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A groundbreaking retelling of the advent of British rule in Sri Lanka. How did the modern nation of Sri Lanka come to be? In search of an answer to this question, Islanded returns us to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and to the advance of the British on the kingdom of Kandy. This advance saw the fall of the last foothold of kingly rule, centered in the highlands of the island. The British undertook a process of “islanding” and “partitioning,” which cast the island, its nature and geography, its religious and ethnic character, and its historical traditions and maritime culture as separate from British domains in mainland India and elsewhere. Kings had seen themselves as rightful rulers of the whole territory of the island. Now, this right was violently extended by British colonists through the application of a model of crown rule and modern bureaucracy that tied ethnicity to language and religion, employing essentialized but not fully realized patterns that would continue to trouble the modern nation. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, Islanded is a groundbreaking text in Sri Lankan history writing, shaping discussions of the imperial transition in South Asia.

A holistic introduction to Wittgenstein’s philosophy that approaches him as a philosopher of ordinary life. One of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most consequential claims was that the meaning of the word, its sense, is its use in language. This deceptively simple claim, the foundation of what became known as ordinary language philosophy, has animated thinkers across disciplinary bounds from metaphysics to ethics and more. In The Senses of Use, Sandra Laugier embarks on a fresh journey through Wittgenstein’s corpus that emphasizes the place of ordinary life and language in its thought. Through his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations, and rich posthumously published works, Laugier offers a compelling new look at Wittgenstein as a philosopher of mind.

Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.   Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.   In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.   Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.

Unearths the religious and cultural roots of a powerful political machine that empowered some everyday Chicagoans but ruled all of the city for decades. In politics, clout is essential. Too often, it determines whether insider access is granted or denied, favors are given or withheld, and payoffs are made or received. But Chicago clout, as we know it today, is even more potent than that—it’s the absolute currency of a social, cultural, and political order that is self-reinforcing and self-dealing. Or, at least, it was.   In Clout City, award-winning historian Dominic A. Pacyga reveals how cultural, ethnic, and religious forces created this distinctive system—and ultimately led to its collapse. Tracing clout’s origins in the Irish Catholic–dominated working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, shaped by De La Salle Institute and home to the legendary Daley family, Pacyga shows how communal ties can be a force for good and also the deepest wellspring of corruption. He maps Chicago’s unique politics to its remarkable history, from the Great Fire of 1871 through its rise and decline as an industrial center to its emergence as a global city in the early twenty-first century. With deep research and firsthand experience from a lifetime in the city, Pacyga argues that Chicago’s politics is understood best as a mixture of cultural and religious influences and more worldly pursuits, exploring how both Jewish and Catholic communalism played central roles in the creation and sustenance of the Chicago machine.   Chicago’s politics today aren’t as defined by its distinctive brand of clout. But they are shaped by clout’s decline and the ghost of the machine. Pacyga’s tour of the city’s multilayered past is an indispensable guide to its present and future.

An expansive vision for data equality that goes beyond algorithmic fairness. When we gave algorithms power over our world, we hoped that the apparent neutrality of machine thinking would create a more egalitarian age. Yet we are more divided than ever, staring down threats to democracy itself. In Data Equals, Colin Koopman argues that data technologies fail us so often because we built them around a deficient notion of equality. It is not enough, Koopman explains, that algorithms engage everyone’s data with the same measuring stick. The data themselves are all too often structured in ways that obscure and exacerbate stratifying distinctions. Koopman contends that we must also work to ensure that those people subject to computational assessment enter data systems on equal terms. Part philosophical argument, part practical guide (replete with case studies from education technology), Data Equals offers novel methods for realizing democratic equality in a digital age.

