(Timur Lenk would leave piles of severed heads in his conquered cities; another tribe sent nine sacks of ears to their khan.) Less studied is the remarkable effectiveness of their battle techniques: For two thousand years, these horse-archer armies were an unstoppable force to sedentary peoples, be they Romans, Crusaders, Chinese, or medieval. Erik Hildinger introduces the most important of these raiders as well as a host of other tribes and examines in detail their tactics, strategies, and weaponry—a form of highly mobile and defensive warfare that even armies of today can learn from.

    This book will be crucial reading in a time when national authorities continue to blame teachers and students for failures in education. It will help educators and parents to combat sterile attitudes toward teaching and prevent current practices from doing further harm.

    Their “motherland” has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, and the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over the Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe that no country on earth has sacrificed so much for the world. In Russia: The Story of War Gregory Carleton explores the belief in exceptionalism that pervades Russian culture and politics and shows how Russians have forged a distinct identity rooted in war.While outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, Russians themselves see a country surrounded by enemies, poised in a permanent defensive crouch as it fights off one invader after another. Time and again, history has called upon Russia to play the savior―of Europe, of Christianity, of civilization itself―and Russia’s victories, especially over the Nazis in World War II, have come at immense cost. Even its defeats, always suffered on behalf of just causes in this telling, have become a source of pride.War is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic, the factor that transcends its wrenching ideological transformations from the archconservative Russian Empire to the radical-totalitarian Soviet Union to the pseudo-democratic Russian Federation. Today, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia asserts itself in ever bolder ways, knowing how the nation’s war-torn past inflects its self-image is essential to understanding Russia’s sense of place in history and in the world.

    The Battle for Sanskrit seeks to alert traditional scholars of Sanskrit and sanskriti - Indian civilization - concerning an important school of thought that has its base in the US and that has started to dominate the discourse on the cultural, social and political aspects of India. This academic field is called Indology or Sanskrit studies. From their analysis of Sanskrit texts, the scholars of this field are intervening in modern Indian society with the explicitly stated purpose of removing 'poisons' allegedly built into these texts. They hold that many Sanskrit texts are socially oppressive and serve as political weapons in the hands of the ruling elite; that the sacred aspects need to be refuted; and that Sanskrit has long been dead. The traditional Indian experts would outright reject or at least question these positions.The start of Rajiv Malhotra's feisty exploration of where the new thrust in Western Indology goes wrong, and his defence of what he considers the traditional, Indian approach, began with a project related to the Sringeri Sharada Peetham in Karnataka, one of the most sacred institutions for Hindus. There was, as he saw it, a serious risk of distortion of the teachings of the peetham, and of sanatana dharma more broadly.Whichever side of the fence one may be on, The Battle for Sanskrit offers a spirited debate marshalling new insights and research. It is a valuable addition to an important subject, and in a larger context, on two ways of looking. Is each view exclusive of the other, or can there be a bridge between them? Readers can judge for themselves.

    But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade.Told with Roger Crowley's customary skill and verve, this is narrative history at its most vivid - an epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation.