The European Convention on Human Rights has evolved into a sophisticated legal system, whose formal reach into the domestic law and politics of the Contracting States is limited only by the ever-widening scope of the Convention itself, as determined by a transnational court. In this book, a team of[...]

This entertaining Very Short Introduction reflects the enduring popularity of archaeology - a subject which appeals as a pastime, career, and academic discipline, encompasses the whole globe, and surveys 2.5 million years. From deserts to jungles, from deep caves to mountain tops, from pebble tools [...]

Reinsurance is a financial market that trades in the risk of unpredictable and devastating disasters - such as Hurricane Katrina, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Such disasters are increasing in both frequency and severity, with the cost of the[...]

Causation is at once familiar and mysterious--we can detect its presence in the world, but we cannot agree on the metaphysics of the causal relation. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, and develop a broad and sophisticated under[...]

A Primer in Theory Construction is for those who have already studied one or more of the social, behavioral, or natural sciences, but have no formal introduction to the way theories are constructed, stated, tested, and connected together to form a scientific body of knowledge. The author discusses s[...]

"Hope on Earth" is the thought-provoking result of a lively and wide-ranging conversation between two of the world's leading interdisciplinary environmental scientists: Paul R. Ehrlich, whose book "The Population Bomb" shook the world in 1968 (and continues to shake it), and Michael Charles Tobias, [...]

In this age of anxiety, we find it increasingly difficult to step back from it all and consider our mental well-being and emotional stability. Here, Paul Wilson draws on the meditation practices put forward in The Quiet, providing simple techniques and inspiring solutions to finding inner harmony in[...]

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are three relatively small countries whose contribution to Europe's economic, spiritual and artistic heritage has been immense. Their histories cannot be written in isolation from one another, or from their neighbours. In the first full historical survey of th[...]

Jim Paul's meteoric rise took him from a small town in Northern Kentucky to governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, yet he lost it all -- his fortune, his reputation, and his job -- in one fatal attack of excessive economic hubris. In this honest, frank analysis, Paul and Brendan Moynihan revis[...]

Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, "sound science." In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there ar[...]

Ubiquitous computing (or ubicomp) is the label for a "third wave" of computing technologies. Following the eras of the mainframe computer and the desktop PC, ubicomp is characterized by small and powerful computing devices that are worn, carried, or embedded in the world around us. The ubicomp resea[...]