The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin? The moment of the universe's conception is one of science's Holy Grails, investigated by some of the most brilliant and inquisitive minds across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher, who lost his sight during the fifty years it took him to compose his Annals of all known history, now famous only for one date: 4004 b.c. Ussher's date for the creation of the world was spectacularly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being so widely accepted that it was printed in early twentieth-century Bibles. As writer and documentary filmmaker Martin Gorst vividly illustrates in this captivating, character-driven narrative, theology let Ussher down just as it had thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time. In the eighteenth century, naturalist Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled, came up with an age of 74,832 years, even though he suspected this was far too low. Biology then had a go in the hands of fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged to have found a specimen of a man drowned at the time of Noah's flood. Regrettably it was only the imprint of a large salamander. And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics, radioactivity, and, most recently, the astronomers at the controls of the Hubble space telescope, who put the beginning of time at 13.4 billion years ago (give or take a billion). Taking the reader into the laboratories and salons of scholars and scientists, visionaries and eccentrics, Measuring Eternity is an engagingly written account of an epic, often quixotic quest, of how individuals who dedicated their lives to solving an enduring mystery advanced our knowledge of the universe.
The moment of the beginning of time is one of science's Holy Grails, pursued by devotees and obsessives across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher who lost his sight in his 50 year quest, laboriously outlined in his 2000 Latin pages of Annals - a chronology of all known history - that is now famous only for one spectacularly inaccurate date: 4004BC, the creation of the world. Theology failed Ussher, just as it thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many others before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time: the Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled came up with age of 74,832 years even though he suspected this was far too little. Biology had a go in the eighteenth century in the hands of Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged that a fossil he had found was of a man at the time of Noah's flood; regrettably what he had was a large salamander. And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics and radioactivity - each new discovery being applied to the enduring mystery: when had time begun. Until now where telescopes of remarkable vision offer a glimpse of the answer, but the moment may prove to be indefinable just as we are on the verge of locating it.
Superb new musical based on the famous classic novel by E Nesbit. Set in London and Yorkshire in the year 1905 it is the story of a mother and three children fallen on hard times when father is wrongly accused and imprisoned. Going from prosperity to poverty they have to make great adjustments, and the children's interest in the local railway station brings adventures aplenty, before the family is finally reunited. CD, video, orchestral parts and backing tapes are available.
The untold story of the religious figures, philosophers, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and mathematicians who, for more than four hundred years, have pursued the answer to a fundamental question at the intersection of science and religion: When did the universe begin? The moment of the universe's conception is one of science's Holy Grails, investigated by some of the most brilliant and inquisitive minds across the ages. Few were more committed than Bishop James Ussher, who lost his sight during the fifty years it took him to compose his Annals of all known history, now famous only for one date: 4004 b.c. Ussher's date for the creation of the world was spectacularly inaccurate, but that didn't stop it from being so widely accepted that it was printed in early twentieth-century Bibles. As writer and documentary filmmaker Martin Gorst vividly illustrates in this captivating, character-driven narrative, theology let Ussher down just as it had thwarted Theophilus of Antioch and many before him. Geology was next to fail the test of time. In the eighteenth century, naturalist Comte de Buffon, working out the rate at which the earth was supposed to have cooled, came up with an age of 74,832 years, even though he suspected this was far too low. Biology then had a go in the hands of fossil hunter Johann Scheuchzer, who alleged to have found a specimen of a man drowned at the time of Noah's flood. Regrettably it was only the imprint of a large salamander. And so science inched forward via Darwinism, thermodynamics, radioactivity, and, most recently, the astronomers at the controls of the Hubble space telescope, who put the beginning of time at 13.4 billion years ago (give or take a billion). Taking the reader into the laboratories and salons of scholars and scientists, visionaries and eccentrics, Measuring Eternity is an engagingly written account of an epic, often quixotic quest, of how individuals who dedicated their lives to solving an enduring mystery advanced our knowledge of the universe.
This book offers a unique look at historical policymaking to explore how nineteenth-century fiction writers influenced the creation of public-school systems in Denmark and Great Britain. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details"--
This book collects a number of Martin Shefter's most important articles on political parties. They address three questions: Under what conditions will strong party organizations emerge? What influences the character of parties--in particular, their reliance on patronage? In what circumstances will the parties that formerly dominated politics in a nation or city come under attack? Shefter's work exemplifies the "new institutionalism" in political science, arguing that the reliance of parties on patronage is a function not so much of mass political culture as of their relationship with public bureaucracies. The book's opening chapters analyze the circumstances conducive to the emergence of strong political parties and the changing balance between parties and bureaucracies in Europe and America. The middle chapters discuss the organization and exclusion of the American working classes by machine and reform regimes. The book concludes by examining party organizations as instruments of political control in the largest American city, New York.
An examination of the ways in which gender intersects with informal and formal education in England, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, USA and the Netherlands. The book looks at various issues including: citizenship; authority; colonialism and education; and the construction of national identities.
This book analyzes motivation, investments, and influence of the Russian Federation and Russian companies in the European oil sector, specifically, the Southeastern Europe. The main idea of the book is to highlight economic and political logic of the Russian activities in the oil sector as well as to provide a brief analysis of the situation in the natural gas sector. The findings help to understand the general code of conduct of Russian energy companies and their potential ties to their homeland government. This project will appeal to academics, researchers, graduate students, field professionals, and everyone who is interested in Russian and European geopolitics.
The Life of the American Beauty Who Became the Toast--and Scandal--of Two Continents, Ruled an Age and Raised a Son—Winston Churchill—Who Shaped History
The Life of the American Beauty Who Became the Toast--and Scandal--of Two Continents, Ruled an Age and Raised a Son—Winston Churchill—Who Shaped History
A master work...Jennie was released to a public that became entranced by her story, and will again be now that she is back in print in this magnificent single volume." —from the foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill Sourcebooks is bringing the internationally acclaimed New York Times bestseller back for a new generation of readers. Jennie Churchill was not merely Winston's mother. She was the most captivating and desired woman of her age. Originally from Brooklyn, Jennie became the reigning queen of British society. Beautiful and defiant, she lived with an honesty that made her the talk of two continents. Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, writes that Jennie is, "a master work" that "pulses with energy as the author leads us from her cradle to relatively early grave, at the age of sixty-seven, of a woman who finally emerges—under his guiding hand—from the shadow of being a great man's mother, to being a woman in her own right.
Making Socialists combines a biographical study of a (nowadays) virtually unknown woman with an original exploration of several major themes in late nineteenth and early twentieth century political and educational history. More than a local politician, Mary Bridges Adams was among the dynamic late nineteenth-century women activists who sought to transform government policy through socialist initiatives, with the ultimate (utopian) aim of creating a social nation. The author has assembled a thorough range of sources, including new materials that will bring fresh insights to this biography and more generally to Labour Party and socialist historiography, well-studied topics. The people Adams knew and the circles in which she travelled are particularly attractive features of this book. Foes thought her an awful woman: friends like George Bernard Shaw remembered the power of her oratory. Placed against the circumstances in which she lived and presented as part of a militant and anti-capitalist tradition within labour history, her life story contributes to new ways of seeing both socialist and feminist politics.
Earth’s Evolving Systems: The History of Planet Earth, Second Edition is an introductory text designed for popular courses in undergraduate Earth history. Written from a “systems perspective,” it provides coverage of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, and discussion of how those systems interacted over the course of geologic time.
Whether ghosts, astrology or ESP, up to 80 per cent of the population believes in one or more aspects of the paranormal. Such beliefs are entertaining, and it is tempting to think of them as harmless. However, there is mounting evidence that paranormal beliefs can be dangerous - cases of children dying because parents rejected orthodox medicine in favour of alternative remedies, and 'psychics' who trade on the grief of the bereaved for personal profit and gain. Expenditure on the paranormal runs into billions of dollars each year. In Beyond Belief: Skepticism, Science and the Paranormal Martin Bridgstock provides an integrated understanding of what an evidence-based approach to the paranormal - a skeptical approach - involves, and why it is necessary. Bridgstock does not set out to show that all paranormal claims are necessarily false, but he does suggest that we all need the analytical ability and critical thinking skills to seek and assess the evidence for paranormal claims.
This book maps the current state of policy, service provision and funding for mental health care across Europe, taking into account the differing historical contexts that have shaped both the development and the delivery of services.
Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases explores the development of criminal justice in Canada through an in-depth examination of ten significant criminal cases. Martin L. Friedland draws on cases that went to the Supreme Court of Canada or the Privy Council, including well-known cases such as those of Louis Riel, Steven Truscott, Henry Morgentaler, and Jamie Gladue. The book addresses such issues as wrongful convictions, the enforcement of morality, Indigenous experiences with criminal law, bail and trial delay, and the impact of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the criminal justice system. Friedland describes in a masterful way the factual background of each case and the political, social, and economic conditions of the time. Each character – the accused, judges, and counsel – is described in detail, as are the relevant laws and procedures. Friedland includes recommendations on how the criminal justice system can be improved, such as by creating a new federal commission devoted solely to criminal justice and by the enactment by Parliament of enhanced codes of evidence and criminal law and procedure. Canadian Criminal Law in Ten Cases is an indispensable guide to understanding the criminal justice system for lawyers, students, and anyone interested in criminal law and the administration of criminal justice.
Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, originally published in 1902, represented the first serious attempt to analyze the consequences of democratic suffrage by a comparative analysis of political systems. As such, Ostrogorski's two-volume study of the party system in Britain and the United States exerted profound influence on the subsequent writings of Max Weber and Robert Michels. A descriptive analyst of the party system in these two countries, Ostrogorski developed concepts and methods that an-ticipated by nearly half a century those later used by American and British political scientists. The core of Ostrogorski's analysis is a detailed history of the rise of and changes within the party system in Britain and the United States, the first nations to introduce mass suffrage. While the emphasis of Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties is on the similar trends in the political parties of both countries, Ostrogorski also showed concern with the sources of differences between them. Seeking to explain these variations, he suggested a number of fundamental hypotheses about these two societies that con-tinue to be of relevance today. Lipset's substantial introduction places Os-trogorski's work within its historical context and assesses Ostrogorski's im-pact and influence on both his contemporaries and on later political scien-tists.
“A richly textured and deeply moving portrait of greatness” (Los Angeles Times). In this masterful book, prize-winning historian and authorized Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert weaves together the research from his eight-volume biography of the elder statesman into one single volume, and includes new information unavailable at the time of the original work’s publication. Spanning Churchill’s youth, education, and early military career, his journalistic work, and the arc of his political leadership, Churchill: A Life details the great man’s indelible contribution to Britain’s foreign policy and internal social reform. With eyewitness accounts and interviews with Churchill’s contemporaries, including friends, family members, and career adversaries, it provides a revealing picture of the personal life, character, ambition, and drive of one of the world’s most remarkable leaders. “A full and rounded examination of Churchill’s life, both in its personal and political aspects . . . Gilbert describes the painful decade of Churchill’s political exile (1929–1939) and shows how it strengthened him and prepared him for his role in the ‘hour of supreme crisis’ as Britain’s wartime leader. A lucid, comprehensive and authoritative life of the man considered by many to have been the outstanding public figure of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly “Mr. Gilbert’s job was to bring alive before his readers a man of extraordinary genius and scarcely less extraordinary destiny. He has done so triumphantly.” —The New York Times Book Review
The Lancashire Giant tells the story of a nine-year-old cotton weaver who went on to carve out two extraordinary careers for himself. In the first, David Shackleton became a truly dominating presence in the Edwardian trade union movement, was the third MP to be elected under the banner of the Labor party, and played a critical role in the infancy of the party. His second career, begun at Winston Churchill’s prompting in 1910, took him to the summit of the British civil service and to active participation in the deliberations of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet. Prominent union officials have frequently become government ministers, but none has repeated Shackleton’s achievement in becoming the permanent secretary of a ministry. "This distinctive career is presented and analysed in meticulous detail by Ross Martin... The result is a thorough and rounded portrait strengthened by some suggestive analysis of Shackleton as a private individual."—Labor History "An accessible, detailed, analytic and sympathetic study."—English Historical Review
“The most comprehensive account of Israeli history yet published” (Efraim Karsh, The Sunday Telegraph). Fleeing persecution in Europe, thousands of Jewish immigrants settled in Palestine after World War II. Renowned historian Martin Gilbert crafts a riveting account of Israel’s turbulent history, from the birth of the Zionist movement under Theodor Herzl to the unexpected declaration of its statehood in 1948, and through the many wars, conflicts, treaties, negotiations, and events that have shaped its past six decades—including the Six Day War, the Intifada, Suez, and the Yom Kippur War. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand source materials, eyewitness accounts, and his own personal and intimate knowledge of the country, Gilbert weaves a complex narrative that’s both gripping and informative, and probes both the ideals and realities of modern statehood. “Martin Gilbert has left us in his debt, not only for a superlative history of Israel, but also for a restatement of the classic vision of Zion, in which a Middle East without guns is not a bedtime story but an imperative long overdue. This is the vision for which Yitzhak Rabin gave his life. This book is tribute to his memory.” —Jonathan Sacks, The Times (London)
In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution. Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call "deep time" was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field- and museum-based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bursting the Limits of Time, the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science.
