bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary Community Ecology
Authors: McPeek Mark A.
Published: May 2018

This book develops a unified framework for understanding the structure of ecological community and the dynamics of natural selection that shape the evolution of the species inhabiting them. All species engage in interactions with many other species, and these interactions regulate their abundance, define their trajectories of natural selection, and shape their movement decisions. This book synthesizes the ecological and evolutionary dynamics generated by species interactions that structure local biological communities and regional metacommunities. The book explores the ecological performance characteristics needed for invasibility and coexistence of species in complex networks of species interactions. This species interaction framework is then extended to examine the ecological dynamics of natural selection that drive coevolution of interacting species in these complex interaction networks. The models of natural selection resulting from species interactions are used to evaluate the ecological conditions that foster diversification at multiple trophic levels. Analyses show that diversification depends on the ecological context in which species interactions occur and the types of traits that define the mechanisms of those species interactions. Lastly, looking at the mechanisms of speciation that affect species richness and diversity at various spatial scales and the consequences of past climate change over the Quaternary period, the book considers how metacommunity structure is shaped at regional and biogeographic scales. Integrating evolutionary theory into the study of community ecology, the book provides a new framework for predicting how communities are organized and how they may change over time.
New Species for the Community
Authors: McPeek Mark A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the main processes that operate at the regional and biogeographic scales to ultimately shape local community structure—namely, speciation and biogeographic mixing of taxa. It first defines what a “species” is before discussing the range of mechanisms that give rise to new species, and more specifically reproductive isolation. In particular, it examines the extent to which the speciation process directly induces differences in ecologically important traits between the progenitor and daughter species. It then explains how the phenotypic differences generated at the time of speciation determine what type of community member the new species begins as. It also shows how past climate change affected current local and regional community structure by periodic forcing of mass movements of species across Earth and causing increases in speciation and extinction rates. Finally, it evaluates the dynamics of invasive species and their role in habitat alteration today.
Moving among Communities
Authors: McPeek Mark A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species across a metacommunity, and how these dynamics affect regional community structure. It begins with a discussion of the evolution of dispersal, focusing on when movement between local communities is and is not favored by natural selection, and how these various movement patterns shape local community structure. An example of the demographic consequences of dispersal is presented, and the evolution of dispersal in a temporally constant environment is analyzed. The chapter also considers the evolution of dispersal rates among communities along with local adaptation within each and explains how link species affect local abundances via their movement strategies. Finally, it explores the interplay between local adaptation and dispersal evolution, the impact of simultaneous spatial and temporal variation in environmental conditions on the evolution of dispersal among populations, and the evolution of phenotypic plasticity.
Rays, Waves, and Scattering
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This book presents many of the mathematical concepts, structures, and techniques used in the study of rays, waves, and scattering. It includes discussions of how ocean waves are refracted around islands and underwater ridges, how seismic waves are refracted in the earth's interior, how atmospheric waves are scattered by mountains and ridges, how the scattering of light waves produces the blue sky, and meteorological phenomena such as rainbows and coronas. This book is a valuable resource for practitioners, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in applied mathematics, theoretical physics, and engineering. Bridging the gap between advanced treatments of the subject written for specialists and less mathematical books aimed at beginners, this unique mathematical compendium features problems and exercises throughout that are geared to various levels of sophistication, covering everything from Ptolemy's theorem to Airy integrals (as well as more technical material), and several informative appendixes.
An Improvement over Ray Optics: Airy’s Rainbow
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the optics of the rainbow as theorized by Sir George Biddle Airy. Airy developed a theory that quantified the dependence upon the raindrop size of the rainbow's angular width and angular radius as well as the spacing of the supernumeraries. The Airy theory also predicted a non-zero distribution of light intensity in Alexander's dark band and a finite intensity at the angle of minimum deviation. However, it could not predict precisely the angular position of many laboratory-generated rainbows, leading several mathematical physicists to seek a more complete theory of scattering. The chapter examines the Airy approximation by performing calculations, taking into account some ray prerequisites and the Airy wavefront. It also explains how colors are distributed in the Airy rainbow before concluding with a derivation for arbitrary p in the case of the Airy wavefront.
Diffraction Catastrophes
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the mathematics of diffraction catastrophes, focusing on the wavefront associated with a monochromatic wave with Q(x, y, f (x, y)) as a point on the wavefront surface and P (X, Y, Z) as a movable observation point. Optical caustics refer to surfaces (in space) and curves (in the plane) where light rays are focused. Caustics can be classified mathematically as the elementary catastrophes of singularity theory. In the plane, the classification gives two singularities: smooth caustic curves, which are “fold” catastrophes, and points where two fold caustics meet on opposite sides of a common tangent, which are “cusp” catastrophes. After providing an overview of the basic geometry of the fold and cusp catastrophes, the chapter considers the Fresnel integrals and the fold diffraction catastrophe. In particular, it examines the rainbow as a fold catastrophe, Airy integral in the complex plane, and the nature of the notation Ai(X).
Island Rays
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter deals with the mathematics of rays that develop around islands. Island rays follow strange trajectories. On the windward side of the island, rays converge slightly, resulting in high waves. Because waves curving around each side of the island converge, waves are lower on the leeward side. Rays that curve around the protected side of the island and spin off into deep water again after turning more than 270 degrees [cross] others on the way. This is an example of how wave refraction around islands can contribute to confused seas. The chapter describes calculations relating to straight and parallel depth contours, focusing on plane wave incident and wave trapping on a ridge, as well as circular depth contours and constant phase lines. It also considers the case of waves and currents moving in exactly opposite directions, asking whether waves can be stopped by opposing streams.
Elastic Waves
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on the mathematics of elastic waves. In the case of a continuous medium, the field equations of physics (yielding the dynamic and thermodynamic variables) arise from three conservation equations: conservation of mass, momentum and energy. For an elastic medium, these equations of motion are known as Navier equations, which give rise to a rich variety of stress waves. There are two dynamic variables in an elastic solid: stress and strain. Stress and strain are linearly related in small-amplitude deformations; this relation is expressed by Hooke's law. The chapter first introduces the basic notation for elastic waves before discussing the solutions for plane waves. It also considers surface waves and Love waves.
Surface Gravity Waves
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter deals with the underlying mathematics of surface gravity waves, defined as gravity waves observed on an air–sea interface of the ocean. Surface gravity waves, or surface waves, differ from internal waves, gravity waves that occur within the body of the water (such as between parts of different densities). Examples of gravity waves are wind-generated waves on the water surface, as well tsunamis and ocean tides. Wind-generated gravity waves on the free surface of the Earth's seas, oceans, ponds, and lakes have a period of between 0.3 and 30 seconds. The chapter first describes the basic fluid equations before discussing the dispersion relations, with a particular focus on deep water waves, shallow water waves, and wavepackets. It also considers ship waves and how dispersion affects the wave pattern produced by a moving object, along with long and short waves.
The Classical Connection
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the relationship between the elegance of the classical Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of mechanics and optics. In physics, action is a mathematical functional which takes the trajectory, or path, of the system as its argument and has a real number as its result. Classical mechanics postulates that the path actually followed by a physical system is that for which the action is minimized, or, more generally, is stationary. The action is defined by an integral, and the classical equations of motion of a system can be derived by minimizing the value of that integral. The chapter first provides an overview of Lagrangians, action, and Hamiltonians in order to draw out an alternative approach to finding equations of motion. It then considers the classical wave equation and classical scattering and concludes with an analysis of the classical inverse scattering problem.
The Classical-to-Semiclassical Connection
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the connection between the classical and semiclassical domains of scattering. Scattering phenomena may be described via three regimes: the scattering of waves by objects with small, large, or comparable sizes with the wavelength of the incident (plane wave) radiation. All three regions can be related to three domains: the classical domain (geometrical optics, particle and particle/ray-like trajectories); the wave domain (physical optics, acoustic and electromagnetic waves, quantum mechanics); and the semiclassical domain (the vast intermediate region between the first and second domain). The chapter first provides an overview of classical and semiclassical scattering domains before beginning with an analysis of the semiclassical formulation. It also considers the radial equation, scattering by a one-dimensional potential barrier, and the radially symmetric problem. Solutions for phase shifts and the potential well are presented.
Morphology-Dependent Resonances: The Effective Potential
Authors: Adam John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the effective potential for morphology-dependent resonances (MDRs). In the cross-section for scattering of electromagnetic energy by a dielectric sphere, a series of sharp peaks that occur as a function of the size parameter can be observed. These peaks are a manifestation of scattering resonances in which electromagnetic energy is temporally trapped inside the particle. These resonances are the MDRs. The chapter first considers the case of a scalar plane wave impinging in the direction θ‎ = 0 on a sphere of radius a before finding the solution of the Schrödinger equation that describes the motion of a particle in the effective potential in the presence of a centrifugal barrier. It also discusses the characteristics that are necessary to define a resonance appropriately.
Mate Choice and Mating Preferences
Authors: Rosenthal Gil G.
Published: May 2018

This chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to present a conceptually unified approach to thinking about what Darwin termed the “taste for the beautiful.” It begins by describing a basic framework for thinking about mate choice and mate preferences. It then provides an outline for how the book attempts to address key questions about how they work, how they evolve, and how they act simultaneously as targets and agents of selection. Topics discussed include the meaning of mate choice; mate choice as distinct from sexual selection; preference and antipathy underlie realized mate choices; preference functions; stages of mate choice; and mate choice as a problem in animal communication.
Aesthetics and Evaluation in Mate Choice
Authors: Rosenthal Gil G.
Published: May 2018

This chapter deals with evaluation, whereby different stimulus combinations elicit different hedonic values: in the context of mate choice, they increase or decrease the probability of a mating decision by a chooser. It focuses on how some stimuli are hedonically marked as attractive, while others are marked as unattractive. Perceptually salient stimuli can elicit positive, neutral, or negative responses—indeed, the same stimulus can elicit very different responses among receivers who can all detect it equally well. The chapter suggests that preference evolution is at least as likely to involve evaluative mechanisms as opposed to the sensory periphery, perhaps leading to abrupt discontinuities in preferences among choosers.
Selection on Mate Choice and Mating Preferences
Authors: Rosenthal Gil G.
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on the proximate sources of selection on chooser preferences and mate-choice algorithms. It surveys the sources of selection on the outcome of choice, and then turns to the evolution of mate-searching strategies and choosiness. Next, it examines at what point in the process choosers make choices. Should choosers reject matings from all but the most attractive courters, or should they mate promiscuously and make decisions during or after mating? The rest of the chapter focuses on the evolution of environmental and social reaction norms in mate choice, before considering the structural and ecological constraints on preference evolution. Mate choice can have positive or negative effects on choosers, and the magnitude and sign of these effects can vary dramatically as a function of ecological and social context over space and time.
Mate Choice, Speciation, and Hybridization
Authors: Rosenthal Gil G.
Published: May 2018

This chapter reviews the ample literature on mate choice and speciation, as well as the more novel topic of mate choice and genetic exchange among species. It begins by discussing the widespread support for the intuitive predictions that mate choice should promote diversification among geographically isolated species, and that mate choice should evolve to minimize drastic loss of fitness through hybridization. The role of mate choice is more complicated when there is incomplete divergence between lineages; depending on their relationship to other traits under selection, mating preferences can act to accelerate speciation through reinforcement, but they can also act to increase gene flow between divergent lineages. Finally, the chapter addresses the relationship between individual mating decisions and hybridization between species.
The Happiness Philosophers
Authors: Schultz Bart
Published: May 2018

This book tells the colorful story of the lives and legacies of the founders of utilitarianism—one of the most influential yet misunderstood philosophies of the past two centuries. Best known for arguing that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong,” utilitarianism was developed by the radical philosophers, critics, and social reformers William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Together, they had a profound influence on nineteenth-century reforms. Their work transformed life in ways we take for granted today. Bentham even advocated the decriminalization of same-sex acts, decades before the cause was taken up by other activists. As Bertrand Russell wrote about Bentham in the late 1920s, “There can be no doubt that nine-tenths of the people living in England in the latter part of last century were happier than they would have been if he had never lived.” Yet in part because of its misleading name and the caricatures popularized by figures as varied as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, and Michel Foucault, utilitarianism is sometimes still dismissed as cold, calculating, inhuman, and simplistic. By revealing the fascinating human sides of the remarkable pioneers of utilitarianism, this book provides a richer understanding and appreciation of their philosophical and political perspectives—one that also helps explain why utilitarianism is experiencing a renaissance today and is again being used to tackle some of the world's most serious problems.
Introduction
Authors: Schultz Bart
Published: May 2018

This book presents biographical/philosophical sketches of the founders of classical utilitarianism such as William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. The great irony of the legacy of utilitarianism is that its name has long been an obstacle to its message, an irony compounded by the infatuation, in recent decades, with work in the area of “happiness studies,” an offshoot in many respects of the “positive psychology” movement that emphasizes the positive side of human nature. The influx of recent books on happiness has mostly not been matched by a serious interest in utilitarianism. This book revisits classical utilitarianism with the goal of highlighting some important aspects of it that have tended to be neglected or underestimated by both the critics and the professed supporters of utilitarianism, including many economists of the twentieth century.
The Adventures of William Godwin
Authors: Schultz Bart
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines William Godwin's role in the development of philosophical utilitarianism. It first provides a background on Godwin's early life before discussing his relationships, first with Mary Wollstonecraft whom he married and then with Mary Jane Clairmont, his second wife. It then considers some of Godwin's works, including An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness; The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays; The Lives of the Necromancers; and Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams. The chapter also describes Godwin's poor health in his later years. Godwin died in 1836 at the age of 80.
Automorphisms of Free Groups
Authors: Clay Matt
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the automorphisms of free groups. Every group is the collection of symmetries of some object, namely, its Cayley graph. A symmetry of a group is called an automorphism; it is merely an isomorphism of the group to itself. The collection of all of the automorphisms is also a group too, known as the automorphism group and denoted by Aut (G). The chapter considers basic examples of groups to illustrate what an automorphism is, with a focus on the automorphisms of the symmetric group on three elements and of the free abelian group. It also examines the dynamics of an automorphism of a free group and concludes with a description of train tracks, a topological model for the free group, and the Perron–Frobenius theorem. Exercises and research projects are included.
Thompson’s Group
Authors: Cleary Sean
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the Thompson's group F. Thompson's group F exhibits several behaviors that appear paradoxical. For example: F is finitely presented and contains a copy of F x F, indicating that F contains the direct sum of infinitely many copies of F. In addition, F has exponential growth but contains no free groups of rank 2. After providing an overview of the analytic definition and basic properties of the Thompson's group, the chapter introduces a combinatorial definition of F and two group presentations for F, an infinite one and a finite one. It also explores the subgroups, quotients, endomorphisms, and group action of F before concluding with an analysis of several geometric properties of F such as word length, distortion, dead ends, and growth. The discussion includes exercises and research projects.
Mapping Class Groups
Authors: Childers Leah , Margalit Dan
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the mapping class group, the group of symmetries of a surface, and some of its basic properties. It first provides an overview of surfaces and the concept of homeomorphism before giving examples of homeomorphisms and defining the mapping class group as a certain quotient of the group of homeomorphisms of a surface. It then looks at Dehn twists and describes some of the relations they satisfy. It also presents a theorem stating that the mapping class group of a compact orientable surface is generated by Dehn twists and proves it. It concludes with some projects and open problems. The discussion also includes various exercises.
Under the Cover
Authors: Childress Clayton
Published: May 2018

This book follows the life trajectory of a single work of fiction from its initial inspiration to its reception by reviewers and readers. The subject is Jarrettsville, a historical novel by Cornelia Nixon, which was published in 2009 and based on an actual murder committed by an ancestor of Nixon's in the postbellum South. The book takes you behind the scenes to examine how Jarrettsville was shepherded across three interdependent fields—authoring, publishing, and reading—and how it was transformed by its journey. Along the way, it covers all aspects of the life of a book, including the author's creative process, the role of literary agents, how editors decide which books to acquire, how publishers build lists and distinguish themselves from other publishers, how they sell a book to stores and publicize it, and how authors choose their next projects. The author looks at how books get selected for the front tables in bookstores, why reviewers and readers can draw such different meanings from the same novel, and how book groups across the country make sense of a novel and what it means to them. This book reveals how decisions are made, inequalities are reproduced, and novels are built to travel in the creation, production, and consumption of culture.
Introduction
Authors: Childress Clayton
Published: May 2018

This book follows the creation, production, and reception of Cornelia Nixon's 2009 historical fiction, Jarrettsville, from start to finish. Jarrettsville tells the story of one of Nixon's ancestors, Martha Jane Cairnes, who shot and killed her newborn baby's father, Nicholas McComas, following the Civil War, just south of the Mason-Dixon line in Jarrettsville, Maryland. Jarrettsville would go on to be many different things for different people: authors, publishers, reviewers, readers. The book explores Jarrettsville's transformation as it made its journey from the three interdependent fields of creation, production, and reception. This introduction discusses the disjunction between the study of production and study of reception in sociology; the three interdependent fields of creation, production, and reception; and how to tell a typical publishing story like Jarrettsville.
Storytelling and Mythmaking
Authors: Childress Clayton
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how a one-sentence email from Kim Wylie, the VP of sales at Publishers Group West, almost led to a doubling of Counterpoint Press's print run for Jarrettsville. Cornelia Nixon enacted Adam Krefman's suggestion to move part of the end of Jarrettsville to the beginning. After this major structural change, only smaller developmental edits and copyediting had to be addressed. The chapter first considers the copyediting and blurbs done for Jarrettsville, as well as the editors' enthusiasm for the novel and Counterpoint's marketing campaign, before discussing how Wylie's email (which read: “About halfway through Jarrettsville, and really enjoying it so far”) helped raise Jarrettsville's profile, increasing the print run for the novel by 1,000 copies while also setting the wheels in motion for larger changes.
Introduction
Authors: Basu Sarbani , Chaplin William J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter covers the basics of stellar pulsations, which are the main preoccupation of asteroseismology. Stellar pulsations may be detected by observing the variations of a star's brightness as a function of time. Radial velocity observations are also used in certain cases, though most pulsating stars have been studied using brightness variations. The focus of this chapter (and the book as a whole) is on stars with solar-like pulsations—the small-amplitude oscillations that are continually excited (in a stochastic manner) and damped by turbulence in the outer convection zones of the stars. In addition to a brief history of the study of solar-type oscillations, this chapter also provides an introduction to the basic appearance and properties of the pulsation spectra of solar-like oscillators.
Interpreting Frequencies of Individual Modes: Other Diagnostics
Authors: Basu Sarbani , Chaplin William J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses some of the other ways mode frequencies can be used, and what additional information they can provide about a star. It first considers how specific combinations of mode frequencies can be used to determine stellar properties. In addition, the properties of a star, such as the acoustic depth of the convection-zone base, are determined by fitting models of the signatures left by acoustic glitches to the frequencies or the second differences. This chapter discusses how one can use signatures of acoustic glitches to infer properties of the star in question. Period spacings of red giants are also potentially very useful, and this chapter discusses how to make use of them.
Switzerland
Authors: Campbell John L. , Hall John A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how Switzerland managed the 2008 financial crisis. It first provides an overview of Switzerland's transition into a modern nation-state before discussing the institutional factors that crystallize Swiss national identity despite cultural differences, including the country's exposure and vulnerability to outside threats. It then considers Switzerland's thick institutions in relation to federalism and direct democracy as well as the structure of the economy. It also describes the oigins of the 2008 financial crisis and Switzerland's response to it in the form of bailouts for banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse. It shows that despite the closed and insulated nature of crisis management, Swiss technocrats managing the crisis were not averse to consulting with outside experts.
Conclusion
Authors: Campbell John L. , Hall John A.
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main findings, showing how vulnerability can increase national solidarity allowing institutions to be built that work for a country's collective benefit, allowing it to stay afloat when a crisis strikes. Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland exemplify the book's argument about the paradox of vulnerability, albeit with interesting nuances in the Irish and Swiss cases. The chapter also considers the differences in the ways that the three nation-states handled the 2008 financial crisis before turning to additional cases to see whether the book's argument can withstand further scrutiny. In particular, it discusses the experiences of Greece and Iceland in handling the 2008 financial crisis, noting that the former demonstrated little resilience in the face of the crisis and that thick institutions played a pivotal role in its resolution in the latter.
War, Peace, and Disillusionment
Authors: Kumekawa Ian
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines Pigou's life during World War I. At no time in his life were his private thoughts about noneconomic values more public than between 1914 and 1918. Economists often grant that war is a period of exception, that policies and rules considered wise in peacetime are not applicable during wars. For Pigou, this exceptionalism applied not only to matters of economic policy but also to his own silence on policy and ethical imperatives. Yet the war left Pigou disheartened by the human capacity for atrocity. Moreover, the byzantine machinations of politics and bureaucracy left him disenchanted with something else entirely: the state apparatus. Thus, the war and its aftermath hollowed Pigou out; his youthful idealism was shaken, and his conception of the state as a fundamental theoretical agent in his system of welfare economics shattered.
