Augustine and Ethics examines the topic of ethics in the life and works of Augustine of Hippo. Adopting a global perspective on ethics as a field of philosophical and theological investigation, this volume includes reflections on virtue and vice, love and sin, and the political outcomes to which certain ethical stances tend to give rise. For Augustine himself, ethics was never merely theoretical. Ethical concerns are concrete; and ethical solutions should be practical. Accordingly, this vo...

Born into a loving family in Puerto Rico stricken by poverty after World War II, five-year-old Jose Camacho was whisked from his homeland and dropped into an urban borough in a foreign nation. He spent the next decade split between the gritty, uncompromising streets of the Bronx and the warm safety of Caguas, leaving him feeling like a foreigner in both lands. These collected stories span his lifetime, from childhood to old age, in colorful detail and sometimes bawdy language, lacing toget...

The null subject has always been central to linguistic theory, because it tells us a great deal about the underlying structure of language in the human brain, and about the interface between syntax and semantics. Null subjects exist in languages such as Italian, Chinese, Russian and Greek where the subject of a sentence can be tacitly implied, and is understood from the context. In this systematic overview of null subjects, José A. Camacho reviews the key notions of null subject analyses o...

A new approach to explaining the existence of firms and markets, focusing on variability and coordination. It stands in contrast to the emphasis on transaction costs, and on monitoring and incentive structures, which are prominent in most of the modern literature in this field. This approach, called the variability approach, allows us to: show why both the need for communication and the coordination costs increase when the division of labor increases; explain why, while t...

Scholars in diverse fields now agree on the importance of investigating the impact of consumption practices on the global environment, quality of life, and international justice. In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines-philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology-examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in t...

A new edition of Clarice Lispector’s final masterpiece, now with a vivid introduction by Colm Tóibín.Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretch...

The Pulitzer Prize–finalist's intimate autobiographical novel of a marriage cut tragically short is "a beautiful love story, and an extraordinary story of loss" (Colm Tóibín).In 2005, celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married Aura Estrada. The two were deeply in love, and Aura was a gifted young writer on the cusp of her own brilliant career. But while on vacation only a month before their second anniversary, Aura died in a tragic accident. In Say Her Name

American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and ...

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.Boldly calling i...

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and co-writer of In the Heights tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse.“Quiara Alegría Hudes is in her own league. Her sentences will take your breath away. How lucky we are to have her telling our stories.”—Lin-Manuel Miranda, award-winning creator of

A work of seminal importance, this book presents Ivan Illich's penetrating analysis of the industrial mode of production which characterises our contemporary world. The conviviality for which noted social philosopher Ivan Illich is arguing is one in which the individual's personal energies are under direct personal control and in which the use of tools is responsibly limited. This book claims out attention for the urgency of its appeal, the stunning clarity of its logic and the overwhelmin...

A freewheeling black comedy bound up in cultural confusion, political insanity, and environmental catastrophe.A Japanese man with a ball floating six inches in front of his head, an American ceo with three arms, and a Brazilian peasant who discovers the art of healing by tickling one’s earlobe rise to the heights of wealth and fame before arriving at disasters—both personal and ecological—that destroy the rain forest and all the birds of Brazil.