The Enlightenment has been blamed for some of the most deadly developments of modern life: racism and white supremacy, imperialist oppression, capitalist exploitation, neoliberal economics, scientific positivism, totalitarian rule. These developments are thought to have grown from principles that are rooted in the soil of the Enlightenment: abstraction, reduction, objectification, quantification, division, universalization. Michael McKeon’s new book corrects this defective view by historicizing the Enlightenment--by showing that the Enlightenment has been abstracted from its history. From its past: critics have ignored that Enlightenment thought is a reaction against deadly traditions that precede it. From its present: the Enlightenment extended its reactive analysis of the past to its own present through self-analysis and self-criticism. From its future: much of what’s been blamed amounts to the failure of its posterity to sustain Enlightenment principles. To historicize the Enlightenment requires that we conjure what it was like to live through the emergence of concepts and practices that are now commonplace—society, privacy, the public, the market, experiment, secularity, representative democracy, human rights, social class, sex and gender, fiction, the aesthetic attitude. McKeon’s book argues the continuity of Enlightenment thought, its consistency and integrity across this broad range of conceptual domains. It also shows how the Enlightenment has shaped our views of both tradition and modernity, and the revisionary work that needs to be done in order to understand our place in the future. In the process, Historicizing the Enlightenment exemplifies a distinctive historiography and historical method.
 
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

By developing the broadest and most inclusive definition of the term "map" ever adopted in the history of cartography, this inaugural volume of the History of Cartography series has helped redefine the way maps are studied and understood by scholars in a number of disciplines.

Volume One addresses the prehistorical and historical mapping traditions of premodern Europe and the Mediterranean world. A substantial introductory essay surveys the historiography and theoretical development of the history of cartography and situates the work of the multi-volume series within this scholarly tradition. Cartographic themes include an emphasis on the spatial-cognitive abilities of Europe's prehistoric peoples and their transmission of cartographic concepts through media such as rock art; the emphasis on mensuration, land surveys, and architectural plans in the cartography of Ancient Egypt and the Near East; the emergence of both theoretical and practical cartographic knowledge in the Greco-Roman world; and the parallel existence of diverse mapping traditions (mappaemundi, portolan charts, local and regional cartography) in the Medieval period.

Throughout the volume, a commitment to include cosmographical and celestial maps underscores the inclusive definition of "map" and sets the tone for the breadth of scholarship found in later volumes of the series.

Traces the development of the sanitary and health problems of New York City from earliest Dutch times to the culmination of a nineteenth-century reform movement that produced the Metropolitan Health Act of 1866, the forerunner of the present New York City Department of Health. Professor Duffy shows the city's transition from a clean and healthy colonial settlement to an epidemic-ridden community in the eighteenth century, as the city outgrew its health and sanitation facilities. He describes the slow growth of a demand for adequate health laws in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the establishment of the first permanent health agency in 1866.

"No one has done so much as Mr. Eliade to inform literature students in the West about 'primitive' and Oriental religions. . . . Everyone who cares about the human adventure will find new information and new angles of vision."—Martin E. Marty, New York Times Book Review

Allan H. Meltzer's monumental history of the Federal Reserve System tells the story of one of America's most influential but least understood public institutions. This first volume covers the period from the Federal Reserve's founding in 1913 through the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, which marked the beginning of a larger and greatly changed institution.

To understand why the Federal Reserve acted as it did at key points in its history, Meltzer draws on meeting minutes, correspondence, and other internal documents (many made public only during the 1970s) to trace the reasoning behind its policy decisions. He explains, for instance, why the Federal Reserve remained passive throughout most of the economic decline that led to the Great Depression, and how the Board's actions helped to produce the deep recession of 1937 and 1938. He also highlights the impact on the institution of individuals such as Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the 1920s, who played a key role in the adoption of a more active monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. Meltzer also examines the influence the Federal Reserve has had on international affairs, from attempts to build a new international financial system in the 1920s to the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 that established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the failure of the London Economic Conference of 1933.

Written by one of the world's leading economists, this magisterial biography of the Federal Reserve and the people who helped shape it will interest economists, central bankers, historians, political scientists, policymakers, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of the institution that controls America's purse strings.

"It was 'an unprecedented orgy of extravagance, a mania for speculation, overextended business in nearly all lines and in every section of the country.' An Alan Greenspan rumination about the irrational exuberance of the late 1990s? Try the 1920 annual report of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. . . . To understand why the Fed acted as it did—at these critical moments and many others—would require years of study, poring over letters, the minutes of meetings and internal Fed documents. Such a task would naturally deter most scholars of economic history but not, thank goodness, Allan Meltzer."—Wall Street Journal

"A seminal work that anyone interested in the inner workings of the U. S. central bank should read. A work that scholars will mine for years to come."—John M. Berry, Washington Post

"An exceptionally clear story about why, as the ideas that actually informed policy evolved, things sometimes went well and sometimes went badly. . . . One can only hope that we do not have to wait too long for the second installment."—David Laidler, Journal of Economic Literature

"A thorough narrative history of a high order. Meltzer's analysis is persuasive and acute. His work will stand for a generation as the benchmark history of the world's most powerful economic institution. It is an impressive, even awe-inspiring achievement."—Sir Howard Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement

Winner of the Missouri History Book Award, from the State Historical Society of Missouri
Winner of the Arkansiana Award, from the Arkansas Library Association

Geologic forces raised the Ozarks. Myth enshrouds these hills. Human beings shaped them and were shaped by them. The Ozarks reflect the epic tableau of the American people—the native Osage and would-be colonial conquerors, the determined settlers and on-the-make speculators, the endless labors of hardscrabble farmers and capitalism of visionary entrepreneurs. The Old Ozarks is the first volume of a monumental three-part history of the region and its inhabitants. Brooks Blevins begins in deep prehistory, charting how these highlands of granite, dolomite, and limestone came to exist. From there he turns to the political and economic motivations behind the eagerness of many peoples to possess the Ozarks. Blevins places these early proto-Ozarkers within the context of larger American history and the economic, social, and political forces that drove it forward. But he also tells the varied and colorful human stories that fill the region's storied past—and contribute to the powerful myths and misunderstandings that even today distort our views of the Ozarks' places and people. A sweeping history in the grand tradition, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks is essential reading for anyone who cares about the highland heart of America.