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The controversial Jewish thinker whose tortured path led him into the heart of twentieth-century intellectual lifeScion of a distinguished line of Talmudic scholars, Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) was an intellectual impresario whose inner restlessness led him from prewar Vienna to Zurich, Israel, and Cold War Berlin. Regarded by some as a genius, by others as a charlatan, Taubes moved among yeshivas, monasteries, and leading academic institutions on three continents. He wandered between Judaism and Christianity, left and right, piety and transgression. Along the way, he interacted with many of the leading minds of the age, from Leo Strauss and Gershom Scholem to Herbert Marcuse, Susan Sontag, and Carl Schmitt. Professor of Apocalypse is the definitive biography of this enigmatic figure and a vibrant mosaic of twentieth-century intellectual life.Jerry Muller shows how Taubes's personal tensions mirrored broader conflicts between religious belief and scholarship, allegiance to Jewish origins and the urge to escape them, tradition and radicalism, and religion and politics. He traces Taubes's emergence as a prominent interpreter of the Apostle Paul, influencing generations of scholars, and how his journey led him from crisis theology to the Frankfurt School, and from a radical Hasidic sect in Jerusalem to the center of academic debates over Gnosticism, secularization, and the revolutionary potential of apocalypticism.Professor of Apocalypse offers an unforgettable account of an electrifying world of ideas, focused on a charismatic personality who thrived on controversy and conflict.

As Lee shows in Overwhelmed, the rapid expansion of print created new relationships between literature and information. He presents a new argument: rather than being at odds, as generations of critics have viewed them, literature and information in the 19th century were entangled in surprisingly collaborative ways.

From the Nobel Prize-winning writer, a new collection of literary and personal essaysOld Truths and New Cliches collects nineteen essays-most of them previously unpublished in English-by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work-including the literary arts, Yiddish and Jewish life, and mysticism and philosophy-the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer's singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Like a modern Montaigne, Singer studied human nature and created a body of work that contributed to a deeper understanding of the human spirit. Much of his philosophical thought was funneled into his stories. Yet these essays, which Singer himself translated into English or oversaw the translation of, present his ideas in a new way, as universal reflections on the role of the artist in modern society. The unpublished essays featured here include "e;Old Truths and New Cliches,"e; "e;The Kabbalah and Modern Times,"e; and "e;A Trip to the Circus."e;Old Truths and New Cliches brims with stunning archival finds that will make a significant impact on how readers understand Singer and his work. Singer's critical essays have long been overlooked because he has been thought of almost exclusively as a storyteller. This book offers an important correction to the record by further establishing Singer as a formidable intellectual.

An authoritative English translation of one of the most important works in the history of the novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795-1796), Goethe's second novel, is a foundational work in the history of the genre--perhaps the first Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story focusing on the growth and self-realization of the main character. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free from the restrictive bourgeois world of his upbringing and seek fulfillment as an actor and playwright. Goethe's novel had a huge impact on the Romantics. Hegel, Schelling, Novalis, and Schopenhauer considered it one of the most important novels yet written. Schlegel famously called it one of the "three tendencies of the age," along with the French Revolution and the philosophy of Fichte. And Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann composed songs to poems from the novel. It also had a major influence on nineteenth-century British writers, including Thomas Carlyle, who was its first English translator, and George Eliot. Drawn from Princeton's authoritative collected works of Goethe, and featuring a new introduction by David Wellbery, this is the definitive English version of a landmark of world literature.

An in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the presentFor years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation-one that will purportedly change the "e;face"e; of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodriguez-Muniz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups.Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations-including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino-have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodriguez-Muniz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures.Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse.

