In ancient India, tragedy strikes a young elephant trainer. Forced into a slave caravan that takes him through perilous lands and into a world at war, Ashoka befriends a special elephant. He and that elephant, Four Nails, together lead Hannibal's army over the Alps and down the back of Rome. Though a time of constant danger and uncertainty, Ashoka finds beauty and kindness while helping others enslaved for the pleasure of ruthless rulers. To survive this remarkable journey, the elephant tr...

After three great wars, Rome has crushed Carthage. Now the undefended riches of Iberia beckon--gold, tin, olives, wine, and healthy young bodies to enslave. Burnt Rocks tells the story of Lavena, last child of the strongest remaining Iberian tribal leader at a time when Rome plunders and loots her land.She must grow up fast and use all her cunning and courage to survive each day. At times helped only by her father's favorite dog, a special horse, or guided by spirits of the earth a...

Crowning six decades of literary, rhetorical, and historical scholarship, Harry Berger, Jr., offers readers another trenchant reading. Berger subverts the usual interpretations of Plato's kalos kagathos, showing Socrates to be trapped in a double ventriloquism, tethered to his interlocutors' speech acts even as they are tethered to his.Plato's Republic and Protagoras both reserve a small but significant place for a poet who differs from Homer and Hesiod: t...

Professor Challenger, accompanied by his devoted sidekick Edward Malone, travels to the misty moors of Scotland to verify a charlatan's boast about a monster in the dark waters of Loch Ness.Will they find something sinister in the dark, lonely water?

Marriage, Sex and Family in Judaism explores Jewish marriage from historical and contemporary perspectives, focusing on the religious and legal concepts of marriage, and the social impact of family in the Jewish community. The book does not advocate one perspective or another; instead, the essays range from conservative to liberal viewpoints, offering readers a well-balanced mixture of perspectives on Jewish marriage.

AN INTRODUCTION TO EXREMISM: Explore how extremist ideologies grow and escalate—with fascinating case studies, from the ancient Romans to the American alt-right.In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, J. M. Berger offers a nuanced introduction to the extremist movements threatening to destabilize civil societies around the globe. He explains what extremism is, how extremist ideologies are constructed, and why extremism can escalate into violence...

The program of extermination Nazis called the Final Solution took the lives of approximately six million Jews, amounting to roughly 60 percent of European Jewry and a third of the world's Jewish population. Studying the Holocaust from a sociological perspective, Ronald J. Berger explains why the Final Solution happened to a particular people for particular reasons; why the Jews were, for the Nazis, the central enemy. Taking a unique approach in its examination of the devastating event, The...

This book provides a short introduction to humanism, aimed at students, young people and those seeking to understand a world without God and those who believe in a science-based, naturalistic worldview.Berger takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the universe absent of a god and finds it to be enlightening, rather than scary; meaningful, rather than aimless; hopeful and rational."Science and Spirituality is a refreshing introduction to the non-religious scientific worl...

This groundbreaking text makes an intervention on behalf of disability studies into the broad field of qualitative inquiry. Ronald Berger and Laura Lorenz introduce readers to a range of issues involved in doing qualitative research on disabilities by bringing together a collection of scholarly work that supplements their own contributions and covers a variety of qualitative methods: participant observation, interviewing and interview coding, focus groups, autoethnography, life history, na...

For five years, a serial rapist had terrorized the small community of Simi Valley in Southern California.By July 4th, 2001 he had added murder to his list of crimes when he shot a twenty-year-old college student, Megan Barroso with an Ak-47.The Simi Valley Police and the Ventura County Task Force did not realize that they had their man, Vincent Sanchez, locked up on a petty robbery charge.Sanchez had kept this horrible secret from his family and friends, roommates, and his girlfrie...

"I wish I'd had this book when I needed it. Death and dying are not subjects that many people are comfortable talking about, but it's hugely important to be as prepared as you can be - emotionally, physically, practically, financially, and spiritually. This book may be the most important guide you could have." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love___________The end of a life can often feel l...

Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 by a United Nations mandate, the Middle East has been a flashpoint of conflict between the world's only Jewish state and the Palestinians, who lost their land because of the UN partition. Although peace agreements were signed with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, Israel's relationships with Lebanon and Syria continue to be strained, owing to those countries' ties with the Islamic political party Hezbollah, and its relationship with Pa...