He dabbled in all the mysteries of his time: the heavenly bodies, sound amplification, museology, botany, Asian languages, the pyramids of Egypt—almost anything incompletely understood. Kircher coined the term electromagnetism, printed Sanskrit for the first time in a Western book, and built a famous museum collection. His wild, beautifully illustrated books are sometimes visionary, frequently wrong, and yet compelling documents in the history of ideas. They are being rediscovered in our own time. This volume contains new essays on Kircher and his world by leading historians and historians of science, including Stephen Jay Gould, Ingrid Rowland, Anthony Grafton, Daniel Stoltzenberg, Paula Findlen, and Barbara Stafford.

    Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean covers the history of the Barbary Pirates.Heraklion Press has included a linked table of contents for easy navigation.

    --David W. Tracy A major contribution to Jewish-Christian relations. --Marc Tanenbaum It will bring the Catholic community an entirely new development in their thinking about the people of the Jewish faith. --Robert F. Drinan It comes from the heart of an honest priest who is deeply moved by the poisonous horror of anti-Semitism, and who appeals to his people to remember that...it is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, and a malady of Christian love. --Abram Sachar A definitive work. --Benjamin Epstein This revised and updated edition of THE ANGUISH OF THE JEWS - a classic history of anti-Semitism written by a Roman Catholic priest and now with a foreword by Philip Cunningham is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1964. Hailed by Jews and Christians alike as a groundbreaking book that did much to expose the reality of historical anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world, it includes material covering the last two decades; it considers developments in the Middle East, and it explores the impact that Judaic studies have had on Christian thought. +

    Tracing the dynamic relationships among plants, peoples, states, and economies over the course of three centuries, this collection of essays offers a lively challenge to a historiography that has emphasized the rise of modern botany as a story of taxonomies and pure systems of classification. Charting a new map of botany along colonial coordinates, reaching from Europe to the New World, India, Asia, and other points on the globe, Colonial Botany explores how the study, naming, cultivation, and marketing of rare and beautiful plants resulted from and shaped European voyages, conquests, global trade, and scientific exploration.From the earliest voyages of discovery, naturalists sought profitable plants for king and country, personal and corporate gain. Costly spices and valuable medicinal plants such as nutmeg, tobacco, sugar, Peruvian bark, peppers, cloves, cinnamon, and tea ranked prominently among the motivations for European voyages of discovery. At the same time, colonial profits depended largely on natural historical exploration and the precise identification and effective cultivation of profitable plants. This volume breaks new ground by treating the development of the science of botany in its colonial context and situating the early modern exploration of the plant world at the volatile nexus of science, commerce, and state politics.Written by scholars as international as their subjects, Colonial Botany uncovers an emerging cultural history of plants and botanical practices in Europe and its possessions.

    Simultaneously admired and vilified, he personified the rake-hell. Libertine, profane, promiscuous, heshocked his pious contemporaries with his doubts about religion and his blunt verses that dealt with sex or vicious satiric assaults on the high and mighty of the court. This account of Rochester and his times provides the facts behind his legendary reputation as a rake and his deathbed repentance. However, it also demonstrates that he was a loving if unfaithful husband, a devoted father, a loyal friend, a serious scholar, a social critic, and an aspiringpatriot. An Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Rochester, James William Johnson is the author or editor of nine books and many articles treating British and American Literature.

    Drawing on the latest literature in Swedish and other languages, Paul Lockhart examines the institutions of the Swedish 'empire' at the height of its influence, while focusing on the key historical questions: why did this impoverished state become a great power, how was it able to maintain this status, and what brought about its eventual decline?

    Finally, he considers how resilient the Portuguese overseas communities were, surviving wars and natural disasters, and fending off attacks by the more heavily armed English and Dutch invaders until well into the 1600s.Including a detailed bibliography and glossary, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 is an invaluable textbook for all those studying this fascinating period of European expansion

    Principal themes explored are the consort's formal and informal power, her religious role, and her cultural patronage. Courts surveyed include those of France, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the Imperial court at Vienna, and three German electorates linked to monarchies: Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony-Poland and Hanover (Great Britain). The fourteen contributing authors include distinguished scholars and researchers from Britain, the U.S. and the continent.

    This school of thought emphasized the great goodness of God, the accord between reason and faith, an integrated life of virtue, and the deep joy of living in concord with God. In an important introduction, the editors situate the Cambridge Platonist movement in its historical and religious setting: the decades of turbulence and political crises surrounding the English Civil War. They then offer brief biographical portraits of the principal members of the movement: Benjamin Whichcote; Henry More; Ralph Cudworth; John Smith; Peter Sterry; Nathaniel Culverwell; and Anne Conway. Following the introduction is a representative sample of Cambridge Platonist writings. Scholars and students of 17th-century England, Christian spirituality of the early modern era, intellectual history, and faith and reason will appreciate this treatment of the spiritual life and work of an often overlooked, but significant, movement. +

    Neglected authors and themes, as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding print market, are discussed in their social and historical contexts. The volume also includes a complete chronology and bibliographies.

    

    Full of torment and torture, heinous homicides, and cataclysms of nature, these pages contain multiple murders, horrendous hauntings, and audacious thefts.  Have you heard the story of the pub landlord who attempted to end it all by leaping down his own well? All he achieved was a broken ankle. Also featured here are the Watchfield farmer who tried to turn his wife into cooking fat, the family who charged people to view their relative's decapitated body, and the violent poltergeist activity that took place at the old forge at Finchampstead and made national news headlines in 1926. This compilation of grim deeds contains a veritable plethora of poisonings, assaults, drownings, kidnappings, suicides, and disasters. If you have ever wondered about what nasty goings-on occurred in the Berkshire of yesteryear, then look no further—it's all here. But do you have the stomach for it?

    Although his professional life centered on the Church of England, it was his brilliance as a writer that brought him, briefly, into the center of power as chief publicist for the Tory regime. With the dissolution of the Harley regime, however, Swift was "exiled" back to Ireland, where he spent the remaining decades of his life as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral.