San Antonio College Library

This book grew out of one of the most popular courses ever offered at Harvard, in which some of the most original thinkers of our day sat down with students and explored how ideas can make us more engaged, involved, and compassionate citizens. They address the topics of war, religion, the global economy, and social change; discuss the role of the citizen and the media in a free society; show the way to a more equitable college admissions system; discuss...

"This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behavior. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be explained by the revised version of modernization theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernization is a process...

"In Common Values, Sissela Bok asks what moral values, if any, might be capable of being shared across national, ethnic, religious, and other boundaries, under what circumstances, and with what qualifications." "Bok argues that certain basic values can be shared cross-culturally without infringing on the richness of diversity and can provide a starting point for dialogue, negotiation, and cooperation. She takes a stand against the claim that respect...

A follow-up to the author's first book by the same title, this text trades the usual platitudes about the consumer society for a more detailed, exacting anthropological treatment.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, like so many Americans, is appalled by crime, drug addiction, illiteracy, juvenile delinquency, illegitimacy and welfare dependency. The solution she proposes, in this follow-up to her much-praised On Looking into the Abyss, is as simple as it is radical - and has the further advantage of solid historical substantiation. We must look back on the Victorians with open minds; they must cease to irk us. And then, Himmelfarb hopes,...

"With cinematic scope and precision, Shorter shows us the harsh, farcical, and inspiring realities of society's changing attitudes toward its mentally ill and the efforts of generations of scientists and physicians to ease their suffering. He takes us inside the eighteenth-century asylums, with their restraints and beatings, and guides us through the landscaped boulevards of the spas and rest homes where the "nervous disorders" of the Victorian elite...

"Recent research documents increasing income inequality in the United States in particular, a widening gap between well-educated and less-educated American workers. But income is not the sole measure of prosperity. The amount of time Americans spend in leisure is also crucial to our understanding of American well-being, changes in well-being over time, and differences in well-being among citizens. This meticulously-researched monograph examines trends...