Kategoria BISAC: History >> World - General

Climate has been humanity's constant, if moody, companion. At times benefactor or tormentor, climate nurtured the first stirrings of civilization and then repeatedly visited ruin on empires and peoples. Eugene Linden reveals a recurring pattern in which civilizations become prosperous and complacent during good weather, only to collapse when climate changes -- either through its direct effects, such as floods or drought, or indirect consequences,...

The description for this book, Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, will be forthcoming.

Marcel Gauchet has launched one of the most ambitious and controversial works of speculative history recently to appear, based on the contention that Christianity is "the religion of the end of religion." In The Disenchantment of the World, Gauchet reinterprets the development of the modern west, with all its political and psychological complexities, in terms of mankind's changing relation to religion. He views Western history as a movement away from religious society, beginning with prophetic Judaism, gaining tremendous momentum in Christianity, and eventually leading to the rise...

After Colonialism offers a fresh look at the history of colonialism and the changes in knowledge, disciplines, and identities produced by the imperial experience. Ranging across disciplines--from history to anthropology to literary studies--and across regions--from India to Palestine to Latin America to Europe--the essays in this volume reexamine colonialism and its aftermath. Leading literary scholars, historians, and anthropologists engage with recent theories and perspectives in their specific studies, showing the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world...

For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped....

The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip, and this classic work is the definitive history of flagellation through the ages. As it shows, flagellation is much more than a punishment -- it is also intimately tied to discipline and eroticism, has a romantic and even comic side, and has also been used for medical purposes. No one is above the bite of the birch or rod -- convent nuns were chastised severely, queens have been flogged, and even favorites of the sultan have had to endure the whip in the great seraglios. The author deals in great detail with...

World War II drastically changed the environment in which scientific researchers worked. It limited freedom to conduct scientific research, isolated international colleagues and imposed scarcities of equipment and energy. Yet paradoxically this was a time when scientists broke new ground in unexpected ways, their need to improvise resulting in remarkable and innovative findings. This work explores just how scientists coped with the circumstances of the war. The first part concerns scientists working in warring countries like the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and the United States,...