Disruptive Fixation
Authors: Sims Christo
Published: May 2018

In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic foundations, it promised to reinvent the classroom for the digital age. This book documents the life of the school from its planning stages to the graduation of its first eighth-grade class. It is the account of how this “school for digital kids,” heralded as a model of tech-driven educational reform, reverted to a more conventional type of schooling with rote learning, an emphasis on discipline, and traditional hierarchies of authority. Troubling gender and racialized class divisions also emerged. The book shows how the philanthropic possibilities of new media technologies are repeatedly idealized even though actual interventions routinely fall short of the desired outcomes. It traces the complex processes by which idealistic tech-reform perennially takes root, unsettles the worlds into which it intervenes, and eventually stabilizes in ways that remake and extend many of the social predicaments reformers hope to fix. It offers a nuanced look at the roles that powerful elites, experts, the media, and the intended beneficiaries of reform—in this case, the students and their parents—play in perpetuating the cycle. The book offers a timely examination of techno-philanthropism and the yearnings and dilemmas it seeks to address, revealing what failed interventions do manage to accomplish—and for whom.
Amenable and Fixable Subjects
Authors: Sims Christo
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how reformers imagined subjects that would be amenable to and fixable with their intervention in comparison with the ways that students negotiated identification and difference with each other at school and online. It considers how problematization and rendering technical processes produce amenable and fixable subjects, how these intended beneficiaries exert unanticipated pressures on a philanthropic intervention, and how the reformers tend to respond to such pressures in rather retrograde ways. In the case of the Downtown School for Design, Media, and Technology, reformers imagined the project's intended beneficiaries as digital kids, a population that presumably would be especially amenable to the intervention's focus on gaming and new media production. The chapter also discusses assembling of affinities and divisions among amenable and fixable subjects, conditions of sanctioned nonconformity, crossing of boundaries, and identities-in-practice in relation to subject fixations.
Concepts in the Language of Politics
Authors: Körner Axel
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines references to the United States of America in the Risorgimento's political language by focusing on concepts such as constitutional government, political representation, and federalism. It first considers the question of natural rights in a constitutional government before discussing the ways in which Italians assimilated and translated American ideas into the historical context of their experiences in the context of the more general Italian assessment of American political institutions. The chapter focuses on the works of Giuseppe Mazzini and other prominent political thinkers such as Cesare Balbo, Vincenzo Gioberti, and Gian Domenico Romagnosi. It also looks at Luigi Angeloni's 1832 pamphlet entitled Schifezze politiche proposte dal dottor Carlo Botta, in which he condemned Botta's antirepublican attitudes, and Antonio Rosmini's critique of American democracy.
Conclusions
Authors: Körner Axel
Published: May 2018

This book concludes with a discussion of the ways that America offered Italians an outlook on a wider range of possible futures, most of which were set in conditions that stood in stark contrast to Italy's own experiences. It examines the connection between the American Civil War and the Unification of Italy, noting how the Italians' experience of that war helped them to make the experience of their own Unification meaningful. It also describes the sudden change in Italian attitudes toward American modernity during the finesecolo, which coincided with the start of Italian mass migration to the United States. Finally, it considers how the assassination of Abraham Lincoln transformed political culture in the United States and views the event as a final example of cross-Atlantic exchange that illustrates how Italians explored what they knew about America for their own purposes, without having to imitate foreign prescriptions.
Sharecroppers and Campesinos
Authors: Olsson Tore C.
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the south–north intellectual exchange of the 1930s. First, it examines how a cadre of left-leaning US reformers, led by the peripatetic academic Frank Tannenbaum, attempted in 1934 and 1935 to translate the blueprint of Mexican agrarian reform into political action for the US South. That campaign ultimately played an essential role in the founding of the Farm Security Administration, one of the most ambitious federal agencies of the New Deal. Second, the chapter looks at the myriad Mexican pilgrimages undertaken by a host of influential US rural reformers during the Cárdenas era. Perhaps no group outside Washington, D.C., was more renowned—or feared—for its agrarian radicalism than the multiracial Southern Tenant Farmers' Union whose political legacy has been closely studied.
