At the End of an Age isa deeply informed and rewarding reflection on the nature of historical and scientific knowledge. Of extraordinary philosophical, religious, and historical scope, it is the product of a great historian's lifetime of thought on the subject of his discipline and the human condition. While running counter to most of the accepted ideas and doctrines of our time, it offers a compelling framework for understanding history, science, and man's capacity for self-knowledge. In this work, John Lukacs describes how we in the Western world have now been living through the ending of an entire historical age that began in Western Europe about five hundred years ago. Unlike people during the ending of the Middle Ages or the Roman empire, we can know where we are. But how and what is it that we know? In John Lukacs's view, there is no science apart from scientists, and all of "Science," including our view of the universe, is a human creation, imagined and defined by fallible human beings in a historical continuum. This radical and reactionary assertion-in its way a summa ofthe author's thinking, expressed here and there in many of his previous twenty-odd books-leads to his fundamental assertion that, contrary to all existing cosmological doctrines and theories, it is this earth which is the very center of the universe-the only universe we know and can know.

"A great resource for students and scholars. Chock-full of up-to-date, reliable information, this book has practically everything you need to know about contemporary Colombia all in one package." --Herbert Braun, author of Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia The South American nation of Colombia has seen more than forty years of unrest, conflict, and civil war. It is a country in which social violence and warfare are intricately intertwined. Colombia is also notorious for its drug trade, being one of the leading producers of cocaine in the world, and for its central role as a staging ground for the U.S. "war on drugs." Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to draw political links between the Colombian drug trade, guerrilla organizations, and terrorism. Inside Colombia offers a valuable introduction and quick reference guide to this complex nation. With chapters devoted to history, human rights issues, the economy, drugs, the controversial antidrug intervention known as Plan Colombia, and relations with the United States, the book offers an easily accessible and comprehensive overview. Readers will learn about the major players in the conflicts, significant political figures, how Colombia's economy has fared in the twentieth century, how the country's geography influences its politics and economy, and how U.S. intervention shapes Colombia's political scene. Grace Livingstone is a journalist who regularly contributes to a range of publications on Latin American current affairs and has reported for the BBC World Service. She is currently based in Venezuela where she is a correspondent for The Guardian. Jenny Pearce is the coauthor of Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration.

History in Transit comprises Dominick LaCapra's explorations of relationships he believes have been insufficiently theorized: between experience and identity, between history and various theories of subjectivity, between extreme events and their representation, between institutional structures and the kinds of knowledge produced within them. Taken together, these discussions form a dialogical encounter, positing the links among epistemological questions, historicist ones, and issues pertaining to disciplinary and institutional politics.

Reacting against the antitheoretical bias of some prominent historians, LaCapra presents an alternative model of historiographical practice one in which emphases on plurality and hybridity are combined with the concept of historical experience. For LaCapra experience emerges as a category both theoretically determined and anchored in the facticity of the everyday. LaCapra tests the assumptions and implications of the way one approaches the past by looking to psychoanalysis to render more self-aware the relationship between the historian and his or her material. He offers criticisms of assumptions held by practicing historians and theorists, placing the study of history at the center of a larger argument about the role of the contemporary university.

Contesting both corporatization and claims that the university is in ruins, LaCapra writes, "It is paradoxical that the demand to make the university conform to an ever-increasing extent to a market or business model seems oblivious to the fact that the American university has probably been the most successful of its type in the world, that students from other countries disproportionately desire to study in it.""

History in Transit comprises Dominick LaCapra's explorations of relationships he believes have been insufficiently theorized: between experience and identity, between history and various theories of subjectivity, between extreme events and their representation, between institutional structures and the kinds of knowledge produced within them. Taken together, these discussions form a dialogical encounter, positing the links among epistemological questions, historicist ones, and issues pertaining to disciplinary and institutional politics.

Reacting against the antitheoretical bias of some prominent historians, LaCapra presents an alternative model of historiographical practice one in which emphases on plurality and hybridity are combined with the concept of historical experience. For LaCapra experience emerges as a category both theoretically determined and anchored in the facticity of the everyday. LaCapra tests the assumptions and implications of the way one approaches the past by looking to psychoanalysis to render more self-aware the relationship between the historian and his or her material. He offers criticisms of assumptions held by practicing historians and theorists, placing the study of history at the center of a larger argument about the role of the contemporary university.

Contesting both corporatization and claims that the university is in ruins, LaCapra writes, "It is paradoxical that the demand to make the university conform to an ever-increasing extent to a market or business model seems oblivious to the fact that the American university has probably been the most successful of its type in the world, that students from other countries disproportionately desire to study in it.""

With the end of the Cold War, the American political establishment perceived Islam as the new enemy. The 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Africa, and the events of 9/11 - all culminated in substantiating this perception.

The War on Terrorism has raised several complicated issues surrounding the relationship between the United States and Islam. With America's increasing involvement in the Middle East, it is imperative for Muslims to understand America; but at the same time, Americans must learn to understand Islam. The progress of civilization hangs on the ability for cooperation and understanding between these cultures.

Although this challenge of removing the "clash" between these two cultures is indeed pressing, it is not new. Negative images of Islam have persisted in the United States throughout its history.

This volume of "The Annals" reflects on how damaging images of Islam have endured in the United States and how Americans' perceptions and misconceptions about Islam is inexorably linked to United States' policy in the Middle East.

The articles in this special issue will spark intriguing debate and discussion as well as shed light on the complex concerns engulfing Americans' ideas about Islam and Muslim states and how this relationship influences global politics.

With the end of the Cold War, the American political establishment perceived Islam as the new enemy. The 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Africa, and the events of 9/11 - all culminated in substantiating this perception.

The War on Terrorism has raised several complicated issues surrounding the relationship between the United States and Islam. With America's increasing involvement in the Middle East, it is imperative for Muslims to understand America; but at the same time, Americans must learn to understand Islam. The progress of civilization hangs on the ability for cooperation and understanding between these cultures.

Although this challenge of removing the "clash" between these two cultures is indeed pressing, it is not new. Negative images of Islam have persisted in the United States throughout its history.

This volume of "The Annals" reflects on how damaging images of Islam have endured in the United States and how Americans' perceptions and misconceptions about Islam is inexorably linked to United States' policy in the Middle East.

The articles in this special issue will spark intriguing debate and discussion as well as shed light on the complex concerns engulfing Americans' ideas about Islam and Muslim states and how this relationship influences global politics.

Anthropologist Neil L. Whitehead presents a collection of recent fieldwork and the latest theoretical perspectives that illuminate how a range of Native communities in the Amazon River basin, and those they encounter, use the past to make sense of their world and themselves. In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role the past plays in the construction of culture and identity. Not only can the past be represented and codified overtly in various ways and media as a "history," it also operates more fundamentally and pervasively in cultures as a mode of consciousness or way of thinking about the world, a "historicity." In addition to examining the particular foundations and significance of history and historicity in such communities as the Guaja, Wapishana, Dekuana, and Patamuna, the contributors to this volume consider more broadly how different natural and cultural features can help shape historical consciousness: landscape and territory; rituals such as feasting; genealogy and kinship; and even the practice of archaeology. Also of interest are activist uses of historicity to promote and legitimize the cultural integrity and political agendas of Native communities, especially in contact situations past and present where multiple and often competing forms of history and historicity play important political roles in articulating relations between colonizers and the colonized. As this volume makes clear, understanding the powerful cultural role of the past helps scholars better appreciate the inherent dynamic quality of all cultures and recognize a rich resource of agency that can be used both to comprehend and to transform the present

Until the 1960s and the advent of African independence, African history was rarely concerned with African lives. Africans were not considered fitting subjects or authoritative sources for historical research and their voices and experiences were largely absent from the continent's history. Efforts to restore African expression to African history have characterized much of postcolonial historical research and writing, but questions about the use of oral sources in the quest for truth continue to plague interpreters and interpretations of the African past. This analysis reveals African historians involved with and committed to developing unique methodologies for dealing with history on their own terms. African historians from North America, Europe and Africa confront questions such as the relationship between a community's oral and written history, the role of personal histories, the effects of racism and colonialism, the suppression of facts, and how historians should mediate and interpret research data.; Focusing on all areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, the essays brought together here seek to reflect the extraordinary range of engagement that represents the state-of-the-art of African h

From Reliable Sources is a lively introduction to historical methodology, an overview of the techniques historians must master in order to reconstruct the past. Its focus on the basics of source criticism, rather than on how to find references or on the process of writing, makes it an invaluable guide for all students of history and for anyone who must extract meaning from written and unwritten sources.

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier explore the methods employed by historians to establish the reliability of materials; how they choose, authenticate, decode, compare, and, finally, interpret those sources. Illustrating their discussion with examples from the distant past as well as more contemporary events, they pay particular attention to recent information media, such as television, film, and videotape.

The authors do not subscribe to the positivist belief that the historian can attain objective and total knowledge of the past. Instead, they argue that each generation of historians develops its own perspective, and that our understanding of the past is constantly reshaped by the historian and the world he or she inhabits.

A substantially revised and updated edition of Prevenier's Uit goede bron, originally published in Belgium and now in its seventh edition, From Reliable Sources also provides a survey of western historiography and an extensive research bibliography.

A new essay focusing on the contribution of Chinua Achebe's writing to Africa's literary and political life, from the standpoint of the early twenty-first century, and the present state of Africa. The essay is interdisciplinary drawing on history, politics and economics, conflict theory and literary criticism. It is wide in scope, discussing a breadth of topics such as imbalances in trade relations between Africa and the rest; the inefficacy and hypocrisy of Western aid in light of debt and the arms supply from the West; genocide and HIV; and the implications of current US uni-polar dominance for Africa. In the context of his study Ekwe-Ekwe celebrates what he argues are the seminal dimensions of Achebe's writings: which affirm an African historicity; point to the futility of an unreconstructed post-colonial state in leading Africa's reconstruction; and advocate an African renaissance based on Africa's critical engagement with its rich cultural heritage. The author is a Professor of history and politics and Director of the centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Dakar.

This provocative book challenges long-held assumptions about the nature of historical consciousness in Germany. Susan A. Crane argues that the ever-more-elaborate preservation of the historical may actually reduce the likelihood that history can be experienced with the freshness and individuality characteristic of the early collectors and preservationists. Her book is both a study of the emergence in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany of a distinctively modern conception of historical consciousness, and a meditation on what was lost as historical thought became institutionalized and professionalized. Public forms of remembering the past which are familiar today, such as historical museums and historical preservation, have surprisingly recent origins. In Germany, caring about the past took on these distinctively new forms after the Napoleonic wars. The Brothers Grimm gathered fairy tales and documented the origins of the German language. Historical preservationists collected documents and artifacts and organized the conservation of cathedrals and other historic buildings. Collectors formed historical societies and created Germany's historical museums. No single national consciousness emerged; instead, many groups used similar means to make different claims about what it meant to have a German past.Although individuals were responsible for stimulating new interest in the past, they chose to band together in voluntary associations to promote collective awareness of German history. In doing so, however, they clashed with academic and political interests and lost control over the very artifacts, collections, and buildings they had saved from ruin. Examining the letters and publications of the amateur collectors, Crane shows how historical consciousness came to be represented in collective terms whether regional or national and in effect robbed everyone of the capacity to experience history individually and spontaneously."

How do ancient historians pursue their craft? From the evidence of coins, pottery shards, remains of buildings, works of art, and, above all, literary texts -- all of which have survived more or less accidentally from antiquity -- they fashion works of history. But how exactly do they go about reconstructing and representing the past? How should history be written?

These and related questions are the subject of Neville Morley's engaging introduction to the theory and philosophy of history. Intended for students and teachers not only of ancient history but of historiography, the philosophy of history, and classics, his book addresses the implications of debates over methodological and theoretical issues for the practice of ancient history.

At the present time, Morley says, students of ancient history are left to come to their own understanding of the field through a process of trial and error. In his view, too many professors regard "questions of theory and methodology ... as pointless distractions from the business of actually doing history. Worse, (these questions) may even be perceived as a threat to the subject." Asserting that more attention must be given to fundamental matters, Morley considers such topics as the nature of historical narrative, style in historical writing, the use and abuse of sources, and the reasons for studying history.

Herodotus, widely known as the father of history, was also described by Aristotle as a mythologos, or "tale-teller." In this stylish and insightful book, intended for both general readers and students, James Romm argues that the author of the Histories was both a historian-in the original sense of "one who inquires"-and a master storyteller. Although most ancient historians wrote only about events they themselves had lived through, Herodotus explored an era well before his own time-from the rise of the Persian Empire to the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 and 480 B.C., the heroic fight of the Greeks against the invaders, and the final Greek victory. Working without the aid of written sources, Herodotus traveled widely and wove into his chronology descriptions of people and countries he visited and anecdotes that shed light on their lives and customs. Romm discusses the historical background of Herodotus`s life and work, his moralistic approach to history, his insatiable fascination with people and places, his literary powers, and the question of the historical "truth" behind the stories he relates. He gives general readers a fresh appreciation of the Histories as a work encompassing fiction and nonfiction, myth and history, and poetry and prose. Herodotus becomes not simply a source of historical data but a masterful and artistic author who created a radically new literary genre. Hermes Books John Herington, Founding Editor

Since the 1980s historians have been influenced by two anthropological concepts: cultural distance and awareness of small-scale interactions. Recent work, however, has shifted away from these notions. We now see that cultures cannot be studied as units with internal coherence and that the microcosm does not represent a cultural whole.

This book proposes an alternative. Differentiation is the keyword that lets us focus on ruptures, contradiction, and change within a society. It drives us to recognize many different histories as opposed to one official history. The case studies in "Between History and Histories" use this new approach in historical anthropology to examine how certain events are silenced in the shadow of others that are commemorated by monuments, ceremonies, documents, and story-telling. The first set of studies explores cases around the world where the official construction of the past has been contested. The second set describes the silences voiced as a result of these disputes.

For students, this collection provides a useful overview of interaction between two disciplines. For historians and anthropologists, it offers a new vision of how history is produced.

Nathan Schur has put together the most compact and complete history of mankind ever written in one volume. With sublime skill and a superbly accessible writing style he illuminates the turning points in World History from Early Man to the Collapse of the Soviet Empire.

From the Epilogue: On the Threshold of the Third Millennium: It can be argued that the 15th century was the Italian, the 16th the Spanish, the 17th the Dutch, the 18th the French, the 19th the British, and the 20th the American. Just to show how changeable and uncertain human affairs are whom should we nominate for the 21st century the Japanese?, the Germans?, the Chinese?, the "Europeans"?, or once more the Americans?

But are we even certain that our descendants will still be around then? Might not pollution, or the greenhouse effect, or ozone depletion, or acid rain, or an atomic war, have wiped out the human race earlier than that?

On the other hand, human adaptability and initiative might have found solutions to these and other problems, just as solutions were found and implemented earlier -- from the fashioning of stone tools to the discovery of antibiotics.... Thus, the young generations which will soon now enter into the third millennium need not fear that they will lack challenges. They should, however, heed George Santayana's warning:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Refreshing, fascinating and informative, this book is an essential read for the enquiring student or adult. "World History" is both fascinating and important. There is no other way to understand who we are and how we came to be where we are now.

In this collection of essays, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called new cultural history. He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and John Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

Intended as both a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, this volume takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He explores, for example, the hypercritical philology of the 19th century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.

At once a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, The Foundation of Rome takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He looks, for example, at the hypercritical philology of the nineteenth century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.Grandazzi produces a depiction of Rome's origins that is both up-to-date and provocative. His use of scientific parallels in describing changes in the ways texts were analyzed and his broad familiarity with comparative material make his synthesis particularly illuminating, and he writes with clarity, verve, and wit.

In this collection of essays, of which four are published here for the first time, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called "new cultural history". He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and John Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

After discussing the origins and identity of cultural history, Burke explores the social history of dreams and the relation between history and social memory. He presents five case studies addressing topics in the history of early modern Italy. Each is located on the frontiers of cultural history -- between learned and popular culture, between the public and the private spheres, and between the serious and the comic. Burke then turns to the encounter between Europe and the New World and to the phenomenon of cultural translation in the etymological, literal, and metaphorical senses of the term. He concludes with two theoretical investigations: one on the history of mentalities and one which asks why cultural history seems doomed to fragmentation.

Employing the approaches of Gramsci and Foucault, Gran proposes a re-conceptualisation of world history. He challenges the convention of relying on totalitarian or democratic functions of a particular state to explain relationships of authority and resistance in a number of national contexts.

This fascinating book examines how the past pervades French public life, how the French both commemorate their past triumphs, heroes, and martyrs and attempt to erase the more violent events in their history. The book surveys the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have manufactured different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimate their goals. Beginning with a discussion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Robert Gildea moves backward in time to show how rival factions have used various elements of French political culture-from the grandeur of the ancien regime to Catholicism, Jacobinism, Anarchism, and Bonapartism-to further their ends. Gildea shows how proponents of revolution and counterrevolution, church and state, centralism and regionalism, and national identity and nationalism campaigned to achieve the widest possible acceptance of their own view of the past. He describes the continuing battle between Left and Right for association with national heroes such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. He exposes the reworking of collective views of the past by political communities, in order to increase or recover political legitimacy. Written in clear and trenchant prose, the book offers a new perspective on French history and political culture.

'Building upon four decades of his own scholarly work in the field of history, Frykenberg presents a notable achievement for clarifying the rich overlap between facts and theory, evidence and belief, history and religion, East and West. He deserves to be commended.'--Lamin Sanneh, Yale Divinity School

How we make history - and what we then make of it - is engagingly dramatized in T. H. Breen's portrait of a 350-year-old American community faced with the costs of its progress. In the particulars of one town's struggle to check development and save its natural environment, Breen shows how our sense of history reflects our ever-changing self-perceptions and hopes for the future. Breen first went to East Hampton, the celebrated Long Island resort town, to write about the Mulford Farmstead, a picturesque saltbox dating from the 1680s. Through his research, he came across a fascinating cast of local characters, past and present, who contributed to, invented, and reinvented the town's history. Breen's work also drew him into contemporary local affairs: factionalism among residents, zoning disputes, and debates over resource management. Driving these heated issues, Breen found, were some dearly held notions about a harmonious, agrarian past that conflicted with what he had come to know about the divisiveness and opportunism of East Hampton's early days. Imagining the Past is about the interplay between some of the East Hampton histories Breen encountered: the official histories of many generations, the myths and oral traditions, and the curious stories that Breen, as an outsider, discerned in the town's rich holdings of artifacts and documents. With a warm yet wry regard for human nature, Breen obliges us to confront our pasts in all their complexities and ironies, no matter how unsettling or inconvenient the experience.

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a rich new perspective on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity.