This brief but inclusive narrative textbook focuses on the comparison of the theoretical promise of democracy with its actual performance. Readily accessible to undergraduates, the text is anchored in and motivated by political science scholarship. This new edition has been completely revised and updated and incorporates the results of the 2000 presidential and congressional elections. With thorough coverage of the successes and failures of the workings of democracy in today's United States, PROMISE AND PERFORMANCE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY provides students with tools they can use to understand politics, evaluate the functioning of democracy, and make educated voting decisions.

Promise and Performance of American Democracy

Politics & Social Sciences

Watson, Richard A.

Politics & Government

John Wiley&Sons, Inc.

Man and Nature presents hypothetical models of eight ways of life --of the nonhuman primate, the protohuman, and six stages of man--synthesized from factual information about the interaction of selected primates with the physical environment. The eight "ways of life" chapters, which form Part II, the core of the book, thus contain few statements of "fact" in a technical sense. The models are constructed on the basis of fundamental laws derived from regularities observable in man's natural interaction with the physical environment and show the logical structure of the various forms of this interaction. Two introductory chapters--on methodology and terms, respectively--comprise Part I. Chapters 11 and 12, which make up Part III, evaluate the sequence of the models as a possible representation of evolutionary and historical fact.

Man and Nature Anthropological Essay In Hu

Harcourt, Brace & Co.

A study of evolutionary processes that involve the combination of systems of semi-independently preadapted genetic material rather than the linear or sequential accumulation of slight modifications; with computational models that illustrate these mechanisms.
No biological concept has had greater impact on the way we view ourselves and the world around us than the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin's masterful contribution was to provide an algorithmic model (a formal step-by-step procedure) of how adaptation may take place in biological systems. However, the simple process of linear incremental improvement that he described is only one algorithmic possibility, and certain biological phenomena provide the possibility of implementing alternative processes. In Compositional Evolution, Richard Watson uses the tools of computer science and computational biology to show that certain mechanisms of genetic variation (such as sex, gene transfer, and symbiosis) allowing the combination of preadapted genetic material enable an evolutionary process, compositional evolution, that is algorithmically distinct from the Darwinian gradualist framework. After reviewing the gradualist framework of evolution and outlining the analogous principles at work in evolutionary computation, Watson describes the compositional mechanisms of evolutionary biology and provides computational models that illustrate his argument. He uses models such as the genetic algorithm as well as novel models to explore different evolutionary scenarios, comparing evolution based on spontaneous point mutation, sexual recombination, and symbiotic encapsulation. He shows that the models of sex and symbiosis are algorithmically distinct from simpler stochastic optimization methods based on gradual processes. Finally, Watson discusses the impact of compositional evolution on our understanding of natural evolution and, similarly, the utility of evolutionary computation methods for problem solving and design.

Compositional Evolution: The Impact of Sex, Symbiosis, And Modularity on the Gradualist Framework of Evolution (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology)

Computers & Technology

Computer Science

Mit Pr

These unjustly neglected works, among the most enjoyable of Mark Twain's novels, follow Tom, Huck, and Jim as they travel across the Atlantic in a balloon, then down the Mississippi to help solve a mysterious crime. Both with the original illustrations by Dan Beard and A.B. Frost.

Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

Literature & Fiction

TWAIN,MARK

United States

University of California Press

These unjustly neglected works, among the most enjoyable of Mark Twain's novels, follow Tom, Huck, and Jim as they travel across the Atlantic in a balloon, then down the Mississippi to help solve a mysterious crime. Both with the original illustrations by Dan Beard and A.B. Frost.

"What am I writing? A historical tale of 300 years ago, simply for the love of it." Mark Twain’s "tale" became his first historical novel, The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881. Intricately plotted, it was intended to have the feel of history even though it was only the stuff of legend. In sixteenth-century England, young Prince Edward (son of Henry VIII) and Tom Canty, a pauper boy who looks exactly like him, are suddenly forced to change places. The prince endures "rags &amp; hardships" while the pauper suffers the "horrible miseries of princedom." Mark Twain called his book a "tale for young people of all ages," and it has become a classic of American literature. The first edition in 1881 was fully illustrated by Frank Merrill, John Harley, and L. S. Ipsen. The boys in these illustrations, Mark Twain said, "look and dress exactly as I used to see them cast in my mind. . . . It is a vast pleasure to see them cast in the flesh, so to speak." This Mark Twain Library edition exactly reproduces the text of the California scholarly edition, including all of the 192 illustrations that so pleased the author.

The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain Library)

The University of California Press is delighted to announce the new publication of this three-act play by one of America's most important and well-loved writers. A highly entertaining comedy that has never appeared in print or on stage, Is He Dead? is finally available to the wide audience Mark Twain wished it to reach. Written in 1898 in Vienna as Twain emerged from one of the deepest depressions of his life, the play shows its author's superb gift for humor operating at its most energetic. The text of Is He Dead?, based on the manuscript in the Mark Twain Papers, appears here together with an illuminating essay by renowned Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin and with Barry Moser's original woodcut illustrations in a volume that will surely become a treasured addition to the Mark Twain legacy. Richly intermingling elements of burlesque, farce, and social satire with a wry look at the world market in art, Is He Dead? centers on a group of poor artists in Barbizon, France, who stage the death of a friend to drive up the price of his paintings. In order to make this scheme succeed, the artists hatch some hilarious plots involving cross-dressing, a full-scale fake funeral, lovers' deceptions, and much more. Mark Twain was fascinated by the theater and made many attempts at playwriting, but this play is certainly his best. Is He Dead? may have been too "out there" for the Victorian 1890s, but today's readers will thoroughly enjoy Mark Twain's well-crafted dialogue, intriguing cast of characters, and above all, his characteristic ebullience and humor. In Shelley Fisher Fishkin's estimation, it is "a champagne cocktail of a play--not too dry, not too sweet, with just the right amount of bubbles and buzz."

Is He Dead?: A Comedy in Three Acts (Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain)

History & Criticism

"Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? No, he wasn't. It only just pisoned him for more." So Huck declares at the start of these once-celebrated but now little-known sequels to his own adventures. Tom, Huck, and Jim set sail to Africa in a futuristic air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas and see some of the world's greatest wonders in Tom Sawyer Abroad. The boys then turn sleuth in Tom Sawyer, Detective as they attempt to solve a mysterious murder in this burlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Replete with down-home, backwoods Missouri wisdom, these two stories tackle every subject from the Crusades and chronometers to ghosts and swearing popes. This authoritative edition includes all of the original illustrations Mark Twain commissioned from Dan Beard ("the only man who can correctly illustrate my writings") and A. B. Frost ("the best humorous artist that I know"). Based directly on the author's manuscripts, incorporating only his revisions and restoring many passages once suppressed by fastidious editors, the texts are presented here in the only form Twain intended them.

Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

Fischer, Victor

Mark Twain's fantastical last novel took him twelve years--and three long drafts—to complete. Based on boyhood memories of the Mississippi River Valley and of the print shops of Hannibal, the story is set in medieval Austria at the dawn of the printing craft. It is a psychic adventure, full of phantasmagoric effects, in which a penniless printer's apprentice—a youthful, mysterious stranger with the curious name 44—gradually reveals his otherworldly powers and the hidden possibilities of the mind. Ending on a startling note, this surprisingly existential novel reveals a darker side to the author's genius. This long-overlooked work appears here as Mark Twain intended it and replaces the bogus 1916 edition published by Albert Bigelow Paine, which relied on the first, instead of the final, draft, deleted one-fourth of the words, added a character, and misrepresented the ending. In addition, for the first time in the Mark Twain Library edition, a glossary of printer's terms is featured along with expert notes and commentary.

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)

Gibson, William M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Watson, Richard A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Watson, Richard A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Watson, Richard A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Promise and Performance of American Democracy

Man and Nature Anthropological Essay In Hu

Compositional Evolution: The Impact of Sex, Symbiosis, And Modularity on the Gradualist Framework of Evolution (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology)

Promise and Performance of American Democracy

Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

The Prince and the Pauper (Mark Twain Library)

Is He Dead?: A Comedy in Three Acts (Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain)

Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective (Mark Twain Library)

No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain Library)