In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.

    Fanon's masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said's Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other.Fanon's analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world, and this bold new translation by Richard Philcox reaffirms it as a landmark.

    Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.

    Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 – from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the “insane” and the rest of humanity.

    It focuses on the relationship between the inmate and the institution, how the setting affects the person and how the person can deal with life on the inside.

    His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students.Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western.Quigley defines a civilization as “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.” A civilization’s decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution—that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.

    Weaving together their extraordinary personal narratives, Oscar Lewis creates a sympathetic but ultimately tragic portrait that is at once harrowing and humane, mystifying and moving.An invaluable document, full of verve and pathos, The Children of Sánchez reads like the best of fiction, with the added impact that it is all, undeniably, true.

    Winner of the National Book Award. “One of the major works of scholarship of the twentieth century” (Christian Science Monitor). Index; illustrations.

    Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.Cover design by Matt Dorfman.

    A provocative new view of Marx stressing his humanist philosophy and challenging both Soviet distortion and Western ignorance of his basic thinking.

    

    In this first and most popular of Usigli's "antihistorical trilogy," the author portrays the brief, disastrous reign of Maximilian I as emperor of Mexico, framed by scenes depicting his wife Carlota in her old age, after she had survived her husband by several decades in spite of having descended into madness.

    That the country went on to develop a tendency for gross overspending on funerals Mitford puts down to the greed and ingenuity of undertakers, whom she regards as salesmen guilty of pressuring families into agreeing to their excessive standards for burial. Mitford, who died recently, delivers facts and criticism in a forthright and humorous manner. She would certainly appreciate that her assessment of the American way of death endures after her own passing.

    Book by Lefebvre, Henri

    Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

    McClelland shares research and analysis on the reasoning behind the fluctuating development of society.The Achieving Society provides a factual basis for evaluating economic, historical, and sociological theories that explain the rise and fall of civilizations. Within this book, readers will learn about McClelland’s notable descriptions of the type of motivational needs society has: achievement motivation, authority and power motivation, and affiliation motivation.

    A timeless classic.

    John Calvin, living and working in Geneva, then as now a center of trade and banking, is the reformer who thought most carefully about economic and social issues, warning that "social disorder is first and foremost disdain for the poor and oppression of the weak." Calvin's application of the teaching of the Bible to practical issues of his place and time speaks to us with continuing relevance. Andr Bi ler examines the reformer's practical theology within the context of his proclamation of the Christian gospel and doctrine, carefully differentiating the authentic voice of Calvin from that of later Calvinists, Puritans, and such academic interpreters as Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, and R.H. Tawney. Biéler's monumental work, a storehouse of Calvin's own writing and teaching, has enjoyed steady sales in French since it first appeared in 1959. With this new edition, it becomes available for the first time in English translation.

    

    The aim of the book is to help the reader develop an orderly perspective--a consistent point of view from which to see his (or her) own conduct and that of his (or her) fellows. Propositions about behavior seen from the viewpoint are presented, and relevant evidence, both descriptive and experimental, is examined and evaluated.The author draws upon the two great intellectual traditions of pragmatism and psychoanalysis, and attempts to integrate them into a single, consistent approach. All concepts are reduced to behavioristic terms--defined always in terms of what people do. In this way, it is possible to draw freely on these two schools, and at the same time, avoid much of the jargon of both. Other approaches to the study of human behavior are frequently mentioned and sometimes discussed, but the objective is to give the reader one perspective rather than confuse him with many. Of course, this standpoint is presented as only one of many possible ways of looking at people.Although the book's basic ideas are drawn from two main schools of psychological thought, relevant material has been gathered from other sources as well--sociology, ethnography, linguistics, experimental psychology, and clinical data from psychiatry. One very important extra feature is the List of Personal Documents, compiled by the author to guide interested readers to first-person accounts--biographies, diaries, clinical records--each of which provides a valuable record of human experience.