Bøger udgivet af Princeton University Press

How encounters with the Roman Empire compelled the Jews of antiquity to rethink their conceptions of Israel and the TorahThroughout their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology.Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel's twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others.Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism.

"The contested creation of free movement, for people and goods, in the Schengen area of Europe. Europe is a place of free movement among nations, or is it? The Schengen area, established in 1985 and today encompassing twenty-seven European countries, allows people, goods, and capital to cross borders without restraint. Schengen transformed European life, advancing both a democratic project of transnational citizenship and a neoliberal project of international free trade. But the right of free movement always excluded non-Europeans, especially migrants of color from former colonies of the Schengen states. In Europe without Borders, Isaac Stanley-Becker explores the contested creation of free movement in Schengen, from treatymaking at European summits and disputes in international courts to the street protests of undocumented immigrants who claimed free movement as a human right. Schengen laid the groundwork for the making of a single market and the founding of the European Union. Yet its emergence is one of the great untold stories of modern European history, one hidden in archives long embargoed. Stanley-Becker is among the first to have access to records of the treatymaking-such as letters between France's Franðcois Mitterrand and West Germany's Helmut Kohl-and Europe Without Borders offers a pathbreaking account of Schengen's creation. Stanley-Becker argues that Schengen gave a humanist cast to a market paradigm; but even in pairing the border crossing of human beings with the principles of free-market exchange, this vision of free movement was hedged by alarm about foreign migrants. Meanwhile, these migrants-the sans papiers-saw in the promise of a borderless Europe only a neocolonial enterprise"--

A new way of thinking about the climate crisis as an exercise in delimiting knowable, and habitable, worldsAs carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, Earth's fragile ecosystems are growing increasingly unstable and unpredictable. Horizon Work explores how climate change is disrupting our fundamental ability to project how the environment will act over time, and how these rapidly faltering predictions are colliding with the dangerous new realities of emergency response.Anthropologist Adriana Petryna examines the climate crisis through the lens of "e;horizoning,"e; a mode of reckoning that considers unnatural disasters against a horizon of expectation in which people and societies can act. She talks to wildfire scientists who, amid chaotic fire seasons and shifting fire behaviors, are revising predictive models calibrated to conditions that no longer exist. Petryna tells the stories of wildland firefighters who could once rely on memory of previous fires to gauge the behaviors of the next. Trust in patterns has become an occupational hazard. Sometimes, the very concept of projection becomes untenable. Yet if all we see is doom, we will overlook something crucial about the scientific and ethical labor needed to hold back climate chaos. Here is where the work of horizoning begins.From experiments probing our planetary points of no return to disaster ecologies where the stark realities of climate change are being confronted, Horizon Work reveals how this new way of thinking has the power to reverse harmful legacies while turning voids where projection falters into spaces of collective action and recoverable futures.

An eminent philosopher explains why we owe it to future generations to take immediate action on global warmingClimate change is the supreme challenge of our time. Yet despite growing international recognition of the unfolding catastrophe, global carbon emissions continue to rise, hitting an all-time high in 2019. Unless humanity rapidly transitions to renewable energy, it may be too late to stop irreversible ecological damage. In The Pivotal Generation, renowned political philosopher Henry Shue makes an impassioned case for taking immediate, radical action to combat global warming.Shue grounds his argument in a rigorous philosophical analysis of climate change's moral implications. Unlike previous generations, which didn't fully understand the danger of burning carbon, we have the knowledge to comprehend and control rising carbon dioxide levels. And unlike future generations, we still have time to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. This generation has the power, and thus the responsibility, to save the planet. Shirking that responsibility only leaves the next generation with an even heavier burden-one they may find impossible to bear.Written in direct, accessible language, The Pivotal Generation approaches the latest scientific research with a singular moral clarity. It's an urgently needed call to action for anyone concerned about the planet's future.

