Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize A Moyers & Company Best Book of the YearHow did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? The Condemnation of Blackness is a biography of the idea of bl
Read supplementary material prepared by Geremie Barme Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)The Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng) lying at th
This work is a study of the twelve small gold lamellae from Crete, nine of them engraved with texts, that were tokens for entrance into a golden afterlife: the deceased who were buried or cremated wit
Descriptions of dreams abound in the literatures of the Near East and North Africa. The Prophet Muhammad endowed them with a theological dimension, saying that after him “true dreams” would be the onl
Read supplementary material prepared by Geremie Barme Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)The Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng) lying at th
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)The Rosetta Stone is one of the world's great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of tho
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)Mycenae, the fabled city of Homer's King Agamemnon, still stands in a remote corner of mainland Gr
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)It was destroyed nearly 2000 years ago, and yet the Temple of Jerusalem--cultural memory, symbol,
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)Westminster Abbey is the most complex church in existence. National cathedral, coronation church,
In 1952 Bolivia was transformed by revolution. With the army destroyed from only a few days of fighting, workers and peasants took up arms to claim the country as their own. Overnight, the electorate
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)Oscar Wilde compared it to a white goddess, Evelyn Waugh to Stilton cheese. In observers from Lord
Yuri Shcherbak--former Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S.--is a writer and physician who came to international prominence with his expose on Chornobyl, as a founder of the Ukrainian Green Party, as Ukra
Little is known of the Luri dialect of Khurramabad, but Professor Amanolahi of Shiraz University has collected various stories from his native town in the local language. Together with Wheeler Thackst
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearA Tablet Book of the YearMarking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores
Over the past two decades, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia have been engaged in unprecedented efforts to re-cast and rapidly expand the legal profession—with profound implications not only
"A civil but honest dialogue...As illuminating as it is fascinating."-Ayaan Hirsi AliIs Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem to be drawn to extremism
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceA Newsweek “50 Coolest Books to Read This Summer” ChoiceA Financial Times Summer Book of 2018The world is in turmoil. From Russia and Turkey to the United S
The white power movement in America wants a revolution.Returning to a country ripped apart by a war they felt they were not allowed to win, a small group of Vietnam veterans and civilians who shared t
In 1918, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France at General Pershing’s explicit request. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. While suffragettes picketed
Idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models to make sense of the world, and life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encount
What do India’s millennials want and how are they transforming one of the youngest, most populous nations in the world?More than half of India is under the age of twenty-five, but India’s millennials
A Times Higher Education Book of the WeekJudith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailing economic and political conditions, analyzing what they signify and how. Understanding
One-Way Street is a thoroughfare unlike anything else in literature—by turns exhilarating and bewildering, requiring mental agility and a special kind of urban literacy. Presented here in a new editio
Ferdowsi's Shahnama: Millennial Perspectives celebrates the ongoing reception, over the last thousand years, of a masterpiece of classical Persian poetry. The epic of the Shahnama or Book of Kings glo
On Poetry will be prized by writers and readers who wish to understand why and how poetic technique matters. Long regarded as one of Britain's major poets, Glyn Maxwell shows that the greatest verse a
Comparative Literature and Classical Persian Poetics applies comparative literary approaches to classical Persian traditions of composing and performing poetry and song. Olga M. Davidson focuses on ep
On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Persianate Travel Writing initiates a comparative study of non-European travel writers in the eastern Islamic or Persianate world from the eighteenth to early twentieth
If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making pro
Spartacus (109?–71 bce), the slave who rebelled against Rome, has been a source of endless fascination, the subject of myth-making in his own time, and of movie-making in ours. Hard facts about the ma
Here in a newly annotated edition are the two founding documents of the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence (1776), our great revolutionary manifesto, and the Constitution (1787–
This book is motivated by the idea that the cost of inaction can be much greater than the cost of action. Inaction can lead to serious negative consequences—for individuals, the economy, and society.
Why are the eggs of the marsh wren deep brown, the winter wren's nearly white, and the gray catbird's a brilliant blue? And what in the DNA of a penduline tit makes the male weave a domed nest of fibe
First published by Harmony Books in 1996, this volume by the much missed champion essayist on the theory of evolution presents one extended argument regarding the nature of evolution as necessarily un
American paleontologist Gould (1941-2002), a fierce champion of rationality, argues here that science and the humanities can co-exist. His perspectives include Newton's light, the weight of humanism,
In 1953, reflecting on early ventures in quantum theory, J. Robert Oppenheimer spoke of terror and exaltation, of history happening in a realm so remote from common experience that it was “unlikely to
This book, translated by acclaimed translator Harman, compiles the letters of Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Kappus from 1903 to 1908. In 1902 Kappus, a young writer in need of advice, had requested corr
In the context of a growing scholarly literature devoted to the topics of biography and autobiography, especially in the Arabic literary tradition, the essays in this volume explore the forms and mean
Can a devout Jew be a devout Jew and drop the belief in the rebuilding of the Temple? Can a devout Muslim be a devout Muslim and drop the belief in the sacredness of the Rock? Can one right (the righ
"La Vita Nuova (1292-1294) has many aspects. Dante's libello, or "little book," is most obviously a book about love. In a sequence of thirty-one poems, the author recounts his love of Beatrice from hi
In 1894, a young Muslim mystic named Muhammad al-Kattani abandoned his life of asceticism to preach Islamic revival and jihad against the French. Through his activism, he mobilized a socially diverse
