by Scott Atran (2010)
Looks at the root causes of terrorism; discusses the psychological, social, and religious aspects of terrorism; and offers practical solutions on ways to identify and prevent future terrorists.
Christopher Slobogin
The author proposes a number of ways the courts can ensure that experts provide the best possible information about ultimately unknowable past mental states and future behavior, arguing that a rigorous demonstration of scientific validity from expert witnesses may often be unfair and can diminish the process's reliability.
David C. Hsiung
Most Americans know Appalachia through stereotyped images: moonshine and handicrafts, poverty and illiteracy, rugged terrain and isolated mountaineers. Historian David Hsiung maintains that in order to understand the origins of such stereotypes, we must look critically at their underlying concepts, especially those of isolation and community. According to Hsiung's interpretation, two worlds coexisted in the Tennessee mountains: some people made connections with the rest of country and others lived in relative isolation. When this latter group came to be characterized by their neighbors as backward, growing perceptions of difference within the mountain region eventually found their way into fiction and popular images of Appalachia for well over a century. By demonstrating that these perceptions of difference first emerged from within Appalachia itself, Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains alters the commonly held views of this region and its people during the antebellum period. This provocative work will stimulate future studies of early Appalachia and serve as a model for the analysis of regional cultures.
Jacques Ranciere
In this title, the foremost philosopher of art argues for a new politics of seeing. The role of the viewer in art and film theory revolves around a theatrical concept of the spectacle. The masses subjected to the society of spectacle have traditionally been seen as aesthetically and politically passive - in response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a performance. In this follow-up to the acclaimed "The Future of the Image", Ranciere takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. Beginning by asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, instead, a melancholic affirmation of their omnipotence?
Linda N. Edelstein
The subject of midlife has been dominated by the woes of aging - menopause, divorce, hormone replacement therapies, aging parents, and fleeing children. Now this broad-ranging new work by clinical psychologist Linda N. Edelstein, Ph.D., describes the freedom and authenticity that can be made a cornerstone of the middle years. She describes three healthy and predictable phases. First, women relinquish old ways, untying themselves from the past and mourning the losses of youth and its illusions. By placing less emphasis on the needs of others, women can live more creatively and enjoy the present. The women Dr. Edelstein studied have been able to move to the next step, in which they reconnect to themselves. They regain their authentic voices, simplify life, and allow long-buried aspects of themselves to emerge. Finally, women refocus their futures. With courage, they embrace new people, ideas, activities, and work - and pursue adult dreams regardless of external rewards.