Contemporary artist Mariko Mori (b. 1967) has transformed herself many times since her memorable debut on to the international art scene in the mid-1990s. Over the past two decades, Mori has made a significant shift in the focus of her work, moving a...

In this third installment of his comprehensive history of "India's religion" and reappraisal of Hindu identity, Professor Jyotirmaya Sharma offers an engaging portrait of Swami Vivekananda and his relationship with his guru, the legendary Ramakrishna...

One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Claude Levi-Strauss casts a long shadow over many areas of inquiry, from ethnology and cultural anthropology to literary studies, Marxist theory, and religious studies. In recent years, i...

After two centuries of ascent, the United States finds itself in economic decline. Some advise America to cure its woes alone. But the road to isolation leads inevitably to the end of US leadership in the international system, warns Richard Rosecranc...

The California Gold Rush began in 1848 and incited many "wagons west". However, only half of the 300,000 gold seekers travelled by land. The other half travelled by sea. And it's the story of this second group that interests Malcolum Rohrbough in his...

Though branded as pornography for its graphic language and explicit sexuality, Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" is far more than a work that tested American censorship laws. In this riveting book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary...

<p>In his personal diaries Richard Burton is a man quite different from the one we familiarly "know" as acclaimed actor, international film star, and jet-set celebrity. From his private, handwritten pages there emerges a different person &n...

During the 18th and 19th centuries, artists and travellers were lured to Rome, the home of civilized values and artistic beauty. But the history of visiting Rome had a pathological side – not only crisis and disorientation but repulsion at its filth...

In less than a century, the accepted picture of the universe transformed from a stagnant place, comprised entirely of our own Milky Way galaxy, to a realm inhabited by billions of individual galaxies, hurtling away from one another. We must thank, in...

The ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., drew international attention when excavations commenced in the 1730s. As a result, the nearby city of Naples became a nexus of scholarship, cult...