Una historia de la biología según el conejillo de Indias:Las plantas y los animales que nos han enseñado a entender la vida (Editorial Ariel, 2009)

A Spanish translation of Jim Endersby's first book has been published by Editorial Ariel, Madrid. They describe it as "Este original examen de las ciencias de la vida, tan ameno como sorprendente e instructivo, nos lanza, además, un desafío: el de tener en cuenta los dilemas éticos que la biología nos plantea en un momento en el que, por primera vez en la historia, tenemos la capacidad de alterar la naturaleza de los seres vivos."

Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species, Edited by Jim Endersby (Cambridge University Press 2009) .

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is both a key scientific work of research, still read by scientists, and a readable narrative that has had a cultural impact unmatched by any other scientific text. First published in 1859, it has continued to sell, to be reviewed and discussed, attacked and defended. The Origin is one of those books whose controversial reputation ensures that many who have never read it nevertheless have an opinion about it. Jim Endersby's major new scholarly edition debunks some of the myths that surround Darwin's book, while providing a detailed examination of the contexts within which it was originally written, published and read. Endersby provides a new, up-to-date and very readable introduction to this classic text and a level of scholarly apparatus (explanatory notes, bibliography and appendixes) that is unmatched by any other edition.

The Legacy of Hans Jonas: Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life, edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Christian Wiese (Boston/Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2008)

Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most creative and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth-century. This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, and environmentalists to reflect on the meaning of his legacy today. From a historian of religions, who wrote a path-breaking monograph on Gnosticism, Jonas turned to the philosophy of nature, extending his existential philosophy and phenomenological analysis to include all forms of life. Unique among twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, Jonas argued for the possibility of a genuinely symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature, which he believed had been suppressed by modern technology. Jonas spoke against the human domination of nature on the basis of Jewish sources, especially the Bible and Lurianic Kabbalah, and he was among the first to define the ethical challenges that modern technology poses to humanity

Hans Jonas, Memoirs, edited by Christian Wiese (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008)

Because Jonas's life spanned the entire twentieth century, this memoir provides nuanced pictures of German Jewry during the Weimar Republic, of German Zionism, of the Jewish emigrants in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, and of German Jewish émigré intellectuals in New York. In addition, Jonas outlines the development of his work, beginning with his studies under Husserl and Heidegger and extending through his later metaphysical speculations about "God after Auschwitz." This memoir, a collection of heterogeneous unpublished materials-diaries, memoirs, letters, interviews, and public statements-has been shaped and organized by Christian Wiese, whose afterword links the Jewish dimensions of Jonas's biography and philosophy.

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, eds., Socialist Modern:  East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008)

Jim Endersby Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian Science, 2008

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first-and most successful-British men of science to become a full-time professional. He was also, Jim Endersby argues, the perfect embodiment of Victorian science. A vivid picture of the complex interrelationships of scientific work and scientific ideas, Imperial Nature gracefully uses one individual's career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era.
By analyzing Hooker's career, Endersby offers vivid insights into the everyday activities of nineteenth-century naturalists, considering matters as diverse as botanical illustration and microscopy, classification, and specimen transportation and storage, to reveal what they actually did, how they earned a living, and what drove their scientific theories. What emerges is a rare glimpse of Victorian scientific practices in action. By focusing on science's material practices and one of its foremost practitioners, Endersby ably links concerns about empire, professionalism, and philosophical practices to the forging of a nineteenth-century scientific identity.

Peter Campbell, Conspiracy in the French Revolution, 2007

Conspiratorial views of events abound even in our modern, rational world. Often such theories serve to explain the inexplicable. Sometimes they are developed for motives of political expediency: it is simpler to see political opponents as conspirators and terrorists, putting them into one convenient basket, than to seek to understand and disentangle the complex motivations of opponents. So it is not surprising to see that just when the French Revolution was creating the modern political world, a constant obsession with conspiracies lay at the heart of the revolutionary conception of politics. The book considers the nature and development of the conspiracy obsession from the end of the old regime to the Directory. Chapters focus on conspiracy and fears of conspiracy in the old regime; in the Constitutuent Assembly; by the king and Marie Antoinette; amongst the people of Paris; on attitudes towards the peasantry and conspiracy; on Jacobin politics of the Year II and the 'foreign plot'; on counter-revolutionary plots and imaginary plots; on Babeuf and the 'conspiracy of equals'; and finally on fear of conspiracy as an intellectual impasse in the revolutionary mentality. Inspired by recent debates, this book is a comprehensive survey of the nature of conspiracy in the French Revolution, with each chapter written by a leading historian on the question. Each chapter is an original contribution to the topic.

Peter Campbell, The Origins of the French Revolution, 2007

The French Revolution, an event of world historical importance that gave birth to modern politics, has long been a subject of debate. Naturally, the question of its origins remains a key area of controversy. This collection of essays by a team of distinguished experts in the field offers original but approachable views and interpretations that will engage students and scholars alike. Each chapter contains new research and focuses upon a major strand of the present debate.

Chapters on art and theatre, on the development of cultural history, and the corrosive role of religious conflict upon the fabric of the monarchy ensure that stimulating new perspectives now form a key part of future discussion. A full introduction considers the nature of the debate and offers a thought-provoking interpretation of the crisis of the absolute monarchy that led to the collapse of state and society in the summer of 1789.

Jim Endersby, A Guinea Pig's History of Biology, 2007

Over the last century we have gone from ignorance as to why some diseases run in families to the availability of simple genetic tests that can be bought on the internet. And from announcements of the death of Darwinism to the triumph of the modern theory of evolution. All this is thanks to the fruit fly, the guinea pig, the zebra fish and a handful of other organisms, which have helped us unravel one of life's greatest mysteries - inheritance. Jim Endersby's strikingly original book tells the history of modern biology through the stories of the animals and plants that made it possible, showing how the guinea-pig and its colleagues have played a pivotal role in our gradual understanding of what genes are and what they do. Entertaining, surprising and enlightening by turns, this unusual and original view of the science of life also challenges us to consider the ethical dilemmas that biology presents today - when we have the capacity as never before to change the very nature of living things.

Published by William Heinemann/Harvard University Press. Winner of the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Prize for non-fiction. Long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award.

Andreas Gotzmann and Christian Wiese (eds), Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities, Encounters, Perspectives, 2007

The volume, composed by excellent scholars from different academic disciplines, is a comprehensive handbook devoted to the complex relationship between modern Judaism and historical thinking in Europe, the United States, and Israel from the Enlightenment to the present. Apart from analyzing the emergence of a new scholarly historical paradigm during this period, the contributions interpret the interaction and the tensions between Jewish historiography and other disciplines such as literature, theology, sociology, and philosophy, describe the way historical consciousness was popularized and used for ideological purposes and explore the impact of different religious or secular identities on the historical representation of the Jewish past. A final part envisions new theoretical and methodological concepts within the field, including cultural studies and gender studies.

Christian Wiese (ed), Redefining Judaism in an Age of Emancipation Comparative Perspectives on Samuel Holdheim (1806-1860), 2007

Based on a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, this volume for the first time interprets the biography and philosophy of the German Jewish thinker Samuel Holdheim, shedding new light on a neglected phenomenon of nineteenth century Jewish intellectual history ? the radical Reform Movement that started in Germany and culminated in the American Jewish Reform ideology. Leading scholars of modern Jewish history and thought from Germany, France, Belgium and the United States present a thorough reading of Holdheim's influential writings in the broader context of the debates within German Jewry about the modernization of Jewish identity in an age of political emancipation and cultural integration, including such controversial issues as the authority of the rabbinical tradition or the re-interpretation of the ceremonial laws.

Christian Wiese, The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions, 2007

Hans Jonas (1903?1993), a Jewish student of Martin Heidegger, is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. Much of his philosophy responds to contemporary historical and political challenges: mass society, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, "nuclearism," environmental devastation (Chernobyl), and, later, the risks of genetic engineering. Wiese's study examines how Jonas's Jewish background influenced his intellectual development. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material and exploring momentous encounters with major figures of 20th century life and letters like Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt, Wiese demonstrates how Jonas combined religious and philosophical elements in his thought, and offers new insights into the work of this eminent thinker.

Knud Haakonssen, Thomas Reid on Practical Ethics, 2007

The pervasiveness of Protestant natural law in the early modern period and its significance in the Scottish Enlightenment have long been recognized. This book reveals that Thomas Reid (1710-1796) - the great contemporary of David Hume and Adam Smith - also worked in this tradition. When Reid succeeded Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy in Glasgow in 1764, he taught a course covering pneumatology, practical ethics, and politics. This section on practical ethics took its starting point from the system of natural law and rights published by Francis Hutcheson. Knud Haakonssen has reconstructed it here for the first time from Reid's manuscript lectures and papers, and it provides a considerable addition to our understanding not only of Reid but of the thought of the Scottish Enlightenment and of the education system of the time. The present work is a revised version of a work first published by Princeton University Press in 1990 which has long been out of print.

Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain, 2007

This book demonstrates how the personal became political in post-war Britain, and argues that attention to gay activism can help us to fundamentally rethink the nature of post-war politics. While the left were fighting among themselves and the reformists were struggling with the limits of law reform, gay men started organising for themselves, first individually within existing organisations and later rejecting formal political structures altogether.

Culture, performance and identity took over from economics and class struggle, as gay men worked to change the world through the politics of sexuality. Throughout the post-war years, the new cult of the teenager in the 1950s, CND and the counter-culture of the 1960s, gay liberation, feminism, the punk movement and the miners' strike of 1984 all helped to build a politics of identity.

There is an assumption among many of today's politicians that young people are apathetic and disengaged. This book argues that these politicians are looking in the wrong place. People now feel that they can impact the world through the way in which they live, shop, have sex and organise their private lives. Robinson shows that gay men and their politics have been central to this change in the post-war world.

Richard Whatmore and Brian Young (eds), Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History, 2006

The past three decades have seen a remarkable growth of interest in intellectual history. This book provides the first comprehensive survey of recent research in Britain and North America concerned with Europe and the wider world from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. Each chapter considers developments in intellectual history in particular subject areas, and shows the ways intellectual historians have contributed to more established disciplinary enquiries, from the history of science and medicine to literary studies, art history and the history of political thought. Several chapters provide an expert overview of the current practice of intellectual history, and scrutinize seminal writings by contemporary intellectual historians which have caused particular historiographical controversy.

Knud Haakonssen, The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, 2006

Written by more than thirty scholars from nine countries, The Cambridge History of Eighteenth- Century Philosophy is a comprehensive general history of the subject. In contrast to most such histories, the field is treated systematically by topic, not by individual thinker and school. As in previous volumes in the series, this work has extensive biographical and bibliographical research materials. In keeping with the eighteenth century's dominant idea of the modern development of philosophy, the work is centered on the concept of human nature. This allows both explorations of the epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical themes that continue to be at the forefront of philosophy and a critical attitude to the historiography behind this emphasis in contemporary philosophical thought. With sensitivity to the historical context, the work emphasizes the connections between philosophy, science, and theology, and it covers the whole of Western philosophy in the Enlightenment period.

Knud Haakonssen (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, 2006

Today Adam Smith is best known as the founder of scientific economics and as an early proponent of the modern market economy. However, his political economy was only part of a comprehensive intellectual system, consisting of a theory of the mind and its functions in language, arts, science, and social intercourse. Smith's ideas on the latter subject served as the basis for a moral theory that provided both historical and theoretical accounts of law and economics. The fifteen contributors to this volume include John Pocock, Amartya Sen, and Donald Winch.

Carol Dyhouse, Students: A Gendered History, Routledge 2006

This book explores the gendered social history of students in modern Britain, focussing on access, ambitions and the troubled politics of co-education in institutions formerly dominated by single-sex colleges and segregated opportunities for men and women.She examines men's and women's sometimes differing expectations of higher education, at a time when many families made substantial sacrifices in order to send young people to college.