New from the University of Chicago Press: The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region by David Alff. About the book, from the publisher: All aboard for the first comprehensive history of the hard-working and wildly influential Northeast Corridor. Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the right-of-way. David Alff welcomes readers aboard to see how nineteenth-century train tracks did more than connect Boston to Washington, DC. They transformed hundreds ..read more

New from Princeton University Press: Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time by Thomas Hale. About the book, from the publisher: Political strategies for tackling climate change and other “long problems” that span generations Climate change and its consequences unfold over many generations. Past emissions affect our climate today, just as our actions shape the climate of tomorrow, while the effects of global warming will last thousands of years. Yet the priorities of the present dominate our climate policy and the politics surrounding it. Even the social scie ..read more

New from Columbia University Press: Black Visions of the Holy Land: African American Christian Engagement with Israel and Palestine by Roger Baumann. About the book, from the publisher: Since at least the high point of the civil rights movement, African American Christianity has been widely recognized as a potent force for social change. Most attention to the political significance of Black churches, however, focuses on domestic protest and electoral politics. Yet some Black churches take a deep interest in the global issue of Israel and Palestine. Why would African American Christians get in ..read more

New from Oxford University Press: The Objects of Credence by Anna Mahtani. About the book, from the publisher: The credence framework is used by scientists and social scientists in almost all disciplines, including economics and political theory, and it underpins policy choice in healthcare, transport, education, and numerous other areas. It is hard to overestimate its importance. On this framework, credences (or probabilities) are assigned to certain objects--but what objects? The Objects of Credence argues that these objects are 'opaque' or 'hyperintensional': to adapt an example from Frege ..read more

New from the University of North Carolina Press: American Literary Misfits: The Alternative Democracies of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Print Cultures by D. Berton Emerson. About the book, from the publisher: The study of nineteenth-century American literature has long been tied up with the study of American democracy. Just as some regions in the United States are elevated to stand in for the whole nation—New England is a good example—D. Berton Emerson argues the same is true for American literature of the nineteenth century; a few canonical texts overrepresent the more motley history of American l ..read more

New from Princeton University Press: Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World by R. Jisung Park. About the book, from the publisher: How the subtle but significant consequences of a hotter planet have already begun—from lower test scores to higher crime rates—and how we might tackle them today It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change, especially if we think of it as an impending planetary catastrophe. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in ..read more

New from Stanford University Press: Cemetery Citizens: Reclaiming the Past and Working for Justice in American Burial Grounds by Adam Rosenblatt. About the book, from the publisher: Across the United States, groups of grassroots volunteers gather in overgrown, systemically neglected cemeteries. As they rake, clean headstones, and research silenced histories, they offer care to individuals who were denied basic rights and forms of belonging in life and in death. Cemetery Citizens is the first book-length study of this emerging form of social justice work. It focuses on how racial disparities s ..read more

New from the University of Chicago Press: A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People by Kevin J. McMahon. About the book, from the publisher: A data-rich examination of the US Supreme Court’s unprecedented detachment from the democratic processes that buttress its legitimacy. Today’s Supreme Court is unlike any other in American history. This is not just because of its jurisprudence but also because the current Court has a tenuous relationship with the democratic processes that help establish its authority. Historically, this “democracy gap” wa ..read more

New from Cornell University Press: Liminal Minorities: Religious Difference and Mass Violence in Muslim Societies by Günes Murat Tezcür. About the book, from the publisher: Liminal Minorities addresses the question of why some religious minorities provoke the ire of majoritarian groups and become targets of organized violence, even though they lack significant power and pose no political threat. Güneş Murat Tezcür argues that these faith groups are stigmatized across generations, as they lack theological recognition and social acceptance from the dominant religious group. Religious justificat ..read more

New from Oxford University Press: Human Motives: Hedonism, Altruism, and the Science of Affect by Peter Carruthers. About the book, from the publisher: Motivational hedonism (often called “psychological hedonism”) claims that everything we do is done in pursuit of pleasure (in the widest sense) and to avoid pain and displeasure (again, in the widest sense). Although perennially attractive, many philosophers and experimental psychologists have claimed to refute it. Human Motives shows how decision-science and the recent science of affect can be used to construct a form of motivational hedonism ..read more