A novel perspective on monetary and fiscal policy that views money as the equity capital of a nation A conventional economic theory, monetarism, holds that inflation is a monetary phenomenon driven by changes in the supply of money. Yet recent experience--including the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic development of China--contradict this basic prediction. In this book, leading economists Patrick Bolton and Haizhou Huang offer a novel perspective, viewing monetary economics through the lens of corporate finance. They propose a richer theory, where money can be seen as the equity capital of a nation, playing a similar role as stocks for a company. This innovative framework integrates the real and monetary sides of the economy, with a banking sector and debt at its core. In the financial world, companies only issue new shares if it results in some kind of value creation; this is a basic principle of corporate finance that Bolton and Huang argue can be applied to monetary economics. When the government increases the money supply to finance positive net value investments--when it prints money to keep the economy going--it increases output, not inflation. This is evidenced by the strong growth in GDP and money in China over the last four decades, and in the United States during World War II. The effect of increasing money supply, they argue, depends on how money enters the system and what the money buys. The principles outlined by Bolton and Huang shed new light on a range of issues, including inflation, monetary and fiscal policy, central banking, money and growth, and the international monetary system.

A behind-the-scenes look at how the rich and powerful use offshore shell corporations to conceal their wealth and make themselves richerIn 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. Spiderweb Capitalism takes you inside this shadow economy, uncovering the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who facilitate the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe.Kimberly Kay Hoang traveled more than 350,000 miles and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals. She traces the flow of capital from offshore funds in places like the Cayman Islands, Samoa, and Panama to special-purpose vehicles and holding companies in Singapore and Hong Kong, and how it finds its way into risky markets onshore in Vietnam and Myanmar. Hoang reveals the strategies behind spiderweb capitalism and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones.Dazzlingly written, Spiderweb Capitalism sheds critical light on how global elites capitalize on risky frontier markets, and deepens our understanding of the paradoxical ways in which global economic growth is sustained through states where the line separating the legal from the corrupt is not always clear.

How social status shapes our dreams of the future and inhibits the lives we envision for ourselvesMost of us understand that a person's place in society can close doors to opportunity, but anything is possible when we dream about what might be, or so we think. Dreams of a Lifetime reveals that what and how we dream-and whether we believe our dreams can actually come true-are tied to our social class, gender, race, age, and life events.Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane argue that our social location shapes the seemingly private and unique life of our minds. We are all free to dream about possibilities, but not all dreamers are equal. Cerulo and Ruane show how our social position ingrains itself on our mind's eye, quietly influencing the nature of our dreams, whether we embrace dreaming or dream at all, and whether we believe that our dreams, from the attainable to the improbable, can become realities. They explore how inequalities stemming from social disadvantages pattern our dreams for ourselves, and how sociocultural disparities in how we dream exacerbate social inequalities and limit the life paths we believe are open to us.Drawing on a wealth of original interviews with people from diverse social backgrounds, Dreams of a Lifetime demonstrates how the study of our dreams can provide new avenues for understanding and combatting inequality-including inequalities that precede action or outcome.

Why evolution is like a network, not a family tree--and why it matters for understanding the health of all living thingsIn The Network of Life, David Mindell explains why the conventional narrative of evolution needs to evolve. Ever since Darwin, evolution has largely been thought to work like a family tree in which species are related through a series of branching events. But, today, a growing knowledge of the ways species share genetic materials in a process known as horizontal evolution has revealed that evolution is actually a network of shared genealogy in which species are more interconnected than previously thought. In this book, Mindell presents this new narrative of life's evolution and its profound implications for all life on Earth.The Network of Life describes the drivers of horizontal evolution--interbreeding and genetic recombination, the merger of species, horizontal gene transfer, and coevolution. The network view of evolution that emerges supports a new symbiotic theory of health, which holds that the future health of humans, other species, and our shared environments depends on evolution and adaptation across life's network.Difficult times lie ahead for many of Earth's species as climates and habitats transform. At the same time, new and altered life-forms are arising and spreading in association with human activities. We are also learning to reshape and create life by mimicking the mechanisms of horizontal evolution, and we are coevolving with technology as we enhance our bodies, brains, and life spans. The Network of Life shows why and how increasing our knowledge of horizontal evolution can provide critical lessons as we navigate our looming challenges.

A bold new reconception of ancient Greek drama as a mode of philosophical thinkingThe Philosophical Stage offers an innovative approach to ancient Greek literature and thought that places drama at the heart of intellectual history. Drawing on evidence from tragedy and comedy, Joshua Billings shines new light on the development of early Greek philosophy, arguing that drama is our best source for understanding the intellectual culture of classical Athens.In this incisive book, Billings recasts classical Greek intellectual history as a conversation across discourses and demonstrates the significance of dramatic reflections on widely shared theoretical questions. He argues that neither "e;literature"e; nor "e;philosophy"e; was a defined category in the fifth century BCE, and develops a method of reading dramatic form as a structured investigation of issues at the heart of the emerging discipline of philosophy.A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's most original classical scholars, The Philosophical Stage presents a novel approach to ancient drama and sets a path for a renewed understanding of early Greek thought.

A comprehensive overview of what psychologists now know about the nature of cognition Principles of Cognition provides students with an invaluable introduction to the modern science of cognition, blending invaluable insights from behavioral and neuroscientific studies of humans and other animals with unique examples, cutting-edge research summaries, and real-world applications. This accessible textbook builds on the legacy of psychologist William James by emphasizing not only the form cognition takes in laboratory research but also the functional dynamics of cognitive processes in everyday life and the ways they vary across individuals and species. Using an integrative approach that highlights the relevance of cognition across psychological disciplines, it engages students by showing how cognition emerges over time, how cognitive abilities can be improved, and how thinking can be upended by something as simple as falling in love.Discusses topics in cognition rarely covered by other textbooks, including perception of time and space, consciousness, animal cognition, mathematical and reading skills, emotions, intelligence, generalization, and social cognitionEmphasizes learning and its interactions with memory and cognitionFeatures practical applications from cognitive research in every chapterConnects topics across chapters to promote retention and critical thinkingDraws on the latest experimental, naturalistic, and applied researchIntegrates findings about animals and children with traditional studies of adults to develop a more neurally grounded framework for thinking about the mechanisms of cognitionAn ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate classrooms

A revealing look at how the Orpheus myth helped Renaissance writers and thinkers understand the force of eloquenceIn ancient Greek mythology, the lyrical songs of Orpheus charmed the gods, and compelled animals, rocks, and trees to obey his commands. This mythic power inspired Renaissance philosophers and poets as they attempted to discover the hidden powers of verbal eloquence. They wanted to know: How do words produce action? In The Trials of Orpheus, Jenny Mann examines the key role the Orpheus story played in helping early modern writers and thinkers understand the mechanisms of rhetorical force. Mann demonstrates that the forms and figures of ancient poetry indelibly shaped the principles of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific knowledge.Mann explores how Ovid's version of the Orpheus myth gave English poets and natural philosophers the lexicon with which to explain language's ability to move individuals without physical contact. These writers and thinkers came to see eloquence as an aesthetic force capable of binding, drawing, softening, and scattering audiences. Bringing together a range of examples from drama, poetry, and philosophy by Bacon, Lodge, Marlowe, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and others, Mann demonstrates that the fascination with Orpheus produced some of the most canonical literature of the age.Delving into the impact of ancient Greek thought and poetry in the early modern era, The Trials of Orpheus sheds light on how the powers of rhetoric became a focus of English thought and literature.

Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life--and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your liberal beliefs more seriously Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was. Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre argues in Liberalism as a Way of Life, many of us are liberal without fully realizing it--or grasping what it means. Misled into thinking that liberalism is confined to politics, we fail to recognize that it's the water we swim in, saturating every area of public and private life, shaping our psychological and spiritual outlooks, and influencing our moral and aesthetic values--our sense of what is right, wrong, good, bad, funny, worthwhile, and more. This eye-opening book shows how so many of us are liberal to the core, why liberalism provides the basis for a good life, and how we can make our lives better and happier by becoming more aware of, and more committed to, the beliefs we already hold. A lively, engaging, and uplifting guide to living well, the liberal way, Liberalism as a Way of Life is filled with examples from television, movies, stand-up comedy, and social media--from Parks and Recreation and The Good Place to the Borat movies and Hannah Gadsby. Along the way, you'll also learn about seventeen benefits of being a liberal--including generosity, humor, cheer, gratitude, tolerance, and peace of mind--and practical exercises to increase these rewards. You're probably already waist deep in the waters of liberalism. Liberalism as a Way of Life invites you to dive in.

A behind-the-scenes look at how digital surveillance is affecting the trucking way of lifeLong-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the day-to-day independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.Karen Levy takes readers inside a world few ever see, painting a bracing portrait of one of the last great American frontiers. Federal regulations now require truckers to buy and install digital monitors that capture data about their locations and behaviors. Intended to address the pervasive problem of trucker fatigue by regulating the number of hours driven each day, these devices support additional surveillance by trucking firms and other companies. Traveling from industry trade shows to law offices and truck-stop bars, Levy reveals how these invasive technologies are reconfiguring industry relationships and providing new tools for managerial and legal control-and how truckers are challenging and resisting them.Data Driven contributes to an emerging conversation about how technology affects our work, institutions, and personal lives, and helps to guide our thinking about how to protect public interests and safeguard human dignity in the digital age.

A fascinating account of the growing "e;Yes in My Backyard"e; urban movement The exorbitant costs of urban housing and the widening gap in income inequality are fueling a combative new movement in cities around the world. A growing number of influential activists aren't waiting for new public housing to be built. Instead, they're calling for more construction and denser cities in order to increase affordability. Yes to the City offers an in-depth look at the "e;Yes in My Backyard"e; (YIMBY) movement. From its origins in San Francisco to its current cadre of activists pushing for new apartment towers in places like Boulder, Austin, and London, Max Holleran explores how urban density, once maligned for its association with overpopulated slums, has become a rallying cry for millennial activists locked out of housing markets and unable to pay high rents.Holleran provides a detailed account of YIMBY activists campaigning for construction, new zoning rules, better public transit, and even candidates for local and state office. YIMBY groups draw together an unlikely coalition, from developers and real estate agents to environmentalists, and Holleran looks at the increasingly contentious battles between market-driven pragmatists and rent-control idealists. Arguing that advocates for more housing must carefully weigh their demands for supply with the continuing damage of gentrification, he shows that these individuals see high-density urbanism and walkable urban spaces as progressive statements about the kind of society they would like to create.Chronicling a major shift in housing activism during the past twenty years, Yes to the City considers how one movement has reframed conversations about urban growth.

Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions. But in Philosophy and Real Politics, Raymond Geuss argues that philosophers should first try to understand why real political actors behave as they actually do. Far from being applied ethics, politics is a skill that allows people to survive and pursue their goals. To understand politics is to understand the powers, motives, and concepts that people have and that shape how they deal with the problems they face in their particular historical situations. Philosophy and Real Politics both outlines a historically oriented, realistic political philosophy and criticizes liberal political philosophies based on abstract conceptions of rights and justice. The book is a trenchant critique of established ways of thought and a provocative call for change.

How medieval Dutch society laid the foundations for modern capitalismThe Netherlands was one of the pioneers of capitalism in the Middle Ages, giving rise to the spectacular Dutch Golden Age while ushering in an era of unprecedented, long-term economic growth across Europe. Pioneers of Capitalism examines the informal institutions in the Netherlands that made this economic miracle possible, providing a groundbreaking new history of the emergence and early development of capitalism.Drawing on the latest quantitative theories in economic research, Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden show how Dutch cities, corporations, guilds, commons, and other private and semipublic organizations provided safeguards for market transactions in the state's absence. Informal institutions developed in the Netherlands long before the state created public safeguards for economic activity. Prak and van Zanden argue that, in the Netherlands itself, capitalism emerged within a robust civil society that constrained and counterbalanced its centrifugal forces, but that an unrestrained capitalism ruled in the overseas territories. Rather than collapsing under unrestricted greed, the Dutch economy flourished, but prosperity at home came at the price of slavery and other dire consequences for people outside Europe.Pioneers of Capitalism offers a panoramic account of the early history of capitalism, revealing how a small region of medieval Europe transformed itself into a powerhouse of sustained economic growth, and changed the world in the process.

A short guide to living well by understanding better what you really value-and what to do when your goals conflictWhat do you want out of life? To make a lot of money-or work for justice? To run marathons-or sing in a choir? To have children-or travel the world? The things we care about in life-family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals-often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Even worse, we don't always know what we really want, or how to define success. Blending personal stories, philosophy, and psychology, this insightful and entertaining book offers invaluable advice about living well by understanding your values and resolving the conflicts that frustrate their fulfillment.Valerie Tiberius introduces you to a way of thinking about your goals that enables you to reflect on them effectively throughout your life. She illustrates her approach with vivid examples, many of which are drawn from her own life, ranging from the silly to the serious, from shopping to navigating prejudice. Throughout, the book emphasizes the importance of interconnectedness, reminding us of the profound influence other people have on our lives, our goals, and how we should pursue them. At the same time, the book offers strategies for coping with obstacles to realizing your goals, including gender bias and other kinds of discrimination.Whether you are changing jobs, rethinking your priorities, or reconsidering your whole life path, What Do You Want Out of Life? is an essential guide to helping you understand what really matters to you and how you can thoughtfully pursue it.

The case for race-conscious education policyIn our unequal society, families of color fully share the dream of college but their children often attend schools that do not prepare them, and the higher education system gives the best opportunities to the most privileged. Students of color hope for college but often face a dead end.For many young people, racial inequality puts them at a disadvantage from early childhood. The Walls around Opportunity argues that colorblind policies have made college inaccessible to a large share of students of color, and reveals how policies that acknowledge racial inequalities and set racial equality goals can succeed where colorblindness has failed.Gary Orfield paints a troubling portrait of American higher education, explaining how profound racial gaps imbedded in virtually every stage of our children's lives pose a major threat to communities of color and the nation. He describes how the 1960s and early 1970s was the only period in history to witness sustained efforts at racial equity in higher education, and how the Reagan era ushered in today's colorblind policies, which ignore the realities of color inequality. Orfield shows how this misguided policy has resegregated public schools, exacerbated inequalities in college preparation, denied needed financial aid to families, and led to huge price increases over decades that have seen little real gain in income for most Americans.Drawing on a wealth of new data and featuring commentaries by Stella Flores and James Anderson, this timely and urgent book shows how colorblind policies serve only to raise the walls of segregation higher, and proposes real solutions that can make higher education available to all.

How the history of a word sheds new light on capitalism and modern politicsWhat exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what's at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? In Capitalism, Michael Sonenscher examines the history behind the concept and pieces together the range of subjects bound up with the word. Sonenscher shows that many of our received ideas fail to pick up the work that the idea of capitalism is doing for us, without us even realizing it."e;Capitalism"e; was first coined in France in the early nineteenth century. It began as a fusion of two distinct sets of ideas. The first involved thinking about public debt and war finance. The second involved thinking about the division of labour. Sonenscher shows that thinking about the first has changed radically over time. Funding welfare has been added to funding warfare, bringing many new questions in its wake. Thinking about the second set of ideas has offered far less room for manoeuvre. The division of labour is still the division of labour and the debates and discussions that it once generated have now been largely forgotten. By exploring what lay behind the earlier distinction before it collapsed and was eroded by the passage of time, Sonenscher shows why the present range of received ideas limits our political options and the types of reform we might wish for.

What all of us can do to fight the pervasive human tendency to enable wrongdoing in the workplace, politics, and beyondIt is easy to condemn obvious wrongdoers such as Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, Harvey Weinstein, and the Sackler family. But we rarely think about the many people who supported their unethical or criminal behavior. In each case there was a supporting cast of complicitors: business partners, employees, investors, news organizations, and others. And, whether we're aware of it or not, almost all of us have been complicit in the unethical behavior of others. In Complicit, Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman confronts our complicity head-on and offers strategies for recognizing and avoiding the psychological and other traps that lead us to ignore, condone, or actively support wrongdoing in our businesses, organizations, communities, politics, and more.Complicit tells compelling stories of those who enabled the Theranos and WeWork scandals, the opioid crisis, the sexual abuse that led to the #MeToo movement, and the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack. The book describes seven different behavioral profiles that can lead to complicity in wrongdoing, ranging from true partners to those who unknowingly benefit from systemic privilege, including white privilege, and it tells the story of Bazerman's own brushes with complicity. Complicit also offers concrete and detailed solutions, describing how individuals, leaders, and organizations can more effectively prevent complicity.By challenging the notion that a few bad apples are responsible for society's ills, Complicit implicates us all-and offers a path to creating a more ethical world.

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural lifeHow did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism's influence on American life. In Christianity's American Fate, David Hollinger shows how the Protestant establishment, adopting progressive ideas about race, gender, sexuality, empire, and divinity, liberalized too quickly for some and not quickly enough for others. After 1960, mainline Protestantism lost members from both camps-conservatives to evangelicalism and progressives to secular activism. A Protestant evangelicalism that was comfortable with patriarchy and white supremacy soon became the country's dominant Christian cultural force.Hollinger explains the origins of what he calls Protestantism's "e;two-party system"e; in the United States, finding its roots in America's religious culture of dissent, as established by seventeenth-century colonists who broke away from Europe's religious traditions; the constitutional separation of church and state, which enabled religious diversity; and the constant influx of immigrants, who found solidarity in churches. Hollinger argues that the United States became not only overwhelmingly Protestant but Protestant on steroids. By the 1960s, Jews and other non-Christians had diversified the nation ethnoreligiously, inspiring more inclusive notions of community. But by embracing a socially diverse and scientifically engaged modernity, Hollinger tells us, ecumenical Protestants also set the terms by which evangelicals became reactionary.

A beautifully illustrated exploration of how Latif Al Ani's photographs and contemporary Iraqi artists continue to challenge the colonial appropriation of Iraq's ancient past Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Mesopotamian and early Islamic ruins became the focus of many Western colonial expeditions. These missions, which routinely dismissed the role and knowledge of local communities, came to shape the historical narrative of ancient civilizations and modern people. In Iraq, home to renowned sites such as Babylon, Dur-Kurigalzu, Ctesiphon, Hatra, and Samarra, foreign excavations appropriated ancient cultures and influenced how they were interpreted and transmitted. And these excavations still reverberate today in understandings of Iraqi identity. Centered around the images of pioneering Iraqi photographer Latif Al Ani (1932-2021), Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani's Visions of Ancient Iraq highlights the voices of those who explored the Iraqi past and the deeply personal stories of those who confront its legacy, challenging the Western colonial narrative that has dominated for centuries. The companion volume to an exhibition at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the book features archival documents, lithographs, 1960s photography, essays that explore the rich history of ancient and modern Iraq, and the work and personal accounts of five contemporary Iraqi artists who reflect on the complex issues of Iraqi cultural identity and heritage. Contributors include Adel Abidin, Narmin Amin, Pedro Azara, Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Abdulrahman K. Darwesh, Nelida Fuccaro, Nadine Hattom, Hanaa Malallah, Nat Muller, Mahmoud Obaidi, and Ala Younis. Distributed for the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University Exhibition ScheduleInstitute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York UniversityNovember 8, 2023-February 25, 2024

A provocative look at the central role of slavery in Augustine's religious, ethical, and political thought Augustine believed that slavery is permissible, but to understand why, we must situate him in his late antique Roman intellectual context. Slaves of God provides a major reassessment of this monumental figure in the Western religious and political tradition, tracing the remarkably close connections between Augustine's understanding of slavery and his broader thought. Augustine is most often read through the lens of Greek philosophy and the theology of Christian writers such as Paul and Ambrose, yet his debt to Roman thought is seldom appreciated. Toni Alimi reminds us that the author of Confessions and City of God was also a Roman citizen and argues that some of the thinkers who most significantly shaped his intellectual development were Romans such as Cicero, Seneca, Lactantius, and Varro--Romans who had much to say about slavery and its relationship to civic life. Alimi shows how Augustine, a keen and influential student of these figures, related chattel slavery and slavery to God, and sheds light on Augustinianism's complicity in Christianity's long entanglement with slavery. An illuminating work of scholarship, Slaves of God reveals how slavery was integral to Augustine's views about law, rule, accountability, and citizenship, and breaks new ground in the history of slavery in late antique and medieval political thought.