Tradition, by esteemed sociologist Edward Shils, was the first book to fully explore the history, significance, and future of tradition as a whole. Intent on questioning the meaning of the antitraditionalist impulse in today's society, Shils argues here that the tendency to distrust and rebel against tradition is at the heart of tradition itself; only through suspicion and defiance does tradition actually move forward. Revealing the importance of tradition to social and political institutions, technology, science, literature, religion, and scholarship, Tradition remains the definitive work on this vital element of our society.--provided by publisher

For more than twenty years David Brion Davis has been recognized as a leading authority on the moral and ideological responses to slavery in the Western world. From Homicide to Slavery, Davis's first book of collected essays, brings together selections reflecting his wide-ranging interests in colonial history, Afro-American history, the social sciences, and American literature. The essays are interconnected by Davis's central concern with violence, irrationality, and the definition of moral limits during a period when Americans believed they were breaking free from historical constraints and acquiring new powers of self-perfection. Topics range from a socially revealing murder trial in 1843 to debates over capital punishment, movements of counter-subverison, the iconography of race, the cowboy as an American hero, the portrayal of violence in American literature, the historiography of slavery, and the British and American antislavery movements.

First published in 1979, this volume offers students and teachers a unique view of American history prior to the Civil War. Distinguished historian David Brion Davis has chosen a diverse array of primary sources that show the actual concerns, hopes, fears, and understandings of ordinary antebellum Americans. He places these sources within a clear interpretive narrative that brings the documents to life and highlights themes that social and cultural historians have brought to our attention in recent years. Beginning with the family and the issue of socialization and influence, the units move on to struggles over access to wealth and power; the plight of "outsiders" in an "open" society; and ideals of progress, perfection, and mission. The reader of this volume hears a great diversity of voices but also grasps the unities that survived even the Civil War. --

Join Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus as they explore fascinating facets of life in ancient Rome. Evocative text and vivid full-color illustrations bring to life the themes, settings, and personalities in the bestselling series. Topics covered include Flavia on the class system in Roman society, favorite myths and legends, and holidays and celebrations; Jonathan discovering the world of Roman sport and leisure and the different religions; Nubia on animals in Roman times; and Lupus on childhood in Roman times, plus ancient cultures' fascination with number and alphabet puzzles and games.A timeline of key events in Roman history and a map of the Roman Empire are included."

The many con men, gangsters, and drug lords portrayed in popular culture are examples of the dark side of the American dream. Viewers are fascinated by these twisted versions of heroic American archetypes, like the self-made man and the entrepreneur. Applying the critical skills he developed as a Shakespeare scholar, Paul A. Cantor finds new depth in familiar landmarks of popular culture. He invokes Shakespearean models to show that the concept of the tragic hero can help us understand why we are both repelled by and drawn to figures such as Vito and Michael Corleone or Walter White. Beginning with Huckleberry Finn and ending with The Walking Dead , Cantor also uncovers the link between the American dream and frontier life. In imaginative variants of a Wild West setting, popular culture has served up disturbing--and yet strangely compelling--images of what happens when people move beyond the borders of law and order. Cantor demonstrates that, at its best, popular culture raises thoughtful questions about the validity and viability of the American dream, thus deepening our understanding of America itself.

A brilliant, alternative take on sixties swinging London, Jenny Diski offers radical reconsiderations of the social, political, and personal meaning of that turbulent era. What was Jenny Diski doing in the sixties? A lot: dropping out, taking drugs, buying clothes, having sex, demonstrating, and spending time in mental hospitals. Now, as Diski herself turns sixty years old, she examines what has been lost in the purple haze of nostalgia and selective memory of that era, what endures, and what has always been the same. From the vantage point of London, she takes stock of the Sexual Revolution, the fashion, the drug culture, and the psychiatric movements and education systems of the day. What she discovers is that the ideas of the sixties often paved the way for their antithesis, and that by confusing liberation and libertarianism, a new kind of radicalism would take over both in the UK and America. Witty, provocative, and gorgeously written, Jenny Diski promises to feed your head with new insights about everything that was, and is , the sixties.

Essays by Schapiro on the political and intellectual history of late Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.

"Origins" is the first fully comprehensive study of the debt owed by modern western culture to Ancient Near Eastern civilization - a debt touched upon by standard histories of the Ancient Near East but never as systematically investigated as here by William W. Hallo. The author, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of the Ancient Near East, places the emphasis on the way the Ancient Near East continues to shape our Western world. He takes an in-depth look at the ancient origins of many institutions that are most essential to contemporary life - and most often taken for granted. In the exploration of the "first half of history," Hallo shows that modern ideas of urbanism and the formation of capital were first developed between 3000-500 BC and that aspects of 20th-century agriculture, manufacturing and trade go back to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Israel. Special attention is given to the role played by women, arguing that this was an often non-traditional one; for example, women are shown to have been among the first authors in history who are actually known by their names. The scope of the work is vast: Hallo methodically examines a wide range of topics, from the order of the alphabet to the coronation of kings, and from schooling to the calendar. An intriguing touch is provided by sections on games and on the world's oldest cookbooks. This ground-breaking study leaves the reader with a full appreciation of the legacy of the Ancient Near East to modern Western society, in all its aspects. It will be essential reading for researchers and general readers alike who are interested in the cultural history of the West as well as the history of the Ancient Near East.

