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Two distinguished scholars offer eight steps to help organizations discover and embrace an authentic higher purpose–something that will dramatically improve every aspect of any enterprise, including the bottom line.

The untold story of Michelangelo’s final decades—and his transformation into one of the greatest architects of the Italian Renaissance As he entered his seventies, the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were past. Anguished by the death of friends and discouraged by the loss of commissions to younger artists, this supreme […]

African American health care workers are there for a reason. A new book by a Washington University in St. Louis social scientist shows how hospitals, clinics and other institutions participate in “racial outsourcing,” relying heavily on black doctors, nurses, technicians and physician assistants to do “equity work” — extra labor that makes organizations and their services […]

The stage works of Saint-Saëns range from grand open-air pageants to one-act comic operas, and include the first composed film score. Yet, with the exception of Samson et Dalila, his twelve operas have lain in the shadows since the composer’s death in 1921. Widely performed in his lifetime, they vanished from the repertory – never […]

This book is about lessons learned (both conferred and received) by a fictional protagonist, E. Randall Mann, who was a law teacher at a major law school for over fifty years. There are nine stories or chapters that comprise this book. The stories appear as written in the first person by Mann and a fictitious […]

A fascinating history of our understanding and the treatment of cancer by one of the leading figures in the field—who is also a pioneer on the cusp of a breakthrough.

A revolution in African American culture and the figure who helped bring it to fruition. As both an activist and the dynamic editor of Negro Digest, Hoyt Fuller stood at the nexus of the Black Arts Movement and the broader black cultural politics of his time. Jonathan Fenderson uses historical snapshots of Fuller’s life and […]

Boxing expert and American culture critic Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and director of the African and African American Studies department, edits this ultimate guide to one of the world’s most interesting and controversial sports. The Companion offers more than two dozen engaging and informative essays about the social impact and historical importance of the sport of boxing. While the book covers luminaries of the sport such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and more, it also tells the lesser known stories of boxing. There are essays on women in boxing, boxing and literature, boxing in Hollywood films, and boxing and opera. You can also get a comprehensive chronology of the sport, listing all of the important events and personalities.

Long before corn was king, the women of Cahokia’s mysterious Mississippian mound-building culture were using their knowledge of domesticated and wild food crops to feed the thousands of Native Americans who flocked to what was then North America’s largest city, suggests a new book by a paleoethnobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Feeding Cahokia” sets the record straight on America’s first farmers while offering a roadmap for rediscovering the highly nutritious native foods they once cultivated, including a North American cousin of quinoa.

Why Hebrew, here and now? What is its value for contemporary Americans? In “What We Talk about When We Talk about Hebrew (and What It Means to Americans)” scholars, writers, and translators tackle a series of urgent questions that arise from the changing status of Hebrew in the United States. To what extent is that […]