Libros de

Speaking of the moor

from Alcazar to Othello

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title "Speak of me as I am," Othello, the Moor of Venice, bids in the play that bears his name. Yet many have found it impossible to speak of his ethnicity with any certainty. What did it ...

The cistercian evolution

the invention of a religious Order in twelfth-century Europe

According to the received history, the Cistercian order was founded in Citeaux, France, in 1098 by a group of Benedictine monks who wished for a stricter community. They sought a monastic life that called for extreme asceticism, rejection of feudal revenues, and manual labor for ...

Gender and christianity in medieval Europe

new perspectives

Eds. Lisa M. Bitel, Felice Lifschitz. In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, six historians explore how medieval people professed Christianity, how they performed gender, and how the two coincided. Many of the daily religious decisions people made were influenced by gender roles, the authors ...

Law and the illicit in medieval Europe

Eds. Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, E. Ann Matter. In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. As historians have long recognized, however, medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law, legal procedure, and the ideals of justice and ...

Deth in the New World

cross-cultural encounters, 1492-1800

Reminders of death were everywhere in the New World, from the epidemics that devastated Indian populations and the mortality of slaves working the Caribbean sugar cane fields to the unfamiliar diseases that afflicted Europeans in the Chesapeake and West Indies. According to historian Erik R ...

Empires in wolrd history

power and the politics of difference

Empires - vast states of territories and peoples united by force and ambition - have dominated the political landscape for more than two millennia. "Empires in World History" departs from conventional European and nation-centered perspectives to take a remarkable look at how empires relied on diversity to ...

Felicidad y dolor

una mirada ética

«El humano puede ser feliz.» Con esa afirmación arranca la travesía a la que nos invitan estas páginas, una travesía que recorre los temas que desde el principio de los tiempos han inquietado al ser humano, que se detiene en los pilares de la filosofía ...

Pensamiento y lenguaje

Ed. Alex Kozulin. El presente libro, que desde su aparición ya se ha convertido en todo un clásico, es el que reveló a Lev Vygotsky como una de las fuerzas teóricas más vivas e impetuosas del pensamiento contemporáneo, un hombre con una fama e influencia ...

The troubled Empire

China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties

The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire - a millennium and a half in the making - was suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer ...

Sudan

Darfur and the failure of an african State

Over the past two decades, the situation in Africa's largest country, Sudan, has progressively deteriorated: the country is in second position on the Failed States Index, a war in Darfur has claimed hundreds of thousands of deaths, President Bashir has been indicted by the ...

When the Gods were born

Greek cosmogonies and the Near East

Ancient Greece has for too long been studied in isolation from its Near Eastern neighbors. And the ancient Near East itself has for too long been seen as an undifferentiated cultural monolith. Classics and Near Eastern Studies, in our modern universities, continue to be separated ...

A new science

the discovery of religion in the Age of Reason

We see the word 'religion' everywhere, yet do we understand what it means, and is there a consistent worldwide understanding? Who discovered religion and in what context? In "A New Science", Guy Stroumsa offers an innovative and powerful argument that the comparative study of religion ...

Pope and devil

the Vatican's archives and the Thrid Reich

The Vatican's dealings with the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich have long been swathed in myth and speculation. After almost seventy years, the crucial records for the years leading up to 1939 were finally opened to the public, revealing the bitter conflicts that ...

The roman army

the greatest war machine of the Ancient World

Ed. Chris McNab. This book follows the Roman Army from the first armed citizens of the early Republic through the glorious heights of the Imperial legions to the shameful defeats inflicted upon the late Roman army by the Goths and Huns. Tracing the development of ...

Salamis 480 BC

the naval campaign that saved Greece

Ill. Peter Dennis. In 480 BC, the Greek and Persian fleets met in a battle in the strait between Attica and the island of Salamis. Although outnumbered, the Greeks delivered a crushing victory that ended the Persian threat to Greece. This book draws on the ...

Julius Caesar

leadership, strategy, conflict

One of the greatest military commanders in history, Julius Caesar's most famous victory - the conquest of Gaul - was to him little more than a stepping stone to power. An audacious and decisive general, his victories over the Gauls allowed him to challenge for the ...

The fortress of Rhodes 1309-1522

First besieged in 305 BC, the island of Rhodes became part of the Roman Empire and was later fortified in the Byzantine style. Due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean, Rhodes was also attacked and besieged for over a century by Islamic forces. This ...

The Varangian Guard 988-1453

The Varangian Guards were Viking mercenaries who operated far beyond their native shores as an elite force within the Byzantine Armies. Descendants from a legendary line of warriors, the Varangian Guard was formed after a group of Viking mercenaries made a major contribution to the ...

George S. Patton

leadership, strategy, conflict

George S. Patton Jr. was the iconic American field commander of World War II, and widely regarded as the US Army's finest practitioner of mechanized warfare. This title examines Patton's colorful life and leadership in three wars, with a concentration on his command ...

Houses in a landscape

memory and everyday life in Mesoamerica

In "Houses in a Landscape", Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains ...