In this book, the author argues that atheism should deepen its roots. Atheism should not only present itself as a cognitive matter, the denial of the existence of god(s), and as a moral matter, the confirmation of freedom from religious rules, but should develop a sentimental-emotional dimension. Atheism should cultivate a cluster of basic human emotions: the experience of reality as both a creative and destructive process that remains fascinating, miraculous, and mysterious, notwithstandi...

According to a fairy tale, after World War II, Europe rejected nationalism and subsequently started the European project, which brought uninterrupted peace from 1945 on. In this book, this version of history is unmasked. First, Europe did not desert nor transcend nationalism after 1945. On the contrary, since 1800, the nationalist program, based on linguistic divisions, has been implemented continuously, also after the end of World War II. Not the rejection of the nationalist program but i...

Tamerlane was the last of the 'world conquerors': his armies looted and killed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of China. Nomad horsemen from the Steppes had been the terror of Europe and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405, an epoch of history came to an end. The future belonged to the great dynastic empires - Chinese, Mughal, Iranian and Ottoman - where most of Eurasia's culture and wealth was to be found, and to the oceanic voyagers from Eurasia's ...

Spanning the divide between Europe and Asia, Russia is a multi-ethnic empire with a huge territory, strategically placed and abundantly provided with natural resources. But Russia's territory has a harsh climate, is cut off from most maritime contact with the outside world, and has open and vulnerable land frontiers. It has therefore had to devote much of its wealth to the armed forces, and the sheer size of the empire has made it difficult to mobilise resources and to governeffectively, e...

A panoramic global history of the nineteenth centuryA monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudi...

From 1789 in France to 2011 in Cairo, revolutions have shaken the world. In their pursuit of social justice, revolutionaries have taken on the assembled might of monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. They have often, though not always, sparked cataclysmic violence, and have at times won miraculous victories, though at other times suffered devastating defeat. This Very Short Introduction illuminates the revolutionaries, their strategies, their successes and failures, and the ways...

A great deal of the world's history is the history of empires. Indeed it could be said that all history is colonial history, if one takes a broad enough definition and goes far enough back. And although the great historic imperial systems, the land-based Russian one as well as the seaborne empires of western European powers, have collapsed during the past half century, their legacies shape almost every aspect of life on a global scale. Meanwhile there is fierce argument, and much speculati...

This ambitious book sets out to reinterpret the history of the twentieth century as a long war in which conditions of outright military confrontation or of frantic "cold" competition lasted from the outbreak of the first world war until the collapseof the Soviet Union. He goes on to argue that this long experience of war has brought about a fundamental change in the constitutional basis of sates, and explores this idea through the notion of the "market state". By clarifying the relationshi...

You may be OK with standard stuff like Conservatism and Democracy, but do you really know what Patrimonialism is? And what about Oligarchy? Anarcho-syndicalism?Politics is, we are willing to bet, the most passionately argued-over subject matter, and yet how many of us flounder around in confrontational debates because we have no grip on political theory, just a vague notion that they are all out to get us?30-Second Politics will help dispel this fog mistrust and para...

From the formation of the Russian state in the 14th century to the political power struggles of the 1990s and the uncertainties of the new millennium, this new history offers a fresh and systematic account of Russian history across six tumultuous centuries. With greater access to previously unobtainable material, and with the gradual depoliticization of what was once an intellectual Cold War battleground, historians are now able to tell the story of Russia more dispassionately and with gre...

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's books are events. They stir passionate public debate among political and civic leaders, scholars, and the general public because they compel people to rethink the most powerful conventional wisdoms and stubborn moral problems of the day. Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon, genocide, that has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges fundamental things we thought we knew about human beings, soc...

A groundbreaking interpretation of the intellectual origins of the United NationsNo Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering in...