Sharing many common beliefs, deities, and rituals, the religion of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca was rooted in both the earth and the sky, the rhythms of the seasons, and the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. Readers will meet rain and sun gods, corn gods and fertility gods, earth mothers who are both creators and destroyers, and even a feathered serpent. Lavish primary-source images of arts a…
The creation of—or even the existence of—a “Pacific World” is a question that has preoccupied scholars to a much greater degree than existential doubts have bothered historians of other oceanic basins. Economic historian Eric Jones and colleagues have written that “there can be no meaningful history ofthe whole Rim or Basin [ofthe Pacific] since there…
This book is for people who have to make decisions about how best to support or conserve biodiversity. These include land managers, conservationists in the public or private sector, farmers, campaigners, advisors or consultants, policymakers, researchers or people taking action to protect local wildlife. What Works in Conservation and the associated synopses summari…
Think outside the box and get results with Essential Managers: Innovation. This book will give you all the tools you'll need to succeed.
For almost two decades, historians and academics from a wide- range of sub- disciplinary backgrounds have been situating their research within a global context, crossing boundaries both geographically and methodologically, in such large numbers as to necessitate the emergence of a recognisably new field of enquiry: Global History. From comparative to connective histories, the …
Is film a medium of communication? This is a basic question of film studies. It is about as old as the field itself, and the discursive frameworks and underlying assumptions that make the question relevant are about as old as the medium, or the art form, of cinema itself. As John Durham Peters argues, “only since the late nineteenth century have we defined ourselves in terms our ability to co…
Twenty years ago, very few music scholars examined Broadway musicals. If musicologists were a bit slow to approach the musical theater reper-toire (and they were), theorists and analysts arrived—and are only now arriving—more than fashionably late to the party. We hope that this vol-ume loudly announces that we are here.Music theorists care about musical theater. We kn…
How We Use Stories and Why That Matters guides the reader through the tangled undergrowth of communication and cultural expression towards a new understanding of the role of group-mediating stories at global and digital scale. It argues that media and networked systems perform and bind group identities, creating bordered fictions within which economic and political activities are made meaningfu…
Our best science tells us wonderful things. The cold and dark skies of our universe were not so long ago in their entirety in a state of unimaginably high energy and temperature. The detritus that exploded from it congealed into stars, planets, and galaxies. These systems of celestial masses are in turn held together by a curvature of the geometry of space and time itself. On a most minute scal…
Discover the amazing inventions throughout history that have shaped the world as we know it. This stunning visual guide explores and explains the greatest inventions, ideas, and discoveries throughout the ages, and introduces their inventors. From fire, stone tools, and the wheel to ploughs and paper, discover the first inventions that shaped societies and grew mighty civilizations and empir…