"A Traveller's History of Cyprus" offers a complete and authoritative history of the island's past and also touches on the sensitive present-day issues for both sides of the island. Although Cyprus is a relatively small island, its position in the East Mediterranean has always given it strategic importance beyond its size. Well-placed for travel from all over the globe with plenty of sunshine throughout the year, Cyprus has become a favored tourist destination. All visitors, whether to the Greek or Turkish side of the island, discover the immensely rich history, which has resulted in so many civilizations making their mark upon its soil. With a historical gazetteer, chronology of major events, index, bibliography and historical and contemporary maps, this book is an invaluable companion to students or visitors to the island.

To understand the turnaround in Spain's stance towards Japan during World War II, this book goes beyond mutual contacts and explains through images, representations, and racism why Madrid aimed at declaring war on Japan but not against the III Reich -as London ironically replied when it learned of Spain's warmongering against one of the Axis members.

The Far Reaches of Empire chronicles the half century of Anglo-American efforts to establish dominion in Nova Scotia, an important French foothold in the New World. John Grenier examines the conflict of cultures and peoples in the colonial Northeast through the lens of military history as he tells how Britons and Yankees waged a tremendously efficient counterinsurgency that ultimately crushed every remnant of Acadian, Indian, and French resistance in Nova Scotia.The author demonstrates the importance of warfare in the Anglo-French competition for North America, showing especially how Anglo-Americans used brutal but effective measures to wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who were no less ruthless. He explores the influence of Abenakis, Maliseets, and Mi'kmaq in shaping the region's history, revealing them to be more than the supposed pawns of outsiders; and he describes the machinations of French officials, military officers, and Catholic priests in stirring up resistance. Arguing that the Acadians were not merely helpless victims of ethnic cleansing, Grenier shows that individual actions and larger forces of history influenced the decision to remove them. The Far Reaches of Empire illuminates the primacy of war in establishing British supremacy in northeastern North America.

Demonstrating the vibrancy of an Early Modern Muslim society through a study of the natural sciences in seventeenth-century Morocco, Revealed Sciences examines how the natural sciences flourished during this period, without developing in a similar way to the natural sciences in Europe. Offering an innovative analysis of the relationship between religious thought and the natural sciences, Justin K. Stearns shows how nineteenth and twentieth-century European and Middle Eastern scholars jointly developed a narrative of the decline of post-formative Islamic thought, including the fate of the natural sciences in the Muslim world. Challenging these depictions of the natural sciences in the Muslim world, Stearns uses numerous close readings of works in the natural sciences to a detailed overview of the place of the natural sciences in scholarly and educational landscapes of the Early Modern Magreb, and considers non-teleological possibilities for understanding a persistent engagement with the natural sciences in Early Modern Morocco.

The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, Joseph Luzzi straddles these two perspectives in My Two Italies to link his family's dramatic story to Italy's north-south divide, its quest for a unifying language, and its passion for art, food, and family. From his Calabrian father's time as a military internee in Nazi Germany - where he had a love affair with a local Bavarian woman - to his adventures amid the Renaissance splendour of Florence, Luzzi creates a deeply personal portrait of Italy that leaps past facile cliches about Mafia madness and Tuscan sun therapy. He delves instead into why Italian Americans have such a complicated relationship with the "old country," and how Italy produces some of the world's most astonishing art while suffering from corruption, political fragmentation, and an enfeebled civil society. With topics ranging from the pervasive force of Dante's poetry to the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi, Luzzi presents the Italians in all their glory and squalor, relating the problems that plague Italy today to the country's ancient roots. He shares how his "two Italies" - the earthy southern Italian world of his immigrant childhood and the refined northern Italian realm of his professional life - join and clash in unexpected ways that continue to enchant the many millions who are either connected to Italy by ancestry or bound to it by love.