Bøker utgitt av Columbia University Press

Argues for a sense of patriotism based on the ideals of sacrifice, tough-minded criticism, and a willingness to look anew at the global role of the United States in the aftermath of 9/11.

Combining research with illustrations, this book presents an account of the saturation bombing, rendering in detail the annihilation of cities such as Dresden, the jewel of Germany's rich art and architectural heritage.

Argues that aesthetic considerations no longer play a central role in the experience and critique of art. Instead art addresses us in our humanity, as men and women who seek meaning in the "unnatural wonders" of art, a meaning that philosophy and religion are unable to provide.

The Neutral ( le neutre) escapes or undoes the paradigmatic binary oppositions that structure and produce meaning in Western thought and discourse. This book centers around 23 "figures," also referred to as "traits" or "twinklings," that are possible embodiments of the Neutral or of the anti-Neutral.

What is truth? What value should we see in or attribute to it? The war over the meaning and utility of truth is at the center of contemporary philosophical debate, and its arguments have rocked the foundations of philosophical practice. This book presents the authors' radically different perspectives on truth and its correspondence to reality.

Offers an exploration of weirdness and fantasy in David Lynch's groundbreaking oeuvre. Considering the filmmaker's entire career, the author examines Lynch's play with fantasy and traces the political, cultural, and existential impact of his unique style. Each chapter discusses the idea of impossibility in one of Lynch's films.

Explores the nature of historical knowledge and its reliance on narrative. This book introduces the concept of "narrative sentences," in which an event is described with reference to later events and discusses why such sentences cannot be understood until the later event happens. It compares narrative and scientific explanation.

Complexity theory sheds light on the many interactions between natural and social systems. This book focuses on natural resource management and community-based conservation. It covers scenario planning, scaling analysis, and adaptive management. It emphasizes on understanding the conditions required for systems self-organization.

An All-Consuming Century is a rich history of how market goods came to dominate American life over the hundred years between 1900 and 2000 and why for the first time in history there are no practical limits to consumerism.

Offers a way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself. This book explores how the animal question is bound up with the general problem of philosophical skepticism. It considers the failure of language to capture the vulnerability of humans and animals.

Demonstrates how documentary serves as a cultural laboratory in the thought and practice of American democracy. This book places iconic images and the work of celebrated filmmakers next to overlooked and rediscovered productions and proves the pliability of documentary's function for American popular intelligence.

Is it true that film in the twentieth century experimented with vision more than any other art form? And what visions did it privilege? This book situates the cinematic experience within discourses of twentieth-century modernity. It examines film's nature as a medium in an age obsessed with immediacy, nearness, and accessibility.

Shows how Hamas is essentially a social and political movement that provides community services and responds to political realities through bargaining and power brokering. This book lifts the veil on Hamas' strategic decision-making methods during the Intifada and the struggle with the PLO.

Contains nine gothic tales that are Japan's celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film "Ugetsu".

Offers insights into Reagan's ideological development and his political ascendancy. This book links the eight years (1954-1962) in which Reagan worked for General Electric; acting as host of its television program, GE Theater, and traveling the country as the company's public-relations envoy - to his conversion to conservatism.

Reimagines the lives of a legendary couple - Sun Yat-sen, known as the "Father of the Chinese Revolution," and his wife, Song Qingling. This novel touches on Sun Yat-sen's tormented political life and Song Qingling's rumored affairs and isolation after her husband's death.

Explores how a popular Islamic media form - the cassette sermon - has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East. Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, this book highlights the pivotal role these tapes play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate - what the author calls an "Islamic counterpublic."

A guide for becoming a sensitive and responsible reporter. Discussing such topics as rape and the ethics of interviewing children, it gives students and journalists a better understanding of what is happening "on the scene" of a violent event, including where a reporter can go safely and legally, and how to obtain the useful information.

Introduces the structural approach of social work practice, which assumes that many clients' problems arise from harmful social forces. Focusing on the construction of such realities as poverty, racism, and domestic violence, this work counters the focus on individual change that is so common in managed care and corporatization.

Features essays on ethics, politics, and law. This book re-evaluates the meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture.

As the twentieth century opened, American intellectuals grew increasingly sympathetic to pragmatism and empirical methods in the social sciences. This book examines how the Catholic Church attempted to retain its identity in an age of pluralism. It shows a Church fundamentally united on major issues.

Argues that the rise of ethnic or identity politics - in the postcolonial world - is a consequence of techniques of governmental administration. Using examples from India, this book examines the different forms taken by the politics of the governed. It provides a perspective on the possibilities and limits of democracy in the postcolonial world.

Follows the intertwined threads of Jewishness and non-Jewishness that play through the life and works of Jacques Derrida. This book merges the biography and textual commentary in a portrait of the man, his works, and being (or not being) Jewish.

An examination of the difference between communication and transmission that stresses technologies and institutions long overlooked in the study of symbols and signs throughout the history of civilizations.

John F. Kennedy was not only a president, but also a symbol for America's most cherished ideas. Not the history of a man's life but the biography of his idea, The Kennedy Obsession traces the creation of Kennedy's image as an inspired-and inspiring-fiction.

Ranging through films, television, lesbian novels, and narrative theory from Victor/Victoria to Star Trek: The Next Generation, from Barnes's Nightwood to Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text, Judith Roof charts how ideas of narrative and sexuality inform, determine, and reproduce one another. She identifies the paradigmatic lesbian story, its unvarying repetition, and how it might be recast.

Shows how early American painters transformed themselves from provincial followers of the established traditions of Europe into some of the innovative artists in the world. This book explores not only the status of artists and their personal relationship to their work but also the dialogue between the artist and society.

Presents studies on gender and life in the Amazon. This book covers the fieldwork of the authors among the Mundurucu people of Brazil in 1952. It provides an account of the historical, ecological, and cultural setting of the Mundurucu, including the mythology surrounding women, women's work and household life, marriage and child rearing, and more.

The poems of Du Fu (712-77) had a diverse range of subject matter, from personal detail to historical fact, expressed with a richness of language that stretched from the elegant to the colloquial, and from the allusive to the direct. This selection includes both famous and lesser-known works.

Shows how our perception of skin has changed from the eighteenth century onwards. This title examines the changing significance of skin through brilliant analyses of literature, art, philosophy, and anatomical drawings and writings.