Bobby Kennedy wasn’t the most visible figure in the civil rights movement, but his impact was transformative. As attorney general, he protected the Freedom Riders and turned the Justice Department from an enemy of civil rights into an enforcer of antiracist policies. Patricia Sullivan gives Kennedy his rightful place as a force for racial justice.

Bobby Kennedy wasn't the most visible figure in the civil rights movement, but his impact was transformative. As attorney general, he protected the Freedom Riders and turned the Justice Department from an enemy of civil rights into an enforcer of antiracist policies. Patricia Sullivan gives Kennedy his rightful place as a force for racial justice.

Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophical method and decisively shaped modern politics. Three hundred years after Kant’s birth, Marcus Willaschek brings together the German idealist’s life and thought, examining the personality who changed the course of intellectual history as well as the substance and enduring importance of his ideas.

The Katrina disaster was not a weather event of summer 2005. It was a disaster a century in the making, a product of lessons learned from previous floods, corporate and government decision making, and the political economy of the United States at large. New Orleans’s history is America’s history, and Katrina represents America’s possible future.

Covering more than 50 central terms and concepts in entries written by leading experts, this book offers an overview of this new subdiscipline of biology, providing the core insights and ideas that show how embryonic development relates to life-history evolution, adaptation, and responses to and integration with environmental factors.

In the 1960s biologists and social scientists engaged in a public debate about human nature. The question-whether humans are innately aggressive or cooperative-eventually receded, but the oppositional nature-nurture binary created in the course of the debate left a lasting legacy that would underpin subsequent discussions of human behavior.

Today John Hancock is known for his signature, but during the revolutionary era, he was famed for his pragmatic statesmanship. Brooke Barbier explores Hancock's position as a revolutionary who nonetheless understood the value of compromise. By shunning political extremes, Hancock became hugely influential in the infant United States.

Today John Hancock is known for his signature, but during the revolutionary era, he was famed for his pragmatic statesmanship. Brooke Barbier explores Hancock’s position as a revolutionary who nonetheless understood the value of compromise. By shunning political extremes, Hancock became hugely influential in the infant United States.

No major economy is more dependent on fossil fuel exports than Russia, yet it is unprepared for the global transition away from hydrocarbons. Thane Gustafson shows that as Russia's income shrinks, its economy will stagnate, even as global warming imposes growing costs on society. By mid-century its power will fade, reordering global politics.

The Dantesque political allegory The Labyrinth of Fortune, composed in 1444 by Juan de Mena, reflects on Juan II of Castile’s contentious kingship and frames the Reconquest of Moorish territories as a sacred task. This is the first English translation of a Spanish masterpiece that influenced Miguel Cervantes and Luis de Góngora.

From Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create ways of being, as individuals and as a society. Here, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning, and the shared practice of speech shapes human experience.