Through astute diplomacy, economic investment, and a series of ambitious military campaigns into the heart of Central Eurasia, the Manchu rulers defeated the Zunghar Mongols, and brought all of modern Xinjiang and Mongolia under their control.

    It was the world of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Jefferson, and also of Gullah Jack, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass. Now, in the first volume of his long awaited, monumental study of the South's road to disunion, historian William Freehling offers a sweeping political and social history of the antebellum South from 1776 to 1854. All the dramatic events leading to secession are here: the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Controversy, the Gag Rule ("the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy"), the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Freehling vividly recounts each crisis, illuminating complex issues and sketching colorful portraits of major figures. Along the way, he reveals the surprising extent to which slavery influenced national politics before 1850, and he provides important reinterpretations of American republicanism, Jeffersonian states' rights, Jacksonian democracy, and the causes of the American Civil War. But for all Freehling's brilliant insight into American antebellum politics, Secessionists at Bay is at bottom the saga of the rich social tapestry of the pre-war South. He takes us to old Charleston, Natchez, and Nashville, to the big house of a typical plantation, and we feel anew the tensions between the slaveowner and his family, the poor whites and the planters, the established South and the newer South, and especially between the slave and his master, "Cuffee" and "Massa." Freehling brings the Old South back to life in all its color, cruelty, and diversity. It is a memorable portrait, certain to be a key analysis of this crucial era in American history.

    The Swiss Army is so quietly efficient at the art of war that the Isrealis carefully patterned their own military on the Swiss model.

    Putting scandals in the Church and the media's response in a much larger context, this stimulating history is a model of nuanced scholarship and provocative reading.

    This penetrating analysis unlocks the mysteries of Arab society to help us better understand a complex, proud and ancient culture.The Arab Mind discusses the upbringing of a typical Arab boy or girl, the intense concern with honor and courage, the Arabs' tendency toward extremes of behavior, and their ambivalent attitudes toward the West. Chapters are devoted to the influence of Islam, sexual mores, Arab language and Arab art, Bedouin values, Arab nationalism, and the pervasive influence of Westernization.With a new foreword by Norvell B. DeAtkine, Director of Middle East Studies at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg, N.C., this book unravels the complexities of Arab traditions and provides authentic revelations of Arab mind and character.

    Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."

    But the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as "political meritocracy." "The China Model" seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? Daniel Bell answers these questions and more.Opening with a critique of "one person, one vote" as a way of choosing top leaders, Bell argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. He discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. Bell summarizes and evaluates the "China model"--meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom--and its implications for the rest of the world.A timely and original book that will stir up interest and debate, "The China Model" looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.

    Though most people know of him only for the famous Pythagorean Theorem (a2 +b2=c2), in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition—belief that the universe is rational, that there is unity to all things, and that numbers and mathematics are a powerful guide to truth about nature and the cosmos—hark back to the convictions of this legendary sixth-century B.C. scholar.Born around 570 B.C. on the cultured Aegean island of Samos, Pythagoras (according to ancient tales) studied with the sage Thales nearby at Miletus, and with priests and scribes in Egypt and Babylon. Eventually he founded his own school at Croton in southern Italy, where he and his followers began to unravel the surprising deep truths concealed behind such ordinary tasks as tuning a lyre. While considering why some string lengths produced beautiful sounds and others discordant ones, they uncovered the ratios of musical harmony, and recognized that hidden behind the confusion and complexity of nature are patterns and orderly relationships. They had surprised the Creator at his drafting board and had glimpsed the mind of God! Some of them later would also find something darker in numbers and nature: irrationality, a revelation so unsettling and subversive that it may have contributed to the destruction of their brotherhood.Praised for her ability to illuminate complex subjects, Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes the archaic world of Pythagoras, showing how ideas spread in antiquity, chronicling the influence he and his followers have had on so many extraordinary people in the history of Western thought and science, and bringing a poignant human saga to readers who are daily reminded that harmony and chaos can and do coexist.

    Hine and John Mack Faragher, present the American West as both frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new, and they show how men and women of all ethnic groups were affected when different cultures met and clashed. Their concise and engaging survey of frontier history traces the story from the first Columbian contacts between Indians and Europeans to the multicultural encounters of the modern Southwest.The book attunes us to the voices of the frontier’s many diverse peoples: Indians, struggling to defend their homelands and searching for a way to live with colonialism; the men and women who became immigrants and colonists from all over the world; African Americans, both slave and free; and borderland migrants from Mexico, Canada, and Asian lands. Profusely illustrated with contemporary drawings, posters, and photographs and written in lively and accessible prose, the book not only presents a panoramic view of historical events and characters but also provides fascinating details about such topics as western landscapes, environmental movements, literature, visual arts, and film.Following in the tradition of Hine’s earlier acclaimed work, The American West: An Interpretive History, this volume will be an essential resource for scholars, students, and general readers.

    Soldiers, mercenaries, free-booters. Europeans all, braving the heat and dust of India. They fought for wealth, for glory, and for sheer fun. Their glorious and inglorious exploits are full of thrill, romance, and violence. Ruskin Bond has recreated the turbulent and colourful India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the soldiers of fortune strutting across the subcontinent. The saga of their lives and loves in Delhi, Jaipur, Aligarh, Sardhana, and Lucknow reads stranger than fiction.

