Professor Price has enlarged his widely known and influential study of science and the humanities to include much new material, extraordinarily broad in its range: from ancient automata, talismans and symbols, to the differences of modern science and technology. Science since Babylon is now more fascinating and useful than ever to anyone concerned with the humanistic understanding of science. Originating in a series of five public lectures delivered under the auspices of the history department at Yale University in 1959, this book is an investigation of the circumstances and consequences of certain vital decisions relating to scientific crises which have the world to its present state of scientific and technological development. Not just another book on "History of Science," it is a plea, an exemplification for a whole new range of studies to take its place in the territory between the humanities and the sciences. The chapter on "Diseases of Science" has received much public attention as an analysis of the present structure and probable future of the organization of science. The author documents his study with accounts of his own researches in his specific fields of interest, relating them to the "crises" which he believes to be of paramount importance.
The sociological study of economic activity has witnessed a significant resurgence. Recent texts have chronicled economic sociology's nineteenth-century origins while pointing to the importance of context and power in economic life, yet the field lacks a clear understanding of the role that concepts at different levels of abstraction play in its organization. Economic Sociology fills this critical gap by surveying the current state of the field while advancing a framework for further theoretical development. Alejandro Portes examines economic sociology's principal assumptions, key explanatory concepts, and selected research sites. He argues that economic activity is embedded in social and cultural relations, but also that power and the unintended consequences of rational purposive action must be factored in when seeking to explain or predict economic behavior. Drawing upon a wealth of examples, Portes identifies three strategic sites of research--the informal economy, ethnic enclaves, and transnational communities--and he eschews grand narratives in favor of mid-range theories that help us understand specific kinds of social action. The book shows how the meta-assumptions of economic sociology can be transformed, under certain conditions, into testable propositions, and puts forward a theoretical agenda aimed at moving the field out of its present impasse.
Extensive maps and color photographs enhance an informative study of the development of Islam, detailing the rise of Arab power, its fragmentation, the spread of Islam, and the modern Arab world
"Much has been written about the Mexican war, but this . . . is the best military history of that conflict. . . . Leading personalities, civilian and military, Mexican and American, are given incisive and fair evaluations. The coming of war is seen as unavoidable, given American expansion and Mexican resistance to loss of territory, compounded by the fact that neither side understood the other. The events that led to war are described with reference to military strengths and weaknesses, and every military campaign and engagement is explained in clear detail and illustrated with good maps. . . . Problems of large numbers of untrained volunteers, discipline and desertion, logistics, diseases and sanitation, relations with Mexican civilians in occupied territory, and Mexican guerrilla operations are all explained, as are the negotiations which led to war's end and the Mexican cession. . . . This is an outstanding contribution to military history and a model of writing which will be admired and emulated."-Journal of American History. K. Jack Bauer was also the author of Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (1985) and Other Works. Robert W. Johannsen, who introduces this Bison Books edition of The Mexican War, is a professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and the author of To the Halls of Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (1985).
Galdos wrote prolifically in two distinct narrative modes: some twenty major 'contemporary novels' in the realist tradition and a special sort of historical novel he called the episodio nacional. The reign of Isabella II (1843-68) and the revolutionary period which followed until 1875 was a time of exceptional volatility in Spain, and Geoffrey Ribbans's comprehensive study shows how each of Galdos's two narrative modes adopts a particular technique in its treatment of Spanish history and politics. The episodio is tightly bound to historical events and timescale, though it skilfully incorporates its fictional characters into this framework; the novel on the other hand is embedded in historical reality in a constant but less systematic manner.
First published in 1974, New Directions in Literary History is a comprehensive attempt to present approaches to literary studies that have developed from phenomenology, stylistics and linguistics, Marxist reconsiderations of literature, interdisciplinary studies and analysis of reader response. Written by an international group of scholars, the essays are taken from the pages of New Literary History. They range from the Middle Ages to contemporary literature. European and American literary critics are here represented, together with an art critic, a philosopher and a novelist. Their essays deal with crucial problems in the study of literature: the relationship of the contemporary critic to works of the past; the place of method in literary study; how reading takes place; the role of the reader in different literary periods in providing a guide to interpretation; the language of literature and its relation to natural or ordinary language; the origin and decline of literary forms; and what constitutes literature, especially in the relation between fictional character and autobiography. Although the essays are essentially concerned with theoretical issues, they also examine the practical applications to literature. Students of English literature and literary theory will find this book particularly interesting.