Bøker utgitt av Columbia University Press

E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution.

Gloria Fisk traces the terms of Orhan Pamuk's engagement with a literary market dominated by the tastes of its Anglophone publics and the instrumental use of literature as a source of crosscultural understanding. She proposes a new way to think about the uneven processes of translation that carry contemporary literature to its readers.

Becoming the News studies how ordinary people make sense of their experience as media subjects. Ruth Palmer charts the arc of the experience of "making" the news, from the events that bring an ordinary person to journalists' attention through their interactions with reporters and reactions to the news coverage and its aftermath.

This collection of recent essays by the influential sociologist Herbert J. Gans brings together the many themes of Gans's wide-ranging career-the city, poverty, ethnicity, employment and political economy, and the relationship between race and class-to make the case for a policy-oriented vision for sociology.

In a narrative history rich in colorful detail, Simon Partner uses the story of an ordinary merchant farmer as a vantage point onto sweeping social transformation and its unwitting agents. Partner's history of Yokahama as a vibrant meeting place humanizes the story of Japan's revolutionary 1860s and their profound consequences.

Danger: Diabolik (1968) was adapted from a comic that has been a social phenomenon in Italy for over fifty years. This study examines its status as a comic-book movie, traces its production and initial reception in Italy, France, the U.S., and the UK, and its cult afterlife as both a pop-art classic and campy "bad film."

The seismologist Lynn R. Sykes, a central figure in the development of the science and technology of nuclear test monitoring, has dedicated his career to halting nuclear testing. Silencing the Bomb tells the inside story behind scientists' quest for disarmament in a tale of intrigue, international politics, and science used for the global good.

Every rock is a tangible trace of the earth's past. This book tells the fascinating stories behind the discoveries that shook the foundations of geology. In twenty-five chapters-each about a particular rock, outcrop, or geologic phenomenon-Donald R. Prothero recounts the scientific detective work that shaped our understanding of geology.

Life and Money uncovers the contentious history of the boundary between economy and politics in liberalism. Bringing economics into conversation with political theory, cultural economy, postcolonial thought, and history, Ute Tellmann gives a radically novel interpretation of scarcity and money in terms of materiality, temporality, and affect.

Joss Whedon's Serenity (2005) is at once a symbol of failure and a triumphant success of fan activism. This book examines the relationship between the film and its peculiar cult following and situates the film in relation to the series Firefly and its other transmedia continuations to plumb the status of different media texts and their platforms.

This book focuses on nine of Luis Bunuel's films made in Mexico in order to show that a concerted focus on space can unlock new philosophical meaning in his rich body of work. The interdisciplinary approach of this book unites the two substrands of his work: the independent movies and the studio potboilers.

Murat Akan reframes the question of secularism, exploring its presence both outside and inside Europe and offering a rich empirical account of how it moves across borders and through time. Akan uses France and Turkey to analyze comparative discussions of secularism, struggles for power, and historical contextual constraints.

Thomas O. Hoellmann explains the development of the Chinese writing system and its importance in literature, religion, art, and other aspects of culture. Spanning epigraphs and oracle bones to writing and texting, Chinese Script is a wide-ranging introduction to the complexity and beauty of written text and calligraphy in the Chinese world.

Would you like to learn to pray like a medieval Christian? Rachel Fulton Brown traces the history of the medieval practice of praising Mary through the complex of prayers known as the Hours of the Virgin. Mary and the Art of Prayer asks readers to immerse themselves in the experience of believing in and praying to Mary.

In 1996 Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art on Antonin Artaud. Artaud the Moma reveals the challenge that Artaud posed to Derrida-and to art and its institutional history. It is a powerful interjection into the museum halls, a crucial moment in Derrida's thought, and an insightful reading of a challenging writer and artist.

Giovanni Aloi maps the discourses and practices that have enabled the emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art. Speculative Taxidermy contextualizes the resilient presence of animal skin, bones, and feathers in gallery spaces, films, and fashion as a productive opportunity to rethink ethical and political stances in human-animal relationships.

Wendy Graham traces the critical discourses that shaped the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's reception and continues to inform responses to them. She explains the mechanics of fame and the politics of scandal contributing to the rise of aestheticism, providing a new interpretation of the place of aesthetic counterculture in Victorian England.

Stefani Engelstein argues that the sibling paradigm shaped the modern subject, life sciences, human sciences, and collective identities such as race, religion, and gender. Integrating close readings with panoramic intellectual history, Sibling Action presents a compelling new understanding of systems of knowledge.

Geoffrey Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating within Tibetan religiosity. Barstow offers a detailed analysis of the debates over meat and vegetarianism from the tenth century through the Chinese invasion in the 1950s.

Aasha M. Abdill draws on fieldwork in Bedford-Stuyvesant to dispel stereotypes of black men as deadbeat dads. She presents qualitative and quantitative evidence of black fathers' presence and shows how supporting black men in their quest to be-and be seen as-family men is key to securing not only their children's well-being but also their own.

Adrian Parr identifies the emancipatory potential of environmental politics both inside and outside existing structures and within opposing paradigms. Ultimately, environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence of global capitalism and militarism. This defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.

Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence through the last years of his life. The first English-language publication of Barthes's letters, Album is a comprehensive testimony to one of the most influential critics of the twentieth century.

On March 28, 1979, the worst nuclear reactor accident in U.S. history occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant. In this innovative study, Natasha Zaretsky uses the near-meltdown to shed new light on the era's political realignments. Radiation Nation uncovers the surprising bodily and ecological dimensions of post-Vietnam conservatism.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America. Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, offering a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens.

John Hoenig explores the path by which the tomato went from a rare seasonal crop to America's favorite vegetable. Garden Variety illuminates American culinary culture from 1800 to the present, challenging a simple story of mass-produced homogeneity and demonstrating the persistence of diverse food cultures throughout modern America.

Confronting the Climate Challenge presents a unique framework for evaluating the impacts of U.S. climate-policy options. Lawrence Goulder and Marc Hafstead demonstrate that these policies-if designed correctly-not only can reduce emissions at low cost but also can avoid burdening low-income households or especially vulnerable industries.

In this book-length interview, Olivier Roy, a leading expert on political Islam, tells the story of how his many adventures and discoveries have shaped his understanding of the Islamic world. In Search of the Lost Orient is both a significant intellectual autobiography and a compelling travelogue.

In the years since Hurricane Katrina, modern-day bohemians have flocked to New Orleans but often find themselves skirting poverty. Down and Out in New Orleans follows the lives of those on the fringes as they carve out unique paths in a resilient city. Peter J. Marina provides an original glimpse into the subcultures of a city in rapid change.

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late Ming China. Each story comes with commentary by the author, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle.

James Rubin and Barie Carmichael provide a roadmap for businesses to rebuild trust and find their voice. Reset offers case studies of reputations lost and found, suggesting fundamental strategies to mitigate risk and build the corporate brand. This book is a guide to navigating the pitfalls and taking advantage of the opportunities of the new era.