World History: An Introduction provides readers with the knowledge and tools necessary to understand the global historical perspective and how it can be used to shed light on both our past and our present. A concise and original guide to the concepts, methods, debates and contents of world history, it combines a thematic approach with a clear and ambitious focus. Each chapter traces connections with the past and the present to explore major questions in world history: How did humans evolve from an endangered species to the most successful of them all? How has nature shaped human history? How did agricultural societies push human history in a new direction? How has humankind organized itself in ever more complex administrative systems? How have we developed new religious and cultural patterns? How have the paths of 'The West' and 'The Rest' diverged over the last five centuries? How, at the same time, has the world become more interconnected and "globalized"? How is this world characterized by growing gaps in wealth, poverty and inequality? Sharp and accessible, Eric Vanhaute's introduction to this exciting field demonstrates that world history is more of a perspective than a single all-encompassing narrative: an instructive new way of seeing, thinking and doing. It is an essential resource for students of history in a global context.

Michael Billig presents a major challenge to orthodox conceptions of nationalism in this elegantly written book. While traditional theorizing has tended to the focus on extreme expressions of nationalism, the author turns his attention to the everyday, less visible forms which are neither exotic or remote, he describes as 'banal nationalism'. The author asks why people do not forget their national identity. He suggests that in daily life nationalism is constantly flagged in the media through routine symbols and habits of language. Banal Nationalism is critical of orthodox theories in sociology, politics and social psychology for ignoring this core feature of national identity. Michael Billig argues forcefully that with nationalism continuing to be a major ideological force in the contemporary world, it is all the more important to recognize those signs of nationalism which are so familiar that they are easily overlooked.

For two hundred years historians have viewed England's Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution - bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view. By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that England's revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 1688-1689. James II developed a modernization programme that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The post-revolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution - not the French Revolution - the first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.

The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire.

運用藏於中國、台灣、日本與美國的檔案資料，平山常富（Nagatomi Hirayama，漢學中心2009年度獎助訪問學人，諾丁漢大學寧波分校助理教授）檢視中國青年黨 在國家變革的1918至1951年之間的角色。追索1923年五四運動時創黨，1930年代晚期的革命路線，到1940年代的去激進化，平山討論中國青年黨興起成為一股強而有力的右翼革命運動，以文化保守主義、政治智識主義與國社主義為其特色。儘管青年黨的歷史相對罕為人知，但平山認為它曾是國、共兩黨的強力競爭者，並在二戰與國共內戰期間被證明了具有特殊的意義。揭示中國青年的的理念與實踐，為讀者提供可藉此觀察20世紀前半葉中國激進右翼的重要視角。

Caliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the struggle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

本书将西方社会思想及社会思想家置于历史潮流、文化传统和学术流派的背景中，以生活的社会逻辑和学理的历史逻辑为经纬，建构和解析从古希腊城邦社会学到当代文化社会学的西方社会思想演进历程，突出社会理论的时代性、历史性和社会性，展示“思想的理趣和历史的韵律”。在对西方社会思想的分析观照中，同时亦表现了作者对西方文化精神的独特领悟。
本书视野开阔，内容丰富，结构紧凑，议论深透；将哲理反思、历史考究与社会分析融为一体。一卷在手，西方两千五百年社会思想之景象尽收眼底。

The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies-a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Thomas S. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God. The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions--astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific--of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus' break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle's theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer's imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation. With a final analysis of Copernicus' life work--its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe--Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it. This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James Bryant Conant in his Foreword: "Professor Kuhn's handling of the subject merits attention, for...he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times."

Science fiction (SF) has existed as a popular genre for around 150 years.
This book offers a survey of the genre from 19th-century pioneers to contemporary authors, introducing the plural versions of early SF across the world, before examining the emergence of the "scientific romance" in the 1880s and 1890s. The "Golden Age" of writers' expansive SF pulp was concentrated in the 1930s, consolidated by best-selling writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. The contributors to this volume also track the increasingly diverse forms SF took from the 1950s onwards. Leading international scholars, writing in an accessible style, consider SF as a world literature, referencing works from diverse traditions in Latin America, Europe, Russia and the Far East. This book combines discussion of central figures of the tradition with a new global reach.

Edited by Patricia Waugh, this comprehensive guide to literary theory and criticism includes 39 specially commissioned chapters by an outstanding international team of academics. The volume is divided into four parts. Part One covers the key philosophical and aesthetic origins of literary theory, Part Two looks at the foundational movements and thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century, Part Three offers introductory overviews of the most important movements and thinkers in modern literary theory and Part Four looks at emergent trends and future directions.

Annamarie Jagose knows that queer theory did not spring full- blown from the head of any contemporary theorist. It is the outcome of many different influences and sources, including the homophile movement, gay liberation, and lesbian feminism. In pointing to the history of queer theory--a history that all too often is ignored or elided--Jagose performs a valuable service.--Henry Abelove, co-editor of The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader
The political and academic appropriation of the term queer over the last several years has marked a shift in the study of sexuality from a focus on supposedly essential categories as gay and lesbian to more fluid or queer notions of sexual identity. Yet queer is a category still in the process of formation. In Queer Theory, Annamarie Jagose provides a clear and concise explanation of queer theory, tracing it as part of an intriguing history of same-sex love over the last century.
Blending insights from prominent theorists such as Judith Butler and David Halperin, Jagose argues that queer theory's challenge is to create new ways of thinking, not only about fixed sexual identities such as heterosexual and homosexual, but also about other supposedly essential notions such as sexuality and gender and even man and woman.

The "Roots of Romanticism" at last makes available in printed form Isaiah Berlin's most celebrated lecture series, the Mellon lectures, delivered in Washington in 1965, recorded by the BBC, and broadcast several times. A published version has been keenly awaited ever since the lectures were given, and Berlin had always hoped to complete a book based on them. But despite extensive further work this hope was not fulfilled, and the present volume is an edited transcript of his spoken words. For Berlin, the Romantics set in motion a vast, unparalleled revolution in humanity's view of itself. They destroyed the traditional notions of objective truth and validity in ethics with incalculable, all-pervasive results. As he said of the Romantics elsewhere: "The world has never been the same since, and our politics and morals have been deeply transformed by them. Certainly this has been the most radical, and indeed dramatic, not to say terrifying, change in men's outlook in modern times." In these brilliant lectures Berlin surveys the myriad attempts to define Romanticism, distills its essence, traces its developments from its first stirrings to its apotheosis, and shows how its lasting legacy permeates our own outlook. Combining the freshness and immediacy of the spoken word with Berlin's inimitable eloquence and wit, the lectures range over a cast of the greatest thinkers and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Kant, Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, Schlegel, Novalis, Goethe, Blake, Byron, and Beethoven.Berlin argues that the ideas and attitudes held by these and other figures helped to shape twentieth-century nationalism, existentialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and our ideas about heroic individuals, individual self-fulfillment, and the exalted place of art. This is the record of an intellectual bravura performance - of one of the century's most influential philosophers dissecting and assessing a movement that changed the course of history.

The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental History, Second Edition, presents a multidisciplinary global history of Earth from its origins to the present day. Provides a comprehensive, global, multidisciplinary history of the planet from its earliest origins to the present era Draws on the most recent research in geology, climatology, evolutionary biology, archaeology, anthropology, history, demography and the social and physical sciences Features the latest research findings on planetary history, human evolution, the green agricultural revolution, climate change, global warming and the nature of world/human history interdependencies Offers in-depth analyses of topics relating to human evolution, agriculture, population growth, urbanization, manufacturing, consumption, industrialization, and fossil fuel dependency.

This fourth edition of this best-selling core history textbook offers a richly illustrated, single volume, narrative introduction to African history, from a hugely respected authority in the field. The market-leading range of illustrated material from prior editions is now further improved, featuring not only additional and redrawn maps and a refreshed selection of photographs, but the addition of full colour to make these even more instructive, evocative and attractive.
Already hugely popular on introductory African History courses, the book has been widely praised for its engaging and readable style, and is unrivalled in scope, both geographically and chronologically – while many competitors limit themselves to certain regions or eras, Shillington chronicles the entire continent, from prehistory right up to the present day. For this new edition, both content and layout have been thoroughly refreshed and restructured to make this wealth of material easily navigable, and even more appealing to students unfamiliar with the subject.

オスマン帝国の崩壊をきっかけに、長い封印から解き放たれた政治と宗教の関係という古くて新しい問い。その答えの一つが「イスラームの声を政治に反映させよう」とするイスラーム主義だ。崩壊「後」の秩序の模索が今も続く中東で、イスラーム主義が果たしてきた役割とは。単なる復古主義ではない、その実像に迫る。「アラブの春」をきっかけに、長い封印から解き放たれた政治と宗教の関係という「古くて新しい問い」。その答えの一つが、イスラームの教えを政治に反映させようとするイスラーム主義だった。オスマン帝国崩壊後の「あるべき秩序」の模索が今も続く中東で、イスラーム主義が果たしてきた役割とは。その実像に迫る。

A new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its head
American Empire is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the United States. Drawing on his expertise in economic history and the imperial histories of Britain and Europe, A. G. Hopkins takes readers from the colonial era to today to show how, far from diverging, the United States and Western Europe followed similar trajectories throughout this long period, and how America’s dependency on Britain and Europe extended much later into the nineteenth century than previously understood.
In a sweeping narrative spanning three centuries, Hopkins describes how the revolt of the mainland colonies was the product of a crisis that afflicted the imperial states of Europe generally, and how the history of the American republic between 1783 and 1865 was a response not to the termination of British influence but to its continued expansion. He traces how the creation of a U.S. industrial nation-state after the Civil War paralleled developments in Western Europe, fostered similar destabilizing influences, and found an outlet in imperialism through the acquisition of an insular empire in the Caribbean and Pacific. The period of colonial rule that followed reflected the history of the European empires in its ideological justifications, economic relations, and administrative principles. After 1945, a profound shift in the character of globalization brought the age of the great territorial empires to an end.
American Empire goes beyond the myth of American exceptionalism to place the United States within the wider context of the global historical forces that shaped the Western empires and the world.