Follow

• 

  At war with government : how conservatives weaponized distrust from Goldwater to Trump

  Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris

  Polling shows that since the 1950s Americans' trust in government has fallen dramatically to historically low levels. In At War with Government , the political scientists Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris reveal that this trend is no accident. Although distrust of authority is deeply rooted in American culture, it is fueled by conservative elites who benefit from it. Since the postwar era conservative leaders have deliberately and strategically undermined faith in the political system for partisan aims. Fried and Harris detail how conservatives have sown distrust to build organizations, win elections, shift power toward institutions that they control, and secure policy victories. They trace this strategy from the Nixon and Reagan years through Gingrich's Contract with America, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump's rise and presidency. Conservatives have promoted a political identity opposed to domestic state action, used racial messages to undermine unity, and cultivated cynicism to build and bolster coalitions. Once in power, they have defunded public services unless they help their constituencies and rolled back regulations, perversely proving the failure of government. Fried and Harris draw on archival sources to document how conservative elites have strategized behind the scenes. With a powerful diagnosis of our polarized era, At War with Government also proposes how we might rebuild trust in government by countering the strategies conservatives have used to weaken it.

• 

  UN global compacts: governing migrants and refugees

  Nicholas R. Micinski

  This book is a concise introduction to the key concepts, issues, and actors in global migration governance and presents a comprehensive analysis of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, the Global Compact on Refugees, and the Global Compact for Migration.

• 

  Queen Victoria's wars : British military campaigns,1857-1902

  Stephen M. Miller Editor

  This is a new history of Britain's imperial wars during the nineteenth century. Including chapters on wars fought in the hills, on the veldt, in the dense forests, and along the coast, it discusses wars waged in China, Burma, Afghanistan, and India/Pakistan; New Zealand; and, West, East, and South Africa. Leading military historians from around the world situate the individual conflict in the larger context of British domestic history and British foreign policy/grand strategy and examine the background of the conflict, the war aims, the outbreak of the war, the forces and technology employed, a narrative of the war, details about one specific battle, and the aftermath of the war. Beginning with the Indian Rebellion and ending with the South African War, it enables readers to see the global impact of British imperialism, the function of the army in the service of British political goals, and the evolution of military technology.

• 

  For The Good Of All, Do Not Destroy The Birds

  Jennifer Moxley

  A blend of literary criticism and memoir, Jennifer Moxley's FOR THE GOOD OF ALL, DO NOT DESTROY THE BIRDS recounts a life spent in the company of birds and poems, intimately attuned to the mysteries of singing. These essays trace the poet's calling to sources in birdsong and sacrifice, asking, "Must a woman be sentenced to endless night for a poet to be born?" From the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the death of the poet's mother, Moxley explores the losses that underlie poetry, and in turn, poetry's use as a measure for living.

• 

  Paths to a Culture of Tolerance and Peace

  Timothy G. Reagan and Hugh J. Curran

  We are living today in a multicultural world, surrounded by people from different backgrounds, cultures and religions. Establishing tolerance and peace has become crucial. Without these qualities, social stability and communal harmony are threatened; and acceptance of each other remains elusive. Spreading a culture of tolerance and peace is necessary to address contemporary issues of world peace, this includes reflection on the importance of refusing violence and adopting a more peaceful means for resolving disagreements and conflicts. This book, written by the world's foremost thinkers in this area, aims to increase feelings of openness and respect toward others, solidarity and sharing based on a sense of security in one's own identity and a capacity to recognize the many dimensions of being human in different cultural and social contexts.

• 

  Opportunism and Goodwill: Canadian Business Expansion in Colombia, 1867-1979

  Stefano Tijerina

  Canada’s social, economic, political, and environmental impacts on the Western Hemisphere have been largely overlooked by historians and other social scientists. Most narratives of the relationships between North America and the emerging markets of the south disproportionately focus on the United States. By downplaying Canada’s role, these narratives have fallen short in reconstructing the history of the region. Opportunism and Goodwill fills in these historical gaps, looking at the dynamics of the relationship between Canada and Colombia as they were spearheaded by Canada’s private sector.

  Stefano Tijerina argues that since the first era of globalization during the second half of the nineteenth century, Canada’s private sector has carved out niche markets across Latin America, sometimes working independently and in other instances working on behalf of foreign interests. In his historical analysis of these temporal and spatial dimensions, Tijerina shows that the long-term economic development of Canada and Colombia was intertwined and interdependent, ultimately stressing the importance of transnational approaches to the study of history. Contributing to questions about Canada’s "goodwill" and other benevolent constructs, Opportunism and Goodwill sets the historical foundation for current debates about Canadian industries across the world.

• 

  A Climate Chronology

  Sharon S. Tisher

  The most challenging of all endeavors in human history will likely be that of understanding the impact of our industrial and technological enterprises on the planet’s climate and ecosystems, and responding effectively to the threats posed by that impact. I began writing this chronology while developing a climate policy course at the University of Maine. It has grown substantially during the ensuing nine years, and continues to grow.
  
  By juxtaposing developments in climate science, U.S. policy, and international policy over the previous two centuries, I hope to give the reader new insights into where we have been, where we are now, and where we may be headed in this formidable endeavor. I welcome comments, and suggested additions to this evolving work. It will be updated every January.

• 

  Social Problems: Continuity and Change

  Steven E. Barkan

  Social Problems: Continuity and Change, Version 2.0 is suitable for undergraduate courses called Social Problems or similar titles such as Issues in American Society or Problems in Society taught in sociology departments in either two- or four-year colleges and universities.

  Social Problems: Continuity and Change, Version 2.0 explores the nature and extent of social problems in America while examining realistic options for positively addressing these challenges. Version 2.0 reflects the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it brings into greater focus many long-term and persistent challenges present in American society.

• 

  Twitter, the Public Sphere, and the Chaos of Online Deliberation

  Gewn Bouvier Editor and Judith E. Rosenbaum Editor

  This volume provides a critical view of the nature and quality of political and civic communication on Twitter. The introduction lays out the current state of research, showing the continuum of views, from the more optimistic to more pessimistic, regarding the platform’s potential to facilitate civic conversations. The eleven empirical case studies in the book provide new insights, addressing a variety of topics through a diverse array of methodological approaches. Together, the chapters provide a counter position to recent studies that offer more celebratory assessments of Twitter’s potential. The book draws attention to the chaotic, insular, uncivil, and emotionally charged nature of debate and communication on Twitter.

• 

  Essential renewal of America's schools : a leadership guide for democratizing schools from the inside out

  Carl D. Glickman and Ian M. Mette

  What can educational leaders do to create schools that are purposeful, moral, and successful? This book outlines a practical framework to replace dependence on top-down state and federal regulations with locally guided initiatives to address local goals. Building on Glickman's classic, Renewing America's Schools, this resource is for anyone involved with school change in today's complex times

• 

  George White and the Victorian Army in India and Africa : Serving the Empire

  Stephen M. Miller

  This book offers a detailed investigation of George S. Whites career in the British Army. It explores late Victorian military conflicts, British power dynamics in Africa and Asia, civil-military relations on the fringes of the empire, and networks of advancement in the army. White served in the Indian Rebellion and, twenty years later, the Second Anglo-Afghan War, where he earned the Victoria Cross. After serving in the Sudan campaign, White returned to India and held commands during the conquest and pacification of Upper Burma and the extension of British control over Balochistan, and, as Commander-in-Chief, sent expeditions to the North-West Frontier and oversaw major military reforms. Just before the start of the South African War, White was given the command of the Natal Field Force. This force was besieged in Ladysmith for 118 days. Relieved in 1900, White was heralded as the "Defender of Ladysmith." He was made Field-Marshal in 1903.

• 

  On the Eastern Front 1914 : Meine Kriegserinnerungen

  Werner N. Riess and Warren C. Riess Editor

  In the spring of 1915, Sgt. (Wachtmeister) Werner Riess of the Prussian field artillery was recovering from surgery at a military hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany. Referring to his battlefield diary and letters that he had sent home to his wife, while everything was still fresh in his mind he wrote this memoir of his five months fighting on the Eastern Front against the Russians. As Riess was in a very mobile unit, his memoir offers a personal view of much of Germany's Eastern Front from 4 August through 31 December 1914, when he returned to Berlin for surgery. Werner Riess related what he did, what he saw, and what he felt. He left us a seemingly honest personal memoir, not edited by the filters and analyses of historical perspective. Because at the time he wrote the memoir Riess still did not know what had transpired out of his sight, the editor has added annotation text and a local map to each chapter and included some pertinent material from his wife's diary. This edition is in English, but includes a scan of his original memoir in German

