Drawing on a lifetime of studies across a broad territory, highly regarded cultural historian and critic Jacques Barzun here synthesizes the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500. The triumphs and defeats of five hundred years form an inspiring saga which modifies the current impression of Western history as one long tale of oppression by white European males. Women and their deeds are prominent, and...

Here is a spectacular and informative guide to the glories of ancient Greece. Superb color photographs of armor, jewelry, temples and much more offer a unique "eyewitness" view of the history, daily life, beliefs and achievements of the ancient Greek civilization. See the golden mask of Agamemnon, the luxurious palaces of Crete, an armed hoplite ready to do battle, the Parthenon Frieze, what a Greek family wore, and what the inside of a Greek farmhouse...

Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1901, when Mann was only twenty-six, has become a classic of modern literature. It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity; in an uncertain new world, the family s bonds and traditions begin to disintegrate. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic...

Who have been the Muslim world's most influential people? What were their ideas, thoughts, and achievements? In one hundred short and engaging profiles of these extraordinary people, fourteen hundred years of the vast and rich history of the Muslim world is unfolded. For anyone interested in getting an intimate view of Islam through its kings and scholars, generals and sportsmen, architects and scientists, and many others, this is the book for you. Among...

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi's "Emergency," V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past. Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters with ordinary Indians-from...

New Look! Relaunched with new jackets and 8 pages of new text! A detailed look at life in Egypt - from the pharaoh and his courtiers, through the mystical rites of the priests, to the world of the workers in the fields. Featuring stunning items from the tomb of Tutankhamun and jewelry from the royal palaces, Eyewitness Ancient Egypt shows how Egyptian palaces, Eyewitness Ancient Egypt shows how Egyptian nobles lived. Find out how they prepared for...

"In 1948, Israel's founders had much more in mind than the creation of a state. They sought not mere sovereignty but also a "national home for the Jewish people," where Jewish life would be transformed. Did they succeed? The state they made, says Daniel Gordis, is a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering. Now, as the country marks its seventy-fifth anniversary, Gordis...

In this eloquent guide to the meanings of the postmodern era, Albert Borgmann charts the options before us as we seek alternatives to the joyless and artificial culture of consumption. Borgmann connects the fundamental ideas driving his understanding of society's ills to every sphere of contemporary social life, and goes beyond the language of postmodern discourse to offer a powerfully articulated vision of what this new era, at its best, has in store. ...

Scholar and travel writer Lafcadio Hearn spent decades in Japan, eventually adopting it as his home country. Perhaps more than any other single writer, Hearn is responsible for documenting and interpreting Japan for Western audiences. In this engrossing volume, Hearn undertakes his most comprehensive comparative analysis of Japanese culture.