Torture and state violence in the United States

A short documentary history

The war on terror has brought to light troubling actions by the United States government which many claim amount to torture. But as this book shows, state-sanctioned violence and degrading, cruel, and unusual punishments have a long and contentious history in the nation. Organized around ...

Inquisitorial inquiries

Brief lives of secret jews and other heretics

On the first day of Francisco de San Antonio's trial before the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo in 1625, his interrogators asked him about his parentage. His real name, he stated, was Abram Rubén, and he had been born in Fez of Jewish parents. How ...

Afghanistan and Pakistan

conflict, extremism, and resistance to modernity

This timely study surveys the conflict in Afghanistan from Pakistan's point of view and analyzes the roots of Pakistan's ambiguous policy-supporting the United States on one hand and showing empathy for the Afghan Taliban on the other. The author, a former foreign secretary ...

Science and Eastern Orthodoxy

from the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization

People have pondered conflicts between science and religion since at least the time of Christ. The millennia-long debate is well documented in the literature in the history and philosophy of science and religion in Western civilization. Science and Eastern Orthodoxy is a departure from that ...

America and the world

culture, commerce, conflict

While the twenty-first century may well be the age of globalization, this book demonstrates that America has actually been at the cutting edge of globalization since Columbus landed here five centuries ago. Lawrence A. Peskin and Edmund F. Wehrle explore America's evolving connections with ...

Leonardo to the Internet

technology and culture from the Renaissance to the present

Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped-and have been shaped by-the cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial ...

The Body in Early Modern Italy

Eds. Julia L. Hairston and Walter Stephens. Human bodies have been represented and defined in various ways across different cultures and historical periods. As an object of interpretation and site of social interaction, the body has throughout history attracted more attention than perhaps any other ...

The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe

Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870-1945

Dylan Riley reconceptualizes the nature and origins of interwar fascism in this remarkable investigation of the connection between civil society and authoritarianism. From the late nineteenth century to World War I, voluntary associations exploded across Europe, especially among rural non-elites. But the development of this ...

Encountering Revolution

Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic

Encountering Revolution looks afresh at the profound impact of the Haitian Revolution on the early United States. The first book on the subject in more than two decades, it redefines our understanding of the relationship between republicanism and slavery at a foundational moment in American ...

Rome

a living portrait of an Ancient City

Stephen L. Dyson has spent a lifetime studying and teaching the history of ancient Rome. That unparalleled knowledge is reflected in his magisterial overview of the Eternal City. Rather than look only at the physical development of the city - its buildings, monuments, and urban spaces ...

The prism and the rainbow

a christian explains why evolution is not a threat

God or Darwin? It is one of the most contentious conflicts of our time. It is also completely unnecessary, according to Joel W. Martin, an evolutionary biologist and ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church USA. In this slim but powerful book, Martin argues that it ...

What about Darwin?

all species of opinion from scientistis, sages, friends, and enemies who met, read, and discissed the naturalist who changed the world

Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas inspired pundits the world over to put pen to paper. In this unique dictionary of quotations, Darwin scholar Thomas Glick presents fascinating observations about Darwin and his ideas from such notable figures as P. T. Barnum, Anton Chekhov, Mahatma ...

The limits of U.S. military capability

lessons from Vietnam and Iraq

Political scientist James H. Lebovic establishes that the size, strength, flexibility, and adaptability of the U.S. military cannot ensure victory in asymmetrical conflicts. In "The Limits of U.S. Military Capability", Lebovic shows how political and psychological factors trumped U.S. military superiority in ...

Cross-cultural scientific exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560- 1660

Avner Ben-Zaken reconsiders the fundamental question of how early modern scientific thought traveled between Western and Eastern cultures in the age of the so-called Scientific Revolution. Through five meticulously researched case studies - in which he explores how a single obscure object or text moved in ...

Lost girls

sex and death in Renaissance Florence

In 1554, a group of idealistic laywomen founded a home for homeless and orphaned adolescent girls in one of the worst neighborhoods in Florence. Of the 526 girls who lived in the home during its fourteen-year tenure, only 202 walked out alive. Struck by the ...

Chariot Racing in the Roman Empire

A massive crowd of people, cloaked in the colors of their beloved athletes, slowly fill a 150,000-seat arena to cheer on their favorite teams. Athletes enter the stadium amid great pomp and circumstance as opposing fans hurl insults at each other and place bets ...

Machiavelli in love

sex, self and society in the Italian Renaissance

"Machiavelli in Love" introduces an exciting new concept of sex and sexual identity and their roles in the culture and politics of the Italian Renaissance. Guido Ruggiero's study counters the consensus among historians and literary critics that there was little sense of individual identity ...

The Eve of Spain

myths of origins in the history of christian, muslim, and jewish conflict

The Eve of Spain demonstrates how the telling and retelling of one of Spain's founding myths played a central role in the formation of that country's national identity. King Roderigo, the last Visigoth king of Spain, rapes (or possibly seduces) La Cava, the ...

Atlantic diasporas

jews, conversos, and crypto-jews in the age of mercantilism, 1500-1800

Edited by Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan. This wide-ranging narrative explores the role that Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews played in settling and building the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1800. Through the interwoven themes of markets, politics, religion, culture, and identity, the essays ...

The dragon and the elephant

agricultural and rural reforms in China and India

China and India are the most extraordinary economic success stories of the developing world. Both nations' economies have grown dramatically over the past few decades, elevating them from two of the world's poorest countries into projected economic superpowers. As a result, the numbers of ...

Adam's ancestors

race, religion and the politics of human origins

Although the idea that all human beings are descended from Adam is a long-standing conviction in the West, another version of this narrative exists: human beings inhabited the Earth before, or alongside, Adam, and their descendants still occupy the planet.In this engaging and provocative ...

Venetians in Constantinople

nation, identity, and coexistence in the early modern mediterranean

Historian Eric R Dursteler reconsiders identity in the early modern world to illuminate Veneto-Ottoman cultural interaction and coexistence, challenging the model of hostile relations and suggesting instead a more complex understanding of the intersection of cultures. Although dissonance and strife were certainly part of this ...