For the past eight decades, we have lived in “the American Century” – a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivalled power – be it political, economic or military - on the global stage. Born on the cusp of this new era, Joseph S. Nye Jr. has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs. His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have rightly earned him his reputation as one of the most influential international relations scholars in the world today.
In this deeply personal book, Joseph Nye shares his own journey living through the American century. From his early years growing up on a farm in rural New Jersey to his time in the State Department, Pentagon and Intelligence Community during the Carter and Clinton administrations where he witnessed American power up close, shaping policy on key issues such as nuclear proliferation and East Asian security. After 9/11 drew the US into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nye remained an astute observer and critic of the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies. Today American primacy may be changing, but he concludes with a faint ray of guarded optimism about the future of his country in a richer but riskier world.
Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by Big Tech. It is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls “the coded gaze”—the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products—and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, she shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them.
Statues and Storms offers a gripping insider’s account of Max Price’s tenure as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town during a transformative period in South African higher education.
With a focus on leadership, the book also explores enduring themes in academia, including academic and artistic freedom, the limits of protest rights, institutional racism, culture and inclusiveness, and the funding of higher education.
To be published in February 2023. A poet and journalist looks back on a remarkable journey from Turkey to Nepal in 1978, when the region was on the brink of massive transformation.
In the spring of 1978, at age twenty-two, Mark Abley put aside his studies at Oxford and set off with a friend on a three-month trek across the celebrated Hippie Trail — a sprawling route between Europe and South Asia, peppered with Western bohemians and vagabonds. It was a time when the Shah of Iran still reigned supreme, Afghanistan lay at peace, and city streets from Turkey to India teemed with unrest. Within a year, many of the places he visited would become inaccessible to foreign travellers.
Drawing from the tattered notebooks he filled as a youthful wanderer, Abley brings his kaleidoscope of experiences back to life with vivid detail: dancing in a Turkish disco, clambering across a glacier in Kashmir, travelling by train among Baluchi tribesmen who smuggled kitchen appliances over international borders. He also reflects on the impact of the Hippie Trail and the illusions of those who journeyed along it. The lively immediacy of Abley’s journals combined with the measured wisdom of his mature, contemporary voice provides rich insight, bringing vibrant witness and historical perspective to this beautifully written portrait of a region during a time of irrevocable change.
Choosing to pursue a PhD is not an easy decision. It can include enormous financial and time investments, relocation, and loss of personal time. It is stressful and onerous work, yet it can bring prestige, better career opportunities, increased income, priceless knowledge, and memorable experiences. Even if you know you want to pursue a PhD, how do you choose which program to apply for? How do you fund your studies? And what questions do you not even know to ask? In The PhD Journey: Strategies for Enrolling, Thriving, and Excelling in a PhD Program, Dr. Gladys Chepkirui Ngetich shares her recent experiences succeeding in a PhD program at the University of Oxford. Her personal stories, practical advice, and down-to-earth perspective will enlighten your journey. Plus, she shares interviews with fifteen other students from universities around the world.
Topics range from choosing a PhD program, finding an advisor, and deciding on a thesis or dissertation topic to coping with homesickness, finding a support group, making the best use of your time, and applying new technology.
An approachable guide to the political, social, and demographic changes happening in Africa and why they matter for the rest of the world.
Africa is undergoing an astounding transformation that will usher in a new era of political volatility and experimentation in the coming years. The region is in the midst of a historically unprecedented demographic surge that has skewed the median age in most countries to below twenty years old. This demographic moment coincides with three factors likely to amplify the political agendas of African youth: rapid urbanization, dramatically increased digital connectivity, and increasing recognition that old political narratives are no longer fit for purpose.
In face of historical injustices such as war, colonialism, slavery, and genocides, what responsibilities, if any, do the present generations owe – and to whom are such responsibilities owed? Drawing upon methods of political theory, empirical politics, legal philosophy, and applied ethics, this book advances the novel account of Collective Moral Debt Reparative Justice.
It aims to establish that descendants of victims inherit claims to reparation by which they can hold inheritors of perpetrators responsible for discharging. This argument applies particularly well to collectives meeting the threshold for group agency and complicit agents. Not only does the concept of “moral debt” serve as an emphatic metaphor for the distinctive ways by which perpetrators and victims, descendants and inheritors are connected – it also provides the compelling explanation hitherto missing as for why claims of reparative justice do not go away merely in virtue of the passage of time.
Freedom of speech has never been more important—or more controversial. From debates about what's permissible on social media, to the politics of campus speakers and corporate advertisements, the First Amendment is incessantly in the news and constantly being held up as the fundamental principle of American democracy. Yet, in reality, it has contributed more to eroding our democracy than supporting it.
In Fearless Speech, Dr. Mary Anne Franks emphasizes the distinction between what speech a democratic society should protect and what speech a democratic society should promote.
The first complete history of Black women physicians in the US, told through a blend of extensive archival research and the author’s own journey as a medical student
As a young Black woman considering a path in medicine, Jasmine Brown quickly realized there weren’t many other Black women physicians to look to as role models—but not because Black women haven’t served as doctors for hundreds of years. No complete history of Black women physicians in the United States exists, and what little mention is made to these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown champions a new history, penning the long-erased stories of Black women physicians in permanent ink.
The legacy of African American women physicians began with Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, whose dreams of working as a physician led her to embark on that career path at a time when slavery was still legal. Only fourteen months after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler graduated from medical school and then promptly moved to Richmond, Virginia to provide medical care for the newly freed slaves who had be neglected and exploited by the medical system.
Jasmine Brown tells this and other stories from the perspective of a historian and a Black woman in medicine. As a medical student, her journey already has parallels to that of Black women who entered medicine generations before her. This work establishes a lineage of Black women doctors whose accomplishments are undeniably important and inspirational, shedding light on the Black women doctor role models that medical students like Jasmine grew up without.
Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbours nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope.
This wide-ranging, detailed and engaging study of Brecht's complex relationship with Greek tragedy and tragic tradition argues that this is fundamental for understanding his radicalism. Featuring an extensive discussion of The Antigone of Sophocles (1948) and further related works (the Antigone model book and the Small Organon of the Theatre), this monograph includes the first-ever publication of the complete set of colour photographs taken by Ruth Berlau. This is complemented by comparatist explorations of many of Brecht's own plays as his experiments with tragedy conceptualized as the 'big form', The significance for Brecht of the Green tragic tradition is positioned in relation to the the other formative influences on his work (Asian theatre, Naturalism, comedy, Schiller, and Shakespeare.) Brecht emerges as a theatre artist of enormous range and creativity, who has succeeded in re-shaping and re0energizing tragedy and has carved paths for its continued artistic and political relevance.
Find out more about Brecht and Tragedy
As a new wave of interplanetary exploration launches in summer 2020, planetary scientist and Rhodes Scholar Sarah Stewart Johnson, charts our centuries-old obsession with Mars.
Mars - bewilderingly empty, coated in red dust - is an unlikely place to pin our hopes of finding life elsewhere. And yet, right now multiple spacecraft are circling, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium and Mare Sirenum - on the brink, perhaps, of a discovery that would inspire humankind as much as any in our history.
With poetic precision and grace, Sarah traces the evocative history of our explorations of Mars. She interlaces her personal journey as a scientist with tales of other seekers - from Galileo to William Herschel to Carl Sagan - who have scoured this enigmatic planet for signs of life and transformed it in our understanding from a distant point of light into a complex world.
We live in a world that is always on, where everyone is always connected. But we feel increasingly disconnected. Why? The answer lies in our brains. Carl D. Marci, MD, a leading expert on social and consumer neuroscience, reviews the mounting evidence that overuse of smart phones and social media is rewiring our brains, resulting in a losing deal: we are neglecting the relationships that sustain us and keep us healthy in favor of weaker and more ephemeral ties.
The ability to connect and form strong social bonds is fundamental to human experience and emerged through unique structures in our brains. But ever-more-powerful technologies and ubiquitous access to media have hijacked our need to connect intimately and emotionally with others. The quick highs of clicking “like” and swiping right overstimulate the same neurological reward centers associated with social relationships. The habits that accompany our digital lifestyles are putting tremendous pressure on critical components of the brain associated with attention, emotion, and memory, changing how we process information and altering how we communicate and relate, even at a physiological level.
As a psychiatrist working at the forefront of research on the impact of digital technology, Marci has seen this transformation up close and developed a range of responses. Rewired provides scientifically supported solutions for everyone who wants to restore their tech–life balance—from parents concerned about their children’s exposure to the internet to stressed workers dealing with the deluge of emails and managing the expectation of 24/7 availability.
These poems are framed by the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. While not all were written during that time, they share a concern with the fragility of the earth and our bodies on the earth, as well as the webs we weave through virtual means of connection.
Jennifer Davis Michael is a professor of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, specializing in British Romanticism. Her publications include a previous chapbook, Let Me Let Go (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell University Press, 2006). Her poem “Forty Trochees” won the Frost Farm Prize in 2020, judged by Rachel Hadas.
Getting to Good Friday intertwines literary analysis and narrative history in an accessible account of the shifts in thinking and talking about Northern Ireland's divided society that brought thirty years of political violence to a close with the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.
Drawing on decades of reading, researching, and teaching Northern Irish literature and talking and corresponding with Northern Irish writers, Marilynn Richtarik describes literary reactions and contributions to the peace process during the fifteen years preceding the Agreement and in the immediate post-conflict era.
Progress in this period hinged on negotiators' ability to revise the terms used to discuss the conflict. As poet Michael Longley commented in 1998, 'In its language the Good Friday Agreement depended on an almost poetic precision and suggestiveness to get its complicated message across.' Interpreting selected literary works by Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Deirdre Madden, Seamus Deane, Bernard MacLaverty, Colum McCann, and David Park within a detailed historical frame, Richtarik demonstrates the extent to which authors were motivated by a desire both to comment on and to intervene in unfolding political situations.
Getting to Good Friday suggests that literature as literature-that is, in its formal properties in addition to anything it might have to 'say' about a given subject-can enrich readers' historical understanding. Through Richtarik's engaging narrative, creative writing emerges as both the medium of and a metaphor for the peace process itself.
Dan Chiponda earns a scholarship to study in China and reluctantly leaves Zimbabwe for an uncertain future. While stoically dealing with racial abuse and haunted by the weight of his mother’s expectations, Dan navigates a future in which nothing will ever be the same again.
Pathways to Excellence suggests ways in which Zambia could liberate herself from mediocrity and become the world class economy it is meant to be. In addition to sensible prescriptions such as maximizing the efficacy of public spending, and creating conditions that support Zambian entrepreneurship, the author argues that the country's full potential cannot be realized until the ghost of colonialism is exorcised from the national psyche. Ways are suggested as to how Zambians can regain the confidence of their pre-colonial ancestors, and proceed to excellence
Find out more about Zambia: Pathways to Excellence
A haunting story of love, art, and betrayal, set against the heart-pounding backdrop of Antarctic exploration—from the Boston Globe-bestselling author of The Clover House.
The year is 1910, and two Antarctic explorers, Watts and Heywoud, are racing to the South Pole. Back in London, Viola, a photo-journalist, harbors love for them both. In Terra Nova, Henriette Lazaridis seamlessly ushers the reader back and forth between the austere, forbidding, yet intoxicating polar landscape of Antarctica to the bustle of early twentieth century London.
Many women enter the workforce feeling like they can never make a mistake, and as a result, they don't take risks in the crucial early stages of their careers. Women, and BIPOC women especially, are disproportionally penalised for mistakes, so any risk begins to feel like a bad risk. Longtime DEI practitioner Christie Hunter Arscott equips readers with the ability to differentiate between reckless and intelligent risks using an actionable model built around three mindsets: a curious mindset, a courageous mindset, and an agile mindset. With a step-by-step method for taking risks, making refinements, and assessing rewards, Arscott's approach gives women a flexible and repeatable framework to guide them through this critical career skill. A 2019 KPMG study found that fewer than 43 percent of women surveyed were willing to take "big" risks, including volunteering to do a major presentation or asking for a pay raise. Begin Boldly empowers women to take chances on themselves so that risk-taking becomes an enlightening and empowering antidote for self-doubt.
In 2019, a group of Louisianans voted to create a new city in part of the Baton Rouge area. The effort drew attention not only because the decision would create a disproportionately White and wealthy city, but also because it would leave the area's considerably poorer, majority-Black school district behind. As this story suggests, local geography, politics, and prejudice are linked in American racial politics. This book explores the relationship between where White Americans live and their attitudes about race. In How the Color Line Bends, Nina M. Yancy shows that what White people think depends on where they live-but not, as conventional wisdom might suggest, because they are more likely to feel "threatened" where race is salient. Rejecting this tendency to tacitly position White Americans as victims, this book focuses on power, agency, and positionality in the study of prejudice and place. Yancy looks at the White perspective through a number of racialized issues, including education, affirmative action, and welfare spending in cities across the United States, as well as a vivid case study of Baton Rouge. Being explicit about Whites Americans' racialized vantage point allows us to better appreciate the capacity of prejudice to ebb and flow in response to local conditions across a diverse nation. Yancy also illustrates why the "color line" remains relevant-if we appreciate the ability of that line to harden or soften, but not necessarily break.
A compelling, stirring narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it’s equally important to organize when you love your job. Here, Brisack delivers practical advice on how workers can and should stand up for their rights, especially when electoral politics seem to have failed us.