Purdue University Press Books

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  Decisions That Shape Supply Chains

  Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, and Erin Robinson

  What drives consumer decisions, and how do those decisions ripple through our food and agricultural systems? In Decisions That Shape Supply Chains, readers are invited to look beyond conventional models of behavior and explore the complex, sometimes counterintuitive factors influencing real-world consumer choices. Drawing on behavioral science and applied research, this volume examines how decisions made in grocery aisles, drive-through lines, and online shopping carts ultimately inform what gets planted, processed, packaged, and promoted across the food-supply chain. From attitudes toward GMO foods to parenting as a form of consumerism and emotional decision-making under stress to the environmental tradeoffs consumers weigh (or ignore), the topics covered in this book challenge assumptions and reframe the conversation about who holds influence in the marketplace. For agribusiness professionals, researchers, and policymakers, these insights offer better ways to connect with the people at the end of every supply chain: the consumers themselves.

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  Edward Charles Elliott, Educator

  Frank K. Burrin

  A study of the 50-year career of Edward Charles Elliott is a study of the development of American education. Elliott had experience as a high school and college teacher, school system superintendent, state college system chancellor, and president of a Big Ten university, all during a period of change in American attitudes toward public schooling and rapid growth in education institutions.

  As president of Purdue University from 1922 to 1945, Elliott steered the school through years of expansion in size, prestige, and service. Student enrollment, staff, course offerings, buildings, and campus acreage more than doubled; the total value of the physical plant increased more than five-fold; and the schools of pharmacy, home economics, and graduate study were opened under Elliott’s leadership.

  This book shows not only how Elliott helped make Purdue University what it is today, but documents educational trends from 1900 to 1950 and includes a lengthy bibliography of Elliott’s writings to assist the student of higher education.

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  Engaging Learners Everywhere: The Interactive Synchronous HyFlex Method

  Nathan Mentzer, Abdul Moeed Asad, Adrie A. Koehler, Lakshmy Mohandas, and Elnara Mammadova

  Initially conceived as a workaround related to the crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown of 2020, Interactive Synchronous HyFlex reimagines an active-learning, team-based classroom, making it possible for any student to participate fully, whether they are seated in the back row or joining from elsewhere in the world. Developed and refined by the authors through five years of classroom experimentation and National Science Foundation–funded research, this forward-facing approach—which refers to online synchronous hybrid delivery and combines the terms “hybrid” and “flexible”—brings together learners in a single classroom who have the daily option of meeting face-to-face or synchronously online. Through simple ideas, thought-provoking questions, and practical examples, Engaging Learners Everywhere reveals how existing technology, such as video conferencing and digital collaboration tools, can help bring students together in more robust and inclusive learning communities. This teaching model minimizes the disruptions and challenges instructors frequently encounter due to inclement weather, illnesses, and travel conflicts. Additionally, features such as live captioning, screen sharing, and classroom recordings benefit all students, not just those with disability accommodations. Ultimately, Interactive Synchronous HyFlex provides a more elastic pedagogical approach that allows students to remain engaged and connected to their instructors and to each other.

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  Eva and Otto: Resistance, Refugees, and Love in the Time of Hitler

  Tom Pfister, Kathy Pfister, and Peter Pfister

  Eva and Otto is a true story about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through the early lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985). It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto born Catholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resisted and fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Paris before the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbable escapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtained refuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue other endangered political refugees, including Otto, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. As revealed in recently declassified records, Eva and Otto later engaged in different secret assignments with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in support of the Allied war effort. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, Eva and Otto gave each other hope and strength as they acted upon what they understood to be an ethical duty to help others threatened by fascism. The book provides a sobering insight into the personal risks and costs of a commitment to that duty. Their unusually beautiful writing—directed to each other in diaries and correspondence during two long periods of wartime separation—also reveals an unlikely and inspiring love story.

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  First Opinions, Second Reactions: A Collection of Innovative Online Reviews of Literature for Children and Young Adults

  Janet Alsup and Christy Wessel-Powell

  First Opinions, Second Reactions: A Collection of Innovative Online Reviews of Literature for Children and Young Adults features selected pieces from the journal First Opinions, Second Reactions, which reviews children’s and young adult books. The journal, and this book, consist of reviews of books written by scholars of children’s and YA literature, followed up with responses from those who share the books with their intended audiences—children and teens. The editors have selected twelve issues classified under four thematic categories (social and political issues; diversity and inclusion; identification and empathy; and genre study) to represent the depth and breadth of publication since the journal’s founding. Also included are ideas for classroom activities that engage with these works.

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  Force for Change: The Class of 1950

  John University Norberg

  The Class of 1950 was like none other—none other before and none since. In the fall of 1946, class members came from the cornfields of the Midwest; from the battlefields of France, Italy, and Germany; and from the jungles of the Pacific islands.They came in great numbers to university campuses throughout the United States.

  Some of them were grown men—twenty- and thirty-year-olds going to college on the GI Bill that guaranteed money to educate World War II veterans.

  Some of them were boys—eighteen-year-olds straight out of high school, competing in the classroom and on the playing fields with war-hardened men who were in a hurry to get on with life. These eighteen-year-olds were unaware that within weeks of their graduation, a war in Korea would beckon them.

  Young women came to campus, although in much smaller numbers than the men. Most majored in home economics. Some were looking for their “Mrs.” degree. Many worked after graduation, but only until their children were born. By the 1960s, they would return to the workplace, beginning a social movement that is still evolving today.

  Only a handful of African Americans came to campuses of major universities. In 1946, they found segregation and racial stereotyping, even after they had fought a war for the freedom of others. In the following years while the world was changing rapidly, civil rights moved slowly.

  This mixture of students blended on the U.S. campuses in the late 1940s and exploded into the world in 1950.

  These graduates transformed technologies developed during World War II into peacetime uses. They ushered into society everything from computers to home air-conditioning to interstate highways to the space age. They created the postwar economic boom, suburbia, and the Baby Boom. They became a force for change.

  A Force for Change: The Class of 1950 looks at the group of students who made up this sweeping national movement: the Purdue University Class of 1950.

  Members of the class tell their stories in their own words. They tell of childhood years during the Great Depression, young adult years during war, idyllic years spent at college, and years of wide-open opportunities for a generation of people who believed nothing could stop them.

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  From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust

  Susanne Barth

  From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust is the first in-depth study of the second largest Auschwitz subcamp, Blechhammer (Blachownia Śląska), and its lesser known yet significant prehistory as a so-called Schmelt camp, a forced labor camp for Jews operating outside the concentration camp system. Drawing on previously untapped archival documents and a wide array of survivor testimonies, the book provides novel findings on Blechhammer’s role in the Holocaust in Eastern Upper Silesia, a formerly Polish territory annexed to Nazi Germany in the fall of 1939, where 120,000 Jews lived.

  Established in the spring of 1942 to construct a synthetic fuel plant, the camp’s abhorrent living conditions led to the death of thousands of young Jews conscripted from the ghettos or taken off deportation convoys from Western Europe. Blechhammer was not only used for selecting parts of the Jewish ghetto population for Auschwitz, but also for killing pregnant women and babies. As an Auschwitz satellite, Blechhammer became the scene of brutal executions and massacres of prisoners refusing to go on the Death March. This microhistory unearths the far-reaching complicity of often overlooked perpetrators, such as the industrialists, factory guards, policemen, and “ordinary” civilians in these atrocities, but more importantly, it focuses on the victims, reconstructing the prisoners’ daily life and suffering, as well as their survival strategies.

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  From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood

  Vincent Brook and Michael Renov

  The outsized influence of Jews in American entertainment from the early days of Hollywood to the present has proved an endlessly fascinating and controversial topic, for Jews and non-Jews alike. From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood takes an exciting and innovative approach to this rich and complex material. Exploring the subject from a scholarly perspective as well as up close and personal, the book combines historical and theoretical analysis by leading academics in the field with inside information from prominent entertainment professionals. Essays range from Vincent Brook’s survey of the stubbornly persistent canard of Jewish industry “control” to Lawrence Baron and Joel Rosenberg’s panel presentations on the recent brouhaha over Ben Urwand’s book alleging collaboration between Hollywood and Hitler. Case studies by Howard Rodman and Joshua Louis Moss examine a key Coen brothers film, A Serious Man (Rodman), and Jill Soloway’s groundbreaking television series, Transparent (Moss). Jeffrey Shandler and Shaina Hamermann train their respective lenses on popular satirical comedians of yesteryear (Allan Sherman) and those currently all the rage (Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, and Sarah Silverman). David Isaacs relates his years of agony and hilarity in the television comedy writers’ room, and interviews include in-depth discussions by Ross Melnick with Laemmle Theatres owner Greg Laemmle (relative of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle) and by Michael Renov with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. In all, From Shtetl to Stardom offers a uniquely multifaceted, multimediated, and up-to-the-minute account of the remarkable role Jews have played over the centuries and ongoing in American popular culture.

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  Fundamental Hydraulics Principles for Agricultural Systems Management and Technology

  Robert M. Stwalley III and Roger Tormoehlen

  Hydraulic systems have spread throughout modern technology, particularly in mobile equipment. The exercises presented in Fundamental Hydraulic Principles for Agricultural Systems Management and Technology are designed for the second-generation Parker Hydraulic Trainer to provide a basic understanding of hydraulic components and systems for technology and engineering students. Readers will learn how hydraulic pumps function, how linear actuators and their control circuits work, and how hydraulic motors operate and are controlled. Readers are also provided with the opportunity to attempt more advanced exercises. Aligned with beginning technology-based experiential hydraulics courses, this book emphasizes familiarity with common hydraulic components and circuit diagrams, while guiding learners through a fundamental, hands-on exposure to modern hydraulic systems.

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  Hard Water: Politics and Water Supply in Milwaukee, 1870-1995

  Kate Foss-Mollan

  Hard Water: Politics And Water Supply In Milwaukee, 1870-1995 by educator and urban studies specialist Kate Foss-Mollan is the documented and historical account of the water supply of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Foss-Mollan blends urban history, technology, biology, research, and political science into a remarkably intriguing and informative saga. From conflicts over supplying poor neighborhoods to partisan debates regarding the necessity of a filtration plant, Hard Water spans over a century with an eye-opening account of the wrangling, machinations, and more all about a seemingly simple drink of water. Very highly recommended for American urban studies reading lists.

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  Imagining Afghanistan: Global Fiction and Film of the 9/11 Wars

  Alla Ivanchikova

  Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelled Afghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening “Afghanistan” has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition. “Afghanistan” serves as a lens through which contemporary cultural producers contend with the moral ambiguities of twenty-first-century humanitarianism, interpret the legacy of the Cold War, debate the role of the U.S. in the rise of transnational terror, and grapple with the long-term impact of war on both human and nonhuman ecologies.

  Post-9/11 global Afghanistan literary production remains largely NATO-centric insofar as it is marked by an uncritical investment in humanitarianism as an approach to Third World suffering and in anti-communism as an unquestioned premise. The book’s first half exposes how persisting anti-socialist biases—including anti-statist bias—not only shaped recent literary and visual texts on Afghanistan, resulting in a distorted portrayal of its tragic history, but also informed these texts’ reception by critics. In the book’s second half, the author examines cultural texts that challenge this limited horizon and forge alternative ways of representing traumatic histories. Captured by the author through the concepts of deep time, nonhuman witness, and war as a multispecies ecology, these new aesthetics bring readers a sophisticated portrait of Afghanistan as a rich multispecies habitat affected in dramatic ways by decades of war but not annihilated.

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  Indiana at a Glance: County Trends, 2025 Edition

  Roberto Gallardo

  Indiana at a Glance: County Trends, 2025 Edition provides an overview of macro socioeconomic and demographic trends based on county-level data in ten-year periods in Indiana, the upper Midwest region, and the nation. Analyzing data primarily from 2013 through 2023, this book presents information that contextualizes the design and implementation of specific policies enacted by elected officials and community leaders, and reveals the impact these initiatives have on the public.

  Inspired, in part, by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural America at a Glance reports, as well as the author’s more than twenty years of work in the field, this study makes use of gap analysis to glean valuable insights into how specific socioeconomic patterns relate to larger regional or national trends. It also offers a fuller picture of community economic development planning, allowing community stakeholders to better discern unique opportunities and challenges from macro socioeconomic and demographic noise.

  Accessible to scholars and nonacademics alike, Indiana at a Glance is meant to assist community leaders and residents who wish to have a firmer grasp of the socioeconomic and demographic landscape of their communities as they attempt to plan, design, implement, and evaluate their policies and initiatives or simply better understand their communities. The content and analysis supplied in this book will be updated every five years to ensure the most current data is available in order to align with the temporal “horizon” under which community economic development practitioners and policymakers frequently operate.

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  Integrating Information into the Engineering Design Process

  Michael Fosmire and David Radcliffe

  Engineering design is a fundamental problem-solving model used by the discipline. Effective problem-solving requires the ability to find and incorporate quality information sources. To teach courses in this area effectively, educators need to understand the information needs of engineers and engineering students and their information gathering habits. This book provides essential guidance for engineering faculty and librarians wishing to better integrate information competencies into their curricular offerings. The treatment of the subject matter is pragmatic, accessible, and engaging. Rather than focusing on specific resources or interfaces, the book adopts a process-driven approach that outlasts changing information technologies.

  After several chapters introducing the conceptual underpinnings of the book, a sequence of shorter contributions go into more detail about specific steps in the design process and the information needs for those steps. While they are based on the latest research and theory, the emphasis of the chapters is on usable knowledge. Designed to be accessible, they also include illustrative examples drawn from specific engineering sub-disciplines to show how the core concepts can be applied in those situations.

  Part 1: Making the Case for Integrated Information in Engineering Design: Information Literary and Lifelong Learning (Michael Fosmire); Multiple Perspectives on Engineering Design (David Radcliffe); Ways that Engineers Use Design Information (Michael Fosmire); Ethical Information Use and Engineering (Megan Sapp Nelson); Information-Rich Engineering Design: A Model (David Radcliffe). Part 2: Pedagogical Advice on How to Implement in Courses: Build a Firm Foundation: Managing Project Information Effectively and Efficiently (Jon Jeffryes); Find the Real Need: Understanding the Task (Megan Sapp Nelson); Scout the Lay of the Land: Exploring the Broader Context of a Project (Amy Van Epps and Monica Cardella); Draw on Existing Knowledge: Taking Advantage of What is Already Known (Jim Clarke); Make Dependable Decisions: Using Trustworthy Information Wisely (Jeremy Garritano); Make It Real: Finding the Most Suitable Materials and Components (Jay Bhatt); Make It Safe and Legal: Meeting Standards, Codes, and Regulations (Bonnie Osif); Get Your Message Across: The Art of Sharing Information (Patrice Buzzanell and Carla Zoltowski); Reflect and Learn: Extracting New Design and Process Knowledge (David Radcliffe); Preparing Students to be Informed Designers: Assessing and Scaffolding Information Literacy (Senay Purzer and Ruth Wertz).

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  Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning

  Susan M. Bridges and Rintaro Imafuku

  Problem-based learning (PBL) has been deployed as a student-centered instructional approach and curriculum design in a wide range of academic fields across the world. The majority of educational research to date has focused on knowledge-based outcomes addressing why PBL is useful. Researchers of PBL are developing a growing interest in qualitative research with a process-driven orientation to examining learning interactions. It is essential to broaden this research base so as to support PBL designs and approaches to leading students into higher-order thinking and a deeper approach to learning.

  Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning explores how students learn in an inquiry-led approach such as PBL. Included are studies that focus on learning in situ and go beyond measuring the outcomes of PBL. The goal is to further expand the PBL research base of qualitative investigations examining the social dimension and lived experience of teaching and learning within the PBL process. A second aim of this volume is to shed light on the methodological aspects of researching PBL, adding new perspectives to the current trends in qualitative studies on PBL. Chapters cover ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Specifically, this book will further contribute to the current educational research both theoretically and empirically in the following key areas: students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts; the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials; the (inter)cultural aspects of learning in PBL; facilitation processes and group dynamics in synchronous and asynchronous face-to-face and blended PBL; and the developing nature of PBL learner identity.

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  Laozi’s "Daodejing": A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary

  Steve Hallett

  Laozi’s “Daodejing”: A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary offers a new translation and fresh interpretation of the eighty-one-verse Daodejing, one of the central texts of Eastern philosophy. Likely written during the late Zhou Dynasty between 600–400 BCE, this foundational work is generally attributed to an individual named Laozi, although it is unlikely that any such person actually existed. Here, author Steve Hallett employs contemporary poetic form when translating the document’s approximately 5,000 Chinese characters and provides short analytical essays that illuminate the verses with a specific focus on the teachings they offer about social and environmental sustainability. His examination of this 2,500-year-old text suggests that perhaps not all our modern crises are as modern as they seem: Much of what ails us today may involve the same foolishness that has ailed us for millennia. Ultimately, this timely study posits that lessons from the past can help us avoid making hasty decisions related to the environment and show us how to chart a calmer, more patient, and more persistent path toward a just and sustainable future.

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  Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries

  John W. White and Heather Gilbert

  Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library’s role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education.

  Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls for a reimagining of the roles of libraries and librarians. In many cases, these reimagined roles call for expanded responsibilities, often in the areas of collaborative instruction and digital asset management, and in turn these expanded responsibilities can strain already stretched resources.

  Laying the Foundation provides practical solutions to the challenges of successfully incorporating digital humanities programs into existing library services. Collectively, its authors argue that librarians are critical resources for teaching digital humanities to undergraduate students and that libraries are essential for publishing, preserving, and making accessible digital scholarship.

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  Letters of George Ade

  Terence University Tobin

  George Ade, one of the most beloved writers of his day, carried on a lively correspondence with the most colorful of great and near-great. George M. Cohan, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, John T. McCutcheon, James Whitcomb Riley, Finley Peter Dunne, Hamlin Garland all received letters from the Hoosier humorist. Ade’s keen observation, compact and straight-forward style, and understated humor mark his correspondence as well as his immensely popular newspaper columns, books, and plays. As Paul Fatout writes in his foreword: “The charm of George Ade lies in his good-natured contemplation of our species, which delineates, not with malice or with condescension, but with the gusty enjoyment of a spectator entertained by a continuous variety show.”

  Ade traveled the world over many times, but always returned to the home he never really left—Indiana. His companions and correspondents included presidents, senators, Hollywood moguls, and Broadway stars, but his first allegiance was to the farmlands and small towns of mid-America. From Hazelden Farm, near Brook, he kept in close touch with politicians from the precincts to the governor’s mansion. He wrote to educators, editors, and executives, and took an active part in the life and growth of his alma mater, Purdue University. Characteristically, the man who succeeded as a writer by setting down familiar situations sent some of his most interesting letters to ordinary citizens all over the state.

  Ade’s friendships were so diversified that his correspondence forms a patchwork of popular history, literature, politics, and entertainment. His interchange of ideas about people and events shaping the twentieth century as well as his own life will provide insights for students of varied aspects of American culture.

  This volume presents 182 of the most interesting and informative letters from the thousands of extant pieces of his correspondence in scores of collections scattered throughout the United States. The letters are arranged chronologically annotated with explanatory material and with sources. A foreword, introduction and Ade’s biography are included. Photographs, sketches, handwriting samples, and other illustrations which evoke the man and his times are interspersed with the text.

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  Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success: Final Research Report (March 2012)

  James L. Mullins, Catherine Murray-Rust, Joyce L. Ogburn, Raym Crow, October Ivins, Allyson Mower, Daureen Nesdill, Mark Newton, Julie Speer, and Charles Watkinson

  This report briefly presents the findings and recommendations of the "Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success" project which investigated the extent to which publishing has now become a core activity of North American academic libraries and suggested ways in which further capacity could be built. The research described (consisting of a survey, some case studies, three workshops, and a set of further reading recommendations) was mainly conducted between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011. It was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Libraries Studies, made to Purdue University Libraries in collaboration with the Libraries of the Georgia Institute of Technology and the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah.

  Related resources to this document are the preliminary report of November 2011 which contains appendices that describe the research activities in general and an HTML version hosted on Comment Press that allows community comments to be posted.

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  Literary Skinheads? Writing from the Right in Reunified Germany

  Jay Julian Rosellini

  "Literary Skinheads? is a very nuanced, meticulously researched and vividly written study of a series of important debates in German literary circles since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid political transformations that have accompanied German unification. No other book in the English-speaking world offers such a comprehensive survey of the legacy of radical conservative ideas in German political life. Rosellini not only offers trenchant interpretations of major political controversies of the last decade in Germany, but he also provides the necessary background information needed to make sense of these important public debates." Elliott Neaman, author of A Dubious Past: Ernst Junger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism.

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  Lowell Hardin: Mentor Extraordinaire

  Larry L. Murdock, Thomas W. Hertel, and Gebisa Ejeta

  Lowell Stewart Hardin (1917–2015), an Indiana farm boy who became an enormously influential international agriculturalist, made the world a better place for the poor and the hungry on this earth. For seventeen years he led the Ford Foundation’s agricultural development efforts, contributing to the Green Revolution. He helped to found and guide international agriculture research centers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He inspired others to get involved and opened doors for them. He taught by example, gave others credit, and always stepped back, avoiding the limelight himself. In this volume, twenty-two people who knew him well share stories of Lowell, and lessons they learned from this extraordinary mentor and wonderful human being.

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  Making Institutional Repositories Work

  Burton B. Callicott, David Scherer, and Andrew Wesolek

  Making Institutional Repositories Work takes novices as well as seasoned practitioners through the practical and conceptual steps necessary to develop a functioning institutional repository, customized to the needs and culture of the home institution. The first section covers all aspects of system platforms, including hosted and open-source options, big data capabilities and integration, and issues related to discoverability. The second section addresses policy issues, from the basics to open-source and deposit mandates. The third section focuses on recruiting and even creating content. Authors in this section will address the ways that different disciplines tend to have different motivations for deposit, as well as the various ways that institutional repositories can serve as publishing platforms. The fourth section covers assessment and success measures for all involved—librarians, deans, and administrators. The theory and practice of traditional metrics, alt metrics, and peer review receive chapter-length treatment. The fifth section provides case studies that include a boots-on-the-ground perspective of issues raised in the first four sections. By noting trends and potentialities, this final section, authored by Executive Director of SPARC Heather Joseph, makes future predictions and helps managers position institutional repositories to be responsive to change and even shape the evolution of scholarly communication.

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  Managing Risk and Complexity through Open Communication and Teamwork

  Phillip K. Tompkins

  Along with increased complexities in work and life in general in the twenty-first century come new and dangerous risks to workers, customers, and the general public. Drawing on decades of experience as a researcher and consultant for a range of organizations and individuals in high-risk domains, the author of this book presents a powerful theory of open communication and teamwork. This unites a range of communication practices and principles that have proven to combat risk and complexity in organizations.

  The book initially focuses on NASA, an organization that experiences and engages with high complexity and risk daily. As a participant-observer in the Apollo program, the author witnessed pioneering communication practices that, for example, empowered engineers with “automatic responsibility” for any technical problem they perceived. It was partly the failure to follow such protocols that resulted in the catastrophes experienced in the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, as the author shows.

  Using the lessons learned from the space program, the book then explores complexity and risk in medicine, aviation, the fighting of forest fires, and homelessness, again consistently finding communication practices that worked and did not work. Based on detailed research conducted over several decades, the book presents a unified theory linked to generally applicable communication practices. Case studies include the results of an international experiment of surgery conducted in ten countries that produced a highly significant reduction of deaths and infections in Africa, India, and other parts of the world, to the creation of innovative communication practices that significantly reduced risks in the US aviation industry.

