Comparative History

In this brilliantly analytical yet personal book, nondemocratic societies are put under a microscope to reveal the mechanics of tyranny that sustain them. In exposing the inner workings of a "fear society", the authors explain why democracy is not beyond any nation's reach, why it is essential for our security, and why there is much that can be done to promote it around the world.

Ostensibly written by an English knight, The Book of Marvels and Travels claim to recount his experiences in Egypt, the Levant, India, and China. It describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and further into Asia, and the many weird and wonderful peoples and practices of the East. The author claims to have traveled in land populated by Amazons, dog-headed people, cannibals, one-footed tribes, and Pygmies.

Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilizations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, American culture was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end? In History Has Begun, Bruno Maçães offers a compelling vision of America's future, both fascinating and unnerving. From the early American Republic, he takes us to the turbulent present, when, he argues, America is finally forging its own path.

What is authoritarianism? And what made people give others the power to rule over them? Unchallenged authority serves at the heart of authoritarianism. In an age of democracy, authoritarianism is often met with stark criticism, whether the discussion is on tyranny, the psychology of totalitarianism, or how democracies die. Can authoritarian regimes be successful in the eyes of their citizens? Some nations thrive under authoritarian rule, while others have numerous issues leading to uprisings and protests.

At the end of the 20th century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years it competed with various forms of dictatorship. Now, though, the entire continent was in the democratic camp for the first time in history. But within a decade, this story had already begun to unravel. Some of the continent's newer democracies slid back towards dictatorship, while citizens in many of its older democracies began questioning democracy's functioning and even its legitimacy.

Never has this book been more timely. Religious intolerance, the resurgence of fundamentalism, hate crimes, repressive laws, and mass shootings are pervasive in today’s world. Selina O’Grady asks how and why our societies came to be as tolerant or intolerant as they are; whether tolerance can be expected to heal today’s festering wound between Islam and the post-Christian West; or whether something deeper than tolerance is needed.

The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. However, that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the "Long Southern Strategy."

When Maziar Bahari left London in June 2009 to cover Iran's presidential election, he assured his pregnant fiancée, Paola, that he'd be back in just a few days, a week at most. Little did he know, as he kissed her good-bye, that he would spend the next three months in Iran’s most notorious prison, enduring brutal interrogation sessions at the hands of a man he knew only by his smell: Rosewater.

After centuries of intellectual evolution, from the worship of nature to the rise of monotheism, from Augustine to Nietzsche, Western culture has now canonized a materialist worldview that insists life is an accident, and meaning is a myth. And yet, as author Grant J. Hallstrom shows, even self-proclaimed atheists exhibit religious fervour in causes like climate justice and social activism. The problem? We’ve rejected the very roots that once gave us a sense of self, morality, and destiny.

From colonial empire-building in the 19th century to the postcolonial culture wars of the 21st century, attempts at "comparison" have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? That is discussed in this audiobook....

The United States is the world's leading foreign aid donor. Yet there has been little inquiry into how such assistance affects the politics and societies of recipient nations. Jessica Trisko Darden challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence. She persuasively demonstrates that many of the foreign aid policy challenges the US faced in the Cold War era, such as the propping up of dictators friendly to US interests, remain salient today.

The tale of St. Josaphat, a prince who gave up his wealth and kingdom to follow Jesus, was widely told and read in the Middle Ages, translated into a dozen languages, and even cited by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Only in the 19th century did scholars note the parallels between the lives of Buddha and Josaphat. In Search of the Christian Buddha traces the Buddha’s story from India to Persia to Jerusalem and then throughout Europe, as it was rewritten by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors, illustrating its unsuspected integration into European culture.

This book is a study of the relationship between revolution and terror. Historically, many have claimed that revolution inevitably devolves into terror, best reflected in the way in which after coming to power the revolutionary elite turns on itself, and one section of it uses terrorist means to eliminate another section. Graeme Gill argues that in order to understand the relationship between revolution and terror, it is necessary to distinguish between different types of terror.

David Sterling Brown offers nothing less here than a wholesale deconstruction of whiteness in Shakespeare's plays, arguing that the 'white other' was a racialized category already in formation during the Elizabethan era—and also one to which Shakespeare was himself a crucial contributor.

Recognizing that Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab societies coexist and are engaged in constant relations, Nahum Karlinsky has assembled an impressive array of contributors to explore these diasporas alongside one another and in dialogue with other diasporic communities.

A distinguished historian of Spain and Europe provides an enlightening account of the development of nationalist and separatist movements in contemporary Catalonia and Scotland.

Are angels, seraphim, and cherubim exactly as the scriptures describe them - spiritual beings made by God for his service? Are demons those same beings acting contrary to their natural purpose? This audiobook draws no conclusions but only asks those questions shouting to us from recently unearthed scrolls, which are thousands of years old.

A Revolutionary Friendship captures the dramatic, challenging, and poignant reality that there was no single founding ideal-only compromise between friends and sometime rivals.

Religion: A Very Short Introduction offers a concise nonpartisan overview of religion's long history and its complicated role in the world today.

Galtieri, Lukashenka, and Putin are some of the dictators whose untrammeled personal power has been seen as typical of the dog-eat-dog nature of leadership in authoritarian political systems.