How new parents in low-wage jobs juggle the demands of work and childcare, and the easy ways employers can helpLow-wage workers make up the largest group of employed parents in the United States, yet scant attention has been given to their experiences as new mothers and fathers. Work Matters brings the unique stories of these diverse individuals to light. Drawing on years of research and more than fifteen hundred family interviews, Maureen Perry-Jenkins describes how new parents cope with the demands of infant care while holding down low-wage, full-time jobs, and she considers how managing all of these responsibilities has long-term implications for child development. She examines why some parents and children thrive while others struggle, demonstrates how specific job conditions impact parental engagement and child well-being, and discusses common-sense and affordable ways that employers can provide support.In the United States, federal parental leave policy is unfunded. As a result, many new parents, particularly hourly workers, return to their jobs just weeks after the birth because they cannot afford not to. Not surprisingly, workplace policies that offer parents flexibility and leave time are crucial. But Perry-Jenkins shows that the time parents spend at work also matters. Their day-to-day experiences on the job, such as relationships with supervisors and coworkers, job autonomy, and time pressures, have long-term consequences for parents' mental health, the quality of their parenting, and, ultimately, the health of their children.An overdue look at an important segment of the parenting population, Work Matters proposes ways to reimagine low-wage work to sustain new families and the development of future generations.

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States“One of the richest books ever to come my way.”—Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Shipping News“This is a wonderful book. . . . An extraordinary achievement.”—Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with Amber EyesSet amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, illustrated with paintings, prints, and photographs, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

An honest confrontation of systemic racism in faculty hiring-and what to do about itWhile colleges and universities have been lauded for increasing student diversity, these same institutions have failed to achieve any comparable diversity among their faculty. In 2017, of the nation's full-time, tenure-track and tenured faculty, only 3 percent each were Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, and Hispanic women. Only 6 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander men, 5 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander women, and 1 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native. Why are the numbers so abysmal? In Doing the Right Thing, Marybeth Gasman takes a hard, insightful look at the issues surrounding the recruitment and hiring of faculty of color. Relying on national data and interviews with provosts, deans, and department chairs from sixty major universities, Gasman documents the institutional forces stymieing faculty diversification, and she makes the case for how such deficiencies can and should be rectified.Even as institutions publicly champion inclusive excellence and the number of doctoral students of color increases, Gasman reveals the entrenched constraints contributing to the faculty status quo. Impediments to progress include the alleged trade-off between quality and diversity, the power of pedigree, the rigidity of academic pipelines, failures of administrative leadership, lack of accountability among administration and faculty, and the opacity and arbitrariness of the recruitment and hiring process. Gasman contends that leaders must acknowledge institutional failures of inclusion, pervasive systemic racism, and biases that restrict people of color from pursuing faculty careers.Recognizing that individuals from all backgrounds are essential to the creation and teaching of knowledge, Doing the Right Thing puts forth a concrete call for colleges and universities to take action and do better.

A comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of credit in America-and how it continues to divide the haves from the have-notsThe Economy of Promises is a far-reaching study of credit in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Synthesizing and surveying economic and social history, Bruce Carruthers examines how issues of trust stitch together the modern U.S. economy. In the case of credit, that trust involves a commitment by debtors to repay money they have borrowed from lenders. Each promise poses a fundamental question: why does the lender trust the borrower?The book tracks the dramatic shift from personal qualitative judgments to the impersonal quantitative measurements of credit scores and ratings, which make lending on a much greater scale possible. It discusses how lending is shaped by the shadow of failure, and the possibility that borrowers will break their promises and fail to repay their debts. It reveals how credit markets have been shaped by public policy, regulatory changes, and various political factors. And, crucially, it explains how credit interacts with economic inequality, contributing to vast and enduring racial and gender differences-which are only exacerbated by the widespread use of credit scores and ratings for "big data" and algorithmic decision-making.Bringing to life the complicated and abstract terrain of human interaction we call the economy, The Economy of Promises is an important study of the tangle of indebtedness that, for better or worse, shapes and defines American lives.

An original defense of the unique value of voting in a democracyVoting is only one of the many ways that citizens can participate in public decision making, so why does it occupy such a central place in the democratic imagination? In Election Day, political theorist Emilee Booth Chapman provides an original answer to that question, showing precisely what is so special about how we vote in today's democracies. By presenting a holistic account of popular voting practices and where they fit into complex democratic systems, she defends popular attitudes toward voting against radical critics and offers much-needed guidance for voting reform.Elections embody a distinctive constellation of democratic values and perform essential functions in democratic communities. Election day dramatizes the nature of democracy as a collective and individual undertaking, makes equal citizenship and individual dignity concrete and transparent, and socializes citizens into their roles as equal political agents. Chapman shows that fully realizing these ends depends not only on the widespread opportunity to vote but also on consistently high levels of actual turnout, and that citizens' experiences of voting matters as much as the formal properties of a voting system. And these insights are also essential for crafting and evaluating electoral reform proposals.By rethinking what citizens experience when they go to the polls, Election Day recovers the full value of democratic voting today.

An original, unified reconstruction of Mill's moral and political philosophy-one that finally reveals its consistency and full powerFew thinkers have been as influential as John Stuart Mill, whose philosophy has arguably defined Utilitarian ethics and modern liberalism. But fewer still have been subject to as much criticism for perceived ambiguities and inconsistencies. In Completely Free, John Peter DiIulio offers an ambitious and comprehensive new reading that explains how Mill's ethical, moral, and political ideas are all part of a unified, coherent, and powerful philosophy.Almost every aspect of Mill's practical philosophy has been charged with contradictions, illogic, or incoherence. Most notoriously, Mill claims an absolute commitment both to promoting societal happiness and to defending individual liberty-a commitment that many critics believe must ultimately devolve into an either/or. DiIulio resolves these and other problems by reconsidering and reconstructing the key components of Mill's practical thought: his theories of happiness, morality, liberty, and freedom. Casting new light on old texts, DiIulio argues that Mill's Utilitarianism and liberalism are not only compatible but philosophically wedded, that his theories naturally emanate from one another, and that the vast majority of interpretive mysteries surrounding Mill can be readily demystified. In a manner at once sympathetic and critical, DiIulio seeks to present Mill in his most lucid and potent form.From the higher pleasures and moral impartiality to free speech and nondomination, Completely Free provides an unmatched account of the unity and power of Mill's enduring moral and political thought.

"In this book Meir Bar-Asher shines light on the deeply ambivalent views toward Jews and Judaism in the Qur'an and in post-Qur'anic Islamic writing. On the one hand, these texts clearly recognize the Jews as a people chosen by God - a "people of the Book" deserving of respect and communal protection for their contribution. On the other hand, an undeniably darker view is also on offer and is found, for example, in passages that accuse Jews of falsifying their own Torah to suppress all pronouncements of the advent of Muhammad, the final Prophet whose message is the culmination of the good news brought by all the prophets from Moses to Jesus. Bar-Asher's view is that one must concede the existence of such polemical anti-Jewish passages while keeping in mind that they do not constitute the final word of the Qur'an or Islam on the Jews. Bar-Asher argues that passages concerning Jews and Judaism in the Qur'an need to be examined alongside the post-Qur'anic Islamic literature rather than read in isolation. His book thus concerns not only Islam's holy scripture but also Hadith, the authoritative oral tradition of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, along with other Islamic commentaries on Jews and Judaism. The book begins with a historical overview of the Jewish presence in the Arab peninsula before the time of Muhammad and covers what scholars have uncovered to date about the relationship between Muhammad, his followers, and the Jews of Medina in particular. Then the book turns to the Qur'an and the aforementioned post-Qur'anic traditional materials"--

