Armageddon Averted

Stephen Kotkin is Professor of European and Asian History at Princeton University, where he also directs the Russian-Eurasian Studies Program. He is the author of nine books, including an acclaimed two-volume study of the rise and fall of Soviet socialism: Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization and Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era.

• Introduction ; Part 1: Phenomenal Knowledge ; 1. What RoboMary Knows, Daniel Dennet, Tufts University ; 2. So This is What it's Like: a Defense of the Ability Hypothesis, Laurence Nemirow, Davis Graham & Stubbs Income Tax, Benefits & Estate Group ; 3. The Knowledge Argument, Diaphanousness, Representationalism, Frank Jackson, Australian National University, British Academy, Australian Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and Fand Institut International de Philosophie ; 4. Does Representationalism Undermine the Knowledge Argument?, Torin Alter, The University of Alabama ; 5. What is This Thing You Call Color: Can a Totally Color-Blind Person Know about Color?, Knut Nordby, formerly University of Oslo and Telnor Communications, Research and Development ; Part 2: Phenomenal Concepts ; 6. What is a Phenomenal Concept?, Janet Levin, University of Southern California ; 7. Phenomenal and Perceptual Conepts, David Papineau, King's College, Cambridge University ; 8. Phenomenal Concepts and the Materialist Constraint, Joseph Levine, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst ; 9. Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap, David Chalmers, Australian National University ; 10. Direct Reference and Dancing Qualia, John Hawthorne, Rutgers University ; 11. Property Dualism, Phenomenal Concepts, and the Semantic Premise, Stephen White, Tufts University ; 12. Max Black's Objection to Mind-Brain Identity, Ned Block, New York University ; 13. Grasping Phenomenal Properties, Martine Nida-Rumelin, University of Fribourg

"The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape."--The New Yorker"A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pages, Kotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted."--The Atlantic Monthly"Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage."--The New York Review of Books