"'Socrates' is a witty and endlessly fascinating drama about a complicated man who changed how the Western world thought. This powerful play is an intellectual thrill ride from the philosopher's growing prominence in democratic Athens through the military and social upheavals that led to one of the most infamous executions in Western history. 'Socrates' is a passionate tribute to the man who continues to inspire us to question authority and defend freedom of belief."--publisher description.

The realities of Jewish life in eastern Europe that concerned the average Jew meant the way their children grew up, the way they studied, how they married, and all the subsequent stages of the life cycle-including the problems of divorce, remarriage, and elderly parents. The family and the community were in a very real sense the core institutions of east European Jewish society. These realities were always dynamic and evolving but in the nineteenth century, the pace of change in almost every area of life was exceptionally rapid. This collection of essays deals with these social realities objectively and analytically. Some of the essays presented here are classics that have been widely acclaimed, earning their author a well-deserved reputation for authoritative research; all have been comprehensively revised for this book. They avoid both sentimental descriptions and judgmental attitudes. The result is a picture that is far from the stereotyped view of the past that is common today, but a more honest and more comprehensive one. Topics covered in the studies on education consider the learning experiences of both males and females of different ages. They also deal with and distinguish between study among the well off and learned (not surprisingly, the two went together) and study among the poorer masses. A number of essays are devoted to aspects of educating the elite. Here too, the reconstruction of the realities of the past, as opposed to the stereotypical popular image, reveals the remarkable creativity of what is often mistakenly considered a highly conservative element of society. Several essays deal with aspects of marriage, a key element in the life of most Jews. Using both quantitative and qualitative sources, the author has been able to identify and document characteristics of both first and subsequent marriages and to highlight and explain trends that have hitherto been misunderstood. The problem of aged parents and the changing nature of the nuclear family is also considered. The attempt to understand the rabbinate in its social and historical context is no less revealing then the studies in other areas. The realities of rabbinical life--the problems of getting appointments, job security and insecurity, changing responsibilities and the difficulties of dealing with fragmented and modernizing communities--are presented in a way that explains rabbinic behavior and the complex relations between communities, ideologies, and modernization. These essays look at the past through the prism of the lives of ordinary people, with results that are sometimes surprising but always stimulating. The topics they treat are varied, but the concern to explain what lay behind the visible reality is common to all of them.

Through personal essays and poetry, short fiction and painting, book reviews, interviews, performance pieces, and hybrid creations of text and image, Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba opens a window onto the meaning of nationality, transnationalism, and homeland in our time. For more than thirty-five years U.S.-Cuban relations have been couched in terms of the Cold War, often pitting Cubans in the diaspora against Cubans who remain in their homeland. Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba celebrates the informal networks that Cubans in both countries have maintained through artistic, academic, family, and other ties. The book brings together for the first time in English Cuban voices of the second generation, both on the island and in the diaspora. The multivocal and multigenre collection includes both scholarly and creative writing and an impressive range of visual art. The participants are earnest, angry, witty, and hopeful. They are sometimes visionaries, but they are not deluded about Cuban or North American realities. Their voices offer testimony to the continuing efforts of Cubans and Cuban-Americans to look beyond the animosities and failings of their respective societies and find possibilities for personal and international reconciliation, dialogue, and renewal. "Ruth Behar, as editor of Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba, leaps across conventional intellectual boundaries in an effort to show the complexity of nationhood, exile, and revolution in the Cuban experience of the last thirty years. An important book about the possibility and impossibility of building cultural and political bridges."--Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Princeton University "Behar narrows the straits of Florida with a richly textured dialogue of voices in and out of Cuba. Bridges to Cuba is sure to make history."--Liz Balmaseda, Miami Herald "A vital and interesting anthology about contemporary Cuba."--Oscar Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love " Bridges to Cuba is the first U.S. anthology that looks at Cuban creativity from an integrated perspective, refusing to kneel before the painful and often arbitrary divisions that have split the voices of this passionate culture into forever separate bands. The results are magnificent. Read this book and get a long overdue understanding of contemporary Cuban literature and art."--Margaret Randall, author of Women in Cuba: Twenty Years Later "In order for memory to be recovered, there must be a community that remembers and tells the story. . . . Bridges to Cuba displays a wealth of insights that leave the reader with a sense of having experienced first hand the intricate web of thought and feeling that is Cuban life."--Latino Review of Books "Ruth Behar's anthology represents one of the most important and moving bridges yet published on contemporary Cuba and its condition as the island that is still absent from the Western world. Bridges to Cuba is an extraordinary example of the faith and ability of Latin American intellectuals to cross true bridges, bridges of solidarity."--Marjorie Agosín, Wellesley College Ruth Behar is author of Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story and coeditor, with Deborah Gordon, of Women Writing Culture. She has been the recipient of awards from the MacArthur and Guggenheim foundations.

"Here is the definitive history of contemporary Europe, a controversial but authoritative and lively narrative that is destined to become the standard account of the period from 1914 to the present. In this important new book, University of Chicago historian Bernard Wasserstein offers the first serious, full-length history of a century of convulsive change. It is a history of barbarism and civilization, of cruelty and tenderness, of technological achievement and environmental blight, of imperial expansion and withdrawal, of authoritarian repression and of individualism resurgent. Wasserstein provides both a narrative of the main contours of the political, diplomatic, and military history and an analysis of the underpinnings of demographic, economic, and social developments. Most notably, the book explores the evolution of values and sensibilities in a period when, for the first time, God disappeared as a living presence in the minds of most Europeans. Wasserstein argues that barbarism and civilization were not polar opposites: rather they marched hand in hand. Twentieth-century Europe saw incontestable improvements in living conditions for most inhabitants of the continent: average life span was extended by more than half; real incomes increased dramatically; illiteracy was all but eliminated; women, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals advanced closer to equality of respect and opportunity. Yet the century also witnessed some of the most brutish episodes in the recorded history of our species. Hence Wasserstein's conclusion that "greed, selfishness, lies, and cruelty are the stuff of the history of Europe in our time." Drawing on the latest scholarly findings,including recent disclosures of intelligence materials and archival revelations that followed the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Wasserstein captures the essence of contemporary European history in an engaging narrative that is by turns grim, humorous, surprising, and enlightening." -- Publisher.

Zeldin studies the problems of modern society in light of demonstrating how individuals pay attention to, or ignore, the experience of previous generations and cultures. Some of his examples are how people have acquired immunity to loneliness, how older fears give rise to new fears, and why people choose a way of life and what they do when it does not wholly satisfy them.

Rousseau and Revolution, " Volume 10 of Willand Ariel Durant's" Story of Civilization, " ranges over a Europe in ferment, but centers on the passionate rebel--philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great exponent of the romantic impulse toward self-exploration and social revolt, who contended with the great rationalist, Voltaire, for the mind of Europe. Rousseau condemned civilization as a disease, glorified the noble savage, proclaimed to the world with equal intensity his own love affairs and the natural Rights of Man, and became the patron Saint of the Revolution and the worldwide social upheavals of two centuries.

More than ever before, our conflict-ridden, drifting planet needs the qualities that Europe, unique among the continents, has developed in more than two millennia of history: its self-criticism, its urge to self-transcendence, exploration and experiment, its conviction that alternative and better forms of human togetherness can be achieved, as well as its dedication to the cause of seeking and promoting this improvement in practice. But today Europe is unsure of itself and its place in a fast-changing world; it is devoid of vision, limited in resources and lacking the will to pursue its vocation. It is also struggling with the consequences of a one-sided process of globalization which is divorcing power from politics, inciting the shift from the social state to security-focused governance and piling up the casualties of uncontrolled market expansion and the ethically blind commercialization of human life. Bauman argues that despite the odds Europe still has much to offer in dealing with the great challenges that face us in the twenty-first century. Through sharing its own hard-won historical lessons, Europe can play a vital role in moving from the Hobbesian-like world in which we find ourselves today towards the kind of peaceful unification of humanity that was once envisioned by Kant.

The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was the first major translation in Western culture. Its significance was far-reaching but largely forgotten. Without a Greek Bible, European history would have been entirely different - no Western Jewish diaspora and no Christianity. Translation and Survival is a radical new study of the ancient creators and receivers of the translations and of their impact. The Greek Bible sustained Jews who spoke Greek and made the survival of the first Jewish diaspora possible: indeed, the translators invented the term 'diaspora'. The translations were a tool for the preservation of group identity and for the expression of resistance. They devised a new kind of language: many of the words they coined are still with us. The Greek Bible translations ended up as the Christian Septuagint, taken over along with the entire heritage of Hellenistic Judaism when the Church parted from the Synagogue. Here, a brilliant creation is restored to its first owners, and to its historical context among Jews, Greeks and Christians.

The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was the first major translation in Western culture. Its significance was far-reaching but largely forgotten. Without a Greek Bible, European history would have been entirely different - no Western Jewish diaspora and no Christianity. Translation and Survival is a radical new study of the ancient creators and receivers of the translations and of their impact. The Greek Bible sustained Jews who spoke Greek and made the survivalof the first Jewish diaspora possible: indeed, the translators invented the term 'diaspora'. The translations were a tool fo