What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.

In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going.

‘I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species’ Bill Gates

‘Interesting and provocative… It gives you a sense of how briefly we’ve been on this Earth’ Barack Obama

Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy. Strauss recovered that great tradition of thought largely lost to the West by beginning his study of classical thought with its teaching on politics rather than its metaphysics. What brought Strauss to this way of reading the classics, however, was a discovery he made as a young political scientist studying the obscure texts of Islamic and Jewish medieval political thought. In this volume, Joshua Parens examines Strauss's investigations of medieval political philosophy, offering interpretations of his writings on the great thinkers of that tradition, including interpretations of his most difficult writings on Alfarabi and Maimonides. In addition Parens explicates Strauss's statements on Christian medieval thought and his argument for rejecting the Scholastic paradigm as a method for interpreting Islamic and Jewish thought. Contrasting Scholasticism with Islamic and Jewish medieval political philosophy, Parens clarifies the theme of Strauss's thought, what Strauss calls the "theologico-political problem," and reveals the significance of medieval political philosophy in the Western tradition. Joshua Parens is professor of philosophy and politics and dean of the Braniff Graduate School at the University of Dallas.

A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction challenges the prevailing view that 'psychology' explains the Gothic. Mighall offers original readings of familiar texts, from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle; but also a rich store of original sources, from European travelogues to sexological textbooks, from ecclesiastic histories to pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse. The book aims to provide the first full-length historical survey of Victorian Gothic fiction.

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the eminent scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great work today.

Heralding a new era in literary studies, the Oxford English Literary History breaks the mould of traditional approaches to the canon by focusing on the contexts in which authors wrote and how their work was shaped by the times in which they lived. These are books that every serious student and scholar of the period will need on their shelves.

James Simpson covers both high medieval and Tudor writing, showing how the coming of the Renaissance and Reformation displaced the earlier, hospitably diverse literary culture. Out went the flourishing variousness of medieval writing (Chaucer, Langland, the 'mystery' plays, feminine visionary writing); in came writing - by Wyatt, Surrey, and others - that prized coherence and unity, even while reflecting a sense of what had been lost.

In what was once described as "the century of nerves", a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This study offers an integrated analysis of how medicine and literature figured the connection between the body and the mind. Alongside detailed examinations of some of the century's most influential neurological and physiological theories, Jane Wood brings readings of both major and relatively neglected fictions - a range which includes work by Charlotte Bronte and George MacDonald, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Stepping into an already lively area of interdisciplinary debate, Passion and Pathology is distinguished by its recognition of the intellectual and imaginative force of both discourses: it extends our understanding of the interaction between science and literature in the wider culture of the period.

Paul Guyer is acknowledged as one of the world's foremost Kant specialists, and he collects here some of his most celebrated essays from the past decade and a half. The governing theme of the volume is the role of systematicity in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Featuring two brand-new papers and an introduction to orient the reader, Kant's System of Nature and Freedom will be an essential purchase for anyone working on the history of philosophy and related areas of ethics, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

Calvet's Web is a study of a circle of French antiquarians, naturalists, and bibliophiles in the period 1750-1810. By using the surviving correspondence of its members, Laurence Brockliss assembles a vivid picture of the French Republic of Letters in an era of rapid change, showing how the world of scholarship relates to the movement historians call the Enlightenment and how it is torn apart, then reconstructed, in the social and political turmoil of the French Revolution.

The Conservative Party has been the dominant force in twentieth-century British politics. On its own or as the predominant partner in a coalition it has held power for more than sixty years since 1900. Despite this it has been the most neglected and misunderstood of all the main parties. This book is the first systematic attempt to survey the history and politics of the Conservative Party across the whole of the twentieth century from the `Khaki' election of 1900 to John Major's victory of 1992 and beyond. Traditional boundaries between history and political science have been ignored, with each of the authoritative team of contributors pursuing an important theme within three main areas; the composition and structure of the Party; its ideas, policies and actions in government; and its public image and sources of support in the country. The essays are based upon new research, in particular in the Conservative Party archives. Conservative Century will be essential reading for both students and specialists, and it offers a mine of fascinating information for anyone interested in British politics.

Over the last three decades Anthony La Vopa has extended his reach as an Enlightenment historian from Germany to England, Scotland, and France. Enlightenment Past and Present: Essays in a Social History of Ideas provides insights into all four contexts, with a view to understanding the Enlightenment's contours in spaces that were distinct but nonetheless shared in a European-wide engagement with a cluster of political, social, and cultural issues. The volume explores a wide variety of themes in the formation of modernity, including the construction of a public, the emergence of modern feminism, the problematic legitimacy of sexuality and marriage, the ideal and practice of friendship, patron-client relations, the conversational sociability of politeness, and the evolution of the essay as a genre. La Vopa aims to demonstrate in practice the new interest in restoring the social to intellectual history without falling back into reductionism. He throws a spotlight on a number of key texts in eighteenth-century philosophy. In several essays, La Vopa employs the resources of meaning in rhetorical cultures with thick social contexts to present Enlightenment texts not simply as print records, but as rhetorical performances with specific audiences. He also often intertwines contexts by focusing on biographical experience, using 'private' life traces such as diaries and other forms of correspondence, to enhance our understanding of published discourse. While drawing on the history of philosophy, the volume takes a decidedly more historical path through the canon. It includes essay reviews which take stock of developments in Enlightenment studies via critical appraisals of major recent contributions to the field.

