Transaction Publishers

American conservative thought in the twentieth century. (reprint, 1970)

This is a reprint of a 1970 collection of essays on conservatism extracted from books and journals. The volume includes pieces by well-known writers such as Milton Freedman, Jane Jacobs and Russell Kirk, along with more obscure voices influential in shaping this intellectual tradition. Edited by Buckley, Jr. (founder of National Review), the collection is intellectual yet accessible and focuses on conservative thought in the realms of economics, social order and religion. This reprint includes a lengthy introduction by Pilon, founder of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. The book's original title was Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?; American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Armenians in the medieval Islamic world; paradigms of interaction, seventh to fourteenth centuries.

This is the first of a three-volume work seeking to reframe the Armenian experience in the context of the Islamic Near East by drawing out hitherto undetected or obscured patterns of interaction between Armenians and their Islamic environments through unearthing paradigmatic cases of political, cultural, religious, philosophical, literary, and artistic interaction and thereby overcoming what the author sees as an inherent Armenocentrism in Armenian historical writing. She takes a generally chronological approach across the three volumes, with this volume examining cases from the 7th to 11th centuries. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Bounded bureaucracy and the budgetary process in the United States.

Ryu (public policy and administration, Ohio U.) defines bounded rationality as the inability of budget decision makers to process policy data and political inputs, and presents empirical evidence that bureaucratic centralization of the budget processes expedites information processing and reduces organizational conflicts. National budget data shows that the Congressional budget process works most efficiently when the government is divided, ensuring the CBO a safeguard against political crossfire. The state budget chapter examines the impact of bureaucratic centralization on budget punctuations in different state governments. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Capitalist solutions; a philosophy of American moral dilemmas.

Decrying the US government for pushing "the nation remorselessly toward socialism in its attempt to resolve America's problems," Bernstein (philosophy, State U. of New York at Purchase) promotes Ayn Rand's capitalism-celebrating philosophy of Objectivism and describes how it can be applied to contemporary moral and political problems. Following a brief introduction to the principles of Objectivism, he presents chapters demonstrating Objectivist approaches to environmental issues, Islamic "totalitarianism," health care, abortion, education, and individual rights. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Children's Health Insurance Program; past and future.

The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides access to healthcare for poor children. Smith (emeritus, political science, Swarthmore College) contends that the CHIP program has been successful and shows how the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) will further improve quality of care and access. The book outlines CHIP's origins, legislation, and implementation and also describes the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The author looks at policy lessons learned from CHIP and makes suggestions for the program's future. A glossary of acronyms and terms is included. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Controlling delinquents. (reprint, 1968)

In this reprint from 1968, the late Wheeler (law and social science, Yale Law School) reports on 13 studies conducted under the support of the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961, which called for the development of curriculum materials for training programs for those who head delinquency prevention and control agencies. Contributed by specialists working in the Boston area in sociology, social work, behavioral sciences, psychology, cultural anthropology, and government, the studies deal with various aspects of the relationships between juvenile offenders and those who work with them. They discuss implications for social policy, including the social organization of delinquency control and the groups and agencies involved, agencies and their clients, and community prevention and casework programs. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Daydreams and nightmares, 2d ed.

In this memoir, Horowitz (sociology and political science, Rutgers U.) recounts his childhood growing up in a small community of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Harlem up to age 13, when his family moved to Flatbush. His parents fled the persecution of the Tsarist army in Russia during World War I to America, where they settled in Harlem in the 1930s. He describes his experiences growing up in poverty; places like the Apollo, the Polo Grounds, and Central Park; and the relationship between blacks and Jews. This edition adds two chapters on the economic impact of the Great Depression, which began the year he was born, and the sense of schooling during the period, with focuses on the education of his sister at a school for girls. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Facts, frameworks, and forecasts. (reprint, 1991)

A reprint from 1991, this volume contains 12 chapters that examine advances in criminological theory. In the first part, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists from North America and Europe discuss biological conditions that have theoretical links to criminal behavior, general issues related to crime, prevention, and specific theories. The second part describes longitudinal studies in four countries showing biological, social, and psychological factors that influence criminal behavior such as aggression, drug use and delinquency, and antisocial behavior. The late McCord was professor of criminal justice at Temple U. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls. (reprint, 1978)

In this reprint from 1978, the late Wilson, a literary critic and social commentator, presents a journalistic, rather than scholarly, report for general readers on the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Wilson heard of their discovery and voyaged to the area to document it and their folklore, history, political and religious issues, and the controversies that arose between scholars. The volume was first serialized by The New Yorker in the 1950s, published in 1955, then updated for the 1978 edition. This edition has a new introduction by Raphael Israeli, who details the ongoing academic controversy over the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Leadership in East European Communism, 1945-1970. (reprint, 1970)

Originally published under the title Political Leadership in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1970, this volume presents fourteen essays on the characteristics of leadership in the former Soviet Bloc. Divided into sections covering theoretical bases of Soviet and East European leadership, profiles of political leaders, leadership, and society and reform, chapters discuss such topics as Marxist theories of leadership and bureaucracy, career types in Soviet politics and leadership and group conflict in satellite states. Contributors include academics in history and political science from American universities. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A new look at new realism; the psychology and philosophy of E.B. Holt.

This collection of essays about, and a couple letters by, Edwin Bissell Holt examines a unique contributor to early American psychology and offers a defense for a renewed interested in his ideas and the issues of psychology he engaged. The collection opens with a preface offering readers background in the philosophical and scientific upheavals that laid the ground for the new sort of investigations Holt would pursue. The two-fold question of introspection and the practico-scientific reality of mental phenomena permeate Holt's work and comes up in these essays. Two letters, to William James in 1905 and Edward Reed in 1979, bracket his life and the collection. Organized into three sections, the essays consider specific responses informed or made by Holt to the problem of illusion, Holt's legacy, and Holt's New Realism against representationalism. The editor, Eric Charles (psychology, Pensylvannia State U.) offers an introduction to Holt's biography and broad influences/interests. The contributors are academic and experimental psychologists from around the world. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

One hundred years of kibbutz life; a century of crises and reinvention.

Palgi (organizational sociology, Emek Yezreel College, and Institute for Research of the Kibbutz and the Cooperative Idea, U. of Haifa, Israel), a kibbutz member, and Reinharz (sociology, Brandeis U.) assemble 20 articles by psychologists, sociologists, writers, economists, artists, and others mostly from Israel who describe the revitalization of the kibbutz. They examine the changes that have occurred in its 100 years of existence and their meaning and discuss the status of the kibbutz in Israeli society, the decline of communal ideology and its connection to changes in the kibbutz way of life, and contemporary changes, including leadership roles, gender equality, family stability, aging, and the developmental stages of a large kibbutz. They then consider the ways contemporary visual, film, and literary artists represent the kibbutz of the past, and the directions and ideas evolving from kibbutzim today, including global ties to communes, their local legal position in Israel, and solutions to keeping the lifestyle alive. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The place of law; the role and limits of law in society.

Barnett (law, Widener U.) explores the interaction between law and society, arguing that the institution of law in economically advanced and socially complex countries is essentially a reactive mechanism that responds to changes in the core activities and values of social life and is an ineffective regulator of behavior and, therefore, an ineffective mechanism for (re)shaping society. The argument is supported, firstly, through explorations of the social character of investment law and, secondly, with quantitative studies that investigate sociological, demographic, and economic conditions of different jurisdictions as antecedents to abortion law in the United States, the law of same-sex relationships in Europe, and state regulation of lawyers in the US. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The politics of reapportionment. (reprint, 1962)

First published in 1962, this volume by Jewell (emeritus, political science, U. of Kentucky) surveyed malappor.tionment of representation in the congressional and state legislative districts of New York , California, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Maryland, and Michigan. For each state, he reviewed the history of apportionment, finding a consistent pattern of gerrymandered districts and disparities of voting power caused by rural control of the legislatures that resulted in discrimination against urban and suburban voters, a Fourteenth Amendment issue that the US Supreme Court refused to take up until Baker v. Carr, heard in the same year as this work was published. This volume includes a new introduction by William Quirk. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Prosperity and depression; a theoretical analysis of cyclical movements. (reprint, 1937)

First published in 1937, this is one of the major works of Austrian economist Haberler (Austrian both in the sense that he was born in Austria and that he is associated with the Austrian School, although he spent much of his career at Harvard University). Haberler conducts an analysis of the then extant literature on business cycle theory and formulates his own synthetic theory of the causes and nature of cyclical phenomena. Although his theory departs from standard Austrian business cycle theory, it remains characterized by an Austrian-style emphasis on the causal role of changes in the supplies of money and credit in conjunction with price and wage-rate rigidities resulting from government regulation. This volume includes a new introduction by Joseph Salerno. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Psychology & politics. (reprint, 1923)

W.H.R. Rivers (1864-1922) was an English ethnologist, anthropologist, and psychiatrist widely known for his work with traumatized World War I soldiers. Prior to his sudden death in June of 1922, he had been preparing to stand for a seat in the British House of Commons as a member of the Labour Party. Part of that preparation included penning three essays in which he sought to lay out his political beliefs and integrate them with his social and psychological views. Those three essays are presented here, together with three other addresses on: "Socialism and Human Nature," "Education and Mental Hygiene," and "The Aims of Ethnology." This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 1923. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Psychiatry and public affairs. (reprint, 1966)

The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) is an American association of psychiatrists comprised of various investigating committees working to advance the field and its application to social and interpersonal problems. This volume, first published in 1966, contains a collection of papers produced in the two decades following GAP's 1946 founding, tackling issues perceived by GAP to be of public import. Topics discussed include psychiatric aspects of school desegregation, psychological attitudes and adaptation for those working overseas, factors used to increase the susceptibility of individuals to forceful indoctrination, psychological and medical aspects of the use of nuclear energy, and psychiatric aspects of the prevention of nuclear war. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Reflections on the revolution of our time. (reprint, 1943)

First published in 1943, this work by the influential British Marxist political scientist and economist Laski (1893-1950) is essentially a defense of the principles of the Russian Revolution and an optimistic meditation on the directions of world political-economy in relation to those principles that are rooted in Laski's perceptions of class and international politics as they stood in the midst of World War II. This edition includes a new introduction by Pearson (emeritus, political science, Radford U.) assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Laski's text in light of the ensuing decades. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Synthetic biology; science, business, and policy.

The techniques of synthetic biology have the potential to rewrite an organism's actual genetic code, allowing synthetic biology to achieve more exact bioengineering results than current genetic engineering techniques. Solomon (law, George Washington U. Law School) presents a policy framework for self-regulation of the promising new field of synthetic biology, arguing against government regulation. The book focuses on the work of National Medal of Science award winner J. Craig Venter. The volume begins with background chapters on scientific explanations of the origins of life, the chemical basis for life as revealed by molecular biology, and recent research on reading the genetic code and sequencing the human genome. The core of the book offers chapters on Venter's organizational structure and the funding of his nonprofit entities; the research progress in synthetic biology made by Venter's nonprofit team, culminating in the first synthetic cell; and projects undertaken by Venter's for-profit arm, Synthetic Genomics, Inc., especially in the biofuels area. A conclusion examines policy implications related to the safety of experiments, the risks of terrorism, and unfair monopolies. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Theories of causality; from antiquity to the present.

Losee (emeritus, philosophy, Lafayette College) samples answers over the centuries to three questions: what types of entities qualify as causes and effects, what the relationship between cause and effect is, and how causal claims are to be assessed. He covers classical sources to 1900, early 20th-century theories and the dominance of the regularity view, quantum mechanics and the regularity-between-states view, and protests against the identification of causality and regularity. His topics include Francis Bacon on the exclusion of final causes, Bertrand Russell and N.R. Campbell on causal relations in science, the interpretation of quantum phenomena, and David Lewis and the counterfactual conditional view. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Village life in south India; cultural design and environmental variation.

Beals (emeritus, anthropology, U. of California-Riverside) examines the kinds or relationships that exist between South Indian villages and the world around them, in order to understand their successful persistence in an uncertain world. Most of his study revolves around three villages in different parts of Mysore State, but he points out where his observations and interpretations find echo elsewhere in South India. Reprinted from a 1974 edition for which no data is provided. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Virgil's golden egg and other Neapolitan miracles; an investigation into the sources of creativity.

Ledeen, a former consultant to the US National Security Council and the Defense Department channels his enthusiasm for the city of Naples into a unique meditation on the origins of its creativity. His exploration touches on the city's roots, history, religion, myths, Mafia ties, customs, and finally destiny, culminating in an exuberant celebration of its rich culture. Leeden is the author of D'Annuzio (2001) and West European Communism and American Foreign Policy (1987) also published by Transaction Publishers. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)