princeton university press mär 2012 (22 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love--and it is these actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Birdscapes is a unique meditation on the variety of human responses to birds, from antiquity to today, and from casual observers to the globe-trotting 'twitchers' who sometimes risk life, limb, and marriages simply to add new species to their 'life lists.' Drawing extensively on literature, history, philosophy, and science, Jeremy Mynott puts his own experiences as a birdwatcher in a rich cultural context. His sources range from the familiar--Thoreau, Keats, Darwin, and Audubon--to the unexpected--Benjamin Franklin, Giacomo Puccini, Oscar Wilde, and Monty Python. Just as unusual are the extensive illustrations, which explore our perceptions and representations of birds through images such as national emblems, women's hats, professional sports logos, and a Christmas biscuit tin, as well as classics of bird art. Conversational, playful, and witty, Birdscapes gently leads us to reflect on large questions about our relation to birds and the natural world. It encourages birders to see their pursuits in a broader human context--and it shows nonbirders what they may be missing.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Many firms go to great lenghts to lure star employees away from competitors in the belief that talented performers who change firms will bring their success with them. But in Chasing Stars, Boris Groysberg reveals what a disastrous assumption this can be. After examining the careers of more than a thousand star analysts at Wall Street investment banks, he comes to a striking conclusion: star analysts who change firms suffer an immediate and lasting decline in performance. The book examines how its findings apply to many other occupations, from general managers to football players. Offering profound insights into the fundamental nature of outstanding performance, Chasing Stars also offers practical guidance.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In The Axe and the Oath, one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people. Robert Fossier vividly describes how these vulnerable people confronted life, from birth to death, including childhood, marriage, work, sex, food, illness, religion, and the natural world. While most histories of the period focus on the ideas and actions of the few who wielded power and stress how different medieval people were from us, Fossier concentrates on the other nine-tenths of humanity in the period and concludes that 'medieval man is us.'.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson--revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe--built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman paint an unforgettable portrait of Schneerson, who, swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, came to believe that he could deny death and change history. This compelling book demonstrates how Schneerson's embrace of traditionalism and American-style modernity made him uniquely suited to his messianic mission.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This is a sweeping and powerful narrative history of the Jewish people from biblical times to today. Based on the latest scholarship and richly illustrated, it is the most authoritative and accessible chronicle of the Jewish experience available. Michael Brenner tells a dramatic story of change and migration deeply rooted in tradition, taking readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. The book is full of fascinating personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Describing the events and people that have shaped Jewish history, and highlighting the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the Jewish past marvelously to life.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - America's Mission argues that the global strength and prestige of democracy today are due in large part to America's impact on international affairs. Tony Smith documents the extraordinary history of how American foreign policy has been used to try to promote democracy worldwide, an effort that enjoyed its greatest triumphs in the occupations of Japan and Germany but suffered huge setbacks in Latin America, Vietnam, and elsewhere. With new chapters and a new introduction and epilogue, this expanded edition also traces U.S. attempts to spread democracy more recently, under presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and assesses America's role in the Arab Spring.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Why doesn't your home page appear on the first page of search results, even when you query your own name How do other web pages always appear at the top What creates these powerful rankings And how The first book ever about the science of web page rankings, Google's PageRank and Beyond supplies the answers to these and other questions and more. The book serves two very different audiences: the curious science reader and the technical computational reader. The chapters build in mathematical sophistication, so that the first five are accessible to the general academic reader. While other chapters are much more mathematical in nature, each one contains something for both audiences. For example, the authors include entertaining asides such as how search engines make money and how the Great Firewall of China influences research.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Power over Peoples examines Western imperialism's complex relationship with technology, from the first Portuguese ships that ventured down the coast of Africa in the 1430s to America's conflicts in the Middle East today. Daniel Headrick traces the evolution of Western technologies bombs and sheds light on the environmental and social factors that have brought victory in some cases and unforeseen defeat in others. Breathtaking in scope, Power over Peoples is a revealing history of technological innovation, its promise and limitations, and its central role in the rise and fall of empire.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What makes for war or for a stable international system Are there general principles that should govern foreign policy In The Cold War and After, Marc Trachtenberg, a leading historian of international relations, explores how historical work can throw light on these questions. Trachtenberg's main goal is to show how in practice a certain type of scholarly work can be done. He demonstrates how, in studying international politics, the conceptual and empirical sides of the analysis can be made to connect with each other, and - how historical, theoretical, and even policy issues can be tied together in an intellectually respectable way. These essays address a wide variety of topics, from theoretical and policy issues, such as the question of preventive war and the problem of international order, to more historical subjects--for example, American policy on Eastern Europe in 1945 and Franco-American relations during the Nixon-Pompidou period. But in each case the aim is to show how a theoretical perspective can be brought to bear on the analysis of historical issues, and how historical analysis can shed light on basic conceptual problems.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A King Travels examines the scripting and performance of festivals in Spain between 1327 and 1620, offering an unprecedented look at the different types of festivals that were held in Iberia during this crucial period of European history. Bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern eras, Teofilo Ruiz focuses on the travels and festivities of Philip II, exploring the complex relationship between power and ceremony, and offering a vibrant portrait of Spain's cultural and political life.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Middle Eastern Muslim men have been widely vilified as terrorists, religious zealots, and brutal oppressors of women. The New Arab Man challenges these stereotypes with the stories of ordinary Middle Eastern men as they struggle to overcome infertility and childlessness through assisted reproduction. Drawing on two decades of ethnographic research across the Middle East with hundreds of men from a variety of social and religious backgrounds, Marcia Inhorn shows how the new Arab man is self-consciously rethinking the patriarchal masculinity of his forefathers and unseating received wisdoms. This is especially true in childless Middle Eastern marriages where, contrary to popular belief, infertility is more common among men than women. Inhorn captures the marital, moral, and material commitments of couples undergoing assisted reproduction, revealing how new technologies are transforming their lives and religious sensibilities. And she looks at the changing manhood of husbands who undertake transnational 'egg quests'--set against the backdrop of war and economic uncertainty--out of devotion to the infertile wives they love.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'With the arrival of this book, the idea that elected politicians and unelected judges operate in separate spheres finally has to be put aside. A blockbuster work, this magnificent rendition of how Congress has built federal judicial power invites us to recognize the national judiciary as a central actor in American politics, placed there by continuous legislative design.'--Rick Valelly, Swarthmore College.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Circles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier--'Don't disturb my circles'--words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete world of reality, and that of the theoretician lost in a world of abstraction. Stories and theorems are, in a sense, the natural languages of these two worlds--stories representing the way we act and interact, and theorems giving us pure thought, distilled from the hustle and bustle of reality. Yet, though the voices of stories and theorems seem totally different, they share profound connections and similarities.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This unique reference provides encyclopedic coverage of 20th-century communism and its enormous impact on world history from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond. Drawing on the archives of former communist states, this indispensable work reflects the most up-to-date understanding of communism as an ideological and political force.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'In this engaging book, Teofilo Ruiz shows himself to be a supreme master of ceremonies. Taking as his point of departure the travels of Philip II of Spain, he places the ceremonies and festivities with which the king was everywhere greeted into the general context of Iberian festive practices and traditions. While describing numerous festive occasions with a wealth of colorful detail, the book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of continuity and change in Spanish political, social, and cultural life between the High Middle Ages and the seventeenth century.'--Sir John Elliott, University of Oxford.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Macroeconomic Theory is the most up-to-date graduate-level macroeconomics textbook available today. This book truly offers something new by emphasizing the general equilibrium character of macroeconomics to explain effects across the whole economy, not just part. It is also the perfect resource for economists who need to brush up on the latest developments. Michael Wickens lays out the core ideas of modern macroeconomics and its links with finance. He presents the simplest general equilibrium macroeconomic model for a closed economy, and then gradually develops a comprehensive model of the open economy. Every important topic is covered, including growth, business cycles, fiscal policy, taxation and debt finance, current account sustainability, exchange-rate determination, and an up-to-date account of monetary policy through inflation targeting. Wickens addresses the interrelationships between macroeconomics and modern finance and shows how they affect stock, bond, and foreign-exchange markets.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Hybrid dynamical systems exhibit continuous and instantaneous changes, having features of continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical systems. Filled with a wealth of examples to illustrate concepts, this book presents a complete theory of robust asymptotic stability for hybrid dynamical systems that is applicable to the design of hybrid control algorithms--algorithms that feature logic, timers, or combinations of digital and analog components. With the tools of modern mathematical analysis, Hybrid Dynamical Systems unifies and generalizes earlier developments in continuous-time and discrete-time nonlinear systems. It presents hybrid system versions of the necessary and sufficient Lyapunov conditions for asymptotic stability, invariance principles, and approximation techniques, and examines the robustness of asymptotic stability, motivated by the goal of designing robust hybrid control algorithms.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'This probing, nuanced, and insightful analysis of international election monitoring splendidly illuminates and assesses a key area of international democracy support. The book's conclusions about the mixed utility and many dilemmas of election monitoring are persuasive and deserve wide attention. Extra kudos to Judith Kelley for providing an all-too-rare example of sophisticated, rigorous political science methods being brought to bear on the domain of democracy promotion.'--Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Designed for researchers and advanced graduate students in applied mathematics, electrical engineering, and physics, this book introduces the electromagnetics of complex media through a systematic, state-of-the-art account of their mathematical theory. The book combines the study of well posedness, homogenization, and controllability of Maxwell equations complemented with constitutive relations describing complex media. The book treats deterministic and stochastic problems both in the frequency and time domains. It also covers computational aspects and scattering problems, among other important topics. Detailed appendices make the book self-contained in terms of mathematical prerequisites, and accessible to engineers and physicists as well as mathematicians.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book considers the so-called Unlikely Intersections, a topic that embraces well-known issues, such as Lang's and Manin-Mumford's, concerning torsion points in subvarieties of tori or abelian varieties. More generally, the book considers algebraic subgroups that meet a given subvariety in a set of unlikely dimension. The book is an expansion of the Hermann Weyl Lectures delivered by Umberto Zannier at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in May 2010.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book considers the so-called Unlikely Intersections, a topic that embraces well-known issues, such as Lang's and Manin-Mumford's, concerning torsion points in subvarieties of tori or abelian varieties. More generally, the book considers algebraic subgroups that meet a given subvariety in a set of unlikely dimension. The book is an expansion of the Hermann Weyl Lectures delivered by Umberto Zannier at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in May 2010. The book consists of four chapters and seven brief appendixes, the last six by David Masser. The first chapter considers multiplicative algebraic groups, presenting proofs of several developments, ranging from the origins to recent results, and discussing many applications and relations with other contexts. The second chapter considers an analogue in arithmetic and several applications of this. The third chapter introduces a new method for approaching some of these questions, and presents a detailed application of this (by Masser and the author) to a relative case of the Manin-Mumford issue. The fourth chapter focuses on the André-Oort conjecture (outlining work by Pila).