Master the art of writing beautiful and powerful Python by using all of the features that Python 3.5 offers About This Book Become familiar with the most important and advanced parts of the Python code style Learn the trickier aspects of Python and put it in a structured context for deeper understanding of the language Offers an expert's-eye overview of how these advanced tasks fit together in Python as a whole along with practical examples Who This Book Is For Almost anyone can learn to write working * and create high quality code but they might lack a structured understanding of what it means to be 'Pythonic'. If you are a Python programmer who wants to code efficiently by getting the syntax and usage of a few intricate Python techniques exactly right, this book is for you. What You Will Learn Create a virtualenv and start a new project Understand how and when to use the functional programming paradigm Get familiar with the different ways the decorators can be written in Understand the power of generators and coroutines without digressing into lambda calculus Create metaclasses and how it makes working with Python far easier Generate HTML documentation out of documents and code using Sphinx Learn how to track and optimize application performance, both memory and cpu Use the multiprocessing library, not just locally but also across multiple machines Get a basic understanding of packaging and creating your own libraries/applications In Detail Python is a dynamic programming language. It is known for its high readability and hence it is often the first language learned by new programmers. Python being multi-paradigm, it can be used to achieve the same thing in different ways and it is compatible across different platforms. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, easy to maintain, and reuse is not so straightforward. This book is an authoritative guide that will help you learn new advanced methods in a clear and contextualised way. It starts off by creating a project-specific environment using venv, introducing you to different Pythonic syntax and common pitfalls before moving on to cover the functional features in Python. It covers how to create different decorators, generators, and metaclasses. It also introduces you to functools.wraps and coroutines and how they work. Later on you will learn to use asyncio module for asynchronous clients and servers. You will also get familiar with different testing systems such as py.test, doctest, and unittest, and debugging tools such as Python debugger and faulthandler. You will learn to optimize application performance so that it works efficiently across multiple machines and Python versions. Finally, it will teach you how to access C functions with a simple Python call. By the end of the book, you will be able to write more advanced *s and take on bigger challenges. Style and Approach This book is a comprehensive guide that covers advanced features of the Python language, and communicate them with an authoritative understanding of the underlying rationale for how, when, and why to use them.

Build websites and applications using the latest techniques in modern web development About This Book Create amazing modern day applications that run seamlessly across multiple platforms Implement multiple methodologies by creating different apps with dynamic features This unique project-based guide will help you build your own websites efficiently Who This Book Is For This book is a must-have for web developers who want to stay on top of the latest trends in web app and site development. If you are a web developer who is already familiar with HTML, CSS, and functional JavaScript, and you want to learn the latest trends in web development, this is the book for you. What You Will Learn Find out how to create responsive websites Create websites using the principals of Flat design Create deep-dive sites using parallax scrolling Discover how to use Ajax in single-page applications Create responsive navigation with CSS and JavaScript Create responsive padding with the box model property In Detail The book delivers simple instructions on how to design and build modern Web using the latest trends in web development. You will learn how to design responsive websites, created with modern Flat User Interface design patterns, build deep-scrolling websites with parallax 3D effects, and roll-your-own single-page applications. Finally, you'll work through an awesome chapter that combines them all. Each chapter features actual lines of code that you can apply right away. Style and Approach Using real-world examples, Web Design Blueprints presents practical how-to projects for site enhancements, with a light-hearted, easy-to-understand tone. This book has individual projects that cumulate until you finally build a super-project at the end, using all the skills learned

Over 70 incredibly effective and practical recipes to get you up and running with Sitecore development About This Book Build enterprise-level rich websites quickly and deliver the best possible content management to your website Get maximum usage of functionalities like different user interfaces, workflow, publishing, search, analytics, etc and learn different rendering techniques using presentation components for data bindings, events, handlers, schedulers, media, etc. Add a surprising amount of functionality just by customizing the Sitecore architecture through the best practices contained in this book Who This Book Is For If you are a Sitecore developer or a programmer who wants to expand your Sitecore development skills, this book is ideal for you. You will need working knowledge of ASP.NET WebForms or MVC, as well as HTML, and a basic knowledge of Sitecore installation. What You Will Learn Create, access, and personalize your website content using different Sitecore presentation components Learn how to extend the presentation components to fulfill some real-life requiremnts such as improving the site’s performance, generating Rss feeds and so on Work with multiple websites on a single Sitecore instance and create multilingual websites Customize the Sitecore interfaces as per your business requirements to provide easier and error-free user interface to content authors to save time and improve accuracy Customize the Sitecore backend architecture as per your business needs Automate tasks and achieve scalability by altering the development and configuration settings Integrate external systems with Sitecore to import or export content and secure user interactions Integrate the advanced features of analytics and personalization, to get the best possible customer experience and generate its reports In Detail This book will get you started on building rich websites, and customizing user interfaces by creating content management applications quickly. It will give you an insight into web designs and how to customize the Sitecore architecture as per your website's requirements using best practices. Packed with over 70 recipes to help you achieve and solve real-world common tasks, requirements, and the problems of content management, content delivery, and publishing instance environments. It also presents recipes on Sitecore’s backend processes of customizing pipelines, creating custom event handler and media handler, setting hooks to interpret foreign language URL and more. Other topics covered include creating a workflow action, publishing sublayouts and media files, securing your environment by customizing user profiles and access rights, boosting search capabilities, optimising performance, scalability and high-availability of Sitecore instances and much more. By the end of this book, you will have be able to add virtually limitless features to your websites by developing and deploying Sitecore efficiently. Style and approach This easy-to-follow guide is full of hands-on recipes on real-world development tasks to improve your existing Sitecore system. Each topic is presented with its benefits and detailed steps to achieve it through well-explained code and images.

Learn how to design 3D-printed objects that work in the real world About This Book This book shows you how to design from a reference to physical objects that can be easily represented by simple basic objects in Blender (cube, cylinder, sphere, and so on) by measuring them This is the only book on the market that shows you how to take your first steps to create 3D printed objects that are able to interact with existing objects Learn how to utilize Blender's functionality to make your designs more precise and accurate Who This Book Is For Reader will have basic knowledge of Blender and 3D Printing, and will have probably already made something simple. They will be interested in printing their first object. What You Will Learn Gain techniques to accurately measure the objects with rules, manual calipers, and digital calipers Break down complex geometries into multiple simple shapes and model them in layers using Blender Scale and re-scale a model to fit based on volume or size constraints See how to multishell geometries and auto-intersections using the Boolean Modifier In Detail Want to model a 3D printed prototype of an object that needs to be replaced or brokenThis book will teach you how to accurately measure objects in the real world with a few basic measuring techniques and how to create an object for 3D printing around the objects measured. In this book, you'll learn to identify basic shapes from a given object, use Vernier and Digital calipers and grid paper tracing techniques to derive measurements for the objects. With the help of measurements, you'll see to model these objects using Blender, organize the parts into layers, and later combine them to create the desired object, which in this book is a 3D printable SD card holder ring that fits your finger. Style and approach This book will be an easy-to-follow guide to learn the methods of scaling, precise measurements, and accurate designing. Using a step-by-step approach, this book will guide you on your journey to model different parts of a complex object and later combine them to create 3D printed objects that work in the real world.

Gain essential knowledge and keep your NetScaler environment in top form About This Book Learn how the main features - Load Balancing, Content Switching, GSLB, SSL offloading, AAA, AppFirewall, and Gateway work under the hood using vividly explained flows and traces Explore the NetScaler layout and the various logs, tools and methods available to help you when it’s time to debug An easy-to-follow guide, which will walk you through troubleshooting common issues in your NetScaler environment Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at NetScaler administrators who have a basic understanding of the product but are looking for deeper exposure and guidance in identifying and fixing issues to keep their application environment performing optimally. What You Will Learn Troubleshoot traffic management features such as load balancing, SSL, GSLB and content switching Identify issues with caching and compression Deal with authentication issues when using LDAP, RADIUS, certificates, Kerberos and SAML Diagnose NetScaler high availability and networking issues Explore how application firewall protections work and how to avoid false positives Learn about NetScaler Gateway integration issues with XenApp, XenDesktop, and XenMobile Deal with NetScaler system-level issues Discover the NetScaler troubleshooting tools In Detail NetScaler is a high performance Application Delivery Controller (ADC). Making the most of it requires knowledge that straddles the application and networking worlds. As an ADC owner you will also likely be the first person to be solicited when your business applications fail. You will need to be quick in identifying if the problem is with the application, the server, the network, or NetScaler itself. This book provides you with the vital troubleshooting knowledge needed to act fast when issues happen. It gives you a thorough understanding of the NetScaler layout, how it integrates with the network, and what issues to expect when working with the traffic management, authentication, NetScaler Gateway and application firewall features. We will also look at what information to seek out in the logs, how to use tracing, and explore utilities that exist on NetScaler to help you find the root cause of your issues. Style and approach This helpful guide to troubleshooting NetScaler is delivered in a comprehensive and easy-to-follow manner. The topics in the book adopt a step-by-step approach.

