With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. In 1956, Mencken read through his notebooks and extracted those pieces he thought truest, most pertinent, most precise, or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain.

Are the views of Latinos and African Americans underrepresented in our federal government? For that matter, what does it mean to be represented equitably? Rather than taking for granted a single answer to these complex questions, John Griffin and Brian Newman use different measures of political equality to reveal which groups get what they want from government and what factors lead to their successes. One of the first books to compare the representation of both African Americans and Latinos to that of whites, Minority Report shows that congressional decisions and federal policy tend to mirror the preferences of whites as a group and as individuals better than the preferences of either minority group, even after accounting for income disparities. This is far from the whole story, though, and the authors’ multifaceted approach illustrates the surprising degree to which group population size, an issue’s level of importance, the race or ethnicity of an office holder, and electoral turnout can affect how well government action reflects the views of each person or group. Sure to be controversial, Minority Report ultimately goes beyond statistical analyses to address the root question of what equal representation really means.

Imagine a future where crimes can be detected before they are committed, and criminals are convicted and sentenced for crimes before committing them. This is the scenario of Philip K. Dick's classic story, now filmed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise. In addition to MINORITY REPORT this exclusive collection includes nine other outstanding short stories by the twentieth century's outstanding SF master, three of which have been made into feature films.

In Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report, ‘precogs’, who are imaginary individuals capable of seeing the future are relied upon to stop crime, with a consensus report synthesized from two of three precogs. When the protaganist is indicted for a future murder, he suspects a conspiracy and seeks out the “minority report,” detailing the suppressed testimony of the third precog. Science works a lot like this science fiction story. Contrary to the view that scientists in a field all share the same “paradigm,” as Thomas Kuhn famously argued, scientists support different, and competing, research programs. Statements of scientific consensus need to be actively synthesized from the work of different scientists. Not all scientific work will be equally credited by science as a whole. While this system works well enough for most purposes, it is possible for minority views to fail to get the hearing that they deserve. This book analyzes the support that should be given to minority views, reconsidering classic debates in science and technology studies and examining numerous case studies.

Imagine a future where crimes can be detected before they are committed, and criminals are convicted and sentenced for crimes before committing them. This is the scenario of Philip K. Dick's classic story, now filmed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise. In addition to 'Minority Report' this exclusive collection includes nine other outstanding short stories by the twentieth century's outstanding sf master, three of which have been made into feature films.

The stuff that comes after modernism isn't all bad. Postmodernism, not needing everything to be buttoned up, can leave things dangling; it can pay attention to the obscure, marginal, and particular. The postmodern dynamic invites one to revisit biblical texts that do not fit into tidy, cherished theological constructs: I call these texts the "minority reports." Popular theology infers that God is just pretending when he changes his mind or gets frustrated, saddened, and affected by humans--this understanding is guided by concepts of God's omni-attributes. But these wise and well-intentioned concepts fail to portray a God who will not be domesticated. Certain biblical narratives trace YHWH's hiddenness, suffering, changeability, and "hostility"--this awkward "shadow side" of YHWH is sometimes selectively overlooked. The fear of God is gone. Instead we have the ever-tolerant, universal God who is in danger of evaporating into "spirit," "light," and "love." As a theologian I use Hebrew block logic: competing truths in the Bible are kept intact; synthesis isn't necessarily sought. God chooses us and we choose God; God is self-sufficient, all-powerful, and all-knowing, needing no creature. Yet he chooses to limit his "omni-ness" in the human arena and makes himself vulnerable to humans. He hyphenates his name with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob--and the church--at a risk.

Through close readings of texts by African American and women authors, Minority Reports offers a theoretical defense of the use of identity categories in American studies by examining how early American literature not only responds to the social stratification of the nineteenth century but also challenges modern historical conceptions of this era.