This full-scale sequential reading of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War will be invaluable to the specialist and also to those in search of an introduction and companion to the Histories. Moving beyond other studies by its focus on the reader's role in giving meaning to the text, it reveals Thucydides' use of objectivity not so much as a standard for the proper presentation of his subject matter as a method for communicating with his readers and involving them in the complexity and suffering of the Peloponnesian War. W. Robert Connor shows that as Thucydides' themes and ideas are reintroduced and developed, the initial reactions of the reader are challenged, subverted, and eventually made to contribute to a deeper understanding of the war.
A reprint of the Princeton University Press edition of 1972, with new Preface by the author. In this powerful contribution to our understanding of politics in fifth-century Athens, Connor constructs models of Athenian political groupings to explain the rise of the "new politicians," young men who launched a new kind of democracy by appealing to the citizenry at large. With Pericles as prototype and Cleon as exemplar of the new politician, this engaging work provides an important insight into the politics of Athens at the height of its power.
A reprint of the Princeton University Press edition of 1972, with new Preface by the author. In this powerful contribution to our understanding of politics in fifth-century Athens, Connor constructs models of Athenian political groupings to explain the rise of the "new politicians," young men who launched a new kind of democracy by appealing to the citizenry at large. With Pericles as prototype and Cleon as exemplar of the new politician, this engaging work provides an important insight into the politics of Athens at the height of its power.
The world's first known empires took shape in Mesopotamia between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, beginning around 2350 BCE. The next 2,500 years witnessed sustained imperial growth, bringing a growing share of humanity under the control of ever-fewer states. Two thousand years ago, just four major powers--the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han empires--ruled perhaps two-thirds of the earth's entire population. Yet despite empires' prominence in the early history of civilization, there have been surprisingly few attempts to study the dynamics of ancient empires in the western Old World comparatively. Such grand comparisons were popular in the eighteenth century, but scholars then had only Greek and Latin literature and the Hebrew Bible as evidence, and necessarily framed the problem in different, more limited, terms. Near Eastern texts, and knowledge of their languages, only appeared in large amounts in the later nineteenth century. Neither Karl Marx nor Max Weber could make much use of this material, and not until the 1920s were there enough archaeological data to make syntheses of early European and west Asian history possible. But one consequence of the increase in empirical knowledge was that twentieth-century scholars generally defined the disciplinary and geographical boundaries of their specialties more narrowly than their Enlightenment predecessors had done, shying away from large questions and cross-cultural comparisons. As a result, Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to address these deficits and encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE. A substantial introductory discussion of recent thought on the mechanisms of imperial state formation prefaces the five newly commissioned case studies of the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Roman, and Byzantine empires. A final chapter draws on the findings of evolutionary psychology to improve our understanding of ultimate causation in imperial predation and exploitation in a wide range of historical systems from all over the globe. Contributors include John Haldon, Jack Goldstone, Peter Bedford, Josef Wiesehöfer, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel, and Keith Hopkins, whose essay on Roman political economy was completed just before his death in 2004.
The new edition of this classic text on modern U.S. history seamlessly blends political, social, cultural, intellectual, and economic themes into an authoritative and readable account of America’s national story since the 1890s. Written by four highly respected scholars, this book has been fully updated with new coverage of the Trump and Biden presidencies, the culture wars, deep political polarization, and the crisis of democracy. The text’s most distinctive quality is its close attention to both history within the United States and the relationships the country has forged with the rest of the world. The eighth edition remains engaging and approachable while continuing to include the most recent scholarship. Each chapter contains a special feature section devoted to cultural topics including the arts and architecture, sports and recreation, technology, and education. Web links to additional online resources accompany each feature, offering complementary learning opportunities to students. While carefully attending to the complexity of history, The American Century traces the long roots of some of the most pressing current issues in the United States and continues to be a compelling resource for students of recent American history.
This timely study deals with the heating and cooling ofbuildings using innovative systems that can reduce fossilfuel and electric energy requirements by as much as 80 percent.Emphasis is placed on thermal storage, utility rate structures,peak load problems, and cogeneration of heat and powerin small-scale applications. The first several chapterstreat promises and problems of solar energy use for efficientcomfort conditioning. Other contributions deal with thesocial implications of future energy efficiency requirementswith a focus on the community.
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