Noam Chomsky is one of the most recognized names of our time, and in 2005 he was voted the most important public intellectual in the world today, the result of his winning 4,827 of 20,000 votes cast in a poll conducted jointly by a British monthly called Prospect and the Washingtonbased journal Foreign Policy. This result is hardly surprising; his contributions to linguistics and his theories regarding the workings of the human mind have rocked the intellectual world for more than fifty years, beginning with the critical reception of his early work on syntactic structures and his appeal to what he called the Cartesian approach to language. His crusade against the Vietnam War and his on-going critique of American foreign policy, his analyses of the Middle East and Central America, his long-standing local and international activism, and his assessment (sometimes with Edward Herman) of how media functions in contemporary society have made him a darling of political dissenters around the world who take from Chomsky both useful analysis and, moreover, a whole approach that is valuable in the struggle against oppression. He is at once a beacon to the downtrodden, and, as much of the world witnessed on September 20, 2006, from a televised speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly, he is also an inspiration to the likes of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who recommended to representatives of the governments of the world that they read Chomsky’s recent book Hegemony or Survival. Chomsky’s vicious and persistent attacks against “Stalinist” politicians, “commissar” academics, greedy members of the managerial classes, poser liberals, “scientific” Marxists, self-aggrandizing social scientists, authoritarian pedagogues, lackey media types, and fanatical sports fans has also created a vicious set of adversaries who commit remarkable amounts of effort to discredit, admonish, critique, or ignore Chomsky’s approach. In the face of it all, Chomsky stands forth, now eighty years old and yet as energetic, fearless, and courageous as ever, perhaps even more so as the years bring him new kinds of experience, optimism and disgust; he is indeed, as U2’s Bono has called him, the “rebel without a pause.” As a consequence, most everyone has strong feelings (positive and negative) about Noam Chomsky, and the effect that he has upon people extending across national, social, and institutional lines is a fascinating phenomenon, and is a remarkable testament to what an intellectual can accomplish when engaged beyond the ivory tower.

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life. In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk. This 30th anniversary edition of Dawkins' fascinating book retains all original material, including the two enlightening chapters added in the second edition. In a new Introduction the author presents his thoughts thirty years after the publication of his first and most famous book, while the inclusion of the two-page original Foreword by brilliant American scientist Robert Trivers shows the enthusiastic reaction of the scientific community at that time. This edition is a celebration of a remarkable exposition of evolutionary thought, a work that has been widely hailed for its stylistic brilliance and deep scientific insights, and that continues to stimulate whole new areas of research today.

Vol. 1 : Abbagnano–Byzantine Philosophy. - 790 p.

To travel from premodernism through modernism and into post-modernism might take several centuries and even millennia. American legal thought, remarkably so, has made the voyage in just over two hundred years. My purpose is to tell the story of this mercurial journey.

This is the first comprehensive study based on a detailed textual analysis of the classical works on war by Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mao Tse-tung, and to a lesser extent, Jomini and Machiavelli. Brushing stereotypes aside, the author takes a fresh look at what these strategic thinkers actually said—not what they are widely believed to have said. He finds that despite their apparent differences in terms of time, place, cultural background, and level of material/technological development, all had much more in common than previously supposed. In fact, the central conclusion of this book is that the logic of waging war and of strategic thinking is as universal and timeless as human nature itself. This third, revised and expanded edition includes five new chapters and some new charts and diagrams.

I have been teaching in the areas of politics and literature for a number of years and have been fascinated especially by the work of George Orwell. In the early 1990s I began work on a book on Orwell and thought at the time that my interest in him would be satisfied. However, George Orwell: A Political Life, published by Manchester University Press in 1993, left me feeling that I wanted to say more than the essentially hybrid format of that book had allowed me to say about his political ideas. In 2003, Orwell’s centenary year, I was invited to give a number of papers on aspects of Orwell’s thought and was disingenuous enough to imagine that these could easily be brought together to make a book. Routledge were good enough to express an interest in the project, and so I immediately began to work on my individual papers. But of course I discovered that a great deal more work had to be done on each, and gaps between them, too, had to be filled. I am very grateful to those at Routledge who expressed an interestin the original project and to those, especially Harriet Brinton, who bore with me when it became clear that the task would be more difficult than originally envisaged. I would also like to express my gratitude to two friends, Claire Lightowler and Stanley Kleinberg, who read most of the original draft – in fact, in Stanley’s case, all the original draft. Their comments were very helpful and caused me frequently to rethink my approach. I am not a good proofreader; in fact, if I were any younger I would have been classified as dyslexic. In those days, however, that option was not available – only indolence. It has been my great good fortune to have a friend who is a meticulous proofreader and I am most grateful for the help that John Stewart offered and gave. Finally, my wife has been enormously and unstintingly supportive of my work. This project would not have been possible to complete without her help. All of these people are partly responsible for the successful completion of what follows, but only I am responsible for its deficiencies.

