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Marine Mammal Welfare
by Andy ButterworthMarine mammals attract human interest – sometimes this interest is benign or positive – whale watching, conservation programmes for whales, seals, otters, and efforts to clear beaches of marine debris are seen as proactive steps to support these animals. However, there are many forces operating to affect adversely the lives of whales, seals, manatees, otters and polar bears – and this book explores how the welfare of marine mammals has been affected and how they have adapted, moved, responded and sometimes suffered as a result of the changing marine and human world around them. Marine mammal welfare addresses the welfare effects of marine debris, of human traffic in the oceans, of noise, of hunting, of whale watching and tourism, and of some of the less obvious impacts on marine mammals – on their social structures, on their behaviours and migration, and also of the effects on captivity for animals kept in zoos and aquaria. There is much to think and talk about – how marine mammals respond in a world dramatically influenced by man, how are their social structures affected and how is their welfare impacted?
Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift
by Michael R. MatthewsThis volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems.The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries.Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes.1. IntroductionSection I. An Academic Vocation (3 chapters)Section II. Philosophy (12 chapters)Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics (4 chapters)Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind (2 chapters)Section V. Sociology and Social Theory (4 chapters)Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy (3 chapters)Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology (3 chapters)Section VIII. Mathematics (3 chapters)Section IX. Education (2 chapters)Section X. Varia (3 chapters)Section XI. Bibliography
Marion and Derrida on The Gift and Desire: Debating the Generosity of Things
by Jason W. AlvisThis book examines the various encounters between Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida on "the gift," considers their many differences on "desire," and demonstrates how these topics hold the keys to some of phenomenology's most pressing structural questions, especially regarding "deconstructive" approaches within the field. The book claims that the topic of desire is a central lynchpin to understanding the two thinkers' conflict over the gift, for the gift is reducible to the "desire to give," which initiates a turn to the topic of "generosity. " To what degree might loving also imply giving? How far might it be suggested that love is reducible to desire and intentionality? It is demonstrated how Derrida (the generative "father" of deconstruction) rejects the possibility of any potential relation between the gift and desire on the account that desire is bound to calculative repetition, economical appropriation, and subject-centered interests that hinder deconstruction. Whereas Marion (a representative of the phenomenological tradition) demands a unique union between the gift and desire, which are both represented in his "reduction to givenness" and "erotic reduction. " The book is the first extensive attempt to contextualize the stark differences between Marion and Derrida within the phenomenological legacy (Husserl, Heidegger, Kant), supplies readers with in-depth accounts of the topics of the gift, love, and desire, and demonstrates another means through which the appearing of phenomena might be understood, namely, according to the generosity of things.
Marjorie Barstow and the Alexander Technique: Critical Thinking in Performing Arts Pedagogy
by Amanda ColeThis book focuses on the teaching and philosophy of the pioneering performing arts teacher and educator Marjorie Barstow. She is one of the best and brightest exponents of the Alexander Technique (AT), an approach to awareness and movement widely deployed and valued in the performing arts and outside artistic circles. By comparing her approach to the educational philosophy of John Dewey, this book resurrects Marjorie Barstow’s name, and gives her pedagogy and legacy the attention it deserves.
Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc: Political Wisdom, Divine Justice, and the Origins of Modernity (Recovering Political Philosophy)
by Bernard J. DobskiThis book is about the political wisdom embodied in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, the self-declared best book by arguably America’s greatest author. More precisely, this study illuminates Twain’s political wisdom by examining his approach to the theological-political problem; it takes up Twain’s handling of the question of whether a providential deity intervenes in human affairs so as to effectuate divine justice on earth and it does this through a commentary on his last complete novel. Through this investigation, Twain prompts his audience to explore the natural, conventional, or divine basis for justice in political life. Such a study is critical for understanding Twain’s corpus, concerned as it is with the tension between material determinism and moral agency. Dobski argues that Twain’s last novel prepares his readers to adopt a “new” understanding of man and his relationship to God, his country, and his fellow man.
Markers of Psychosocial Maturation: A Dialectically-Informed Approach
by Mufid James HannushThis book advances an integrative approach to understanding the phenomenon of psychosocial maturation. Through a rigorous, dialectically-informed interpretation of psychoanalytic and humanistic-existential-phenomenological sources, Mufid James Hannush distils thirty essential markers of maturity. The dialectical approach is described as a process whereby lived, affect-and-value laden polar meanings are transformed, through deep insight, into complementary and integrative meta-meanings. The author demonstrates how responding to the call of maturation can be viewed as a life project that serves the ultimate purpose of living a balanced life. The book will appeal to students and scholars of human development, psychotherapy, social work, philosophy, and existential, humanistic, and phenomenological psychology.
Market Education: The Unknown History (Studies in Social Philosophy & Policy, No. #21)
by Andrew J. CoulsonCoulson concludes that free educational markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public's needs than state-run school systems have. (from the publisher)
Market, Ethics and Religion: The Market and its Limitations (Ethical Economy #62)
by Niels KærgårdThis book deals with the basic question of what money can and cannot buy and offers an analysis of the limitations of the market mechanism. Few concepts are as controversial as religion and the market mechanism. Some consider religion to be in conflict with a modern rational scientific view of life, and thus as a contributory cause of harsh conflicts and a barrier to human happiness. Others consider religious beliefs as the foundation for ethics and decent behaviour. Similar, a number of neoliberal writers acclaimed the market mechanism as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, and saw it as the main reason why rich countries became rich. Others are extremely skeptical and stress how this mechanism has result in big multinational firms with powerfully rich owners and masses of poor low-paid workers. Researchers from various fields - economists, social scientists, theologians and philosophers - handle these questions very differently, applying different methods and different ideals. This book offers a synthesis of the different viewpoints. It deals with economists’, theologians’ and philosophers’ differing thoughts about the market and its limitations.
Marketing Violence: The Affective Economy of Violent Imageries in the Dutch Republic (Elements in Histories of Emotions and the Senses)
by Karel Vanhaesebrouck Cornelis van der Haven Inger Leemans Frans-Willem KorstenThis Element describes the development of an affective economy of violence in the early modern Dutch Republic through the circulation of images. The Element outlines that while violence became more controlled in the course of the 17th century, with fewer public executions for instance, the realm of cultural representation was filled with violent imagery: from prints, atlases and paintings, through theatres and public spectacles, to peep boxes. It shows how emotions were evoked, exploited, and controlled in this affective economy of violence based on desires, interests and exploitation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Marketisation, Ethics and Healthcare: Policy, Practice and Moral Formation (Routledge Key Themes in Health and Society)
by Andrew Papanikitas Therese Feiler Joshua HordernHow does the market affect and redefine healthcare? The marketisation of Western healthcare systems has now proceeded well into its fourth decade. But the nature and meaning of the phenomenon has become increasingly opaque amidst changing discourses, policies and institutional structures. Moreover, ethics has become focussed on dealing with individual, clinical decisions and neglectful of the political economy which shapes healthcare. This interdisciplinary volume approaches marketisation by exploring the debates underlying the contemporary situation and by introducing reconstructive and reparative discourses. The first part explores contrary interpretations of ‘marketisation’ on a systemic level, with a view to organisational-ethical formation and the role of healthcare ethics. The second part presents the marketisation of healthcare at the level of policy-making, discusses the ethical ramifications of specific marketisation measures and considers the possibility of reconciling market forces with a covenantal understanding of healthcare. The final part examines healthcare workers’ and ethicists’ personal moral standing in a marketised healthcare system, with a view to preserving and enriching virtue, empathy and compassion. Chapters 4 and 7 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Markets with Limits: How the Commodification of Academia Derails Debate
by James Stacey TaylorIn Markets with Limits James Stacey Taylor argues that current debates over the moral limits of markets have derailed. He argues that they focus on a market-critical position that almost nobody holds: That certain goods and services can be freely given away but should never be bought or sold. And he argues that they focus on a type of argument for this position that there is reason to believe that nobody holds: That trade in certain goods or services is wrongful solely because of what it would communicate. Taylor puts the debates over the moral limits of markets back on track. He develops a taxonomy of the positions that are actually held by critics of markets, and clarifies the role played in current moral and political philosophy by arguments that justify (or condemn) certain actions owing in part to what they communicate. Taylor argues that the debates have derailed because they were conducted in accord with market, rather than academic, norms—and that this demonstrates that market thinking should not govern academic research. Markets with Limits concludes with suggestions as to how to encourage academics to conduct research in accord with academic norms and hence improve its quality. Key features Provides original suggestions concerning how to improve the exegetical quality of academic research Systematically identifies the primary exegetical errors—and the ways in which these errors have adversely influenced current debates—that Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski made in their influential book, Markets Without Limits Argues that despite the current, widespread view that semiotic objections to markets are widespread in the literature, they are in actuality rare to nonexistent Offers an up-to-date taxonomy of the current arguments in the various debates over both the ontological and the moral limits of markets Provides an extensive overview of mistaken claims that have been made and propagated in various academic literatures
Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests
by Jason F. Brennan Peter JaworskiMay you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character. Or so most people say. In Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski give markets a fair hearing. The market does not introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the authors claim, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, they claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell.
Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests
by Jason F. Brennan Peter JaworskiMay you sell your spare kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? May spouses pay each other to do the dishes, watch the kids, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? May you ever sell your vote? Most people—and many philosophers—shudder at these questions. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character. In this expanded second edition of Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski say it is now past time to give markets a fair hearing. The market does not, the authors claim, introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, Brennan and Jaworski claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell. Key Updates and Revisions to the Second Edition: Includes revised introductory chapters to further clarify what’s at stake in the commodification debate. Provides easier-to-follow chapters on semiotic objections, stronger analyses of these objections, and more evidence of these objections’ widespread pervasiveness. Offers cogent responses to several recent papers that have raised counterexamples to the authors’ thesis. Includes new empirical evidence on the ways markets sometimes crowd in virtue and altruism. Analyzes the topics of blackmail and "associative" objections to markets. Includes new material on issues surrounding exploitation and coercion, selling citizenship, residency rights, and arguments about "dignity" as objections to markets.
Markets, Constitutions, and Inequality (Critical Studies in Jurisprudence)
by Anna Chadwick, Eleonora Lozano-Rodríguez, Andrés Palacios-Lleras, and Javier SolanaThis interdisciplinary collection examines the significance of constitutions in setting the terms and conditions upon which market economies operate. With some important exceptions, most notably from the tradition of Latin American constitutionalism, scholarship on constitutional law has paid negligible attention to questions of how constitutions relate to economic phenomena. A considerable body of literature has debated the due limits of the exercise of executive and legislative power, and discussions about legitimacy, democracy, and the adjudication of rights (civil and political, and socioeconomic) abound, yet scant attention has been paid by constitutional lawyers to the ways in which constitutions may protect and empower economic actors, and to how constitutions might influence the regulation and governance of specific markets. The contributors to this collection mobilize insights from other disciplines – including economic theory, history, and sociology – and consider the relationship between constitutional frameworks and bodies of law – including property law, criminal law, tax law, financial regulation, and human rights law – to advance understanding of how constitutions relate to markets and to the political economy. This book’s analysis of the role constitutions play in shaping markets will appeal to scholars and students in law, economics, history, politics, and sociology.
Markets, Ethics, and Business Ethics
by Steven ScaletThis book introduces a study of ethics and values to develop a deeper understanding of markets, business, and economic life. Its distinctive features include a thorough integration of personal and institutional perspectives; applied ethics and political philosophy; and philosophy, business, and economics.Part I introduces a study of markets, property rights, and law. Part II examines the purpose and responsibilities of corporations. Parts III and IV analyze economic life through the ethics and values of welfare and efficiency, liberty, rights, equality, desert, personal character, community, and the common good.This Third Edition maintains the strengths of previous editions – short, digestible chapters and engaging writing that explains challenging ideas clearly. The material is easily adaptable with suggested course outlines, separable chapters, and flexible applications to case studies. This book is designed for interdisciplinary programs in philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE), as well as courses in business ethics.Updates to the Third Edition include: addition of a new introductory chapter on the value of an ethical life coverage of artifical intelligence (AI) developments, including copyrights and patent implications, social media companies and corporate social responsibility, ethical differences between AI and human personality, and impacts on meaningful work integration of recent scholarship, bringing discussions and references up to date improvement of the writing across all chapters, making the book easier to read addition of new material on the is-ought gap in Chapter 1 with revised discussion of personal and institutional points of view editing and repositioning of consequentialist and deontological ethics in Chapter 3 revision of appendix for instructors that includes different syllabi possibilities for different types of courses The eBook of the Third Edition now includes hyperlinks (1) between when a term is first used in the main text and its definition in the Glossary and (2) between germane sections when they are cross-referenced.Cover image: Gary Yeowell/Getty Images
Markets, Ethics, and Business Ethics (2nd Edition)
by Steven Scalet<p>This book introduces a study of ethics and values to develop a deeper understanding of markets, business, and economic life. Its distinctive feature is its thorough integration across personal and institutional perspectives; across applied ethics and political philosophy; and across philosophy, business, and economics. <p>Part 1 studies markets, property rights, and law, and introduces normative theories with many applications. Part 2 examines the purpose of corporations and their responsibilities. Parts 3 and 4 analyze business and economic life through the ethics and values of welfare and efficiency, liberty, rights, equality, desert, personal character, community, and the common good. <p>This second edition maintains the strengths of the first edition—short, digestible chapters and engaging writing that explains challenging ideas clearly. The material is user-friendly, with an emphasis on a strong theoretical core. Easily adaptable to the instructor’s teaching, the chapters are separable and can be shaped to the interests of the instructor with suggested course outlines and flexible application to case studies. This text is designed both for coursework in business ethics, as well as interdisciplinary programs in philosophy, politics, economics, and law. This second edition: <p> <li>revises presentation of eight normative theories, with increased emphasis on linksto business and economic life <li>incorporates recent scholarship on shareholder/stakeholder debates about the purpose of corporations, bringing this important topic up to date <li>includes a new, streamlined preface that provides a quick overview of the book before smoothly guiding the reader to the first chapter <li>uses updated examples and applications <li>revamps a useful appendix, including enhancing the popular primer on ethics <li>includes Key Terms, Discussion Questions, Biographies, and Lists of Further Readings at the end of each chapter <li>includes a new ending chapter on the value of an ethical life
Markets, Minds, and Money: Why America Leads the World in University Research
by Miguel UrquiolaA colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.
Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought
by Béla KapossyWhen István Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he looked not only to the works of great thinkers but also to their reception and use amid revolution and interstate competition. His innovative program of study culminated in the landmark 2005 book Jealousy of Trade, which explores the birth of economic nationalism and other social effects of expanding eighteenth-century markets. Markets, Morals, Politics brings together a celebrated cast of Hont’s contemporaries to assess his influence, ideas, and methods. Richard Tuck, John Pocock, John Dunn, Raymond Geuss, Gareth Stedman Jones, Michael Sonenscher, John Robertson, Keith Tribe, Pasquale Pasquino, and Peter N. Miller contribute original essays on themes Hont treated with penetrating insight: the politics of commerce, debt, and luxury; the morality of markets; and economic limits on state power. The authors delve into questions about the relationship between states and markets, politics and economics, through examinations of key Enlightenment and pre-Enlightenment figures in context—Hobbes, Rousseau, Spinoza, and many others. The contributors also add depth to Hont’s lifelong, if sometimes veiled, engagement with Marx. The result is a work of interpretation that does justice to Hont’s influence while developing its own provocative and illuminating arguments. Markets, Morals, Politics will be a valuable companion to readers of Hont and anyone concerned with political economy and the history of ideas.
Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary
by Paul RabinowIn Marking Time, Paul Rabinow presents his most recent reflections on the anthropology of the contemporary. Drawing richly on the work of Michel Foucault, John Dewey, Niklas Luhmann, and, most interestingly, German painter Gerhard Richter, Rabinow offers a set of conceptual tools for scholars examining cutting-edge practices in the life sciences, security, new media and art practices, and other emergent phenomena. Taking up topics that include bioethics, anger and competition among molecular biologists, the lessons of the Drosophila genome, the nature of ethnographic observation in radically new settings, and the moral landscape shared by scientists and anthropologists, Rabinow shows how anthropology remains relevant to contemporary debates. By turning abstract philosophical problems into real-world explorations and offering original insights, Marking Time is a landmark contribution to the continuing re-invention of anthropology and the human sciences.
Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity (History of Analytic Philosophy)
by A. R. J. FisherThis book is an edited collection of essays in celebration of the centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, published in 1920. Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) was a leading figure of British philosophy in the early twentieth century. He was partly responsible for the ‘new realism’ movement along with G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. However, his work has been overlooked in developments of twentieth century philosophy and yet his theories and style of theorising are in vogue. This book begins with three previously unpublished papers by Alexander that shed light on his metaphysical commitments about time, universals, God, knowledge of past truths, grounding, and inference in logic and science. There are also two important posthumous chapters by philosophers of the mid-twentieth century, who elaborate on his life and most significant contributions. The second half of the book contains new essays by current scholars, discussing Alexander on metaphysical realism, idealism, naturalism, space and time, process ontology, ontological categories, epistemology, perception, philosophy of history, emergentism, and empiricism.
Markus Gabriel’s New Realism (Synthese Library #492)
by Jan VoosholzThis is the first volume focused on Markus Gabriel’s version of New Realism, which spans the fields of metaphysics/ontology, philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of science, and meta-philosophy. Most of the selected contributions are directly or indirectly concerned with Gabriel’s fields of sense-ontology, his version of a thoroughly realistic pluralism. While some take up criticisms from previous debates surrounding Gabriel’s philosophy and New Realism in general, others advance completely new and innovative challenges for this highly systematic thinker. Overall, the contributions provide both a substantive commentary on Gabriel’s work and a multifaceted, critical assessment of its underlying ideas. The book is not only an essential addition to the debate surrounding New Realism, but also furthers the discussions about naturalism, deflationist ontologies, contextualism and mereological arguments to which Gabriel’s work has contributed in recent years.
Marranos: The Other of the Other
by Donatella Di CesareMarranos were Spanish or Portuguese Jews who converted to Christianity at the time of the Spanish Inquisition to avoid being massacred or forced to flee but who continued to practise Judaism in secret. They were persecuted by the first racist blood laws but the water of forced baptism was not enough to make them assimilate. Donatella Di Cesare sees the marranos as the quintessential figures of the modern condition: the marranos were not just those whom modernity cast out as the ‘other’, but were those ‘others’ who were forced to disavow their beliefs and conceal themselves. They became ‘the other of the other’, doubly excluded, condemned to a life of existential duplicity with no way out, spurned by both Catholics and Jews and unable to belong fully to either community. But this double life of the marranos turned out to be a secret source of strength. Doubly estranged, with no possibility of redemption, the marranos became modernity’s first true radicals. Dissidents out of necessity, they inaugurated modernity with their ambivalence and their split self. And their story is not over. By treating the history of the marranos as a prism through which to grasp the defining features of modernity, this highly original book will be of interest to a wide readership.
Marriage and Morals (Routledge Classics Ser.)
by Bertrand RussellMarriage and Morals is a compelling cross-cultural examination of individual, familial and societal attitudes towards sex and marriage. By exploring the codes by which we live our sexual lives and conventional morality, Russell daringly sets out a new morality, shaped and influenced by dramatic changes in society such as the emancipation of women and the wide-spread use of contraceptives. From the origin of marriage to the influence of religion, Russell explores the changing role of marriage and codes of sexual ethics. The influence of this great work has turned it into a worthy classic.
Marriage and Morals: Marriage And Moral
by Bertrand RussellFirst published in 1985. Marriage and Morals won Bertrand Russell the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. With his customary wit and clarity, Russell explores the changing role of marriage, the codes of sexual ethics and the question of population. By what codes should we live our sexual lives? Every aspect, from the origin of marriage to the values of a healthy sex life, from the influence of religion, psychoanalysis and taboos to the possibilities of eugenics, receives the incisive scrutiny of Russell’s intellect. Here is the Passionate Sceptic at his most vigorous.
Mars Direct
by Robert ZubrinThe human race is at a crossroads. In the coming years, we will make decisions regarding our human spaceflight program that will lead to one of two familiar futures: the open universe of Star Trek, where we allow ourselves the opportunity to spread our wings and attempt to flourish as an interplanetary species-or the closed, dystopian, and ultimately self-destructive world of Soylent Green. If we ever hope to live in the future that is the former scenario, our first stepping stone must be a manned mission to Mars. Dr. Robert Zubrin details the challenges of a manned Earth-to-Mars mission. Challenges which, according to Zubrin, we are technologically more prepared to overcome than the obstacles of the missions to the moon of the sixties and seventies. Dr. Zubrin's relatively simple plan, called Mars Direct, could feasibly have humans on the surface of Mars within a decade. Zubrin also discusses the current predicament of NASA, the promise of privatized space flight from companies like SpaceX, and the larger implication behind the absolute necessity to open the final frontier to humanity-the human race's future as a species that takes the necessary baby steps away from the cradle that is planet Earth or, ultimately, perishes here.