WINNER OF THE 2020 CONNECTICUT BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS IN 2021 BY BOOKBROWSE "Perkins' richly detailed narrative is a reminder that gender equity has never come easily, but instead if borne from the exertions of those who precede us."-Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls If Yale was going to keep its standing as one of the top two or three colleges in the nation, the availability of women was an amenity it could no longer do without. In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "one thousand male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it? The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale's imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first girls found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future. Anne Gardiner Perkins's unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change is an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today. "Yes, Yale needed women, but it didn't really want them... Anne Gardiner Perkins tells how these young women met the challenge with courage and tenacity and forever changed Yale and its chauvinistic motto of graduating 1,000 male leaders every year."-Lynn Povich, author of The Good Girls Revolt

How 'effectiveness', increasingly a measurement of value replacing a simple financial result, can best be judged across a wide variety of fields. The purpose of this volume is to examine the concept and measurement of 'effectiveness', now increasingly employed to evaluate the kinds of operations where success cannot be judged in monetary terms. A philosopher comments on thedevelopment of the concepts of 'cause' and 'effect' from classical times to the present; a systems engineer looks at the possibility of using the parameter for the evaluation of coherent systems; a restoration ecologist discussesthe parameters used in reforestation and their relation to effectiveness considered at different levels; a sociologist relates the methodologies used in this discipline to evaluate the effectiveness of health programs; an expertof education discusses the applicability of the measurement of effectiveness to the functioning of schools; a specialist in aid to developing countries describes the effectiveness of operations from the implementation of major projects to demining operations; a consultant on foreign aid highlights the cultural perception of efficacy in developing countries; finally, an anthropologist examines the relationship between 'effectiveness' and 'efficiency' in food intake and production between two different populations living in the same region, a semi-nomadic agro-pastoralist and a settled agriculturalist one. A concluding discussion notes the salience of the concept of effectiveness inmany 'living' phenomena, including sociocultural ones, and the possibility of using them better to understand their evolution.

Frederick F. Schmitt offers a systematic interpretation of David Hume's epistemology, as it is presented in the indispensable A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume's text alternately manifests scepticism, empiricism, and naturalism in epistemology. Interpretations of his epistemology have tended to emphasise one of these apparently conflicting positions over the others. But Schmitt argues that the positions can be reconciled by tracing them to a single underlying epistemology of knowledge and probability quietly at work in the text, an epistemology according to which truth is the chief cognitive merit of a belief, and knowledge and probable belief are species of reliable belief. Hume adopts Locke's dichotomy between knowledge and probability and reassigns causal inference from its traditional place in knowledge to the domain of probability-his most significant departure from earlier accounts of cognition. This shift of causal inference to an associative and imaginative operation raises doubts about the merit of causal inference, suggesting the counterintuitive consequence that causal inference is wholly inferior to knowledge-producing demonstration. To defend his associationist psychology of causal inference from this suggestion, Hume must favourably compare causal inference with demonstration in a manner compatible with associationism. He does this by finding an epistemic status shared by demonstrative knowledge and causally inferred beliefs-the status of justified belief. On the interpretation developed here, he identifies knowledge with infallible belief and justified belief with reliable belief, i.e., belief produced by truth-conducive belief-forming operations. Since infallibility implies reliable belief, knowledge implies justified belief. He then argues that causally inferred beliefs are reliable, so share this status with knowledge. Indeed Hume assumes that causally inferred beliefs enjoy this status in his very argument for associationism. On the reliability interpretation, Hume's accounts of knowledge and justified belief are part of a broader veritistic epistemology making true belief the chief epistemic value and goal of science. The veritistic interpretation advanced here contrasts with interpretations on which the chief epistemic value of belief is its empirical adequacy, stability, or fulfilment of a natural function, as well as with the suggestion that the chief value of belief is its utility for common life. Veritistic interpretations are offered of the natural function of belief, the rules of causal inference, scepticism about body and matter, and the criteria of justification. As Schmitt shows, there is much attention to Hume's sources in Locke and to the complexities of his epistemic vocabulary.

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Philosophy in eighteenth-century Britain was diverse, vibrant, and sophisticated. This was the age of Hume and Berkeley and Reid, of Hutcheson and Kames and Smith, of Ferguson and Burke and Wollstonecraft. Important and influential works were published in every area of philosophy, from the theory of vision to theories of political resistance, from the philosophy of language to accounts of ways of governing the passions. The philosophers of eighteenth-century Britain were enormously influential, in France, in Italy, in Germany, and in America. Their ideas and arguments remain a powerful presence in philosophy three centuries later. This Oxford Handbook is the first book ever to provide comprehensive coverage of the full range of philosophical writing in Britain in the eighteenth century. It provides accounts of the writings of all the major figures, but also puts those figures in the context provided by a host of writers less well known today. The book has five principal sections: 'Logic and Metaphysics', 'The Passions', 'Morals', 'Criticism', and 'Politics'. Each section comprises four chapters, providing detailed coverage of all of the important aspects of its subject matter. There is also an introductory section, with chapters on the general character of philosophizing in eighteenth-century Britain, and a concluding section on the important question of the relation at this time between philosophy and religion. The authors of the chapters are experts in their fields. They include philosophers, historians, political theorists, and literary critics, and they teach in colleges and universities in Britain, in Europe, and in North America.

How did time begin? What conditions led to humans evolving on Earth? Will we survive the Anthropocene? And is it really true that we're all made from stars? Combining knowledge from chemistry, biology, and physics, with insights from the social sciences and humanities, A Brief History of the Last 13.8 Billion Years follows the continuum of historical change in the cosmos - from the Big Bang, through the evolution of life, to human history. In this compelling and revealing book, David Baker traces the rise of complexity in the cosmos, from the first atoms to the first life and then to humans and the things we have made. He shows us how simple clumps of hydrogen gas transformed into complex human societies. This approach - Big History - allows us to see beyond the chaos of human affairs to the overall trajectory. Finally, Baker looks at the dramatic and sudden changes we're making to our planet and its biosphere and how history hints at what might come next.

What was the Scottish Enlightenment? Long since ignored or sidelined, it is now a controversial topic - damned by some as a conservative movement objectively allied to the enemies of enlightenment, placed centre stage by others as the archetype of what is meant by 'Enlightenment'. In this book leading experts reassess the issue by exploring both the eighteenth-century intellectual developments taking place within Scotland and the Scottish contribution to the Enlightenment as a whole. The Scottish experience during this period forms the underlying theme of early chapters, with contributors examining the central philosophy of the 'science of man', the reality of 'applied enlightenment' in Scotland, and the Presbyterian hostility to the spread of 'heretical' ideas. Moving beyond Scotland's borders, contributors in later chapters examine the wider recognition of Scotland's intellectual activity, both within Europe and across the Atlantic. Through a series of case studies authors assess the engagement of European intellectuals with Scottish thinkers, looking at the French interpretation of Adam Smith's notion of sympathy, divergent approaches to the writing of history in Scotland and Germany, and the variety of Neapolitan responses to Scottish thought; the final chapter analyses the links between the 'moderate Enlightenment' in Scotland and America. Through these innovative studies this book provides a rich and nuanced understanding of Enlightenment thought in Scotland and its impact in Europe and North America, highlighting the importance of placing the national context in a transnational perspective.

The Enigma of Justice: Freedom and Morality in the Work of Immanuel Kant, G.W.F Hegel, Agnes Heller, and Axel Honneth offers a novel perspective on the idea of justice. Claire Nyblom argues that justice is a cultural and historical constant, routinely summoned as if it were a foundational concept to legitimate or challenge social arrangements. Instead, justice is characterized by a plurality of theories, containing regulative and critical dimensions that are in tension. Nyblom argues that the categorical imperative can be positioned as a strong evaluative standard that mediates plurality, creating a revisable idea of justice resistant to relativism. After identifying the originating architecture of Immanuel Kant and G.W.F Hegel, the discussion engages with the work of Agnes Heller and Axel Honneth, using the "pivots of justice" as an analytic lens focused on commonalities rather than differences. This framework leads to a dialogue between Heller and Honneth that strengthens their respective positions. The Enigma of Justice provides a valuable study and insight into the contemporary nature of justice. The book provides a useful orientation for students and scholars interested in debates about justice, and to those working in the areas of European philosophy, social and political theory, sociology, and the law.

A wide-ranging political biography of diplomat, Nobel prize winner, and civil rights leader Ralph Bunche. A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala restores Bunche to his rightful place in history. He shows that Bunche was not only a singular figure in midcentury America; he was also one of the key architects of the postwar international order. Raustiala tells the story of Bunche's dramatic life, from his early years in prewar Los Angeles to UCLA, Harvard, the State Department, and the heights of global diplomacy at the United Nations. After narrowly avoiding assassination Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his ground-breaking mediation of the first Arab-Israeli conflict, catapulting him to popular fame. A central player in some of the most dramatic crises of the Cold War, he pioneered conflict management and peacekeeping at the UN. But as Raustiala argues, his most enduring achievement was his work to dismantle European empire. Bunche perceptively saw colonialism as the central issue of the 20th century and decolonization as a project of global racial justice. From marching with Martin Luther King to advising presidents and prime ministers, Ralph Bunche shaped our world in lasting ways. This definitive biography gives him his due. It also reminds us that postwar decolonization not only fundamentally transformed world politics, but also powerfully intersected with America's own civil rights struggle.