"How scientists are unravelling one of the most tantalizing questions in paleontology. Our understanding of dinosaur behavior has long been hampered by the inevitable lack of evidence from animals that went extinct more than sixty-five million years ago and whose daily behaviors are rarely reflected by the fossil record. Today, with the discovery of new specimens and the development of new and cutting-edge techniques, paleontologists are making major advances in reconstructing how dinosaurs lived and acted. Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior provides an unparalleled look at this emerging field of science, presenting the latest findings on dinosaur behavior and explaining how researchers interpret the often minimal and even conflicting information available to them.David Hone begins by introducing readers to the fundamentals of dinosaur biology, diversity, and evolution, and goes on to describe behaviors across the whole range of species and groups, from feeding and communication to reproduction, sociality, and combat. Speculation about dinosaur behavior goes back to the earliest scientific studies of these "terrible lizards." Hone traces how frontier science is opening a window onto prehistoric life like never before, and discusses future directions of research in this thrilling and rapidly growing area of paleontology.Written by one of the world's leading dinosaur experts and featuring accurate color recreations by paleoartist Gabriel Ugueto along with a wealth of photos and diagrams, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a foundational work on the subject and an invaluable reference for anyone interested in these amazing creatures"--

Why some of Asia's authoritarian regimes have democratized as they have grown richer-and why others haven'tOver the past century, Asia has been transformed by rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization-a spectacular record of development that has turned one of the world's poorest regions into one of its richest. Yet Asia's record of democratization has been much more uneven, despite the global correlation between development and democracy. Why have some Asian countries become more democratic as they have grown richer, while others-most notably China-haven't? In From Development to Democracy, Dan Slater and Joseph Wong offer a sweeping and original answer to this crucial question.Slater and Wong demonstrate that Asia defies the conventional expectation that authoritarian regimes concede democratization only as a last resort, during times of weakness. Instead, Asian dictators have pursued democratic reforms as a proactive strategy to revitalize their power from a position of strength. Of central importance is whether authoritarians are confident of victory and stability. In Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan these factors fostered democracy through strength, while democratic experiments in Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar were less successful and more reversible. At the same time, resistance to democratic reforms has proven intractable in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Reconsidering China's 1989 crackdown, Slater and Wong argue that it was the action of a regime too weak to concede, not too strong to fail, and they explain why China can allow democracy without inviting instability.The result is a comprehensive regional history that offers important new insights about when and how democratic transitions happen-and what the future of Asia might be.

One of today's most accomplished biologists and gifted storytellers reveals the rules that regulate all lifeHow does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important questions, and shows how their discoveries matter for our health and the health of the planet we depend upon.One of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated—there are rules that regulate the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant in the wild. And the most surprising revelation about the rules that regulate life at such different scales is that they are remarkably similar—there is a common underlying logic of life. Carroll recounts how our deep knowledge of the rules and logic of the human body has spurred the advent of revolutionary life-saving medicines, and makes the compelling case that it is now time to use the Serengeti Rules to heal our ailing planet.Bold and inspiring, The Serengeti Rules illuminates how life works at vastly different scales. Read it and you will never look at the world the same way again.

"An in-depth look at the ways in which an emboldened effort to ungovern threatens to undermine the effective working of the administrative state. In this book, political theorists Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, aim to identify and name a growing effort to undermine the workings of effective government. They call this "ungoverning." It is an unfamiliar name for an unfamiliar phenomenon, but one which has become increasingly strident in recent years. It is a root and branch attack on the functions and legitimacy of the administrative state, that unloved element of modern government that is necessary for everything people expect a modern state to do. The administrative state consists of the vast array of government agencies that shape, implement, adjudicate, and enforce public policies of every kind. It encompasses all those who carry on the day-to day business of government: the ordinary and routine, the wars and emergencies, and even the most basic function of a democracy: the oversight of free and fair elections. Ungoverning is the effort to reverse, by various methods, the already highly developed capacity of state to provide for its citizenry. It is different from state failure because it is a path deliberately chosen by politicians and agency heads who have a specific aim in mind. Ungoverning in the U.S., went from thinly veiled policy to open warfare, during the Trump presidency. Although efforts to ungovern were underway before his term in office, Trump clarified ungoverning as no one else could by forming the first presidential administration that was anti-administration. Rosenblum and Muirehead point to the incapacitation of a range of agencies from the Departments of State and Justice to Housing and Urban Development. Ungoverning did not come out of nowhere. The President brought decades of cultivated hostility toward government to a crescendo. Prior to that, even though over its history hostility toward the administrative state was expressed by both the Left and Right, there had been nothing like errant destruction of government capacity. But this is not just a story of the Trump administration. The damage ungoverning has done and can do remains a grave threat. Despite the Biden's admistration's efforts, reversing the corrosive effects of ungoverning cannot happen at a stroke. The capacity of a public agency takes many years to build. Replacing demoralized civil servants can take decades. The retail consequences of disdain for governing endure: As hard to reverse, and perhaps most serious for democracies, is public belief that neither the ability nor the will to govern exists. Ungoverning is, the authors argues, part of the constellation of actions that make up illiberal, anti-democratic politics with the end result being democratic erosion"--

