Giving Kids a Fair Chance

by James Heckman
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / March 2013

In Giving Kids a Fair Chance, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman argues that children born into disadvantage are, by the time they start kindergarten, already at risk of dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, crime, and a lifetime of low-wage work. This is bad for all those born into disadvantage and bad for American society. He shows that acting early has much greater positive economic and social impact than later interventions. At a time when state and local budgets for early interventions are being cut, Heckman issues an urgent call for action and offers some practical steps for how to design and pay for new programs.

The debate that follows delves deeply into some of the most fraught questions of our time: the sources of inequality, the role of schools in solving social problems, and how to invest public resources most effectively. Mike Rose, Geoffrey Canada, Charles Murray, Carol Dweck, Annette Lareau, and other prominent experts participate.

What We Know About Climate Change

by Kerry Emanuel
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / November 2012

"This slender volume is perhaps the single best thing written about climate change for a general audience."
—The New York Times

The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In this new edition, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel—a political conservative—outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. He also covers two major developments since the first edition: the most recent round of updated projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate simulations, and the so-called "climategate" incident that heralded the subsequent collapse of popular and political support in the United States for dealing with climate change.

Occupy the Future

edited by David Grusky, Doug McAdam,
Rob Reich and Debra Satz
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / December 2012

The Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited new questions about the relationship between democracy and equality in the United States. Do new developments—most notably the rise of extreme inequality—offer new threats to the realization of our most cherished principles? Can we build an open, democratic, and successful movement to realize our ideals? Occupy the Future offers informed and opinionated essays that address these questions. The writers—including Nobel Laureate in Economics Kenneth Arrow and bestselling authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich—lay out what our country’s principles are, whether we’re living up to them, and what can be done to bring our institutions into better alignment with them.

Shopping for Good

Dara O'Rourke
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / November 2012

“Buy local,” “buy green,” “buy organic,” “fair trade”—how effective has the ethical consumption movement been in changing market behavior? Can consumers create fair and sustainable supply chains by shopping selectively?

Dara O’Rourke, the activist-scholar who first broke the news about Nike’s sweatshops in the 1990s, considers the promise of ethical consumption—the idea that individuals, voting with their wallets, can promote better labor conditions and environmental outcomes globally.

Back to Full Employment

Robert Pollin
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / April 2012

Full employment used to be an explicit goal of economic policy in most of the industrialized world. Some countries even achieved it. In Back to Full Employment, economist Robert Pollin argues that the United States—today faced with its highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression—should put full employment back on the agenda.

"Pollin’s strategy is to step around the political blockage and describe what a true full employment program might look like. The exercise helps the reader appreciate the impoverishment not just of our labor markets but of our politics." —Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

Blaming Islam

John Bowen
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / April 2012

In the United States and in Europe, politicians, activists, and even some scholars argue that Islam is incompatible with Western values. In Blaming Islam, John Bowen uncovers the myths about Islam and Muslim integration, with a focus on the histories, policy, and rhetoric associated with Muslim immigration in Europe, the British experiment with sharia law for Muslim domestic disputes, and the claims of European and American writers that Islam threatens the West.

Border Wars

Tom Barry
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / September 2011

With the rise of the Tea Party and their current favorite, Governor Rick Perry, the entire country may soon be following a Texas model of border security. In Border Wars, dogged investigative journalist Tom Barry (2010 National Magazine Award finalist for public-interest reporting) documents the costs of that model: lives lost; families torn apart; billions of wasted tax dollars; vigilantes prowling the desert; and fiscal crises at every level of government.

Government’s Place In the Market

Eliot Spitzer
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / April 2010

There has been a lot of technocratic talk about credit default swaps and bailouts, but Americans still have not come to terms with what we really need: a market that delivers public benefit. Spitzer lays out a map of when and how government should intervene to ensure that the market works for everyone.

With responses from Dean Baker and Robert Johnson.

Preparing for Climate Change

Michael D. Mastrandrea and Stephen H. Schneider
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / 2010

Global momentum is building to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The less happy news is that Earth’s temperatures will continue to rise for decades, and climbing temperatures are already having serious consequences for vulnerable people and regions through droughts, extreme weather, and melting glaciers. In this book, climate experts Michael Mastrandrea and the late Stephen Schneider argue that we need to start adapting to climate change, now.

Immigrants and the Right to Stay

Joseph H. Carens
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / 2010

Few issues have so divided the country in recent years as immigration. Immigrants and the Right to Stay brings the debate into the realm of public reason. Political theorist Joseph H. Carens argues that although states have a right to control their borders, the right to deport those who violate immigration laws is not absolute. With time, immigrants develop a moral claim to stay.

With responses from T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Linda Bosniak, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Douglas S. Massey, Mae M. Ngai, and Carol M. Swain.

Taking Economics Seriously

Dean Baker
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / 2010

“A terrific book. Dean Baker deconstructs the myth that big corporations have any interest in free markets and deregulation. And he is right: industry interests support government intervention all the time—when it helps them. They have thrown the free market under the bus to maximize profits, and Taking Economics Seriously explains how.”
—Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel

“Read this book only if you worried about where the United States is heading.” —Simon Johnson, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Rule of Law, Misrule of Men

Elaine Scarry
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / 2010

Scarry, “known for her unflinching investigations of war, torture, and pain” (New York Times Sunday Magazine), offers a fierce defense of the people’s role as guarantor of our democracy. This book is an uncompromising call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not.

“Excoriating and elegant, Elaine Scarry takes us to the big issues: why the rule of law matters, what went wrong, and what is needed to put it right.” —Philippe Sands, author of Lawless World and Torture Team

“Elaine Scarry consistently offers some of the most trenchant and passionate analysis of the politics of democracy and terror in the United States. These essays are a searing call to conscience, an eloquent plea for justice, and a damning indictment of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11.” —David Cole, author of Justice At War: The Men and Ideas That Shaped America’s War on Terror

Why We Cooperate

Michael Tomasello
MIT Press / Cloth / $14.95 / 2009

“[A] fascinating approach to the question of what makes us human renders this a singularly worthwhile read.” —Publishers Weekly

Tomasello identifies the psychological processes that underlie human collaboration and culture, from the evolution of tolerance and trust to the creation of such group-level structures as cultural norms and institutions.

The book includes responses from four scholars: Carol Dweck, Joan Silk, Brian Skyrms, and Elizabeth Spelke.

After America’s Midlife Crisis

Michael Gecan
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2009

“[Gecan] diagnoses the range of problems threatening the country, community by community, as our institutions grow unreliable and corrupt . . . [He] makes it clear that the fleecing of the American worker is a problem comparable in scope, ethics and injustice to American slavery.” —Publishers Weekly

The Village Voice calls Gecan’s first book, Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action, “A treatise on power for those whose goal is to make effective social change.”

Michael Gecan has worked as a community organizer in Chicago and New York City. He trained with Saul Alinsky and is affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

Read an excerpt.

Africa’s Turn?

Edward Miguel
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2009

“A refreshing take on the fortunes of Africa in the current century and a fascinating compendium of some of the leading theorists of African development.” —Publishers Weekly

In Africa’s Turn? Miguel tracks a decade of comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub–Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround.

Nine experts respond to Miguel’s optimism: Olu Ajakaiye, Ken Banks, Robert Bates, Paul Collier, Rachel Glennerster, Rosamond Naylor, Smita Singh, David N. Weil, and Jeremy M. Weinstein.

Inventing American History

William Hogeland
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2009

“For William Hogeland, thinking about history is an act of moral inquiry and high citizenship. A searching and original voice.” —Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland

“Good stuff.”—Douglas Rushkoff, boingboing.net

“Hogeland writes quietly, carefully, never letting his knowledge of the entire frame of references of his argument make the reader feel ignorant, but he can hit.” —Greil Marcus, The Believer

American public history—in magazines and books, television documentaries and museums—tends to celebrate its subject at all costs. This does us a great disservice, argues William Hogeland. Looking at details glossed over in three examples of public history—the Alexander Hamilton revival, tributes to Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley, and the Constitution Center in Philadelphia—Hogeland considers what we lose when history is written to conform to political aims.

Race, Incarceration, and American Values

Glenn C. Loury
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2008

“Loury’s claims are well-supported with genuinely shocking statistics . . . the slim volume keeps up the pace of the argument without being overwhelming.” —Publishers Weekly

Economist Glenn C. Loury argues that the United States’s extraordinarily high incarceration rate is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy, but the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Our system, Loury argues, should be unacceptable to Americans, and his call to action makes all of us responsible for ensuring that it changes.

The Men in My life

Vivian Gornick
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2008
2008 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist!

“The essays in this collection, in their conviction about the relevance of literature in this hypertext age . . . will provide enjoyment and illumination for fans old and new.” —Daphne Merkin, Bookforum

In The Men in My Life, Vivian Gornick explores her love of literature through essays on eight distinctive male writers: V.S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H.G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.

Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters

Hans Blix
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2008

“It’s the least daunting and most accessible book on the subject I’ve ever seen.” —Diane Rehm, host of NPR’s Diane Rehm Show

For more than forty years Dr. Blix has worked on global disarmament, and with this new book he renews the call for nuclear nonproliferation. It is not, he argues, a recipe for success for nuclear states to tell the rest of the world that it must stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable. We will never be able to convince rogue states to halt the pursuit of nuclear weapons programs unless we take the lead in a new nonproliferation and disarmament movement.

The Road to Democracy in Iran

Akbar Ganji
Foreword by Joshua Cohen and Abbas Milani
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2008

“Tending toward the philosophical more than the programmatic, Ganji’s aspirations—some idealistic, some practice—will resonate will all engaged with the human rights movement.” —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

The Road to Democracy in Iran, Ganji’s first book in English, demonstrates his lifelong commitment to human rights and democracy. A passionate call for universal human rights and the right to democracy from a Muslim perspective, it lays out the goals and means of Iran’s democracy movement, why women’s rights trump some interpretations of Islamic law, and how the West can help promote democracy in Iran (he strongly opposes U.S. intervention) and other Islamic countries.

Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life

Alan A. Stone
Foreword by Joshua Cohen
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2007

“Our good news is that Alan A. Stone is here now and a discovery to rejoice at, a welcome addition to the sparse regiment of worthwhile film writers.” —David Thomson, Los Angeles Times

“This brilliant book is like that ideal conversation after a movie. Few critics have Alan Stone’s moral, psychological, and spiritual subtlety, or even his patience and scope. With his psychologist’s eye for complex elemental human relationships, Stone is an inspired guide through the American and foreign film world. I wanted to watch, or watch again, every movie in this book.”
—Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University

What We Know About Climate Change

Kerry Emanuel
Afterword by Judith A. Layzer and William R. Moomaw
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2007

“Emanuel’s words are measured and authoritative. His book should help reduce the huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the people who need to know, the public and policymakers.”
—James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Making Aid Work

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2007

In Making Aid Work, Abhijit Banerjee argues that aid has much to contribute, but the lack of analysis about which programs really work creates considerable waste, which in turn fuels unwarranted pessimism about the role of aid in fostering economic development.

The Story of Cruel and Unusual

Colin Dayan
Foreword by Jeremy Waldron
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2007

“[Dayan] can’t help but raise compelling questions, forcing us to reconsider our founding documents and what they say about us.” —David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Colin Dayan traces a disturbing pattern that shows a dismantling of Eighth Amendment protections and renders words like “cruel” and “unusual” meaningless. This is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

God and the Welfare State

Lew Daly
Foreword by James Carroll
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2006

“Lew Daly offers a fresh and original way to think about democracy, politics, and religion when thinking has just about disappeared from the discourse. Pay attention: there is hope here.” —Bill Moyers

Comparing Bush’s faith-based initiatives with the ways the same basic ideas have played out in Europe, Lew Daly is skeptical that they offer an effective new way to fight poverty. But he takes the animating ideas very seriously, as they go to the heart of the relationship between religion, government, and social welfare.

The End of the Wild

Stephen M. Meyer
MIT / Cloth / $14.95 / 2006

“In just 97 quarto-sized pages, Meyer offers a more powerful and convincing dissection of the human predicament in relation to biodiversity than most full-length academic books.”
—Mike Hulme, Times Higher Education Supplement

The End of the Wild is a wake-up call. Marshaling evidence from the last ten years of research on the environment, Stephen M. Meyer argues that we can no longer talk about conserving nature, only managing what is left.

Who’s Qualified?

Lani Guinier and Susan Sturm
Beacon / Paper / 2001

“In this bracing look at ways to create equal opportunity in education and jobs, Guinier and Sturm, law professors at Harvard and Columbia, respectively, argue that affirmative action is usually grafted onto a fake meritocracy, resulting in an artificial trade-off between merit and justice. They urge schools and businesses to determine what talents are truly desirable in participants, and recommend gauging those abilities via performance-based evaluations.”
—Publishers Weekly

For Love of Country?

Martha Nussbaum
Beacon / Paper / 1996

“Rarely does one come across a forum where all the facets of an important idea are so thoroughly debated. This is the give-and-take of intellectual debate at its finest.”
—Kirkus Review

In For Love of Country?, University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum argues that we should distrust conventional patriotism as parochial and instead see ourselves first of all as “citizens of the world.” Fifteen prominent thinkers respond, including Benjamin R. Barber, Sissela Bok, Nathan Glazer, Cornell West, Elaine Scarry, Amartya Sen, and Michael Walzer.

Who Defended the Country?

Elaine Scarry
Beacon / Paper / 2003

“Elaine Scarry’s consistently radical way of posing essential questions redirects inquiry in the most valuable ways, a tribute to a disciplined and erudite imagination put almost exclusively at the service of democratic citizenship in American society.” —Richard Falk, Princeton University

Through a minute-by-minute analysis of the phone calls, official reports, responses, and reported actions of passengers on two hijacked flights, United Airlines 93 and American Airlines 77, Elaine Scarry offers a dramatic retelling of their fate—and some startling conclusions.

Will Standards Save Public Education?

Deborah Meier
Beacon / Paper / 2000

“A civic treasure. . . . A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache.” —Robert Pinsky

Acclaimed educator Deborah Meier offers a fresh take on standardized tests. Standardization, she argues, prevents citizens-including teachers-from emerging as thoughtful, responsible adults, seriously engaged with shaping their own schools, classrooms, and communities. As a result, young people can’t learn from them how to be thoughtful, responsible adults and good citizens, the primary goal of public education in a democracy.

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

ed. Susan Okin
Princeton University Press / Paper / 1999

“This book brings together impressively varied voices who help to set the terms for discussing the relationship of feminism and multiculturalism.” —Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania

Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate.

Islam and the Challenge of Democracy

Khaled Abou El Fadl
Princeton University Press / Paper / 2004

“In a just world, Khaled Abou El Fadl would get as much publicity as Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Bin Laden and Zarqawi blow up buildings and slaughter fellow Muslims. Abou El Fadl blows up everything those two terrorists supposedly believe in. —Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

The events of September 11, the war on terrorism, and the recent Iranian presidential election have provoked widespread discussion about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world. Most debates, however, have taken place outside of the vibrant traditions of argument within Islamic theology, philosophy, and law. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy aims to correct this deficiency.

The Place of Tolerance in Islam

Khaled Abou El Fadl
Beacon Press / Paper / 2002

Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent critic of Islamic puritanism, leads off this lively debate by arguing that Islam is a deeply tolerant religion. Injunctions to violence against nonbelievers stem from misreadings of the Qur’an, he claims, and even jihad, or so-called holy war, has no basis in Qur’anic text or Muslim theology but instead grew out of social and political conflict.

Many of Abou El Fadl’s respondents think differently. The debate underscores an enduring challenge posed by religious morality in a pluralistic age: how can we preserve deep religious conviction while participating in what Abou El Fadl calls “a collective enterprise of goodness” that cuts across confessional differences?

Just Marriage

Mary Lyndon Shanley
Oxford University Press / Paper / 2004

“It is difficult for disagreements about the public meaning of marriage to be reasonable today. Mary Shanley sets the tone with strong views reasonably stated, and her interlocutors follow her example. This is an articulate and timely conversation!” —Iris Marion Young, author of Inclusion and Democracy

As the fierce national debate over same-sex marriage and civil unions continues, Mary Lyndon Shanley argues that while the state should continue to play a role in regulating personal relations, the law must be fundamentally reformed if marriage is to become a more just institution. Fourteen prominent writers and thinkers respond, including Nancy F. Cott, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Amitai Etzioni, Martha Albertson Fineman, and Cass R. Sunstein.

Keep up with your favorite independent, nonprofit magazine!

Our Partners

BR Kindle Singles

CHAVEZ, JEWS,
AND THE LEFT
by Claudio Lomnitz
and Rafael Sánchez