Exploring the fascinating cross-cultural influences between Jews and Christians in Italy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, Acculturation and Its Discontents assembles essays by leading historians, literary scholars, and musicologists to present a well-rounded history of Italian Jewry. The contributors offer rich portraits of the many vibrant forms of cultural and artistic expression that Italian Jews contributed to, but this volume also pays close attention to the ways in which Italian Jews - both freely and under pressure - creatively adapted to the social, cultural, and legal norms of the surrounding society. Tracing both the triumphs and tragedies of Jewish communities within Italy over a broad span of time, Acculturation and Its Discontents challenges conventional assumptions about assimilation and state intervention and, in the process, charts the complex process of cultural exchange that left such a distinctive imprint not only on Italian Jewry, but also on Italian society itself. This collection of rigorous and thought-provoking essays makes a major contribution to both the history of Italian culture and the cultural influence and significance of European Jews.

Exploring the fascinating cross-cultural influences between Jews and Christians in Italy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, Acculturation and Its Discontents assembles essays by leading historians, literary scholars, and musicologists to present a well-rounded history of Italian Jewry. The contributors offer rich portraits of the many vibrant forms of cultural and artistic expression that Italian Jews contributed to, but this volume also pays close attention to the ways in which Italian Jews - both freely and under pressure - creatively adapted to the social, cultural, and legal norms of the surrounding society. Tracing both the triumphs and tragedies of Jewish communities within Italy over a broad span of time, Acculturation and Its Discontents challenges conventional assumptions about assimilation and state intervention and, in the process, charts the complex process of cultural exchange that left such a distinctive imprint not only on Italian Jewry, but also on Italian society itself. This collection of rigorous and thought-provoking essays makes a major contribution to both the history of Italian culture and the cultural influence and significance of European Jews.

This book describes how epigenetic context, in a large sense, affects gene expression and the development of an organism, using the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory to construct statistical models useful in data analysis. The approach allows deep understanding of how embedding context affects development. We find that epigenetic information sources act as tunable catalysts, directing ontogeny into characteristic pathways, a perspective having important implications for epigenetic epidemiology. In sum, environmental stressors can induce a broad spectrum of developmental dysfunctions, and the book explores a number of pandemic chronic diseases, using U.S. data at different scales and levels of organization. In particular, we find the legacy of slavery has been grossly compounded by accelerating industrial decline and urban decay. Individual chapters are dedicated to obesity and its sequelae, coronary heart disease, cancer, mental disorders, autoimmune dysfunction, Alzheimer’s disease, and other conditions. Developmental disorders are driven by environmental factors channeled by historical trajectory and are unlikely to respond to medical interventions at the population level in the face of persistent individual and community stress. Drugs powerful enough to affect deleterious epigenetic programming will likely have side effects leading to shortened lifespan. Addressing chronic conditions and developmental disorders requires significant large-scale changes in public policy and resource allocation.

The contributors to this volume probe systematically and in depth the adaptation patterns and trajectories of concrete ethnic groups. They provide a close look at this rising second generation by focusing on youth of diverse national origins—Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Filipino, Vietnamese, Haitian, Jamaican and other West Indian—coming of age in immigrant families on both coasts of the United States. Their analyses draw on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, the largest research project of its kind to date. Ethnicities demonstrates that, while some of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clear upward path, moving into society's mainstream in record time, others are headed toward a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility. The book concludes with an essay summarizing the main findings, discussing their implications, and identifying specific lessons for theory and policy.

The first full-scale sociological survey of the assimilation of minorities in America, this classic work presents significant conclusions about the problems of prejudice and discrimination in America and offers positive suggestions for the achievement of a healthy balance among societal, subgroup, and individual needs.

"In this fourth volume, [the author] notes that the decline of religiousness in the second and third generations of American Jews was balanced by the development of an activist political culture based an elaborate organizational life, an effective fund-raising apparatus, and Zionism, with its notion of Jewish peoplehood. That reshaping of American Jewish individual and communal identity in some measure accounts for the insufficient response to the plight of European Jews during the Holocaust. American Jewry's remarkable achievement in the private sphere overshadowed its weakness in the public one"--Series Editor's forword.

(Dover thrift editions).

What influences led to the creation of civilization? How did it come to be? What determines its course? In this seminal volume of 20th-century thought, Freud elucidates the contest between aggression, the death drive, and its adversary eros.

A collection of original essays on Philip Roth offering contemporary critical readings and assessments of recent texts.