The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion.
Best-selling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius.
In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole.
Though the practical value of maps during the sixteenth century is well documented, their personal and cultural importance has been relatively underexamined.
In April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims.
From the bestselling authors of The Rise of Babylon and The ISIS Crisis, the essential guide for Christians about what Bible prophecy foretells concerning current events in the Middle Eastespecially the rise of ISIS and the resurgence of Russiawhile providing a way to find peace and hope in the face of end times concerns.
The Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Winning AuthorWinner of the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best NovelCeremonial murder has returned to Florence.
A 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist in the Religion CategoryWith clarity and penetrating insight, Alex Ryvchin unravels the mystery of antisemitism Mandatory reading for anyone concerned with the ethical fate of the human race.
AJL 2024 Judaica Reference & Bibliography Awards Honorable MentionThe late Steven Lowenstein was a brilliant social historian who, after retiring from his academic position at the University of Judaism, toiled for yearsand up to his final daysto complete this monumental book, which is the definitive demographic history of German Jewry.
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus publicly defended his hypothesis that the earth is a planet and the sun a body resting near the center of a finite universe.
This compelling novel takes the reader into the tumultuous period of the Renaissance and the origins of Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard child of a notary.
At the turn of the fifteenth century, Rome was in the midst of a dramatic transformation from what the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch had termed a "e;crumbling city"e; populated by "e;broken ruins"e; into a prosperous Christian capital.
In Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science, Richard Yeo interprets a relatively unexplored set of primary archival sources: the notes and notebooks of some of the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution.
The Corporate Commonwealth traces the evolution of corporations during the English Renaissance and explores the many types of corporations that once flourished.
In the study of Shakespeare since the eighteenth century, four key concepts have served to situate Shakespeare in history: chronology, periodization, secularization, and anachronism.
In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain.
As the news shows us every day, contemporary American culture and politics are rife with people who demonize their enemies by projecting their own failings and flaws onto them.
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it.
How cultural categories shaped--and were shaped by--new ideas about controlling nature Ranging from alchemy to necromancy, "e;books of secrets"e; offered medieval readers an affordable and accessible collection of knowledge about the natural world.
Divination, the use of special talents and techniques to gain divine knowledge, was practiced in many different forms in ancient Israel and throughout the ancient world.
This mirror for princes sheds light on the relationship between spiritual and political authority in early modern Egypt This guide to political behavior and expediency offers advice to Sufi shaykhs, or spiritual guides, on how to interact and negotiate with powerful secular officials, judges, and treasurers, or emirs.
A broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced Rabbi Moses b.
A scholar’s experiences inside a contemplative working community in Israel’s Negev desert In this thoughtful and enlightening work, world renowned religion scholar Ariel Glucklich recounts his experiences at Neot Smadar, an ecological and spiritual oasis that has been thriving in the arid Southern Israeli desert for a quarter century.
The first English translation of The Life of Christina of Hane, a gripping account of a largely unknown medieval female mystic The thirteenth-century mystic Christina of Hane led an extraordinary life, but her recently unearthed case remains to be discovered in the English-speaking world.
In a remote village on the Dutch-German border, a young Catholic woman named Cunegonde tries to kidnap a baby to prevent it from being baptized in a Protestant church.
Sufism is often understood to be the mystical dimension of Islam, and many works have focused on the nature of "e;mystical experiences"e; and the relationship between man and God.
The definitive history of conversion and assimilation of Jews in Europe and America from the eighteenth century to the presentBetween the French Revolution and World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews left the Jewish fold-by becoming Christians or, in liberal states, by intermarrying.
