princeton university press jul 2012 (21 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Across the Board is not simply about chess but the chessboard itself and the fascinating mathematics behind it. John Watkins surveys all the well-known problems in this surprisingly fertile area of recreational mathematics. Many beautiful solutions have emerged for basic chessboard problems since mathematicians first began working on them in earnest over three centuries ago. But now such problems have been extended to three-dimensional chessboards and even chessboards on unusual surfaces such as toruses (the equivalent of playing chess on a doughnut) and cylinders. Across the Board will captivate students and instructors, mathematicians, chess enthusiasts, and puzzle devotees.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Everybody knows that mathematics is indispensable to physics. But how many people realize that physics can be used to produce many astonishing and strikingly elegant solutions in mathematics Mark Levi shows how in this delightful book, treating readers to a host of entertaining problems and mind-bending puzzlers that will amuse and inspire their inner physicist. The Mathematical Mechanic will appeal to anyone interested in the little-known connections between mathematics and physics and how both endeavors relate to the world around us.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What are your chances of dying on your next flight, being called for jury duty, or winning the lottery In this collection of twenty-one puzzles, Paul Nahin challenges us to think creatively about the laws of probability as they apply in playful, sometimes deceptive, ways to a fascinating array of speculative situations. Written in an informal way and containing a plethora of interesting historical material, Duelling Idiots is ideal for those who are fascinated by mathematics and the role it plays in everyday life and in our imaginations.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'Gerken has written a compelling and practical plan for improving the conduct of American elections. The Democracy Index offers a politically sophisticated strategy for converting those forces that typically frustrate reform--partisanship and localism--into engines of reform. Given the evident shortcomings in the ways in which citizens register to vote, cast their ballots, and have their choices counted, the subject of this book could not be more important. And Gerken's lively and engaging prose makes it a genuine pleasure to read.'--Thomas E. Mann, coauthor of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How To Get It Back on Track.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - X and the City, a book of diverse and accessible math-based topics, uses basic modeling to explore a wide range of entertaining questions about urban life. How do you estimate the number of dental or doctor's offices, gas stations, restaurants, or movie theaters in a city of a given size How can mathematics be used to maximize traffic flow through tunnels Can you predict whether a traffic light will stay green long enough for you to cross the intersection And what is the likelihood that your city will be hit by an asteroid Every math problem and equation in this book tells a story and examples are explained throughout in an informal and witty style. The level of mathematics ranges from precalculus through calculus to some differential equations, and any reader with knowledge of elementary calculus will be able to follow the materials with ease. There are also some more challenging problems sprinkled in for the more advanced reader.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives--biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities--including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and periods. What emerges is a provocative rendering of China's moral landscape, featuring characters who have resonated in the historical imagination as examples of villainy, heroism, wisdom, spiritual vision, political guile, and complex combinations of all of these.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'Eric Oliver's masterful study turns our gaze away from the national limelight to the quiet, steady politics of local governments. City councils, mayors, and school committees, he rightly points out, are every bit as important as the Congress and president in making American government, but they are subjects we academics have largely ignored for the better part of three decades. Oliver uncovers a healthy and vibrant system of democracy in local U. S. politics. For those worried about the partisan divisions and gridlock that have torn through our national politics, Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy offers a strong message of reassurance.'--Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard University.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'The Reputational Premium dramatically advances the study of political parties and vote choice. Sniderman and Stiglitz provide a powerful new theory of party identification that helps make sense of a central puzzle in contemporary American politics: how polarized political parties can thrive alongside a far more moderate electorate.'--Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction: define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a community. Almost two decades later it is clear that it was less the future than the habits and horizons of anxious life in racially defined enclaves that determined post-apartheid freedom. In this book, Thomas Blom Hansen offers an in-depth analysis of the uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that have accompanied post-apartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township in Durban. Exploring five decades of township life, Hansen tells the stories of ordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by the township, and how these residents domesticated and inhabited this urban space and its institutions, during apartheid and after.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Despite the growth of digital media, traditional FM radio airplay still remains the essential way for musicians to achieve commercial success. Climbing the Charts examines how songs rise, or fail to rise, up the radio airplay charts. Looking at the relationships between record labels, tastemakers, and the public, Gabriel Rossman develops a clear picture of the roles of key players and the gatekeeping mechanisms in the commercial music industry. Along the way, he explores its massive inequalities, debunks many popular misconceptions about radio stations' abilities to dictate hits, and shows how a song diffuses throughout the nation to become a massive success. Climbing the Charts provides a fresh take on the music industry and a model for understanding the diffusion of innovation.