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 ...

The globalization of martyrdom

Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the diffusion of suicide attacks

This groundbreaking volume examines the rise and spread of suicide attacks over the past decade. Sorting through 1,270 terror strikes between 1981 and 2007, Assaf Moghadam attributes their recent proliferation to the mutually related ascendance of al Qaeda and its guiding ideology, Salafi Jihad ...

The economy of Renaissance Florence

Richard A. Goldthwaite, a leading economic historian of the Italian Renaissance, has spent his career studying the Florentine economy. In this magisterial work, Goldthwaite brings together a lifetime of research and insight on the subject, clarifying and explaining the complex workings of Florence's commercial ...

Cannibal encounters

europeans and island caribs, 1492-1763

Philip Boucher analyzes the images -and the realities- of European relations with the people known as Island Caribs during the first three centuries after Columbus. Based on literary sources, travelers' observations, and missionary accounts, as well as on French and English colonial archives and administrative ...

Information and communication technologies for development and poverty reduction

the potential of telecommunications

The IT revolution made some glorious promises to the world's poor: instant access to information and far-flung markets, political empowerment, greater growth, even the possibility that countries could leapfrog entire stages of development. But when none of that happened in a hurry, the hoopla ...

Juana the Mad

sovereignty and dynasty in Renaissance Europe

Herbert A. Simon

the bounds of reason in Modern America

Building the next american century

the past and future of american economic competitiveness

Collaboration between the public and private sectors helped the U.S. economy recover from its last period of economic malaise, and similar collaboration is needed today, according to a key participant in the 1980s#1990s competitiveness movement. In Building the Next American Century, Kent H ...

Beyond metropolis

the planning and bovernance of Asia's mega-urban region

Beyond Metropolis studies planning and governance in the regions surrounding the twelve cities in Asia with populations over ten million: Tokyo, Mumbai, Kolkata, Dhaka, Delhi, Shanghai, Jakarta, Osaka, Beijing, Karachi, Metro Manila, and Seoul. These regions are greater than cities plus suburbs: for almost all ...

Late roman Spain and its cities

Michael Kulikowski draws on the most recent archeological and literary evidence to integrate late antique Spain into the broader history of the Roman empire, crafting a definitive narrative and analytical account of the Iberian peninsula from the end of the third century to the beginning ...

Programs in aid of the poor

This is a businesslike, readable, and generally useful little guide to and commentary on the United States' organized antipoverty efforts... The programs are set forth in logical sequence, measured in dollar and manpower terms, and briefly evaluated against their objectives... We have here a remarkably ...

The culture of classicism

ancient Greece and Rome in american intellectual life, 1780-1910

Adventures in group theory

Rubik's Cube, Merlin's machine & other mathematical toys

Group theory deals with symmetry, in the most abstract form possible. It is a core part of the undergraduate math curriculum, and forms part of the training of theoretical physicists and chemical crystallographers. In this book, David Joyner uses mathematical toys (primarily the Rubik's ...

Aspiring saints

pretense of hotliness, inquisition, and gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618-1750

Constituting federal sovereignty

the European Union in comparative context