Take your Android applications to the next level of interactivity by exploring the wide variety of Android sensors About This Book Get a thorough understanding of the fundamentals and framework of Android sensors. Acquire knowledge of advance sensor programming, and learn how to connect and use sensors in external devices such as the Android Watch, Polar heart rate monitors, Adidas speed cells, and so on. Learn from real-world sensor-based applications such as the Pedometer app to detect daily steps, the Driving app to detect driving events, and the Professional Fitness tracker app to track heart rate, weight, daily steps, calories burned, and so on. Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at Android developers who want to get a good understanding of sensors and write sensor-based applications, or who want to enhance their existing applications with additional sensor functionality. A basic knowledge of Android development is required What You Will Learn Learn about sensor fundamentals, different types of sensors, and the sensor co-ordinate system Understand the various classes, callbacks, and APIs of the Android Sensor framework Check all the available sensors on an Android device and know their individual capabilities—for example, their range of values, power consumption, and so on. Implement sensor fusion using two or more sensors together and learn to compensate for the weakness of one sensor by using the strength of another Build a variety of sensor based, real-world applications such as Weather, Pedometer, Compass, Driving Events Detection, Fitness Tracker, and so on. Get to know about wake up and non-wake up sensors, wake locks, and how to use sensor batch processing along with the sensor hardware FIFO queue Develop efficient battery and processor algorithms using raw sensor data to solve real-world problems Connect to a variety of remote sensors such as body weight measurement and body fat percentage measurement using the Google Fit platform from your Android app In Detail Android phones available in today’s market have a wide variety of powerful and highly precise sensors. Interesting applications can be built with them such as a local weather app using weather sensors, analyzing risky driving behavior using motion sensors, a fitness tracker using step-counter sensors, and so on. Sensors in external devices such as Android Watch, Body Analyzer & Weight Machine, Running Speed Cell, and so on can also be connected and used from your Android app running on your phone. Moving further, this book will provide the skills required to use sensors in your Android applications. It will walk you through all the fundamentals of sensors and will provide a thorough understanding of the Android Sensor Framework. You will also get to learn how to write code for the supportive infrastructure such as background services, scheduled and long running background threads, and databases for saving sensor data. Additionally, you will learn how to connect and use sensors in external devices from your Android app using the Google Fit platform. By the end of the book, you will be well versed in the use of Android sensors and programming to build interactive applications. Style and approach A step-by-step and easy-to-follow guide that focuses on utilizing sensors to perform certain tasks. After covering the fundamentals in the first chapter, the book develops the concepts by building a real-world, sensor-based application in subsequent chapters.

In Regimens of the Mind, Sorana Corneanu proposes a new approach to the epistemological and methodological doctrines of the leading experimental philosophers of seventeenth-century England, an approach that considers their often overlooked moral, psychological, and theological elements. Corneanu focuses on the views about the pursuit of knowledge in the writings of Robert Boyle and John Locke, as well as in those of several of their influences, including Francis Bacon and the early Royal Society virtuosi. She argues that their experimental programs of inquiry fulfill the role of regimens for curing, ordering, and educating the mind toward an ethical purpose, an idea she tracks back to the ancient tradition of cultura animi. Corneanu traces this idea through its early modern revival and illustrates how it organizes the experimental philosophers' reflections on the discipline of judgment, the study of nature, and the study of Scripture. It is through this lens, the author suggests, that the core features of the early modern English experimental philosophy-including its defense of experience, its epistemic modesty, its communal nature, and its pursuit of "e;objectivity"e;-are best understood.

For centuries, the writ of habeas corpus has served as an important safeguard against miscarriages of justice, and today?it remains at the center of some of the most contentious issues of our time-among them terrorism, immigration, crime, and the death penalty.?Yet, in recent decades, habeas has been seriously abused. In this book, Nancy J. King and Joseph L. Hoffmann argue that habeas should be exercised with greater prudence.Through historical, empirical, and legal analysis, as well as illustrative case studies, the authors examine the current use of the writ in the United States and offer sound reform proposals to help ensure its ongoing vitality in today's justice system. Comprehensive and thoroughly grounded in a modern understanding of habeas corpus, this informative book will be an insightful read for legal scholars and anyone interested in the importance of habeas corpus for American government.

We think of medical science and doctors as focused on treating conditions-whether it's a cough or an aching back. But the sicknesses and complaints that cause us to seek medical attention actually have deeper origins than the superficial germs and behaviors we regularly fault. In fact, as Jeremy Taylor shows in Body by Darwin, we can trace the roots of many medical conditions through our evolutionary history, revealing what has made us susceptible to certain illnesses and ailments over time and how we can use that knowledge to help us treat or prevent problems in the future.?In Body by Darwin, Taylor examines the evolutionary origins of some of our most common and serious health issues. To begin, he looks at the hygiene hypothesis, which argues that our obsession with anti-bacterial cleanliness, particularly at a young age, may be making us more vulnerable to autoimmune and allergic diseases. He also discusses diseases of the eye, the medical consequences of bipedalism as they relate to all those aches and pains in our backs and knees, the rise of Alzheimer's disease, and how cancers become so malignant that they kill us despite the toxic chemotherapy we throw at them. Taylor explains why it helps to think about heart disease in relation to the demands of an ever-growing, dense, muscular pump that requires increasing amounts of nutrients, and he discusses how walking upright and giving birth to ever larger babies led to a problematic compromise in the design of the female spine and pelvis. ?Throughout, he not only explores the impact of evolution on human form and function, but he integrates science with stories from actual patients and doctors, closely examining the implications for our health.?As Taylor shows, evolutionary medicine allows us think about the human body and its adaptations in a completely new and productive way. By exploring how our body's performance is shaped by its past, Body by Darwin draws powerful connections between our ancient human history and the future of potential medical advances that can harness this knowledge.

Southern food is America's quintessential cuisine. From creamy grits to simmering pots of beans and greens, we think we know how these classic foods should taste. Yet the southern food we eat today tastes almost nothing like the dishes our ancestors enjoyed because the varied crops and livestock that originally defined this cuisine have largely disappeared. Now, a growing movement of chefs and farmers is seeking to change that by recovering the rich flavor and diversity of southern food. At the center of that movement is historian David Shields, who has spent over a decade researching early American agricultural and cooking practices.In Southern Provisions, he reveals how the true ingredients of southern cooking have been all but forgotten and how the lessons of its current restoration and recultivation can be applied to other regional foodways.?Shields's turf is the southern Lowcountry, from the peanut patches of Wilmington, North Carolina to the sugar cane fields of the Georgia Sea Islands and the citrus groves of Amelia Island, Florida, and he takes us on an excursion to this region in order to offer a vivid history of southern foodways, drawing connections among plants, farms, growers, seed brokers, vendors, cooks, and consumers. Shields begins by looking at how professional chefs during the nineteenth century set standards of taste that elevated southern cooking to the level of cuisine. He then turns to the role of food markets in creating demand for ingredients and enabling conversation between producers and preparers. Next, his focus shifts to the field, showing how the key ingredients-rice, sugarcane, sorghum, benne, cottonseed, peanuts, and citrus-emerged and went on to play a significant role in commerce and consumption. Shields concludes with a look at the challenges of reclaiming both farming and cooking traditions.?From Carolina gold rice to white flint corn, the ingredients of authentic southern cooking are returning to fields and dinner plates, and with Shields as our guide, we can satisfy our hunger both for the most flavorful regional dishes and their history.

Beards-they're all the rage these days. Take a look around: from hip urbanites to rustic outdoorsmen, well-groomed metrosexuals to post-season hockey players, facial hair is everywhere. The New York Times traces this hairy trend to Big Apple hipsters circa 2005 and reports that today some New Yorkers pay thousands of dollars for facial hair transplants to disguise patchy, juvenile beards. And in 2014, blogger Nicki Daniels excoriated bearded hipsters for turning a symbol of manliness and power into a flimsy fashion statement. The beard, she said, has turned into the padded bra of masculinity.Of Beards and Men makes the case that today's bearded renaissance is part of a centuries-long cycle in which facial hairstyles have varied in response to changing ideals of masculinity. Christopher Oldstone-Moore explains that the clean-shaven face has been the default style throughout Western history-see Alexander the Great's beardless face, for example, as the Greek heroic ideal. But the primacy of razors has been challenged over the years by four great bearded movements, beginning with Hadrian in the second century and stretching to today's bristled resurgence. The clean-shaven face today, Oldstone-Moore says, has come to signify a virtuous and sociable man, whereas the beard marks someone as self-reliant and unconventional. History, then, has established specific meanings for facial hair, which both inspire and constrain a man's choices in how he presents himself to the world.This fascinating and erudite history of facial hair cracks the masculine hair code, shedding light on the choices men make as they shape the hair on their faces. Oldstone-Moore adeptly lays to rest common misperceptions about beards and vividly illustrates the connection between grooming, identity, culture, and masculinity. To a surprising degree, we find, the history of men is written on their faces.

We usually think of cities as the domain of humans-but we are just one of thousands of species that call the urban landscape home. Chicago residents knowingly move among familiar creatures like squirrels, pigeons, and dogs, but might be surprised to learn about all the leafhoppers and water bears, black-crowned night herons and bison, beavers and massasauga rattlesnakes that are living alongside them. City Creatures introduces readers to an astonishing diversity of urban wildlife with a unique and accessible mix of essays, poetry, paintings, and photographs.The contributors bring a story-based approach to this urban safari, taking readers on birding expeditions to the Magic Hedge at Montrose Harbor on the North Side, canoe trips down the South Fork of the Chicago River (better known as Bubbly Creek), and insect-collecting forays or restoration work days in the suburban forest preserves.The book is organized into six sections, each highlighting one type of place in which people might encounter animals in the city and suburbs. For example, schoolyard chickens and warrior wasps populate "e;Backyard Diversity,"e; live giraffes loom at the zoo and taxidermy-in-progress pheasants fascinate museum-goers in "e;Animals on Display,"e; and a chorus of deep-freeze frogs awaits in "e;Water Worlds."e; Although the book is rooted in Chicago's landscape, nature lovers from cities around the globe will find a wealth of urban animal encounters that will open their senses to a new world that has been there all along. Its powerful combination of insightful narratives, numinous poetry, and full-color art throughout will help readers see the city-and the creatures who share it with us-in an entirely new light.

German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-75) fled from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential works, such as The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and On Revolution. Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has directly considered the influence of America on her thought-until now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that while all of Arendt's work was haunted by her experience of totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative to totalitarian rule.?Situating Arendt within the context of U.S. intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American culture and society. In the last section of Arendt and America, King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took place and follows the debate about "e;the banality of evil"e; that has continued ever since. ?As King shows, Arendt's work, regardless of focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War.For Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt's ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought.

From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women's responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women's rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve's sin forever fixed women's subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution-especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man-as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis.?Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women's rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger.Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.

While Gertrude Stein hosted the literati of the Left Bank, Mrs. Bates-Batcheller, an American socialite and concert singer in Paris, held sumptuous receptions for the Daughters of the American Revolution in her suburban villa. History may remember the American artists, writers, and musicians of the Left Bank best, but the reality is that there were many more American businessmen, socialites, manufacturers' representatives, and lawyers living on the other side of the River Seine.Be they newly minted American countesses married to foreigners with impressive titles or American soldiers who had settled in France after World War I with their French wives, they provide a new view of the notion of expatriates.Nancy L. Green thus introduces us for the first time to a long-forgotten part of the American overseas population-predecessors to today's expats-while exploring the politics of citizenship and the business relationships, love lives, and wealth (and poverty for some) of Americans who staked their claim to the City of Light. The Other Americans in Paris shows that elite migration is a part of migration tout court and that debates over "e;Americanization"e; have deep roots in the twentieth century.

The eighteenth century saw the creation of a number of remarkable mechanical androids: at least ten prominent automata were built between 1735 and 1810 by clockmakers, court mechanics, and other artisans from France, Switzerland, Austria, and the German lands. Designed to perform sophisticated activities such as writing, drawing, or music making, these "e;Enlightenment automata"e; have attracted continuous critical attention from the time they were made to the present, often as harbingers of the modern industrial age, an era during which human bodies and souls supposedly became mechanized.?In Androids in the Enlightenment, Adelheid Voskuhl investigates two such automata-both depicting piano-playing women. These automata not only play music, but also move their heads, eyes, and torsos to mimic a sentimental body technique of the eighteenth century: musicians were expected to generate sentiments in themselves while playing, then communicate them to the audience through bodily motions. Voskuhl argues, contrary to much of the subsequent scholarly conversation, that these automata were unique masterpieces that illustrated the sentimental culture of a civil society rather than expressions of anxiety about the mechanization of humans by industrial technology. She demonstrates that only in a later age of industrial factory production did mechanical androids instill the fear that modern selves and societies had become indistinguishable from machines.?

From August 29 to September 21, 1909, Sigmund Freud visited the United States, where he gave five lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. This volume brings together a stunning gallery of leading historians of psychoanalysis and of American culture to consider the broad history of psychoanalysis in America and to reflect on what has happened to Freud's legacy in the United States in the century since his visit.There has been a flood of recent scholarship on Freud's life and on the European and world history of psychoanalysis, but historians have produced relatively little on the proliferation of psychoanalytic thinking in the United States, where Freud's work had monumental intellectual and social impact. The essays in After Freud Left provide readers with insights and perspectives to help them understand the uniqueness of Americans' psychoanalytic thinking, as well as the forms in which the legacy of Freud remains active in the United States in the twenty-first century. After Freud Left will be essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American history, general intellectual and cultural history, and psychology and psychiatry.?

Despite its foundational role in the history of philosophy, Plato's famous argument that art does not have access to truth or knowledge is now rarely examined, in part because recent philosophers have assumed that Plato's challenge was resolved long ago. In Art and Truth after Plato, Tom Rockmore argues that Plato has in fact never been satisfactorily answered-and to demonstrate that, he offers a comprehensive account of Plato's influence through nearly the whole history of Western aesthetics.?Rockmore offers a cogent reading of the post-Platonic aesthetic tradition as a series of responses to Plato's position, examining a stunning diversity of thinkers and ideas. He visits Aristotle's Poetics, the medieval Christians, Kant's Critique of Judgment, Hegel's phenomenology, Marxism, social realism, Heidegger, and many other works and thinkers, ending with a powerful synthesis that lands on four central aesthetic arguments that philosophers have debated. More than a mere history of aesthetics, Art and Truth after Plato presents a fresh look at an ancient question, bringing it into contemporary relief.

A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization.?But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization.?It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential-and central-part of how we define our civilization.

Achievement tests play an important role in modern societies. They are used to evaluate schools, to assign students to tracks within schools, and to identify weaknesses in student knowledge. The GED is an achievement test used to grant the status of high school graduate to anyone who passes it. GED recipients currently account for 12 percent of all high school credentials issued each year in the United States. But do achievement tests predict success in life?The Myth of Achievement Tests shows that achievement tests like the GED fail to measure important life skills. James J. Heckman, John Eric Humphries, Tim Kautz, and a group of scholars offer an in-depth exploration of how the GED came to be used throughout the United States and why our reliance on it is dangerous. Drawing on decades of research, the authors show that, while GED recipients score as well on achievement tests as high school graduates who do not enroll in college, high school graduates vastly outperform GED recipients in terms of their earnings, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and health. The authors show that the differences in success between GED recipients and high school graduates are driven by character skills. Achievement tests like the GED do not adequately capture character skills like conscientiousness, perseverance, sociability, and curiosity. These skills are important in predicting a variety of life outcomes. They can be measured, and they can be taught.?Using the GED as a case study, the authors explore what achievement tests miss and show the dangers of an educational system based on them. They call for a return to an emphasis on character in our schools, our systems of accountability, and our national dialogue.ContributorsEric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin-MadisonAndrew Halpern-Manners, Indiana University BloomingtonPaul A. LaFontaine, Federal Communications CommissionJanice H. Laurence, Temple UniversityLois M. Quinn, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeePedro L. Rodrguez, Institute of Advanced Studies in AdministrationJohn Robert Warren, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

The German-American relationship was special long before the Cold War; it was rooted not simply in political actions, but also long-term traditions of cultural exchange that date back to the nineteenth century. Between 1850 and 1910, the United States was a rising star in the international arena, and several European nations sought to strengthen their ties to the republic by championing their own cultures in America. While France capitalized on its art and Britain on its social ties and literature, Germany promoted its particular breed of classical music.Delving into a treasure trove of archives that document cross-cultural interactions between America and Germany, Jessica Gienow-Hecht retraces these efforts to export culture as an instrument of nongovernmental diplomacy, paying particular attention to the role of conductors, and uncovers the remarkable history of the musician as a cultural symbol of German cosmopolitanism. Considered sexually attractive and emotionally expressive, German players and conductors acted as an army of informal ambassadors for their home country, and Gienow-Hecht argues that their popularity in the United States paved the way for an emotional elective affinity that survived broken treaties and several wars and continues to the present.