Journal of the History of Ideas

Allison, Henry E. Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. xi, 412p., bibl., index, $65. Time, space, being, epistemology, causation, and skepticism.

Almog, Joseph. Cogito? Descartes and Thinking the World. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. xi, 120p., index, $35. Meditation on the first part of Descartes's maxim.

Banner, Stuart. Who Owns the Sky? The Struggle to Control Airspace from the Wright Brothers On. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2008. vi, 353p., ill., index, $29.95. Property law, eminent domain, and legal jurisdiction.

Barash, Jeffrey Andrew. The Symbolic Construction of Reality: The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. xx, 223p., index. Eleven essays on myth and Enlightenment in the modern political world.

Beck, Gunnar. Fichte and Kant on Freedom, Rights, and Law. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2008. 246p., bibl., index, $65. Human freedom and the duty of self-mastery in rights-based political liberalism.

Belmonte, Laura A. Selling the American Way: U. S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. xiv, 255p., ill., index, $47.50. The designers of pamphlets, films, radio shows of the U. S. Information Agency, Voice of America, and similar authorities.

Berman, Joshua A. Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. xiv, 249p., bibl., ill., index, $39.95. The Pentateuch as establishing an egalitarian society in contrast to Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Ugarit, and Hittite hierarchies.

Blanning, Tim. The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2008. x, 416p., ill., index, $29.95. Balladeers, Baroque composers, and modern rock stars reach ever broader audiences thanks to written notation, new instruments, concert halls, and audio recording; or, From Stradivarius to the Strato-caster.

Brewer, Daniel. The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century French Thought. New York: Cambridge UP, 2008. viii, 260p., bibl., ill., index, $95. The "Enlightenment" as a modernizing project in the construction of a French national identity from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

Burger, Ronna. Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. viii, 309p., bibl., index, $35. Doctrines of the good, beautiful and just and of self, friendship, and happiness altered from Platonic dialogue to Aristotelian treatise.

Conklin, William E. Hegel's Laws: The Legitimacy of a Modern Legal Order. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. xii, 381p., index. Nineteenth-century vocabulary [End Page 341] and problematic (in translation) applied to twentieth-century legal reasoning and general jurisprudence.

Contosta, David R. Rebel Giants: The Revolutionary Lives of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus, 2008. 365p., bibl., ill., index, $26.95. Great men at odds with their age, coincidentaly born under the same star.

Cottingham, John. Cartesian Reflections: Essays on Descartes's Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. xiii, 332p., bibl., index, $80. Fifteen essays on mind and world, ethics and religion, and Cartesianism in philosophy.

Darwin, Charles. The "Beagle" Letters. Ed. Frederick Burkhardt, intro. Janet Browne. New York: Cambridge UP, 2008. xxx, 470p, bibl., ill., index, $32. Complete correspondence to and from Darwin, Jan. 1831 to Oct.1836; also viewable at http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/.

Da Silva, Filipe Carreira. Mead and Modernity: Science, Selfhood, and Democratic Politics. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2008. viii, 241p., bibl., index, $70. Social psychology in the Progressive era.

Davenport, Stewart. Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815–1860. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. x, 269p., bibl., index, $45. The simultaneous rise of American religion and commerce.

Dowlen, Oliver. The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008. viii, 264p., bibl., ill., index. Lotteries in ancient Athens, late medieval and Renaissance Italy, England and colonial America, and the French Revolution.

Eburne, Jonathan P. Surrealism and the Art of Crime. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell UP, 2008. xi, 324p., bibl., ill., index, $35. Sensationalist journalism, police blotters, and mystery novels as sources for violent crime in surrealist art and political tracts.

Endersby, Jim. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. xii...