A radical new portrait of the infamous Roman emperor Rome's second emperor, Tiberius (42 BCE-CE 37), has traditionally been seen as a villainous hypocrite--treacherous, grasping, vindictive, and depraved. But in Tiberius and His Age, Edward Champlin draws on vast and diverse evidence to show that Tiberius was--and was seen by contemporaries to be--recognizably human and far more complex than the monster of the hostile tradition that began with Tacitus and Suetonius. Focusing on the overlapping themes of luxury, sex, power, and, especially, myth, Tiberius and His Age examines Tiberius's standing as a folkloric figure in the Roman popular imagination and his conscious use of mythological themes to consolidate his power. It argues that the striking stories of Tiberius's sexual depravity, which literary sources passed on to later generations, are ultimately incoherent fictions, the work of a brilliant fantasist who hated the emperor. The book's portraits of three important figures in Tiberius's circle--the gourmands Asellius Sabinus and Marcus Apicius and the emperor's lieutenant, Sejanus--provide new perspectives on the emperor and his age. Tiberius's passion for astrology, gastronomy, and mythology, which have often been seen as eccentric scholarly diversions, are revealed instead to be central to contemporary Roman debates and keys to understanding his personality, his power, and the lasting image of Roman emperors. Incisive, witty, and original, Tiberius and His Age presents a startingly new picture of Tiberius and the culture and politics of the early Roman Empire.

"The most authoritative account we have on the Shi'a of Iraq. . . . Nakash's book provides a powerful corrective to earlier books on Iraq which have been battered by recent events. No reader who goes through Nakash's work will fail to be moved by the historical vistas he opens up."--Fouad Ajami, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University

A landmark history of early radio in Germany and the quest for broadcast fidelityWhen we turn on a radio or stream a playlist, we can usually recognize the instrument we hear, whether it's a cello, a guitar, or an operatic voice. Such fidelity was not always true of radio. Broadcasting Fidelity shows how the problem of broadcast fidelity pushed German scientists beyond the traditional bounds of their disciplines and led to the creation of one of the most important electronic instruments of the twentieth century. In the early days of radio, acoustical distortions made it hard for even the most discerning musical ears to differentiate instruments and voices. The physicists and engineers of interwar Germany, with the assistance of leading composers and musicians, tackled this daunting technical challenge. Research led to the invention in 1930 of the trautonium, an early electronic instrument capable of imitating the timbres of numerous acoustical instruments and generating novel sounds for many musical genres. Myles Jackson charts the broader political and artistic trajectories of this instrument, tracing how it was embraced by the Nazis and subsequently used to subvert Nazi aesthetics after the war and describing how Alfred Hitchcock commissioned a later version of the trautonium to provide the sounds of birds squawking and flapping their wings in his 1963 thriller The Birds. A splendid work of scholarship by an acclaimed historian of science, Broadcasting Fidelity reveals how the interplay of science, technology, politics, and culture gave rise to new aesthetic concepts, innovative musical genres, and the modern discipline of electroacoustics.

A spectacularly illustrated field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of California California is home to more than 200 species of reptiles and amphibians that can be found in an extraordinary array of habitats, from coastal temperate rainforests with giant redwoods to southeastern deserts offering dazzling wildflower displays each spring. California Amphibians and Reptiles covers every species and subspecies in this biodiverse region of the United States, with outstanding color photography and in-depth species accounts that draw on the latest findings on taxonomy and distribution. Setting a new standard for regional field guides, this state-of-the-art field guide will serve as the definitive reference for California's amphibian and reptile fauna for many years to come.Covers all 209 species of amphibians and reptiles found in CaliforniaFeatures hundreds of stunning photos that illustrate geographic and within-species variation as well as differences between males, females, and youngIncludes first-ever color images and species accounts for newly discovered speciesShows every species and subspecies in full color on a white backgroundDepicts all amphibian larvae in breathtaking color illustrationsDetailed species accounts describe key identification features, similar species, habitat, range and elevation, activity and behavior, diet, reproduction, and conservationProvides updated status of all threatened, endangered, nonnative, and special concern speciesAccurate range maps reflect contemporary and, where applicable, historical distributions in light of significant habitat loss across the stateAn invaluable resource for amateur naturalists, resource managers, and professional herpetologists

Class Dismissed reveals the entrenched inequities that harm our most vulnerable students and what colleges can do to help them excel Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversity they so fervently recruited. And disadvantaged students suffered. Class Dismissed exposes how woefully unprepared colleges were to support these students and shares their stories of how they were left to weather the storm alone and unprotected. Drawing on the firsthand experiences of students from all walks of life at elite colleges, Anthony Abraham Jack reveals the out-of-sight and unequal worlds students navigated before and during the pandemic closures and upon their return to campus. He shows how COVID-19 exacerbated the very inequalities that universities ignored or failed to address long before campus closures. Jack examines how students dealt with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, how they navigated social unrest, and how they grappled with problems of race both on campus and off. A provocative and much-needed book, Class Dismissed paints an intimate and unflinchingly candid portrait of the challenges of undergraduate life for disadvantaged students even in the elite schools that invest millions to diversify their student body. Moreover, Jack offers guidance on how to make students' path to graduation less treacherous--guidance colleges would be wise to follow.

How, over the course of five centuries, one particular god and one particular Christianity came to dominate late Roman imperial politics and piety The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity--or rather, of early Christianities--through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople. It is a story with a sprawling cast of characters: not only theologians, bishops, and emperors, but also gods and demons, angels and magicians, astrologers and ascetics, saints and heretics, aristocratic patrons and millenarian enthusiasts. All played their part in the development of what became and always remained an energetically diverse biblical religion. The New Testament, as we know it, represents only a small selection of the many gospels, letters, acts of apostles, and revelations that circulated before the establishment of the imperial church. It tells how the gospel passed from Jesus, to the apostles, thence to Paul. But by using our peripheral vision, by looking to noncanonical and paracanonical texts, by availing ourselves of information derived from papyri, inscriptions, and archaeology, we can see a different, richer, much less linear story emerging. Fredriksen brings together these many sources to reconstruct the lively interactions of pagans, Jews, and Christians, tracing the conversions of Christianity from an energetic form of Jewish messianism to an arm of the late Roman state.

In the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over racial justice. This work takes us back to this place and time.

Ethnography and Virtual Worlds is the only book of its kind--a concise, comprehensive, and practical guide for students, teachers, designers, and scholars interested in using ethnographic methods to study online virtual worlds, including both game and nongame environments. Written by leading ethnographers of virtual worlds, and focusing on the key method of participant observation, the book provides invaluable advice, tips, guidelines, and principles to aid researchers through every stage of a project, from choosing an online fieldsite to writing and publishing the results. Provides practical and detailed techniques for ethnographic research customized to reflect the specific issues of online virtual worlds, both game and nongame Draws on research in a range of virtual worlds, including Everquest, Second Life, There.com, and World of Warcraft Provides suggestions for dealing with institutional review boards, human subjects protocols, and ethical issues Guides the reader through the full trajectory of ethnographic research, from research design to data collection, data analysis, and writing up and publishing research results Addresses myths and misunderstandings about ethnographic research, and argues for the scientific value of ethnography

