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Southeast Asia: a Very Short Introduction by James R. Rush
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The eleven countries of Southeast Asia are diverse in every way, from the ethnicities and religions of their residents to their political systems and levels of prosperity. These nations--Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, and East Timor-- ...Show more
Stoicism by Brad Inwood
Category: Philosophy | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Stoicism is two things: a long past philosophical school of ancient Greece and Rome, and an enduring philosophical movement that still inspires people in the twenty-first century to re-think and re-organize their lives in order to achieve personal satisfaction. What is the connection between them? This ...Show more
The Apocryphal Gospels by Paul Foster
Category: Reference | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
This Very Short Introduction offers a clear, accessible, and concise account of the apocryphal gospels--exploring their origins, their discovery, and discussing how the various texts have been interpreted both within and outside the Church. Looking at texts ranging from the Gospels from Nag Hammadi to t ...Show more
The Beats by David Sterritt
Category: Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writers of the Beat Generation revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their followers took aim at the hypocrisy and taboos of their time ...Show more
The Dead Sea Scrolls by Timothy H. Lim
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Since their discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have become an icon in popular culture that transcends their status as ancient Jewish manuscripts. Everyone has heard of the Scrolls, but amidst the conspiracies, the politics, and the sensational claims, it can be difficult to separate themyths from t ...Show more
The Ghetto: a Very Short Introduction by Bryan Cheyette
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
For three hundred years the ghetto defined Jewish culture in the late medieval and early modern period in Western Europe. In the nineteenth-century it was a free-floating concept which travelled to Eastern Europe and the United States. Eastern European ghettos, which enabled genocide, werecrudely rehabi ...Show more
The Great Depression and the New Deal by Eric Rauchway
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the "American Way" itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depression, illuminating its successes and failures.Rauchway first describes ...Show more
The Hellenistic Age by Peter Thonemann
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The three centuries which followed the conquests of Alexander are perhaps the most thrilling of all periods of ancient history. This was an age of cultural globalization: in the third century BC, a single language carried you from the Rhone to the Indus. A Celt from the lower Danube couldserve in the me ...Show more
The History of Astronomy by Michael Hoskin
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
This is a fascinating introduction to the history of Western astronomy, from prehistoric times to the origins of astrophysics in the mid-nineteenth century. Historical records are first found in Babylon and Egypt, and after two millennia the arithmetical astronomy of the Babylonians merged with the Gree ...Show more
The Periodic Table by Eric R. Scerri
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The periodic table of elements, first encountered by many of us at school, provides an arrangement of the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic number, electron configuration, and recurring chemical properties, and divided into periodic trends. In this Very Short Introduction Eric R. Scerri looks a ...Show more
Viruses by Dorothy H. Crawford
Category: Science | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Viruses are big news. From pandemics such as HIV, swine flu, and SARS, we are constantly being bombarded with information about new lethal infections. In this Very Short Introduction Dorothy Crawford demonstrates how clever these entities really are. From their discovery and the unravelling oftheir intr ...Show more
World Music: a Very Short Introduction by Philip V. Bohlman
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
World Music draws readers into a remarkable range of historical encounters, in which music had the power to evoke the exotic and to give voice to the voiceless. In the course of the volume's eight chapters the reader witnesses music's involvement in the modern world, but also the individual moments and ...Show more