We exist at a moment during which the entangled challenges facing the human and natural worlds confront us at every turn, whether at the most basic level of survival—health, sustenance, shelter—or in
For much of the twentieth century, most religious and secular Jewish thinkers believed that they were witnessing a steady, ongoing movement toward secularization. Toward the end of the century, howeve
Since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes—mass atrocities—have been explicitly illegal. When such crimes are committe
As military campaigns go, the War of 1812 was a disaster. By the time it ended in 1815, Washington, D.C., had been burned to the ground, the national debt had nearly tripled, and territorial gains wer
In the early nineteenth century, London publishers dominated the transatlantic book trade. No one felt this more keenly than authors from Ireland, Scotland, and the United States who struggled to esta
Elections are, and always have been, the lifeblood of American democracy. Often raucous and sharply contentious, sometimes featuring grand debates about the nation's future, and invariably full of dra
Paint, Pattern, and People explores the fascinating and diverse furniture of southeastern Pennsylvania through the people who made, owned, inherited, and collected it. Delving into the cultures and cr
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia,
In the wake of the New Deal, U.S. politics has been popularly imagined as an ongoing conflict between small-government conservatives and big-government liberals. In practice, narratives of left versus
Celebrated landscape architect Gilles Clement may be best known for his public parks in Paris, including the Parc Andre Citroen and the garden of the Musee du Quai Branly, but he describes himself as
Building the Empire State examines the origins of American capitalism by tracing how and why business corporations were first introduced into the economy of the early republic. Brian Phillips Murphy f
Poetry occupied a complex position in the social life of nineteenth-century America. While some readers found in poems a resource for aesthetic pleasure and the enjoyment of linguistic complexity, man
Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Spanish Christians living near the border of Castile and Muslim-ruled Granada held complex views about religious tolerance. People living in frontier cities bo
The problems of international communication and linguistic rights are recurring debates in the present-day age of globalization. But the debate truly began over a hundred years ago, when the increasin
Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingha
Individualism is arguably the most vital tenet of American national identity: American cultural heroes tend to be mavericks and nonconformists, and independence is the fulcrum of the American origin s
The thirteen mainland colonies of early America were arguably never more British than on the eve of their War of Independence from Britain. Though home to settlers of diverse national and cultural bac
Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways that Christian theology has shaped centuries of conflict from the Jewish-Roman War of late antiquity through the First Crusade, the French Revolution,
Anyone who has paid the entry fee to visit Shakespeare's Birthplace on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon—and there are some 700,000 a year who do so—might be forgiven for taking the authenticity of
Adam Usk, a Welsh lawyer in England and Rome during the first years of the fifteenth century, lived a peculiar life. He was, by turns, a professor, a royal advisor, a traitor, a schismatic, and a spy.
Rituals of Ethnicity is a transnational study of the relationships between mobility, ethnicity, and ritual action. Through an ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between H
While elite merchants, financiers, shopkeepers, and customers were the most visible producers, consumers, and distributors of goods and capital in the nineteenth century, they were certainly not alone
In an era of ethnopolitical conflict and constitutional change worldwide, nationalist and Islamist movements are two of the most powerful forces in global politics. However, the respective roles playe
The Markets for Force examines and compares the markets for private military and security contractors in twelve nations: Argentina, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Uk
The Port Huron Statement was the most important manifesto of the New Left student movement of the 1960s. Initially drafted by Tom Hayden and debated over the course of three days in 1962 at a meeting
Planetary spaces such as the poles, the oceans, the atmosphere, and subterranean regions captured the British imperial imagination. Intangible, inhospitable, or inaccessible, these blank spaces—what S
How did the GOP trounce the Democrats in 2014? Acclaimed political analyst Ed Kilgore crunches the data, examines structural factors, places the vote in historical context, and reflects on implication
Examining the shift between American immigrant policy between 1924 and 1964, Ellis Island Nation traces the emergence of "contributionism," the belief that the newcomers from eastern
From the front office to the family room, sabermetrics has dramatically changed the way baseball players are assessed and valued by fans and managers alike. Rocketed to popularity by the 2003 bestsell
As early modern Europe launched its multiple projects of global empire, it simultaneously embarked on an ambitious program of describing and picturing the world. The shapes and meanings of the extraor
In recent decades, scholars have vigorously revised Jacob Burckhardt's notion that the free, untrammeled, and essentially modern Western individual emerged in Renaissance Italy. Douglas Biow does not
Throughout human history, the rate of world population growth overall has been outpaced by the rate of urban population growth. Right now, more the half the world's population lives in cities, and tha
Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islam
Ending hunger requires that each society find the right balance of market forces and government interventions to bring even a country's most vulnerable citizens into a sustainable food system. C. Pete
Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540 argues that the educated awareness of death and mortality was a vital aspect of the city's civic culture, critical not only to the shaping of single lives and the
Inspired by European impressionist paintings of open countryside, private gardens, and urban parks, American artists working in the years between 1887 and 1920 turned their attentions to the new lands
Analyzing the layers of interpretation in the Sifra and the transformation of Rabbi Akiva's portrayal in rabbinic literature more broadly, Azzan Yadin-Israel traces an ideological shift toward scriptu
Deterring Rational Fanatics provides a full-scale discussion of deterrence theory concepts and controversies, assessing the utility of relying on the logic of deterrence to counter contemporary terror
"If the goal of the American medical system is to provide optimal care for all patients, healthcare providers must understand cultural differences that create conflicts and misunderstandings and can r
Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls investigates the creation of "obscene writings and images" as a category of print in nineteenth-century Germany. Sarah L. Leonard charts the process through which te
