bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reading Novels into Life
Authors: Childress Clayton
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how readers read Jarrettsville into their lives. To read a novel into one's life is to treat the novel as the raw materials through which one turns over, reconsiders, or shares with others one's own experiences. While some book groups found Jarrettsville to be neither a “good book” nor a “good book group book,” other groups viewed Cornelia Nixon's work as good in both ways, or not a great read but still a good book to make discussion with. The chapter considers how Jarrettsville became a means for discussing two topics: inquisitive and oftentimes frank talk of personal romantic relationships, and distressing observations of—and encounters with—structural racism. It also explores how readers connected the plot points and events depicted in Jarrettsville to a wide range of current events and topics, including post-Apartheid South Africa, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the passage of Proposition 8 in California.
Conclusion
Authors: Childress Clayton
Published: May 2018

This book has shown how authors, publishers, and readers all operate in different fields, rather than occupy a single “literary field.” Through her author tour and occasional fan mail, Cornelia Nixon gained a window into the field of reception. For Counterpoint Press, the decision to publish Jarrettsville had not been a mistake, but it had not earned enough to cover many losses on what would be inevitable future mistakes. For some of the readers of Jarrettsville, the book became an occasional reference point in their future reading and socializing. This conclusion reconsiders the studies of creation, production, and reception and examines the exogenous forces of change that explain the evolution of these three interdependent fields. In particular, it discusses the path from Anne Rice's 1976 Interview with the Vampire to E. L. James's 2011 Fifty Shades of Grey. Finally, it asks whether books are special objects; for example, as status symbols.
Asteroseismic Data Analysis
Authors: Basu Sarbani , Chaplin William J.
Published: May 2018

Studies of stars and stellar populations, and the discovery and characterization of exoplanets, are being revolutionized by new satellite and telescope observations of unprecedented quality and scope. Some of the most significant advances have been in the field of asteroseismology, the study of stars by observation of their oscillations. This book gives a comprehensive technical introduction to this discipline. It not only helps students and researchers learn about asteroseismology; it also serves as an essential instruction manual for those entering the field. The book presents readers with the foundational techniques used in the analysis and interpretation of asteroseismic data on cool stars that show solar-like oscillations. The techniques have been refined, and in some cases developed, to analyze asteroseismic data collected by the NASA Kepler mission. Topics range from the analysis of time-series observations to extract seismic data for stars to the use of those data to determine global and internal properties of the stars. Reading lists and problem sets are provided, and data necessary for the problem sets are available online.
Observational Data: Analysis of the Frequency Spectrum
Authors: Basu Sarbani , Chaplin William J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter is an analysis of the frequency-power spectrum. It first discusses the probabilistic methods for detecting signatures of individual modes in the spectrum, including schemes that incorporate a Bayesian framework for the analysis. The chapter then turns to the automated detection of the ensemble signatures of the oscillations. Next, this chapter considers the detailed peak-bagging analysis, where a multiparameter model is fitted to the spectrum to provide robust estimates of parameters of the individual modes. It introduces the fundamentals, discusses the practical implementation and challenges, and finally considers the additional challenges posed by subgiants and red giants showing mixed modes.
The First Serious Optimist
Authors: Kumekawa Ian
Published: May 2018

This book is an intellectual biography of the British economist A. C. Pigou (1877–1959), a founder of welfare economics and one of the twentieth century's most important and original thinkers. Though long overshadowed by his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Pigou was instrumental in focusing economics on the public welfare. And his reputation is experiencing a renaissance today, in part because his idea of “externalities” or spillover costs is the basis of carbon taxes. The book tells how Pigou reshaped the way the public thinks about the economic role of government and the way economists think about the public good. Setting Pigou's ideas in their personal, political, social, and ethical context, the book follows him as he evolved from a liberal Edwardian bon vivant to a reserved but reform-minded economics professor. With World War I, Pigou entered government service, but soon became disenchanted with the state he encountered. As his ideas were challenged in the interwar period, he found himself increasingly alienated from his profession. But with the rise of the Labour Party following World War II, the elderly Pigou re-embraced a mind-set that inspired a colleague to describe him as “the first serious optimist.” The story is not just of Pigou but also of twentieth-century economics, the book explores the biographical and historical origins of some of the most important economic ideas of the past hundred years. It is a timely reminder of the ethical roots of economics and the discipline's long history as an active intermediary between the state and the market.
