Böcker utgivna av Princeton University Press

An introduction to gradient-based stochastic optimization that integrates theory and implementationThis book explains gradient-based stochastic optimization, exploiting the methodologies of stochastic approximation and gradient estimation. Although the approach is theoretical, the book emphasizes developing algorithms that implement the methods. The underlying philosophy of this book is that when solving real problems, mathematical theory, the art of modeling, and numerical algorithms complement each other, with no one outlook dominating the others.The book first covers the theory of stochastic approximation including advanced models and state-of-the-art analysis methodology, treating applications that do not require the use of gradient estimation. It then presents gradient estimation, developing a modern approach that incorporates cutting-edge numerical algorithms. Finally, the book culminates in a rich set of case studies that integrate the concepts previously discussed into fully worked models. The use of stochastic approximation in statistics and machine learning is discussed, and in-depth theoretical treatments for selected gradient estimation approaches are included.Numerous examples show how the methods are applied concretely, and end-of-chapter exercises enable readers to consolidate their knowledge. Many chapters end with a section on “Practical Considerations” that addresses typical tradeoffs encountered in implementation. The book provides the first unified treatment of the topic, written for a wide audience that includes researchers and graduate students in applied mathematics, engineering, computer science, physics, and economics.

A provocative book that demystifies China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one-man rule instead of democracy as many in the West had hopedWhen China embarked on its transformative journey of modernization in 1979, many believed the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and mark the birth of a democratic, open society. Instead, China reverted to a neo-totalitarian state, one backed by one of the fastest-growing, most formidable economies on earth. The Broken China Dream pulls back the curtain on the regime of strongman Xi Jinping, revealing why the reforms of the post-Mao era have been reversed on nearly every front—and why the world failed to see it coming.Exposing the truth behind China’s economic ascendency after the Cultural Revolution, Minxin Pei shows how, following Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping strategically deployed the tools of capitalism to preserve the Chinese Communist Party. Deng kept intact the institutional foundations of totalitarianism even as he unleashed private entrepreneurship and courted foreign investment, giving China’s one-party state control of a vast repressive apparatus and the most critical sectors of the economy. Only a fragile balance of power among dueling factions prevented the rise of a totalitarian leader in the two decades after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989—but this temporary equilibrium collapsed.Essential to understanding today’s China, this meticulously researched book is a sobering account of why the country’s reformers and institutions could not stop a shrewd and ruthless politician like Xi from resurrecting dormant totalitarian practices that, for the foreseeable future, have spelled the end of China’s dream of a free and prosperous society.

A vivid new translation of selections from an inspiring guide to self-transformation through kindness by an eighth-century Buddhist monkWritten by the medieval Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva, The Bodhicaryavatara is one of the most beloved and frequently taught works in Buddhism and a favorite of the Dali Lama. An inspiring and powerful poem that uses a gripping, first-person, confessional voice, it is the most systematic work of ethical thought in the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And its invaluable insights, exhortations, and encouragements about how we can relieve suffering by becoming more caring and compassionate are universal. In How to Be Caring, philosopher and Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield presents a lively new translation of selected verses from Shantideva’s text that capture its powerful lessons for all of us. The result is the clearest, most concise, and most accessible introduction to this masterful Buddhist guidebook about how we can change the world by changing ourselves.Focusing on the life of a bodhisattva, a person committed to attaining awakening for the benefit of all beings, Shantideva argues that the first step to reducing suffering and making the world better is to conquer our own psychopathologies. Urging us to remember that we won’t live forever and therefore need to think about what is most important, the work seeks to inspire us and teach us how to be more generous, thoughtful, polite, patient, committed, and self-aware. Featuring an introduction and the original Tibetan text on facing pages, this dazzling volume is filled with wisdom that still speaks directly to readers today.