Masters of Craft
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

In today's new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual-labor occupations as careers. This book looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering. The book takes readers into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into “cool” and highly specialized upscale occupational niches—and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. It shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of “cultural repertoires,” which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. The book describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers. The book provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.
The Cocktail Renaissance
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter talks about how cocktail bartenders are most likely to respect, discuss, and debate the history of their craft and its culture, and recognize its importance in the work they do. Classic cocktail culture appears in their recipes and personal style, the motifs of their bars, and their professional identity. To them, the spread of craft cocktails throughout the nightlife industry and the rise of bartending to what they see as its rightful place as a respected trade are true revivals and rebirths. Cocktail bartenders build on and reshape the past, for their own livelihood and for a drinking public who want special bar experiences and crave a story behind their drink. Bringing their cocktail knowledge to bear on their service helps to elevate their work to an elite level.
Strange Vernaculars
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

While eighteenth-century efforts to standardize the English language have long been studied, less well-known are the era's popular collections of odd slang, criminal argots, provincial dialects, and nautical jargon. This book delves into how these published works presented the supposed lexicons of the “common people” and traces the ways that these languages, once shunned and associated with outsiders, became objects of fascination in printed glossaries, and in novels, poems, and songs. The book argues that the recognition and recovery of outsider languages was part of a transition in the eighteenth century from an aristocratic, exclusive body politic to a British national community based on the rhetoric of inclusion and liberty, as well as the revaluing of a common British past. These representations of the vernacular made room for the “common people” within national culture, but only after representing their language as “strange.” Such strange and estranged languages, even or especially in their obscurity, came to be claimed as British, making for complex imaginings of the nation and those who composed it. Odd cant languages, witty slang phrases, provincial terms newly valued for their connection to British history, or nautical jargon repurposed for sentimental connections all toggle, in eighteenth-century jest books, novels, and poems, between the alluringly alien and familiarly British. Shedding new light on the history of the English language, the book explores how eighteenth-century British literature transformed the patois attributed to those on the margins into living symbols of the nation.
Reappraising Cant
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how criminal cant terms began to appear alongside a more quotidian if lowly set of terms associated with a common English vernacular during the eighteenth century. Here, the chapter primarily examines the print representations and the work they do, rather than attempting to make claims about an actual cant language and its speakers. These early works, with their depictions of nefarious, incomprehensible criminals, reveal much about the society that produced those works than about some vague, largely invented criminal element that might or might not have spoken it. Eighteenth-century representations of cant, as this chapter shows, retained that sense of the language's waywardness, its exciting danger, while folding it into the idea of a vernacular that could familiarize strangers.
The Gendered Slang of Century’s End
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the use of cant in burlesque writing. In the burlesques of Gay and Henry Fielding, the comic strangeness of cant, and of language itself, is made more so, its “unnaturalness” and “ludicrousness” emphasized often in the interest of cutting satire. Cant lexicographers of the later part of the century, however, celebrated cant's amusing figurative uses of language, especially its humor. They took the humor of the burlesque uses of cant and low languages but left the grim vision behind. While readers might be strangers to the world of canters, later collections of cant language often introduced it to elicit laughter—a laughter that depended on and reminded readers of their own wit and their playful intimacy with a shared and expanding English.
Economics in Perspective
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Parker Richard
Published: May 2018

This book presents a compelling and accessible history of economic ideas, from Aristotle through the twentieth century. Examining theories of the past that have a continuing modern resonance, the book shows that economics is not a timeless, objective science, but is continually evolving as it is shaped by specific times and places. From Adam Smith's theories during the Industrial Revolution to those of John Maynard Keynes after the Great Depression, the book demonstrates that if economic ideas are to remain relevant, they must continually adapt to the world they inhabit. A lively examination of economic thought in historical context, the book shows how the field has evolved across the centuries.
The Separate Personality of Money
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the role of money and its management, the origins of what is known today as monetarism. It first provides a brief history of money, focusing on the steps that accorded money its separate and distinctive personality, including the establishment of banks; borrowing and the resulting act of money creation; and the realization by kings, princes and parliaments that the creation of money could be used as a substitute for taxes or as an alternative to borrowing from financiers. It then considers the significance of the institutions and experience surrounding money, along with the economic thought and controversy that money has evoked. In particular, it looks at precipitating factors that shaped American attitudes on money in the nineteenth century, including the Greenbacks and silver. Finally, it describes the role of money in facilitating exchange by taking into account the equation of exchange introduced by American economist Irving Fisher.
John Maynard Keynes
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes. According to Keynes, the modern economy does not necessarily find its equilibrium at full employment; it can find it with unemployment. This is the underemployment equilibrium, in which Say's Law no longer holds; there can be a shortage of demand. The government can and should take steps to overcome this shortage. The chapter discusses in more detail the underemployment equilibrium, the repeal of Say's Law, the call for government spending uncovered by revenues to sustain demand—all of which made up the so-called the Keynesian Revolution. In particular, it considers Keynes's central prescription that there should be government expenditures financed by borrowing to sustain demand and employment. It also analyzes Keynes's criticism of Winston Churchill, his A Treatise on Money (1930), and the economic discussion that followed the publication of The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1936).
Affirmation by Mars
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how John Maynard Keynes's ideas appealed to younger economists in America. For the younger generation of scholars, Keynes's views were a welcome alternative to the unemployment and misery that could no longer be defended and also to a commitment to Karl Marx and revolution. Those from Harvard University were of the belief that the Keynesian system came to the United States through their agency. Harvard, would be the germinal point for Keynesian economics in the United States. The chapter considers some of the economists who engaged in the discussion of the Keynesian system as it applied to the United States, including Joseph Schumpeter and Alvin Harvey Hansen. It also discusses Keynes's influence in the late depression period and during World War II, leading Keynesian voices in the American government such as Lauchlin Currie, and the major consequences of World War II for the Keynesian system.
Taxation and the Public Services
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the role of taxation in the culture of contentment. In the age of contentment, macroeconomic policy has come to center not on tax policy but on monetary policy. Higher interest rates, it is hoped, will curb inflation without posing a threat to people of good fortune. Those with money to lend, the economically well-endowed rentier class, will thus be rewarded. The chapter first considers the role of monetary policy in the entirely plausible and powerfully adverse attitude toward taxation in the community of contentment before discussing the relationship between taxation and public services, and between taxation and public expenditures. It shows that public services and taxation have disparate effects on the Contented Electoral Majority on the one hand, and on the less affluent underclass on the other.
Of Coins and Treasure
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the history of coins made of precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper. Some 4,000 years ago, there had been agreement on the use of silver, copper, or gold for purposes of exchange. Metal was made into coins of predetermined weight, an innovation attributed by Herodotus to the kings of Lydia, presumably in the latter part of the eighth century BC. The chapter considers how coinage after the Lydians evolved into a major art form. It also examines how the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the ensuing conquest and development of Spanish America affected the European continent. Finally, it looks at the ways that the American treasure enhanced profits, stimulated commerce and industry, and enlarged the opportunity of all who saw money as a way of making money, with a focus on the rise of banks as a means of regulating and limiting abuse of currency.
The Great Compromise
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the dual monetary system that existed in the hundred years after 1832, a period characterized by basic compromise. The compromise which followed the demise of the Second Bank of the United States had some negative consequences. Recurrently, and reflecting the euphoria stimulated by other causes, banks were created and loans were made with abandon. People then started coming to the banks for their money. These were the panics. The chapter considers the turbulent years after 1832, focusing on the emergence of free banking, the resulting bank failures and greenbacks, agitation for more greenbacks, the pressure for the coinage of cheap silver, and the recurrent panics—all of which combined to make the financial system of the United States, according to Andrew Carnegie, “the worst in the civilized world.” The passage of the National Bank Act (1863) establishing a new system of national banks is also discussed.
When the Money Stopped
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the impact of the stock market crash of October 1929 on the monetary system of the United States. Very little attention has been given to the factors which converted the uncomfortable and distressing crises of the previous century into the profound and enduring tragedy known as the Great Depression. Neither the stock market crash of October 1929 nor the antecedent speculation has often been deemed to be a decisive cause. The chapter first considers how the stock market crash affected investment expenditures by business and consumer expenditures before discussing the bank failures that followed the crash. It also explores how bank failures and the fear of bank failures induced deflation and how the Federal Reserve System began open-market operations after harboring fears of inflation. Finally, it looks at the reform of the Federal Reserve System by legislation in 1933, 1934, and 1935.