As she did with Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis here retrieves individual lives from historical obscurity to give us a window onto the early modern world. As women living in the seventeenth century, Glikl bas Judah Leib, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Maria Sibylla Merian, equally remarkable though very different, were not queens or noblewomen, their every move publicly noted. Rather, they were living "on the margins" in seventeenth-century Europe, North America, and South America. Yet these women - one Jewish, one Catholic, one Protestant - left behind memoirs and writings that make for a spellbinding tale and that, in Davis' deft narrative, tell us more about the life of early modern Europe than many an official history. All these women were originally city folk. Glikl bas Judah Leib was a merchant of Hamburg and Metz whose Yiddish autobiography blends folktales with anecdotes about her two marriages, her twelve children, and her business. Marie de L'Incarnation, widowed young, became a mystic visionary among the Ursuline sisters and cofounder of the first Christian school for Amerindian women in North America. Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname. The resulting triptych suggests the range of experience, self-consciousness, and expression possible in seventeenth-century Europe and its outposts. It also shows how persons removed from the centers of power and learning ventured in novel directions, modifying in their own way Europe's troubled and ambivalent relations with other "marginal" peoples.

Jeffrey Herf, a leading scholar in the field, offers the most extensive examination to date of Nazi propaganda activities targeting Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. He draws extensively on previously unused and little-known archival resources, including the shocking transcriptions of the "Axis Broadcasts in Arabic" radio programs, which convey a strongly anti-Semitic message.

Egypt's enduring civilization described in fourteen stages which progress from ancient beginnings to contemporary time.

The Dutch-Spanish confrontation in the 17th century began as a local insurrection but evolved into the world's first global conflict--a conflict that profoundly influenced the relationship between Europe and the Indies as well as the European balance of power and the world economy. This is the first study of the conflict and its immediate aftermath. Israel reveals the deep and complex divisions between the political elites on both sides and demonstrates the decisive impact of political and military activity on the economic fate of Europe and the wider world.

Usually Crosstime Traffic concerns itself with trade. Our world owns the secret of travel between parallel continuums, and we mean to use it to trade for much-needed resources with the worlds next door. Preferably without letting them know about any of that parallel-worlds stuff. But there’s one parallel world that’s different. In it, the atomic war broke out in 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love. Now, Crosstime Traffic has been given a different sort of mission: find out what on earth, or on the many earths, went wrong.

In a society where lies are law, a simple act of honesty can become the ultimate rebellion. When does silent compliance with an oppressive regime become unbearable? For Charlie Simpkins, the manager of a small vegetable shop in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, part of the West Coast People's Democratic Republic, the breaking point comes when he is asked to display a meaningless propaganda poster in his shop window. It is a seemingly insignificant act in a lifetime of obedience. But Charlie just can't bring himself to doing it. This minor act of defiance, however, show too much independent thinking on Charlie's part, setting off a chain of escalating consequences for Charlie and his wife and two children. Powerless is a haunting dystopian tale of how even the smallest act of defiance can spiral into disaster in a society that demands total conformity. It serves as a chilling reminder of how easily standing up for one's principles can lead to crushing consequences, erringly echoing the challenges we face today for speaking our truth, even in societies that claim to uphold freedom. While the novel draws original inspiration from Alexander Dubček's 1968 vision of "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia (the reformist movement sought to humanize authoritarian rule), it will resonate with many who fear that individual freedoms are under attack in many parts of the world. In Powerless, Charlie Simpkins' growing disillusionment mirrors the psychological toll experienced by many today as political stress and uncertainty become ever more pervasive. As Charlie seeks out others who share his dissatisfaction, his increasingly deliberate and risky actions symbolize the quiet acts of defiance that offer hope and resistance in a society where the powerful suppress dissent. Powerless serves as a poignant reminder of the consequences that can arise when standing up for one's principles in an environment that demands conformity.​

This globe-spanning history of sugar is "an epic story on a broad canvas that never loses sight of individual moments of human drama; a historical methodology infused with political, intellectual, cultural, and social strands; a complex sequence of cause and effect; an illuminating synthesis of primary and secondary sources; and a thoughtful marriage of words, picture, and design." (Horn Book starred review) Here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Using songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos put a human face on this vast pageant. Time line, source notes, bibliography, and index included. The history of sugar runs like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe's Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar caused the loss of countless lives, but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. Cane, not cotton or tobacco, drove the bloody Atlantic slave trade and took the lives of countless Africans who toiled on vast sugar plantations under cruel overseers. And yet the very popularity of sugar gave abolitionists in England the one tool that could finally end the slave trade. Sugar moved, murdered, and freed millions; sugar changed the world.

Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley. Most of these passes are simply topography with little or no difference in climate, language, or culture between the valleys on either side. But some passes are different: they are true divides. History too knows such divides. Once these divides have been crossed, the social and political landscape changes; the social and political climate is different, and so is the social and political language. Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over such a divide and entered "the next century." Challenging, insightful, and provocative, Peter Drucker's "The New Realities" anticipates the central issues of a rapidly changing world. When it was initially published, in 1989, some reviewers mistakenly thought "The New Realities" was a book about the future, or in other words, a series of predictions. But, as indicated in the title, the book discusses "realities." Drucker argues that events of the next thirty to forty years, or even further on, had already largely been defined by events of the previous half-century. Thus, Drucker discusses episodes in world history that had not yet happened at the time of the book's initial publication, such as: the archaism of the hope for "salvation by society" in "The End of FDR's America"; the democratization of the Soviet Union in "When the Russian Empire is Gone"; the technology boom of the 1990s in "The Information-Based Organization"; and the evolution of management in "Management as Social Function and Liberal Art." Graced with a new preface by the author that discusses both reactions to the original publication of the book and how important it is for decision-makers to consider the past and present when planning for the future, "The New Realities" is mandatory reading for understanding politics, government, the economy, information technology, and business in an ever-changing world.

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to The Book of Daniel, World’s Fair, and The March, the novels of E. L. Doctorow comprise one of the most substantive achievements of modern American fiction. Now, with Homer & Langley, this master novelist has once again created an unforgettable work. Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers–the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers–wars, political movements, technological advances–and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians...and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves. Brilliantly conceived, gorgeously written, this mesmerizing narrative, a free imaginative rendering of the lives of New York’s fabled Collyer brothers, is a family story with the resonance of myth, an astonishing masterwork unlike any that have come before from this great writer.

In the tradition of Why Nations Fail , this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world? Western exceptionalism--the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent--is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in The Invention of Power , Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the twelfth century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivized economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not. The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history.

"The untold story of the movement that came close to keeping the United States out of the First World War. This book is about the Americans who tried to stop their nation from fighting in one of history's most destructive wars and then were hounded by the government when they refused to back down. In the riveting War Against War, Michael Kazin brings us into the ranks of the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated peace coalition up to that point in US history. They came from a variety of backgrounds: wealthy and middle and working class, urban and rural, white and black, Christian and Jewish and atheist. They mounted street demonstrations and popular exhibitions, attracted prominent leaders from the labor and suffrage movements, ran peace candidates for local and federal office, and founded new organizations that endured beyond the cause. For almost three years, they helped prevent Congress from authorizing a massive increase in the size of the US army--a step advocated by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. Soon after the end of the Great War, most Americans believed it had not been worth fighting. And when its bitter legacy led to the next world war, the warnings of these peace activists turned into a tragic prophecy--and the beginning of a surveillance state that still endures today. War Against War is a dramatic account of a major turning point in the history of the United States and the world"--

Traces the role of Judaism and the Jewish people in God's plan for the salvtion of mankind, from Abraham through the Second Coming, as revealed by the Catholic faith and by a thoughtful examination of history. It will give both Jews and Christians a deeper understanding of Judaism, both as a religion in itself and as a central component of salvation history. The book examines the unique and central role Judaism plays in the destiny of the world. It documents that throughout history attacks on Jews and Judasim have been rooted, not in Christianity, but in the most anti-Christian of forces. Areas addressed in depth include: the Messianic prophecies in Jewish Scripture; the very anti-Christian roots of Nazi anti-Semitism; the links between Nazism and Arab anti-Semitism; the theological insights of well-known Jewish converts; and the role of the Jews in the Second Coming.

For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills. The unending war of words suggests an intractable divide between Iran and the West, one that may very well lead to a shooting war in the near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative history of Iran's relations with the world since the revolution, behind the famous personalities and extremist slogans is a nation that is far more pragmatic--and complex--than many in the West have been led to believe. Takeyh explodes many of our simplistic myths of Iran as an intransigently Islamist foe of the West. Tracing the course of Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution, Takeyh identifies four distinct periods: the revolutionary era of the 1980s, the tempered gradualism following the death of Khomeini and the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, the "reformist" period from 1997-2005 under President Khatami, and the shift toward confrontation and radicalism since the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Takeyh shows that three powerful forces--Islamism, pragmatism, and great power pretensions--have competed in each of these periods, and that Iran's often paradoxical policies are in reality a series of compromises between the hardliners and the moderates, often with wild oscillations between pragmatism and ideological dogmatism. The U.S.'s task, Takeyh argues, is to find strategies that address Iran's objectionable behavior without demonizing this key player in an increasingly vital and volatile region. With its clear-sighted grasp of both nuance and historical sweep, Guardians of the Revolution will stand as the standard work on this controversial--and central--actor in world politics for years to come.

"WILD THINGS is queer theorist Jack Halberstam's account of sexuality in general, and queerness in particular, after nature. As the heterosexual/homosexual binary emerged in the late 19th-century and coalesced in the 20th-century, discourses of both heterosexuality and homosexuality defined sexuality in relation to nature and the natural world. The most well-known is the homophobic framing of homosexuality as unnatural, aberrant, and "against" nature, but of equal importance is the 19th-century male dandy's positioning of artifice and camp-and through it homosexuality-as anti-natural. On the other hand, heterosexuality was often held up as the "natural" sexuality and, later in the 20th-century, gay scientists tried to prove that homosexuality was a natural, biological desire. In this book, Halberstam mobilizes wildness as an analytic through which an alternative history of sexuality and desire outside of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and taxonomical classifications can emerge. To that end, Halberstam turns back to the orderly, taxonomical, and classified homosexuality and heterosexuality of the 19th and 20th-centuries and asks: what embodiments and desires were swept under the carpet in the process of creating identitarian sexualities? Halberstam claims these excluded and unruly figures as "wild" lives lived out in embodiments and desires which eluded the orderly classifications of their era. Wildness, for Halberstam, thus becomes a way to claim an "epistemology of the ferox," a way of being and knowing in the world which is not the opposition of order but order's absence: a force which "disorders desire and desires disorder." Although he is clear that wildness and queerness are not interchangeable, Halberstam sees in wildness and "wild thought" queer theory's anti-identitarian impulse to explore life outside of the limits of the human and liberal governance. More than just a project of recuperating queer figures lost in the archive, Halberstam's WILD THINGS argues for a revision of queer history, one in which "nature" and the "natural world" does not function as that which sexuality defines itself with and against"--

A landmark history of the war that firmly places the First World War in the context of imperialism and gives due weight to the role of non-Europeans in the conflict.

"This history covers the Middle East from its ancient beginnings to the present. The Byzantine and Ottoman empires, which laid much of the framework for the region to move into the modern era, are covered in depth, as are World Wars I and II and the regional conflicts that inflame the Middle East of the 21st century"--Provided by publisher.

