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Foundations of Natural Morality
Foundations of Natural Morality
Seagrave, S. Adam
¥288.41
Recent years have seen a renaissance of interest in the relationship between natural law and natural rights. During this time, the concept of natural rights has served as a conceptual lightning rod, either strengthening or severing the bond between traditional natural law and contemporary human rights. Does the concept of natural rights have the natural law as its foundation or are the two ideas, as Leo Strauss argued, profoundly incompatible?With The Foundations of Natural Morality, S. Adam Seagrave addresses this controversy, offering an entirely new account of natural morality that compellingly unites the concepts of natural law and natural rights. Seagrave agrees with Strauss that the idea of natural rights is distinctly modern and does not derive from traditional natural law. Despite their historical distinctness, however, he argues that the two ideas are profoundly compatible and that the thought of John Locke and Thomas Aquinas provides the key to reconciling the two sides of this long-standing debate. In doing so, he lays out a coherent concept of natural morality that brings together thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes and Locke, revealing the insights contained within these disparate accounts as well as their incompleteness when considered in isolation. Finally, he turns to an examination of contemporary issues, including health care, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty, showing how this new account of morality can open up a more fruitful debate.
Tunguska, or the End of Nature
Tunguska, or the End of Nature
Hampe, Michael
¥288.41
On June 30, 1908, a mysterious explosion erupted in the skies over a vast woodland area of Siberia. Known as the Tunguska Event, it has been a source of wild conjecture over the past century, attributed to causes ranging from meteors to a small black hole to antimatter. In this imaginative book, Michael Hampe sets four fictional men based on real-life scholars-a physicist (Gunter Hasinger and Steven Weinberg), a philosopher (Paul Feyerabend), a biologist (Adolf Portmann), and a mathematician (Alfred North Whitehead)-adrift on the open ocean, in a dense fog, to discuss what they think happened. The result is a playful and highly illuminating exploration of the definition of nature, mankind's role within it, and what its end might be.?Tunguska, Or the End of Nature uses its four-man setup to tackle some of today's burning issues-such as climate change, environmental destruction, and resource management-from a diverse range of perspectives. With a kind of foreboding, it asks what the world was like, and will be like, without us, whether we are negligible and the universe random, whether nature can truly be explained, whether it is good or evil, or whether nature is simply a thought we think. This is a profoundly unique work, a thrillingly interdisciplinary piece of scholarly literature that probes the mysteries of nature and humans alike.?
Observing by Hand
Observing by Hand
Nasim, Omar W.
¥370.82
Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope's digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena.?Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge.?An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers.
Lost Classroom, Lost Community
Lost Classroom, Lost Community
Brinig, Margaret F.
¥370.82
In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,600 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools-public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations-have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape.?More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital-the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind.This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policing policy debates.
The Theory of Ecology
The Theory of Ecology
Samuel M.Scheiner,Michael R.Willig
¥394.36
Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences.
THE Affect Effect
THE Affect Effect
George E. Marcus,W. Russell Neuman
¥265.87
two sections branch out to explore how politics work at the societal level and suggest the next steps in modeling, research, and political activity itself. Opening up new paths of inquiry in an exciting new field, this volume will appeal not only to scholars of American politics and political behavior, but also to anyone interested in political psychology and sociology.
Marriage and Cohabitation
Marriage and Cohabitation
Arland Thornton,William G. Axinn,Yu Xie
¥270.76
In an era when half of marriages end in divorce, cohabitation has become more commonplace and those who do get married are doing so at an older age. So why do people marry when they doAnd why do?some couples choose to cohabitA team of expert family sociologists examines these timely questions in Marriage and Cohabitation, the result of their research over the last decade on the issue of union formation.Situating their argument in the context of the Western world's 500-year history of marriage, the authors reveal what factors encourage marriage and cohabitation in a contemporary society where the end of adolescence is no longer signaled by entry into the marital home. While some people still choose to marry young, others elect to cohabit with varying degrees of commitment or intentions of eventual marriage. The authors' controversial findings suggest that family history, religious affiliation, values, projected education, lifetime earnings, and career aspirations all tip the scales in favor of either cohabitation or marriage. This book lends new insight into young adult relationship patterns and will be of interest to sociologists, historians, and demographers alike.
Science in the Age of Sensibility
Science in the Age of Sensibility
Riskin, Jessica
¥282.53
Empiricism today implies the dispassionate scrutiny of facts. But Jessica Riskin finds that in the French Enlightenment, empiricism was intimately bound up with sensibility. In what she calls a "sentimental empiricism," natural knowledge was taken to rest on a blend of experience and emotion.Riskin argues that sentimental empiricism brought together ideas and institutions, practices and politics. She shows, for instance, how the study of blindness, led by ideas about the mental and moral role of vision and by cataract surgeries, shaped the first school for the blind; how Benjamin Franklin's electrical physics, ascribing desires to nature, engaged French economic reformers; and how the question of the role of language in science and social life linked disputes over Antoine Lavoisier's new chemical names to the founding of France's modern system of civic education.Recasting the Age of Reason by stressing its conjunction with the Age of Sensibility, Riskin offers an entirely new perspective on the development of modern science and the history of the Enlightenment.
Egocracy
Egocracy
Arribas,Sonia
¥288.41
Sonia Arribas would like to thank her colleagues from the CSIC and UPF seminars ?Mínima Políticaand ?Movimientos Sociales?, especially Paco Fernández Buey, Antonio Gimeno and José Antonio Zamora; and also, for the invaluable support that they have provided at the CSIC, José María González, Reyes Mate and Concha Roldán.
Global Pigeon
Global Pigeon
Jerolmack, Colin
¥247.21
The pigeon is the quintessential city bird. Domesticated thousands of years ago as a messenger and a source of food, its presence on our sidewalks is so common that people consider the bird a nuisance-if they notice it at all. Yet pigeons are also kept for pleasure, sport, and profit by people all over the world, from the "e;pigeon wars"e; waged by breeding enthusiasts in the skies over Brooklyn to the Million Dollar Pigeon Race held every year in South Africa.Drawing on more than three years of fieldwork across three continents, Colin Jerolmack traces our complex and often contradictory relationship with these versatile animals in public spaces such as Venice's Piazza San Marco and London's Trafalgar Square and in working-class and immigrant communities of pigeon breeders in New York and Berlin. By exploring what he calls "e;the social experience of animals,"e; Jerolmack shows how our interactions with pigeons offer surprising insights into city life, community, culture, and politics. Theoretically understated and accessible to interested readers of all stripes, The Global Pigeon is one of the best and most original ethnographies to be published in decades.
I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation (Te
I Didn’t Do It For You: How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation (Te
Michela Wrong
¥81.03
One small East African country embodies the battered history of the continent: patronised by colonialists, riven by civil war, confused by Cold War manoeuvring, proud, colorful, with Africa's best espresso and worst rail service. Michela Wrong brilliantly reveals the contradictions and comedy, past and present, of Eritrea. Just as the beat of a butterfly’s wings is said to cause hurricanes on the other side of the world, so the affairs of tiny Eritrea reverberate onto the agenda of superpower strategists. This new book on Africa is from the author of the critically acclaimed In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz. Eritrea is a little-known country scarred by decades of conflict and occupation. It has weathered the world's longest-running guerrilla war, and the dogged determination that secured victory against Ethiopia, its giant neighbour, is woven into the national psyche. Fascist Italy wanted Eritrea as the springboard for a new, racially-pure Roman empire, Britain sold off its industry for scrap, the US needed headquarters for its state-of-the-art spy station and the Soviet Union used it as a pawn in a proxy war. Michela Wrong reveals the breathtaking abuses this tiny nation has suffered and, with the sharp eye for detail that was the hallmark of her account of Mobutu's Congo, she tells the story of colonialism itself. Along the way, we meet a formidable Emperor, a guerrilla fighter who taught himself French cuisine in the bush, and a chemist who arranged the heist of his own laboratory. An arresting blend of travelogue and history, ‘I Didn't Do It For You’ pierces the dark heart of our colonial history.
Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna
Adam Zamoyski
¥80.25
Following on from his epic ‘1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow’, bestselling author Adam Zamoyski has written the dramatic story of the Congress of Vienna. In the wake of his disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon's imperious grip on Europe began to weaken, raising the question of how the Continent was to be reconstructed after his defeat. There were many who dreamed of a peace to end all wars, in which the interests of peoples as well as those of rulers would be taken into account. But what followed was an unseemly and at times brutal scramble for territory by the most powerful states, in which countries were traded as if they had been private and their inhabitants counted like cattle. The results, fixed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, not only laid the foundations of the European world we know; it put in place a social order and a security system that lie at the root of many of the problems which dog the world today. Although the defining moments took place in Vienna, and the principle players included Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich, the Duke of Wellington and the French master of diplomacy Talleyrand, as well as Napoleon himself, the accepted view of the gathering of statesmen reordering the Continent in elegant salons is a false one. Many of the crucial questions were decided on the battlefield or in squalid roadside cottages amid the vagaries of war. And the proceedings in Vienna itself were not as decorous as is usually represented. Drawing on a wide range of first-hand sources in six languages, which include not only official documents, private letters, diaries and first-hand accounts, but also the reports of police spies and informers, Adam Zamoyski gets below the thin veneer of courtliness and reveals that the new Europe was forged by men in thrall to fear, greed and lust, in an atmosphere of moral depravity in which sexual favours were traded as readily as provinces and the 'souls' who inhabited them. He has created a chilling account, full of menace as well as frivolity.
The Ocean Railway
The Ocean Railway
Stephen Fox
¥81.52
An epic social history of steamship travel from the 19th-century to the ‘Lusitania’, the ‘Mauretania’ and the ‘Titanic’. The great transatlantic steamships became emblems of an age, of a Victorian audacity of spirit-cathedrals to man's harnessing of new technology. Through the innovations and designs of key engineers and shipping magnates – Samuel Cunard, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Edward Knights Collins – ‘the largest movable objects in human history' were created. To the wealthy, steamships represented glamorous travel, but to most they offered cheap passage out of Europe to the New World. At their peak, steamships delivered one million new Americans each year, transforming the world’s oceans from barriers into highways. In this fascinating history, Stephen Fox chronicles the tragedies that marked the evolution of the ocean liner, including the 1852 sinking of the ‘Arctic’, with the loss of three hundred and twenty-two lives, and the early 20th-century losses of the ‘Lusitania’ and the ‘Titanic’. Using contemporary records, diaries and writing, he penetrates the experience of transatlantic passage and examines the societies created on the vast floating cities, ‘a kind of third human environment, neither land nor sea but partaking of each, and bridging them in unprecedented ways’.
Wildlife of Southern Africa (Traveller’s Guide)
Wildlife of Southern Africa (Traveller’s Guide)
David Hosking,Martin Withers
¥91.43
The perfect companion for the safari enthusiast, this complete traveller’s guide to the wildlife of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi is a must-have for all those considering a trip to the game reserves of this highly popular region. Written and illustrated by wildlife experts who have been leading safaris in the region for over 20 years, and featuring over 400 species of bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian and insect, this informative guide makes the perfect companion for all those considering a trip to the game reserves of southern Africa. Each species is illustrated with a full-colour photograph and features a full species de*ion. Key information on wildlife photography is also included, such as the best type of camera, film and lenses to use, along with information on techniques and codes of conduct.
A Foreign Field (Text Only)
A Foreign Field (Text Only)
Ben Macintyre
¥57.09
This edition does not include illustrations. A wartime romance, survival saga and murder mystery set in rural France during the First World War. From the Number 1 bestselling author of ‘Agent ZigZag’ and ‘Operation Mincemeat’. Four young British soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines at the height of the fighting on the Western Front in August 1914. Unable to get back to their units, they shelter in the tiny French village of Villeret, where they are fed, clothed and protected by the villagers, including the local matriarch Madame Dessenne, the baker and his wife. The self-styled leader of the band of fugitives, Private Robert Digby, falls in love with the 20-year-old daughter of one of his protectors, and in November 1915 she gives birth to a baby girl. The child is just six months old when someone betrays the men to the Germans. They are captured, tried as spies and summarily condemned to death. Using the testimonies of the daughter, the villagers, detailed town hall records and, most movingly, the soldiers’ last letters, Ben Macintyre reconstructs an extraordinary story of love, duplicity and shame – ultimately seeking to discover through decades of village rumour the answer to the question, ‘Who betrayed Private Digby and his men?’ In this new updated edition the mystery is finally solved. This edition does not include illustrations.
