The University of Chicago Press strana 4 z 7

The economic case for self-interest at the outer limits of being morally good. Modern life is an exercise in discomfort. In the face of endless injustice, how much selfishness is permissible? How do we square suffering elsewhere with our hope to thrive at home? How does one strive for the greater good while guarding one's personal interests? The Price of Our Values argues that the answers to these questions are economic: by weighing our sense of the personal costs associated with the outer limits of our moral beliefs. These tradeoffs—the want to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the points at which people abandon goodness due to its costs—are somewhat unsettling. But as economists Augustin Landier and David Thesmar show, they are highly predictable, even justified. Our values guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions. The Price of Our Values is an economic reckoning with the universal unease of contemporary moral life. Wielding insights from the philosophical founders of the field, Landier and Thesmar provide frameworks for thinking about the place of values—justice, freedom, beauty— in the decisions of modern life. They do so in terms that seek to be consistent with both our good intentions and their limits.

The story of how Yellowstone, established in 1872 as the world’s first national park, has become synonymous with nature conservation—and an examination of today’s challenges to preserve the region’s wilderness heritage.   For more than 150 years, the Yellowstone region—now widely known as the twenty-three million acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—has played a prominent role in the United States’ nature conservation agenda. In this book, Robert B. Keiter, an award-winning public land law and policy expert, traces the evolution and application of fundamental ecological conservation concepts tied to Yellowstone.   Keiter’s book highlights both the conservation successes and controversies connected with this storied region, which has been enmeshed in change. During the 1980s, leaders in Yellowstone embraced ecosystem management concepts to recover a dwindling grizzly bear population and to support wolf reintroduction. Since then, management policies in the region’s two national parks and adjacent national forests have largely followed suit, prioritizing ecosystem-level conservation over industrial activity. Groundbreaking efforts are currently afoot to protect elk, deer, and pronghorn migration corridors and to maintain the park’s bison population, effectively expanding the scope of regional conservation initiatives. But in the face of explosive human population growth and related development pressures, new efforts must also account for the region’s privately owned lands along with accelerating recreational activities that present quite different problems.   Indeed, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—extending across three states and twenty counties and embracing more than sixteen million acres of federal land as well as private and tribal lands —can only be characterized as a complex, jurisdictionally fragmented landscape. As Keiter makes clear, the quest for common ground among federal land managers, state officials, local communities, conservationists, ranchers, Indigenous tribes, and others is a vital, enduring task.   Exploring both notable conservation accomplishments and the ongoing challenges confronting this special place, Keiter’s book explains the many forces—scientific, political, economic, legal, cultural, climatic, and more—at work driving controversy and change across the region. But more than this, Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone shows us that the lessons gleaned from Yellowstone’s expansive nature conservation efforts are profoundly important for both the country and the world.

Revealing a history that is deep, broad, and infuriating, The Black Tax casts a bold light on the racist practices long hidden in the shadows of America’s tax regimes.   American taxation is unfair, and it is most unfair to the very people who critically need its support. Not only do taxpayers with fewer resources—less wealth, power, and land—pay more than the well-off, but they are forced to fight for their rights within an unjust system that undermines any attempts to improve their position or economic standing. In The Black Tax, Andrew W. Kahrl reveals the shocking history and ruinous consequences of inequitable and predatory tax laws in this country—above all, widespread and devastating racial dispossession.   Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans acquired substantial amounts of property nationwide. But racist practices, obscure processes, and outright theft diminished their holdings and their power. Of these, Kahrl shows, few were more powerful, or more quietly destructive, than property taxes. He examines all the structural features and hidden traps within America’s tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less and stripped them of their land and investments, and he reveals the staggering cost. The story of America’s now enormous concentration of wealth at the top—and the equally enormous absence of wealth among most Black households—has its roots here.   Kahrl exposes the painful history of these practices, from Reconstruction up to the present, and tells, for the first time, the story of Black Americans’ experiences as taxpayers and their fight for a more fair and equitable system for raising and spending the public’s money. This is a history that deepens our understanding of the disadvantages and persistent inequalities that African American households continue to face and reveals hidden engines of economic inequality in America. Detailing the hows and whys of America’s profoundly unequal tax system, The Black Tax equips readers with the knowledge needed to combat inequality and injustice today.

Albert Camus’s lively journals from his eventful visits to the United States and South America in the 1940s, available again in a new translation. In March 1946, the young Albert Camus crossed from Le Havre to New York. Though he was virtually unknown to American audiences at the time, all that was about to change—The Stranger, his first book translated into English, would soon make him a literary star. By 1949, when he set out on a tour of South America, Camus was an international celebrity. Camus’s journals offer an intimate glimpse into his daily life during these eventful years and showcase his thinking at its most personal—a form of observational writing that the French call choses vues (things seen).  Camus’s journals from these travels record his impressions, frustrations, joys, and longings. Here are his unguarded first impressions of his surroundings and his encounters with publishers, critics, and members of the New York intelligentsia. Long unavailable in English, the journals have now been expertly retranslated by Ryan Bloom, with a new introduction by Alice Kaplan. Bloom’s translation captures the informal, sketch-like quality of Camus’s observations—by turns ironic, bitter, cutting, and melancholy—and the quick notes he must have taken after exhausting days of travel and lecturing. Bloom and Kaplan’s notes and annotations allow readers to walk beside the existentialist thinker as he experiences changes in his own life and the world around him, all in his inimitable style.

A vital examination of how social and economic justice organizations overcome resource disadvantages and build political power. Why do some coalitions triumph while others fall short? In Power to the Partners, Maraam A. Dwidar documents the vital role of social and economic justice organizations in American politics and explores the process by which they strategically build partnerships to advance more effective and equitable advocacy. Using original data tracking the collaboration patterns of more than twenty thousand nationally active advocacy organizations, Dwidar evaluates the micro- and macro-level conditions surrounding these groups’ successful efforts to collectively shape public policy. Power to the Partners reveals that while organizational advocates for social and economic justice are at a disadvantage in the American lobbying landscape—financially, tactically, and politically—coalition work can help ameliorate these disparities. By building and sustaining coalitions with structures and memberships that facilitate clarity, learning, and diverse perspectives, these advocates can successfully—and uniquely—make their mark on American public policy. Dwidar’s work offers critical insights for scholars and practitioners alike, from groundbreaking academic findings to evidence-based lessons for political organizers.

A fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization.   The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.

A new edition of Martin Buber’s many writings on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine, with updated forewords by two preeminent Palestinian and Jewish scholars.   The theologian and philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) was committed to radical socioeconomic reconstruction in pursuit of international peace. His voluminous writings on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine interweave his religious and philosophical teachings with his politics, each essential to Buber’s vision of democratic and religious life. A Land of Two Peoples collects the letters, talks, and essays in which Buber advocated for a binationalism that reconciled Arabs and Jews as a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. As relevant today as when it was first published nearly fifty years ago, this edition of A Land of Two Peoples includes two forewords from the preeminent Jewish and Palestinian scholars Paul Mendes-Flohr and Raef Zreik.

A nuanced analysis takes a California oil spill as its point of departure to show how affluent homeowners pushed for an environmentalism that would protect not only the earth but also property and community norms.   A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? As Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city’s past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends.

A fresh examination of political representation in an era of negative partisanship. What does representation look like when politicians focus on "othering" the opposing party rather than the policy interests of their constituents? How do voters react to negative partisan rhetoric? And is policy responsiveness still the cornerstone of American representative democracy? In How Politicians Polarize, Mia Costa draws on survey experiments, analysis of congressional newsletters and tweets, and data on fundraising and media coverage to examine how and why politicians rely so often on negative partisan attacks. Costa shows that most Americans do not like negative rhetoric, and politicians know this. Nonetheless, these kinds of attacks can reap powerful rewards from national media, donors, and party elites. Costa’s findings challenge the popular notion that Americans are motivated more by their partisan identities than by policy representation. Her research illuminates how the political ecosystem rewards negative representation and how this affects the quality of American democracy.

Writers talk about their work in many ways: as an art, as a calling, as a lifestyle. Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business, and those who want to make a living from their writing must understand the basic business principles underlying the industry. The Business of Being a Writer offers the business education writers need but so rarely receive. Jane Friedman is one of today's leading experts on the publishing industry. Through her website, social media presence, online courses, email newsletters, and other media, she helps writers understand how to navigate the industry with confidence and intentionality. This book advises writers on how to build a platform in a way that aligns with their values, how to spot critical mindset issues that might sabotage their efforts before they even begin, how to publish strategically, and what it means to diversify income streams beyond book sales. For this second edition, Friedman has updated every topic to reflect how the industry has evolved over the past half decade. New features include a section on business and legal issues commonly faced by writers, exercises at the end of each chapter, and a wealth of sample materials posted on a companion website. Reaching beyond the mechanical aspects of publishing, The Business of Being a Writer will help both new and experienced writers approach their careers with the same creative spirit as their writing. Friedman is encouraging without sugarcoating reality, blending years of research with practical advice that will help writers market themselves and maximize their writing-related income. Her book will leave them empowered, confident, and ready to turn their craft into a sustainable career.

A comprehensive biography of the celebrated author of the Decameron, a medieval masterpiece written in early Italian.                                                Boccaccio (1313–75) stands with Dante and Petrarch as one of the “Three Crowns” of Italian letters, a trio of writers who shaped the history of humanism, literature, and poetry. In this book, Dante’s award-winning biographer, Marco Santagata, takes up the moving life and legacy of Boccaccio—whose unflinching story of a pandemic-era community (the Decameron) created new possibilities for vernacular Italian prose. This landmark biography sheds new light on Boccaccio’s life—his family, friends, and foes, his aspirations, fears, and frustrations—and it shows how he was affected by transformations in Italian society. It also charts the influences that shaped Boccaccio’s understanding of literature: what kinds of stories it could tell and what kinds of characters it could depict; and, perhaps most importantly, what role art could play in a changing world. An insightful portrait of one of literature’s most important figures, this book promises to be the definitive biography of Boccaccio for many years to come.

An incisive exploration of Nietzsche as a bold, visionary poet-philosopher.   Today, Nietzsche is justly celebrated for his rich, philosophical naturalism, but Keith Ansell-Pearson warns that we must not overlook the visionary dimension of his thinking and his focus on the need to cultivate a new care of the self and care of life. In Nietzsche’s Earthbound Wisdom, Ansell-Pearson recovers Nietzsche’s love for a philosophy that guides us through our passions, one that opens us more fully to the possibilities of life and the joy of knowledge. Ansell-Pearson offers close readings of Nietzsche’s texts in conversation with philosophical and literary figures including Augustine, Baudelaire, Carlyle, Dostoevsky, Emerson, Flaubert, Stendhal, and more. Throughout, Ansell-Pearson examines Nietzsche’s sophisticated critique of literary naturalism and his alternative conception of the poet as a seer who has a deep longing for a new earth.

CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025A definitive history of the United States’ recovery from the Great Depression—and the New Deal's true part in it. FDR’s New Deal has long enjoyed a special place in American history and policy—both because it redefined the government’s fundamental responsibilities and because Roosevelt’s “bold experimentation” represented a type of policymaking many would like to see repeated. But “the thing about bold experiments,” economist George Selgin reminds us, “is that they often fail.” In False Dawn Selgin draws on both contemporary sources and numerous studies by economic historians to show that, although steps taken during the Roosevelt administration’s first days raised hopes of a speedy recovery from the Great Depression, instead of fulfilling those hopes, subsequent New Deal policies proved so counterproductive that over seventeen percent of American workers—more than the peak unemployment rate during the COVID-19 crisis—were still either unemployed or on work relief six years later. By distinguishing the New Deal’s successes from its failures, and explaining how the U.S. finally managed to lay the specter of mass unemployment to rest, Selgin draws salient lessons for dealing with future recessions.

A vivid tour of US military efforts to understand, survive, and command harsh environments worldwide—and beyond.   Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon.  Sand, Snow, and Stardust explores how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments and attempted to master them, intending to cement America’s planetary power. Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural knowledge as on military expertise and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer implausibility of modeling Martian environments on Earth, Gretchen Heefner takes us on a wry expedition into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the first manned space flight, plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth.   An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the planet—whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to escape it entirely.

A comprehensive history of masks in France from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.  Masks can conceal, disguise, or protect. They can guard status, inspire delight, or spread fear. They can also betray trust through insincerity, deceit, and hypocrisy. In Paris Concealed, historian James H. Johnson offers a sweeping history of masks both visible and unseen from the time of Louis XIV to the late nineteenth century, exploring the complex roles that masking and unmasking have played in the fashioning of our social selves.   Drawing from memoirs, novels, plays, and paintings, Paris Concealed explores the many domains in which masks have been decisive. Beginning in the court of Versailles, Johnson charts the genesis of courtly politesse and its widespread condemnation by Enlightenment philosophers and political thinkers. He describes strategies deployed in the era of the French Revolution for unmasking traitors and later efforts to penetrate criminal disguises through telltale marks on the body. He portrays the disruptive power of masks in public balls and carnivals and, with the coming of modernity, evokes their unsettling presence within the unconscious.    Compellingly written and beautifully illustrated, Paris Concealed lays bare the mask’s transformations, from marking one’s position in a static society to inspiring imagined identities in meritocracies to impeding the elusive search for one’s true self.  To tell the history of masks, Johnson shows, is to tell the history of modern selfhood.

A wide-ranging history of the term “fascism,” what it has meant, and what it means today.   The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the term “fascist” and when and whether it is appropriate to use it. The landmark study Fascism: The History of a Word takes this debate further by tackling its most fundamental questions: How did the terms “fascism” and “fascist” come to be in the first place? How and in what circumstances have they been used? How can they be understood today? And what are the advantages (or disadvantages) of using “fascism” to make sense of interwar authoritarianism as well as contemporary politics?   Exploring the writings and deeds of political leaders, activists, artists, authors, and philosophers, Federico Marcon traces the history of the term’s use (and usefulness) in relation to Mussolini’s political regime, antifascist resistance, and the quest of postwar historians to develop a definition of a “fascist minimum.” This investigation of the semiotics of “fascism” also aims to inquire about people’s voluntary renunciation of the modern emancipatory ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity.