The philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is very important at every stage of the history of modern American thought. It informs William James's evolutionary metaphysics, John Dewey's theory of logic, W.V.O. Quine's naturalism, and Richard Rorty's notion of the Linguistic Turn. Similarly, many Continental philosophers, like Jurgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Jacques Derrida, and Umberto Eco, have developed Peirce's semiotic logic as central to their own philosophical views. Yet until now there has been a yawning gap in the literature on what is arguably the most essential idea in the entire Peircean corpus, namely his "fallibilism." The basic idea of fallibilism is that all knowledge claims, including those metaphysical, methodological, introspective, and even mathematical claims - all of these remain uncertain, provisional, merely fallible conjectures.

As Elizabeth Cooke explains in "Peirce's Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry," one long-standing concern with the idea of fallibilism is that it might all too easily slide into "skepticism." And this would certainly undermine the overall project of making Peirce's fallibilism the linchpin for any realistic pragmatism. So, it is essential to show Peirce's philosophy does not require any claims to certitude, in order to keep his fallibilism from falling into skepticism or contextualism. Cooke's solution to this problem is to interpret Peirce as having reconceived knowledge - traditionally defined as "foundational" and even "static" - as a dynamic process of inquiry, one which evolves within a larger ontological process of evolution. Her book will be of great interest not only to Peirce and Pragmatism specialists but also to contemporary epistemologists more generally.

Elizabeth Cook's mesmerising poetic voice weaves the interlocking stories of Achilles and the central figures of his legend into a many-layered exploration of achievement and loss, of choice and inescapable destiny. Born of the sea-nymph Thetis by the mortal King Peleus, hidden as a girl on Skiros until Odysseus discovers him, Achilles becomes the Greeks' greatest warrior at Troy. Into his story come others - among them Hector, Helen, Penthiseleia the Amazon Queen and the centaur Chiron; and finally John Keats, whose writings form the basis of a meditation on identity and shared experience. An unforgettable and deeply moving work of fiction, Achilles also affirms of the story's enduring power to reach across centuries and cultures to the core of our imagination.

The law of estoppel is a modern concept with a medieval label. It concerns the enforcement of obligations outside the law of contract and tort; we might call it the law of consistency, which obliges people to stand by things they have said. This is a book for lawyers, but will be of interest to other readers as a picture of how the law has tried to deal with its own shortcomings. The book will be of interest practitioners and scholars in other jurisdictions particularly Australia and New Zealand.

King David sings his psalms. A world away, King Henry plots. And courtier Thomas Wyatt sees them both, his beloved falcon Lukkes on his arm. David wants Bathsheba. Henry too must have what he wants. He wants Ann, a divorce, a son. He looks up at his tapestry of David and sees a mighty predecessor who defended his faith and took what he liked. But he leaves it to others to count the costs. Among those counting is the poet Wyatt, who sees a different David, a man who repented before God, in song as in life. This is the version of the biblical king which Wyatt must give voice to as he translates David's psalms. As David pursues Bathsheba, Henry courts Ann, and Wyatt interweaves the past and present. Lux is a story of love and its reach, fidelity and faith, power and its abuses.

  Challenging received American history and forging a new path for Native American studies
Addressing Native American Studies' past, present, and future, the essays in "New Indians, Old Wars" tackle the discipline head-on, presenting a radical revision of the popular view of the American West in the process. Instead of luxuriating in its past glories or accepting the widespread historians' view of the West as a shared place, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn argues that it should be fundamentally understood as stolen.
Firmly grounded in the reality of a painful past, Cook-Lynn understands the story of the American West as teaching the political language of land theft and tyranny. She argues that to remedy this situation, Native American studies must be considered and pursued as its own discipline, rather than as a subset of history or anthropology. She makes an impassioned claim that such a shift, not merely an institutional or theoretical change, could allow Native American studies to play an important role in defending the sovereignty of indigenous nations today.

We all know what happened at Wounded Knee . . . don't we?
In this powerful and essential work, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn confronts the politics and policies of genocide that continue to destroy the land, livelihood, and culture of Native Americans. "Anti-Indianism in Modern America" tells the other side of stories of historical massacres and modern-day hate crimes, events that are dismissed or glossed over by historians, journalists, and courts alike. Cook-Lynn exposes the colonialism that works both overtly and covertly to silence and diminish Native Americans, supported by a rhetoric of reconciliation, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Comparing anti-Indianism to anti-Semitism, she sets the American history of broken treaties, stolen lands, mass murder, cultural dispossession, and Indian hating in an international context of ethnic cleansing, " ecocide" (environmental destruction), and colonial oppression.
Cook-Lynn also discusses the role Native American studies should take in reasserting tribal literatures, traditions, and politics and shows how the discipline has been sidelined by anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies. Asserting the importance of a " native conscience" --a knowledge of the mythologies, mores, and experiences of tribal society--among American Indian writers, she calls for the expression in American Indian art and literature of a tribal consciousness that acts to assure a tribal-nation people of its future.
Passionate, eloquent, and uncompromising, "Anti-Indianism in Modern America" concludes that there are no real solutions for Indians as long as they remain colonized peoples. Native Americans must be ableto tell their own stories and, most important, regain their land, the source of religion, morality, rights, and nationhood. As long as public silence accompanies the outlaw maneuvers that undermine tribal autonomy, the racist strategies that affect all Americans will continue.
It is difficult, Cook-Lynn concedes, to work toward the development of legal mechanisms against hate crimes, in Indian Country and elsewhere in the world. But it is not too late.