Encouraged by his friend, Chick, to write down his ideas about humankind, university professor Abe Ravelstein receives unexpected acclaim and bounty and invites Chick to join in his success, a situation that sparks a philosophical journey for both.

Peer review is the process by which submissions to journals and presses are evaluated with regard to suitability for publication. Armed with the results of numerous empirical studies, critics have leveled a variety of harsh charges against peer review such as: reviewers and editors are biased toward authors from prestigious institutions, peer review is biased toward established ideas, and it does a poor job of detecting errors and fraud. While an immense literature has sprouted on peer review in the sciences and social sciences, Peer Review is the first book-length, wide-ranging study of peer review that utilizes methods and resources of contemporary philosophy. Its six chapters cover the following topics: the tension between peer review and the liberal notion that truth emerges when ideas proliferate in the marketplace of ideas; arguments for and against blind review of submissions; the alleged conservatism of peer review; the anomalous nature of book reviewing; the status of non-peer-reviewed publications, such as invited articles or Internet publications, in tenure and promotion cases; and the future of peer review in the age of the Internet. The author has also included several key readings about peer review.

Presents the report of an investigation in 1985 into the case of Lienhard Bergel, a German instructor dismissed from the New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College) in 1935. Bergel claimed that he was dismissed by the pro-Nazi chairman of the department, Friedrich J. Hauptmann, on a trumped-up charge of incompetence because of his anti-Nazi views. The local Jewish community tended to view Bergel as a "surrogate Jew, " victimized for his opposition to Nazis. Examines the controversy against the background of the antisemitism of this period, pro-Nazi demonstrations by German-American groups (causing anxiety in the New Jersey legislature which passed a law against Nazi propaganda), and student unrest led by left-wing and communist groups. An investigation in the 1930s found that there was little evidence that Hauptmann, despite his praise for Nazi racism, had treated Jews unfairly. Bergel's dismissal was upheld. The 1985 committee found that Bergel's non-reappointment was valid, but that the actions of Rutgers authorities were questionable. They had supported Hauptmann in order to protect the university, which was in a precarious financial state, from unfavorable publicity.

Even before he wrote his bestselling book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , historian Ilan Pappe was a controversial figure in Israel. In Out of the Frame , he gives a full account of his break with conventional Israeli scholarship and its consequences. Growing up in a conventional Israeli community influenced by the utopian visions of Theodor Herzl, Pappe was barely aware of the Nakbah in his high school years. Here, he traces his journey of discovery from the whispers of Palestinian classmates to his realization that the "enemy's" narrative of the events of 1948 was correct. After producing his Ph.D at Oxford University based on recently declassified documents in the early 1980s, he returned to Palestine determined to protect the memory of the Nakbah and struggle for the rectification of its evils. For the first time, he gives the details of the formidable opposition he faced in Israel, including death threats fed by the media, denunciations by the Knesset, and calls for him to be sacked from his post at Haifa University. This revealing work, written with dignity and humor, highlights Israel's difficulty in facing up to its past and forging a peaceful, inclusive future in Palestine.