Ethics, Politics, and Science
Authors: Kumekawa Ian
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the development of Pigou's early works, particularly concerning the relationship between ethics and economics. While Pigou was invested with an ethical desire to help the masses, he suffered from an unwillingness to get near them. Moreover, his speech, titled “Economic Science in Relation to Practice” and delivered at his inauguration as Professor of Political Economy, revealed not a tension but a synthesis of scientific, political, and moral elements. In the first decade of the twentieth century, these elements were to publicly weave in and out of one another, leaving Pigou's politics, ethics, and economics not separate intellectual categories, but integrated components of a single mode of thought.
Retreat to the Ivory Tower
Authors: Kumekawa Ian
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses Pigou's withdrawal to the academy at Cambridge, which did not merely indicate a changing perception of the possibilities of government action. This withdrawal also signaled that the dream to engage in efforts that directly affected welfare was fading. These developments occurred, however, during the period of Pigou's career that would prove the most productive, a period when he consolidated his reputation as the most eminent economic voice of his generation. As he stepped back from participating in issues of policy, he was ascendant as a scientist “of the chair.” It is not unlikely that Pigou himself took some satisfaction in this transformation.
Another War and a Fresh Start
Authors: Kumekawa Ian
Published: May 2018

This chapter recounts Pigou's life in the advent of World War II. Though the war did cement the practical importance of economists as advisors to the government, everywhere else Pigou looked, cherished foundations of his comfortable life were threatened or crumbling. Pigou himself had reached an age at which he found his own energies waning. Nevertheless, with the arrival of war, he began to search assiduously for things to do. So reticent to work for the government during the first war, he asked for “any” job to help the war effort during the second, composing reports for the government and eventually teaching for a stint at Harrow. And as the dust settled over Europe and Pigou confronted a changed Britain, he would find redemption, or at least consolation.
America as History
Authors: Körner Axel
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines early Italian writings on the history of the American War of Independence, including Carlo Botta's History of the War of Independence of the United States of America (1809), Carlo Giuseppe Londonio's three-volume Storia delle colonie inglesi (1812–1813), and Giuseppe Compagnoni's twenty-nine-volume Storia dell'America (1829). The chapter compares the context in which these works were created to the changing responses they generated during the later course of the Risorgimento. It also draws on these writings to discuss historiography as political thought, arguing that most Italian historians writing about the American Revolution presented the United States as a political reality far removed from European experiences. Even 500 years after the American Declaration of Independence, Italian references to the United States did not necessarily mean an open endorsement of popular sovereignty.
A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848
Authors: Körner Axel
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how protagonists of the Italian revolutions of 1848, including Giuseppe Montanelli and Carlo Cattaneo, engaged with American political institutions by looking at the cases of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Before discussing the role played by the United States of America in Italian political thought of 1848, the chapter considers Italian experience of the revolutions of 1820–1821 and 1830–1831, both of which marked a watershed for the peninsula's national movement. It shows that Italian revolutionaries addressed the United States with very different emphasis, illustrating how references to the United States could serve very different ideological purposes. With respect to Tuscany's long history of engagement with the United States, there were far fewer references to American political institutions than for instance in Sicily, where the revolutionaries adopted a monarchical constitution. The chapter also analyzes Cattaneo's involvement in the Revolution in Lombardy and his understanding of American democracy.
A War for Uncle Tom: Slavery and the American Civil War in Italy
Authors: Körner Axel
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the Italian reception of Giuseppe Rota's ballet Bianchi e Neri (Whites and Blacks), an adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Bianchi e Neri, which presents the dehumanizing brutality of a slaveholding society, became a major point of reference in Italians' critical assessment of life in the United States. Rota's work inspired comments that reveal the passion with which Italians engaged with issues such as race and slavery across the Atlantic. The chapter considers how Bianchi e Neri transformed the ways in which Italians discussed and imagined the New World. It also explores how the debate on the ballet influenced Italian responses to the unfolding American Civil War, and how the abolition of slavery in America intersected with the Unification of Italy as “one single cause”: a struggle for the good of humankind as a whole.
A Stroll Through the Market
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

This introductory chapter discusses how bars, barbershops, and butcher shops were neighborhood cornerstones in the industrial city. Today, new versions of them catering to knowledgeable and wealthy consumers have been opening in gentrifying neighborhoods in cities across the country. Professionals in high-profile economic sectors (like Google employees), members of the “foodie” taste community, and tourists—all key consumer groups in today's urban economy—support them. The chapter traces the rise of these new elite occupations, workplaces, products, and forms of consumption to three key cultural, urban, and economic changes happening in society today: reconfigured understandings of taste, the new role of community institutions in gentrifying neighborhoods, and work in the “new economy” of postindustrial cities.
Distilling Authenticity
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks at how craft distilleries are part of a groundswell of small-batch, “artisanal” light manufacturing businesses that have recently emerged in the United States. Along with their small size, businesses like craft distilleries have a number of attributes. They have respect for handmade products and all the subtle variations they contain. They promote a strong sense of localness in terms of where they source their ingredients, the regions where they sell their products, and/or how they use place as a basis of their brand's identity. Perhaps most importantly, they create and promote a sense of authenticity, or the idea of a product as full of integrity, truth, and realness as markers of its quality.
Working on Men
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter demonstrates how manhood, or what it means to be a man, is in a state of crisis today. Men are always worried if they are acting as a man should, whether in their family, romantic, or work lives, or in relationships with other men. The reason is that society's expectations of proper male behavior constantly change and present men with challenges and mixed signals about how to act. If the enduring ideal masculine image in the United States is of the “self-made man,” or the man who earns his living independently and is in control of his own life, then being a man means constantly struggling to live up to it. The question is not whether men feel like manhood is in crisis, but what the crisis looks like in any given era, what is causing men to feel like it is, and how they respond to it.
How Middle-Class Kids Want Working-Class Jobs
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers how, for young urbanites with hip tastes, the culture of the cocktail world exude cool. To them, visiting the hidden bar for craft cocktails and unique small-batch spirits, the lodge-like masculine barbershop for a classic-looking haircut and an old-fashioned shave, and the local butcher for a rare cut of locally raised meat are fundamental to life in the city. People with certain sensibilities toward what they buy and do for leisure seek out these new urban luxuries among the city's many other options. They represent fun, cool, and urbane alternatives to the more popular sports bars and loud nightclubs, branded booze, cheap and quick haircuts, and shrink-wrapped meat on Styrofoam trays.
Building an American Empire
Authors: Frymer Paul
Published: May 2018

This book examines the politics of the United States' westward expansion, showing how the government's regulation of population movements on the frontier, both settlement and removal, advanced national aspirations for empire and promoted the formation of a white settler nation. The book details how a government that struggled to exercise plenary power used federal land policies to assert authority over the direction of expansion by engineering the pace and patterns of settlement and to control the movement of populations. At times, the government mobilized populations for compact settlement in strategically important areas of the frontier; at other times, policies were designed to actively restrain settler populations in order to prevent violence, international conflict, and breakaway states. The book examines how these settlement patterns helped construct a dominant racial vision for America by incentivizing and directing the movement of white European settlers onto indigenous and diversely populated lands. The book pays close attention to the failures as well, from the lack of further expansion into Latin America to the defeat of the black colonization movement. It reveals the lasting and profound significance government settlement policies had for the nation, both for establishing America as dominantly white and for restricting broader aspirations for empire in lands that could not be so racially engineered.
Introduction
Authors: Frymer Paul
Published: May 2018

This book examines the imperial aspirations and geographic expansion of the United States over the long nineteenth century, with emphasis on the process of state formation and political development. It analyzes the concerns and actions of federal policy makers in promoting the formation of national borders through territorial expansion, as well as the ultimate settlement and incorporation of lands on the frontier. In particular, it considers how federal land policies were used to regulate population movements across the territory. The book argues that the building of an American empire was a project of population control and settlement, aided primarily by land policy. This chapter provides an overview of the contested and multifaceted nature of American expansion, how this expansionist project relates to race and state formation, and the politics of population control. It also presents a summary of the chapters that follow.
“Advancing Compactly as We Multiply”
Authors: Frymer Paul
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the final decades of American policy toward incorporation of lands east of the Mississippi. It first considers the federal government's continuation of land and expansion policies under the Jeffersonian Republicans from 1800 to the mid-1820s before discussing the federal government's initial incursions into the lands purchased from the French, especially Orleans Territory that became the state of Louisiana. It then explores how the addition of Louisiana, and its French settlers who were actively involved in the slave trade, exacerbated existing national debates over slavery. It also looks at the role of judges and courts of law in privileging the rights of settlers in their claims against both Native Americans and the federal government. Finally, it analyzes the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and its enforcement, with emphasis on the politics of removals of Native Americans.
The Limits of Manifest Destiny
Authors: Frymer Paul
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the politics of American expansion into the Southwest, focusing on how some racist politicians promoted manifest destiny while others opposed expansion. The chapter first takes a look at Mexico's land policy and its attempt to design its settlement policies in a way that copied the United States. It shows how Mexico struggled to assert national authority over its states and territories, promoting a federated structure that empowered the states to control their own land policies. Many of those territories, in turn, committed themselves to land policies that were at odds with those of the central government. The chapter proceeds by discussing U.S. efforts to acquire territory from Latin America, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic, before concluding with an analysis of the politics of the battle to incorporate New Mexico Territory as a state.
Introduction
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This introductory chapter considers the impact of vernacular language on eighteenth-century English readers. They were anxious to learn and master the English that was being standardized throughout the century—so much so that they made grammar books bestsellers and, when they could not afford Samuel Johnson's famous Dictionary of the English Language (1755) in its entirety, bought it in serial form, week by week. As deportment and manners, often most immediately discernable in one's language practices, played an increasing role in establishing class status, knowing, speaking, and writing a standard English mattered more. Yet eighteenth-century men and women also exhibited a fascination with words and phrases that fell well outside of polite, improving texts.
Daniel Defoe’s Novel Languages
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This chapter situates the emergence of realist, nationally focused fiction alongside vernacular English and cant dictionaries in order to illuminate the complex ways they position readers in relation to vernacular languages. These genres of the vernacular present back to readers the familiar in print forms, yet do so in terms that render it unfamiliar—at once a reader's own and yet also strange. Or, they present the actually unfamiliar as, nonetheless, part of the reader's national world—what should be, but is not, familiar. English dictionaries and realist fiction of the eighteenth century create readerly expectations of discovering in a new print form what is already one's own, but also prompt a realization of the strangeness of what one might have thought was one's own.
John Gay’s Overloaded Languages
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This chapter turns to John Gay's method of deploying cant languages, which marks a return to its older associations with violation and outsiders in order to represent a Britain in which self-serving cant-speakers were difficult to distinguish from corrupt members of “legitimate” society. The disorienting mixture of respectable and cant languages in The Beggar's Opera signals disturbing, if also creatively productive, breakdowns of distinctions between high and low, right and wrong. Although a shift in thinking about cant was taking place in some quarters in the eighteenth century, Gay makes use of an ongoing understanding of cant as the sine qua non of criminals, a language of dangerous outsiders that illegitimately departs from given meaning.
Provincial Languages out of Place
Authors: Sorensen Janet
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the relation of the glossaries, poems, print dialogues, and novels that attempted to place provincial languages to the vernacular in complex terms of embodiment and disembodiment and of transparency and obscurity. While the chapter claims that representing the helter-skelter assortment of languages from across the space of Britain helped to constitute a full understanding of the English language, it also contends that eighteenth-century print representations also helped to institute these languages as part of an English vernacular. Here, the chapter turns to the works of Francis Grose in gleaning, ordering, and publication of strange languages, as well as presenting them as part of the language of the British “common people,” not only with his cant and vulgar words collection but also with a compendium of provincial terms and lore.
Who Believes in the American Dream?
Authors: Graham Carol
Published: May 2018

This chapter goes on to ask who still believes in the American Dream. It begins with a review of what we know about the relationship between inequality, well-being, and attitudes about future mobility. It summarizes what we know from survey data on attitudes about inequality and opportunity in the United States, and then places those attitudes in the context of those in other countries and regions, based on new data and analysis with a focus on individuals' beliefs in the role of hard work in future success. Evidence suggests that the American Dream is very unevenly shared across socioeconomic cohorts. The poor and the rich in the United States lead very different lives, with the former having a much harder time looking beyond day-to-day struggles and associated high levels of stress, while the latter is able to pursue much better futures for themselves and their children, with the gaps between the two likely to increase even more in the future.
Can We Save the Dream?
Authors: Graham Carol
Published: May 2018

This chapter offers some modest suggestions for policies that might begin to revive the fragile American Dream. It also highlights the role that well-being metrics and markers can play in identifying negative beliefs and behaviors before they result in the kinds of desperate outcomes that are described in the book, such as rising mortality rates. It argues that the American Dream is clearly tattered. However, there are signs of hope, and we must find more. Some are in the success stories of programs that seem to work, such as Moving to Opportunity and the earned income tax credit program. Some are in new experiments that show that very simple interventions that provide hope, such as the provision of a modest asset or simply affirmation and a more positive attitude, can make a difference to the subsequent performance of the poor or destitute.
A Look at the Landscape
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the history of economics and the events that shaped that history. It first considers the nature and content of economics, taking into account questions related to the theory of value and the theory of distribution, the institutions involved in economic activity, and the larger political and social framework in which economic life proceeds. It views economics as a reflection of the world in which specific economic ideas have developed, such as those associated with Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. It argues that economic ideas are not very important when and where there is no economy. Change in economics has been reluctant and reluctantly accepted, especially by those who benefit from the status quo and economists who have a vested interest in what has always been taught and believed.
The Enduring Interim
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the basic economic life in the Middle Ages, noting the absence of trade or a market during the period. It first considers the legacy of the Romans with respect to economic and political life, including their commitment to the sanctity of private property and Christianity. In particular, it describes Christian attitudes toward wealth and the link between morality and the market. It also examines the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Nicole Oresme before turning to the role of markets in the Middle Ages, along with their special characteristics. Finally, it looks at other aspects of economic life during the medieval period, such as the intrusion of ethics on economics—the fairness or justice of the relationship between master and slave, lord and serf, landlord and sharecropper.
The Great Classical Tradition, 3
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the ideas elaborated specifically in the refinement and defense of the classical tradition in economics. There were points of vulnerability and fault that required a defense of the classical tradition, including the pronounced difference between the wages and resulting living standard of the workers and those of the employers or capitalists, the unequal distribution of power inherent in the system, and the phenomenon referred to as a panic, crisis, depression or recession, with its associated unemployment and general despair. The chapter considers how the classical tradition dealt with inequality and oppressive power, focusing on the initial defense advanced for the low wages of the laborer in comparison with the revenues of the employer and landlord. It also discusses the defense from Utilitarianism, led by Jeremy Bentham, and the views of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Nassau Senior, and William Stanley Jevons.
Completion and Criticism
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the criticisms hurled against economic ideas associated with the classical tradition in the industrial world during the first decades of the twentieth century. Karl Marx was long gone from the scene, but disturbing ideas would come from his heir, Lenin. One was the notion that the working class of the industrial countries knew no fatherland. As to the classical tradition itself, the instruction of Alfred Marshall, partly through his Principles of Economics, was now without any challenge in England. The chapter first considers money and banking during the period before discussing issues pertaining to monopolies and competition. It also looks at some important developments that influenced economic attitudes and policy during the period, including the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the migration of economists from Poland, Hungary, Austria and Romania to the West, where they would dominate economic discussions in the years ahead.
Twilight and Evening Bell
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the decline of Keynesian economics, mainly due to its grave political asymmetry: what was politically possible against deflation and depression was not politically possible or feasible against inflation. Deflation and unemployment called for higher public expenditure and lower taxes, which were very agreeable actions from a political perspective. However, lower government expenditure and higher taxes, which price inflation precisely called for, were not politically agreeable. Furthermore, they were not easily effective against wage-price inflation—the modern form of inflation. The chapter explains how the separation of microeconomics from the purview of Keynesian economics and policy preserved a microeconomic model that could not assume an inflationary role. It also considers some legal efforts to arrest the wage-price spiral, including the Nixon administration's wage and price controls, and Milton Friedman's contribution to the history of economics.
The Present as the Future, 1
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the low estate to which modern economics has descended or is widely thought to have descended. John Maynard Keynes made the most famous forecast of the future of economics more than half a century ago, in which he concluded that “the economic problem is not—if we look into the future—the permanent problem of the human race.” Keynes's prediction has turned out to be less than accurate. While some of the formerly powerful economic influences are diminishing in the industrial countries, the production of goods is a far less urgent matter than it was. The chapter considers a range of forces that holds economics to the classical tradition and that will continue to do so, including the power of economic interest and the fact that classical economics solves the problem of power in the economy and polity.
The Present as the Future, 2
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines various developments in economics that are part of the present and will contend against the neoclassical tradition for recognition in the future. Industrial countries, including the United States, have already become deeply concerned with the economic ideas and more especially their practice in Japan. The chapter considers some of the lessons to come and that are coming from Japan, such as the industry–government cooperation and investment in human capital, It also discusses a number of ways to escape market discipline and deal with competition, including a return to tariff protection, and how the distinction between microeconomics and macroeconomics will blur and disappear due to factors such as the dynamic of prices and wages as a determinant of both inflation and unemployment. Finally, it comments on the future of domestic monetary and fiscal policy in relation to a nation's international position.
The Military Nexus, I
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the role of the military in the community of contentment. During the past half century, Communism was considered the most obtrusive threat to contentment. The perception that the military was a bulwark against Communism was the most significant support to the deeply embedded position of the military establishment in the culture of contentment. Fear of Communism was deep and fundamental in the psyche of the contented. Imperiled freedom, loss of liberty, was much cited; especially acute was the threat to private property. The chapter considers how the fear of Communism gave rise to a major development in the military power as that existed in the political economy of contentment: a further enormous increase in military and defense spending as the constituency of contentment gained full power in the 1980s—the arms buildup under Ronald Reagan.
The Politics of Contentment
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on the politics of contentment. In the past, the contented and the self-approving were a small minority in any national entity, with the majority of the citizenry being relegated outside. In the United States, the favored are now numerous, greatly influential of voice and a majority of those who vote. This, and not the division of voters as between political parties, is what defines modern American political behavior and shapes modern politics. The chapter first considers the commitment of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party to the policies of contentment before discussing the effects of money and media on the politics of contentment. It also examines American electoral politics, social exclusion, and international relations in the context of the politics of contentment. Finally, it tackles the question of whether, and to what extent, the politics of contentment in the United States extends to other industrial countries.
The Reckoning, I
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the larger consequences of contentment. The United States now has a democracy of the contented and the comfortable, who monopolize or largely monopolize the political franchise. In contrast, the uncomfortable and the distressed of the poor urban and rural slums and those who identify with their bad fortune do not vote because they have no candidates that will represent their needs. The chapter first considers the self-corrective capacity of democracy as it relates to the culture of contentment before discussing how the short-run economic policies of contentment, protected by the accommodation of economics to comfort, could bring eventual economic discomfort. It also looks at inflation as a threat to the culture of contentment and the ways that a severe recession or depression could change the political economy of contentment.
An Instrument of Revolution
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the use of paper money and assignats to finance the American Revolution and the French Revolution, respectively. Before the First Continental Congress assembled, some of the American colonies (including Massachusetts) had authorized note issues to pay for military operations. The Congress was without direct powers of taxation; one of its first acts was to authorize a note issue. More states now authorized more notes that financed the American Revolution. Robert Morris, considered the “Financier of the Revolution,” obtained roughly $6.5 million in loans from France, a few hundred thousand from Spain and later, after victory was in prospect, a little over a million from the Dutch. The chapter first considers how paper money was used to finance the American Revolution, along with the problem of inflation during the period, before turning to the French Revolution and how it was financed with assignats.
The Money War
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the controversies surrounding money and banking in the early years of the new American Republic. It shows how the U.S. Constitution restricted the right of coinage to the federal government and forbade both the states and the national government to issue paper money. It then coinsiders the issuance of Treasury notes by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin in the 1812–1814 war, while Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury under the Lincoln administration, asked Congress to authorize repeated issues of greenbacks. The chapter also considers Alexander Hamilton's application for a central bank that would become the Bank of the United States, which competed with other banks. Finally, it discusses the establishment of the Second Bank of the United States and the struggle between President Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States.
The Price
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the consequences of the panics that occurred in and after 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, in a minor way in 1884, with great severity in 1893 and again in 1907, and of the stock market crash of October 1929. The late years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth were a good time to be rich. For one, there was no income tax. Historians refer to these years as the Gilded Age, but they might as well be called the age of gold. The chapter considers recognizable constants in the panics of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, including the expansion in business activity, particularly investment in the construction of canals and railroads. It also discusses speculation in railroads and common stocks, financed by money from banks, and the resulting bank failures.
The Ultimate Inflation
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the inflation that rocked a number of industrial nations after World War I. At the end of World War I, all of the principal belligerents had ditched the gold standard. No major country now allowed the free export of gold. It followed that none need now worry lest foreigners convert deposits or notes into gold to take out of the country. Accordingly, domestic policy was no longer restrained by the fear that gold would be lost. And since gold could not leave, its loss could not reduce bank reserves, bank deposits, or note circulation, all with further depressing effect on production, prices and employment. The chapter considers the experiences of France, Austria, and Germany with inflation.
Afterword
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues that the history of money could be better. It suggests that the problem of money is now linked to that of the economy, even with that of the polity, and explains how monetary policy has become but a minor part of the whole economic policy, how economic policy has become an aspect of politics, and how supply and demand in the modern economy are now brought into equilibrium only after significant movements in prices and in income. It also discusses six imperatives that will shape or control monetary policy and the larger economic policy of which it is now a lesser part. Finally, it considers the prospect that policy in the future will be based not on economic forecasting but on the current reality, and insists that inflation and recessions do not last forever.
Matching under Transferable Utility: Theory
Authors: Chiappori Pierre-André
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the theory of matching under transferable utility (TU). It first introduces a formal definition of the TU property: a group satisfies TU if there exists monotone transformations of individual utilities such that the Pareto frontier is a hyperplane. It then examines the cornerstone of the theory of nontransferable utility (NTU) matching, namely, the Gale-Shapley algorithm, before turning to a discussion of a crucial property of matching models under TU: their intrinsic relationship with optimal transportation. It also describes the notions of supermodularity and assortativeness, along with individual utilities and intrahousehold allocation. Finally, it looks at hedonic models, taking into account hedonic equilibrium and stable matching, and presents two examples that illustrate the relationship between matching and hedonic models: a competitive IO model and randomized matching.
Religion, Philosophy, and the Absolute
Authors: Farneth Molly
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on Hegel's concept of absolute spirit, which refers to the collection of norms and practices in which spirit has itself for an object—the norms and practices in and through which the members of the community create, sustain, and transform spirit itself. This view of Hegel's concept of absolute spirit has both epistemological and ethical implications. It suggests that the standard of knowledge against which people's beliefs, actions, and norms are judged emerges from the social practices of the people who share a form of life. It also suggests that among these social practices ought to be rituals and other shared activities in which people recognize one another's authority and accountability.
The Tower of Hanoi for Humans
Authors: Stockmeyer Paul K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses one of the great classics of recreational math—the Tower of Hanoi. The Tower of Hanoi was introduced in 1883 by Le Professeur N. Claus (de Siam), Mandarin du College Li-Sou-Stian. He was later revealed to be French mathematician Éduard Lucas, born in Amiens, France, in 1842 and teaching at the Lycée Saint-Louis in 1883. The puzzle consists of three vertical pegs and a set of n pierced disks of differing diameters. All n disks are stacked in order on one of the pegs, smallest on top, to form a tower. Disks are moved one at a time, removing a disk from the top of the stack formed on one of the pegs and placing it atop the (possibly empty) stack on a different peg. At no time can a disk be placed on top of a smaller disk. The goal is to transport the tower to a different peg, using as few disk moves as possible.
Enumeration of Solutions to Gardner’s Paper Cutting and Folding Problem
Authors: Dunham Jill Bigley , Whieldon Gwyneth R.
Published: May 2018

In a plenary talk by Colm Mulcahy at the Fall 2013 Meeting of the MD-DCVA section of the Mathematical Association of America, the authors were introduced to an interesting puzzle about paper folding. This chapter presents the solution to one version of the puzzle. In this puzzle, a square of paper three inches wide is black on one side and white on the other. Rule the square into nine one-inch squares. By cutting only along the ruled lines, is it possible to cut a pattern that will fold along the ruled lines into a cube that is all black on the outside? The pattern must be a single piece, and no cuts or folds are permitted that are not along the lines that divide the sheet into squares.
Making Walks Count: From Silent Circles to Hamiltonian Cycles
Authors: Alekseyev Max A. , Michon Gérard P.
Published: May 2018

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) invented graph theory in 1735, by solving a puzzle of interest to the inhabitants of Königsberg. The city comprised three distinct land masses, connected by seven bridges. The residents sought a walk through the city that crossed each bridge exactly once but were consistently unable to find one. Euler showed that such a puzzle would have a solution if and only if every land mass was at the origin of an even number of bridges, with at most two exceptions—which could only be at the start or the end of the journey. Modern treatments of the problem capture Euler's reasoning by employing a diagram in which the land masses are represented by dots (called nodes), while the bridges are represented by line segments connecting the nodes (called edges). Such a diagram is referred to as a graph. This chapter uses algebraic graph theory to solve a number of counting problems.
Duels, Truels, Gruels, and Survival of the Unfittest
Authors: Lanphier Dominic
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers two generalizations of duels. The first generalization is to n players, like n-uels. The other generalization is an iterative duel. The main issue for both of these duel-type games is to determine the likelihood that a player will survive the game. Section 1 reviews the main definitions, rules, and results about (sequential) duels and truels. Section 2 introduces duel-type games called gruels, giving some simple examples and establishing certain basic facts concerning such games. Section 3 introduces the second generalization, iterative duels. It applies certain combinatorial methods to investigate these games. In particular, it applies generating functions and thereby obtains arithmetic results about numbers associated to such duels. Section 4 applies more delicate analysis. This section is more mathematically challenging and follows methods from Stanley and Wilf to study which player in a sequential iterative duel is most likely to win.
Computational Complexity of Arranging Music
Authors: Demaine Erik D. , Moses William S.
Published: May 2018

Music has long been a subject of analysis for mathematicians and has led to interesting questions in music theory and other fields. For the most part, computer scientists have looked into applying artificial intelligence to music and finding algorithms and data structures to solve various musical problems. These problems tend to be solvable in polynomial time using dynamic programming and have various applications. This chapter takes an additional step in this direction, asking what sorts of problems in music cannot be efficiently computed. Specifically, it asks how various constraints affect the computational complexity of arranging music originally written for one set of instruments for a single instrument instead. It then applies these results to other domains, including musical choreography (such as ice skating and ballet) as well as to creating levels for rhythm games (such as Rock Band). It proves that all of the problems are NP-complete.
Afterword
Authors: Mintzker Yair
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter explains how the polyphonic nature of the book is essential in understanding the historical figure of Jew Süss. By exploring in quick succession the lives and works of Jäger, Bernard, Schloss, and Fassmann, scholars were able to see Oppenheimer portrayed from different angles: from up close and far away; in public, in the interrogation room, and in prison; in a legal, social, and theological light; and in Christian and Jewish terms. The stories of these men throw into sharp relief the nexus of relationships and prejudices that gave Oppenheimer's case its recognizable shape. There is no doubt that many Württembergers harbored strong anti-Jewish sentiments.
Introduction
Authors: Finkel Evgeny
Published: May 2018

This book examines the choices and actions of Jews during the Holocaust at the individual and community levels. It considers the survival strategies that the Jewish victims of the Holocaust had to choose from, namely, cooperation and collaboration, coping and compliance, evasion, and resistance. Based on the underlying assumption that genocide is a complicated social and political process that unfolds over time, rather than a one-time event, the book asks what made individual Jews choose particular behavioral strategies, and why the distribution of these strategies varies across localities. To this end, it compares three Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust—those of Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok. This chapter explains why the Holocaust was chosen as the book's main case study, the methodology and data used, and the book's goals, contributions, and limitations.
What Did the Jews Know?
Authors: Finkel Evgeny
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines what the Jews in Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok knew, or were likely to have known, about Nazi policies, especially during the initial stages of the war, when German actions were yet to be directly observed. It considers whether the political regimes under which the Jews of the three ghettos lived prior to the Nazi occupation shaped what people in these communities knew and could know about German policies. It also discusses whether this knowledge and information affected the distribution of survival strategies across the three cities. It shows that the information available to the Jews was cacophonous, contradictory, messy, and could serve as the grounds for a variety of behaviors. The Nazis themselves did not know how their anti-Jewish policies would unfold and what, in practical terms, their end result would be.