The continuation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s great meditation on the origins and meanings of the French Revolution. With his monumental work The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59)—best known for his classic Democracy in America—envisioned a multivolume philosophical study of the origins of modern France that would examine the implications of French history on the nature and development of democratic society. Volume I, which covered the eighteenth-century background to the Revolution, was published to great acclaim in 1856. On the continuation of this project, he wrote: "When this Revolution has finished its work, [this volume] will show what that work really was, and what the new society which has come from that violent labor is, what the Revolution has taken away and what it has preserved from that old regime against which it was directed." Tocqueville died in the midst of this work. Here in Volume II is all that he had completed, including the chapters he started for a work on Napoleon, notes and analyses he made in the course of researching and writing the first volume, and his notes on his preparation for his continuation. More than ever before, readers will be able to glean how Tocqueville's account of the Revolution would have come out, had he lived to finish it. This handsomely produced volume completes the set and is essential reading for anyone interested in the French Revolution or in Tocqueville’s thought.

An hourly guide that spotlights twenty-four trees as they root, flower, and host diverse forest life. In this short book, treetop explorer Meg Lowman guides us through a global forest. Each chapter of Tree Day introduces a single tree during a single hour, highlighting twenty-four species from around the world. In the dark of Yemen’s night, it is too early to see the red sap from which the dragon’s blood tree gets its name. But if we watch closely, we will see nocturnal geckos carry the trees’ pollen in their snouts. Later, in the Pacific Northwest, we climb the world’s tallest species, the coastal redwood. The morning fog is a reminder that redwoods absorb water through their roots and canopies, helping them survive such heights. The sun is already low in the sky on an autumn afternoon. Given the darkness of this New England forest, the sugar maple’s leaves have stopped producing chlorophyll that converts light into energy—and green gives way to vivid crimson foliage. After many hours of boiling, the maple sap makes delicious maple syrup. As the sun sets in Mexico, we observe the origin of another treat, chocolate. The cocoa tree’s flowers sprout along its trunk and branches, allowing easy access for tiny insects like midges that pollinate the tree and start the process of making delicious food for humans, monkeys, bats, and squirrels. By the end of our tree day, we will understand that trees are the silent caretakers of our planet, providing us with medicines, foods, machinery for making fresh water and oxygen, and more. For each hour, celebrated artist Thibaud Hérem has depicted these trees with gorgeous pen and ink illustrations. Working together to narrate and illustrate these unique moments in time, Lowman and Hérem have created an engaging read that is a perfect way to spend an hour or two—and a true gift for anyone who has ever looked up at a tree in wonder.

A new window into Machiavelli’s idea of virtuous leadership and the appropriate relationship among leaders, common citizens, and elites. For more than a decade, John P. McCormick has been at the forefront of a new wave of scholarship that reveals the anti-elitist and democratic commitments at the center of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political thought. In The People’s Princes, McCormick turns his attention to Machiavelli’s conception of virtuous leadership and Machiavelli’s views on the appropriate relationships among individual leaders, common citizens, and elites. While most people think of Machiavelli as a cynical advisor of tyrants—a man who counseled leaders to aggrandize themselves, by any means necessary, at the expense of their subjects and citizens—The People’s Princes fundamentally challenges this understanding. Drawing from Machiavelli’s major political works a normative standard for leadership that emphasizes the mutually reinforcing relationship of civic leadership and popular government, McCormick delineates Machiavelli’s method of “political exemplarity” by analyzing in detail the Florentine’s case studies of leaders and their interactions with populaces throughout ancient and modern history. McCormick argues that Machiavelli suggests that civic leaders should enhance their reputations by providing for their own eventual obsolescence; specifically, they should establish institutional means through which common citizens rule themselves more directly and substantively. The People’s Princes invites readers to consider Machiavelli anew, and also reflect on insights that remain relevant in the twenty-first century amidst growing concerns that political leaders are not accountable or responsive to popular majorities.

A powerful exploration of how literature expresses and transforms our earliest preverbal experiences. Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language—a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these “primacies” release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful literary expressions of sorrow, joy, and fulfillment. In this book, Fishbane explores how ancient, medieval, and modern literature and poetry express and transform these primal sensations. Building on his theological project begun in Sacred Attunement and Fragile Finitude, Fishbane offers here a radically new lived hermeneutics that seeks to do nothing less than redefine the relationship between experience and language.

An unforgettable visual journey through the kingdom of fungi, both enigmatic and entrancing. Recyclers, creators of soil, enablers of life, and food for many—fungi are as dynamic as they are diverse. And, throughout her career, Alison Pouliot has observed these organisms with a unique vision. As a scientist and photographer, she has led hundreds of forays through the forests of the Americas, Australia, and Europe. In this book, readers can travel along with her on these global explorations through stunning photographs and meditations on the landscape. She says her camera is where fungal lives come most clearly into focus. And like the camera obscura, this book, Funga Obscura, captures brief mycological moments and unforgettable fungus microcosms. The word funga refers to the fungi of a region, and Pouliot’s photography spans continents. We see a parade of violet webcap mushrooms, spotted in the understory of a Pacific Northwest forest; brilliantly blue pixie’s parasols in Australia; an Italian alpine lichen, looking for all the world like a treasure map; and a showstopping whitelaced shank, ready to spread its spores in Switzerland. We learn that fungi live almost everywhere, from our lawns to forests and woodlands, from the ocean’s depths to deserts and alpine peaks. Yet, like a web of rootlike mycelium, Funga Obscura goes deeper to investigate how fungi shape landscapes and interact with other organisms, including humans. This journey spans eons, from long ago in evolutionary time, when fungi first emerged from the ocean onto land, to today, when we witness their work all around us. The scenes here challenge our ideas about what fungi are, what they do, and why they matter. In Pouliot’s photographs, you might recognize a few old friends, but many mushrooms will be new acquaintances. Sometimes they make their presence immediately known; at other times, they just provide clues—and trails to follow.

An essential guide to how the interactions between social norms, party politics, and expressions of prejudice are driving contemporary politics. Antiminority rhetoric in American politics has grown more overt. What were once fringe comments on Stormfront have now become typical campaign appeals from many mainstream politicians. If there was ever a doubt, this is a poignant reminder that the boundaries of what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable” to say and do are fluid and socially enforced. In Parties and Prejudice, Maneesh Arora offers a broad framework for understanding this new political terrain. Arora argues that the interaction between social norms and party politics determines what the political consequence of prejudicial speech will be. He illuminates this nuanced relationship by showing that norms vary based on the targeted minority group and the intended audience. Drawing on experiments, survey data, news coverage, and real-world examples, Parties and Prejudice examines the distinctive ways that egalitarian/inegalitarian norms have developed—within each party—for Black, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ Americans. It is essential reading for understanding Donald Trump’s rise to power, the modern conservative agenda (including opposition to critical race theory and transgender rights), and threats to the development of a multiracial democracy.

The story of a unique and controversial wartime study of pilot fatigue.   During World War II, members of the Cambridge Psychology Laboratory were commissioned to study pilot fatigue. They set up a Spitfire cockpit in the laboratory, turned it into a piece of laboratory apparatus, and carried out a series of important experiments that appeared to dramatically confirm the dangers of fatigue. Historians of psychology are aware of this episode, but the experiments, the events surrounding them, and the scientific reasoning involved have never been studied in detail. By going into the episode in depth, and by looking behind the scenes at archival material, David Bloor offers an analysis that is both original and more penetrating than anything that has been said before on the topic.   Bloor describes the Cockpit experiments themselves before turning to the theoretical interpretation of the results and the intellectual resources that informed how they were viewed. Bloor then explains a major empirical and theoretical challenge to the Cambridge Cockpit work drawn from a field study of landing accidents apparently showing that fatigue-effects were operationally negligible. Bloor delves into the consequences of this challenge, and the Cambridge reaction to it, in the post-war years. The analysis is deepened by comparison with the corresponding wartime work on fatigue carried out both in Germany and the United States. As the author demonstrates, even today the Cambridge Cockpit experiments pose a challenge to the current understanding of pilot fatigue.

The latest, updated edition of the essential, authoritative reference for botanical, mycological, and phycological names.   The International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, known as “the Code,” is the set of internationally agreed rules and recommendations that govern the naming of these organisms. Scientific naming has deep historical roots. Indeed, the system of naming organisms is one of the first truly global scientific standards. This essential reference originates in Alphonse de Candolle’s 1867 Lois de la nomenclature botanique. This 2025 edition of the Code, the Madrid Code, reflects the decisions made at the Twentieth International Botanical Congress, which met in Madrid, Spain, in July 2024. The congress debated 447 proposals to amend the Code and accepted important new rules, including a mechanism for voluntary registration of plant and algal names, clarifications for naming fossil taxa, the option to reject a new name if it is derogatory to a group of people, and the replacement of an epithet that was considered particularly offensive (revising to afra, afrorum, and afrum).

A biography of Henry Edward Armstrong, an underappreciated maverick in the history of chemistry.  Fifth Business is a biography of the English chemist, educator, and scientific critic Henry Edward Armstrong. Today, Armstrong, who was a central figure in the development of the science of chemistry between 1885 and 1914, is more remembered for his campaigns to improve the teaching of chemistry, and science generally, and less for his theory of residual affinity and reverse electrolysis—or his hostility toward physical chemistry. However, right up until his retirement, Armstrong was a significant and prolific organic chemist, as well as a major figure in the academic and social life of the Chemical Society.   Fifth Business is structured as chronologically as possible, with Armstrong’s life and achievements as an active chemist in Part I (1848–1911) and as a critic in his long retirement in Part II (1911–1937). Brock’s authoritative biography provides a unique inside look at its subject, allowing us to better understand the history of British science, scientific institutions, scientific education, pedagogical theory, and social relations of science during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth.

An eye-opening look at the relationship between students’ majors and their entry-level jobs. Humanities majors are used to answering the question, “So, what are you going to do with that degree?” The common misconception is that students in humanities programs don’t learn any useful skills for the real world. In Major Trade-Offs, sociologist Corey Moss-Pech argues that not only do humanities majors learn real-world skills, but they actually use them when they graduate. Despite this discrepancy, graduates with so-called practical degrees like business and engineering are much more likely to find employment, and they earn higher salaries. Why do we belittle a liberal arts education despite the valuable skills that students acquire during their studies?  Major Trade-Offs addresses this question by following students from different majors as they enter the workforce. To understand the relationship between majors and entry-level jobs, Moss-Pech conducted nearly 200 interviews with roughly ninety students from four majors at a large Midwestern university: engineering, business, English, and communications. He follows these students through their senior years, chronicling their internships and the support their universities provide in helping them pursue their career paths. He found that graduates from practical majors entered the labor market successfully, typically through structured internship programs. However, many ended up in entry-level jobs that, while well-paid, were largely clerical and didn’t necessarily require a degree to perform. On the other hand, liberal arts majors rarely accessed structured internships and were largely left to carve out their own paths, but did use their degree skills once they secured a job. These results challenge popular myths about the “marketability” of these different majors and offer a new vision for the future of higher education. Liberal arts skills are essential in the labor market, and yet educators and policymakers still push resources into the practical arts, perpetuating the myth that those majors are more valuable while depriving students of a well-rounded education and leaving them no better prepared for the workforce than liberal arts students.   Of interest to students, educators, and employers, Major Trade-Offs calls on colleges and universities to advocate for liberal arts majors, leveling the playing field for students as they plan for entry-level work.

“A must-have field guide for fans of Second City area fish.”—Robert Ito, The New York Times Book Review • “A treasure of hardcore fish intelligence and delightful tidbits of fish history.”—Dale Bowman, Chicago Sun-TimesFish don’t heed state boundaries, and neither does this comprehensive, photo-filled guide to the diverse species of Chicago and beyond.  Encompassing southern Lake Michigan, northeastern Illinois, and adjacent areas of Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the Chicago Region is home to rare habitats supporting diverse fish populations. From small creeks to large rivers and from small ponds to one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems, Lake Michigan, these systems are home to some 164 fish species representing 31 families. In this essential field guide, the most complete and up-to-date reference for fishes in the Chicago Region, we meet them all—lampreys, sturgeon, paddlefish, gars, drum, darters, perches, sticklebacks, sculpins, and more. Written by leading local ecologists and featuring a pictorial family key, color photographs, detailed species distribution maps, and natural history observations unique to the region, this go-to guide belongs on the shelf—and in the boat—of every angler, naturalist, fisheries manager, and biologist.