Although shattered by war, in 1945 Britain and France still controlled the world's two largest colonial empires, with imperial territories stretched over four continents. And they appeared determined to keep them: the roll-call of British and French politicians, soldiers, settlers and writers who promised in word and print at this time to defend their colonial possessions at all costs is a long one. Yet, within twenty years both empires had almost completely disappeared. The collapse was cataclysmic. Peaceable 'transfers of power' were eclipsed by episodes of territorial partition and mass violence whose bitter aftermath still lingers. Hundreds of millions across four continents were caught up in the biggest reconfiguration of the international system ever seen. In the meantime, even the most dogged imperialists, who had once stiffly defended imperial rule, ultimately bent to the wind of change. By the early 1950s Winston Churchill had retreated from his wartime pledge to keep Britain's Empire intact. And General de Gaulle, who quit the French presidency in 1946 complaining that France's new post-war democracy would never hang on to the country's imperial prizes, narrowly escaped assassination a generation later - after negotiating the humiliating French withdrawal from Algeria. Fight or Flight is the first ever comparative account of this dramatic collapse, explaining the end of the British and French colonial empires as an intertwined, even co-dependent process. Decolonization gathered momentum, not as an empire-specific affair, but as a global one, in which the wider march of twentieth-century history played a vital part: industrial concentration and global depression, World War and Cold War, Communism and other anti-colonial ideologies, mass consumerism and the allure of American popular culture. Above all, as Martin Thomas shows, the internationalization of colonial affairs made it impossible to contain colonial problems locally, spelling the end for Europe's two largest colonial empires in less than two decades from the end of the Second World War.
The Dawn of the Cheap Press provides the first detailed study of the mid-Victorian campaign for the repeal of the taxes on knowledge for over a hundred years. Using the recently discovered papers of the Association for the Promotion of the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge and taking advantage of new forms of research made possible by the digitisation of nineteenth century newspapers, it assesses the impact of the removal of the last surviving legal disabilities on the newspaper industry, the nature of journalism, and the cultures and practices of newspaper reading. The book demonstrates that the campaign against the taxes on knowledge retained broad popular appeal, and played an important role in the politics of mid-Victorian budgets. It not only makes a seminal contribution to the history of the nineteenth century press and print culture, but also illuminates the culture and politics of mid-Victorian Britain, offers an important re-reading of the history of extra-parliamentary pressure group politics and provides new insights into the origins of Gladstonian Liberalism.
World War II was the largest and most devastating war in modern history with far-reaching consequences. The single most important campaign was the Soviet–German war, which consumed the lion share of Germany’s military resources. In contrast to the tone in German and Anglo-American precampaign assessments, the USSR ws able to repulse the invasion after huge losses and turn the table on Germany and her minor Axis allies. This book examines how the two most important Western Allies in World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom, assessed the economic and military potential of the Soviet Union in 1939–1945. Since the USSR was the single most important military contributor to the Allied victory in Europe, and the main target of Germany’s military strength, these assessments are of paramount importance in order to understand how the Anglo-Americans perceived the overall war situation and adjusted their own war effort in accordance with it. Utilising a wide range of documents produced by the Anglo-Americans during and shortly before World War II, this book explores why Soviet strength was underestimated, and how the Soviet economic system, Soviet society and military capabilities were viewed by Western Government observers. The Western Allies and Soviet Potential in World War II is a fascinating read for those in academia studying economic history, international economics and security studies, especially areas on military and strategic.
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