Bücher veröffentlicht von W. W. Norton & Company

We are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we-and should we-be thinking about?In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America's current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. "Free" and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom.As an economic advisor to presidents and as chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz has witnessed these profound changes firsthand. As he argues, the failures follow from the elites' unshakeable dedication to "the neoliberal experiment." Explicitly taking on giants such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Stiglitz exposes accepted ideas about our political and economic life for what they are: twisted visions that tear at the social fabric while they enrich the very few.The Road to Freedom breaks new ground, showing how economics-including recent advances in which Stiglitz has played such an important role-reframes how to think about freedom and the role of the state in a twenty-first century society. Drawing on the work of contemporary philosophers, Stiglitz explains a deeper, more humane way to assess freedoms-one that considers with care what to do when one person's freedom conflicts with another's. We must reimagine our existing economic and legal systems and embrace forms of collective action, including regulation and investment, if we are to create an innovative society in which everyone can flourish. The task could not be more urgent, and Stiglitz's latest book is essential reading for those committed to the American ideal of an economic and political system that delivers well-being, opportunity, and meaningful freedoms for all.

Erik H. Erikson is recognized as one of the world's leading figures in the field of psychoanalysis and human development. His ideas about the stages of development, the sources of identity, and the interdependence of individual growth and historical change revolutionized our understanding of the nature and course of psychological growth. Erikson, whose work first described the now familiar concepts of "identity crisis" and "life cycle," provided an unprecedented framework for considering the individual psyche within society and culture. Unveiling a dynamic process of psychological development, he emphasized the tendency toward growth and the integration of multiple influences-the biological, social, psychological, cultural, and historical. With writings from Erikson's entire career, including major work from Childhood and Society, Insight and Responsibility, Young Man Luther, and Gandhi's Truth, this invaluable reader charts the influence of Erikson's thinking in the areas of child psychology, development through the lifespan, leadership, and moral growth.

Here is an absorbing biography of the English artist Dora Carrington, who called herself simply "Carrington". She was a woman who made a vivid impression on those she met-she was portrayed (or caricatured), for example, in novels by Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, and Aldous Huxley. Hopelessly in love with the noted writer Lytton Strachey, she achieved notoriety by killing herself shortly after his death. A talented painter, living a bohemian life, Carrington was torn by conflicts as an artist and a woman, including the shrewd and inquisitive Bloomsbury group. Carrington's paintings, however, reveal much of her remarkable and original cast of mind, and since her death her reputation as an artist has grown steadily. Her work is new represented in major collections worldwide.

By the late fall of 1630, the Black Plague had descended upon northern Italy. The prentice Magistry of Public Health, centered in Florence, took steps to contain and combat the scourge. In this essay, Carlo Cipolla recreates the daily struggle of plague-stricken Monte Lupo, a rustic Tuscan village, revealing in the vivid terms of actual events and personalities a central drama of Western civilization - the conflict between faith and reason, Church and state.

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill. Creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate in search of food and mates; invasive plants hitch rides in tire treads; road salt contaminates lakes and rivers; and the very noise of traffic chases songbirds from vast swaths of habitat.Yet road ecologists are also seeking to blunt the destruction through innovative solutions. Goldfarb meets with conservationists building bridges for California's mountain lions and tunnels for English toads, engineers deconstructing the labyrinth of logging roads that web national forests, animal rehabbers caring for Tasmania's car-orphaned wallabies and community organisers working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities.Today, as our planet's road network continues to grow exponentially, the science of road ecology has become increasingly vital. Written with passion and curiosity, Crossings is a sweeping, spirited and timely investigation into how humans have altered the natural world-and how we can create a better future for all living beings.

A refreshing, insightful, sacrilegious take on African American history, Crazy as Hell explores the site of America's greatest contradictions. The notables of this book are the runaways and the rebels, the badass and funky, the activists and the inmates-from Harriet Tubman, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali to B'rer Rabbit, Single Mamas, and Wakandans-but are they crazy as hell, or do they simply defy the expectations designated for being Black in America?With humor and insight, scholars and writers V. Efua Prince and Hoke S. Glover III (Bro. Yao) offer brief breakdowns of one hundred influential, archetypal, and infamous figures, building a new framework that emphasizes their humanity. Including an introduction by MacArthur Fellow Reginald Dwayne Betts and peppered with little-known historical facts and PSAs that get real about the Black experience, Crazy as Hell captures the tenacious, irreverent spirit that accompanies a long struggle for freedom.

There is a robotics revolution underway. A record 3.1 million robots are working in factories right now, doing everything from assembling computers to packing goods and monitoring air quality and performance. A far greater number of smart machines impact our lives in countless other ways-improving the precision of surgeons, cleaning our homes, extending our reach to distant worlds-and we're on the cusp of even more exciting opportunities.In The Heart and the Chip, roboticist Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren't going to steal our jobs: they're going to make us more capable, productive, and precise.At once optimistic and realistic, Rus and Mone envision a world in which these technologies augment and enhance our skills and talents, both as individuals and as a species-a world in which the proliferation of robots allows us all to be more human.

During his impeachment proceedings, Richard Nixon boasted, "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in twenty-five minutes seventy million people will be dead." Nixon was accurately describing not only his own power but also the power of every American president in the nuclear age.Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon each contemplated using nuclear weapons-Eisenhower twice, Kennedy three times, Johnson once, Nixon four times. Whether later presidents, from Ford to Obama, considered using them we will learn only once their national security papers are released.In this incisive, masterfully argued new book, award-winning social theorist Elaine Scarry demonstrates that the power of one leader to obliterate millions of people with a nuclear weapon-a possibility that remains very real even in the wake of the Cold War-deeply violates our constitutional rights, undermines the social contract, and is fundamentally at odds with the deliberative principles of democracy.According to the Constitution, the decision to go to war requires rigorous testing by both Congress and the citizenry; when a leader can single-handedly decide to deploy a nuclear weapon, we live in a state of "thermonuclear monarchy," not democracy.The danger of nuclear weapons comes from potential accidents or acquisition by terrorists, hackers, or rogue countries. But the gravest danger comes from the mistaken idea that there exists some case compatible with legitimate governance. There can be no such case. Thermonuclear Monarchy shows the deformation of governance that occurs when a country gains nuclear weapons.In bold and lucid prose, Thermonuclear Monarchy identifies the tools that will enable us to eliminate nuclear weapons and bring the decision for war back into the hands of Congress and the people. Only by doing so can we secure the safety of home populations, foreign populations, and the earth itself.

Praised and condemned for its aggressive coverage of the Vietnam War, the American press has been both commended for breaking public support and bringing the war to an end and accused of misrepresenting the nature and progress of the war. While in-depth combat coverage and the instantaneous power of television were used to challenge the war, Clarence R. Wyatt demonstrates that, more often than not, the press reported official information, statements, and views. Examining the relationship between the press and the government, Wyatt looks at how difficult it was to obtain information outside official briefings, what sort of professional constraints the press worked under, and what happened when reporters chose not to "get on the team."

One cold November morning in Perser, Oklahoma, Sheriff Jerry Martin receives a disturbing call: a local fifteen-year-old has disappeared. The boy, J.T., who is half Mexican, half Chickasaw and has been raised by his grandmother, is known for starting trouble. Sheriff Martin sets out on a fevered search, determined to find J.T., even as the hunt reopens wounds from a traumatic event in his past. In a seemingly parallel but ultimately intersecting story, Hickson Crider, a veteran of the first Iraq war, discovers a mysterious crevice, perfectly round and seemingly bottomless, in his backyard. The hole becomes Hickson's obsession-and an ominous clue in Sheriff Martin's investigation.Aaron Gwyn's perceptive, quietly beautiful prose is "reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor" (Kirkus Reviews), engaging us in a tale that is both savage and burning with heart, about the after effects of war, violence, faith, and random acts of devotion.

Behind the scenes of Napoleon's threatened invasion of England, a war of wits known as "The Great Terror." In 1801, as Napoleon's Grande Armee faced an army of English volunteers across the Channel, a secret war of espionage and subversion was being fought by shadowy men with little-known names. New weaponsrockets, submarines, and torpedoeswere being developed in France by the American inventor Robert Fulton. Even during the lull of the Peace of Amiens, when English tourists flocked to Paris, the secret war continued. Drawing on diaries, letters, and newspapers, Tom Pocock provides a wonderful picture of the years 1801-5, and of the people caught up in these unique events: Nelson blockading the French at sea for two years while his beloved Emma Hamilton waited at home; Jane Austen and her naval brothers; the admirals, generals, and politicians on both sides; and perhaps most interesting of all, those lesser-known men such as Congreve, Moreau, and Pichegru, who were responsible for a new kind of warfare. 16 pages of b/w illustrations.

Scientists are racing to unravel the code of life in our DNA sequences. But once we know the code, will we know what life means? Will we know what to do with the powerful - healing, destructive, and marketable - information we will have?Barbara Katz Rothman's warm, learned, passionate, and humorous voice is just the one we need to guide us through some of the most loaded issues and technologies of our time - ones that bear on the most intimate aspects of our lives. Her astute observations about the new genetics are combined with personal reflections: about raising a black child; the risks of cancer; midwives and pregnancy; the social web into which we are born; motherhood; time, growth, chance, and all the indefinable things that make us human. She helps us to think about the place of genetic science in our own lives, its role in our social world, and how we choose to think about human life itself.A genetic map will take us places, but we need an imagination to see the relationship between DNA and public policy, between genes and the society we live in, and to understand why human life can't be reduced to genetics. Rothman inspires that imagination, in a book that is essential reading.

For years, Gioia Timpanelli has held audiences rapt with her retellings of ancient tales, often appearing with Robert Bly, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and Gary Snyder. Here, in fiction full of warmth and resonances--characters we can't help but recognize, prose and imagery that play on the strings of the soul--Timpanelli draws on her deep knowledge of these old stories and their wisdoms to create a new and refreshing kind of storytelling, with hints of both Italo Calvino and Angela Carter. In "A Knot of Tears," a woman's locked-up life is transformed by a parrot who tells tales; her story becomes a subtle and surprising meditation on the necessity of being true to oneself and others. In "Rusina, Not Quite in Love," a strange and lovely retelling of the story of the Beauty and the Beast, a young woman escapes family and society--especially the grasp of her superficial and beastly sisters--to find consolation and beauty in nature and its muse. In each case, women of very different backgrounds--one aristocratic, one impoverished--find solitary spaces from which they can emerge as artists and shapers of their own destinies. With a sense of character unusual in contemporary fiction (not mere personality, but moral character) and a gentle, lyric touch, Timpanelli blends the seeming simplicity of folktale with a richly textured understanding of human nature. With great integrity and affection for language, her work teaches about love and solitude, honesty and art.

On the face of it, the Ford-Carter years seem completely forgettable. They were years of weak presidential leadership and national drift. Yet, as Laura Kalman shows in this absorbing narrative history, the contours of our contemporary politics took shape during these years. This was the incubation period for a powerful movement on the right that was to triumph with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. These years also marked the coming of age of the social movements of the 1960s, as their causes moved from the streets to the courts for mediation. Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and the scope of privacy rights had immense social and political impact. The nation experienced an energy crisis, a sharp economic downturn, and a collision with fundamentalism in Iran that set the terms for coming crises. Kalman's navigation of this eventful political and social terrain is expert and riveting.

It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad-and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence.Through a gallery of vivid characters-heroic, ignoble, or desperate-Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.

Who was Judas Iscariot and why did he betray Jesus? Despite the recent recovery of a Gnostic Gospel bearing his name, the centrality of Judas has gone largely ignored. Yet, because of gaps and incongruities in biblical accounts about him, artists throughout the ages have returned to the twelfth apostle, who inaugurates Jesus' death and resurrection.In this comprehensive, probing book, Susan Gubar explains how Judas came to stand for the Jewish people and how he personifies a composite Judeo-Christianity that illuminates ambivalent relationships between Christians and Jews as well as changing attitudes toward the body, blood, and money; greed and hypocrisy; suicide and repentance; homosexuality and divinity. Over twenty centuries, a figure of disgrace turns into a dignitary. Gubar shows how Jesus' most notorious disciple-known for a kiss-has provoked profound reflections on the problem of evil that still resonate today.

With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem-or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their food-enough to feed all the world's hungry at least three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West's greenhouse gas emissions are released growing food that will never be eaten. While affluent nations throw away food through neglect, in the developing world crops rot because farmers lack the means to process, store and transport them to market.But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. Waste traces the problem around the globe from the top to the bottom of the food production chain. Stuart's journey takes him from the streets of New York to China, Pakistan and Japan and back to his home in England. Introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers and food industry CEOs, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. The journey is a personal one, as Stuart is a dedicated freegan, who has chosen to live off of discarded or self-produced food in order to highlight the global food waste scandal.Combining front-line investigation with startling new data, Waste shows how the way we live now has created a global food crisis-and what we can do to fix it.

In 1980 newly-elected Margaret Thatcher went forth to do battle against "the British Disease" and immediately set off a bitter war in which her allies and adversaries fought for dominion over economy and culture. In this imaginative, informed account Charles Dellheim tells the story of how the Iron Lady tried to refurbish her rusty realm. More than a sketch of the Thatcher years and its protagonist, The Disenchanted Isle places the 1980s in broad historical perspective, connecting Britain's past and present. This history takes us on a journey into the heart of British politics, culture, and business. We watch the rise and fall of the grocer's daughter who overcame modest origins and sexism to become Britain's first female prime minister. We watch Oxford dons consider whether to confer an honorary degree on an alumna few liked; miners strike to protest plans that threatened their jobs and communities; and Jaguar employees struggle to rescue their failing firm. We meet old-style paternalists, free-market street fighters, corporate raiders, socially committed bishops, and left-wing intellectuals. The result is a dramatic, vivid, and colorful story that captures the ambiguities of British history.

An inside look at Japan's use of professional barriers, both institutional and psychological, against the entire outside world.

Jacob's Ladder delivers a remarkably lucid explanation of what the sequencing of the human genome really tells us. Decoding the sequence, evolutionary biologist Henry Gee shows, is just the beginning: seeing the letters and words. The next frontier is in understanding snatches of conversation between genes-how they interact to direct the growth of an organism. Gee takes us into the heart of that conversation, illuminating how genes govern a single egg cell's miraculous transformation into a human being, and how they continue to direct that person's day-by-day development throughout a lifetime.Gee tells the story of what we know about the genome today and what we are likely to discover tomorrow. As our knowledge advances, we will be able to direct with increasing authority the conversations between genes: not only performing medical interventions but also creating whole scripts directing birth, ancestry, and diversity in a brave new world.

Along with Freud, Jung, Adler, and William James, Wolfgang Kohler, co-founder of Gestalt Psychology, is one of the most valuable and innovative thinkers in modern psychology. Dynamics in Psychology is his most important statement of the application of the Gestalt approach to psychological thinking generally and to perception and memory in particular. He argues here that psychological theories cannot be restricted to the realm of psychology proper, that they must refer to biological and physical concepts. Kohler's scientific precision and continual respect for the whole human being gives his work its lasting value.

Russell Braddon opens this novel of character and suspense with a murder as viewed by the victim herself. Then the body is found in the back row of a rural English cinema, and it appears that the murderer who victimizes only young, blond female hitchhikers has struck for the fourth time in a year. The question unresolved until the very last pages is: Who is the target of the investigation?

In today's society, a wealth of information can be obtained at the touch of a button. But while information is abundant, time, unfortunately, is not. How do you present your material in a way that grabs-and holds-the attention of your audience? Whether you are writing a report, drafting email, creating a Power Point presentation, or building a Web site, this book shows how to use language that is easily accessible, never oppressive. It explains how to organize content in progressive, digestible detail, allowing readers to navigate a document's contents and to move quickly to areas of interest. And it describes how to link ideas within a document and across the mediums of print, Internet, and CD-ROM. Each two-page spread covers one subject and is linked to other subjects for further study. More than one hundred sets of recommendations, backed by concrete examples, cover everything from common grammatical mistakes to the basics of using charts and tables.

Alyson Thomson has left the city for a simpler life on an abandoned farm with her lover, Walker, a potter. Wandering there, she uncovers, in the ruins of a log cabin, the writings of a young woman who lived more than a hundred years before. Into Alyson's story Merilyn Simonds weaves the moving tale of Margaret MacBayne, who, with her family, left behind hardship in a seaside Scottish town in the hope of building a new home in the Canadian wilderness. Margaret, an expert on herbs, contemplates revenge when her brothers rob her of her happiness. When Alyson too suffers great loss, she must decide if retribution is worth the price. Taut and uplifting, sensuous and astute, The Holding is psychologically complex and beautifully rendered. Simonds brings us an intimate journey of discovery into the things we keep most guarded, whose truths often lie in unexpected places.

Teaching philosophy to retired people should be a path to wisdom, Ron Manheimer thought. He was right, but in an unexpected fashion. His lively Socratic "dialogues" with older people led him into hilarious and provocative conversations with a colorful cast of fellow seekers: from his bon vivant Danish mentor Augie Nielsen to his strong-willed elderly student Hildegard, from his ironic teenaged daughter Esther to his wisecracking Uncle Joe.Like James Carse in Breakfast at the Victory, Manheimer reinvigorates the ancient tradition of using storytelling to explore truth. What is romantic love? How do we shape the stories we tell ourselves about our own pasts? Does the purpose of life become clearer in old age? How do we find common meanings across religious, ethnic, and generational divides? What is the essence of a person? What does it mean to live a "full" life?Showing how ideas and lives can illuminate one another, Manheimer's engaging narratives address these questions while providing an inviting exploration of the ideas of thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, and Martin Buber. A great teacher, Manheimer shows how these philosophers might provide the footgear for treading everyday paths of human experience, on our inevitable journeys to "the end of time."

Food has never been more exalted as part of a lifestyle, yet fewer and fewer people really know what good food is. Drawing on enough culinary experiences to fill several lifetimes, Gina Mallet's irreverent memoir combines recollections of meals and their milieus with recipes and tasting tips. In loving detail, Last Chance to Eat muses on the fates of foods that were once the stuff of feasts: light, fluffy eggs; rich cheeses; fresh meat; garden vegetables; and fish just hauled ashore. Mallet's gastronomic adventures appeal to any palate: from finding the perfect grilled cheese ("as delicate tasting as any Escoffier recipe") to combing the bustling food department at postwar Harrod's for the makings of "an Elizabeth David meal." The search for taste often takes her far from the beaten path-to an underground "chevaline" restaurant serving horsemeat steaks and to purveyors of contraband Epoisses, for instance-but the journey is always a delight.

"Miss Savarese, who has worked in this area and written one other book like her heroine, Paula Jericho, features Today, one of the seemingly successful subsidiaries of Kimberly Publishing Company (just which empire is toppling might prompt an educated guess)... Paula works for promotion; has just been through an affair with a married man, and is well on her way to another with the head of the magazine division, Dave Wolffe, who offers her the next best of everything, Campari and black pearls." - Kirkus Review