• 

  Gandhi After 9/11: Creative Nonviolence and Sustainability

  Douglas Allen

  Douglas Allen argues that Gandhi offers to us the most profound and influential theory, philosophy, and engaged practices of ahimsa or nonviolence. Embracing Gandhi's insightful critiques of modernity, the book sees his approach as a creative and challenging catalyst to rethink our positions today. We live in a post-9/11 world that is defined by widespread physical, psychological, economic, political, cultural, religious, technological, and environmental violence and that is increasingly unsustainable. The author's central claim is Gandhi, when selectively appropriated and creatively reformulated and applied, is essential for formulating new positions that are more nonviolent and more sustainable. These provide resources and hope for dealing with our contemporary crises. The author analyzes what a Gandhi-informed, valuable but humanly limited swaraj technology looks like and what a Gandhi-informed, more egalitarian, interconnected, bottom-up, decentralized world of globalization looks like. The book focuses on key themes in Gandhi's thought, such as violence and nonviolence, Absolute Truth and relative truth, ethical and spiritual living. Challenging us to consider nonviolent, moral, and truthful transformative alternatives today, the author moves through essays on Gandhi in the age of technology; Gandhi after 9/11 and 26/11 terrorism; Gandhi's controversial views on the Bhagavad-Gita and Hind Swaraj; Gandhi and Vedanta; Gandhi on socialism; Gandhi and marginality, caste, class, race, and oppressed others.

• 

  Childfree by Choice: the Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence

  Amy Blackstone

  As a childfree woman, Dr. Amy Blackstone is no stranger to a wide range of negative responses when she informs people she doesn’t have–nor does she want–kids: confused looks, patronizing quips, thinly veiled pity, even outright scorn and condemnation. But she is not alone in opting out when it comes to children. More people than ever are choosing to forgo parenthood, and openly discussing a choice that’s still often perceived as taboo. Yet this choice, and its effects personally and culturally, are still often misunderstood.
  
  Amy Blackstone, a professor of sociology, has been studying the childfree choice since 2008, a choice she and her husband had already confidently and happily made. Using her own and others’ research as well as her personal experience, Blackstone delves into the childfree movement from its conception to today, exploring gender, race, sexual orientation, politics, environmentalism, and feminism, as she strips away the misconceptions surrounding non-parents and reveals the still radical notion that support of the childfree can lead to better lives and societies for all.

• 

  Aquatic frontier : oysters and aquaculture in the progressive era

  Samuel P. Hanes

  Although few remember their former significance, oysters were one of the largest U.S. fisheries at their peak in the late nineteenth century. As the fishery industrialized on-and offshore, oyster farms and canning factories spread along the Eastern Seaboard, with overharvesting becoming increasingly common. During the Progressive Era, state governments founded new agencies to cope with this problem and control this expanding economy. Regulators faced a choice: keep elaborate conservation systems based on common property rights or develop new ones with private, hatchery-stocked aquaculture farms. The tradition-preserving solution won, laying the groundwork for modern oyster management.

  The Aquatic Frontier explores the forms this debate took between 1870 and 1920 in law enforcement, legislative advising, natural science, and oyster cartography. Samuel P. Hanes argues that the effort to centralize and privatize the industry failed due to a lack of understanding of the complex social-ecological systems in place—a common dilemma for environmental managers in this time period and for fisheries management confronting dangers from dwindling populations today.

• 

  "The Public Gaze and the Prying Eye": Privacy, Slavery and Wife Abuse in 19th-Century Courts

  Jerome J. Nadelhaft

  “It is difficult to define with precision what is and what is not extreme and repeated cruelty,” an Illinois judge noted in 1882. Throughout the century, some courts acted in accordance with the words of an anonymous author of an 1831 piece in the Carolina Law Journal: “The indurance of partial suffering, from incompatibility of tempers, or vicious habits, among married people is an evil vastly less... than that which arises” from easy divorce. Judicially, for some courts the tone had been set by an often cited late eighteenth-century English case, Evans v. Evans. In a long drawn out judgment, Sir William Scott had declared: “the happiness of some individuals must be sacrificed to the greater and more general good.” In New York in 1863 Hannah Solomon accused her husband of attempting to break her arm, of pulling a chair out from under her while she was holding her child, and of kicking her several times. The judge was not convinced she was telling the truth, but in the end he decided it really did not matter. If true, this “single instance” of cruelty “should receive the reprobation of every just person,” but still, it ought to be forgiven. Husbands and wives “should bear long and patiently with each other.” As Iowa Chief Justice Day put it in 1871, “married couples, for the good of their common offspring, the conservation of social order, and the maintenance of general morality, must bear with patience and composure the occasional disquietudes growing out of inharmonious tempers and dispositions.” Ruling in an 1890 case which involved at least one act of violence, “outbursts of temper,” an undescribed incident with a poker,“It is difficult to define with precision what is and what is not extreme and repeated cruelty,” an Illinois judge noted in 1882, although for some judges it hardly mattered. Throughout the century, some courts, fortunately only a minority, acted in accordance with the words of an anonymous author of an 1831 piece in the Carolina Law Journal: “The indurance of partial suffering, from incompatibility of tempers, or vicious habits, among married people is an evil vastly less... than that which arises” from easy divorce. Judicially, for some courts the tone had been set by an often cited late eighteenth-century English case, Evans v. Evans. In a long drawn out judgment, Sir William Scott had declared: “the happiness of some individuals must be sacrificed to the greater and more general good.” In New York in 1863 Hannah Solomon accused her husband of attempting to break her arm, of pulling a chair out from under her while she was holding her child, and of kicking her several times. The judge was not convinced she was telling the truth, but in the end he decided it really did not matter. If true, this “single instance” of cruelty “should receive the reprobation of every just person,” but still, it ought to be forgiven. Husbands and wives “should bear long and patiently with each other.” As Iowa Chief Justice Day put it in 1871, “married couples, for the good of their common offspring, the conservation of social order, and the maintenance of general morality, must bear with patience and composure the occasional disquietudes growing out of inharmonious tempers and dispositions.” Ruling in an 1890 case which involved at least one act of violence, “outbursts of temper,” an undescribed incident with a poker, the display of a pistol, and a broken promise not to drink, a New York Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s grant of separation. It might well be disagreeable for a woman to continue an association with such a man, but “the necessity to endure... is one of the evils attending the marriage state.”1 Or, as Sir William Scott had put it one hundred years earlier, marriage was “for better, for worse,” to be “submitted to with patience” even when it “exhibit[s] a great deal of the misery that clouds human life.”

• 

  Linguistic Legitimacy and Social Justice

  Timothy Reagan

  This book examines the nature of human language and the ideology of linguistic legitimacy – the common set of beliefs about language differences that leads to the rejection of some language varieties and the valorization of others. It investigates a broad range of case studies of languages and dialects which have for various reasons been considered 'low-status' including: African American English, Spanglish, American Sign Language, Yiddish, Esperanto and other constructed languages, indigenous languages in post-colonial neo-European societies, and Afrikaans and related language issues in South Africa. Further, it discusses the implications of the ideology of linguistic legitimacy for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the US. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book provides a readable and pedagogically useful tool to help readers comprehend the nature of human language, and the ways in which attitudes about human language can have either positive or negative consequences for communities and their languages. It will be of particular interest to language teachers and teacher educators, as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics, intercultural communication, minority languages and language extinction.

• 

  Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy

  Donald Beith

  In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations, psychology, postmodernism, social constructivism, and critical race theory. Drawing on empirical studies and phenomenological reflections, Beith argues that in nature, novel meaning emerges prior to any type of constituting activity or deterministic plan.
  
  The Birth of Sense is an original phenomenological investigation in the style of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and it demonstrates that the French philosopher’s works cohere around the notion that life is radically expressive. While Merleau-Ponty’s early works are widely interpreted as arguing for the primacy of human consciousness, Beith argues that a pivotal redefinition of passivity is already under way here, and extends throughout Merleau-Ponty’s corpus. This work introduces new concepts in contemporary philosophy to interrogate how organic development involves spontaneous expression, how personhood emerges from this bodily growth, and how our interpersonal human life remains rooted in, and often thwarted by, domains of bodily expressivity.

• 

  Ecosystem biogeochemistry: element cycling in the forest landscape

  Christopher S. Cronan

  This textbook presents a comprehensive process-oriented approach to biogeochemistry that is intended to appeal to readers who want to go beyond a general exposure to topics in biogeochemistry, and instead are seeking a holistic understanding of the interplay of biotic and environmental drivers in the cycling of elements in forested watersheds. The book is organized around a core set of ecosystem processes and attributes that collectively help to generate the whole-system structure and function of a terrestrial ecosystem. In the first nine chapters, a conceptual framework is developed based on distinct soil, microbial, plant, atmospheric, hydrologic, and geochemical processes that are integrated in the element cycling behavior of watershed ecosystems. With that conceptual foundation in place, students then proceed to the final three chapters where they are challenged to think critically about integrated element cycling patterns; roles for biogeochemical models; the likely impacts of disturbance, stress, and management on watershed biogeochemistry; and linkages among patterns and processes in watersheds experiencing novel environmental changes.