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  Markets We Thought We Knew

  Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, and Erin Robinson

  Markets We Thought We Knew explores the evolving nature of markets and how they shape—and are shaped by—consumer behavior. From essential life necessities such as water to everyday commodities and products including locally sourced foods, this book covers a variety of topics and invites readers to examine a diverse range of markets through a reflective lens. By revisiting past market dynamics and real-world examples, readers are encouraged to rethink how preferences are formed, how opinions shift over time, and how value is assigned—sometimes in unexpected ways. What insights might you gather from a deeper understanding of local and global markets, markets for water, or even markets for something you may have never considered valuable, such as carbon? Markets We Thought We Knew challenges assumptions and inspires fresh thinking about marketplaces, both near and far.

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  Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller

  Angelica Duran and Yuhan Huang

  In 2012 the Swedish Academy announced that Mo Yan had received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.” The announcement marked the first time a resident of mainland China had ever received the award. This is the first English-language study of the Chinese writer’s work and influence, featuring essays from scholars in a range of disciplines, from both China and the United States. Its introduction, twelve articles, and epilogue aim to deepen and widen critical discussions of both a specific literary author and the globalization of Chinese literature more generally.

  The book takes the “root-seeking” movement with which Mo Yan’s works are associated as a metaphor for its organizational structure. The four articles of “Part I: Leaves” focus on Mo Yan’s works as world literature, exploring the long shadow his works have cast globally. Howard Goldblatt, Mo Yan’s English translator, explores the difficulties and rewards of interpreting his work, while subsequent articles cover issues such as censorship and the “performativity” associated with being a global author. “Part II: Trunk” explores the nativist core of Mo Yan’s works. Through careful comparative treatment of related historical events, the five articles in this section show how specific literary works intermingle with China’s national and international politics, its mid-twentieth-century visual culture, and its rich religious and literary conventions, including humor. The three articles in “Part III: Roots” delve into the theoretical and practical extensions of Mo Yan’s works, uncovering the vibrant critical and cultural systems that ground Eastern and Western literatures and cultures. Mo Yan in Context concludes with an epilogue by sociologist Fenggang Yang, offering a personal and globally aware reflection on the recognition Mo Yan’s works have received at this historical juncture.

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  My Amiable Uncle: Recollections about Booth Tarkington

  Susanah University Mayberry

  He was twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction: in 1919 for The Magnificent Ambersons and in 1922 for Alice Adams. His play, Clarence, launched Alfred Lunt on his distinguished career and provided Helen Hays with an early successful role. His Penrod books continued the American boy story tradition that started with the works of Mark Twain. In the early 1900s, through his novel The Turmoil, he warned of sacrificing the environment to industrial growth. Yet, since his death in 1946, Booth Tarkington—this writer from the Midwest who accomplished so much—has faded from the memory of the reading public, and many of his works are out of print.

  But his memory is fresh and vivid in the mind of his grandniece Susanah Mayberry, and her recollections of him leap from the pages. She recalls that as a small child, before she was aware of her uncle’s fame as a writer, he emerged as the one figure whose outline was clear among the blur of forms that made up her large family.

  The author of My Amiable Uncle draws primarily upon personal experiences, family lore, and letters (some never before published) to portray her uncle. She tells of the pleasure it gave him to entertain his young nephews and nieces at his Tudor-style winter home in Indianapolis—where they played a spirited form of charades. She recalls vacations, as a college student, spent at his light-filled summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine—where she met his famous neighbors. During all of those times, Uncle Booth was a keen observer of youth. He created Penrod and friends from his observations, and as a teacher of youth, transmitted his own love of art to his young relations.

  The book will appeal to the general reader and the scholar. The former will be charmed by the reminiscences, and the latter will be interested in the new information about this writer of distinction. All readers will appreciate the substantial introduction to the volume by James Woodress, who places Tarkington within his literary milieu while reviewing his major works.

  Indiana residents will feel “at home” with the frequent references to the state and its people. Indianapolis influenced Tarkington and his work—the city was his birthplace. He spent a year at Purdue University where he met such “brilliancies” as George Ade and John McCutcheon. Other famous and not-so-famous Hoosiers became a part of Tarkington’s life, and they—along with international literary, theatrical, and political luminaries—reappear in Mayberry’s recollections of her amiable uncle.