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East German science fiction enabled its authors to create a subversive space in another time and place. One of the country's most popular genres, it outlined futures that often went beyond the party's official version. Many utopian stories provided a corrective vision, intended to preserve and improve upon East German communism. This study is an introduction to East German science fiction. The book begins with a chapter on German science fiction before 1949. It then spans the entire existence of the country (1949-1990) and outlines key topics essential to understanding the genre: popular literature, socialist realism, censorship, fandom, and international science fiction. An in-depth discussion addresses notions of high and low literature, elements of the fantastic and utopia as critical narrative strategies, ideology and realism in East German literature, gender, and the relation between literature and science. Through a close textual analysis of three science fiction novels, the author expands East German literary history to include science fiction as a valuable source for developing a multi-faceted understanding of the country's short history. Finally, an epilogue notes new titles and developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This volume offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana. The thematic image for this enterprise is the 'fiery hunt' for Ahab's whale, which focuses attention on the strange brew of mixed motives for American ventures abroad. The reach of Pax Americana exceeds its grasp, but this verdict requires deeper insight than simply flushing out cultural premises and conceptual limits. The volume's purpose is to understand the USA's 'fiery hunt,' and thereby to help to end it.

The best nonfiction science books and articles demonstrate that accurate science can be presented to the public so that it is understandable, yet as gripping as fine fiction. Some of these works serve as examples for students taking science-writing workshops. However, programs in science writing, journalism, English, the sciences, and medicine may benefit from offering a course that explores science writing as literature. Nonfiction books published each year outnumber fiction books by more than six to one, yet relatively few nonfiction literature courses exist, and science-writing-as-literature courses are rare, although popular with students. Courses in science writing as literature are known to have been taught at six universities. Courses have varied in emphasis (biology, medicine, general) and approach (one compared scientists and nonscientists as science writers). This report surveys the readings and features of existing courses.

This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible 'sustainable energy' transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of 'the transition' itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to 'open up' (rather than 'close down'), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons.

This volume offers trenchant studies by renowned scholars who reassess the role of the social sciences in the construction and upkeep of the Pax Americana. The thematic image for this enterprise is the 'fiery hunt' for Ahab's whale, which focuses attention on the strange brew of mixed motives for American ventures abroad. The reach of Pax Americana exceeds its grasp, but this verdict requires deeper insight than simply flushing out cultural premises and conceptual limits. The volume's purpose is to understand the USA's 'fiery hunt,' and thereby to help to end it.

Background: Social scientists have paid increasing attention to health technology assessment (HTA). This paper provides an overview of existing social scientific literature on HTA, with a focus on sociology and political science and their subfields. Methods: Narrative review of key pieces in English. Results: Three broad themes recur in the emerging social science literature on HTA: the drivers of the establishment and concrete institutional designs of HTA bodies; the effects of institutionalized HTA on pricing and reimbursement systems and the broader society; and the social and political influences on HTA decisions. Conclusion: Social scientists bring a focus on institutions and social actors involved in HTA, using primarily small-N research designs and qualitative methods. They provide valuable critical perspectives on HTA, at times challenging its otherwise unquestioned assumptions. However, they often leave aside questions important to the HTA practitioner community, including the role of culture and values. Closer collaboration could be beneficial to tackle new relevant questions pertaining to HTA.

Discusses the lasting influence on later US presidential scholars of Richard E. Neustadt's "Presidential power", first published in 1960, in which he analyzed presidential leadership and policy-making, and the need for an executive partnership with Congress, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his ideal, and subsequent challenges to Neustadt's theses.

Applied Social Sciences: Education Sciences is a collection of essays specific to the field of education. The volume contains both essays on general issues in education (education in antiquity, discipline in early childhood, quality of the educational process, formative assessment, pedagogical approaches to literature, teacher training, gender stereotypes in education, and education and media) and essays on education in elementary school (curriculum design options, and science achievement in

Based on research in the social sciences, this article suggests new directions and compromises that might make it possible for liberals and leftists to work together in the hopeful post-9/11, post-Bush/Cheney era. There are five basic issues—electoral strategy, the role of social movements, the need for a new model for the economy, the need for a reframing of who is "us" and who is "them," and the creation of a new organizational structure. It first explains why leftists should organize themselves into Egalitarian Democratic Clubs within the Democratic Party, followed by an analysis of why social movements are more valuable than many liberals have acknowledged but only when they embrace strategic nonviolence as their sole method of social disruption. It then suggests a new framework for thinking about an egalitarian economy that would allow liberals and leftists to work together even while disagreeing about how egalitarian that economy could become. Finally, it suggests a reframing of "us" and "them" in terms of people's values and policy prescriptions, not their class, race, gender, or sexual orientation, and the creation of a network of organizations that share a commitment to the proposed electoral, social movement, and economic strategies.