Al B.Tross in the City is a whimsical tale of a seabird who becomes bored with his life living by the sea. He decides to go on an adventure into the faraway city. The food is not the same, the animals are not as friendly, and the place does not look as inviting. In his travels he learns a very important lesson.

In Unbending Gender, Joan Williams takes a hard look at the state of feminism in America. Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

The first critical history of interdisciplinary efforts and movements in the modern university. Interdisciplinarity—or the interrelationships among distinct fields, disciplines, or branches of knowledge in pursuit of new answers to pressing problems—is one of the most contested topics in higher education today. Some see it as a way to break down the silos of academic departments and foster creative interchange, while others view it as a destructive force that will diminish academic quality and destroy the university as we know it. In Undisciplining Knowledge, acclaimed scholar Harvey J. Graff presents readers with the first comparative and critical history of interdisciplinary initiatives in the modern university. Arranged chronologically, the book tells the engaging story of how various academic fields both embraced and fought off efforts to share knowledge with other scholars. It is a story of myths, exaggerations, and misunderstandings, on all sides. Touching on a wide variety of disciplines—including genetic biology, sociology, the humanities, communications, social relations, operations research, cognitive science, materials science, nanotechnology, cultural studies, literacy studies, and biosciences—the book examines the ideals, theories, and practices of interdisciplinarity through comparative case studies. Graff interweaves this narrative with a social, institutional, and intellectual history of interdisciplinary efforts over the 140 years of the modern university, focusing on both its implementation and evolution while exploring substantial differences in definitions, goals, institutional locations, and modes of organization across different areas of focus. Scholars across the disciplines, specialists in higher education, administrators, and interested readers will find the book’s multiple perspectives and practical advice on building and operating—and avoiding fallacies and errors—in interdisciplinary research and education invaluable.

As we enter the last decade of the twentieth century, the AIDS epidemic looms ever larger and threatening. The specter of upwards of a million deaths in the United States and perhaps many millions worldwide from a sexually transmitted virus shakes our belief in modem medical science, while challenging the foundations of democratic society. Almost ten years into the epidemic, and with an enormous body of basic science research on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), we still do not know why AIDS emerged when it did or how to stop its spread. A very humbling experience for scientists, clinicians, public health experts, politicians, and the general public. Yet there are signs that a well coordinated multidisciplinary research program can conquer the epidemic and, perhaps, provide the basis for preventing future epidemics. The HIV family of viruses is now better understood, both in terms of structure and function, than any other virus. Genetically engineered peptides and nucleic acids are being tested as specific treatments or vaccines against HIV infection/disease. Most prom ising are the strides which have been made in understanding those aspects of human behavior which have contributed to the spread of HIV infection and which must be substantially modified if AIDS is to be controlled and eventually eradicated. The basis of that understanding has roots in a diverse set of disciplines which have converged in the work presented in this book.

This volume is a collection of lectures and selected papers by Giorgio Parisi on the subjects of Field Theory (perturbative expansions, nonperturbative phenomena and phase transitions), Disordered Systems (mainly spin glasses) and Computer Simulations (lattice gauge theories).The basic problems discussed in the Field Theory section concern the interplay between perturbation theory and nonperturbative phenomena which are present when one deals with infrared or ultraviolet divergences or with nonconvergent perturbative expansions. The section on Disordered Systems contains a complete discussion about the replica method and its probabilistic interpretation, and also includes a short paper on multifractals. In the Simulations section, there is a series of lectures devoted to the study of quantum chromodynamics and a review paper on simulations in complex systems.The works of Giorgio Parisi have repeatedly displayed a remarkable depth of originality and innovation, and have paved the way for new research in many areas. This personal selection of his lectures and papers, complete with an original introduction by him, undoubtedly serves as a vital reference book for physicists and mathematicians working in these fields.