A unified framework for understanding monetary policy, including recent unprecedented interventions by central banks Over the past two decades, monetary policy has been deployed in unprecedented ways, as central banks attempted to mitigate the adverse consequences of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 global lockdown, and recent inflationary surges. In Monetary Economics and Policy, Pierpaolo Benigno offers a new way to understand the potency and effectiveness of monetary policy, presenting a unified modeling framework to analyze policy challenges posed by both paper and digital currency systems. He investigates current theoretical and policy controversies, drawing connections with historical themes in monetary economics. Benigno examines how central banks control the value of their currency amid competition from cryptocurrencies and private money-like securities; discusses the desirability of inflation targeting for macroeconomic stabilization; and explores theoretical grounds for the unconventional monetary policies seen in the recent period of zero nominal interest rates, including forward guidance, quantitative and credit easing, and helicopter money. He accompanies his analysis with an innovative visual representation of the New Keynesian model and inflation-targeting policies. Benigno's novel framework also allows the study of monetary policy normalization through quantitative tightening toward what has become the "new normal." He discusses the optimal provision of liquidity and the different roles of the government and financial intermediaries. Finally, he recounts historical controversies regarding the inflation-unemployment trade-off to understand the 2020s inflationary surge and delves into the causes and dynamics of hyperinflations, tracing them to the subtle, ambiguous linkages between monetary and fiscal policy and weak balance-sheet conditions for the central bank.

Why leaders, not citizens, are the driving force in Europe's crisis of democracyA seeming explosion of support for right-wing populist parties has triggered widespread fears that liberal democracy is facing its worst crisis since the 1930s. Democracy Erodes from the Top reveals that the real crisis stems not from an increasingly populist public but from political leaders who exploit or mismanage the chronic vulnerabilities of democracy.In this provocative book, Larry Bartels dismantles the pervasive myth of a populist wave in contemporary European public opinion. While there has always been a substantial reservoir of populist sentiment, Europeans are no less trusting of their politicians and parliaments than they were two decades ago, no less enthusiastic about European integration, and no less satisfied with the workings of democracy. Anti-immigrant sentiment has waned. Electoral support for right-wing populist parties has increased only modestly, reflecting the idiosyncratic successes of populist entrepreneurs, the failures of mainstream parties, and media hype. Europe's most sobering examples of democratic backsliding-in Hungary and Poland-occurred not because voters wanted authoritarianism but because conventional conservative parties, once elected, seized opportunities to entrench themselves in power.By demonstrating the inadequacy of conventional bottom-up interpretations of Europe's political crisis, Democracy Erodes from the Top turns our understanding of democratic politics upside down.

How Robespierre's career and legacy embody the dangerous contradictions of democracyMaximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) is arguably the most controversial and contradictory figure of the French Revolution, inspiring passionate debate like no other protagonist of those dramatic and violent events. The fervor of those who defend Robespierre the "e;Incorruptible,"e; who championed the rights of the people, is met with revulsion by those who condemn him as the bloodthirsty tyrant who sent people to the guillotine. Marcel Gauchet argues that he was both, embodying the glorious achievement of liberty as well as the excesses that culminated in the Terror.In much the same way that 1789 and 1793 symbolize the two opposing faces of the French Revolution, Robespierre's contradictions were the contradictions of the revolution itself. Robespierre was its purest incarnation, neither the defender of liberty who fell victim to the corrupting influence of power nor the tyrant who betrayed the principles of the revolution. Gauchet shows how Robespierre's personal transition from opposition to governance was itself an expression of the tragedy inherent in a revolution whose own prophetic ideals were impossible to implement.This panoramic book tells the story of how the man most associated with the founding of modern French democracy was also the first tyrant of that democracy, and it offers vital lessons for all democracies about the perpetual danger of tyranny.