A dazzlingly illustrated guide to the plant life of the dinosaur age, from intricate ferns to the most majestic megafloraThe Mesozoic was dominated by a spectacular array of flora, from ferns, conifers, and cycads to ginkgos and flowering plants, as well as some enigmatic species with no modern-day descendants. This wide-ranging illustrated guide provides an unparalleled, in-depth look at the era’s extraordinary plant life, exploring its natural history, biology, and evolution over a span of 185 million years. Blending the latest discoveries in paleontology with informative profiles of extinct species and their living descendants, The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Plants is a one-of-a-kind reference to the botanical wonders of the prehistoric world.Features hundreds of breathtaking illustrations, from life studies and scenic landscapes to detailed sketches of representative speciesIntroduces the history of plant paleontology and the dating, geography, and extinction of Mesozoic floraProfiles hundreds of Mesozoic species, tracing the evolutionary relationships of fossil plants with living onesDiscusses photosynthesis, reproduction, growth, climate, plant communication, partnerships with fungi and animals, and conservationReveals how Mesozoic plants evolved in response to predation and changing environmental conditionsJourneys through the forests of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periodsA must-have guide for anyone interested in the lost world of the dinosaurs

A comprehensive photographic field guide to the butterflies and caterpillars of Britain and Western Europe—as well as the Canaries, the Azores, Madeira, and CyprusThis is the first field identification guide to the adult butterflies of Britain and Western Europe that also covers most of their caterpillars and egg types, providing all the tools needed for accurate identification. Comprehensive, practical, and easy to use in the field, this superb photographic guide covers all of the 472 species of butterfly found in Britain and Western Europe—as well as the Canaries, the Azores, Madeira, and Cyprus. Using the most recent taxonomy, it is also the first European butterfly field guide to use identification keys, including images of genitalia to distinguish between similar-looking species. The keys also include biogeographic and ecological identification criteria. Complete with an introduction on the biodiversity and biogeography of European butterflies, this is an essential guide for all lepidopterists and entomologists, from amateur enthusiasts to professionals.Features more than 1,500 color photographs and 300 distribution mapsIncludes identification keys for the top side and underside of adult butterflies and identification keys for most of their caterpillars and egg typesIncludes some 100 genitalia diagrams for difficult-to-identify speciesA highly visual presentation of the biological and ecological features of each speciesDesigned for lepidopterists and entomologists of every level

A groundbreaking look at the integral role of women in premodern Jewish communal lifeIn small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. Hiding in Plain Sight marshals a dazzling array of previously untapped archival sources to tell the stories of these woman for the first time.Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach focus their lens on the kehillah, a lively and thriving form of communal life that sustained European Jews for three centuries. They paint vibrant portraits of Jewish women of all walks of life, from those who wielded their wealth and influence in and out of their communities to the poorest maidservants and vagrants, from single and married women to the widowed and divorced. We follow them into their homes and learn about the possessions they valued and used, the books they read, and the writings they composed. Speaking to us in their own voices, these women reveal tremendous economic initiative in the rural marketplace and the princely court, and they express their profound spirituality in the home as well as the synagogue.Beautifully illustrated, Hiding in Plain Sight lifts the veil of silence that has obscured the lives of these women for too long, contributing a new chapter to the history of Jewish women and a new understanding of the Jewish past.

The essential illustrated guide to the ingenious techniques that insects use to design and construct an astounding array of natural structures, from nests to shelters to trapsInsect Architecture takes you inside the amazing structures that insects build, from the paper galleries of yellowjacket wasps to elaborate termite mounds complete with royal chambers and air-conditioning systems. Each chapter focuses on a group of insect architects, describing the materials and methods they use while exploring the structures themselves in detail. Blending spectacular illustrations with illuminating case studies of representative species from around the world, this is the ultimate guide to insect artistry, innovation, and design.Features a wealth of color photos, explanatory diagrams and blueprints, step-by-step sequences, and visual spreadsCovers all major groups of insect architects and the broad array of structures they buildExplains how anatomy, life cycle, and habitat are the ingredients to extraordinary creationsProfiles the insect world’s most accomplished builders—from beetles, bees, and cicadas to moths, wasps, ants, and termitesDiscusses the ecological impacts of insect architectureReveals how insect builders have inspired human design innovations

How American-style capitalism creates a coercive state unlike any otherHow could America, that storied land of liberty, be home to mass incarceration, police killings, and racialized criminal justice? In Law and Order Leviathan, David Garland explains how America’s racialized political economy gives rise to this extraordinary outcome.The United States has long been an international outlier, with a powerful business class, a weak social state, and an exceptional gun culture. Garland shows how, after the 1960s, American-style capitalism disrupted poor communities and depleted social controls, giving rise to violence and social problems at levels altogether unknown in other affluent nations. Aggressive policing and punishment became the default response.Marshalling a wealth of evidence, Garland shows that America lags behind comparable nations in protections for working people. He identifies the structural sources of America’s penal state and the community-level processes through which political economy impacts crime and policing. He argues that there is nothing paradoxical in America’s reliance on coercive state controls; the nation’s vaunted liberalism is largely an economic liberalism devoted to free markets and corporate power rather than to individual dignity and flourishing. Fear of violent crime and distrust of others ensure public support for this coercive Leviathan; racism enables indifference to its harms.America’s carceral regime will remain an outlier until America’s economy is structurally transformed. And yet, Garland argues, there is a path to reduced violence and significant penal reform even in the absence of structural change. Law and Order Leviathan sets out a powerful theory of the relation between political economy and crime control and a realistic framework for pursuing progressive change.

A groundbreaking history of Africa’s looted architectural heritage—and a bold proposal for the repatriation of the continent’s stolen cultural artifactsBetween the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their intended functions, and the removal of these objects often had catastrophic consequences for the original structures. Africa’s Buildings traces the history of the collection and distribution of African architectural fragments, documenting the brutality of the colonial regimes that looted Africa’s buildings and addressing the ethical questions surrounding the display of these objects.Itohan Osayimwese ranges across the whole of Africa, from Egypt in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, and spanning the western, central, and eastern regions of the continent. She describes how collectors employed violent means to remove elements such as columns and door panels from buildings, and how these methods differentiated architectural collecting from conventional collecting. She shows how Western collectors mischaracterized building components as ornament, erasing their architectural character and concealing the evidence of their theft. Osayimwese discusses how the very act of displacing building parts like floor tiles and woven screen walls has resulted in a loss of knowledge about their original function and argues that because of these removals, scholars have yet to fully grasp the variety and character of African architecture.Richly illustrated, Africa’s Buildings uncovers the vast scale of cultural displacement perpetrated by the West and proposes a new role for museums in this history, one in which they champion the repatriation of Africa’s architectural heritage and restitution for African communities.

The first photographic field guide to present the moths of western North America as they are found in nature, making it easy to use for novices and experts alikeWestern North America is home to a surprising array of moth species that come in a variety of colors and sizes. This richly illustrated field guide covers 1,900 of the most commonly occurring species in the region, from the United States–Mexico border north to Edmonton, Alberta, and central British Columbia. Images on the full-color plates are marked with arrows to help users quickly know the most important features to look for, while facing-page species accounts highlight these features and, when applicable, how they differ from those of similar species. Whether you are a beginning moth enthusiast or a seasoned observer in the field, Moths of Western North America is the ultimate photographic guide to these marvelous insects.Covers 1,900 of the most common species in western North AmericaFeatures more than 2,000 spectacular color photos of live specimens, at rest, including examples of variations and sexual dimorphism where presentSpecies accounts describe key identification features and include information on caterpillar host plants, the time of year in which adults may be found, and the probability of encountering each speciesIncludes a range map for each speciesProvides invaluable tips for newcomers on how to get started observing moths

The ultimate illustrated guide to elephants and their prehistoric relativesToday, only three species of elephants survive—the African savanna elephant, the African forest elephant, and Asian elephants. Yet the true scale of the proboscidean order, which includes living elephants and their extinct relatives, is far more expansive, spanning 60 million years of evolution and five continents. This book provides a comprehensive look at proboscidean biology and evolutionary history, describing the characteristics of every known species and revealing an incredible array of adaptations, from variations in tusks and trunks to specialized teeth. With stunning illustrations by Shu-yu Hsu, Elephants and Their Fossil Relatives is the essential reference guide to the most remarkable animals ever to walk the earth.Brings together all known elephant species and their fossil relatives in a single volumeCovers more than 230 extinct species ranging in size from creatures no larger than a chihuahua to colossal giants weighing up to three times the mass of modern elephantsFeatures hundreds of stunning full-color illustrations and cutting-edge 3D reconstructions—many restored for the first timeDelves into the biology and behavior of modern elephants, answering key questions about their anatomy, behavior, and profound impact on human cultureDraws on groundbreaking studies of ancient proteins, isotopes, and DNAA must-have for elephant lovers everywhere

A treasure trove of illuminating and entertaining quotations from the legendary naturalistHere is Charles Darwin in his own words-the naturalist, traveler, scientific thinker, and controversial author of On the Origin of Species, the book that shook the Victorian world. Featuring hundreds of quotations carefully selected by world-renowned Darwin biographer Janet Browne, The Quotable Darwin draws from Darwin's writings, letters to friends and family, autobiographical reminiscences, and private scientific notebooks. It offers a multifaceted portrait that takes readers through his youth, the famous voyage of the Beagle, the development of his thoughts about evolution, his gradual loss of religious faith, and the time spent turning his ideas into a well-articulated theory about the natural origin of all living beings-a theory that dangerously included the origin of humans.The Quotable Darwin also includes many of the key responses to Darwin's ideas from figures across the social spectrum, scientists and nonscientists alike-and criticism too. We see Darwin as an innovative botanist and geologist, an affectionate husband and father, and a lively correspondent who once told his cousin that he liked to play billiards because "it drives the horrid species out of my head." This book gives us an intimate look at Darwin at work, at home, as a public figure, and on his travels.Complete with a chronology of Darwin's life by Browne, The Quotable Darwin provides an engagingly fresh perspective on a remarkable man who was always thinking deeply about the natural world.

A comprehensive and authoritative collection of Thoreau quotations on more than 150 subjects, from beauty to wisdomFew writers are more quotable than Henry David Thoreau. His books, essays, journals, poems, letters, and unpublished manuscripts contain an inexhaustible treasure of epigrams and witticisms, from the famous ("The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation") to the obscure ("Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining") and the surprising ("I would exchange my immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather"). The Quotable Thoreau, the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of Thoreau quotations ever assembled, gathers more than 2,000 memorable passages from this iconoclastic American author, social reformer, environmentalist, and self-reliant thinker. Including Thoreau's thoughts on topics ranging from sex to solitude, manners to miracles, government to God, life to death, and everything in between, the book captures Thoreau's profundity as well as his humor ("If misery loves company, misery has company enough"). Drawing primarily on The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, published by Princeton University Press, The Quotable Thoreau is thematically arranged, fully indexed, richly illustrated, and thoroughly documented. For the student of Thoreau, it will be invaluable. For those who think they know Thoreau, it will be a revelation. And for the reader seeking sheer pleasure, it will be a joy. Over 2,000 quotations on more than 150 subjectsRichly illustrated with historic photographs and drawingsThoreau on himself and his contemporariesThoreau's contemporaries on ThoreauBiographical time lineAppendix of misquotations and misattributionsFully indexedSuggestions for further reading

A panoramic biography of Japan’s iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the presentMount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrought havoc and instilled fear. Long an object of worship, Fuji has been inhabited by deities that changed radically over time. It has been both a totem of national unity and a flashpoint for economic and political disputes. And while its soaring majesty has inspired countless works of literature and art, the foot of the mountain is home to military training grounds and polluting industries. Tracing the history of Fuji from its geological origins in the remote past to its recent inscription as a World Heritage Site, Andrew Bernstein explores these and other contradictions in the story of the mountain, inviting us to reflect on the relationships we share with the nonhuman world and one another.Beautifully illustrated, Fuji presents a rich portrait of one of the world’s most celebrated sites, revealing a mountain forever in the making and offering a meditation on the ability of landscape both to challenge and inspire.