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, Grégoire Chamayou examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous for simply existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable. An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, Manhunts is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Since its first publication more than twenty-five years ago, How to Build a Habitable Planet has established a legendary reputation as an accessible yet scientifically impeccable introduction to the origin and evolution of Earth, from the Big Bang through the rise of human civilization. This classic account of how our habitable planet was assembled from the stuff of stars introduced readers to planetary, Earth, and climate science by way of a fascinating narrative. Now this great book has been made even better. Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir has worked closely with the original author, Wally Broecker, one of the world's leading Earth scientists, to revise and expand the book for a new generation of readers for whom active planetary stewardship is becoming imperative.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief. In this provocative book, Richard Foley finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs--something important that she doesn't quite 'get.' This may seem a modest point but, as Foley shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'This is a brilliant and highly original investigation of how Cold War politics shaped the emergence of world literature and new forms of cultural authority, literary consecration, and political surveillance in the aftermath of the Second World War. Eye-opening and provocative, Archives of Authority is indispensable reading for all serious scholars of world literature, Cold War cultural politics, and globalization.'--Anne McClintock, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Most studies of ancient Greek politics focus on formal institutions such as the political assembly and the law courts, and overlook the role that informal social practices played in the regulation of the political order. Sara Forsdyke argues, by contrast, that various forms of popular culture in ancient Greece--including festival revelry, oral storytelling, and popular forms of justice--were a vital medium for political expression and played an important role in the negotiation of relations between elites and masses, as well as masters and slaves, in the Greek city-states. Although these forms of social life are only poorly attested in the sources, Forsdyke suggests that Greek literature reveals traces of popular culture that can be further illuminated by comparison with later historical periods. By looking beyond institutional contexts, moreover, Forsdyke recovers the ways that groups that were excluded from the formal political sphere--especially women and slaves--participated in the process by which society was ordered.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - When a government in a democracy acts in our name, are we, as citizens, responsible for those acts What if the government commits a moral crime The protestor's slogan--'Not in our name!'--testifies to the need to separate ourselves from the wrongs of our leaders. Yet the idea that individual citizens might bear a special responsibility for political wrongdoing is deeply puzzling for ordinary morality and leading theories of democracy. In Our Name explains how citizens may be morally exposed to the failures of their representatives and state institutions, and how complicity is the professional hazard of democratic citizenship. Confronting the ethical challenges that citizens are faced with in a self-governing democracy, Eric Beerbohm proposes institutional remedies for dealing with them.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer provide a comprehensive theoretical approach to the analysis of nutrition--the Geometric Framework. They show how it can help us to understand the links between nutrition and the biology of individual animals, including the physiological mechanisms that determine the nutritional interactions of the animal with its environment, and the consequences of these interactions in terms of health, immune responses, and lifespan. Simpson and Raubenheimer explain how these effects translate into the collective behavior of groups and societies, and in turn influence food webs and the structure of ecosystems. Then they demonstrate how the Geometric Framework can be used to tackle issues in applied nutrition, such as the problem of optimizing diets for livestock and endangered species, and how it can also help to address the epidemic of human obesity and metabolic disease. Drawing on a wealth of examples from slime molds to humans, The Nature of Nutrition has important applications in ecology, evolution, and physiology, and offers promising solutions for human health, conservation, and agriculture.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This is a thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded edition of a classic illustrated introduction to the structural materials in natural organisms and what we can learn from them to improve man-made technolog---from nanotechnology to textiles to architecture. Julian Vincent's book has long been recognized as a standard work on the engineering design of biomaterials and is used by undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and professionals studying biology, zoology, engineering, and biologically inspired design. This third edition incorporates new developments in the field, the most important of which have been at the molecular level. All of the illustrations have been redrawn, the references have been updated, and a new chapter on biomimetic design has been added.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'The Reputational Premium dramatically advances the study of political parties and vote choice. Sniderman and Stiglitz provide a powerful new theory of party identification that helps make sense of a central puzzle in contemporary American politics: how polarized political parties can thrive alongside a far more moderate electorate.'--Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - From the pyramids and the Parthenon to the Sydney Opera House and the Bilbao Guggenheim, this book takes readers on an eye-opening tour of the mathematics behind some of the world's most spectacular buildings. Beautifully illustrated, the book explores the milestones in elementary mathematics that enliven the understanding of these buildings and combines this with an in-depth look at their aesthetics, history, and structure. Whether using trigonometry and vectors to explain why Gothic arches are structurally superior to Roman arches, or showing how simple ruler and compass constructions can produce sophisticated architectural details, Alexander Hahn describes the points at which elementary mathematics and architecture intersect. Rich in detail, this book takes readers on an expedition around the globe, providing a deeper understanding of the mathematical forces at play in the world's most elegant buildings.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 'With profound insight, Hansen explores the struggles of South African Indians to take possession of their new political and cultural liberty since the end of apartheid. Showing how they are haunted by a past they cannot openly mourn and bereft of the ambiguous certainties once ensured by a racist state, this compelling and highly original book calls on us to rethink the complex challenges that attend the meaning of freedom everywhere.'--Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago.