We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the past was much worse. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: genocides in the Old Testament, gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm, monarchs who beheaded their relatives, and American founders who dueled with their rivals. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were common features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? Pinker argues that thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

Trade paperback. 208 pages approximate.

Every so often, a startling book emerges that gives voice to a new of previously unexamined trend that is transforming society. In Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways, Alan M. Dershowitz, the renowned lawyer and educator, chronicles the world's fundamental shift in its approach to controlling dangerous and destructive human behavior. Dershowitz reveals that we are moving - whether in terms of fighting crime, profiling suspicious behavior, or combating terrorism - toward increasingly preventive and proactive measures and away from a traditional reliance on reactive responses. In showing the seismic shift that not only has profoundly altered foreign policy but also has affected matters as close to home as inoculation, Internet censorship, and stings, Dershowitz presents the reader with challenging dilemmas. For example, should one detain and interrogate a potential criminal solely on the basis of his profile, DNA, or predicted behavior? Should the Department of Homeland Security have the power to monitor law-abiding citizens just because they attend a certain mosque or church? Should a nation threatened by terrorism or nuclear attack be authorized to launch a preemptive attack or a preventive war? In presenting his finds, Dershowitz contrasts our approach to the Cold War - deterring a nuclear attack by threatening mutually assured destruction (MAD) - with our current approach to terrorism: kill them before they kill us. The tragic events of 9/11 have of course outwardly change the nature of American foreign policy, but Preemption convincingly demonstrated that the seeds were planted long before the collapse of the World Trade Towers and the deadly chain of al-Qaids bombings that have ripped through more than a dozen cities throughout the world. In tracing the emergence of a preemptive approach, particularly in this new century, Dershowitz examines the troubling implications not just for national security and foreign policy but for civil liberties and human rights as well. He calls for, and constructs, a new jurisprudence of preemption that seeks to balance security and freedom. With a remarkable flair for debate that has won him acclaim in the courtroom, Dershowitz brings his prodigious talen and firsthand expertise as lawyer to a topic of great philosophical and political import, The questions that he raises, both in his introduction and through the many lucid examples in Preemption, have already begun to define our age. In doing so, they will profoundly alter our fundamental understanding of how to confront crime, terrorism, and warfare. Indeed, the knife cuts both ways.

This globe-spanning history of sugar is "an epic story on a broad canvas that never loses sight of individual moments of human drama; a historical methodology infused with political, intellectual, cultural, and social strands; a complex sequence of cause and effect; an illuminating synthesis of primary and secondary sources; and a thoughtful marriage of words, picture, and design." (Horn Book starred review) Here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Using songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos put a human face on this vast pageant. Time line, source notes, bibliography, and index included. The history of sugar runs like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe's Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar caused the loss of countless lives, but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. Cane, not cotton or tobacco, drove the bloody Atlantic slave trade and took the lives of countless Africans who toiled on vast sugar plantations under cruel overseers. And yet the very popularity of sugar gave abolitionists in England the one tool that could finally end the slave trade. Sugar moved, murdered, and freed millions; sugar changed the world.

The al-Qaida informal and loose international network in over 50 countries has been responsible for spectacular terrorist operations such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, and is apparently linked to the attack of the destroyer USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in 2000 and the September 11th, 2001 events in New York City and Washington, DC. The purpose of this book is not to glorify bin Laden and al-Qaida. Rather, it is designed to provide an easily accessible reference for academics, policymakers, reporters and other interested individuals on one of the most notorious terrorist groups. The volume exposes much of al-Qaida's mystique and thereby places it in perspective as one of the many challenges facing the international community in the 21st Century. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint