Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century

Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century

by Justine Larbalestier

Women's contributions to science fiction over the past century have been lasting and important, but critical work in the field has only just begun to explore its full range. Justine Larbalestier has collected 11 key stories--many of them not easily found, and all of them powerful and provocative--and sets them alongside 11 new essays, written by top scholars and critics, that explore the stories' contexts,... (more)

Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style

Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style

by David Cope

Virtual Music is about artificial creativity. Focusing on the author's Experiments in Musical Intelligence computer music composing program, the author and a distinguished group of experts discuss many of the issues surrounding the program, including artificial intelligence, music cognition, and aesthetics. The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides a historical background to Experiments in... (more)

Causation and Explanation (Topics in Contemporary Philosophy)

Causation and Explanation (Topics in Contemporary Philosophy)

This collection of original essays on the topics of causation and explanation offers readers a state-of-the-art view of current work in these areas. The book is notable for its interdisciplinary character, and the essays, by distinguished authors and important rising scholars, will be of interest to a wide readership, including philosophers, computer scientists, and economists. Students and scholars alike will... (more)

Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Finalist, 2008 Book of the Year, Association for Humanist Sociology The smart growth movement aims to combat urban and suburban sprawl by promoting livable communities based on pedestrian scale, diverse populations, and mixed land use. But, as this book documents, smart growth has largely failed to address issues of social equity and environmental justice. Smart growth sometimes results in gentrification and... (more)

Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Although the environmental movement and the environmental justice movement would seem to be natural allies, their relationship over the years has often been characterized by conflict and division. The environmental justice movement has charged the mainstream environmental movement with racism and elitism and has criticized its activist agenda on the grounds that it values wilderness over people. Environmental... (more)

From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

by Christine L. Borgman

Will the emerging global information infrastructure (GII) create a revolution in communication equivalent to that wrought by Gutenberg, or will the result be simply the evolutionary adaptation of existing behavior and institutions to new media? Will the GII improve access to information for all? Will it replace libraries and publishers? How can computers and information systems be made easier to use? What are the... (more)

The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower

by Robert F. Barsky

"People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged." —Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted "most important public... (more)

Command of Office: How War, Secrecy, And Deception Transformed the Presidency, from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush

Command of Office: How War, Secrecy, And Deception Transformed the Presidency, from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush

by Stephen Richards Graubard

"This impressive, massive book on American presidential power is the work of a distinguished scholar of the presidency.... <It> will fascinate the general reader as well as the specialist." -- The Times (London) Command of Office reveals the remarkable--and dangerous--concentration of power in the American presidency over the course of the twentieth century, told through incisive analyses of the... (more)

Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective (Bradford Books)

Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective (Bradford Books)

by Dan Zahavi

What is a self? Does it exist in reality or is it a mere social construct—or is it perhaps a neurologically induced illusion? The legitimacy of the concept of the self has been questioned by both neuroscientists and philosophers in recent years. Countering this, in Subjectivity and Selfhood , Dan Zahavi argues that the notion of self is crucial for a proper understanding of consciousness. He investigates the... (more)

Elements of Argumentation

by Philippe Besnard

Logic-based formalizations of argumentation, which assume a set of formulae and then lay out arguments and counterarguments that can be obtained from these formulae, have been refined in recent years in an attempt to capture more closely real-world practical argumentation. In Elements of Argumentation, Philippe Besnard and Anthony Hunter introduce techniques for formalizing deductive argumentation in artificial... (more)

Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation)

Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution (Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation)

Although the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Kenyan environmentalist, few have considered whether environmental conservation can contribute to peace-building in conflict zones. Peace Parks explores this question, examining the ways in which environmental cooperation in multijurisdictional conservation areas may help resolve political and territorial conflicts. Its analyses and case studies of... (more)

Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice (Urban and Industrial Environments)

Environmental justice concerns form an important part of popular environmental movements in many countries. Activists, scholars, and policymakers in the developing world, for example, increasingly use the tools of environmental justice to link concerns over social justice and environmental well-being. Environmental Justice in Latin America investigates the emergence of a distinctively Latin American... (more)

Functions in biological and artificial worlds : comparative philosophical perspectives

Functions in biological and artificial worlds : comparative philosophical perspectives

The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology. Biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality; yet the concept of function is notoriously obscure (with problematic issues regarding the normative and the descriptive nature of functions, for example) and demands philosophical clarification. So too the relationship between biological organisms and... (more)

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