This revelatory study of Russian medieval history and the age of Mongolian conquest “infuses the subject with fresh insights and interpretations” (History). In the 13th century, a Mongolian confederation known as The Golden Horde dominated a vast region including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Caucuses. Though it would hold power into the 15th century, the influence of the Mongolian Empire on Russian history and culture has been all but...

Discusses Portuguese voyages of discovery and exploration around Africa and Asia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

"... a common-sense handbook for gardeners... It will help slacken the stress level that gardening was never meant to bring." HortScience"{Diane Heilenman} gets to the heart, the soul and the humor shared by all in the gardening world... both a practical reference and an inspiration... " The Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN)Diane Heilenman tells novice and experienced gardeners how to cope in this difficult and trying climate, create gardens appropriate...

The groundbreaking Kinsey Report study on female sexuality from one of the most influential figures in American intellectual history( The New York Times ). Originally published in 1953, the material presented in Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was derived from personal interviews with nearly 6,000 women; from studies in sexual anatomy, physiology, psychology, and endocrinology. The study revealed the incidence and frequency with which women participate...

If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjings bookstore, the Librairie Avant-Garde, where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucaults philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwells 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen Chinaor post-9/11 America? In these often playful, always...

Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies used by religiously orthodox (what some would call "fundamentalist") movements around the world. Rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of taking over civil society. Claiming Society for God tells the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel,...

When the Showers family arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, the railroad had only recently come to town and a modest university was struggling to survive. Having spent the prior 18 years moving from place to place, the family decided to settle down and invest its modest resources to start a furniture company. The business proved to be extremely profitable and a stroke of good fortune for the small community. The companys success strengthened Bloomington's...

The author of Got Shade? and Go Native! turns out “an ideal primer for gardeners who want to have lovely, sustainable and hospitable plantings” (Moya Andrews, author of Perennials Short and Tall).
 
Are you looking for more butterflies and birds in your yard? Do you enjoy seasonal color and beauty? Are you concerned about environmental issues such as water conservation and pollution control?...

Shatterzone of Empires is a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe's eastern borderlands over the past two centuries. In this vast territory, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically widespread, multicultural region at several levelslocal,...

This engaging biography tells the dramatic story of a Russian noblewoman turned revolutionary terrorist. Born in 1852 in the last years of serfdom, Vera Figner came of age as Imperial Russian society was being rocked by the massive upheaval that culminated in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At first a champion of populist causes and women's higher education, Figner later became a leader of the terrorist party the People's Will and was an accomplice...