In November 1919, newspapers around the world alerted readers to a sensational new theory of the universe: Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Coming at a time of social, political, and economic upheaval, Einstein's theory quickly became a rich c...

China's economic boom over the last two decades has taken many analysts by surprise, given the ongoing role of central government planning. Its current growth trajectory suggests that the size of its economy could soon surpass that of the United Stat...

Now in its third edition, "Alaska Natives and American Laws" is still the only work of its kind, canvassing federal law and its history as applied to the indigenous peoples of Alaska. Covering 1867 through 2011, the authors offer lucid explanations o...

Conundrums, puzzles, and perversities: these are Leo Katz's stock-in-trade, and in "Why the Law Is So Perverse", he focuses on four fundamental features of our legal system, all of which seem to not make sense on some level and to demand explanation....

Sandy Koufax, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand first came to public attention in the early 1960s, a period Kaufman identifies as historically ripe for American Jews to reexamine their (Jewish) identities. All four achieved extraordinary s...

Opera often seems to arouse either irrational enthusiasm or visceral dislike. Such madness, as Goethe wrote, is indispensable in all theater, and yet in practice, sentiment and passion must be balanced by sense and reason. Exploring this tension betw...

Historians of British colonial rule in India have noted both the place of military might and the imposition of new cultural categories in the making of Empire, but Bhavani Raman, in "Document Raj", uncovers a lesser-known story of power: the power of...

Are humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are...

The third volume of the revived "Ice Floe" series, "Ice Floe III" features new and exciting works of poetry by authors from Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. All work is presented in both its original la...

The central question of the Arab Spring – what democracies should look like in the deeply religious countries of the Middle East – has developed into a vigorous debate over these nations' secular identities. But what, exactly, is secularism? What has...