  Included with the text are figures, tables of comparative data, extensive literature citations, a glossary of terms, an index, and a set of 24 biogeochemical problems with answers. The problems are intended to support chapter concepts and to demonstrate how critical thinking skills, simple algebra, and thoughtful human logic can be used to solve applied problems in biogeochemistry that might be encountered by a research scientist or a resource manager.

  Using this book as an introduction to biogeochemistry, students will achieve a level of subject mastery and disciplinary perspective that will permit them to see and to interpret the individual components, interactions, and synergies that are represented in the dynamic element cycling patterns of watershed ecosystems.

• 

  Ecosystem Biogeochemistry: Element Cycling in the Forest Landscape

  Christopher S. Cronan

  This textbook presents a comprehensive process-oriented approach to biogeochemistry that is intended to appeal to readers who want to go beyond a general exposure to topics in biogeochemistry, and instead are seeking a holistic understanding of the interplay of biotic and environmental drivers in the cycling of elements in forested watersheds. The book is organized around a core set of ecosystem processes and attributes that collectively help to generate the whole-system structure and function of a terrestrial ecosystem. In the first nine chapters, a conceptual framework is developed based on distinct soil, microbial, plant, atmospheric, hydrologic, and geochemical processes that are integrated in the element cycling behavior of watershed ecosystems. With that conceptual foundation in place, students then proceed to the final three chapters where they are challenged to think critically about integrated element cycling patterns; roles for biogeochemical models; the likely impacts of disturbance, stress, and management on watershed biogeochemistry; and linkages among patterns and processes in watersheds experiencing novel environmental changes. Included with the text are figures, tables of comparative data, extensive literature citations, a glossary of terms, an index, and a set of 24 biogeochemical problems with answers. The problems are intended to support chapter concepts and to demonstrate how critical thinking skills, simple algebra, and thoughtful human logic can be used to solve applied problems in biogeochemistry that might be encountered by a research scientist or a resource manager. Using this book as an introduction to biogeochemistry, students will achieve a level of subject mastery and disciplinary perspective that will permit them to see and to interpret the individual components, interactions, and synergies that are represented in the dynamic element cycling patterns of watershed ecosystems. Provides a unified emphasis on forested watershed ecosystems that is more process-oriented, comprehensive, and pedagogical than existing single watershed case studies; Delivers a coherent synthesis of biogeochemistry at the watershed ecosystem scale - the most common landscape unit for current research and resource management; Enables students to interpret the individual components, interactions, and synergies represented in the dynamic element cycling patterns of watershed ecosystem; Presents an operational manual that examines how forested watersheds work with respect to fundamental parts, processes, interrelationships, whole-system behavior, and responses to changing conditions.

• 

  "For Every Wrong There Is a Remedy": Changing Law and Fleeing Wives in Nineteenth-century America

  Jerome J. Nadelhaft

  Throughout the nineteenth century, husbands were jailed, wives won divorces, alimony, support, and, indeed, in many states, a clear right to run away and to enlist the help of neighbors, relatives, and friends, although none of those protections separately, and not all of them together, effectively protected wives from husbands who wanted to beat them. Illegality was simply not enough for protection, and certainly not when abuse was lightly punished. Moreover, the widespread incidence of abuse led to legal confusion, or at least led many people to the wrong conclusions. If abuse was so prevalent, some seemed to reason, it must have been legal. Illegality, then, did not adequately define how Americans understood or responded to wife abuse. Court rulings did not adequately reflect either the pervasiveness of abuse or society's toleration of it and its consignment of abused wives to continued pain and often horrific suffering. Wife abuse had a resiliency that the law was hopeless to overcome.Still, court decisions need to be considered if only to highlight the suffering--often vividly pictured4--and the tragedy. Indeed, this is a story with a great many 'if onlys' centered around the legal system, alternate scenarios which might have flowed from openings provided by humane judges: their decisions, their sometimes eloquent words, might have penetrated peoples's psyches if only they had been publicized, made part of the public record by mainstream newspapers or those devoted to women’s oppression; they might have filtered down to lower courts, to magistrates, to justices of the peace, to anyone responsible for maintaining order. Unfortunately, however, often only the horrible was publicized. Judicial attacks on wife abuse scarcely made it out of the legal environment, never had a chance to alter peoples's consciences.

• 

  O Lord How Long?

  Jerome J. Nadelhaft

  I began to study wife abuse in America early in the 1980's, participating in a program to help police deal with daily calls for help. My specific job was to provide some sort of historical context. A number of memories have stayed with me. First, of police officers describing the dangers of interfering in a domestic dispute. Especially vivid was the state trooper who described his fear of driving alone down a dark Maine road to face barking dogs straining against fully extended chains and an armed husband. His fear was palpable. No one said the obvious: if a burly trooper carrying a gun was afraid.... Providing a historic context proved to be quite difficult. Few people were working in the field. Historians studying the temperance and the women's rights movements touched upon the subject, but they ignored the centrality of the beaten wife in both movements. Historians of the temperance movement, for example, provided much data linking alcoholism with crime and economic distress. They produced numbers, tables, and graphs. Domestic costs were simply mentioned: broken furniture (but not broken bones), hunger, perhaps even starvation. I suspect that these mostly male historians did not actually see what they were reading. No bells went off. If they noticed the abuse at all, they probably saw it as a woman’s topic. That soon changed and I am glad to have played a part, perhaps most importantly by showing that accounts of wife abuse are everywhere. Once you see them, you can never not see them. Pick up an old joke book, a songbook, a school reader. And sometimes, with considerable embarrassment, you will stumble over an account where you least expect it; for me it was a children's classic I had read, read again and probably reread. Near the end of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, Colin, Mary and Dickon are talking to Ben, the gardener, about the magic of words said over and over. Strangely, Ben chose to tell the children, “I’ve heard Jem Fettleworth’s wife say th’ same thing over thousands o’ times—callin’ Jem a drunken brute.” And every time Jem’s response is to give her “a good hidin’” and then get drunk at the Blue Lion. Colin blamed Jem’s wife. If she had used better words she might have gotten a bonnet instead of a beating. "A bonnet instead of a beating." What a catchy chapter title, but how lunatic the suggestion that brutal husbands would be swayed by conciliatory speech. Not the husbands in these and later chapters.

• 

  Where Corals Lie: A Natural and Cultural History

  J. Malcolm Shick

  For millennia, corals were a marine enigma, organisms that confounded scientific classification and occupied a space between the animal and plant kingdoms. Our cultural relationships with coral have been similarly ambiguous. The danger posed by unseen underwater reefs led to an association of coral with death and interment that has figured in literature, poetry, music, and film, while the bright redness of precious Mediterranean coral was associated in European and Indian mythology with its origins in blood and gore. And yet, coral skeletons have long been prized as jewelry and ornament, featuring prominently in Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. Opening the door onto these most peculiar of animals, this unique book treats the many manifestations of coral across biology, geology, and culture. Today, the tide of danger flows in reverse. Seen as rainforests of the sea, coral reefs have become emblematic of the fragility of marine biodiversity, their declining health a warning sign of the human-driven climate change that has produced warming seas, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. Looking at corals as builders of islands and protectors of coastlines, as building materials themselves, as well as at the myriad ways in which diverse corals have come to figure in art, medicine, folklore, geopolitics, and international trade, Where Corals Lie reveals how the threatening has become threatened—and of the danger this poses to humans. Exceptionally embellished with a wide range of biological illustrations, underwater photography, and fine art, Where Corals Lie is a beautiful and informative resource for anyone interested in ocean environments and the cultures that flourish or fail there.

• 

  Health, Illness, and Society: An Introduction to Medical Sociology

  Steven E. Barkan

  This engaging text provides a sociological perspective on health, illness, and health care. Serving as an introduction to medical sociology for undergraduate and graduate students, it also presents a summary of the field for medical sociologists and for public health scholars and practitioners. A highlight of the text is its emphasis on the social roots of health and disease and on the impact of social inequality on health disparities and the quality of health care. The book also critically examines health care in the United States and around the world and evaluates the achievements and limitations of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and other recent health care reform efforts.

• 

  2016 Presidential Election The Causes and Consequences of a Political Earthquake

  Amnon Cavari, Richard J. Powell, and Kenneth R. Mayer

  The 2016 Presidential Election: The Causes and Consequences of a Political Earthquake critically analyzes the 2016 presidential election. The chapters in this book identify key factors behind the election of Donald J. Trump, explore the unconventional campaign, analyze the unexpected election result, evaluate the forecasting models, and speculate on the effect of the election outcome on politics and governance in the Trump Administration.