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Author
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Very short introductions volume 492
Language
English
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Description
"The 2014 Ebola epidemic demonstrated the power of pandemics and their ability not only to destroy lives locally but also to capture the imagination and terrify the world. Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped history and, at the same time, social behavior has influenced pandemic disease. Extremely interesting from a medical standpoint,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 102
Language
English
Formats
Description
Art History: A Very Short Introduction considers the issues, debates, and artefacts that make up art history. It explores the emergence of social histories of art and, using a wide range of images, it discusses key aspects of the discipline including how we write about, present, read, and look at art, and the impact this has on our understanding of art history. This second edition includes a new chapter on global art histories, considering how the...
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Series
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English
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Description
The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 123
Language
English
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Description
"Amid the many catastrophes of the twentieth century, the Spanish Civil War continues to exert a particular fascination among history buffs and the lay-reader alike. This Very Short Introduction integrates the political, social and cultural history of the Spanish Civil War. It sets out the domestic and international context of the war for a general readership. In addition to tracing the course of war, the book locates the war's origins in the cumulative...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 63
Language
English
Formats
Description
This concise, accessible introduction provides an analytical narrative of the main events and developments in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1936. It examines the impact of the revolution on society as whole-on different classes, ethnic groups, the army, men and women, youth. Its central concern is to understand how one structure of domination was replaced by another. The book registers the primacy of politics but situates political developments firmly...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 148
Language
English
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Description
"In this wide-ranging exploration of the Renaissance, Jerry Brotton shows the period as a time of unprecedented intellectual excitement, cultural experimentation, and interaction on a global scale, alongside a darker side of religion, intolerance, slavery, and massive inequality of wealth and status"--Publisher description.
Author
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Very short introductions volume 689
Language
English
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Description
"The region of the Indus Valley has a 4,000-year-old history, being the site of one of the earliest riverine civilizations in the world, while the modern nation of Pakistan as we know it was created as a postcolonial homeland for the Muslims of British India. This Very Short Introduction looks at Pakistan as one of the two nation-states of the Indian sub-continent that emerged in 1947. Pippa Virdee reaches into the ancient past to understand the complex...
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Language
English
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From the Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century to the entry into peace talks in the late twentieth century the Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict-Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. Marc Mulholland explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history-the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA, and of the opposition,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 666
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The American South has a dramatic history that has made it a distinctive place on the world stage, one with continuing significance into the twenty-first century. Its early history illuminates the expansion of Europe into the New World, creating a colonial, plantation, slave society that made it different from other parts of the United States but fostered commonalities with other southern places that had similar colonial experiences. The Civil War...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 578
Language
English
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Description
"From early slave rebels to radical reformers of the Civil War era and beyond, the struggle to end slavery was a diverse, dynamic, and ramifying social movement. In this succinct narrative, Richard S. Newman examines the key people, themes, and ideas that animated abolitionism in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries in the United States and internationally. Filled with portraits of key abolitionists - including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 160
Language
English
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Description
"Until recently, Africa was seen by the outside world as being without history, a continent left behind in the wider story of human progress. But our understanding of the African past is very different today. This Very Short Introduction examines the changing ways in which African history has been understood and represented by historians and by Africans themselves. Examples drawn from across the continent and from the African diaspora beyond are used...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 720
Language
English
Formats
Description
Cinema is a powerful cultural medium, both reflecting and influencing society. The role of British cinema has been controversial--sometimes derided, but also vigorously celebrated, especially for specific films and film-makers. In this Very Short Introduction, Charles Barr considers cinema in Britain against the backdrop of changing artistic, socio-political, and industrial climates up to the present day. He traces how British cinema has developed...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 396
Language
English
Description
"This short introduction to American slavery begins with the Portuguese capture of Africans in the 1400s and, drawing upon the scholarship of numerous historians as well as the analysis of primary documents, explores the development of slavery in the American colonies and later, the United States of America. It analyzes early legislation in Virginia that differentiated Indians and Africans from Europeans and began the process of stratifying society...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 54
Language
English
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Description
The French Revolution is a time of history made familiar from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of let them eat cake, and tricolors. Beginning in 1789, this period of extreme political and social unrest saw the end of the French monarchy, the death of an extraordinary number of people beneath the guillotine's blade during the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon, as well as far reaching consequences still with us today, such...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 408
Language
English
Description
"Iran has rarely been out of the headlines, yet media interest and extensive coverage rarely translates into more than a superficial understanding of Iran, its identity, and its people. In this Very Short Introduction, Ali M. Ansari takes a new look at Iranian history and politics, placing the Islamic Revolution in the context of a century of political change and social transformation. Ansari argues that conflict and confrontation are not inevitable,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 141
Language
English
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Description
How much have women's lives really changed? In the West women still come up against the "glass ceiling" at work, most earning considerably less than their male counterparts. What are we to make of the now commonplace insistence that feminism deprives men of their rights and dignities? And how does one tackle the issue of female emancipation in different cultural and economic environments-in, for example, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent,...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 374
Language
English
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Description
This book explores the lands of the ancient Near East from around 3200 BCE to 539 BCE. The earth-shaking changes that marked this era include such fundamental inventions as the wheel and the plow and intellectual feats such as the inventions of astronomy, law, and diplomacy.
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 334
Language
English
Description
In a miracle of concision, Paul S. Boyer provides a wide-ranging and authoritative history of America, capturing in a compact space the full story of our nation. Ranging from the earliest Native American settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, diplomacy, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, cultural, and scientific developments that shaped our country. Here is...
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