This multi-disciplinary collection examines the recent wave of political apologies for acts of past injustice.

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A leading economist's exploration of what our economic arrangements might look like if we applied basic principles without ideological blinders. There is nothing wrong with economics, Dean Baker contends, but economists routinely ignore their own principles when it comes to economic policy. What would policy look like if we took basic principles of mainstream economics seriously and applied them consistently? In the debate over regulation, for example, Baker—one of the few economists who predicted the meltdown of fall 2008—points out that ideological blinders have obscured the fact there is no “free market” to protect. Modern markets are highly regulated, although intrusive regulations such as copyright and patents are rarely viewed as regulatory devices. If we admit the extent to which the economy is and will be regulated, we have many more options in designing policy and deciding who benefits from it. On health care reform, Baker complains that economists ignore another basic idea: marginal cost pricing. Unlike all other industries, medical services are priced extraordinarily high, far above the cost of production, yet that discrepancy is rarely addressed in the debate about health care reform. What if we applied marginal cost pricing—making doctors' wages competitive and charging less for prescription drugs and tests such as MRIs? Taking Economics Seriously offers an alternative Econ 101. It introduces economic principles and thinks through what we might gain if we free ourselves from ideological blinders and get back to basics in the most troubled parts of our economy.

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

Christopher Woodard presents a new and rich version of utilitarianism, the idea that ethics is ultimately about what makes people's lives go better. He launches a state-of-the-art defence of the theory, often seen as excessively simple, and shows that it can account for much of the complexity and nuance of everyday ethical thought.

A landmark work of political and legal philosophy, Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously was acclaimed as a major work on its first publication in 1977 and remains profoundly influential in the 21st century. A forceful statement of liberal principles - championing the legal, moral and political rights of the individual against the state - Dworkin demolishes prevailing utilitarian and legal-positivist approaches to jurisprudence. Developing his own theory of adjudication, he applies this to controversial public issues, from civil disobedience to positive discrimination. Elegantly written and cuttingly insightful, Taking Rights Seriously is one of the most important works of public thought of the last fifty years.

A hilarious illustrated meditation on the question that runs through the mind of every woman who cohabitates with--or simply enjoys the company of--the opposite sex: Seriously, WTF is wrong with men? If you've ever laid awake at night wondering why the man in your life seems physically incapable of moving a two-pound laundry basket 45 degrees in order to accurately deposit a pair of dirty socks (#literallywhy), you'll find succor in this lighthearted--but smart and savvy--collection of all those little stories that women share about their dudes. From WTFs throughout history (like how Attila the Hun was so in love with his bride-to-be that he felt the need to destroy Italy en route to picking her up), to WTFs at home (Your Husband Put the Baby to Sleep: What's Wrong with This Picture?), to WTFs in the wild (Manspreading: A Diagram), Seriously WTF offers a compilation of positively eye-rolling conversations, illustrations, anecdotes, e-mails, text messages, and miscellany that will make women everywhere think, Yup. That.

Taking Rites Seriously is about how religious beliefs and religious believers are assessed by judges and legal scholars and are sometimes mischaracterized and misunderstood by those who are critical of the influence of religion in politics or in the formation of law. Covering three general topics - reason and motive, dignity and personhood, nature and sex - philosopher and legal theorist Francis J. Beckwith carefully addresses several contentious legal and cultural questions over which religious and non-religious citizens often disagree: the rationality of religious belief, religiously motivated legislation, human dignity in bioethics, abortion and embryonic stem cell research, reproductive rights and religious liberty, evolutionary theory, and the nature of marriage. In the process, he responds to some well-known critics of public faith - including Brian Leiter, Steven Pinker, Suzanna Sherry, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Richard Dawkins - as well as to some religiously conservative critics of secularism, such as the advocates for intelligent design.

Refugee displacement is a global phenomenon that has uprooted millions of individuals over the past century. In the 1980s, repatriation became the preferred option for resolving the refugee crisis. As human rights achieved global eminence, refugees' right of return fell under its umbrella. Yet return as a right and its practice as a rite created a radical disconnect between principle and everyday practice, and the repatriation of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) remains elusive in cases of forced displacement of victims by ethnic conflict. Reviewing cases of ethnic displacement throughout the twentieth century in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan juxtapose the empirical lack of repatriation in cases of ethnic conflict, unless accompanied by coercion. The emphasis on repatriation during the last several decades has obscured other options, leaving refugees to spend years warehoused in camps. Repatriation takes place when identity, defined by ethnicity or religion, is not at the center of the displacing conflict, or when the ethnic group to which the refugees belong are not a minority in their original country or in the region to which they want to return. Rather than perpetuate a ritual belief in return as a right without the prospect of realization, Adelman and Barkan call for solutions that bracket return as a primary focus in cases of ethnic conflict.

First published in 1993. When do we laugh? Why do we laugh? What makes us stop? What does ‘humour’ consist of? Listen to any everyday conversation: it is full of the constant interruptions and detours of humour. Look at the TV schedules for any evening—how many of the programmes are comedies or contain a degree of humour? Humour and comedy invite our pleasure at every step we take—they are absolutely integral to any culture. In Taking Humour Seriously, Jerry Palmer argues that we must take humour seriously (as well as humorously) or fail to understand a fundamental part of culture. Taking Humour Seriously unravels the reasons why humour is a challenge for every different theoretical approach. It is multi-dimensional, it is part of personality and part of our cognitive and emotional processes; it is subject to social rules governing appropriate behaviour on different occasions. It is part of literary and audio-visual narrative; it is subject to moral and aesthetic judgment, and it is a rhetorical instrument. Palmer argues that it is only through investigating those separate dimensions that we can begin to understand the phenomenon of humour. Taking Humour Seriously examines the role humour and comedy play in many different types of society. It also looks at the many different approaches to its study—from Freud to anthropology, from literary criticism to biology. Finally it considers its limits—the things that prevent humour and comedy from delivering their usual pleasures—and explores the aesthetic value of those pleasures.