Author: Dwight Codr In Raving at Usurers, Dwight Codr explores the complex intersection of religion, economics, ethics, and literature in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Codr offers an alternative to the orthodox story of secular economic modernity's emergence in this key time and place, locating in early modern anti-usury literature an ethic of uncertainty that viewed economic transactions as ethical to the extent that their outcomes were uncertain. Codrs development of an anti-financial reading practice reveals that the financial revolution might be said to have grown out ofrather than in spite ofearly modern anti-usury and Protestant ethics. Beginning with the reconstruction of a major controversy provoked by the delivery of a sermon against usury in the financial heart of London, Codr goes on to show not only how the ethic at the core of the discourse surrounding usury in the eighteenth century was culturally mediated but also how that ethic may be used as a lens to better understand major works of eighteenth-century literature. Codr offers radically new perspectives on Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe and Henry Fieldings Tom Jones, examining how these novels reacted to emergent financial ways of knowing and meaning as well as how the texts formally bear out the possibility of a truly open and uncertain future. By reading the eighteenth century in terms of risk rather than certainty, Raving at Usurers offers a reassessment of what has been called the financial revolution in England and provides a revisionist account of the intimate connection between risk, ethics, and economics in the period.

Author: William F. Massy Higher education expert William F. Massys decades as a professor, senior university officer, and consultant have left him with a passionate belief in the need for reform in Americas traditional universities. In Reengineering the University, he addresses widespread concerns that higher educations costs are too high, learning falls short of objectives, disruptive technology and education models are mounting serious challenges to traditional institutions, and administrators and faculty are too often unwilling or unable to change. An expert microeconomist, Massy approaches the challenge of reform in a genuinely new way by applying rigorous economic principles, informed by financial data and other evidence, to explain the forces at work on universities and the flaws in the academic business model. Ultimately, he argues that computer models that draw on data from college transaction systems can help both administrators and faculty address problems of educational performance and cost analysis, manage the complexity of planning and budgeting systems, and monitor the progress of reform in nonintrusive and constructive ways. Written for institutional leaders, faculty, board members, and policymakers who bear responsibility for initiating and carrying through on reform in traditional colleges and universities, Reengineering the University shows how, working together, administrators and faculty can improve education, research, and affordability by keeping a close eye on both academic values and the bottom line.

Author: Virginia Kerns Journeys West traces journeys made during seven months of fieldwork in 1935 and 1936 by Julian Steward, a young anthropologist, and his wife, Jane. Virginia Kerns identifies the scores of Native elders whom they met throughout the Western desert, men and women previously known in print only by initials and thus largely invisible as primary sources of Stewards classic ethnography. Besides humanizing Stewards cultural informantsrevealing them as distinct individuals and also as first-generation survivors of an ecological crisis caused by American settlement of their landsKerns shows how the elders worked with Steward. Each helped to construct an ethnographic portrait of life in a particular place in the high desert of the Great Basin. The elders memories of how they and their ancestors had lived by hunting and gatheringa sustainable way of life that endured for generationsrichly illustrated what Steward termed cultural adaptation. It later became a key concept in anthropology and remains relevant today in an age of global environmental crisis. Based on meticulous research, this book draws on an impressive array of evidencefrom interviews and observations to census data, correspondence, and the field journals of the Stewards. Journeys West illuminates not onlythe elders who were Stewards guides but also the practice of ethnographic fieldwork: a research method that is both a journey and a distinctive way of looking, listening, and learning.

Author: Carl J. Ekberg & Foreword by Marie-Sol de La Tour d'Auvergne In 1790, Pierre-Charles de Lassus de Luzieres gathered his wife and children and fled Revolutionary France. His trek to America was prompted by his purchase of two thousand acres situated on the bank of the Ohio River from the Scioto Land Companythe institution that infamously swindled French buyers and sold them worthless titles to property. When de Luzieres arrived and realized he had been defrauded, he chose, in a momentous decision, not to return home to France. Instead, he committed to a life in North America and began planning a move to the Mississippi River valley. De Luzieres dreamed of creating a vast commercial empire that would stretch across the frontier, extending the entire length of the Ohio River and also down the Mississippi from Ste. Genevieve to New Orleans. Though his grandiose goal was never realized, de Luzieres energetically pursued other important initiatives. He founded the city of New Bourbon in what is now Missouri and recruited American settlers to move westward across the Mississippi River. The highlight of his career was being appointed Spanish commandant of the New Bourbon District, and his 1797 census of that community is an invaluable historical document. De Luzieres was a significant political player during the final years of the Spanish regime in Louisiana, but likely his greatest contributions to American history are his extensive commentaries on the Mississippi frontier at the close of the colonial era. A French Aristocrat in the American West: The Shattered Dreams of De Lassus de Luzieres is both a narrative of this remarkable mans life and a compilation of his extensive writings. In Part I of the book, author Carl Ekberg offers a thorough account of de Luzieres, from his life in Pre-Revolutionary France to his death in 1806 in his house in New Bourbon. Part II is a compilation, in translation, of de Luzieress most compelling correspondence. Until now very little of his writing has been published, despite the fact that his letters constitute one of the largest bodies of writing ever produced by a French emigre in North America. Though de Luzieress presence in early American history has been largely overlooked by scholars, the work left behind by this unlikely frontiersman merits closer inspection. A French Aristocrat in the American West brings the words and deeds of this fascinating man to the public for the first time.