MacMullen’s provocative conclusion is that mass conversions to Christianity were based more on the appeal of miracle or the opportunity for worldly advantages than simply on a “rising tide of Christian piety.”“Provocative to the Christian religious scholar and the nonreligious historian alike. . . . MacMullen’s style is lucid, and the story of a period with its own innate interest is narrated with compelling feeling. . . . It is an important book, and highly recommended for the general reader of history as well as the Christian who wonders how the ‘Jesus movement’ came, by Constantine’s time, to be the church we know—Choice“Written in a fresh and vigorous style, . . . [this book] offers an admirable survey of some major aspects of the history [of the early Christian church].”—Robert M. Grant, New York Times Book Review “Gently provocative. . . . MacMullen has written an instructive and enjoyable book on a great theme.”—Henry Chadwick, Times Literary Supplement  “A carefully argued and well-written study.”—Jackson P. Hershbell, Library Journal

    AD 539-594) is a fascinating exploration of the events that shaped sixth-century France. This volume contains all ten books from the work, the last seven of which provide an in-depth description of Gregory's own era, in which he played an important role as Bishop of Tours. With skill and eloquence, Gregory brings the age vividly to life, as he relates the exploits of missionaries, martyrs, kings and queens - including the quarrelling sons of Lothar I, and the ruthless Queen Fredegund, third wife of Chilperic. Portraying an age of staggering cruelty and rapid change, this is a powerful depiction of the turbulent progression of faith at a time of political and social chaos.

    But as Europe moves into the second decade of the twenty-first century, problems are multiplying—problems that arose due to the EU's very existence. In The Trouble with Europe, Roger Bootle, winner of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, tackles the uncomfortable truth that the European Union might be going down—and could take the global economy with it.Bootle expertly outlines the factors that gave birth to the European union of the twentieth century, from the collective Euro-spirit that initiated a solution to the region's various problems and the subsequent unforeseen consequences of the compromises nations made in order to create a sustainable organization. Bootle examines how the euro has hindered independent actions of member nations, both economically and politically, before envisaging how a post-EU Europe might come about and how it would affect the United Kingdom, along with other member states and the world at large. Is a full dissolution the only answer or could the United Kingdom's withdrawal be a viable course of action? With EU elections looming in May 2014, The Trouble with Europe is a compelling read for anyone interested in the economic, political, and social future of the United Kingdom and all of Europe.Roger Bootle is an economist and a weekly columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He is currently the managing director of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy. Bootle is the author of several books, including The Trouble with Markets and Money for Nothing.

    In 1450, all of western Europe's books were hand-copied and amounted to no more than are in a modern public library. By 1500, printed books numbered in the millions. Johann Gutenberg's invention of movable type ignited the explosion of art, literature, and scientific research that accelerated the Renaissance and led directly to the Modern Age. In Gutenberg, you?ll meet the genius who fostered this revolution, discover the surprising ambitions that drove him, and learn how a single, obscure artisan changed the course of history."His story is one of genius very nearly denied. A few records less, and we would not now be revering the Gutenberg Bible as his. All we would have would be the results: an idea that changed the world and a book that is amongst the most astonishing objects ever created?a jewel of art and technology, one that emerged fully formed, of a perfection beyond anything required by its purpose. It is a reminder that the business Gutenberg started . . . contains elements of the sublime?that at the heart of the mountains of printed dross there is gold." --From the Introduction to Gutenberg

    As Chicanos engaged in widespread protest in their struggle for social justice, civil rights, and self-determination, women in el movimiento became increasingly militant about the gap between the rhetoric of equality and the organizational culture that suppressed women's leadership and subjected women to chauvinism, discrimination, and sexual harassment. Based on rich oral histories and extensive archival research, Maylei Blackwell analyzes the struggles over gender and sexuality within the Chicano Movement and illustrates how those struggles produced new forms of racial consciousness, gender awareness, and political identities.Chicana Power! provides a critical genealogy of pioneering Chicana activist and theorist Anna NietoGomez and the Hijas de Cuauhtemoc, one of the first Latina feminist organizations, who together with other Chicana activists forged an autonomous space for women's political participation and challenged the gendered confines of Chicano nationalism in the movement and in the formation of the field of Chicana studies. She uncovers the multifaceted vision of liberation that continues to reverberate today as contemporary activists, artists, and intellectuals, both grassroots and academic, struggle for, revise, and rework the political legacy of Chicana feminism.

    This provocative book shows that Europe in the Middle Ages was as much a product of a process of conquest and colonization as it was later a colonizer.

    Bossy begins with a systematic exposition of traditional or pre-Reformation Christianity, exploring the forces that tended to undermine it, the characteristics of the Protestant and Catholic regimes that superseded it, and the fall-out that resulted from its disintegration.

    Peggy Pascoe demonstrates how these laws were enacted and applied not just in the South but throughout most of the country, in the West, the North, and the Midwest. Beginning in the Reconstruction era, when the term miscegenation first was coined, she traces the creation of a racial hierarchy that bolstered white supremacy and banned the marriage of Whites to Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and American Indians as well as the marriage of Whites to Blacks. She ends not simply with the landmark 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court finally struck down miscegenation laws throughout the country, but looks at the implications of ideas of colorblindness that replaced them. What Comes Naturally is both accessible to the general reader and informative to the specialist, a rare feat for an original work of history based on archival research.

    These recipes, stories, jokes, advice, farm lore, and illustrations were collected from a wide variety of American agricultural sources from the 1880s to the 1950s.

    Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women whose stories appear only briefly in historical records. Fuentes takes us through the streets of Bridgetown with an enslaved runaway; inside a brothel run by a freed woman of color; in the midst of a white urban household in sexual chaos; to the gallows where enslaved people were executed; and within violent scenes of enslaved women's punishments. In the process, Fuentes interrogates the archive and its historical production to expose the ongoing effects of white colonial power that constrain what can be known about these women.Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed Lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death. By vividly recounting enslaved life through the experiences of individual women and illuminating their conditions of confinement through the legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, colonial authorities, and the archive, Fuentes challenges the way we write histories of vulnerable and often invisible subjects.

    Karl Marx was a 19th-century philosopher, political economist, sociologist, humanist, political theorist and revolutionary.