We think of noise as background sound that interferes with our ability to hear more interesting sounds. But noise is anything that interferes with the reception of signals of any sort. Whatever its cause, the consequence of noise is error by receivers, and these errors are the key to understanding how noise shapes the evolution of communication.

Raymond Geuss is a critic of liberalism, a politics so pervasive in the West that it goes unnoticed. His attention sharpened by his own unorthodox intellectual journey, Geuss locates what we fail to see in the status quo: its shallowness and futility. Rejecting both authoritarian horror and liberal complacency, Geuss looks to genuinely new ideas.

By the late 19th century Odessa was the most polyglot and cosmopolitan city in the empire. In the first decades of the 20th century, however, strikes, revolutionary agitation, and pogroms brought on the city’s decline. Herlihy contrasts Odessa’s rapid development in the 19th century with the growing tension in its society up to the First World War.

David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi, two leading critics of law's role in global life, join together to explore the origins and destiny of efforts to build law into the fabric of global life. Erudite, open-minded, and at times personal, Of Law and the World is a poignant conversation about humanity's struggle to live together.

Schooling has become less about learning and more about the scramble for good grades, high test scores, and spotless transcripts. No one is happy about this, least of all students. But what can be done? Off the Mark explains how we got into this predicament, why our reforms haven't worked, and how we can reorient our system to advance learning.

Richard Primus challenges the prevailing view that Congress is constrained to exercise only those powers enumerated in the Constitution. Analyzing constitutional text and history, as well as the structure of US federalism, Primus shows that the primary function of enumeration is to rule the listed powers in, not to rule other powers out.

Omeljan Pritsak and the Intellectual Origins of the Ukrainian “Harvard Miracle” is the first English-language intellectual biography of Omeljan Pritsak—a prominent and controversial historians of Ukraine, Central Europe, and the Turko-Osmanic and Mongol worlds. This concise study serves as a new intellectual history of Ukrainian history.

Betrayal seems to have lost its grip on the public consciousness in liberal societies, yet it is all around us, dissolving the thick glue of trust that holds friends, families, and communities together. By focusing on the ethics of betrayal, Avishai Margalit offers a philosophical account of what we owe those who give us our sense of belonging.

The alternate self is a persistent theme of modern culture. From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, poets and novelists-and readers-are fascinated by paths not taken. In an elegant and provocative rumination, Andrew H. Miller lingers with other selves, listening to what they have to say about our stories and our lives.

Claudius Claudianus (c. 370-c. 410 CE) gives us important knowledge of Honorius's time and displays poetic as well as rhetorical skill, command of language, and diversity. A panegyric on the brothers Probinus and Olybrius (consuls together in 395 CE) was followed mostly by epics in hexameters, but also by elegiacs, epistles, epigrams, and idylls.