John Hoffmann argues that a combination of aesthetics and anthropology allowed modernist writers to challenge social hierarchies they associated with the nineteenth century. He shows how Enlightenment philosophers synthesized the two discourses and how modernists working in the early twentieth century then took up this synthesis to dispute categories of social difference that had been naturalized, and thus legitimized, by pre-evolutionary and Darwinian anthropological theories. The book br...

Lincoln Hall at the University of Illinois, named to commemorate the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, has long been a familiar landmark on the Urbana-Champaign campus and the home for undergraduate and graduate work in the liberal arts and communication. Funded by the Illinois State Legislature in 1909, the building was dedicated in 1913 on Lincoln's birthday, February 12. In addition to its function as space for offices, classrooms, and departmental libraries, Lincoln Hall was commi...

Delinquency Theories: Appraisals and applications provides a fulsome and accessible overview of contemporary theories of juvenile delinquency.The book opens with a comprehensive description of what a theory is, and explains how theories are created in the social sciences. Following on, each subsequent chapter is dedicated to describing an individual theory, broken down and illustrated within four distinct sections. Initially, each chapter tells the tale of a delinquent you...

Although numerous studies of religious rituals have been conducted by religious studies scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, it is rare to find a work that brings scholars from different disciplines together to discuss the similarities and differences in their research. This book represents contributions by leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this...

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year“An expert and engaging new introduction to the philosopher.” —Adam Kirsch, New YorkerA foremost Kant expert takes us on a lively tour through the revolutionary ideas of the founder of modern philosophy.Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and conception of perpetual pe...

"A wonderfully readable account of Chicago's early history" and the inspiration behind PBS's American Experience (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).Depicting its turbulent beginnings to its current status as one of the world's most dynamic cities, City of the Century tells the story of Chicago—and the story of America, writ small. From its many natural disasters, including the Great Fire of 1871 and several cholera epidemics, to its winner-tak...

"Magisterial…a frequently surprising treatment of major political thinkers."— Perspectives on PoliticsFrom Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centurie...

WINNER OF THE LINCOLN FORUM BOOK PRIZE“A Lincoln classic...superb.” —The Washington Post“A book for our time.”—Doris Kearns GoodwinLincoln on the Verge tells the dramatic story of America’s greatest president discovering his own strength to save the Republic.As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln...

Building a National Literature boldly takes issue with traditional literary criticism for its failure to explain how literature as a body is created and shaped by institutional forces. Peter Uwe Hohendahl approaches literary history by focusing on the material and ideological structures that determine the canonical status of writers and works. He examines important elements in the making of a national literature, including the political and litera...

The definitive biography of the influential abolitionist, ardent social reformer and conservationist, and the visionary designer of Central Park.Frederick Law Olmsted is arguably the most important historical figure that the average American knows the least about. Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the e...

This is the first English-language intellectual biography of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a leading figure on the Weimar intellectual scene and one of the last and finest representatives of the liberal-idealist tradition. Edward Skidelsky traces the development of Cassirer's thought in its historical and intellectual setting. He presents Cassirer, the author of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, as a defender of the liberal ideal of culture in an increa...

WINNER OF THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYAMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNERFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHYA groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr.In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantat...