Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511) is the earliest printed treatise on musical instruments in the West. Written by a priest and chapel singer named Sebastian Virdung, it provided rudimentary instruction on playing three instruments: the clavichord, the lute and the recorder. This early 'do-it-yourself' manual of instruction not only tells us about music-making in that era, it also illumines other aspects of society in the years just before the Reformation. Its author communicates in a popular style, choosing a mixture of media: a written text in the guise of an informal conversation, coupled with...

This volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature deals with writings on learned subjects from the 'Abbasid period (8th to 13th centuries AD), the golden age of Arabic literature. These cover a wide area, from philosophy, theology and law, through grammar and lexicography, to mathematics, astronomy and medicine. There are separate chapters on six of the greatest scholars of the period, on the development of translations from Greek into Arabic, and on the Arabic literature of the Christians and Jews who lived under the rule of the 'Abbasid caliphate.

The human brain contains billions of nerve cells whose activity plays a critical role in the way we behave, feel, perceive, and think. This two-volume set explains the basic properties of a neuron--an electrically active nerve cell--and develops mathematical theories for the way neurons respond to the various stimuli they receive. Volume 1 contains descriptions and analyses of the principle mathematical models that have been developed for neurons in the past thirty years. It provides a brief review of the basic neuroanatomical and neurophysiological facts that will form the focus of the...