Books published by Princeton University Press

Develops a theory of response variability that, by reconciling the strengths and weaknesses of the standard approaches, that helps pollsters and scholars resolve perennial problems. This work offers an analysis of what a respondent is likely to choose, and also how variable those choices would be under differing circumstances.

Offers an investigation into what is known in Tibet as 'secret autobiography', a literary genre that presents an exploration of religious experiences. This book translates and studies the autobiographies by a Tibetan Buddhist visionary, Jigme Lingpa (1730 - 1798).

Argues that economists and sociologists have paid little attention to each other during most of the twentieth century: social problems have been analyzed as if they had no economic dimension and economic problems as if they had no social dimension. This book also describes how they came to challenge the separation between economics and sociology.

Offers an econometric analysis of business cycles. This book addresses five principal questions about the measurement, modeling, and forecasting of business cycles. It asks whether business cycles have become more moderate in the postwar period, concluding that recessions have, in fact, been shorter and shallower.

Presents an analysis of the rise and fall of US inflation after 1960. This book examines two explanations for the behavior of inflation and unemployment in this period: the natural-rate hypothesis joined to the Lucas critique and a more traditional econometric policy evaluation modified to include adaptive expectations and learning.

Offering a comparative history of marketing and campaigning, this book generates a "jukebox model" of participation and shows that expressive choice has become a target for those eliciting mass participation and public support.

How does law transform family, sexuality, and community in the fractured social world characteristic of the colonizing process? This title reveals how, in Hawai'i, indigenous Hawaiian law was displaced by a transplanted Anglo-American law as global movements of capitalism, Christianity, and imperialism swept across the islands.

Offers a guide to the conceptual framework of quantum mechanics. This book presents the Copenhagen interpretation, showing its logical consistency and completeness. The problem of measurement is a major area of inquiry, with the author surveying its history from Planck to Heisenberg before describing the consistent-histories interpretation.

The dream of scientific management was a rationalized machine world where life would approach the perfection of an assembly line. Since its early twentieth-century peak, this dream has come to seem a dehumanizing nightmare. This book tells the story of the emergence of modernist architecture as a romance with the ideas of scientific management.

Accounts for the origins of Social Security as we know it. This book tells the story of the Townsend Plan - a political organization that sought to alleviate poverty and end the Great Depression through a government-provided retirement stipend of $200 a month for every American over the age of sixty.

Contradicts the long-held belief that Aristotle was the first to discuss individuation systematically. This book argues that Plato was concerned with what makes something a something and that he solved the problem in a radically different way than did Aristotle.

Presents an area of mathematical research that combines topology, geometry, and logic. This book seeks to explain and illustrate the implications of the general principle, first emphasized by Alex Nabutovsky, that logical complexity engenders geometric complexity.

Reflects the influence not only of French poets including Verlaine and Rimbaud, but also of Whitman. This title presents the poems, whose English translations appear opposite the French originals, which are accompanied by reproductions of seven woodcuts by Georges Minne that appeared in the original volume.

Introduces readers to the basics of volcanology. This book follows the author as he descends into the steaming crater of the Soufri re Volcano on the island of St Vincent, as he conducts research on lava flows on the desolate south shore of the Island of Hawaii, and as he struggles to understand the explosion at Mount St Helens.

A collection of known eyewitness account of the great Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). It contains accounts, ranging from the writings of Meir Aron Goldschmidt, editor of "The Corsair", to the recollections of Kierkegaard's fiancee.

Uses the experiences of Asian Americans to reconfigure the ways in which American history can be understood. This book examines a set of binaries - East and West, black and white, man and woman - that have structured the telling of our nation's history and shaped our ideas of citizenship since the late nineteenth century.

Presenting the story of Poincare's work, this book traces the history of attempts to solve the problems of celestial mechanics posed in Isaac Newton's "Principia" in 1686. It introduces the people whose ideas led to the field called nonlinear dynamics.

Challenges the view that the fifteenth century was the 'Drab Age' of English literary history. This book seeks to recover the late-medieval literary system that defined the canon of Chaucer's work and the canonical approaches to its understanding. It shows how the poets, and scribes constructed Chaucer as the 'poet laureate'

Explains the origins and development of modern physical concepts about matter. This book examines two of the earliest known theories about matter - the atomic theory, which attributed all physical phenomena to atoms and their motion in the void, and the theory of the elements, which described matter as consisting of earth, air, fire, and water.

Offers an introduction to critical transitions in complex systems - the radical changes that happen at tipping points when thresholds are passed. This title describes the dynamical systems theory behind critical transitions, covering catastrophe theory, bifurcations and chaos.

The closest galactic nucleus in the universe, Sagittarius A* can provide us with a realistic expectation of learning about the physics of strong gravitational fields. This book provides an overview of the ideas and discoveries pertaining to the supermassive black hole at the galactic center known as Sagittarius A*.

Shibe Park was demolished in 1976, and today its site is surrounded by the devastation of North Philadelphia. The author, however, vividly evokes the feelings people had about the home of the Philadelphia Athletics and later the Phillies.

Provides an analysis of the huge changes undergone by the economies of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This book assesses the economic prospects of each country, and the likelihood that economic conditions will spur major political changes.

On Europe's periphery, Russia was an early modernizing nation whose troubles stimulated intellectuals to develop radical and utopian alternatives to Western models of modernity. This work tells the fascinating story of how Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed our world in dramatic but often unattributed ways.

Focusing on the earliest forays into microscopical research, from 1620 to 1720, this book provides technological history of the knowledge that helped launch philosophy into the modern era. It argues that the discovery of microworld presented metaphysicians with the task of reconciling the ubiquity of life with human-centered theological systems.

What makes humans unique? This work presents an alternative to this puzzling question. Based on insights into the behavior of chimps and other great apes, our now extinct human ancestors, and existing hunting and gathering societies, it shows the remarkable role that meat has played in these societies.

Shows what the Badger State did and how it was done. Wisconsin's welfare reform was the most radical in the country, and it began far earlier than that in most other states. It was the achievement of legislators and administrators who were unusually high-minded and effective by national standards.

Shows how enlightened aristocrats, reactionary romantics, and the theorists and victims of totalitarianism have variously fashioned their vision of Russian society in musical terms. This book focuses on four individual composers, each characterized both as a self-consciously Russian creator and as a European.

Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman are widely acclaimed for their pioneering theoretical studies of how special interest groups seek to influence the policymaking process in democratic societies. This collection of eight of their articles is a companion to their monograph, "Special Interest Politics".