Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries brought the Enlightenment to America-an intellectual revolution that laid the foundation for the political one that followed. With the “first Drudgery” of settling the American colonies now past, Franklin announced in 1743, it was time the colonists set about improving the lot of humankind through collaborative inquiry. From Franklin's idea emerged the American Philosophical Society, an association hosted in Philadelphia and dedicated to the harness...

Despite the West's growing involvement in Muslim societies, conflicts, and cultures, its inability to understand or analyze the Islamic world threatens any prospect for East–West rapprochement. Impelled by one thousand years of anti-Muslim ideas and images, the West has failed to engage in any meaningful or productive way with the world of Islam. Formulated in the medieval halls of the Roman Curia and courts of the European Crusaders and perfected in the newsrooms of Fox News and CNN, this...

While comedy writers are responsible for creating clever scripts, comedic animators have a much more complicated problem to solve: What makes a physical character funny? Comedy for Animators breaks down the answer by exploring the techniques of those who have used their bodies to make others laugh. Drawing from traditions such as commedia dell’arte, pantomime, Vaudeville, the circus, and silent and modern film, animators will learn not only to create funny charact...

Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Award 2018‘So you liked Irvine Welsh? Read Carnivore’ CosmopolitanMeet Leander: lover, fighter, liar.He learnt a long time ago that nothing is as intoxicating as blood. But whether it’s his or someone else’s doesn’t matter any more. There’s a mysterious pain in every muscle of his body – and it’s got so bad that he’ll do anything to escape it.Up to now, it’s been his se...

Bloomsbury presents The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons, read by Nezar Alerazi.For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to visit cities like Baghdad or Antioch. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advan...

Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Award 2018‘So you liked Irvine Welsh? Read Carnivore’ CosmopolitanMeet Leander: lover, fighter, liar.Now including an exclusive interview with the author and Jon Appleton at the end of the audiobook.He learnt a long time ago that nothing is as intoxicating as blood. But whether it’s his or someone else’s doesn’t matter any more. There’s a mysterious pain in every muscle...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER **• NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A landmark work of history explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals—Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison—confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation.“A splendid book—humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit.” —The New York Times Book Review**The United States was m...

**A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. • With a new foreword by Ussama Makdisi"Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times**In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which ...

New York Times BestsellerEditors' Choice —New York Times Book Review"Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in our country." —James Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of DefenseThe Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling auth...

"[A] must-read by one of the most thought-provoking writers on Islam and the Middle East." —#1 New York Times –Bestselling Author Reza AslanWhat if Islam never existed? To some, it's a comforting thought: no clash of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists. But what if that weren't the case at all?In A World Without Islam, Graham E. Fuller, a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at...

Winner of the Bancroft PrizeIn this brilliantly original book, written for the general reader, the American past becomes richly meaningful to the present.

Islam features widely in the news, often in its most militant versions, but few people in the non-Muslim world really understand the nature of Islam. Malise Ruthven's Very Short Introduction contains essential insights into issues such as why Islam has such major divisions between movements such as the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and the Wahhabis, and the central importance of the Shar'ia (Islamic law) in Islamic life. It also offers fresh perspectives on contemporary questions: Why is ...