Professor of geosciences Tullis C. Onstott *81 explores the universe’s most elusive realms in Deep Life: The Hunt for the Hidden Biology of Earth, Mars, and Beyond (Princeton University Press). By taking the reader to extreme environments, Onstott gives an inside tour of geomicrobiology and how it’s being used to find life elsewhere in our solar system. Part thriller, part scientific adventure, Deep Life sheds light on the biotic fringe.
Princeton political science professor Christopher H. Achen and Vanderbilt political scientist and Princeton professor emeritus Larry M. Bartels contend in Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton University Press) that voters choose candidates not on policy or past behavior, but instead on how closely the candidate jibes with their own longstanding beliefs and biases. They also show how election outcomes can be influenced by natural occurrences, such as the amount of rainfall or number of shark attacks during an election year.
Fugitive Democracy and Other Essays (Princeton University Press) collects the writings of professor of politics Sheldon S. Wolin, who died in October 2015. The book, which Wolin collaborated on before his death, unites essays from his 40-year academic career as a leading political theorist. Spanning essays from the Vietnam War era to later, more radical, writings about the undemocratic implications of America’s social inequalities, Wolin’s work engages classical political theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville to Karl Marx.