More than just colorful clickbait or pragmatic city grids, maps are often deeply emotional tales: of political projects gone wrong, budding relationships that failed, and countries that vanished.
The promotion and vernacularization of Hebrew, traditionally a language of Jewish liturgy and study, was a central accomplishment of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
In The Mountain, geographers Bernard Debarbieux and Gilles Rudaz trace the origins of the very concept of a mountain, showing how it is not a mere geographic feature but ultimately an idea, one that has evolved over time, influenced by changes in political climates and cultural attitudes.
The story of the extraordinary relationship between a former slave and England’s most distinguished man of letters This compelling book chronicles a young boy’s journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London’s literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life.
In New York and London during World War I, the performance of lieder-German art songs-was roundly prohibited, representing as they did the music and language of the enemy.
This monumental seven-volume encyclopedia, prepared by the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, describes the universe of camps and ghettos-more than 20,000 in all-that the Nazis and their allies operated, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia.
A chapter-by-chapter explanation of the Book of Exodus, revealing its wisdom about nation building and people formation"e;Kass draws from Exodus' record of the founding of Judaism timely even urgent universal lessons about twenty-first-century preconditions for human flourishing in any community.
An illuminating history of state-building, nationalism, and bureaucracy, this book tells the story of how an international cohort of Austrian officials from Bohemia, Hungary, the Hapsburg Netherlands, Italy, and several German states administered Galicia from its annexation from Poland-Lithuania in 1772 until the beginning of Polish autonomy in 1867.
The first full-scale history of the Makah people of the Pacific Northwest, whose culture and identity are closely bound to the sea For the Makahs, a tribal nation at the most northwestern point of the contiguous United States, a deep relationship with the sea is the locus of personal and group identity.
A controversial examination of the internal Israeli debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a best-selling Israeli author Since the Six-Day War, Israelis have been entrenched in a national debate over whether to keep the land they conquered or to return some, if not all, of the territories to Palestinians.
The first full-scale biography of one of the most important—and enigmatic—leaders in Israeli history Menachem Begin, father of Israel's right wing and sixth prime minister of the nation, was known for his unflinchingly hawkish ideology.
A prize-winning scholar offers a sweeping exploration of the role doors have played in history Exploring a chapter not yet probed in the cultural history of the West, The Strait Gate demonstrates how doors, gates, and related technologies such as the key and the lock have shaped the way we perceive and navigate the domestic and urban spaces that surround us in our everyday lives.
A thought-provoking reflection on why secular national liberation movements are so often challenged by militant religious revivals Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals.
A compelling examination of the establishment of the secret police in Communist Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Eastern Germany This book examines the history of early secret police forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War.
The clearest explanation yet of how the financial crisis of 2008 developed and why it could happen againIn the wake of the financial meltdown in 2008, many claimed that it had been inevitable, that no one saw it coming, and that subprime borrowers were to blame.
In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible.
Katrina Jagodinsky’s enlightening history is the first to focus on indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The people and publications at the root of a national obsession In the century between the accession of Elizabeth I and the restoration of Charles II, a horticultural revolution took place in England, making it a leading player in the European horticultural game.
In this first examination of Lenin’s genealogical and political connections to East European Jews, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern reveals the broad cultural meanings of indisputable evidence that Lenin’s maternal grandfather was a Jew.
The first single-volume history of Reformed Protestantism from its sixteenth-century origins to the present This briskly told history of Reformed Protestantism takes these churches through their entire 500-year history—from sixteenth-century Zurich and Geneva to modern locations as far flung as Seoul and São Paulo.
The Chinook Indian Nationwhose ancestors lived along both shores of the lower Columbia River, as well as north and south along the Pacific coast at the rivers mouthcontinue to reside near traditional lands.
A knowledgeable insider provides the first clear view of what has happened in the Arab world and why This important book is not about immediate events or policies or responses to the Arab Spring.
How the West sleepwalked into another Cold WarA native of Yalta, Constantine Pleshakov is intimately familiar with Crimea's ethnic tensions and complex political history.
A beautifully written exploration of religion's role in a secular, modern politics, by an accomplished scholar of critical theoryMigrants in the Profane takes its title from an intriguing remark by Theodor W.
A powerful account of life and loss in the Great War, as told by British soldiers in their letters home This book was inspired by the author’s discovery of an extraordinary cache of letters from a soldier who was killed on the Western Front during the First World War.
A history of capitalism in nineteenth' and twentieth'century China and India that explores the competition between their tea industries Tea remains the world’s most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India.
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.
In this bold and groundbreaking book, Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian manuscripts and demonstrates that much of what we thought we knew about these books and fragments is mistaken.