The history of modern Italy is characterized by recurrent cultural and political projects of modernity, rejuvenation, and regeneration; projects which often had their roots in a widespread dissatisfaction with social and political reality, and perceived moral corruption. The Risorgimento, the movement leading to Italian Unification in 1861, explicitly linked the quest for national unity to a process of moral regeneration and progress. Later forms of nationalism and the rise of fascism in the first two decades of the twentieth century advocated a spiritual revolution and the moulding of new...

In 1883, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the word "eugenics" to express his dream of perfecting the human race by applying the laws of genetic heredity. Adapting Darwin's theory of evolution to human society, eugenics soon became a powerful, international movement, committed to using the principles of heredity and statistics to encourage healthy and discourage unhealthy reproduction. Early in the twentieth century and across the world, doctors, social reformers, and politicians turned to the new science of eugenics as a means to improve and strengthen their populations....

Millions of Africans, Asians, and other peoples were the subjects of colonial rule by overseas empires through the mid-twentieth century. By the end of the century, however, nearly all of these peoples had become citizens of independent nation-states. The United Nations grew from 51 member states at its founding in 1945 to 193 today. Its nearly four-fold increase is one measure of the historic shift in international relations that has occurred over the past half-century. Decolonization is the term commonly used to refer to this transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of...

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. It was the cultural phase of the "New Negro" movement, a social and political phenomenon that promoted a proud racial identity, economic independence, and progressive politics.
In this Very Short Introduction, Cheryl A. Wall captures the Harlem Renaissance's zeitgeist by identifying issues and strategies that engaged writers, musicians, and visual artists alike. She introduces key figures such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer, along with such...

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) is a pivotal figure in the birth of modern science, the astronomer who "stopped the sun and set the earth in motion." Born in Poland, educated at Cracow and then in Italy, he served all of his adult life as a church administrator. His vision of a sun-centered universe, shocking to many and unbelievable to most, turned out to be the essential blueprint for a physical understanding of celestial motions, thereby triggering what is commonly called "the Copernican revolution." A first edition of his world-changing treatise, De Revolutionibus Orbium...

Hinduism is practised by nearly eighty per cent of India's population, and by some seventy million people outside India. In this Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott offers a succinct and authoritative overview of this major religion, and analyses the challenges facing it in the twenty-first century. She discusses key preoccupations of Hinduism such as the centrality of the Veda as religious texts, the role of Brahmins, gurus, and storytellers in the transmission of divine truths, and the cultural and moral importance of epics such as the Ramayana.
In this second edition Knott...

Slang, however one judges it, shows us at our most human. It is used widely and often, typically associated with the writers of noir fiction, teenagers, and rappers, but also found in the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. It has been recorded since at least 1500 AD, and today's vocabulary, taken from every major English-speaking country, runs to over 125,000 slang words and phrases.
This Very Short Introduction takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of this fascinating sub-set of the English language. It considers the meaning and origins of the word 'slang' itself, the ideas that a make a...

When humanity first glimpsed planet Earth from space, the unity of the system that supports humankind entered the popular consciousness. The concept of the Earth's atmosphere, biosphere, oceans, soil, and rocks operating as a closely interacting system has rapidly gained ground in science. This new field, involving geographers, geologists, biologists, oceanographers, and atmospheric physicists, is known as Earth System Science.
In this Very Short Introduction, Tim Lenton considers how a world in which humans could evolve was created; how, as a species, we are now reshaping that...

Few Americans and even fewer citizens of other nations understand the electoral process in the United States. Still fewer understand the role played by political parties in the electoral process or the ironies within the system. Participation in elections in the United States is much lower than in the vast majority of mature democracies. Perhaps this is because of the lack of competition in a country where only two parties have a true chance of winning, despite the fact that a large number of citizens claim allegiance to neither and think badly of both. Or perhaps it is because in the U.S....

The American founding fathers were dedicated to the project of creating a government both functional and incapable of devolving into tyranny. To do this, they intentionally decentralized decision making among the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. They believed this separation of powers would force compromise and achieve their goal of "separating to unify." In the second edition of this Very Short Introduction, Charles O. Jones delves into the constitutional roots of the American presidency to show how presidents faced the challenges of governing within a system of...