Product Description: Taking a historical approach, this book examines the conditions under which scientists compromised the ideals of science, and offers some ways in which the expectations of the scientific enterprise can be transformed. Are these ideals too removed from the realities of democratic capitalism? Were they ever attained? Only against some idealized vision of science can we critically assess how well or poorly the scientific community has performed in the past three centuries...read more

Product Description: Who are our public intellectuals? Are they needed in a democracy? Should the state underwrite their activities even if they end up, like Socrates, being gadflies? Shouldn't they refrain from public debates so as to retain their critical vantage point? These and other questions are answered in this historically-informed survey of the role of public intellectuals in western democracies...read more

Religion and Sports in American Culture explores the relationship between religion and modern sports in America. Whether found in the religious purpose of ancient Olympic Games, in curses believed to plague the Chicago Cubs, or in the figure of Tim Tebow, religion and sports have been and are still tightly intertwined. While there is widespread suspicion that sports are slowly encroaching on the territory historically occupied by religion, Scholes and Sassower assert that sports are not replacing religion and that neither is sports a religion. Instead, the authors look at the relationship between sports and religion in America from a post-secular perspective that looks at both discourses as a part of the same cultural web. In this way each institution is able to maintain its own integrity, legitimacy, and unique expression of cultural values as they relate to each other. Utilizing important themes that intersect both religion and sports, Scholes and Sassower illuminate the complex and often publicly contentious relationship between the two. Appropriate for both classroom use and for the interested non-specialist, Religion and Sports in American Culture brings pilgrimage, sacrifice, relics, and redemption together in an unexpected cultural continuity.

Product Description: This book adopts an explicitly postmodernist perspective of the digital revolution. While exploring issues relating to the re-creation of social life in the digital world, its main focus is on the political economy and in particular the extent to which the paradigms of capitalism and socialism can be mapped as postcapitalism onto this new world...read more

Product Description: Solo: Postmodern Explorations provides a postmodern approach to technoscience and economics. Sassower pulls together postmodern motifs and attitudes with his own experience to provide a unique perspective on political history and economics...read more

Product Description: Debates over the role of government have intensified in the wake of America's deepest financial crisis since the Depression. This book suggests new ways of moving forward based on the policies and principles that have worked in the past...read more