But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This 50th anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A Second Look (in which Snow responded to the controversy four years later) features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed.

    Pepper White entered MIT in 1981 and received his master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. His account of his experiences, written in diary form, offers insight into graduate school life in general--including the loneliness and even desperation that can result from the intense pressure to succeed--and the purposes of engineering education in particular. The first professor White met at MIT told him that it did not really matter what he learned there, but that MIT would teach him how to think. This, then, is the story of how one student learned how to think. There have of course been changes at MIT since 1984, but its essence is still the same. White has added a new preface and concluding chapter to this edition to bring the story of his continuing education up to date.

    Ginsberg argues that universities have degenerated into poorly managed pseudo-corporations controlled by bureaucrats so far removed from research and teaching that they have barely any idea what these activities involve. He attacks virtually everyone from overpaid presidents and provosts down through development officers, communications specialists and human-resource staffers but he reserves his most bitter scorn for the midlevel "associate deans" and "assistant deans" who often have the most direct control over the faculty. Mr. Ginsberg refers to them as "deanlets," but at my institution they are often called "ass. deans." The Fall of the Faculty" reads like a cross between a grand-jury indictment and a call to arms. Yet as bracing and darkly pleasurable as this call is, it is hard to imagine professors joining the resistance with so few weapons at their disposal."--The Wall Street Journal

    Using graphics, checklists, and sample forms, this guide readies you for each step of the process, including selecting the committee, getting acclimated to academic writing, preparing for your oral defense, and publishing your research. New features include:A chapter on ethical considerations Expanded coverage of digital data collection and the Internet More detailed information on conducting the literature review A discussion of how to develop a theoretical or conceptual framework

    In his tenure at Yale, Anthony Kronman has watched students march across campus to protest the names of buildings and seen colleagues resign over emails about Halloween costumes. He is no stranger to recent confrontations at American universities. But where many see only the suppression of free speech, the babying of students, and the drive to bury the imperfect parts of our history, Kronman recognizes in these on-campus clashes a threat to our democracy. As Kronman argues in The Assault on American Excellence, the founders of our nation learned over three centuries ago that in order for this country to have a robust democratic government, its citizens have to be trained to have tough skins, to make up their own minds, and to win arguments not on the basis of emotion but because their side is closer to the truth. In other words, to prepare people to choose good leaders, you need to turn them into smart fighters, people who can take hits and think clearly so they’re not manipulated by demagogues. Kronman is the first to tie today’s campus debates back to the history of American values, drawing on luminaries like Alexis de Tocqueville and John Adams to show how these modern controversies threaten the best of our intellectual traditions. His tone is warm and optimistic, that of a humanist and a lover of the humanities who is passionate about educating students capable of living up to the demands of a thriving democracy. Incisive and wise, The Assault on American Excellence makes the radical argument that to graduate as good citizens, college students have to be tested in a system that isn’t wholly focused on being good to them.

    scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly—some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it.Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.

    But what is the ultimate source of these gifts? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. Woods’s story goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn: · Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church · How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith · How the Catholic Church invented the university · Why what you know about the Galileo affair is wrong · How Western law grew out of Church canon law · How the Church humanized the West by insisting on the sacredness of all human life No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth.

    From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that at one time dominated half the earth and for nearly a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, more than one billion Chinese citizens live under a regime that proclaims fealty to Marxist ideology. Yet this important tome has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx’s difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader.Here Serge Levitsky presents a revised version of Kapital, abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx’s work while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Pointing out Marx’s many erroneous predictions about the development of capitalism, Levitsky's introduction nevertheless argues for Kapital's relevance as a prime example of a philosophy of economic determinism that "subordinates the problems of human freedom and human dignity to the issues of who should own the means of production and how wealth should be distributed."Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas provided inspiration for communist regimes' ideological war against capitalism, a struggle that helped to shape the world today.

    Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers--including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials--Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank. Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable. Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of $1.17 billion in 2011--2012. Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank's American president from 1940--1946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open. After 1945 the BIS--still behind the scenes--for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown--until now.

    In fact, says Ann M. Blair in this intriguing book, the invention of the printing press and the ensuing abundance of books provoked sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European scholars to register complaints very similar to our own. Blair examines methods of information management in ancient and medieval Europe as well as the Islamic world and China, then focuses particular attention on the organization, composition, and reception of Latin reference books in print in early modern Europe. She explores in detail the sophisticated and sometimes idiosyncratic techniques that scholars and readers developed in an era of new technology and exploding information.

    This new and expanded third edition continues to offer students and readers the best one-volume introduction to the field.The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unraveled. Unlike many books which assume certain positions about the critics and the theories they represent, Peter Barry allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped.

    It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

    In Third Thoughts Steven Weinberg casts a wide net: from the cosmological to the personal, from astronomy, quantum mechanics, and the history of science to the limitations of current knowledge, the art of discovery, and the rewards of getting things wrong.Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls, or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist.Weinberg is that great rarity, a prize-winning physicist who is entertaining and accessible. The essays in Third Thoughts, some of which appear here for the first time, will engage, provoke, and inform--and never lose sight of the human dimension of scientific discovery and its consequences for our endless drive to probe the workings of the cosmos.

    He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have "Puritans as Democrats," "The Monarch's Revolution," "The Artist Prophet and Jester" -- show the recurrent role of great themes throughout the eras.The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga that modifies the current impression of one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and freedom (even in sexual matters) is not an invention of the last decades. And when Barzun rates the present not as a culmination but a decline, he is in no way a prophet of doom. Instead, he shows decadence as the creative novelty that will burst forth -- tomorrow or the next day.Only after a lifetime of separate studies covering a broad territory could a writer create with such ease the synthesis displayed in this magnificent volume.

    In a quick, easy read, you can take the main principles from White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism! The phrase “white fragility” has grown into a term that many people have accepted and referenced when talking about the defensiveness and discomfort a white person feels when talking about race. The term, originally coined in a 2011 article by Robin DiAngelo, is now used in various articles, books, TV shows, and more. Although it’s commonly heard, not many people truly understand what it means. That’s why Robin DiAngelo wrote the book entitled White Fragility: Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. DiAngelo is an author, former professor, and lecturer with a PhD in Multicultural Education from the University of Washington in Seattle. For more than 20 years, she’s focused on racial justice and whiteness studies. Her book on white fragility is a culmination of everything she’s learned from her personal experiences, her studies, and her interactions with white people and people of color. Her book aims to create a dialogue about race despite the white fragility that Americans feel when confronted with that topic. The book, published in 2018, has gained strong reviews because it explores race in-depth and attempts to break down those walls that white people have built in order to protect themselves from acknowledging their race and the benefits it gives them in life. The book debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List. DiAngelo is the two-time winner of the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Aside from her White Fragility book, DiAngelo has numerous other publications and books under her belt. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism is the #1 bestseller in the discrimination & racism category on Amazon. That’s because it’s a useful tool that can be used in classrooms, discussions, lectures, and more. For those not in an academic setting, it’s also simply just a book that people from all different cultures can learn from, as it aims to teach us all how we got to this point in society, why we have the racial biases we do, and how we can overcome white fragility in order to have meaningful relationships with people of color.