Schools do not define education, and they are not the only institutions in which learning takes place. After-school programs, music lessons, Scouts, summer camps, on-the-job training, and home activities all offer out-of-school educational experiences. In "Learning at Not-School," Julian Sefton-Green explores studies and scholarly research on out-of-school learning, investigating just what it i…
"In Made in the USA, Vaclav Smil powerfully rebuts the notion that manufacturing is a relic of predigital history and that the loss of American manufacturing is a desirable evolutionary step toward a pure service economy. Smil argues that no advanced economy can prosper without a strong, innovative manufacturing sector and the jobs it creates. Reversing a famous information economy dictum, Smil…
The global economic crisis of 2008-2009 seemed a crisis not just of economic performance but also of the system's underlying political ideology and economic theory. But a second Great Depression was averted, and the radical shift to New Deal-like economic policies predicted by some never took place. Perhaps the correct response to the crisis is simply careful management of the macroeconomic cha…
A study of how materialism and consumerism undermine our quality of life. In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further material gains do little to impr…
Essays examine how the genre of historia reflects connections between the study of nature and the study of culture in early modern scholarly pursuits. The early modern genre of historia connected the study of nature and the study of culture from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century. The ubiquity of historia as a descriptive method across a variety of disciplines—including natura…
In the mid to late 1890s, J.J. Thomson and colleagues at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory conducted experiments on "cathode rays" (a form of radiation produced within evacuated glass vessels subjected to electric fields) -- the results of which some historians later viewed as the "discovery" of the electron. This book is both a biography of the electron and a history of the microphysical world …
The evolution of cognitive psychology, traced from the beginnings of a rigorous experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century to the "cognitive revolution" at the end of the twentieth, and the social and cultural contexts of its theoretical developments. Modern psychology began with the adoption of experimental methods at the end of the nineteenth century: Wilhelm Wundt establ…
Every field of history has a basic need for a detailed chronology of what happened: who did what when. In the absence of such a resource, fanciful accounts flourish. This book provides a rich narrative of the early development of online information retrieval systems and services, from 1963 to 1976--a period important to anyone who uses a search engine, online catalog, or large database. Drawing…
Papers presented at the Conference on Household Portfolios, held in Florence, Italy, Dec. 17-18, 1999.Theoretical and empirical analysis of the structure of household portfolios.Until recently, researchers in economics and finance paid relatively little attention to household portfolios. Reasons included the tendency of most households to hold simple portfolios, the inability of the dominant as…
Papers originally presented at the World Summit on the Information Society, November 2005.International organizations, governments, academia, industry, and the media have all begun to grapple with the information society as a global policy issue. The first United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in December 2003, recognized the connections between information technol…