If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars o
From wood to coal to oil and gas, the sources of energy on which civilization depends have always changed as technology advances. Now renewables are overtaking fossil fuels, with wind and solar energy
In the 1940s and ’50s, Havana was a locus for American movie stars, with glamorous visitors including Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Marlon Brando. In fact, Hollywood was seemingly
Few American historians of his generation have had as much influence in both the academic and popular realms as Alan Brinkley. His debut work, the National Book Award–winning Voices of Protest, launch
As much as dogs, cats, or any domestic animal, horses exemplify the vast range of human-animal interactions. Horses have long been deployed to help with a variety of human activities—from racing
In November 1978, a group of Haitians sailed their small wooden vessel into the harbor of the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay. After replenishing their stores of food and water, they departe
A comprehensive analysis of European craft guilds through eight centuries of economic historyGuilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attr
Throughout the twentieth century, the ancient city of Athens underwent a massive transformation into simple sets of apartment blocks, or polykatoikia. Today, these multifamily residential units define
In architecture, nothing is ever truly new; everything has been tried before. And nowhere is this more evident than in the architecture of housing. Each proffered solution to a specific architectural
Dry stone walls are a critical component of the landscape in Switzerland and many other countries. They support the cultivation of agriculture and livestock, and they are also are also integral to the
For thirteenth-century preacher, exorcist, and hagiographer Thomas of Cantimpré, the Southern Low Countries were a harbinger of the New Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit, he believed, was manifesting itself
How a vast network of shadow credit financed European growth long before the advent of bankingPrevailing wisdom dictates that, without banks, countries would be mired in poverty. Yet somehow much of E
A leading expert challenges the prevailing gloomy outlook on higher education with solid evidence of its successesCrushing student debt, rapidly eroding state funding, faculty embroiled in speech cont
Shortly before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. called for a radical redistribution of economic and political power to transform the whole of society. In 1967 he designed the Poor People
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of po
Braided Waters sheds new light on the relationship between environment and society by charting the history of Hawaii’s Molokai island over a thousand-year period of repeated settlement. From the
What are the causes of war? How might the world be made more peaceful? In this landmark work of international relations theory, first published in 1959, the eminent realist scholar Kenneth N. Waltz of
How poetic modernism shaped Arabic intellectual debates in the twentieth century and beyondCity of Beginnings is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during
The idea that land should be—or even could be—treated like any other commodity has not always been a given. For much of British history, land was bought and sold in ways that emphasized it
The U.S. stock market has been transformed over the last twenty-five years. Once a market in which human beings traded at human speeds, it is now an electronic market pervaded by algorithmic trading,
For close to a century, Harlem has been the iconic black neighborhood widely seen as the heart of African American life and culture, both celebrated as the vanguard of black self-determination and lam
Sovereignty and the Sacred challenges contemporary models of polity and economy through a two-step engagement with the history of religions. Beginning with the recognition of the convergence in the hi
Artists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogethe
Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents h
In Germany, Nazi ideology casts a long shadow over the history of archaeological interpretation. Propaganda, school curricula, and academic publications under the regime drew spurious conclusions from
Public space is political space. When a work of public art is put up or taken down, it is an inherently political statement, and the work’s aesthetics are inextricably entwined with its political vale
This book is a collection of essays written in tribute to N. Ram, journalist, writer, and person of the Left. Its title reflects Ram’s concern that journalism, and indeed intellectual endeavor, be bot
At any given time, a limited number of national currencies are used as instruments of international commerce, to settle foreign trade transactions or store value for investors and central banks. How c
Anchorage is an exceptional city. What was once a town site of tents is now the largest city in the state. It just celebrated its centenary in 2015, but it has seen inhabitants for millennia. It is an
This fall marks the centennial of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, the agreement that put a stop to the hostilities of World War I. But was the end of this historic conflict really as clearly defin
A bold new view of sentimental art’s significance in American visual culture from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuryIn Moved to Tears, Rebecca Bedell overturns received ideas about sentimental ar
A leading historian reconstructs the forgotten history of medieval AfricaFrom the birth of Islam in the seventh century to the voyages of European exploration in the fifteenth, Africa was at the cente
This volume features Ingels’s earliest EC crime and horror work. Highlights include Ingels’s very first EC story, a clever twist on “The Cask of Amontillado” that you won’t see coming, and more.
A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the storyIn the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle
In Quest of Justice provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period. Drawing on groundbreaking research in the Egyptian archives,
Midcentury America was a wonderland of department stores, suburban cul-de-sacs, and Tupperware parties. At Christmastime, postwar America’s dreams and desires were on full display, from shopping mall
An eleventh-century classic, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is frequently paired with The Tale of Genji as one of the most important works in the Japanese canon. Yet it has also been marginalized wit
Pantheism is the idea that God and the world are identical—that the creator, sustainer, destroyer, and transformer of all things is the universe itself. From a monotheistic perspective, this notion is
