This book offers an analysis of the wide range of attitudes that communist movements and regimes adopted towards atheism during the 20th century. Despite the well-known violent fight of the Bolsheviks against believers, for example, and religious persecution in communist regimes at different times, being a communist...

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade." In My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass deepens his already powerful life story, moving beyond his escape from slavery to examine the moral, political, and spiritual dimensions of oppression. This second autobiography is not only a record of unimaginable hard...

A large number of enciphered documents survived from early modern Hungary. This area was a particularly fertile territory where cryptographic methods proliferated, because a large portion of the population was living in the frontier zone, and participated (or was forced to participate) in the network of the informat...

There is growing awareness about how social media circulate extreme viewpoints and turn up the temperature of public debate. Posts that exhibit agitation garner disproportionate engagement. Within this clamour, fringe sources and viewpoints are mainstreaming, and mainstream media are marginalized. This book takes up...

Istanbul, through the mind of its most celebrated writer Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 'A declaration of love.' Sunday Times 'A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west.' The Economist 'An irresistibly seductive book' Jan Morris, Gua...

I sitt förord skriver Ragnar Östberg helt ödmjukt: "Det är icke omöjligt; att dessa anteckningar kunna väcka ett visst intresse, ackompanjerade som de äro av bilder, vilka ofta tillåta läsaren att bortse från texten. Denna börjar och slutar med en arkitektsspurt. Mellan dessa båda moment försiggå de händelser inom a...

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of America's most influential writers and also one of the most complex. He was the essential New Englander, a believer in hard work and simple living, and his personality and writing were tremendously influenced by his Puritan ancestry and the Salem Witch Trials. He obsessed over sin and r...

In the late 1800s, British engineers building some of the first railways in the Dominion of India discovered large numbers of bricks buried in the dusty plains of the Punjab. This was odd because historians were not aware of any cities or civilizations which might have constructed buildings in this area. It wasn't u...

This book offers a critical contribution to feminist peace and disaster research by challenging the successful disaster recovery narrative of the Kachchh 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India. Engaging in a feminist intersectional analysis of complex cascades of violence, the book uses a theoretical and methodological a...

The Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union lasted for more than 40 years. In general, this was a war of spies and subterfuge, of covert action and espionage. There was always a danger, however, that an error of judgment on either side could suddenly cause the Cold War to turn red-hot with...

The Punic Wars, a series of three wars involving the Roman Republic and Carthage between 264 and 146 BCE, did much to shape the subsequent history of the world. These wars were among the most important of any fought in the ancient world and led directly to the power and reach of the later Roman Empire. One of these ...

The last ruler of the House of Solomon, Haile Selassie, was not only the final Emperor of Ethiopia but also the link to a bygone past. In the days of Haile Selassie, absolute rule was given as an unquestioned divine right. Even though Selassie in many ways was a moderate progressive, he was still an autocratic ruler...

'In overthrowing me, you have done no more than cut down the trunk of the tree of liberty - it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.' - Toussaint Louverture The leader of the only successful slave revolt in history, Toussaint Louverture is seen by many to be one of the greatest anti-imperi...

Eyewitness account of a recent event Introduction by renown Israeli academic Ilan Pappe

This is the first book to bring together groundbreaking scholarship focusing on the various ways in which famines result from political decision-making, and how the threat, occurrence, relief, or memory of famine is instrumentalized as a political and military tool. Contributions to this volume reveal the complexiti...

If the history of the Eastern Han dynasty were limited to the accomplishments of its scholars, scientists, and inventors, it would be a glorious saga of the innovation and creativity of the human mind. Anesthesia was first used during surgical procedures in the years of the Eastern Han emperors, earthquake tremors w...