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The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire
by A. MitchellThe Habsburg Empire’s grand strategy for outmaneuvering and outlasting stronger rivals in a complicated geopolitical worldThe Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Its army was not renowned for offensive prowess, its finances were often shaky, and its populace was fragmented into more than a dozen ethnicities. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe's most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare.Taking readers from the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 1700s to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, A. Wess Mitchell argues that the Habsburgs succeeded not through offensive military power or great wealth but by developing strategies that manipulated the element of time in geopolitical competition. Unable to fight all their enemies at once, the Habsburgs learned to use the limited tools at their disposal—terrain, technology, and treaty allies—to sequence and stagger their conflicts, drive down the costs of empire, and concentrate scarce resources against the greatest threat of the moment. Rarely holding a grudge after war, they played the "long game" in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire's lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe.A study in adaptive statecraft, The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.
Grand Theories and Ideologies in the Social Sciences
by Howard J. WiardaThis book analyzes the main competing grand theories in the social sciences, including developmentalism, dependency analysis, Marxism, institutionalism, rational choice, Freudianism, environmentalism, sociobiology, neurosciences, and transitions to democracy.
Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism
by Agnes HellerGrandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism provides a theoretical construction to the extraordinary events of the past several years in Europe and the Soviet Union, and China. These masterful essays attribute much of the problem of totalitarianism to its blind acceptance of a Marxist philosophy of practice. With the failure of communist practice, the collapse of the Marxian paradigm was quick to follow.At its roots this volume is a critique of the idea that we can have "scientific knowledge" of the social and political future. Totalitarian Marxism combined statements of history and claims of omniscience. Free choice was surrendered to history, and when the predicted outcomes fail to materialize, when communism came closer to being buried than capitalism, and western ideals of democracy proved far more compelling than inherited doctrines of authoritarianism, the outcome proved monumental and disastrous.The authors position themselves as evolving from critical Marxism to post-Marxism, and then post modernism. By this, they mean a modest view of life, one that moves beyond radical universalism and grand narrative, into a realization of individualism and equity concerns are central to the end of the twentieth century. The volume proceeds historically: from studies of the classic Marxian legacy; to the early twentieth century efforts of Lukacs, Weber and Adorno; proceeding to the disintegration of the Marxian paradigm in both its pure and revisionist forms. It ends with a study of options posed by this paradigmatic collapse - to consideration of the status of postmodernity and the choices between pure relativism and a theological fundamentalism. ,This is a work of absolute importance for political philosophy, the sociology of knowledge, and the history of ideas. In raising recent events to a theoretically meaningful framework, it represents a refreshing as well as remarkable step toward understanding Revolutions from 1789 to 1989.
Grandma Says: The Wisdom, Wit, Advice, and Stories of “Grandma Aggie”
by Agnes Baker PilgrimAgnes Baker Pilgrim, known to most as Grandma Aggie, is in her nineties and is the oldest living member of the Takelma Tribe, one of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.A descendant of both spiritual and political tribal leaders, Grandma Aggie travels tirelessly around the world to keep traditions alive, to help those in need, and to be a voice for the voiceless, helping everyone to remember to preserve our Earth for animals and each other in a spiritual environment.Considered an excellent speaker, she has mesmerized her audience wherever she appears, and now her wit, wisdom, memories, advice, stories and spirituality have been captured for all to hear.Honored as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandma Aggie here speaks about her childhood memories, about her tribe and her life as a child growing up in an area that often didn’t allow Indians and dogs into many public places, as well as about such contemporary issues as bullying, teen suicide, drugs and alcohol, Pope Francis, President Obama, water conservation, climate change, and much more. This is an amazing recording of one of the oldest and most important voices of the First Nation and of the world. Her stories and advice will mesmerize and captivate you, as well as provide a blueprint for how all the inhabitants of the earth can live together in harmony, spirituality, and peace.
Granular Computing in Decision Approximation
by Lech Polkowski Piotr ArtiemjewThis book presents a study in knowledge discovery in data with knowledge understood as a set of relations among objects and their properties. Relations in this case are implicative decision rules and the paradigm in which they are induced is that of computing with granules defined by rough inclusions, the latter introduced and studied within rough mereology, the fuzzified version of mereology. In this book basic classes of rough inclusions are defined and based on them methods for inducing granular structures from data are highlighted. The resulting granular structures are subjected to classifying algorithms, notably k--nearest neighbors and bayesian classifiers. Experimental results are given in detail both in tabular and visualized form for fourteen data sets from UCI data repository. A striking feature of granular classifiers obtained by this approach is that preserving the accuracy of them on original data, they reduce substantially the size of the granulated data set as well as the set of granular decision rules. This feature makes the presented approach attractive in cases where a small number of rules providing a high classification accuracy is desirable. As basic algorithms used throughout the text are explained and illustrated with hand examples, the book may also serve as a textbook.
Granularity: An Ontological Inquiry Into Justice and Holistic Education
by Şevket Benhür OralThis book presents an original exploration of philosophical questions pertaining to the ways we grasp the Absolute by bringing together the Buddhist notion of interpermeation of all phenomena into contemporary strains of thought in continental philosophy. This text introduces an ontological concept, granularity, deploying it to probe questions concerning the intersection of ontology, ethics, and education. A wide range of issues in metaphysics are covered—including being, nothingness, unity, plurality, truth, change, transformation, subjectivity, contradiction, coherence, potentiality—from the perspective of thinkers such as Hegel, Heidegger, Badiou, Meillassoux, Malabou, Žižek, and Harman. The text deploys granularity in arguing for an ethics of unconditional hospitality within education. This volume is intended for students and researchers working in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, and continental philosophy.
Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning: 26th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2021, Virtual Event, September 20–22, 2021, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #12879)
by Tanya Braun Marcel Gehrke Tom Hanika Nathalie HernandezThis book constitutes the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2021, held virtually in September 2021.The 12 full papers and 4 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers focus on the representation of and reasoning with conceptual structures in a variety of contexts. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: applications of conceptual structures; theory on conceptual structures, and mining conceptual structures.
Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning: 24th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2019, Marburg, Germany, July 1–4, 2019, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #11530)
by Dominik Endres Mehwish Alam Diana ŞotropaThis book constitutes the proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2019, held in Marburg, Germany, in July 2019. The 14 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. The proceedings also include one of the two invited talks. The papers focus on the representation of and reasoning with conceptual structures in a variety of contexts. ICCS 2019's theme was entitled "Graphs in Human and Machine Cognition."
Graph Structure and Monadic Second-Order Logic
by Bruno Courcelle Joost EngelfrietThe study of graph structure has advanced in recent years with great strides: finite graphs can be described algebraically, enabling them to be constructed out of more basic elements. Separately the properties of graphs can be studied in a logical language called monadic second-order logic. In this book, these two features of graph structure are brought together for the first time in a presentation that unifies and synthesizes research over the last 25 years. The authors not only provide a thorough description of the theory, but also detail its applications, on the one hand to the construction of graph algorithms, and, on the other to the extension of formal language theory to finite graphs. Consequently the book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in graph theory, finite model theory, formal language theory, and complexity theory.
Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: 6th International Workshop, GKR 2020, Virtual Event, September 5, 2020, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #12640)
by Michael Cochez Madalina Croitoru Pierre Marquis Sebastian RudolphThis open access book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, GKR 2020, held virtually in September 2020, associated with ECAI 2020, the 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.The 7 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited contributions were reviewed and selected from 9 submissions. The contributions address various issues for knowledge representation and reasoning and the common graph-theoretic background, which allows to bridge the gap between the different communities.
Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
by Madalina Croitoru Pierre Marquis Sebastian Rudolph Gem StapletonThis book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Graph Structures for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, GKR 2015, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 2015, associated with IJCAI 2015, the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The 9 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 10 submissions. The papers feature current research involved in the development and application of graph-based knowledge representation formalisms and reasoning techniques. They address the following topics: argumentation; conceptual graphs; RDF; and representations of constraint satisfaction problems.
Graph Theory: Favorite Conjectures And Open Problems - 1 (Problem Books in Mathematics)
by Stephen T. Hedetniemi Teresa W. Haynes Ralucca GeraThis second volume in a two-volume series provides an extensive collection of conjectures and open problems in graph theory. It is designed for both graduate students and established researchers in discrete mathematics who are searching for research ideas and references. Each chapter provides more than a simple collection of results on a particular topic; it captures the reader’s interest with techniques that worked and failed in attempting to solve particular conjectures. The history and origins of specific conjectures and the methods of researching them are also included throughout this volume. Students and researchers can discover how the conjectures have evolved and the various approaches that have been used in an attempt to solve them. An annotated glossary of nearly 300 graph theory parameters, 70 conjectures, and over 600 references is also included in this volume. This glossary provides an understanding of parameters beyond their definitions and enables readers to discover new ideas and new definitions in graph theory. The editors were inspired to create this series of volumes by the popular and well-attended special sessions entitled “My Favorite Graph Theory Conjectures,” which they organized at past AMS meetings. These sessions were held at the winter AMS/MAA Joint Meeting in Boston, January 2012, the SIAM Conference on Discrete Mathematics in Halifax in June 2012, as well as the winter AMS/MAA Joint Meeting in Baltimore in January 2014, at which many of the best-known graph theorists spoke. In an effort to aid in the creation and dissemination of conjectures and open problems, which is crucial to the growth and development of this field, the editors invited these speakers, as well as other experts in graph theory, to contribute to this series.
Graph Transformation: 11th International Conference, ICGT 2018, Held as Part of STAF 2018, Toulouse, France, June 25–26, 2018, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #10887)
by Leen Lambers Jens WeberThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Graph Transformation, ICGT 2018, held as part of STAF 2018, in Toulouse, France, in June 2018.The 9 full papers, 2 short papers and 1 keynote presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 16 submissions. The papers deal with the following topics: graph languages; graph transformation formalisms; parallel independence and conflicts; and graph conditions and verification.
Graphic Girlhoods: Visualizing Education and Violence (Children's Literature And Culture Ser.)
by Elizabeth MarshallDrawing on a dynamic set of "graphic texts of girlhood," Elizabeth Marshall identifies the locations, cultural practices, and representational strategies through which schoolgirls experience real and metaphorical violence. How is the schoolgirl made legible through violence in graphic texts of girlhood? What knowledge about girlhood and violence are under erasure within mainstream images and scripts about the schoolgirl? In what ways has the schoolgirl been pictured in graphic narratives to communicate feminist knowledge, represent trauma, and/or testify about social violence? Graphic Girlhoods focuses on these questions to make visible and ultimately question how sexism, racism and other forms of structural violence inform education and girlhood. From picture books about mean girls The Recess Queen or graphic novels like Jane, The Fox and Me to Ronald Searle's ghastly pupils in the St. Trinian's cartoons to graphic memoirs about schooling by adult women, such as Ruby Bridges's Through My Eyes and Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons texts for and about the schoolgirl stake a claim in ongoing debates about gender and education.
Graphic Novels as Philosophy
by Jeff McLaughlinContributions by Eric Bain-Selbo, Jeremy Barris, Maria Botero, Manuel “Mandel” Cabrera Jr., David J. Leichter, Ian MacRae, Jeff McLaughlin, Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera, Corry Shores, and Jarkko TuusvuoriIn a follow-up to Comics as Philosophy, international contributors address two questions: Which philosophical insights, concepts, and tools can shed light on the graphic novel? And how can the graphic novel cast light on the concerns of philosophy? Each contributor ponders a well-known graphic novel to illuminate ways in which philosophy can untangle particular combinations of image and written word for deeper understanding.Jeff McLaughlin collects a range of essays to examine notable graphic novels within the framework posited by these two questions. One essay discusses how a philosopher discovered that the panels in Jeff Lemire’s Essex County do not just replicate a philosophical argument, but they actually give evidence to an argument that could not have existed otherwise. Another essay reveals how Chris Ware’s manipulation of the medium demonstrates an important sense of time and experience. Still another describes why Maus tends to be more profound than later works that address the Holocaust because of, not in spite of, the fact that the characters are cartoon animals rather than human.Other works contemplated include Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. Mainly, each essay, contributor, graphic novelist, and artist is doing the same thing: trying to tell us how the world is—at least from their point of view.
The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama
by Arthur BravermanWhat motivated Sodo–san to spend the last twenty years of his life in a “temple under the sky”— a corner of a public park where he taught passersby what it means to be forever young through the funky tunes he played on his grass flute? In The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama, we are seeking not only a truer understanding of this well–loved monk, but of zazen, Zen meditation, itself. In his search for insights into Sodo Yokoyama’s life, Arthur Braverman skillfully weaves a tapestry from seemingly disparate threads—the brief taisho period into which Sodo–san was born and where individualism shone; his teachers, both ancient and contemporary practitioners of Zen Bhuddism; the monk’s love of baseball; and the similarities Braverman finds between Sodo–san and Walt Whitman, who both found the universal in nature.Through conversations with Joko Shibata, Yokoyama’s sole disciple, and careful study of his teacher’s poetry, an intriguing tension between the personal and the universal is revealed. The Grass Flute Zen Master is a meditative examination not of just one life, but of many. The lineage of teacher and protégé is traced back through generations, contemporaries are drawn up from unexpected places, and Braverman examines his own long journey in Zen Buddhism; confronting his own expectations and surprising disappointments (the monk lived in a boarding house and later took a cab to his park when he could no longer walk the whole way) and the understanding and acceptance that followed. “When you play the leaf,” Sodo–san once wrote, “you’ll usually be a little out of tune. That’s where its very charm lies . . .”
The Grateful Dead and Philosophy
by Steve GimbelThis book is another one of those late-night Grateful Dead inspired dorm room conversations with friends . . . only this time it's your professors sitting cross-legged on the floor asking if anyone else wants to order a pizza.The Grateful Dead emerged from the San Francisco counter-culture movement of the late 1960s to become an American icon. Part of the reason they remain an institution four decades later is that they and their fans, the Deadheads, embody deviation from social, artistic, and industry norms. From the beginning, the Grateful Dead has represented rethinking what we do and how we do it. Their long, free-form jams stood in stark contrast to the three minute, radio friendly, formulaic rock that preceded them. Allowing their fans to tape and trade recordings of shows and distributing concert tickets themselves bucked the corporate control of popular music. The use of mind-altering chemicals questioned the nature of consciousness and reality. The practice of "touring," following the band from city to city, living as modern day nomads presented a model distinct from the work-a-day option assumed by most in our corporate dominated culture. As a result, Deadheads are a quite introspective lot.The Grateful Dead and Philosophy contains essays from twenty professional philosophers whose love of the music and scene have led them to reflect on different philosophical questions that arise from the enigma that is the Grateful Dead. Coming from a variety of perspectives, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, The Grateful Dead and Philosophy considers how the Grateful Dead fits into the broader trends of American thought running through pragmatism and the Beat poets, how the parking lot scene with its tie-dyed t-shirt and veggie burrito vendors was both a rejection and embrace of capitalism, and whether Jerry Garcia and the Buddha were more than just a couple of fat guys talking about peace. The lyrics of the Grateful Dead's many songs are also the basis for several essays considering questions of fate and freedom, the nature-nurture debate, and gamblers' ethics.
The Grateful Dead and Philosophy: Getting High-Minded about Love and Haight
by Steven GimbelTwenty philosophical essays about the Grateful Dead phenomenon evaluates the band, its lyrics, and its influence from a variety of ancient and modern perspectives to consider how it fits into broader trends of American thought.
Gratitude
by Oliver SacksA deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life.In January 2015, Oliver Sacks was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, and he shared this news in a New York Times essay that inspired readers all over the world: "I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.... Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."Gratitude consists of four essays that originally appeared in The New York Times, accompanied by a foreword that describes the occasion of each chapter. The foreword is written by Billy Hayes, Oliver Sacks's partner, and Kate Edgar, his long time collaborator.
Gratitude: Essays
by Oliver SacksA deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.&“A series of heart-rending yet ultimately uplifting essays….A lasting gift to readers." —The Washington Post&“It is the fate of every human being,&” Sacks writes, &“to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.&” Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.&“My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.&” —Oliver Sacks &“Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer. He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the &‘abnormal.&’ He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way—face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw.&” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal
Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil: A Comprehensive Introduction
by Bryan FrancesSuffering that is not coupled with any redeeming good is one of our world’s more troubling, apparent glitches. It is particularly vexing for any theist who believes that the world was created by a supremely morally good, knowledgeable, and powerful god. Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil: A Comprehensive Introduction is among the first book-length discussions of theistic approaches to this issue. Bryan Frances’s lucid and jargon-free analyses of a variety of possible responses to the problem of gratuitous suffering will provide serious students or general readers much material with which to begin an extended contemplation of this ancient and contemporary concern. The perfect size and scope for an introductory philosophy class’s discussion of the problem of evil and suffering, and deliberately crafted to be approachable by all interested readers, Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil is philosophy doing what it does best: serious, engaged, rigorous explorations of even the darkest truths. The book offers many useful pedagogical features, including chapter overviews and summaries, annotated suggested readings, and eight-eight discussion questions.