A bold retelling of the 1960s civil rights struggle through its work against police violence—and a prehistory of both the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged half a century laterPolice Against the Movement shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: that the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, as Joshua Clark Davis shows, activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins in precinct stations, picketing outside department headquarters, and stopping traffic to expose officer misdeeds. In return, organizers found themselves the targets of overwhelming political repression thanks to widespread police surveillance, infiltration by undercover spies, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at discrediting and derailing the movement.The history of the civil rights era abounds with accounts of physical brutality by sadistic sheriffs and tales of political intrigue and constitutional violations by FBI agents. Turning our attention to municipal officials in both the North and South, Davis reveals how local police bombarded civil rights organizers with an array of insidious weapons. More than just physical violence, these economic, legal, and reputational attacks were designed to project the appearance of color-blind law enforcement.The civil rights struggle against police violence is largely overlooked today, the victim of a willful campaign by local law enforcement to erase their record of repression against the movement. By returning activism against local police abuses to the center of the civil rights story, Police Against the Movement undoes decades of historical erasure surrounding the struggle against state violence that continues to this day.

The first annotated edition of the book that shocked the Victorian world and continues to generate controversy todayWhen Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man was published in 1871, the book was an immediate sensation. It presents Darwin's account of how we evolved from primates and expounds his theory of sexual selection, which he believed accounted for human origins and diversity. James Costa and Elizabeth Yale bring Darwin's Descent to new life in this authoritative annotated edition, shedding light on the cultural context in which the legendary naturalist developed his ideas and exploring how subsequent generations of scientists, scholars, and social reformers adapted them.Informative and in-depth commentaries accompany the text of The Descent of Man, enabling readers to engage with Darwin's ideas and contextualize them in light of our current understanding of human evolution and sexual selection. Costa and Yale show how Darwin's antislavery commitments and his beliefs in European superiority shaped his account of the evolution of human difference, and examine how Victorian beliefs about gender informed the development of his theory of sexual selection. They explain where Darwin's arguments about the origins of human differences line up with modern science—and where they don't.Spanning the boundaries of history and science, this fully annotated edition illuminates the rich cultural and scientific contexts underpinning Darwin's ideas and introduces his landmark book to a new generation of readers.

The consequences of America’s retreat from prosecuting elite-level corporate crimeThe United States is an exceptionally violent country, increasingly unable or unwilling to stem violence in its many forms. A growing corporate crime wave has gone unprosecuted and unpunished, with those in the C-suites largely escaping accountability. Meanwhile, the country has doubled down on pursuing people accused of street and drug crimes and immigration offenses. Corporate impunity, the financialization of the economy, militarized policing, the burgeoning carceral state, and the forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere all have fostered corporate, economic, and state violence in America. In Crime and No Punishment, Marie Gottschalk argues that these developments have undermined the legitimacy of American political and economic institutions. Gottschalk analyzes how the concentration of economic, political, and military power has siphoned off vital resources, preying on the most vulnerable communities and normalizing violence and death. It has kept America from attacking the root causes of violent street crime and curtailing “deaths of despair” from suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses, and chronic diseases. The United States continues to incarcerate more of its people than nearly every other country even as it decriminalizes or turns a blind eye to elite-level corporate crime. Public and scholarly attention, however, remains fixated on violent street crime—although corporate and white-collar crime and state and economic violence directly and indirectly hurt far more people in the United States. Gottschalk contends that the US failure to protect its people from these harms has increased the fragility of democracy in America.

How an enigmatic masterpiece of the French Revolution became a talisman of the revolutionary spirit in our own timeJacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat depicts the painter’s friend and fellow revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, collapsed in his bath after being fatally stabbed by a female assassin who stands just outside the frame. In this fascinating book, Thomas Crow traces the radical legacy of a painting that has been called the Pietà of the French Revolution, showing how David’s masterpiece captures the saga of that violent era in the single figure of Marat, and how it reveals itself anew today.Crow begins by describing how the painting’s enduring power came to the fore during the countercultural tumult of the 1960s, discussing how his vocation as a scholar arose out of his own encounter with the work. He then takes readers back to 1793, telling the story of the painting’s creation through the eyes of David, his subject, and Marat’s charismatic assassin, Charlotte Corday. Charting the history of its impact across more than two centuries, Crow shows how this multilayered portrait surfaced in succeeding waves of political dissent as an enduring talisman of popular insurgency.Beautifully illustrated, Murder in the Rue Marat is an art historian’s disarmingly personal account of a painting whose hidden complexities bear witness to the promise and peril of revolution in Marat’s time and our own.

From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near EastIn 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten’s capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.Blending scholarly expertise with painstaking detective work, Eric Cline describes the spectacular discovery, the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them. Dating to the middle of the fourteenth century BCE and the time of Tutankhamun’s immediate predecessors, Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, the Amarna letters are the only royal archive from New Kingdom Egypt known to exist. In them, we learn of royal marriages, diplomatic negotiations, gift-giving, intrigue, and declarations of brotherly love between powerful rulers as well as demands made by the petty kings in Canaan who owed allegiance to Egypt’s pharaohs.A monumental achievement, Love, War, and Diplomacy transports readers to the glorious age of the Amarna letters and the colonial era that brought them to light and reveals how the politics, posturing, and international intrigues of the ancient Near East are not so unlike today’s.

From acclaimed folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor, an enchanting collection of the ancient myths that emerged out of the wonders-and disasters-of the natural worldMythopedia is a fun, fact-filled A-Z treasury of myths inspired by natural events. Bringing together fifty legends from antiquity to the present, this delightfully entertaining book takes you around the world to explore sunken kingdoms and lost cities, accursed mountains and treacherous terrains, and lethal lakes and singing sand dunes, explaining the historical background and latest science underlying each tale. As soon as humans invented language, they told stories to explain mysterious things they observed around them-on land, in the seas, and in the skies. Even though these tales are expressed in poetic or supernatural language, they contain surprisingly accurate insights and even eyewitness descriptions of catastrophic events millennia ago. Drawing on her unique insights as a pioneer in the exciting new field of geomythology, Adrienne Mayor describes how cultural memories of tsunamis, volcanic disasters, and other massive geological events can reach back thousands of years as the stories were preserved, elaborated, told, and retold across generations. She shows how geomythology is expanding our understanding of our planet's history over eons, revealing the human desire to explain nature and weave imaginative stories intertwined with keen observation, rational speculation, and memory. With captivating drawings by Michele Angel, Mythopedia is a compendium of many marvels, from the Hindu monkey god Hanuman and his army of bridge-building primates to the terrifying sand demon Shensha shen of China, the gnawing glaciers of Austria, and the vengeful fish-headed snake god Nyami Nyami of Africa's Zambezi River. Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual viceIntellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates. Taking readers from the academies of ancient Greece to today's culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us, painting vibrant portraits of some of the most intensely irritating intellectuals ever known, from devious sophists and bossy savants to hypercritical theologians, dry-as-dust antiquarians, and know-it-all professors. He shows how criticisms of pedantry have typically been more about conduct than ideas, and he demonstrates how pedantry served as a weapon in the perennial struggle over ideas, social status, political authority, and belief. Shifting attention away from the self-proclaimed virtues of the learned to their less-than-flattering vice, Visser makes a bold and provocative contribution to the history of Western thought. Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from satire and comedy to essays, sermons, and film, On Pedantry sheds critical light on why anti-intellectual views have gained renewed prominence today and serves as essential reading in an age of rising populism across the globe.