Libros de

The Taliban at War

2001 - 2021

How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement's extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban's external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which ...

The ledger

accounting for failure in Afghanistan

'These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world,' said Charlie Wilson, of America's role backing the anti-Soviet mujahideen. 'And then we fucked up the endgame.' With no support for Afghanistan after that war, the vacuum was filled by the Taliban and ...

Toxic

a history of nerve agents, from Nazi Germany to Putin's Russia

Nerve agents are the world's deadliest means of chemical warfare. Nazi Germany developed the first military-grade nerve agents and massive industry for their manufacture-yet, strangely, the Third Reich never used them. At the end of the Second World War, the Allies were stunned to ...

Palestine

matters of truth and justice

In January 2020, US President Donald Trump announced his 'deal of the century'. Supposedly intended to 'resolve' the Palestine-Israel conflict, it accepted Israeli occupation as a fait accompli. Azmi Bishara places this normalisation of occupation in its historical context, examining Palestine as an unresolved case ...

Christian intellectuals and the Roman Empire

from Justin Martyr to Origen

Early in the third century, a small group of Greek Christians began to gain prominence and legitimacy as intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Examining the relationship that these thinkers had with the broader Roman intelligentsia, Jared Secord contends that the success of Christian intellectualism during ...

Life of Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola / Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola; Oration / Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

(The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 93)

The Oration by philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), to which later editors added the subtitle On the Dignity of Man, is the most famous text written in Italy at the height of the Renaissance. The Life of Giovanni by Gianfrancesco Pico, his nephew, is ...

The last witches of England

a tragedy of sorcery and superstition

On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird ...

Capitalism and the Limits of Desire

Addressing Spinoza's perennial question: "why do the masses fight for their servitude as if it was salvation?", Capitalism and the Limits of Desire examines the ways in which self-love as the care of the self has become intertwined with self-love as the pursuit of ...

Accidental allies

the U.S.-Syrian democratic forces partnership against the Islamic State

The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting "by, with and through" the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a ...

Putin's war in Syria

Russian foreign policy and the price of America's absence

"Skillfully lays out Mr. Putin's approach to the Middle East." Wall Street Journal "Detailed and fascinating." Diplomatic Courier Putin intervened in Syria in September 2015, with international critics predicting that Russia would overextend itself and Barack Obama suggesting the country would find itself in ...

The Sultan's fleet

seafarers of the Ottoman empire

While the Ottoman Empire is most often recognized today as a land power, for four centuries the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean were dominated by the Ottoman Navy. Yet to date, little is known about the seafarers who made up the sultans' fleet, the men ...

A sultan in autumn

Erdogan faces Turkey's uncontainable forces

"Informative." - Foreign Affairs Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled Turkey for nearly two decades. Here, Soner Cagaptay, a leading authority on the country, offers insights on the next phase of Erdogan's rule. His dwindling support base at home, coupled with rising opposition, the impact of ...

Vision or mirage

Saudi Arabia at the crossroads

Something extraordinary is happening in Saudi Arabia. A traditional, tribal society once known for its lack of tolerance is rapidly implementing significant economic and social reforms. An army of foreign consultants is rewriting the social contract, King Salman has cracked down hard on corruption, and ...

State-building in the Middle East and North Africa

one hundred years of nationalism, religion and politics

Why have state-building projects across the MENA region proven to be so difficult for so long? Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, the countries of the region began a violent and divisive process of state formation. But a century later ...

El bipedismo: el primate erguido

(Origen. Cuadernos Atapuerca, Nº 25, año 2022)

Este proyecto editorial está ideado como una colección de cuadernos que aspira a mostrar, en 30 números, las claves de lo que nos hace humanos. Una publicación bimestral que pretende acercar la arqueología, antropología, paleontología, etc, a todas las mentes inquietas, bajo un lenguaje divulgativo ...

Vetusta. 1884

Mapa literario La Regenta

¿Le gustaría viajar a una ciudad imaginaria? ¿Es un apasionado de "La Regenta"? ¿Qué tal una jornada en Vetusta? Aunque parezca una locura, ahora es posible gracias a este fascinante mapa literario con el que podrá recorrer la ciudad que Leopoldo "Alas" Clarín describió en ...

Poesía completa

John Keats es uno de los primeros y más asiduos cultivadores de la metapoesía en su siglo. En este sentido, y en otros, anuncia ya a Rimbaud y a Rilke. Como el francés, es un poeta visionario. Como el poeta de lengua alemana, convierte en ...

Historia de los volcanes

Los volcanes son una formidable escuela de geología e historia de la humanidad. Nahúm Méndez, @geologoenapuros, nos adentra en el apasionante mundo de la vulcanología, desde las erupciones más peligrosas que cambiaron la historia de la tierra hasta la última tecnología para medir el pulso ...

Diccionario histórico, biográfico y enciclopédico del Caballero de Gracia

Jacobo Gratij (1517-1619) repartió sus 102 años de vida a partes iguales, año arriba, año abajo, entre su Italia natal y su España adoptada y querida, Madrid en particular. Sus tres décadas de secretario y confidente de Giambattista Castagna, jurista seglar primero, luego arzobispo, después ...

La mujer y el sacrificio

desde Antígona hasta nosotras

Pensar la femineidad bajo los auspicios del sacrificio, es también pensar la relación de la mujer al trauma singular y colectivo, que, por este evento, ella revela. En este sentido, el sacrificio es un acto de desobediencia, siempre. Comprometido en contra de la moral común ...