Grave Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed
by Karen Bray“This is a book about what it would mean to be a bit moody in the midst of being theological and political. Its framing assumption is that neoliberal economics relies on narratives in which not being in the right mood means a cursed existence.” So begins Grave Attending: A Political Theology for the Unredeemed, which mounts a challenge to neoliberal narratives of redemption. Mapping the contemporary state of political theology, Karen Bray brings it to bear upon secularism, Marxist thought, affect theory, queer temporality, and other critical modes as a way to refuse separating one’s personal mood from the political or philosophical. Introducing the concept of bipolar time, she offers a critique of neoliberal temporality by countering capitalist priorities of efficiency through the experiences of mania and depression. And it is here Bray makes her crucial critical turn, one that values the power of those who are unredeemed in the eyes of liberal democracy—those too slow, too mad, too depressed to be of productive worth—suggesting forms of utopia in the poetics of crip theory and ordinary habit. Through performances of what she calls grave attending—being brought down by the gravity of what is and listening to the ghosts of what might have been—Bray asks readers to choose collective care over individual overcoming.Grave Attending brings critical questions of embodiment, history, and power to the fields of political theology, radical theology, secular theology, and the continental philosophy of religion. Scholars interested in addressing the lack of intersectional engagement within these fields will find this work invaluable. As the forces of neoliberalism demand we be productive, efficient, happy, and flexible in order to be deemed worthy subjects, Grave Attending offers another model for living politically, emotionally, and theologically. Instead of submitting to such a market-driven concept of salvation, this book insists that we remain mad, moody, and unredeemed. Drawing on theories of affect, temporality, disability, queerness, work, and race, Bray persuades us that embodying more just forms of sociality comes not in spite of irredeemable moods, but through them.
Gravitation and Spacetime
by Hans C. Ohanian Remo RuffiniThe third edition of this classic textbook is a quantitative introduction for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. It gently guides students from Newton's gravitational theory to special relativity, and then to the relativistic theory of gravitation. General relativity is approached from several perspectives: as a theory constructed by analogy with Maxwell's electrodynamics, as a relativistic generalization of Newton's theory, and as a theory of curved spacetime. The authors provide a concise overview of the important concepts and formulas, coupled with the experimental results underpinning the latest research in the field. Numerous exercises in Newtonian gravitational theory and Maxwell's equations help students master essential concepts for advanced work in general relativity, while detailed spacetime diagrams encourage them to think in terms of four-dimensional geometry. Featuring comprehensive reviews of recent experimental and observational data, the text concludes with chapters on cosmology and the physics of the Big Bang and inflation.
Gravity's Ghost: Scientific Discovery in the Twenty-first Century
by Harry CollinsIn theory, at least, gravitational waves do exist. We are constantly bathed in gravitational radiation, which is generated when stars explode or collide and a portion of their mass becomes energy that ripples out like a disturbance on the surface of a serene pond. But unfortunately no gravitational wave has ever been directly detected even though the search has lasted more than forty years. As the leading chronicler of the search for gravitational waves, Harry Collins has been right there with the scientists since the start. The result of his unprecedented access to the front lines of physical science is Gravity’s Ghost, a thrilling chronicle of high-stakes research and cutting-edge discovery. Here, Collins reveals that scientific discovery and nondiscovery can turn on scientific traditions and rivalries, that ideal statistical analysis rests on impossible procedures and unattainable knowledge, and that fact in one place is baseless assumption in another. He also argues that sciences like gravitational wave detection, in exemplifying how the intractable is to be handled, can offer scientific leadership a moral beacon for the twenty-first century. In the end, Gravity’s Ghost shows that discoveries are the denouements of dramatic scientific mysteries.
Gravity's Ghost and Big Dog
by Harry Collins"Gravity s Ghost and Big Dog" brings to life science s efforts to detect cosmic gravitational waves. These ripples in space-time are predicted by general relativity, and their discovery will not only demonstrate the truth of Einstein s theories but also transform astronomy. Although no gravitational wave has ever been directly detected, the previous five years have been an especially exciting period in the field. Here sociologist Harry Collins offers readers an unprecedented view of gravitational wave research and explains what it means for an analyst to do work of this kind. Collins was embedded with the gravitational wave physicists as they confronted two possible discoveries BigDog, fully analyzed in this volume for the first time, and the Equinox Event, which was first chronicled by Collins in "Gravity s Ghost. " Collins records the agonizing arguments that arose as the scientists worked out what they had seen and how to present it to the world, along the way demonstrating how even the most statistical of sciences rest on social and philosophical choices. "Gravity s Ghost and Big Dog" draws on nearly fifty years of fieldwork observing scientists at the American Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and elsewhere around the world to offer an inspired commentary on the place of science in society today. "