Monthly Archive: January, 2012

January 31, 2012

The Lives of Transgender People reviewed in Inside Higher Ed

While reading Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin’s The Lives of Transgender People for his review of the book in Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee was struck by some of the rather dispiriting findings in the book. Beemyn and Rankin’s book...

January 31, 2012

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

We are happy to announce that The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael E. Mann is now available as a book and an e-book. Please note that two corrections will be made to...

January 31, 2012

The Kitchen as Laboratory Quiz

Sure you love a great grilled cheese sandwich but do you know the science behind what distinguishes a good from a bad sandwich? Test your knowledge of the science and psychology with this quiz based on The Kitchen as Laboratory:...

January 31, 2012

New Book Tuesday: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars and More!

The following books are now available: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines Michael E. Mann Who Killed Hammarskjöld?: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa Susan Williams Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence...

January 30, 2012

Mark C. Taylor: Is Modern Finance Ruining Modern Art?

“As art becomes a progressively abstract play of non-referential signs, so increasingly abstract financial instruments become an autonomous sphere of circulation whose end is nothing other than itself.”—Mark C. Taylor In a piece for Bloomberg View, Mark C. Taylor, author...

January 27, 2012

Michael R. Powers on Terrorism Forecasting

The following excerpt on terrorism forecasting is from Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance, by Michael R. Powers: In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. insurance industry confronted billions of dollars...

January 25, 2012

Olivier Roy: The cold choice — jobs or jihad

“In the final analysis, the victory of the Islamists is part of the normalisation of the Arab world.”—Olivier Roy In the most recent issue of the New Statesman , Olivier Roy, author of Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part...

January 25, 2012

Michael R. Powers on Risk

In his book, Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance, Michael R. Powers discusses how risk impacts our lives, health, and possessions and proceeds to introduce the statistical techniques necessary for analyzing these uncertainties. In this excerpt...

January 25, 2012

Interview with Joshua Miller, author of "Psychosocial Capacity Building in Response to Disasters"

Joshua Miller, author of Psychosocial Capacity Building in Response to Disasters, was recently interviewed as part of the Living Proof Podcast Series. Here is a description of the series from “Living Proof”: Dr. Joshua Miller discusses the many types of...

January 24, 2012

Ho-fung Hung: South China’s Protests Are Not as Subversive as Many Think

“China’s escalating popular violence against local authorities and humble petition to the central government in the last two decades should be understood in light of [a] longstanding Confucianist conception of authority. This conception persists despite all the ideological and political...

January 24, 2012

Michael R. Powers, author of Acts of God and Man, Takes the Page 99 Test

Michael R. Powers, author of Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance, recently took The Page 99 Test. Powers discussed how page 99 from his book reflects some of the ideas in his book Acts of God...

January 24, 2012

New Book Tuesday: Epigenetics, J-Pop, and More!

From Nessa Carey’s Epigenetics to J-Pop, here’s our list of new titles now available: The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance Nessa Carey Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop...