Masculine assertions, whether of verbal command, political power or physical violence, have formed the traditional subject matter of history. This volume combines current discussions in sexual politics with historical analysis to demonstrate that, far from being natural and monolithic, masculinity is an historical and cultural construct, with varied, competing and above all changing forms.

Sarah Fleming was a deranged stalker who attempted to murder the wife of a prominent local pastor and was shot dead when the pastor's wife defended herself. That's the official ruling of the police and the local prosecutor as they rule Sarah's death a justifiable homicide resulting from self- defense. Sarah's surviving family and friends refuse to accept that and reach out to Benjo Lane, a tattooed, bearded, reclusive ex- police detective who lives in the middle of nowhere with only a cat ...

I could never have imagined what the future had in store for me and my Castro Street friends when I began a memory book in 1985. This is my memoir of more than ninety people I knew in San Francisco who died of AIDS. It was the decimation of a thriving culture in just over a decade. Who cares? We all should.

War memory and commemoration have had increasingly high profiles in public and academic debates in recent years. This volume examines some of the social changes which have led to this development, among them the passing of the two World Wars from survivor into cultural memory. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, the book illuminates the struggle to install particular memories at the centre of a cultural world, and offers an extensive argument about how the po...

On October 31, 1517 an unknown monk nailed a theological pamphlet to a church door in a small university town and set in motion a process that helped usher in the modern world. Within a few years Luther's ideas had spread like wildfire. His attempts to reform Christianity by returning it to its biblical roots split the Western Church, divided Europe, and polarized people's beliefs.Yet Luther was a deeply flawed human being: a fervent believer tormented by spiritual doubts; a prolif...

From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life imageMartin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portraye...

Ethnic conflict is the major form of mass political violence in the world today, and it has been since World War II. Dramatic acts of terrorism and calculated responses to them may distract the attention of policymakers and the public, but ethnic and nationalist conflict continues to pose the greatest challenge to peace and security across the globe. Causes of such conflict and ideas about how to address it are hotly debated in the literature that has emerged over the past fifteen years.

The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink and sex. Under Christianity and Islam they survived as demons, allegories, and pla...

**This program is read by an AI-based synthesized voice.Unshackling America challenges the persistent fallacy that Americans fought two separate wars of independence. Willard Sterne Randall documents an unremitting fifty-year-long struggle for economic independence from Britain overlapping two armed conflicts linked by an unacknowledged global struggle. Throughout this perilous period, the struggle was all about free trade.**Neither Jefferson nor any other Founding...

Our universe has multiple origin stories, from religious creation myths to the Big Bang of scientists. But if we leave those behind and start from nothing—no matter, no cosmos, not even empty space—could we create a universe using only math? Irreverent and boundlessly creative, The Big Bang of Numbers invites us to try.In this new mathematical origin story, mathematician and novelist Manil Suri creates a natural progression of ideas needed to design our world, starting wit...

Well into the twenty-first century, Winston Churchill continues to be the subject of scores of books. Biographers portray him as a soldier, statesman, writer, painter, and even a daredevil, but Robert Schmuhl, the noted author and journalist, may be the first to depict him as a demanding, indeed exhausting White House guest. Drawing on years of research, Schmuhl not only contextualizes the unprecedented time Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent together between 1941 and 1945...

A powerful, groundbreaking narrative of the ordinary Russian soldier's experience of the worst war in history, based on newly revealed sources.Of the thirty million who fought in the eastern front of World War II, eight million died, driven forward in suicidal charges, shattered by German shells and tanks. They were the men and women of the Red Army, a ragtag mass of soldiers who confronted Europe's most lethal fighting force and by 1945 had defeated it. Sixty year...