A landmark study in the history of working class labour organisations, WORLDS OF LABOUR is a sequel to the author's widely acclaimed LABOURING MEN. WORLDS OF LABOUR is a series of studies that considers the formation and evolution of working classes in the period between the late eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth, scrutinising their 'consciousness', ways of life and the movements they generated. The emphasis throughout the study is on the way labour organisations, policies and ideas were rooted in the everyday reality of working class life. In the process, leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm reveals the daily struggles of working class militants, many of whom are still unknown to the modern world. The result is a book that is expansive in scope, but fluent and clear in detail. It will serve as a valuable source of reference to those with an academic interest in the subject, and as an inspiration to those who simply wish to discover the development of working class movements.

The topics covered in this book can be divided into four broad groups: studies of labour conditions up to the middle of the nineteenth century; studies in the 'new trade unionism' of 1889 to 1914; studies in the late nineteenth-century revival of Socialism in Britain; and more general topics covering a wider chronological span. The common factor in this wide-ranging work is that, unlike much other work of labour history, it concentrates on the working classes as such, and on the economic and technical conditions which allowed labour movements to be effective or which prevented their effectiveness. This work is notable not only for its clarity and incisiveness, but also for the richness and variety of the material, which ranges from Marx to Methodism and from labour traditions to the machine breakers.

This popular illustrated history explores the dramatic highs and lows of Wall Street and its development through the 19th century.

"From the time of Pythagoras, we have been tempted to treat numbers as the ultimate or only truth. This book tells the history of that habit of thought. But more, it argues that the logic of counting sacrifices much of what makes us human, and that we have a responsibility to match the objects of our attention to the forms of knowledge that do them justice. Humans have extended the insights and methods of number and mathematics to more and more aspects of the world, even to their gods and their religions.Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity.But the rules of mathematics do not strictly apply to many things-from elementary particles to people-in the world.By subjecting such things to the laws of logic and mathematics, we gain some kinds of knowledge, but we also lose others. How do our choices about what parts of the world to subject to the logics of mathematics affect how we live and how we die?This question is rarely asked, but it is urgent, because the sciences built upon those laws now govern so much of our knowledge, from physics to psychology.Number and Knowledge sets out to ask it. In chapters proceeding chronologically from Ancient Greek philosophy and the rise of monotheistic religions to the emergence of modern physics and economics, the book traces how ideals, practices, and habits of thought formed over millennia have turned number into the foundation-stone of human claims to knowledge and certainty.But the book is also a philosophical and poetic exhortation to take responsibility for that history, for the knowledge it has produced, and for the many aspects of the world and of humanity that it ignores or endangers.To understand what can be counted and what can't is to embrace the ethics of purposeful knowing"--

An illuminating and comprehensive atlas, containing over 100 maps and 30 photographs, tracing the fascinating development of Jewish history from ancient times to the present day.In this illuminating history, Dan Cohn-Sherbok traces the development of Jewish history from ancient times to the present day. Containing over 100 maps and 30 photographs, this is a comprehensive atlas of Jewish history designed for students and the general reader. It is ideally suited for those courses in Jewish or Biblical Studies, serving as a handy reference guide as well as a textbook.

"This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. Besides the military account, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Historian Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side--where the archives are still closed--is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. He examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. He looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world--a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel."-

Arthur Koestler's extraordinary history of humanity's changing vision of the universe In this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between 'sciences' and 'humanities' to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieval world-view in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He also provides vivid and judicious pen-portraits of a string of great scientists and makes clear the role that political bias and unconscious prejudice played in their creativity.

Race. You know it at a glance: he's black; she's white. They're Asian; we're Latino. Racism. I'm better; she's worse. Those people do those kinds of things. We all know it's wrong to make these judgments, but they come faster than thought. Why? Where did those feelings come from? Why are they so powerful?

Adds 21 new essays and drops some that appeared in the 1984 edition (first in 1978) to reflect recent scholarship and changes in orientation by historians. Adds entirely new clusters on sickness and health, early American medicine, therapeutics, the art of medicine, and public health and personal hygiene. Other discussions are updated to reflect such phenomena as the growing mortality from HIV, homicide, and suicide. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"This investigation into the dreams and stereotypes of the Western world that fuel hatred in the hearts of Al Qaeda and its ilk argues that the origins of those dreams lie in the West itself. The anti-Western virus has found a ready host in the Islamic world for a number of reasons, but it is not native there. The West that these jihadis imagine themselves fighting is the same menace that has haunted the thoughts of revolutionary groups since the early nineteenth century. Occidentalism identifies its main oppositions - the timid, soft bourgeois versus the heroic revolutionary; the machine society versus the organically knit one of "blood and soil"; the sterile Western mind, all reason and no soul, versus the "inner life" of the spirit - and provides a new conceptual framework for understanding them, as we must to face the world's most pressing issues."--BOOK JACKET.

For over five hundred years the Russians wondered what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic subjects were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are exceedingly rude. They do not take off their hats and do not bow to each other," huffed an eighteenth-century scholar. They are "children of nature" and "guardians of ecological balance," rhapsodized early nineteenth-century and late twentieth-century romantics. Even the Bolsheviks, who categorized the circumpolar foragers as "authentic proletarians," were repeatedly puzzled by the "peoples from the late Neolithic period who, by virtue of their extreme backwardness, cannot keep up either economically or culturally with the furious speed of the emerging socialist society."Whether described as brutes, aliens, or endangered indigenous populations, the so-called small peoples of the north have consistently remained a point of contrast for speculations on Russian identity and a convenient testing ground for policies and images that grew out of these speculations. InArctic Mirrors, a vividly rendered history of circumpolar peoples in the Russian empire and the Russian mind, Yuri Slezkine offers the first in-depth interpretation of this relationship. No other book in any language links the history of a colonized non-Russian people to the full sweep of Russian intellectual and cultural history. Enhancing his account with vintage prints and photographs, Slezkine reenacts the procession of Russian fur traders, missionaries, tsarist bureaucrats, radical intellectuals, professional ethnographers, and commissars who struggled to reform and conceptualize this most "alien" of their subject populations.Slezkine reconstructs from a vast range of sources the successive official policies and prevailing attitudes toward the northern peoples, interweaving the resonant narratives of Russian and indigenous contemporaries with the extravagant images of popular Russian fiction. As he examines the many ironies and ambivalences involved in successive Russian attempts to overcome northern-and hence their own-otherness, Slezkine explores the wider issues of ethnic identity, cultural change, nationalist rhetoric, and not-so European colonialism. --

An overview of the history of antisemitism throughout the ages, with emphasis on the modern period. Ch. 3 (pp. 39-70) deals with ancient and medieval anti-Judaism, and the rest of the book describes antisemitism from the Enlightenment to the present day. The 19th century saw the development of racialism and theories of a Jewish conspiracy. The dramatic rise of antisemitism after World War I ended with the Holocaust. Afterwards antisemitism appeared in the guise of anti-Zionism, Holocaust denial, neo-fascism and other forms. Subsequently, antisemitism was adopted by the Left and by the Muslim world. Nowadays the radical Left, radical Right, and radical Muslim antisemitisms are undistinguishable and form all kinds of alliances with one another. It is difficult to differentiate between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. At present, antisemitism, by whatever name, is still much more than a mere historical memory.

As the author makes clear, every book has a history; Guerrilla Warfare is noexception. Together with its sequel Terrorism (and two companion readers) it was part of a wider study: to give a critical interpretation of guerrilla and terrorism theory and practice throughout history. It did not aim at providing a general theory of political violence, nor did it give instructions on how to conduct guerrilla warfare and terrorist operations. Its aim remains to bring about greater semantic and analytic clarity, and to do so at psychological as well as political levels. While the word guerrilla has been very popular, much less attention has been given to guerrilla warfare than to terrorism - even though the former has been politically more successful. The reasons for the lack of detailed attention are obvious: guerrilla operations take place far from big cities, in the countryside, in remote regions of a nation. In such areas there are no film cameras or recorders. In his probing new introduction, Laqueur points out that a review of strategies and the fate of guerrilla movements during the last two decades show certain common features. Both mainly concerned nationalists fighting for independence either against foreign occupants or against other ethnic groups within their own country. But despite the many attempts, only in two places—Afghanistan and Chechnya —were the guerrillas successful. According to Laqueur historical experience demonstrates that guerrilla movements have prevailed over incumbents only in specific conditions. Due to a constellation of factors, ranging from modern means of observation to increase in firepower. The author suggests that we may witness a combination of political warfare, propaganda, guerrilla operations and terrorism. In such cases, this could be a potent strategy for unsponsored revolutionary change. But either as social history or military strategy this work remains a crucial work of our times.

In this fascinating book, noted journalist Thomas de Waal—author of the highly acclaimed Black Garden—makes the case that while the Caucasus is often treated as a sub-plot in the history of Russia, or as a mere gateway to Asia. The five-day war in Georgia, which flared into a major international crisis in 2008, proves that this is still a combustible region, whose inner dynamics and history deserve a much more complex appreciation from the wider world. In The Caucasus, de Waal provides this richer, deeper, and much-needed appreciation, one that reveals that the South Caucasus—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and their many smaller regions, enclaves, and breakaway entities—is a fascinating and distinct world unto itself. Providing both historical background and an insightful analysis of the period after 1991, de Waal sheds light on how the region has been scarred by the tumultuous scramble for independence and the three major conflicts that broke out with the end of the Soviet Union—Nagorny Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The book examines the region as a major energy producer and exporter; offers a compelling account of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the rise of Mikheil Saakashvili, and the August 2008 war; and considers the failure of the South Caucasus, thus far, to become a single viable region. In addition, the book features a dozen or so "boxes" which provide brief snapshots of such fascinating side topics as the Kurds, Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, the promotion of the region as the "Soviet Florida," and the most famous of all Georgians, Stalin. The Caucasus delivers a vibrantly written and timely account of this turbulent region, one that will prove indispensable for all concerned with world politics. It is, as well, a stimulating read for armchair travelers and for anyone curious about far-flung corners of the world.