What makes trust such a powerful concept? This question has been at the back of my mind for about nine years now while I have been researching trust both in highly abstract terms and in more practical settings. It is with great pleasure and satisfaction, but also with a sense of vulnerability and uncertainty, of course, that I present in this book what I believe to be the most important approaches to understanding trust in the social sciences as well as core original insights into the leap of faith as the essential element at the heart of trust. Young scholars are increasingly discouraged from writing books and advised to focus their efforts on journal articles. Personally, I am glad that people around me have encouraged me to compose and publish this work. The opportunity to develop and describe my scholarly understanding of trust more thoroughly has been immensely valuable to me because in this book I can connect my most recent thoughts with some ideas that I have presented separately in articles and chapters elsewhere. As a result, a bigger picture emerges not just for me, but also for the reader. I have noticed that key inspirations have often come from books rather than articles on trust, which might reflect the fact that trust is a complex topic that does not lend itself well to merely incremental or fragmented contributions. Books, however, can integrate a broad range of ideas and move the field in new directions. The authors whose writings have enabled me to develop my own argument are duly cited in this book. Of those who have encouraged, inspired and assisted me in my work on trust over the years in person, I would like to thank specifically: Mats Alvesson, Reinhard Bachmann, Jens Beckert, Katinka Bijlsma-Frankema, Sandro Castaldo, John Child, Nicole Gillespie, Chris Grey, Rod Kramer, Christel Lane, Frederique Six, Denise Skinner, Jorg Sydow, Malin Tillmar, Antoinette Weibel, Arnold Windeler and Aks Zaheer. Countless others have also helped me through constructive dialogue and exchanges of ideas. I am grateful to all of them and hope that this work provokes further lively discussion to which I already look forward.

The language of rights is utilized frequently in debates over contemporary social issues—a fetus’s “right to life” versus a woman’s “right to choose,” for example. Because these debates pertain to what our social policies should be, it is clear that the rights in question are moral rights, and that existing legal rights ought to be changed or maintained accordingly. The problem, however, is that moral rights require moral justification. In Conflicts of Rights, John Rowan takes this next step, and investigates possible moral justifications for rights alleged to exist in four contexts: abortion, affirmative action, welfare, and pornography freedoms. In doing so, he reaches conclusions about the morally appropriate policy for each issue, and also about the effectiveness of rights language in general.

This book is written in the conviction that religion is a if not the shaper of culture. Religion is a response to the sacred. However we define that sacred—theistically or nontheistically—we can't avoid the word or the experience. Life is not just good. In some of its manifestations it is sacred—our code word for the peaking of preciousness. There is no one who finds nothing sacred, and there is nothing that adds power to human motivation like the tincture of the sacred. As John Henry Newman once observed, people will die for a dogma who will not stir for a conclusion. So if we would mobilize cures for the ills of earth, religion will be a player, for good or for ill. Mysteries like birth and death stimulate the emotion of the religio-sacred, making religion an inevitable presence—again, for good or for ill—in the ethics and policies of family planning.

A companion to Oxford's The Unpublished Opinions of the Warren Court, this book contains the draft opinions that were prepared by the Justices in the cases included, as well as a short historical preface of each case and an analysis of the legal events occurring after the drafts were sent to the Justices.

Recent and ongoing developments in science and technology--such as the prevention and treatment of disease through genetics and the development of increasingly sophisticated computer systems with wide-ranging applications--hold out the promise of vastly improving the quality of human life, but they can also raise serious ethical, legal, and public policy questions. The thirteen essays in this volume address these questions and related issues from a variety of perspectives.

Pedophilia, defined as a persistent sexual interest in prepubescent children, is an emotional and controversial topic. For many people, the mention of pedophilia brings images to mind of sexual predators1 who pursue and violate unknown children, although the reality is quite different. The public's perceptions of sexual offenses against children are influenced by media stories focusing on sensational cases that involve child abductions, killings, or individuals with long histories of sexually offending against many children (see Cheit, 2003; Jenkins, 1998). Parents are understandably worried about the safety and well-being of their children, and many others are concerned that children they know might be exploited or harmed by adults. In this preface, I discuss the social, political, and legal contexts for studying pedophilia to provide readers a framework for understanding the social, political, and legal responses to pedophilia and the associated problem of sexual offending against children.