In the recent cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects are intertwined with interest in cultural tourism and sites of the memory of enslavement. Questions of historical guilt and present responsibility have become a source of social conflict, particularly in multicultural societies with an enslaving past. This became apparent in the context of the Black Lives Matte…
For two thousand years the real, physical metropolis lay buried while another, ghostly city lived on through ideas as varied as the legendary Hanging Gardens, the career of the biblical Daniel, and even the Apocalypse. More recently, the site of Babylon has been the centre of major excavation, yet the spectacular results of this work have done little to displace the many other fascinating ways …
Diverse processes of democratic participation – and exclusion – are braided with or propelled onwards by ritual acts and complexes. This volume is the result of collaborations and conversations between international researchers who have focused on the employment and deployment of those cultural resources identifiable as ‘ritual’ as pa…
Here is a spectacular and informative guide to the 21st century and beyond. Original photography and artworks illustrate the extraordinary visions of the future of scientists, artists and inventors through the ages, offering a unique "eyewitness" view of a world we are yet to know. See an insect robot learning to walk, a hypersonic plane, a calendar for the next century, a space hotel and a mil…
An introduction to Christian beliefs and culture discusses the life and teachings of Jesus, the Gospels, divisions and sects within Christianity, and Christian life.
In early 2012, when I visited Theodore (Ted) Schwartz at his home in Del Mar, California, he had recently finished digitising audio recordings of interviews he had conducted with Manus people in Papua New Guinea (PNG) from 1953 through 1995; the annotated catalogue went on for many pages.1 Ted gave me an audio tour and we listened to Paliau, his supporters, an…
Throughout history, humans everywhere have searched for remedies to heal our bodies and minds. Covering everything from ancient herbs to cutting-edge chemicals, this book in the hugely popular Milestones series looks at 250 of the most important moments in the development of life-altering, life-saving, and sometimes life-endangering pharmaceuticals. Illustrated entries feature ancient drugs lik…
From the emergence of life, to Leewenhoeks microscopic world, to GMO crops, The Biology Book presents 250 landmarks in the most widely studied scientific field. Brief, engaging, and colorfully illustrated synopses introduce readers to every major subdiscipline, including cell theory, genetics, evolution, physiology, thermodynamics, molecular biology, and ecology. With information on such varied…
This volume breaks new ground in applying Benson’s second per-spective to medical history: ‘to explore the history of nonhuman ani-mals as subjects in their own right and for their own sakes’.5 Humans remain important, of course, for ultimately we can only know about animals from the records that humans have created, and which reflect …
Discover 10,000 years of the shadowy side of our world in this treasure trove of alternative history. The Encyclopedia of Secret Societies features detailed information about.