From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us—and how it could unite usToday, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth—a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this ...

One of the country’s most astute legal scholars explains how American political culture disempowers ordinary citizens and makes the case for a reinvigorated democracyAmericans across the political spectrum agree that our democracy is in crisis. We view our political opponents with disdain, if not terror, and an increasing number of us are willing to consider authoritarian alternatives. In Two Cheers for Politics, Jedediah Purdy argues that this heated poli...

Jedediah Purdy calls For Common Things his "letter of love for the world's possibilities." Indeed, these pages--which garnered a flurry of attention among readers and in the media--constitute a passionate and persuasive testament to the value of political, social, and community reengagement. Drawing on a wide range of literary and cultural influences--from the writings of Montaigne and Thoreau to the recent popularity of empty entertainment and breathless chroniclers of th...

An Artforum Best Book of the YearA Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year“After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’sNature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anth...

In A Tolerable Anarchy, Jedediah Purdy traces the history of the American understanding of freedom, an ideal that has inspired the country’s best—and worst—moments, from independence and emancipation to war and economic uncertainty. Working from portraits of famous American lives, like Frederick Douglas and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Purdy asks crucial questions about our relationship to liberty: Does capitalism perfect or destroy freedom? Does freedom mean following tradition, God’s wo...

Having risen to national attention with his first book, For Common Things*,* Jedediah Purdy now cements his claim to being one of the most arresting public intellectuals of his generation. In Being America, Purdy turns his erudition and unique perspective to America’s relationship with a world that both admires and hates it.Purdy has absorbed insights from people around the world: Westernized Egyptians who consider Osama bin Laden a hero, an urbane...

Research in environmental justice reveals that low-income and minority neighborhoods in our nation’s cities are often the preferred sites for landfills, power plants, and polluting factories. Those who live in these sacrifice zones are forced to shoulder the burden of harmful environmental effects so that others can prosper. Mountains of Injustice broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on comm...

Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth—a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world.From the coalfields of Appalachia and the tobacco fields of the Carolinas to the public lands of the West, Jedediah Purdy—one of our finest writers and leading environmental...

Today, as we confront an unprecedented environmental crisis of our own making, it is more urgent than ever to consider the notion of nature and our place within it. This book brings together essays that individually and as a whole present a detailed and rigorous multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of nature and its wider ethical and political implications.A distinguished list of scholars take up a broad range of questions regarding the relations between the human subject a...

Today, as we confront an unprecedented environmental crisis of our own making, it is more urgent than ever to consider the notion of nature and our place within it. This book brings together essays that individually and as a whole present a detailed and rigorous multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of nature and its wider ethical and political implications.A distinguished list of scholars take up a broad range of questions regarding the relations between the human subject a...

In this thought-provoking collection, leading scholars explore democracy in the United States from a sweeping variety of perspectives. A dozen contributors consider the nature and prospects of democracy as it relates to the American experience-free markets, religion, family life, the Cold War, higher education, and more. These probing essays bring American democracy into fresh focus, complete with its idealism, its moral greatness, its disappointments, and its contradictions.Ba...