4.1 [254] Julian has, therefore, denounced God’s glory and cried out most disgracefully against the doctrines of Moses, as though it was otherwise impossible for him to secure a winning verdict for the Greeks’ superstitions unless he vilified the teachings of Christians1 – a tactic in keeping with his deceptions and love of slander.2 And yet, surely it would have been necessary and better, at least in my view, if he supported their opinions with the facts themselves – assuming there is something true in them – and didn’t deck them out in the inventive bombast3 of certain persons,4 just like those women, for example, who are courtesans and suppose they can dispel the shame of their activity with seductive chit-chat and superficial make-up.5

This chapter provides an overview of the history of books and printing in English, in four sections defined by time period. Each section briefly surveys the technological innovations of that period and discusses how the changing print industry influenced and reflected developments of English between 1476 and the present. After an introduction (7.1), Section 7.2 discusses the rise of print in England during the incunabula and early print period (1476–1640). Section 7.3 then follows the continued expansion of print across England and North America during the hand-press period (1641–c. 1800), and Section 7.4 considers the explosion of printed texts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The final section culminates with an overview of the rise of digital reading platforms and a discussion of how the ongoing evolution of text technologies continues to influence the development of English today.

Health insurance does not work well when individuals have more information about illness than the insurer. Two problems arise as a consequence of this information gap. Moral hazard, which arises when individuals know more about their current needs than the insurer, generates an overutilization of care services. Adverse selection, caused by insureds having more information about future risk than insurers, leads high-risk individuals to buy high coverage (at a high premium) and low-risk individuals to buy lower coverage than optimal. This chapter covers these market failures and presents some evidence and thoughts about policies that have been used to reduce their negative effect, such as cost-sharing for dealing with moral hazard, and mandates and cross-subsidies for buying high coverage. I end by arguing that dealing with selection should not be a top priority.

This chapter discusses insurance as a central player in the purchasing of health goods and services. It points out the flaws and quirks in the insurance market that lead to an absence of perfect competition and the potential for skewed bargaining power between providers and insurers. Managed care is then outlined as an attempt by insurance companies to curtail health spending through utilization controls and narrow networks. Additional tools such as paying for wellness programs, bundling payments for episodes of care, and cost-effectiveness measures are also discussed as possibilities to improve the efficiency of payouts by insurers. The chapter concludes by reminding us that insurance companies make more money the less they pay out and that making it more difficult for beneficiaries to access care will allow them to accomplish that.

This chapter explores Leoš Janáček’s innovative and individualistic approach to opera, with a particular focus on his most frequently performed work, Jenůfa. Composed between 1894 and 1903, Jenůfa reflects Janáček’s interest in the concept of realism, influencing his choice of subject matter, the use of a prose text, and a compositional style rooted in spoken language. The chapter also discusses Janáček’s fascination with Gustave Charpentier’s 1900 opera Louise and its impact on Janáček’s musical language. Similar approaches can also be identified in Janáček’s other operas. The composer’s innovations encountered resistance within Czech musical circles, and it took more than a decade for them to receive even partial appreciation.

The double-distortion argument holds that income taxation is more efficient than redistribution through changes in legal rules because a change in a legal rule distorts both the market to which the rule applies and, by altering incomes of market participants, the labor market as well. The argument succeeds only if it is possible to achieve the same distributive outcomes with the income tax as with changes to legal rules. This is not the case, however, because tax authorities cannot obtain information regarding the extent of the surplus available for redistribution without altering legal rules in individual markets and observing whether the effect is inframarginal (in which case there is surplus available for redistribution) or marginal (in which case there is not). This point is illustrated using the Ayres and Talley model of Coasean bargaining with divided entitlements.

Chapter 4 on Richard Feynman, my theoretical physics thesis advisor, is a collection of vignettes that reveal aspects of behavior and thought that contributed to his mystique and unique accomplishments in physics.

After relating the history behind Feynman’s V-A theory of party violation, much of it in Feynman’s own words, the rest of the chapter is based on my personal interactions with Feynman lasting for a little more than twenty years, from the time I arrived at Caltech in 1959 till I left in 1981. Feynman’s attitude towards experimental results related to parity violation provides an informative background to how he would handle experimental information related to the discovery of quarks. The intent here, and in the remainder of the Chapter, is to give the reader a sense of how Feynman thought about physics, how he practiced it, and what he valued. His struggle with constituent quarks (aces), and what to make of them, lasted considerably longer than a decade, passing though several phases, including one with partons, but eventually ending with his fully accepting their reality.

Despite the amount of innovation and creativity in evidence, reviewing Shakespeare productions outside London in 2024 was a somewhat gloomy experience. The first performance under consideration, Tim Crouch’s Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel, was performed as part of the Mayfest festival, originally founded in 2011 by Kate Yedigaroff and Matthew Austin. This biennial festival is one of the best places to find new work in the country, bringing world-class, international live performance to Bristol, and has long been a force for good in the city. This year, for example, it operated a ‘pay-what-you-can’ ticketing structure to encourage those without economic means to access performances and build new audiences. Sadly, in November 2024 Mayfest announced that they would have to take an organizational hiatus until 2026 for financial reasons, evidence of a cultural sector in crisis that could be witnessed up and down the country. In Sheffield, for example, I was fortunate to see Northern Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum where Prokofiev’s outstanding score was played by the Northern Ballet Sinfonia.

After a brief drought, 2024 saw the release of seven new single-play editions: As You like It; Henry IV, Part I; Macbeth; Measure for Measure; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Romeo and Juliet; and The Tempest – all published as part of the Oxford World’s Classics New Oxford Shakespeare series. The texts, which are taken from The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, overseen by Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terri Bourus and Gabriel Egan in 2016, have now been furnished with compelling new introductions by Todd Andrew Borlik, Indira Ghose, Emma Smith, Emma Whipday, Callan Davies, Hannah August and Lauren Working, respectively, with more of the editions (twenty-eight in total) set to be released at the start of 2025.

1.1 [11] Those wise and sagacious experts in the sacred doctrines marvel at the beauty of the truth and highly regard the ability to understand “a parable and an obscure word, both the sayings of the wise and their obscure utterances.”1 For by thus focusing their exact and discerning mind on the God-breathed writings, they fill up their souls with the divine light, and by setting their ambition upon achieving an upright and most lawful way of life, [12] they may also become providers to others of the highest assistance.2 For it is written, “Son, if you should become wise for yourself, you will be wise also for your neighbor.”3

Leonard Becket’s various publications insistently quote passages from Lucrece as illustrations for the subjects they explore. In developing this sustained afterlife for Lucrece, Becket’s works exhibit a striking redactive agency, whilst the poem itself serves to illuminate a meditation on the fragility of life.