    Martin Luther King, Jr.-America's best-known champion of civil liberties-was a Baptist minister. Father Divine, a fiery preacher who established a largefollowing in the 1920s and 1930s, convinced his disciples that he could cure not only disease and infirmity, but also poverty and racism.An in-depth examination of African-American history and religion, this comprehensive and lively book provides panoramic coverage of the black religious and social experience in America. Renowned historian Albert J. Raboteau traces the subtle blending of African tribal customs with the powerfulChristian establishment, the migration to cities, the growth of Islam, and the 200-year fight for freedom and identity which was so often centered around African-American churches. From the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Nation of Islam and from the first African slaves to LouisFarrakhan, this far-reaching book chronicles the evolution of an important and influential component of our religious and historical heritage. African American Religion combines meticulously researched historical facts with a fast-paced, engaging narrative that will appeal to readers of any age.

    Now, in The Persian Puzzle, published to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, he examines the behind-the-scenes story of the tumultuous relationship between Iran and the United States, and weighs options for the future.Here Pollack, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official, brings his keen analysis and insider perspective to the long and ongoing clash between the United States and Iran, beginning with the fall of the shah and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Pollack examines all the major events in U.S.-Iran relations–including the hostage crisis, the U.S. tilt toward Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iran-Contra scandal, American-Iranian military tensions in 1987 and 1988, the covert Iranian war against U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf that culminated in the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, and recent U.S.-Iran skirmishes over Afghanistan and Iraq. He explains the strategies and motives from American and Iranian perspectives and tells how each crisis colored the thinking of both countries’ leadership as they shaped and reshaped their policies over time. Pollack also describes efforts by moderates of various stripes to try to find some way past animosities to create a new dynamic in Iranian-American relations, only to find that when one side was ready for such a step, the other side fell short.With balanced tone and insight, Pollack explains how the United States and Iran reached this impasse; why this relationship is critical to regional, global, and U.S. interests; and what basic political choices are available as we deal with this important but deeply troubled country.From the Hardcover edition.

    Miller's lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In what light did they see themselves? As men and women undertaking a mission that was its own cause and justification? Or did they consider themselves errand boys for a higher power which might, as is frequently the habit of authority, change its mind about the importance of their job before they had completed it?These questions are by no means frivolous. They go to the roots of seventeenth-century thought and of the ever-widening and quickening flow of events since then. Disguised from twentieth-century readers first by the New Testament language and thought of the Puritans and later by the complacent transcendentalist belief in the oversoul, the related problems of purpose and reason-for-being have been central to the American experience from the very beginning. Mr. Miller makes this abundantly clear and real, and in doing so allows the reader to conclude that, whatever else America might have become, it could never have developed into a society that took itself for granted.The title, Errand into the Wilderness, is taken from the title of a Massachusetts election sermon of 1670. Like so many jeremiads of its time, this sermon appeared to be addressed to the sinful and unregenerate whom God was about to destroy. But the original speaker's underlying concern was with the fateful ambiguity in the word errand. Whose errand?This crucial uncertainty of the age is the starting point of Mr. Miller's engrossing account of what happened to the European mind when, in spite of itself, it began to become something other than European. For the second generation in America discovered that their heroic parents had, in fact, been sent on a fool's errand, the bitterest kind of all; that the dream of a model society to be built in purity by the elect in the new continent was now a dream that meant nothing more to Europe. The emigrants were on their own. Thus left alone with America, who were they? And what were they to do?In this book, as in all his work, the author of The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century; The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, and The Transcendentalists, emphasizes the need for understanding the human sources from which the American mainstream has risen. In this integrated series of brilliant and witty essays which he describes as "pieces," Perry Miller invites and stimulates in the reader a new conception of his own inheritance.

    Alexander Etkind traces how the Russian Empire conquered foreign territories and domesticated its own heartlands, thereby colonizing many peoples, Russians included. This vision of colonization as simultaneously internal and external, colonizing one's own people as well as others, is crucial for scholars of empire, colonialism and globalization. Starting with the fur trade, which shaped its enormous territory, and ending with Russia's collapse in 1917, Etkind explores serfdom, the peasant commune, and other institutions of internal colonization. His account brings out the formative role of foreign colonies in Russia, the self-colonizing discourse of Russian classical historiography, and the revolutionary leaders' illusory hopes for an alliance with the exotic, pacifist sectarians. Transcending the boundaries between history and literature, Etkind examines striking writings about Russia's imperial experience, from Defoe to Tolstoy and from Gogol to Conrad. This path-breaking book blends together historical, theoretical and literary analysis in a highly original way. It will be essential reading for students of Russian history and literature and for anyone interested in the literary and cultural aspects of colonization and its aftermath.

    One-third of the world's Muslims now live as members of a minority. At the heart of this development is, on the one hand, the voluntary settlement of Muslims in Western societies and, on the other, the pervasiveness and influence of Western cultural models and social norms. The revival of Islam among Muslim populations in the last twenty years is often wrongly perceived as a backlash against westernization rather than as one of its consequences. Neofundamentalism has been gaining ground among a rootless Muslim youth--particularly among the second- and third-generation migrants in the West--and this phenomenon is feeding new forms of radicalism, ranging from support for Al Qaeda to the outright rejection of integration into Western society.In this brilliant exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernization, Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or "re-Islamization," results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context. A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world--including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbollah of Lebanon--and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary ummah, or Muslim community, not embedded in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful, like Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. He shows how neofundamentalism acknowledges without nostalgia the loss of pristine cultures, constructing instead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. Thus contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is not a single-note reaction against westernization but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalization.