Books published by The University of Chicago Press

Considering humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable, this text addresses diminishing human agency and political freedom - the paradox that as human powers increase through technology and inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions.

The "Nicomachean Ethics" is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, the authors have produced an English-language translation of the "Ethics" that is as faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism both as a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom

Challenges long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don't arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation, but that revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of normal science.

Written in the sixteenth century, this book tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China's most famous religious heroes, and his four supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures.

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-73), legendary Persian Muslim poet, theologian, and mystic, wrote poems acclaimed through the centuries for their spiritual images and provocative content, which often described Rumi's love for God in romantic or even erotic terms. This volume includes four hundred poems which provides English translations of this genius.

"The Companion Species Manifesto" is about the implosion of nature and culture in the joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in "significant otherness". In all their historical complexity, Donna Haraway tells us, dogs matter. They are not surrogates for theory, she says; they are not here just to think with.

The body plays a central role in shaping our experience of the world. Why, then, are we so frequently oblivious to our own bodies? We gaze at the world, but rarely see our own eyes. We may be unable to explain how we perform the simplest of acts. We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is "absent"--forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured. In part 1, Leder explores a wide range of bodily functions with an eye to structures of concealment and alienation. He discusses not only perception and movement, skills and tools, but a variety of "bodies" that philosophers tend to overlook: the inner body with its anonymous rhythms; the sleeping body into which we nightly lapse; the prenatal body from which we first came to be. Leder thereby seeks to challenge "primacy of perception." In part 2, Leder shows how this phenomenology allows us to rethink traditional concepts of mind and body. Leder argues that Cartesian dualism exhibits an abiding power because it draws upon life-world experiences. Descartes' corpus is filled with disruptive bodies which can only be subdued by exercising "disembodied" reason. Leder explores the origins of this notion of reason as disembodied, focusing upon the hidden corporeality of language and thought. In a final chapter, Leder then proposes a new ethic of embodiment to carry us beyond Cartesianism. This original, important, and accessible work uses examples from the author's medical training throughout. It will interest all those concerned with phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, or the Cartesian tradition; those workingin the health care professions; and all those fascinated by the human body.

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This anthology of his major work contains a foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson.

"Storytelling is one of the few traits common to all human societies. A sequence of actions, a sympathetic character, a complication, a resolution-the key ingredients in a story are as familiar to us today as they were to our ancestors. Although we may associate the form with fictional narratives such as novels and movies, the same ingredients also underlie the best nonfiction works, including those by David Grann, Mary Roach, Tracy Kidder, and John McPhee. In the first edition of Storycraft, Jack Hart illustrated how these and other nonfiction writers, including many he coached over decades at the Oregonian, used the ingredients of story to create compelling and award-winning works of narrative nonfiction. For this revision, he has expanded the field to consider how storytelling techniques can be used in the rapidly growing nonfiction form of podcasting. He has added insights from recent research into storytelling and the brain, illustrating how facts and arguments effectively embedded in narrative are more likely to stick in readers' minds. And he has added new examples of effective nonfiction narratives."--

In 2020, it will have been twenty-five years since one of the greatest wildlife conservation and restoration achievements of the twentieth century took place: the reintroduction of wolves to the world's first national park, Yellowstone. Eradicated after the park was established, then absent for seventy years, these iconic carnivores returned to Yellowstone in 1995 when the US government reversed its century-old policy of extermination and--despite some political and cultural opposition--began the reintroduction of forty-one wild wolves from Canada and northwest Montana. In the intervening decades, scientists have studied their myriad behaviors, from predation to mating to wolf pup play, building a one-of-a-kind field study that has both allowed us to witness how the arrival of top predators can change an entire ecosystem and provided a critical window into impacts on prey, pack composition, and much else. Here, for the first time in a single book, is the incredible story of the wolves' return to Yellowstone National Park as told by the very people responsible for their reintroduction, study, and management. Anchored in what we have learned from Yellowstone, highlighting the unique blend of research techniques that have given us this knowledge, and addressing the major issues that wolves still face today, this book is as wide-ranging and awe-inspiring as the Yellowstone restoration effort itself. We learn about individual wolves, population dynamics, wolf-prey relationships, genetics, disease, management and policy, newly studied behaviors and interactions with other species, and the rippling ecosystem effects wolves have had on Yellowstone's wild and rare landscape. Perhaps most importantly of all, the book also offers solutions to ongoing controversies and debates. Featuring a foreword by Jane Goodall, beautiful images, a companion online documentary by celebrated filmmaker Bob Landis, and contributions from more than seventy wolf and wildlife conservation luminaries from Yellowstone and around the world, Yellowstone Wolves is a gripping, accessible celebration of the extraordinary Yellowstone Wolf Project--and of the park through which these majestic and important creatures once again roam.

When a film is not a document, it is a dream. This visual autobiography traces the author's lifelong love affair with film. It looks at his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood's golden age, and a romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that basic metaphors used in everyday speech not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning.

"Though there are many books about the history of the alphabet, virtually none address how that history came to be. In Inventing the Alphabet, Johanna Drucker guides readers from antiquity to the present to show how humans have shaped and reshaped their own understanding of this transformative writing tool. From ancient beliefs in the alphabet as a divine gift to growing awareness of its empirical origins through the study of scripts and inscriptions, Drucker describes the frameworks-classical, textual, biblical, graphical, antiquarian, archaeological, paleographic, and political-within which the alphabet's history has been and continues to be constructed. Drucker's book begins in ancient Greece, with the earliest writings on the alphabet's origins. She then explores biblical sources on the topic and medieval preoccupations with the magical properties of individual letters. She later delves into the development of modern archaeological and paleographic tools, and she concludes with the role of alphabetic characters in the digital era. Throughout, she argues that, as a shared form of knowledge technology integrated into every aspect of our lives, the alphabet performs complex cultural, ideological, and technical functions, and her carefully curated selection of images demonstrates how closely the letters we use today still resemble their original appearance millennia ago"--

Initially denounced as a collection of sinister maxims and a recommendation of tyranny, this text has more recently been defended as the first scientific treatment of politics, challenging the traditions of ancient and medieval thought and morality.

Celebrated science writer Carl Zimmer's classic book, updated in a new edition, is an eye-opening look at Covid-19 and the many other viruses that shape our planet and ourselves.

Stories accompany us through life from birth to death. Stories connect people, but they can also disconnect, creating boundaries between people and justifying violence. This book grapples with this fundamental aspect of our lives, offering both a theory of how stories shape us and a useful method for analyzing them.

Suitable for writers, editors, and publishers, this sixteenth edition offers expanded information on producing electronic publications, including Web-based content and e-books. It offers an appendix on production and digital technology that demystifies the process of electronic workflow and offers a primer on the use of XML markup.