The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family
The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family
Christopher Simon Sykes
¥81.03
Please note that some images were unavailable for the electronic edition. The highly praised biography of an archetypal great house and the family who lived there for over 250 years. ‘The Big House’ is the biography of a great country house and the lives of the Sykes family who lived there, with varying fates, for the next two hundred and fifty years. It is a fascinating social history set against the backdrop of a changing England, with a highly individual, pugnacious and self-determining cast, including: ‘Old Tat’ Sykes, said to be one of the great sights of Yorkshire (the author’s great-great-great-grandfather), who wore 18th-century dress to the day of his death at ninety-one in 1861. His son was similarly eccentric, wearing eight coats that he discarded gradually throughout the day in order to keep his body temperature at a constant. He was forced to marry, aged forty-eight, eighteen-year-old Jessica Cavendish-Bentick – a lively and highly intelligent woman who relieved the boredom of her marriage by acquiring a string of lovers, writing novels and throwing extravagant parties (her nickname became ‘Lady Satin Tights’), all the while accumulating debts that ended in a scandalous court case. Their son, Mark, died suddenly whilst brokering the peace settlement at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I; Sledmere was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards. But the rebuilt Sledmere rose from the flames to resound again with colourful, brilliant characters in the 1920s and 1930s including the author’s grandmother, Lily, who had been a celebrated bohemian in Paris. ‘The Big House’ is vividly written and meticulously researched using the Sykes’ own family’s papers and photographs. In this splendid biography of place and time, Christopher Simon Sykes has resuscitated the lives of his ancestors and their glorious home from the 18th- through to the 20th-century.
A History of Food in 100 Recipes
A History of Food in 100 Recipes
William Sitwell
¥114.48
The ingredients, cooks, techniques and tools that have shaped our love of food. We all love to eat and most of us have a favourite ingredient or dish. In today's world we can get the food we want, when we want it, but how many of us really know where our much-loved recipes come from, who invented them and how they were originally cooked? In this book William Sitwell, culinary expert on BBC2's 'A Question of Taste' and editor of Waitrose Kitchen magazine, takes us on a colourful, whirlwind journey as he explores the fascinating history of cuisine. This book is a celebration of the great dishes, techniques and above all brilliant cooks who have, over the centuries, created the culinary landscape we now enjoy. Any lover of fine food who has ever wondered about the origins of the methods and recipes we now take for granted will find A History of Food in 100 Recipes required reading. As well as shining a light on food's glorious past, there are contributions from a glittering array of stars of British cuisine, including Marco Pierre White, Delia Smith, Heston Blumenthal, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. In an incisive and humorous narrative, Sitwell enters an Egyptian tomb to reveal the earliest recipe for bread and discovers the greatest party planner of the Middle Ages. He uncovers the extraordinary and poetic roots of the roast dinner and tells the heart-rending story of the forgotten genius who invented the pressure cooker. And much, much more.
David Attenborough’s First Life: A Journey Back in Time with Matt Kaplan
David Attenborough’s First Life: A Journey Back in Time with Matt Kaplan
Sir David Attenborough,Matt Kaplan
¥184.23
The epic story of the beginning of life on Earth from the much loved and respected naturalist, writer and broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough. Spanning billions of years, Attenborough's time-travelling narrative brings the reader face to face with the first animals that ever existed. By using the latest technology, we are finally able to see for ourselves how these early animals would have looked like and how they would have lived. Attenborough also shows us how some of the evolutionary features of these most primitive creatures are alive today in modern animals, including us humans. Attenborough shows us how the evolution of the first eyes, the first solid body parts and the first feet and backbones came to be. Looking at global ice ages and volcanic eruptions he also shows how evolution is heavily connected with the history of the planet. In this groundbreaking investigation, Attenborough travels the world, from Canada to Australia and Morocco to unearth the secrets hidden in prehistoric fossils, providing a deeper understanding of the first living creatures and the origins of our evolutionary traits.
The Natural History of Wales (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 66)
The Natural History of Wales (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 66)
William. M. Condry
¥456.66
This book is an attempt to survey the natural history of the whole of Wales. It therefore covers such areas as Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as well as the spectacularly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast and the less well-known but no less interesting areas of mid-Wales. Wales is a country of great geographical and biological diversity, a largely mountainous land whose eastern scarps overlook the richer plains of Mercia. William Condry is an acute observer of the potentialities of terrain, and particularly in respect of wildlife habitats. The author of the distinguished volume on Snowdonia in the New Naturalist series, he is the ideal person to write about one of the best-known and best-loved parts of Great Britain. This book is an attempt to survey the natural history of the whole of Wales. It therefore covers such areas as Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as well as the spectacularly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast and the less well-known but no less interesting areas of mid-Wales. Describing each kind of terrain in turn, William Condry has explored and surveyed the face of this unique land as few others have done. Beginning with corries, crags and summits, he goes on to consider moorlands, mires and conifers. There then follow rivers, lakes and marshes; the native woodlands; limestone flora; farmlands, villages and estates; the industrial scene; and finally perhaps the most striking terrain of all, the coast. This encompasses polders, peatlands, beaches, dunes and estuaries as well as cliffs, headlands and island. Within each of these areas William Condry brings a wealth of experience to bear on the more obvious aspects of wildlife - flowering plants and ferns, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Important rarities such as the Snowdon lily or the red kite are, of course, included, but always with the intention of establishing a proper respect for their conservation. Affectionate and thoroughly informative, full of insights into local history and always a delight to read, this is a magnificent introduction to Wales and its countryside.
Ferns (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 74)
Ferns (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 74)
Christopher N. Page
¥456.66
Ferns gives the reader an introduction to the reasons for the variety of ferns in the British Isles, as well as the history of their development within this landscape and their use by man. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.com Ferns, horsetails and clubmosses, or to use their technical term the Pteridophyta, are a fascinating area of the British flora that ranged from the prehistoric-looking horsetails to the delicate beauty of the Aspleniaceae family (otherwise known as the spleenworts and familiar inhabitants of many a conservatory). Ferns are ubiquitous on this damp island, but often overlooked, overshadowed by the interest in the technicolour of our flowering plants. This book gives the reader an introduction to the reasons for the variety of ferns in the British Isles, as well as the history of their development within this landscape and their use by man. Taking each major habitat, Dr Page details which species of ferns are most likely to be encountered and why. Using numerous examples, he also shows how some species have become highly adapted to their environment using a whole range of strategies varying from the ordinary to the bizarre. Ferns follows in the distinguished New Naturalist series tradition of investigative natural history, drawing from the latest field studies and research, and is the most authoritative, up-to-date and in-depth survey of this part of the British flora available.
British Freshwater Fish (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 75)
British Freshwater Fish (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 75)
P. S. Maitland,R. N. Campbell
¥456.66
An in-depth look at the fish that inhabit the fresh waters of Britain and Ireland. These include famous members of the salmon family, such as the Atlantic Salmon and the Brown Trout, and the obscure whitefish, species of which are confined to just a few lakes. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.com Fish have been a highly sought after part of the British fauna since Dame Juliana Berners wrote the first fishing book in 1486, but have long been overlooked by naturalists as a part of the British countryside. In this new volume in the New Naturalist series, Dr Peter Maitland and Niall Campbell, who have both spent a lifetime studying and catching fish, take an in-depth look at the fish that inhabit the fresh waters of Britain and Ireland. These include famous members of the salmon family, such as the Atlantic Salmon and the Brown Trout, and the obscure whitefish, species of which are confined to just a few lakes. The information that the authors uncover gives a comprehensive overview of the life cycle of fish, whether mundane spawning or the complex migrations of the Eel and Sea Trout, as well as details on diet, behaviour and ecology. The book also contains the most up to date identification key to both the families and individual species of fish, allowing every species of freshwater fish to be conclusively identified. As well as detailed de*ions of each family, there are also seven chapters on more general subject. These include chapters on fish conservation and the future of the fish fauna in our country: a sign of the change in status of fish from the pursued to the studied.