Harvard University Press: 1090 books

Ian Shapiro makes a compelling case that the purpose of politics should be to combat domination, and he shows what this means in practice at home and abroad. This is a major work of applied political theory, a profound challenge to utopian visions, and a guide to fundamental problems of justice and distribution.

A Physics World Top Ten Book of 2010 Steven Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, continues the wide-ranging reflections that have also earned him a reputation as, in the words of New York Times reporter James Glanz, “a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate—and sting.”

After the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant had a meltdown, protesters around the world challenged nuclear power. Climate change has never aroused this visceral dread. Weart dissects this paradox, showing that powerful images surrounding nuclear energy hold us captive, allowing fear, rather than facts, to drive our thinking and public policy.

The great Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky has long been recognized as a pioneer in developmental psychology. But his theory of development has never been well understood in the West. Mind in Society corrects much of this misunderstanding. Carefully edited by a group of outstanding Vygotsky scholars, the book presents a unique selection of Vygotsky's important essays.

The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent...

Despite global progress, staggering health inequalities between rich and poor raise basic questions of social justice. Defining the field of global health law, Lawrence Gostin drives home the need for effective governance and offers a blueprint for reform, based on the principle that the opportunity to live a healthy life is a basic human right.

Soldier of Christ reveals a paradoxical figure: a prophetic reformer of limited vision whose leadership stimulated the emergence of a global Catholicism while sowing doubt and dissension among some of the Church’s most faithful servants. The Cold War and Pius XII’s manner of engaging with the modern world defined his pontificate, Ventresca argues.

Famous as the catalyst of the fight or flight response, adrenaline has also received forensic attention as a perfect, untraceable poison—and rumors persist of its power to revive the dead. True to the spirit of its topic, Adrenaline is a stimulating journey that reveals the truth behind adrenaline’s scientific importance and popular appeal.

Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread—in search of hiccups, coughs, yawns, sneezes, and other lowly, undignified, human behaviors. Our earthiest instinctive acts bear the imprint of our evolutionary origins and can be valuable tools for understanding how the human brain works and what makes us different from other species.

During four years in session, Vatican Council II held television audiences rapt with its elegant, magnificently choreographed public ceremonies, while its debates generated front-page news on a near-weekly basis. By virtually any assessment, it was the most important religious event of the twentieth...

Trent, the Catholic Church’s attempt to put its house in order after the Reformation, has long been praised and blamed for things it never did. This one-volume history, the first in modern times, explores the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, five popes, and all of Europe to the brink of disaster.

Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with Vatican officials, this book affords a firsthand look at the people, the politics, and the organization behind the institution. Throughout, revealing and colorful anecdotes from church history and the present day bring the unique culture of the Vatican to life.

The British Empire governed more than half the world’s Muslims. John Slight traces the empire’s complex interactions with the Hajj—the annual pilgrimage to Mecca—from the 1860s, when an outbreak of cholera led Britain to engage reluctantly in medical regulation of pilgrims, to the Suez Crisis of 1956. He gives voice to pilgrims and officials alike.

The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.