Free Press paperback

Dr. Becker, theoretician and author of The Birth and Death of Meaning: A Perspective in Psychiatry and Anthropology, combines his philosophic behaviorism with a humanistic version of social psychiatry in an attempt to provide a base for a new science of man -- an interdisciplinary ""man-centered"" science. He draws substantiation for his orientation and theses mainly from Dewey and Allport and emphasizes the social nature of the influences that have molded the ""symbolic animal"" -- man. He offers a detailed non-medical analysis of the nature of schizorenia and depression to show that biologically oriented medical psychiatry must fail in its attempt to understand these so-called ""mental illnesses"" because of its narrowly posited and unhistorical perspective. He sees these ills as results of man's inability to get proper satisfaction from his capacities for symbolization, stemming from society's restrictive habits, culture patterns, inhibited and inhibiting human relations that in various ways undermine, overwhelm or destroy self-esteem. Thus, Becker strikes hard at conventional, even eclectic psychiatry, and with his arguments should stimulate much scholarly praise and rebuttal.

I was familiar with Sherwin Carlquist's scientific production, which I find to be very clearly written and approachable despite it being catered to technical audiences. In this collection of short stories, I was completely amazed to find Dr. Carlquist's prose is even more entertaining and captivating than you would expect from a scientist. As a trans non-binary person who lived many years as a gay man, and as someone who has studied Dr. Carlquist's work for their own research, I feel that this book provided me with a very inspiring perspective of the man behind the science: someone unabashedly queer who wanted to tell uplifting queer stories so that future generations of gay men could imagine themselves living fulfilling lives.

On Thermonuclear War was controversial when originally published and remains so today. It is iconoclastic, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and finally it is calm and compellingly reasonable. The book was widely read on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the result was serious revision in both Western and Soviet strategy and doctrine. As a result, both sides were better able to avoid disaster during the Cold War.

"In 1893, a young doctoral student was to publish an entirely original work on the nature of labor and production as they were being shaped by the industrial revolution. Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society studies the nature of social solidarity and explores the ties that bind one person to the next in order to hold society together. This revised and updated second edition fluently conveys original arguments for contemporary readers. Leading Durkheim scholar Steve Lukes's new introduction builds upon Lewis Coser's original -- which places the work in its intellectual and historical context and pinpoints its central ideas and arguments -- by focusing on the text's significance for how we ought to think sociologically about some central problems that face us today."--Back cover.

Considers the national and international ramifications of U.S. ABM deployment, and its effects on SALT talks with the Soviet Union.