In 2003, Sergeant Brian Turner was at the head of a convoy of 3,500 soldiers as they entered the Iraqi desert. Ten years later, he lies awake beside his sleeping wife, hallucinating: he is a drone aircraft. He hovers over a landscape in which the terrains of every conflict, of Bosnia and Vietnam, Ir[...]

"The authors restore metaphor to our lives by showing us that it's never gone away. We've merely been taught to talk as if it had: as though weather maps were more 'real' than the breath of autumn; as though, for that matter, Reason was really 'cool.' What we're saying whenever we say is a theme thi[...]

In "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award - winning "Whole Eart[...]

In candid, in-depth interviews, gay men discuss their experiences in the age of AIDS, their attitudes toward sex, and their motives for engaging in behaviors that are widely considered to be dangerous health risks. Revealing that such factors as guilt for being HIV negative, alcohol and drug use, an[...]

The Garden of Eden as the ideal and untouched site of life's creation persists in popular thought, even as we have uncovered a lengthy fossil record and developed a scientific understanding of evolution. The continent of Africa is a good candidate for Eden: its generally warm climate, rich vegetatio[...]

In his new book, Richard Brent Turner explores the history and contemporary significance of the popular religious traditions, identities, and performance forms celebrated in the second lines of the jazz street parades of black New Orleans. The second line is the group of dancers who follow the first[...]

An early 20th century American journalist's articles on Mexico before the Revolution.

From Denali's majestic slopes to the Great Swamp of central New Jersey, protected wilderness areas make up nearly 20 percent of the parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands that cover a full fourth of the nation's territory. But wilderness is not only a place. It is also one of the m[...]

Now that mankind has created the capability of destroying itself through nuclear technology, is it still possible to think in terms of a "just war"? Johnson argues that it is, and in the context of specific case studies he offers moral guidelines for addressing such major contemporary problems as te[...]

When is the use of military force by a nation morally justified? How can the tendency toward unrestrained warfare between parties with major cultural differences be controlled? In this timely book, James Turner Johnson refocuses the moral analysis of war on the real problems of contemporary armed co[...]

A definitive new biography, deftly interweaving an account of Turner's early life with profound scholarly and aesthetic appreciation of his work A complex figure, and divisive during his lifetime, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) has long been considered Britain's greatest painter. An artis[...]