Narrow escapes and new starts, tearful departures and hopeful arrivals, unwanted scrutiny in the backrooms of officialdom: some of our most memorable experiences involve a passport. In License to Travel, Patrick Bixby examines the passports of artists and intellectuals, ancient messengers and modern migrants to reveal how these seemingly humble documents implicate us in larger ...(展开全部)

This surprising global history of an indispensable document reveals how the passport has shaped art, thought, and human experience while helping to define the modern world. In License to Travel, Patrick Bixby takes the reader on a captivating journey from pharaonic Egypt and Han-dynasty China to the passport controls and crowded refugee camps of today. Along the way, you will: ...(展开全部)

Using his own intellectual biography as a narrative device, Geoff Eley tracks the evolution of historical understanding in our time from social history through the so-called "cultural turn," and back again to a broad history of society. A gifted writer, Eley carefully winnows unique experiences from the universal, and uses the interplay of the two to draw the reader toward an o...(展开全部)

In this title, Eli Maor examines the role of infinity in mathematics and geometry and its cultural impact on the arts and sciences. He evokes the profound intellectual impact the infinite has exercised on the human mind - from the 'horror infiniti' of the Greeks to the works of M.C. Escher; from the ornamental designs of the Moslems, to the sage Giordano Bruno, whose belief in ...(展开全部)

In this title, Eli Maor examines the role of infinity in mathematics and geometry and its cultural impact on the arts and sciences. He evokes the profound intellectual impact the infinite has exercised on the human mind - from the 'horror infiniti' of the Greeks to the works of M.C. Escher; from the ornamental designs of the Moslems, to the sage Giordano Bruno, whose belief in ...(展开全部)

The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in...(展开全部)

With "The Invention of Art", Larry Shiner challenges our conventional understandings of art and asks us to reconsider its history entirely, arguing that the category of fine art is a modern invention - that the lines drawn between art and craft resulted from key social transformations in Europe during the long 18th century.

Global warming and the future of the climate is one of the greatest challenges of our time, but what do we know about climate variations 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago? How can we know anything at all about the history of weather? What impact have climate changes had on human prosperity and the spirit of invention? In this major new book Wolfgang Behringer introduces us to th...(展开全部)