Medieval Jerusalem" examines an old question that has recently surfaced and given rise to spirited discussion among Islamic historians and archeologists: what role did a city revered for its holiness play in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic period? Was there an historic moment when the city, holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, may have been considered as the administrative center of a vast Islamic world, as some scholars on early Islam have recently claimed? The book also emphasizes the city's evolution as a revered Islamic religious site comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina. Examining Muslim historiography and religious lore in light of Jewish traditions about the city, Jacob Lassner points out how these reworked Jewish traditions and the imposing monumental Islamic architecture of the city were meant to demonstrate that Islam had superseded Judaism and Christianity as the religion for all monotheists. Jacob Lassner interrogates the literary sources of medieval Islamic historiography and their modern interpreters as if they were witnesses in a court of law, and applies the same method for the arguments about the monuments of the city's material culture, including the great archaeological discoveries along the south wall of the ancient Temple Mount

In the period covered here Isaiah Berlin creates Wolfson College, Oxford; John F. Kennedy becomes U.S. President (and is assassinated); Berlin dines with JFK on the day he is told of the Soviet missile bases in Cuba; the Six-Day Arab-Israeli war of 1967 creates problems that remain with us today; Richard M. Nixon succeeds Johnson as President and resigns over Watergate; and the long agony of the Vietnam War grinds on in the background. At the same time Berlin publishes some of his most important work, including Four Essays on Liberty--the key texts of his liberal pluralism--and the essays later included in Vico and Herder . He appears on the radio, on television, and in documentary films, and gives numerous lectures, especially his celebrated Mellon Lectures, later published as The Roots of Romanticism . Behind these public events is a constant stream of gossip and commentary, acerbic humor, and warm personal feeling. This new volume leaves no doubt that Berlin is one of the very best letter-writers of the 20th century.

In the nineteenth century, American tourists, scholars, evangelists, writers, and artists flocked to Palestine as part of a "Holy Land mania." Many saw America as a New Israel, a modern nation chosen to do God's work on Earth, and produced a rich variety of inspirational art and literature about their travels in the original promised land, which was then part of Ottoman-controlled Palestine. In American Palestine, Hilton Obenzinger explores two "infidel texts" in this tradition: Herman Melville's Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876) and Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress (1869). As he shows, these works undermined in very different ways conventional assumptions about America's divine mission.In the darkly philosophical Clarel, Melville found echoes of Palestine's apparent desolation and ruin in his own spiritual doubts and in America's materialism and corruption. Twain's satiric travelogue, by contrast, mocked the romantic naiveté of Americans abroad, noting the incongruity of a "fantastic mob" of "Yanks" in the Holy Land and contrasting their exalted notions of Palestine with its prosaic reality. Obenzinger demonstrates, however, that Melville and Twain nevertheless shared many colonialist and orientalist assumptions of the day, revealed most clearly in their ideas about Arabs, Jews, and Native Americans.Combining keen literary and historical insights and careful attention to the context of other American writings about Palestine, this book throws new light on the construction of American identity in the nineteenth century.

"An insider's account of how the Washington Post broke the Watergate story, depicting the tensions, challenges, and personal conflicts that were overcome as it laid bare the criminal wrongdoings of the Nixon administration"--

A definitive life of the flawed man who succeeded to the American presidency after Lincoln's assassination and who presided, disastrously, over the tumultuous first years of Reconstruction. Historian Hans L. Trefousse gives us "a brilliant, compassionate portrait of a dynamic era of social change and national healing, and of the tragic failure of an American leader" (LIBRARY JOURNAL). Photos.

The description for this book, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism, Volume 2: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, will be forthcoming.

Never has the power of scientific research to solve existing problems and uncover new ones been more evident than it is today. Yet there exists widespread ignorance about the larger contexts within which scientific research is carried out. For example, the point of view some scientists adopt in their work or in their social commitments may become clearer if considered in light of the opposing views held by other scientists. This is a theme Gerald Holton addresses in his new collection. Whether considering conflicts between Heisenberg and Einstein, Bohr and Einstein, or P. W. Bridgman and B. F. Skinner; tracing I. I. Rabi's shift of attention from superb science to education and scientific statesmanship; or examining the emergence, in the last few decades, of the need to connect scientific research to societal needs--in each case, Holton demonstrates a masterly understanding of modern science and how it influences our world. The author shows why, at any given time--even in the mature phase of science--there exists no single "paradigm," but rather a spectrum of competing perspectives; and why so much good science has been based, from antiquity to today, on a relatively small number of presuppositions.

In the 1830s Russia was facing a crisis. The army was poorly organized, the administration was underdeveloped, inefficient, and corrupt, and the state was too poor to bear the strain. This crisis was the principal driving force behind Russia's reforms of the 1830s, and Nicholas' policies can only be understood within the context of that crisis. Within this context, Frederick Kagan's text examines Nicholas' fundamental reorganization of the Russian military administration from 1832-1836, bringing about the birth of the modern Russian army.

Neuroscience is one of the scientific fields where progress in the 20th century has been spectacular. With the coming of the new millennium, it is appropriate to look at some of the advances and the neurologists who helped to produce them. The original contributions in this volume reflect the background against which the rapid advances have taken place in the past 100 years.

With keen perception, serious scholarship and wry amusement, Ashleigh Brilliant, not only a famous epigrammatist but also an accomplished historian, recounts the profound social effects of our mass conversion to the automobile age in the 1920's.

The story begins in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has reduced our world to ashes. Luckily, a few found their way to the stars and into immortality. In the year 3000, nostalgic for the past, they return to Earth in an effort to reconstruct the lives of the people who lived there.

It was July 23, 1892, and Alexander Berkman was planning to die. He just had some business to attend to first. Dressed in a new suit and a black derby hat, Berkman burst into the Pittsburg office of Henry Clay Frick, the notoriously anti-union manager of the Carnegie Steel Company. From his pocket, Berkman produced a pistol. This pocket-sized book collects the shorter works of one of the world's most influential anarchists.

Traces the efforts of two women scholars who recovered what has become the most vital cache of Hebrew manuscripts ever discovered, in an account that explains what the findings reveal about Mediterranean Judaism.

It's a Man's World was first released in 2003 to critical acclaim and was featured on the cover of the Los Angeles Times Book Review and in the New York Times. This rich collection, filled with interviews, essays, and color reproductions of testosterone-heavy thirty-five-cent magazines with names like Man's Exploits, Rage, and Escape to Adventure (to name a few), illustrates the culture created to help veterans confront the confusion of jobs, girls, and the Cold War on their return from World War II and the Korean War. The expanded paperback edition includes wartime illustrations and advertisements from mass-produced magazines that preview the xenophobia and racist ideas later seen throughout men's adventure magazines of the '50s and '60s--

First published in 1962, this book examines Germany's Free Youth Movement, a revolt of the younger generation in Germany from 1896 to 1933. This movement was one of the most significant factors in shaping modern Germany. Laqueur, who grew up in Germany, retraces the history of the movement, its central ideas, and its cultural background. He begins with its origins in 19th century, and goes on to examine the Jewish question, before moving on to the movement's roots in Germany around the time of the rise of National Socialism in the late 1920's and early 1930's. This book inspires all the ideas which continue to preoccupy proponents and students of generational conflict today.

No one brings history so enjoyably to life as the insatiably curious Tony Robinson. Now he turns his attention to a subject dear to our hearts - us. In Tony Robinson's History of Australia , the always-entertaining storyteller explores the modern history of our nation, from colonial beginnings to the Stolen Generations apology, with trademark gusto. He delights in unfurling lesser-known tales such as the First Fleet's Founding Orgy or how shots fired in Port Phillip Bay raised the curtains of both World Wars. But it's people that most interest Robinson, and from William Dampier to Anh Do he profiles a multicultural cast of characters who have contributed to the remarkable Australian story. For this book, as well as Tony Robinson Explores Australia , The History Channel's highest-ever-rating TV series, he travelled the country, taste-testing colonial rations and spending time in dark solitary at Port Arthur - even learning of a possible convict ancestor. He dove into archives and libraries, chatted to experts and relatives of historic figures, and was guided by some of our most respected historians, such as Thomas Keneally, Tim Flannery and Eric Willmot. Lavishly illustrated with historical images as well as beautiful photographs taken on location, Tony Robinson's History of Australia will spark the memory, fill the gaps and invite fresh consideration of who we are and how we've come to be this way.

From a 13-year old ninja to young Salem "witches"--a guided tour through the lives of outlaw children from history, their dastardly crimes, and awful punishments So you've broken a classroom window and you're standing outside the principal's office with sweaty palms and a serious sinking feeling in your stomach. Do you think no one's ever had a life as bad as you? Well, you're wrong--this book reveals how kids in the past have had to suffer much worse punishments than a lecture about how they've let the whole school down. For instance, however angry your principal gets, it's fairly certain that she's not going to put you in a pillory and nail your ears to it. All through history, children have been getting into some serious scrapes, and they didn't often get off lightly. This is a guided tour to children for whom laughing, dancing on a Sunday, killing a rabbit that wasn't on your land, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time could mean a beating, beheading, or ordeal by hot water (no, it's not a nice warm bath with bubbles and a little plastic duck).

"The acclaimed and controversial historian turns his critical gaze on the writing of history today. Drawing on his four decades as a professional historian, Shlomo Sand interrogates the academic discipline of history, whose origin lay in the need for a national ideology. In the last few decades, traditional history has begun to fragment, yet only to give rise to a new role of historians as priests of official memory. Working in Israel has sharpened Sand's perspective, since the role of history as national myth is particularly salient in a country where the Bible is treated as a history book. He asks such questions as: Is every historical narrative ideologically marked? Do political requirements and state power weigh down inordinately on historical research and teaching? And, in such conditions, can there be a morally neutral and 'scientific' truth? Despite his trenchant criticism of academic history, Sand would still like to believe that the past can be understood without myth, and sees pointers for this in the work of Weber and Sorel."--Publisher's description