This book willserve as the basic work on the rise and development of bop in jazz. Engendered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, bebop, now known as bop, quickly became the most powerful musical force in modern jazz. Today it is still the main musical language of jazz musicians. Over a ten-year period, Ira Gitler interviewed more than 50 of the seminal figures in jazz history to preserve for posterity their recollections of how jazz moved from the big band era in the late '30s and '40s into the modern jazz period. The musicians interviewed recreate not only their own experiences but also evoke the legendary figures of bop who where so influential in its development but were never recorded, people like Clyde Hart and Freddie Webster. Swing to Bop shows how the music first established itself in jam sessions in Harlem and then spread to New York's famed 52nd Street and beyond. Separate chapters describe how young musicians in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit became swept up in the movement. Along with the music and the personalities who made it, the book vividly recreates the atmosphere of the country in the '30s and '40s: traveling on the ballroom theather curcuit; racial attitudes and interaction; extra-musical pastimes; the relationship to World War II; and the influence of drugs. Thus Swing to Bop reveals not only how the music evolved but the environment in which it flourished and what effect in turn the music had on that environment and the music to follow. About the Author Ira Gitler is the author of Jazz Masters of the '40s and The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies. He was previously Professor of Jazz History at City College of New York and Associate Editor of Downbeat.

From the first Arab-Islamic Empire of the mid-seventh century to the Ottomans, the story of the Middle East has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less important, of imperialist dreams. So argues Efraim Karsh in this provocative book. Rejecting the conventional Western interpretation of Middle Eastern history as an offshoot of global power politics, Karsh contends that the region's experience is the culmination of long-existing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns, and that foremost is Islam's millennarian imperial tradition. Attacks such as September 11 have little to do with U.S. international behavior or policy in the Middle East, says Karsh. The House of Islam's war for world mastery is traditional, indeed venerable, and it is a quest that is far from over.

The best-selling A World Champion's Guide to Chess is available again!! Winning Chess the Polgar Way! In A World Champion's Guide to Chess, Women's World Champion Susan Polgar's exclusive training methods will have you playing winning chess! Topics include Chess Essentials, Tactics, Strategy, Pattern Recognition, Endgames, Chess Etiquette, Advice for Parents & Coaches and much more! SUSAN POLGAR is a winner of four Women's World Championships and the top-ranked woman chess player in the United States. She became the #1 woman player in the world at 15 and remained in the top 3 for over 20 years. In 2013, she received the U.S. Coach of the Year Award and the following year, she was named the Chess Trainer of the Year by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). She thus became the first person in history to be accorded both honors. Under her guidance, SPICE chess teams at both Texas Tech University and Webster University have won a combined five consecutive National Division I Collegiate Chess Championships. PAUL TRUONG is winner of eleven national titles, a prolific chess trainer, and award-winning chess author. He was also captain and manager of the historic 2004 US Women's Olympiad team which won two gold and two silver medals, as well as the coach of the five-time national champion SPICE chess teams.

We are born with the instinct to create and invent. Indeed our ability to do so is what separates we humans from the rest of the animal world. The moment man first converted a stone to a useful tool set him on a relentless path toward greater control and power over his environment. But have our creative ideas always produced desirable results in line with their original good intention? How many ill-effects and dangers have they brought about along the way? And have they really served us well? Bad Ideas? traces the fascinating history of our attempts at self-improvement but also questions their value. The dubious consequences of the development of weaponry, for example, is self-evident from the primitive but lethal sling to the devastating nuclear bomb. But what of apparently more innocuous inventions such as farming, writing or medicine? All were initiated for the greater good but have nonetheless produced unforeseen fallout that continues to this day. What are their undesirable side-effects, how did they emerge over the years and where will they take us in the future? Written against a huge historical canvas, we join Robert Winston on a thrilling and inspiring journey from our earliest days to the present. We learn about the history of modern science, engineering, IT and much more, following the unexpected twists and turns of their progress. We meet the individuals who played a key role in their development, and share quirky anecdotes about their lives and brainwaves. Inspiring, unusual, and at times controversial, Bad Ideas? enables us by appreciating the past to look forward to the technological opportunities and ethical challenges of the future. In so doing it celebrates man's extraordinary capacity for achievement whilst warning us that his good intentions can sometimes end up as thoroughly bad ideas.