It is incredibly satisfying to judge the historical figures of the 18th century by the highly evolved moral standards of the 21st century. It is also intellectually dishonest and sociologically dangerous. Presentism is the cognitive bias of projecting contemporary cultural values onto the past, effectively judging historical actors by rules they had no concept of. This chronological arrogance completely ignores the brutal, complex socio-economic realities and limited information ecosystems...

Attitudes toward long-term care contain a strong residue of negativity in today‘s society and current problems with the system augment such perceptions. Unless dealt with now, this will only get worse, as the 85-and-older crowd is the fastest growing part of the population, and the first wave of Baby Boomers is approaching 60. Exploring and delinea

Scholarship on the role of religion in American public life has taken on a new urgency in the increasingly contentious wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. This volume brings together an impressive group of scholars to build on past work and broaden the scope of this crucial inquiry in two respects: by exploring aspects of the religion-politics nexus in the United States that have been neglected in the past, and by examining traditional questions concerning the religious tincture of ...

This book examines folk music and dance revival movements in Russia, exploring why this folk culture has come to represent Russia, how it has been approached and produced, and why memory and tradition, in these particular forms, have taken on particular significance in different periods. Above all it shows how folk "tradition" in Russia is an artificial cultural construct, which is periodically reinvented, and it demonstrates in particular how the "folk revival" has played a key role in st...

A fun and delightful rapper book on the Jewish holidays for children and adults.

This fully updated and revised 12th edition of the highly acclaimed textbook on health care delivery provides graduate and undergraduate students with a comprehensive survey of health care in the United States ranging in topics from the organization of care, the politics surrounding healthcare in the United States, to population health and vulnerable populations, healthcare costs and value, health care financing, and health information technology. Chapters provide thorough coverage of the ...

Through a nationwide telephone survey of 2,000 people and an additional 200 face-to-face interviews, Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith probed the grassroots of white evangelical America. They found that despite recent efforts by the movement's leaders to address the problem of racial discrimination, evangelicals themselves seem to be preserving America's racial chasm. In fact, most white evangelicals see no systematic discrimination against blacks. But the authors contend that it is n...

Combining the insights of an economist and a political scientist, this new third edition of Cases in Public Policy Analysis offers real world cases to provide students with the institutional and political dimensions of policy problems as well as easily understood principles and methods for analyzing public policies.Guess and Farnham clearly explain such basic tools as problem-identification, forecasting alternatives, cost-effectiveness analysis, and cost-benefit analysis and show h...

This is a wholly new and compelling answer to one of the most persistent dilemmas in both law and moral philosophy: If rights are "natural"-if, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is "self-evident that all men are endowed . . . with certain inalienable rights"-where do these rights come from? Does natural law really exist outside the formal structure of humanly enacted law? On the other hand, if rights are nothing more than the product of human law, what argument is there f...

This tenth edition of a classic textbook, updated in November 2013 with a free, downloadable chapter on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), presents the critical issues and core challenges surrounding our health care system. Designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, it includes the contributions of leading thinkers, educators, and practitioners who provide an in-depth and objective appraisal of why and how we organize health care the way we do; the enormous impact of health-rel...

With same-sex marriage igniting a firestorm of controversy in the press and in the courts, in legislative chambers and in living rooms, Andrew Sullivan, a pioneering voice in the debate, has brought together two thousand years of argument in an anthology of historic inclusiveness and evenhandedness. Among the selections included here:- The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in support of same-sex marriage- Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Scalia’s...

"There are many books on the U.S. healthcare system, but few have the longevity of this one. It is easy to read and straightforward in its approach to difficult subjects such as the rise of the Tea Party and how that movement has impacted healthcare. This update is certainly needed as the landscape has changed dramatically since the previous edition was published in 2007."--Doody's Medical ReviewsThis best-selling textbook remains the most concise and balanced intr...