The British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877-59) reconceptualized economics as a theory of economic welfare and a logic of policy analysis. Misconceptions of his work abound. This book, an essay in demystification and the first reading of the entire Pigouvian oeuvre, stresses his pragmatic and historicist premises.

This book is a provocative account of the ties between civil defence, national security, and public support for nuclear deterrence in the early Cold War. Oakes argues that while civil defence films and drills told Americans it was possible to survive a nuclear attack, the primary purpose of civil defence was to provide a moral foundation for nuclear deterrence.

'The Anthem Companion to C. Wright Mills' offers the best contemporary work on C. Wright Mills, written by the best scholars currently working in this field. Original, authoritative and wide-ranging, the critical assessments of this volume will make it ideal for Wright Mills students and scholars alike.

'Anthem Companions to Sociology' offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the last two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological tradition, and will provide students and scholars with both an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), the author of such books as Political Theology and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (both published in English by The MIT Press), was one of the leading political and legal theorists of the twentieth century. His critical discussions of liberal democratic ideals and institutions continue to arouse controversy, but even his opponents concede his uncanny sense for the basic problems of modern politics. Political Romanticism is a historical study that, like all of Schmitt's major works, offers a fundamental political critique. In it, he defends a concept of political action based on notions of good and evil, justice and injustice, and attacks the political passivity entailed by the romanticization of experience. The book has three strands. The first is an attack on received notions of the origins of the Romantic Movement. Schmitt argues that this movement represents a secularization, subjectification, and privatization in which God is replaced by the emancipated, private individual of the bourgeois social order. The second is an assault on political romanticism that includes a broader attack on the new European bourgeoisie, which Schmitt characterizes as the historical bearer of the movement. The third strand is a defense of political conservatism and a refutation of the view that political romanticism is intrinsically linked with romanticism. Here Schmitt argues that the political romantic is tied not to positions but to aesthetics, and can therefore as easily become a Danton as a Frederick the Great. Guy Oakes's introduction places the book in historical context and also suggests its continuing relevance through his discussion of the latest outcropping of political romanticism in the late 1960s, intriguingly brought out in his example of Norman Mailer as a political romantic. Political Romanticism is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

One of the most original and prolific economists of the twentieth century, Joan Robinson (1903-83) is widely regarded as the most important woman in the history of economic thought. Robinson studied economics at Cambridge University, where she made a career that lasted some fifty years. She was an unlikely candidate for success at Cambridge. A young woman in 1930 in a university dominated by men, she succeeded despite not having a remarkable academic record, a college fellowship, significant publications, or a powerful patron. In "The Provocative Joan Robinson," Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes trace the strategies and tactics Robinson used to create her professional identity as a Cambridge economist in the 1930s, examining how she recruited mentors and advocates, carefully defined her objectives, and deftly pursued and exploited opportunities.

Aslanbeigui and Oakes demonstrate that Robinson's professional identity was thoroughly embedded in a local scientific culture in which the Cambridge economists A. C. Pigou, John Maynard Keynes, Dennis Robertson, Piero Sraffa, Richard Kahn (Robinson's closest friend on the Cambridge faculty), and her husband Austin Robinson were important figures. Although the economists Joan Robinson most admired--Pigou, Keynes, and their mentor Alfred Marshall--had discovered ideas of singular greatness, she was convinced that each had failed to grasp the essential theoretical significance of his own work. She made it her mission to recast their work both to illuminate their major contributions and to redefine a Cambridge tradition of economic thought. Based on the extensive correspondence of Robinson and her colleagues, "The Provocative Joan Robinson" is the story of a remarkable woman, the intellectual and social world of a legendary group of economists, and the interplay between ideas, ambitions, and disciplinary communities.

Heinrich Rickert (1863 1936) was one of the leading neo-Kantian philosophers in Germany and a crucial figure in the discussions of the foundations of the social sciences in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His views were extremely influential, most significantly on Max Weber. The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science is Rickert's most important work, and it is here translated into English for the first time. It presents his systematic theory of knowledge and philosophy of science, and deals particularly with historical knowledge and the problem of demarcating the natural from the human sciences. The theory Rickert develops is carefully argued and of great intrinsic interest. It departs from both positivism and neo-Hegelian idealism and is worked out by contrast to the views of others, particularly Dilthey and the early phenomenologists.