Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Introductory Statistics
Barbara Illowsky; Susan Dean; Daniel Birmajer; Bryan Blount · OpenStax · 2023
Introductory Statistics 2e provides an engaging, practical, and thorough overview of the core concepts and skills taught in most one-semester statistics courses. The text focuses on diverse applications from a variety of fields and societal contexts, including business, healthcare, sciences, sociology, political science, computing, and several others. The material supports students with conceptual narratives, detailed step-by-step examples, and a wealth of illustrations, as well as collaborative exercises, technology integration problems, and statistics labs. The text assumes some knowledge of intermediate algebra, and includes thousands of problems and exercises that offer instructors and students ample opportunity to explore and reinforce useful statistical skills.
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The Office of the Presidency: Powers and Responsibilities
Jakob Miller · Jakob Miller · 2025
Popular imagination gives the President of the United States vast, sweeping power. The Constitution tells a different story. This book is about the gap between the two. The Office of the Presidency: Powers and Responsibilities is a free, introductory political science textbook for undergraduate students. It examines the American presidency through the lens of the leadership dilemma — the persistent gap between what the public expects presidents to accomplish and what the office actually empowers them to do. Each chapter explores a key dimension of presidential power: the constitutional origins of the office, nominations and campaigns, the tools and limits of executive authority, the relationship with Congress and the courts, war and foreign policy, and the presidency's management of public opinion and the media. Throughout, the focus is not on the presidents who have held the office, but on the office itself — its surprising constraints, its creative expansions, and the enduring tension between expectation and reality that has shaped every presidency from Washington to the present.
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Open Judicial Politics
Rorie Solberg; Jennifer Diascro; Eric Waltenburg · Oregon State University · 2020
The impetus for this volume was a multitude of conversations regarding pedagogy and teaching related to our judicial process courses. Based on these conversations, we identified four main threads or needs of our colleagues: First, many of us bring or want to bring more “political science” into our classes, though we also want to avoid the high costs of reinventing successful existing courses to do so. Second, our programs all require a political methodology course, and we want to reinforce those lessons in our substantive courses. We want to encourage our students’ understanding of how to read and understand research studies as well as how to craft their own research questions. Third, we want to keep our courses as current as possible. And fourth, we wanted to find a way to bring the cost of our courses down, as we see so many students struggle with the high costs of a college degree. This volume (as well as any future editions) addresses each of these concerns. Open Judicial Politics is a compilation of new and original research in judicial politics written specifically for the undergraduate audience, thus providing accessible examples of political science research that also address some of the more current concerns and controversies in our field. Additionally, every article is accompanied by some type of classroom activity—from basic discussion questions to full-blown simulations—that makes it easier for instructors to adapt the material to their courses and enhance classes with interactives. The chapters of the volume generally follow the well-worn path of most textbooks of judicial politics, making the volume an easy companion for adoption, and the material should fit seamlessly into the preestablished structures of most courses. Finally, the volume is an open-source resource, and adoption of the text adds no cost for our students. Whether one uses one or ten articles, the cost remains nil. This volume includes twenty-two original contributions that we have grou
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First Amendment: Cases, Controversies, and Contexts
Ruthann Robson · CALI's eLangdell® Press · 2016
This Casebook (Second Edition, December 2019) is intended to be used in an upper-division course covering the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its 14 chapters are substantially the same length, with the exception of Chapter One, the introduction, and Chapters Eleven and Twelve which in combination are the usual length. It is intended for 13 or 14 week semester that meets once or twice per week. Each Chapter contains a “Chapter Outline” at the beginning for ease of reference. The Casebook is organized with the Speech Clauses as Part One and the Religion Clauses as Part Two. Unlike many other courses, there is no accepted organizational scheme within these broad areas. As the Introduction notes, First Amendment doctrine, especially within freedom of speech, presents a varied and haphazard landscape. The Casebook follows a scheme that has proven effective in Professor Robson’s years of teaching the course to hundreds of students. The selection of cases tends toward the most recent and these tend to be less heavily edited. These recent cases often contain extended discussions of earlier cases that are not included in the Casebook.
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Introduction to Sociology
William Little; Ron McGivern · BCcampus · 2016
Introduction to Sociology adheres to the scope and sequence of a typical introductory sociology course. In addition to comprehensive coverage of core concepts, foundational scholars, and emerging theories, we have incorporated section reviews with engaging questions, discussions that help students apply the sociological imagination, and features that draw learners into the discipline in meaningful ways. Although this text can be modified and reorganized to suit your needs, the standard version is organized so that topics are introduced conceptually, with relevant, everyday experiences.For the student, this book is based on the teaching and research experience of numerous sociologists. In today's global socially networked world, the topic of Sociology is more relevant than ever before. We hope that through this book, students will learn how simple, everyday human actions and interactions can change the world. In this book, you will find applications of Sociology concepts that are relevant, current, and balanced. For instructors, this text is intended for a one-semester introductory course and includes these features: Sociological Research: Highlights specific current and relevant research studies. Sociology in the Real World: Ties chapter content to student life and discusses sociology in terms of the everyday. Big Picture: Features present sociological concepts at a national or international level. Case Study: Describes real-life people whose experiences relate to chapter content. Social Policy and Debate: Discusses political issues that relate to chapter content. Section Summaries distill the information in each section for both students and instructors down to key, concise points addressed in the section. Key Terms are bold and are followed by a definition in context. Definitions of key terms are also listed in the Key Terms, which appears at the end of each chapter. Section Quizzes provide opportunities to apply and test the information students learn throughout
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International Relations
Stephen McGlinchey · E-International Relations · 2016
This book is designed to be a ‘Day 0' introduction to International Relations. As a beginner's guide, it has been structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in the most accessible way. The chapters offer a broad sweep of the basic components of International Relations and the key contemporary issues that concern the discipline. The narrative arc forms a complete circle, taking readers from no knowledge to competency. The journey starts by examining how the international system was formed and ends by reflecting that International Relations is always adapting to events and is therefore a never-ending journey of discovery. Unlike typical textbooks, there are no boxes, charts, pictures or exercises. The philosophy underpinning this book is that these things can be a distraction. This book, like others in the E-IR Foundations series, is designed to capture attention with an engaging narrative. The chapters are short, with simple paragraphs and clear sentences placing the reader inside crucial issues and debates so they can understand how things work, and where they fit in the world around them.
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Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined
Ingrid Robeyns · Open Book Publishers · 2017
How do we evaluate ambiguous concepts such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice? How do we develop policies that offer everyone the best chance to achieve what they want from life? The capability approach, a theoretical framework pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, has become an increasingly influential way to think about these issues. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined is both an introduction to the capability approach and a thorough evaluation of the challenges and disputes that have engrossed the scholars who have developed it. Ingrid Robeyns offers her own illuminating and rigorously interdisciplinary interpretation, arguing that by appreciating the distinction between the general capability approach and more specific capability theories or applications we can create a powerful and flexible tool for use in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of policymaking. This book provides an original and comprehensive account that will appeal to scholars of the capability approach, new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction, and those interested in theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach.
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Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience
Joshua Farrington; Norman Powell; Gwendolyn Graham; Ogechi Anyanwu · Encompass Digital Archive · 2019
Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework. It offers sound interdisciplinary analysis of selected historical and contemporary issues surrounding the origins and manifestations of White supremacy in the United States. By placing race at the center of the work, the book offers significant lessons for understanding the institutional marginalization of Blacks in contemporary America and their historical resistance and perseverance.
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Institutional Racism in the United States Revisited
Carmichael Peters; Louis Knowles; Rodè Cramer; Glennan Keldin · Chapman University · 2024
This book aims to examine the current state of systemic racism in the United States as compared to baseline data collected in 1969. Using recent findings in the fields of history, economics, education, political science and public health, the work reveals the ways in which systemic racism in the US has and has not been addressed in the past five decades.
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La política petrolera en el gobierno de la revolución ciudadana: El caso del Campo Sacha
Nelson García-Osorio · Editorial Grupo AEA · 2022
En la primera parte, se realiza un resumen del manejo del petróleo a partir de 1972 hasta la actualidad, así como también se describe la política petrolera aplicada por los gobiernos, desde la administración del doctor Oswaldo Hurtado hasta la administración del señor Guillermo Lasso. En la segunda, se analiza el entorno jurídico en el contexto de los recursos naturales especialmente del petróleo, en el marco de la Ley de Hidrocarburos y de la Constitución de la República del Ecuador. Y en la tercera, se analiza la producción en el Campo Sacha, adjudicada a ORNCEM mediante el contrato de servicios específicos y de acuerdo a sus dos contratos modificatorios. Se concluye con algunas consideraciones que se deben tomar en cuenta y que llaman a la reflexión cuando se proponen y ejecutan contratos cuyo beneficio no es el mejor para el país. Por otro lado, los bosques son grandes “limpiadores” de dióxido de carbono, al ser destruidos se anula su potencial de absorción y, por lo tanto, contribuyen al calentamiento global del planeta por el incremento de gases de efecto invernadero, razón por la cual, se debe contrarrestar la deforestación.
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Mapping, Society, and Technology
Steven Manson · University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2017
This book is about how to read, use, and create maps. Our exploration of maps will be informed by a contextual understanding of how maps reflect the relationship between society and technology, and how mapping is an essential form of scientific and artistic inquiry. We will also explore how mapping is used to address a variety of societal issues, such as land use planning and political gerrymandering. You will gain insight into the technical underpinnings of mapping as a science approach, complement on-going interest and activities, or provide an applied focus for research or policy.
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Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation
Tom Theis; Jonathan Tomkin · OpenStax CNX · 2015
With “Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation”, first and second-year college students are introduced to this expanding new field, comprehensively exploring the essential concepts from every branch of knowledge – including engineering and the applied arts, natural and social sciences, and the humanities. As sustainability is a multi-disciplinary area of study, the text is the product of multiple authors drawn from the diverse faculty of the University of Illinois: each chapter is written by a recognized expert in the field. This text is designed to introduce the reader to the essential concepts of sustainability. This subject is of vital importance seeking as it does to uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet but is only peripherally served by existing college textbooks. The content is intended to be useful for both a broad-based introductory class on sustainability and as a useful supplement to specialist courses which wish to review the sustainability dimensions of their areas of study. By covering a wide range of topics with a uniformity of style, and by including glossaries, review questions, case studies, and links to further resources, the text has sufficient range to perform as the core resource for a semester course. Students who cover the material in the book will be conversant in the language and concepts of sustainability, and will be equipped for further study in sustainable planning, policy, economics, climate, ecology, infrastructure, and more. Furthermore, the modular design allows individual chapters and sections to be easily appropriated without the purchase of a whole new text. This allows educators to easily bring sustainability concepts, references, and case studies into their area of study. This appropriation works particularly well as the text is free downloadable to anyone who wishes to use it. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to work with the text. Provided there is attribution to the source, use
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Contextualised open educational practices: Towards student agency and self-directed learning
Jako Olivier; Charlene du Toit-Brits; Byron Bunt; Amit Dhakulkar · AOSIS Publishing · 2022
This book covers original research on the implementation of open educational practices through the use of open educational resources at the university level. The emphasis on open education in this book is on contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning specifically within a South African milieu. The envisaged chapters cover conceptual and review research and empirical work focussing on open educational practices and the use of renewable assessments. The work starts off with an overview of an institutional-wide open education project that prompted the research followed by research on open education in terms of various modules in the health science, music education, law, philosophy, dietetics, anthropology, French language learning, journalism and political science. There is a clear gap in the literature on open education in terms of open educational practices, specifically in terms of contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning in a South African context. Despite the existence of some general works on open education in terms of policy, social justice and open textbooks, this book will be unique in exploring the intersections of openness, specifically with contextualisation, student agency and self-directedness.
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Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business
Don Mayer; Daniel Warner; George Siedel; Jethro Lieberman · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Mayer, Warner, Siedel and Lieberman's Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business is an up-to-date textbook that covers legal issues that students must understand in today's highly regulated business environment. The text is organized to permit instructors to tailor the materials to their particular approach. The authors take special care to engage students by relating law to everyday events with their clear, concise and readable style. After introductory chapters covering the legal environment of business, Government Regulation and the Legal Environment of Business provides students with context and essential legal concepts relating to contracts, consumer credit transactions, bankruptcy, intellectual property, securities regulation, regulation of real estate, antitrust, unfair trade practices, employment law and labor relations. The text provides the vocabulary and legal savvy they will need to talk in an educated way to customers, suppliers, employees, creditors, shareholders, government regulators and other stakeholders — and to their own lawyers.
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Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy
Guillermo Jimenez; Elizabeth Pulos · Open SUNY · 2016
This textbook provides an innovative, internationally oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies involving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical, and business dynamics underlying CSR in such areas as global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food production, free trade and fair trade, anti-sweatshop and living-wage movements, organic foods and textiles, ethical marketing practices and codes, corporate speech and lobbying, and social enterprise. The book is designed to encourage students and instructors to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices by stimulating a class debate based on each case study.
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Principles of Macroeconomics 3e
David Shapiro; Daniel MacDonald; Steven A. Greenlaw; Eric Dodge · OpenStax, Rice University
Principles of Macroeconomics 3e covers the scope and sequence of most one semester introductory macroeconomics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of macroeconomics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world scenarios. The third edition has been carefully and thoroughly updated to reflect current data and understanding, as well as to provide a deeper background in diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis. For example, the third edition highlights the research and views of a broader group of economists. Brief references and deeply explored socio-political examples have also been updated to showcase the critical – and sometimes unnoticed – ties between economic developments and topics relevant to students. A fuller list of changes made in Principles of Macroeconomics 3e are described in the preface and the transition guide to help instructors transition to the third edition. The second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics by OpenStax is available in web view here. OpenStax is retiring Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics for AP 2e textbooks because they are outdated. We recommend that Advanced Placement instructors and students use the college-level textbooks.
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Principles of Economics 3e
Steven A. Greenlaw; David Shapiro; Daniel MacDonald; Eric Dodge · OpenStax, Rice University
Principles of Economics 3e covers the scope and sequence of most introductory economics courses. The third edition takes a balanced approach to the theory and application of economics concepts. The text uses conversational language and ample illustrations to explore economic theories, and provides a wide array of examples using both fictional and real-world scenarios. The third edition has been carefully and thoroughly updated to reflect current data and understanding, as well as to provide a deeper background in diverse contributors and their impacts on economic thought and analysis. For example, the third edition highlights the research and views of a broader group of economists. Brief references and deeply explored socio-political examples have been updated to showcase the critical – and sometimes unnoticed – ties between economic developments and topics relevant to students. A fuller list of changes made in Principles of Economics 3e are described in the preface and the transition guide to help instructors transition to the third edition. The second edition of Principles of Economics by OpenStax is available in web view here. OpenStax is retiring Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics for AP 2e textbooks because they are outdated. We recommend that Advanced Placement instructors and students use the college-level textbooks.
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Introductory Statistics 2e
Barbara Illowsky; Susan Dean; Daniel Birmajer; Bryan Blount · OpenStax, Rice University
Introductory Statistics 2e provides an engaging, practical, and thorough overview of the core concepts and skills taught in most one-semester statistics courses. The text focuses on diverse applications from a variety of fields and societal contexts, including business, healthcare, sciences, sociology, political science, computing, and several others. The material supports students with conceptual narratives, detailed step-by-step examples, and a wealth of illustrations, as well as collaborative exercises, technology integration problems, and statistics labs. The text assumes some knowledge of intermediate algebra, and includes thousands of problems and exercises that offer instructors and students ample opportunity to explore and reinforce useful statistical skills. The first edition of Introductory Statistics by OpenStax is available in web view here.
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American Government 4e
Glen Krutz; Sylvie Waskiewicz, PhD; Prosper Bernard, Jr.; Jennifer Danley-Scott · OpenStax, Rice University
American Government 4e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. The authors have worked to develop meaningful and memorable explanations, narratives, and examples regarding the actions, workings, and outputs of government. The offering focuses on the real-world impact of government, and presents the importance and benefits of civic engagement by students. This book follows a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of political structures. American Government 4e is designed to continually build upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes updated information on the 2024 election results, recent court decisions and legal actions, and new opportunities for civic engagement. Changes made in American Government 4e are described in the preface to help instructors transition to the fourth edition. The third edition of American Government by OpenStax is available in web view here.
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A la defensa del disenso
Glencora Borradaile · Oregon State University · 2021
A la defensa del disenso es una introducción a la criptografía que atiende los efectos sociales de la vigilancia, así como el potencial de protección que brinda el cifrado, con un enfoque en los movimientos sociales nacidos en Estados Unidos. Cada capítulo termina con una historia que aporta un contexto social al material: desde la vigilancia contra protestas contemporáneas en Estados Unidos, hasta la forma en que el Congreso Nacional Africano usó cifrado parcialmente manual para luchar contra el Apartheid en la Sudáfrica de los años 80 del siglo pasado.Puedes leer este libro en forma lineal o puedes elegir los temas sobre los cuales te gustaría aprender. Al inicio de cada capítulo se menciona lo que deberías leer primero (como antecedente) y al final, lo que podría ser de tu interés a continuación.