Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), whose bicentennial coincided with the momentous events occurring in Ukraine in 2014, is almost universally acclaimed as the father of the modern Ukrainian nation and the icon of its cultural and political resurgence. Des...

Many philosophers believe they can gain knowledge about the world from the comfort of their armchairs, simply by reflecting on the nature of things. But how can the mind arrive at substantive knowledge of the world without seeking its input? Michael...

In this eye-opening book, Paul J. Kosmin explains how the Seleucid Empire's invention of a new kind of time – and the rebellions against this worldview – transformed the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future. In the afterm...

"A Treatise on Dharma", written in the fourth or fifth century, is the finest example of the genre of dharmasastra – texts on religious, civil, and criminal law and the duties of rulers – that informed Indian life for a thousand years. It illuminates...

In 1204, brothers Alexios and David Komnenos became the unwitting founders of the Empire of Trebizond, a successor state to the Byzantine Empire that emerged after Crusaders sacked Constantinople. Trebizond, which stretched along the coast of the Bla...

When the United States emerged as a world power in the years before the Civil War, the men who presided over the nation's triumphant territorial and economic expansion were largely southern slaveholders. As presidents, cabinet officers, and diplomats...

The Soviet Union was a notoriously closed society until Stalin's death in 1953. Then, in the mid-1950s, a torrent of Western novels, films, and paintings invaded Soviet streets and homes, acquiring heightened emotional significance. "To See Paris and...

The first comprehensive study of the lifework of Guo Moruo (1892-1978) in English, this book explores the dynamics of translation, revolution, and historical imagination in twentieth-century Chinese culture. Guo was a romantic writer who eventually b...

For more than four decades, one of the most captivating and celebrated science communicators of our time has challenged the public to think carefully about the foundations of nature and the inseparable entanglement of science and society. In "Third T...

Seneca is a figure of first importance in both Roman politics and literature: a leading adviser to Nero who attempted to restrain the emperor's megalomania; a prolific moral philosopher; and the author of verse tragedies that strongly influenced Shak...