications of YPAR as a youth-oriented group process where school counselors collaborate alongside students in developmentally relevant ways to achieve their goals toward personal growth and positive school-community improvement. In section one of the book, YPAR is introduced with a focus on the individual/small group level. In sections two and three, authors provide developmentally relevant descriptions and report on YPAR projects conducted in small and large groups, and illustrate YPAR at the community level. Activating Youth as Change Agents is essential reading for school counseling professionals and trainees who are seeking how to engage in culturally responsive counseling practice that helps build counselors' self-awareness and understanding of bias, and how to collaborate with others to improve systems that are unjust. Additionally, this book provides practitioners and counselors-in-training with group-counseling skills focused on action and how to engage in social justice efforts both locally at their school and in their communities.

Richly illustrated with figures and examples and supplemented with a glossary of terms, The Evolutionary Roots of Human Brain Diseases assembles recent findings in clinical neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and cellular biology to elucidate the origins of human brain diseases and how evolution has given rise to exclusive impacts on brain health only in humans. The book is succinct, up-to-date, and written by researchers across numerous disciplines, making it a compulsory read for clinical neurologists, psychologists, and all medical researchers interested in the brain. The book's 22 chapters cover basic science concepts behind cerebral cellular specificities or human-specific network developments, detailed discussions of neurological or psychiatric diseases and their clinical expression with an evolutionary focus, the newest imaging techniques to study the brain, future medication developments, as well as cultural and societal repercussions. Evolutionary concepts ranging from genetic pleiotropic antagonism to disease remnants of ancient behaviours crucial for survival are also presented. Insightful and innovative in its approach, this book offers a fascinating interdisciplinary dialogue on the potential repercussions of ongoing human brain evolution.

Politicians, judges, and citizens commonly use the phrase "rule of law" to describe some good that flows from a legal system. But what precisely is that good? Even in Aristotle's time, there was no agreement on either its nature, and on whether it counted as an unqualified good. Even now, a core rule-of-law aspiration is that law can constrain how power is flexed. But how or when? Disagreement persists as to whether the rule of law is a matter of how law is used or why it is deployed. In consequence, the World Bank, the leaders of Singapore's one-party state, and the Communist Party in China can all offer their own spins on the concept. By charting these disagreements and showing the overlap and the conflicts between different understandings of the concept, Aziz Z. Huq shows how the rule of law can still be used as an important tool for framing and evaluating the goals and functions of a legal system. He traces the idea's historical origins from ancient Greece to the constitutional theorist Albert Venn Dicey to the economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek. And he explores how that value is coming under pressure from terrorist threats, macroeconomic crisis, pandemics, autocratic populism, and climate change.

Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years. Between Borders tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants.

Nine tales of early Irish literature beautifully retold in a modern, evocative style A mysterious woman appears nightly at the bedside of a prince and sings to him until he falls sick with love for her. A determined hero tracks his beloved through several incarnations, struggling to win her back. A young warrior seeks a woman who turns into a swan. These are the plots of little-known, anonymous tales composed over a thousand years ago in the monastic libraries of Ireland. In poetry and prose, they tell us what happens when human and supernatural lovers cross the boundaries between our world and the Otherworld (síd). Set in a lost time of heroes, demi-gods, warrior queens, and other folk of the Irish Otherworld (áes síde), these stories inspired some of the earliest fairy tales of France and England. What is more, they are sexier, funnier, and bloodier than better-known medieval myths and romances. In Otherworld, historian and novelist Lisa M. Bitel offers lively retellings of these Irish original myths using her expertise in Irish history and literature to guide modern readers. She traces themes and characters that link the nine magical tales, explains customs and locations, and brings out the humor. Like all storytellers--whether medieval or modern, performers or scribes--Bitel interprets the originals as she leads her readers over the boundary of reality to the Otherworld. Drawings especially created for the book by Saba Joshaghani accompany these astonishing tales.

A new biography of the 8th president of the United States, the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power. Martin Van Buren was one of the most remarkable politicians not only of his time but in American presidential history. The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he came to dominate New York-then the most influential state in the Union-and was instrumental in electing Andrew Jackson president. Van Buren's skills as a political strategist were unparalleled (he was known as the "Little Magician"), winning him a series of high-profile offices: US senator, New York's governor, US secretary of state, US vice president, and finally the White House. In his rise to power, Van Buren sought consensus and conciliation, bending to the wishes of slave interests and complicit in the dispossession of America's Indigenous population--two of the darkest chapters in American history. This new biography of Van Buren -- the first full-scale portrait in four decades -- charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.

Most known for his creative fictions that tackle literary questions of authorship as well as more philosophical notions such as multiverse theory, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has captivated scholars from a variety of disciplines since his emergence on the international scene. However, much of the scholarship surrounding Borges does not focus on the reception of Borges's works in the fields of philosophy, the visual arts, film, political science, media theory, mathematics, and law, nor do it consider how his affiliations and interests changed over the course of his long life. In The Oxford Handbook of Jorge Luis Borges, editors Daniel Balderston and Nora Benedict, along with a team of international scholars, contextualize Jorge Luis Borges's work for a new generation of twenty-first-century readers and critics. This volume shifts the emphasis to Borges's working life, his writing processes, his collaborations and networks, and the political and cultural background of his production. The Handbook also evaluates his impact on a variety of other fields ranging from political science and philosophy to media studies and mathematics. The volume highlights current debates among Borges scholars, reevaluating how the physical forms and socio-political contexts of Borges's writings both shaped and determined specific readerships around the world. Incorporating such broader perspectives into the Handbook brings out tensions, continuities, and discontinuities in Borges's work, allowing for a much more nuanced understanding of it.

"The daughter of Freddy Trump, the highly accomplished, dashing eldest son of wealthy real estate developer Fred Trump, ... Mary lived in the shadow of Freddy's humiliation at the hands of his father. Fred Trump embodied the ethos of the zero-sum game and among his five children, there could only be one winner. That was supposed to be Freddy, his namesake, but Fred found him wanting--too sensitive, too kind, too interested in pursuits beyond the realm of the real estate empire he was meant to inherit. In Donald, Fred found a kindred spirit, a 'killer,' who would stop at nothing to get his own way. ... At the age of forty-two, [Freddy] succumbed to Fred's lethal contempt and died alone in an emergency room. ... Mary Trump brings us inside the twisted family whose patriarch ignored, froze out, and eventually destroyed his own. Freddy Trump's decline into alcoholism and illness, along with [his wife] Linda's suffering after their divorce, left Mary dangerously vulnerable as a very young girl. Inadequately and only conditionally loved, there were no adults in her life except for the father she loved, but lost before she could know him; and a mother abandoned by her ex-husband's rich and powerful family who demanded her loyalty but left her with nothing"

The inclusion of marginalised groups is a problem of modern democratic societies as representative democracy is built on principles which favour the majority. Around the world, some sections of society are silenced and actively excluded--including women, migrants, refugees, LGBTIQ, indigenous communities, and ethnic minorities, among others. The voice of the majority is used to contain, diminish, and oppress minorities through institutional racism, violence, erasure from public life, socio-economic exclusion, and gender inequality. As marginalised people around the globe rise up to challenge political regimes, there is a pressing need to understand what political voice is, why is it vital to marginalised and excluded people, and examine its transformative potential. In Political Voice, Aidan McGarry examines the agency of marginalised people, emphasizing the processes and strategies through which different communities around the world articulate their political voices. McGarry develops an innovative concept of political voice around three elements: autonomy, representation, and constitution. This conceptualization is illustrated through contemporary case studies of two persecuted and silenced groups: LGBTIQ activists in India and Roma mobilization in Europe. The cases show how excluded people articulate their ideas, demands, hopes, and experiences, and what impact these interventions have on democratic institutions. By focusing on the political voices of marginalised groups, McGarry considers democratic expression beyond the ballot box, examining how the articulation of political voice constitutes marginalised groups and democracy itself.

What is a feminist theologian to do with Christianity's patriarchal inheritance? She can avoid the most patriarchal aspects of the theological tradition and seek resources for constructive work elsewhere. Or she can critique misogynistic texts and artifacts, exposing their strategies of domination to warn against replicating them. Both approaches have merits and yet, without other interpretive strategies, they reaffirm that the theological tradition does not belong to women and others marginalized by gender. They cannot transform the discourse. But within feminist theology are the seeds of another approach, aimed at just such transformation by reworking the theological landscape to become hospitable to all those marginalized by gender. Attunement: The Art and Politics of Feminist Theology identifies trajectories resonant with this alternative approach and from them, describes and develops attunement as a third, generative path for feminist theologians. Attunement is an aesthetically-invested approach to texts and artifacts that self-consciously co-creates as it interprets. Aware of what the text affords the reader, attunement constellates images, texts, and insights to build or augment positive affordances in the text and diminish negative ones. Natalie Carnes describes why this approach is significant for feminist theology, maps its roots in a long history of gender-marginalized individuals claiming authority, describes how it casts interpretation as both an aesthetic and political event, and notes how it might provide a way forward in vexed topics in feminist theology.

Increasingly, political parties have adopted not only different policies, but different sets of facts. As E.J. Fagan argues, partisan think tanks have helped create these alternate realities in their capacity as de facto formal party organizations. Through the analyses generated by aligned think tanks, political elites on both the left and right frequently offer radically different assessments of a policy's consequences, such as the effect of tax cuts on deficits or the impact of environmental regulations on economic growth. In The Thinkers, Fagan tells the story of how partisan think tanks--such as the Heritage Foundation and Center for American Progress--displaced non-partisan experts to become the closest policy advisors to the Republican and Democratic Parties. He explores their history, how they influence policymakers, and how their influence impacts the polarization of American politics. More broadly, Fagan shows that the rise of partisan think tanks tracks closely with the increase in political polarization since the 1970s. Because they are funded and staffed by strong ideologues, partisan think tanks seek to move their party's preferences to the left or right of center. When they are successful, parties take more extreme positions than if they had only drawn information from non-partisan sources, which increases polarization. A powerful account of the impact of partisan think tanks on American democracy, The Thinkers will reshape our understanding of the fundamental drivers of the US's polarized political system.

"Ah, alas!" The "faithful shepherd" Mirtillo's woeful sigh of unrequited love, delivered with outrageous musical dissonances, has rung through the ages since the first publication of Claudio Monteverdi's madrigal "Cruda Amarilli" in 1605. But there is far more to the composer's nine books of madrigals than dissonant progressions--they are an integral part of the intellectual, artistic, and practical worlds of creation and performance in Italian musical and literary culture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While Monteverdi is also recognized for his operas and sacred works, it is no surprise that the madrigal dominated his output through his long career in Cremona, Mantua, and Venice. Author Tim Carter illustrates how the composer's wonderfully witty settings of Italian verse ran the gamut from compositions in the traditional polyphonic style for five unaccompanied voices to those in more modern idioms for one or more singers and instruments. Their poets included the major figures of the day--Torquato Tasso, Battista Guarini, and Giambattista Marino--as well as the classics, not least of all Petrarch, with texts that embraced all the current literary genres from lyric through epic to dramatic. Monteverdi also repeatedly asked and answered the fundamental question of any musical setting of poetry concerning the relationship between poetic and musical voice(s). Carter offers a more holistic perspective than has been adopted in the partial studies of Monteverdi's madrigals to date and moves far beyond conventional views of the composer and his work. He considers how Monteverdi engaged with poetry, with sound, and with the performers for whom he was writing. As Carter shows, Monteverdi was irascible, exasperating, and prone to error. Yet his astonishing musical mind was also inventive, playful, and capable of the most extraordinary wit--producing madrigals that continue to invite new approaches both to their study and to their performance.