Is history more than (in Boswell's words) a chronological series of remarkable events'? Does it have a pattern? Is it fraught with meaning'? Can we discern its trends? What determines its course? In short, can a substantial and coherent philosophy of history be devised that offers answers to these questions? These issues, which have intrigued -and bedeviled - historians for centuries, are explored in this thoughtful book.

Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropologytraces the interaction of evolutionary thought and anthropological theory from Herbert Spencer to the twenty-first century. It is a focused examination of how the idea of evolution has continued to provide anthropology with a master principle around which a vast body of data can be organized and synthesized. Erudite and readable, and quoting extensively from early theorists (such as Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, John McLennan, Henry Maine, and James Frazer) so that the reader might judge them on the basis of their own words, Evolutionism in...

This journal captures the day-by-day, week-by-week excitement of a fall season spent challenging the sports books of. Reno as the author tries to beat the point spread betting college football. While basically the story of one man, armed with a system, going head to head against the oddsmaker, it is also an ethnography of the sports books of Nevada. The author, a professional anthropologist, presents the mo detailed account ever written of just how sports books operate. How is the point spread made? By whom? How does it change, game by game, in response to the money bet? All this and more is...

Is history more than (in Boswell's words) a chronological series of remarkable events'? Does it have a pattern? Is it fraught with meaning'? Can we discern its trends? What determines its course? In short, can a substantial and coherent philosophy of history be devised that offers answers to these questions? These issues, which have intrigued -and bedeviled - historians for centuries, are explored in this thoughtful book.

It is some years in the future, and Pope Urban IX, pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, after reigning for thirteen years, has suddenly died of a massive heart attack. From every corner of the globe, 77 cardinals converge on the city of Rome, where they will gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect Urban's successor. Ballot after ballot, the leading candidates vie with each other for the papacy, only to falter and fall by the wayside. Finally, after endless maneuvering and many ballots, one of them gains enough support among his fellows to emerge as the 267th pope. Although fiction, this...