A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee's first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athletic prowess alone would not explain Bradley's magnetism, which is in the quality of the man himself—his self-discipline, his rationality, and his sense of responsibility. Here is a portrait of Bradley as he was in college, before his time with the New York Knicks and his election to the U.S. Senate—a story that suggests the abundant beginnings of his professional careers in sport and politics.

    Historian J.E. Lendon presents a sweeping tale of pitched battles by land & sea, sieges, sacks, raids, & deeds of cruelty & guile—along with courageous acts of mercy, surprising charity, austere restraint & arrogant resistance. Recounting the rise of democratic Athens to great-power status, & the resulting fury of authoritarian Sparta, Greece’s traditional leader, Lendon portrays the causes & strategy of the war as a duel over national honor, a series of acts of revenge. A story of new pride challenging old, Song of Wrath is the 1st work of Ancient Greek history for the post-cold-war generation.

    He projects Ted Kaczynski's life against the sinister background of the Cold War, when the prospect of nuclear conflict generated a fear of technology and a culture of despair on American college campuses. On these same campuses, federal agencies enlisted psychologists in a covert search for technologies of mind control and encouraged ethically questionable experiments on unwitting students. Harvard University, to postgraduate study and to the edge of the wilderness in Montana, where he put his unthinkable plans into action. His reign of terror is rendered in detail and interwoven with this narrative is the chilling counterpoint of Kaczynki's coded journal entries on the efficacy of materials and techniques - the stark record of a killer's learning curve. A cautionary tale about modern evil, the conditions that provoked Kaczynski's alienation remain in place and may be getting worse as the War on Terrorism replaces the Cold War.

    A comprehensive look at the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900, a bloody uprising in north China against native Christians and foreign missionaries.

    Vilfredo Pareto's long essay from the turn of the century on The Rise and Fall of the Elites marks his giant step from econometrics into sociology. Here in brief outline is the major sociological ideas for which he later became famous. This essay is more readable and disciplined than most of his later elaborations and serves exceedingly well as a first introduction to his political sociology. Translation of Un applicazione di teorie sociologiche, published in Revista Italiana di sociologia, 1901. Bibliography and notes: p. [103]-120. Introd. by Hans L. Zetterberg.

    The Gnostic message, however, was not destroyed but simply went underground. Starting with the first emergence of Gnosticism, the author shows how its influence extended from the teachings of neo-Platonists and the magical traditions of the Middle Ages to the beliefs and ideas of the Sufis, Jacob Böhme, Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner, and the Rosicrucians and Freemasons. In the language of spiritual freemasonry, gnosis is the rejected stone necessary for the completion of the Temple, a Temple of a new cosmic understanding that today's heirs to Gnosticism continue to strive to create.The Gnostics believed that the universe embodies a ceaseless contest between opposing principles. Terrestrial life exhibits the struggle between good and evil, life and death, beauty and ugliness, and enlightenment and ignorance: gnosis and agnosis. The very nature of physical space and time are obstacles to humanity's ability to remember its divine origins and recover its original unity with God. Thus the preeminent gnostic secret is that we are God in potential and the purpose of bona fide gnostic teaching is to return us to our godlike nature.Tobias Churton is a filmmaker and the founding editor of the magazine Freemasonry Today. He studied theology at Oxford University and created the award-winning documentary series and accompanying book The Gnostics, as well as several other films on Christian doctrine, mysticism, and magical folklore. He lives in England.

    The authors propose that the 20th century was not only the American century, but also the century of human capital. That is, her educational system made America the richest nation on earth.

    Impassioned debate over situations as diverse as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Elián Gonzáles affair is characteristic not only of modern times but of centuries of Cuban history. In this concise and up-to-date book, British journalist Richard Gott casts a fresh eye on the history of the Caribbean island from its pre-Columbian origins to the present day. He provides a European perspective on a country that is perhaps too frequently seen solely from the American point of view. The author emphasizes such little-known aspects of Cuba’s history as its tradition of racism and violence, its black rebellions, the survival of its Indian peoples, and the lasting influence of Spain. The book also offers an original look at aspects of the Revolution, including Castro’s relationship with the Soviet Union, military exploits in Africa, and his attempts to promote revolution in Latin America and among American blacks. In a concluding section, Gott tells the extraordinary story of the Revolution’s survival in the post-Soviet years.

    The Kurdish lands have been contested territory for many centuries. In this detailed history of the Kurds from the 19th century to the present day, McDowall examines the interplay of old and new aspects of the struggle, the importance of local rivalries within Kurdish society, the enduring authority of certain forms of leadership and the failure of modern states to respond to the challenge of Kurdish nationalism. Drawing extensively on primary sources McDowall's book is useful for all who want a better understanding of the underlying dynamics of the Kurdish question.

    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.

    Her family, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, returns home to find a radically altered public education system. Geraldlynn's parents hope their daughter's new school will prepare her for college--but the teenager has ideals and ambitions of her own.Aidan is a fresh-faced Harvard grad drawn to New Orleans by the possibility of bringing change to a flood-ravaged city. He teaches at an ambitious charter school with a group of newcomers determined to show the world they can use science, data, and hard work to build a model school.Mary Laurie is a veteran educator who becomes principal of one of the first public high schools to reopen after Katrina. Laurie and her staff find they must fight each day not only to educate the city's teenagers, but to keep the Walker community safe and whole.In this powerful narrative non-fiction debut, the lives of these three characters provide readers with a vivid and sobering portrait of education in twenty-first-century America. Hope Against Hope works in the same tradition as Random Family and There Are No Children Here to capture the challenges of growing up and learning in a troubled world.

    Learn about President Kagame, who strives to make Rwanda the first middle-income country in Africa, in a single generation. In this adventurous tale, learn about Kagame's early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelligence agent, his training in Cuba and the United States, the way he built his secret rebel army, his bloody rebellion, and his outsized ambitions for Rwanda.

    Instead, they found that they had exchanged old forms of political and economic dependence for a new kind of dependency on the international capitalism of multinational corporations. In the much-acclaimed original Spanish edition (Dependencia y Desarrollo en América Latina) and now in the expanded and revised English version, Cardoso and Faletto offer a sophisticated analysis of the economic development of Latin America.The economic dependency of Latin America stems not merely from the domination of the world market over internal national and “enclave” economies, but also from the much more complex interact ion of economic drives, political structures, social movements, and historically conditioned alliances. While heeding the unique histories of individual nations, the authors discern four general stages in Latin America's economic development: the early outward expansion of newly independent nations, the political emergence of the middle sector, the formation of internal markets in response to population growth, and the new dependence on international markets. In a postscript for this edition, Cardoso and Faletto examine the political, social and economic changes of the past ten years in light of their original hypotheses.

    Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questionsof Chinese history. What is distinctive about China in comparison with other civilizations? What have been the major changes and continuities in Chinese life over the past four millennia? Offering a global perspective, the book shows how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influencedmuch of the political, military, and even cultural history of China. Ropp also examines Sino-Indian relations, highlighting the impact of the thriving trade between India and China as well as the profound effect of Indian Buddhism on Chinese life. Finally, the author discusses the humiliation ofChina at the hands of Western powers and Japan, explaining how these recent events have shaped China's quest for wealth, power and respect today, and have colored China's perception of its own place in world history.

    A study which combines personal reminiscences with careful historical research, the myth of the 'good old days' is summarily dispensed with; Robert Roberts describes the period of his childhood, when the main affect of poverty in Edwardian Salford was degredation, and, despite great resources of human courage, few could escape such a prison.