Books Received

Adamson, Peter. Classical Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. xxi, 346p., bibl., index, $29.95. First of a series, here covering the Presocratics, Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle.

Ahnert, Thomas. The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. viii, 1216p., bibl., index, $65. Moderate conduct as the touchstone of orthodoxy and Presbyterianism.

Allen, Barry. Vanishing Into Things: Knowledge in Chinese Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2015. 289p., index, $45. Ethical and practical epistemology in Confucian and Daoist thinkers.

Beiser, Frederick C. The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796–1880. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 610p., bibl., index, $99. Studies of eleven philosophers from Fries and Herbart to Winderband and Riehl.

Biow, Douglas. On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2015. xii, 311p., bibl., ill, index, $55. Patronage, education, and work and the shifting status of artisans and artists.

Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 2015. xxvi, 229p., $19.95. Aphorisms and advice from the 1970s, like “the importance of readings index cards” and “how to avoid being exploited by your advisor.”

Engberg-Pedersen, Anders. Empire of Chance: The Napoleonic Wars and the Disorder of Things. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2015. x, 324p., ill, index, $45. Veterans and nineteenth-century critics second-guess the decisions made in the midst of Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo.

Farr, James and David Lay Williams, eds. The General Will: The Evolution of a Concept. New York: Cambridge UP, 2015. xl, 495p., bibl., index, $125. Sixteen essays from Arnauld, Malebranche, and Locke to Benjamin Constant, Tocqueville, and Rawls.

Fitzmaurice, Andrew. Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000. Ideas in Context, no. 107. New York: Cambridge UP, 2014. ix, 378p., bibl., index, $99. Territorial occupation justified by the school of Salamanca, especially regarding the conquest of the Americas and the carving up of Africa.

Flores, Ruben. Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2014. 353p., ill., index. Franz Boas and John Dewey in Mexico’s integration and Mexican integration theories in the ending of Jim Crow in the U. S. west.

Gianquitto, Tina and Lydia Fisher, eds. America’s Darwin: Darwinian Theory and U. S. Literary Culture. Athens, Ga.: U of Georgia P, 2014. vi, 401p., index, $29.95. Fourteen essays address textual responses in U. S. fiction, history of science, women’s studies, geology, and other disciplines.

Godwin, William. The Letters of William Godwin. Vol. 2: 1798–1805. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. xlvii, 423p., ill,. index, $160. 242 letters depict the author as contemplative philosopher and risk-taking entrepreneur.

Gregor, A. James. Marxism and the Making of China: A Doctrinal History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xiii, 304p., bibl., index, $100. The appropriation of Marx and Engels in the Mao revolution and its transformation in the new China of Deng Xioping.

Gubser, Michael. The Far Reaches: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Social Renewal in Central Europe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2014. xiii, 335p., index. The reception of Franz Brentano’s and Edmund Husserl’s social ethics by dissident thinkers like Jan Patočka, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), and Vaclav Havel.

Hartman, Andrew. A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2015. 342p., index, $30. The deterioration of agreed-upon twentieth-century social norms and the emergence of a more diverse and tolerant country.

Jankélévitch, Vladimir. The Bad Conscience. Trans. Andrew Kelley. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2015. xxii, 179p., index, $35. The responsibility in moral freedom and the importance of remorse for irreversible actions.

Kornhauser, Anne M. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2015. 323p., index, $59.95. The legitimacy of the administrative state after the New Deal, as an occupying force in post-war Germany, and the question of individual autonomy in the philosophy of John Rawls.

Laursen, John Christian and Gianni Paganini, eds. Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Toronto: U of...