In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Ferber explores Romanticism during the period of its incubation, birth, and growth, covering the years roughly from 1760 to 1860. This is the only introduction
Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman--"as unflinching as a hero in a book"--who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-shi
Games are played whenever people interact wherever there are strategies to adopt and outcomes or prizes to win. And that means games are played everywhere: from economics to evolutionary biology, fro
Michael J. Klarman, author of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History, is one of the leading authorities on the history of civil rights law in the U
It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, more common than an infant's first word ma or the ever-present beverage Coke. It was even the first word spoken on the moon.
With The Doctor's Wife, Mary Elizabeth Braddon rewrote Flaubert's Madame Bovary, exploring the heroine's sense of entrapment and alienation in middle-class provincial life. A woman with a secret, adul
In a time of dazzling scientific progress, how can we separate genuine breakthroughs from the noisy gaggle of false claims? From Deepak Chopra's "quantum alternative to growing old" to unwarranted hy
Since 1945 the modern revolution in sculpture has gathered pace, and even the term sculpture has ceased to be the fixed category it once was. In Sculpture Since 1945, Andrew Causey provides a ground-b
In this gripping chronicle of America's struggle for independence, award-winning historian John Ferling transports readers to the grim realities of that war, capturing an eight-year conflict filled w
The essential reference work on international law, edited by two leading authors in the field is now available from Oxford University Press. This classic Ninth edition takes full account of the vast i
Conventional wisdom holds that China's burgeoning economic power has reduced the United States to little more than a customer and borrower of Beijing. The rise of China, many feel, necessarily means
From 1910 to 1940, over half a million people sailed through the Golden Gate, hoping to start a new life in America. But they did not all disembark in San Francisco; instead, most were ferried across
When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, an
Praised as "suave, soulful, ebullient" (Tom Waits) and "a meticulous researcher, a graceful writer, and a committed contrarian" (New York Times Book Review), Elijah Wald is one of the leading popular
Lie detection, offender profiling, jury selection, insanity in the law, predicting the risk of re-offending , the minds of serial killers, and many other topics that fill news and fiction are all asp
Based on dozens of face-to-face interviews, Sex and the Soul explores the sexual and spiritual lives of today's college students. Donna Freitas crisscrossed the country, visiting a range of America's
Diplomacy means different things to different people, the definitions ranging from the elegant ("the management of relations between independent states by the process of negotiations") to the jocular
"Thomas de Waal has written one of the most vivid, clear-minded accounts of the history and current troubles of the lands between Russia and Turkey. The Caucasus defies easy explanation, and de Waal d
Hester tells the story of the aging but powerful Catherine Vernon, and her conflict with the young and determined Hester, whose growing attachment to Edward, Catherine's favorite, spells disaster for
This unique anthology of Kipling's war stories and poems provides critical comment on the ineptitude of the British in the Boer War. Including such stories as "Barrack-Room Ballads," this work provi
`every heart imagines itself the first to thrill to a myriad sensations which once stirred the hearts of the earliest creatures and which will again stir the hearts of the last men and women to walk
This translation is based upon the Norwegian text in the Centenary Edition of Ibsen's collected works. It provides a close account of the quality of Ibsen's play by reproducing as nearly as possible
The last twelve stories written about Holmes and Watson, these tales reflect the disillusioned world of the 1920s in which they were written. Some of the sharpest turns of wit in English literature ar
In the fifth century BC professional educators, the sophists, travelled the Greek world claiming to teach success in public and private life. In this dialogue Plato shows the pretensions of the leadi
A unique selection of four dialogues in which Plato considers virtue-- individual virtue as well as virtue as a whole-- and its definition. Charmides, Laches, and Lysis investigate the specific virtu
This new verse translation of Aristophanes' comedies offers one of the world's great comic dramatists in a form that is both historically faithful and theatrically vigorous. Aristophanes' plays were
"With a single announcement from a herald, all the cities of Greece and Asia had been set free; only an intrepid soul could formulate such an ambitious project, only phenomenal valour and fortune bri
The heritage of literature in the French language is rich, varied, extensive in time and space, and appealing both to its immediate public--readers of French--and also to a global audience reached thr
Thomas Hobbes' timeless account of the human condition, first developed in The Elements of Law (1640), which comprises Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, is a direct product of the intellectual an
One of the first great spy novels, The Riddle of the Sands is set during the long suspicious years leading up to the First World War. Bored with his life in London, a young man accepts an invitation
Editorial censorship has long obscured Goethe's Roman Elegies, which were inspired by Goethe's sexual liberation in Italy and his love for the woman he took as his unofficial wife on his return to Ge
`Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.' This is the final judgement of Satan on Victoria di Loredani, the heroine of Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), a tale of lust, betrayal, and multipl
The Old English Baron is an ambitious rewriting of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, transporting the trappings of the Gothic to medieval England. The noble hero endures many adventures of romantic
The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled "Thieftaker General", controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime h
Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl wh
David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against
The most influential Sufi poem ever written, the six books of the Masnavi are often called "the Qur'an in Persian". Book Two is concerned with the challenges facing the seeker of Sufi enlightenment. I
We live in a society that is awash with information, but few of us really understand what information is. In this Very Short Introduction, one of the world's leading authorities on the philosophy of i
If now in decline since the tumultuous events of 1989, communism was without doubt the great political movement of the twentieth century--at its peak, more than a third of the world's population lived
Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called "the Koran in Persian." The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of h
