The effect of climate on historical change represents an exciting frontier for reading and research. In this volume scholars contribute to an area of interdisciplinary study which has not been systematically explored by climatologists and historians working together.

Originally published in 1981.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The revival of comparative and historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet his work offers a powerful resource for this field. Kalberg rejects the view that Weber's historical writings consist only of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucratization on the other. On the contrary, Weber's substantive work provides coherent and distinctive guidelines for comparative-historical analysis. A systematization and reconstruction of his comparative-historical sociology, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated approach which addresses agency and structure, multiple causation and model-building.

Kalberg shows how Weber's work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance for comparative-historical research today; it addresses in a forceful way the whole range of problems and dilemmas confronted by the comparative-historical enterprise. Once the full analytic and empirical power of Weber's substantive writings is made clear, they can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes.

Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology and comparative history.

Modernity is a troubling concept, not only for scholars but for the general public, for it seems to represent a choice between oppressive traditions and empty, rootless freedom. Seeking a broader understanding of modernity, Kolb first considers the views of Weber and then discusses in detail the pivotal writings of Hegel and Heidegger. He uses the novel strategy of presenting Heidegger's critique of Hegel and then suggesting the critique of Heidegger that Hegel might have made.
Kolb offers his own views, proposing the possibility of a meaningful life that is free but still rooted in shared contexts. He concludes with comments on postmodernity as discussed by Lyotard and others, arguing persuasively against the presupposition of a unified Modern or Postmodern Age.

The Time Is Out of Joint handles the Shakespearean oeuvre from a philosophical perspective, finding that Shakespeare's historical dramas reflect on issues and reveal puzzles which were taken up by philosophy proper only in the centuries following them. Shakespeare's extraordinary handling of time and temporality, the difference between truth and fact, that of theory, and that of interpretation and revelatory truth are evaluated in terms of Shakespeare's own conjectural endeavors, and are compared with early modern, modern, and postmodern thought. Heller shows that modernity, which recognized itself in Shakespeare only from the time of Romanticism, found in Shakespeare's work a revelatory character which marked the end of both metaphysical system-building and a tragic reckoning with the inaccessibility of an absolute, timeless truth. Heller distinguishes the four stages found in constantly unique relation in Shakespeare's work (historical, personal, political, and existential) and probes their significance as time comes to fall 'out of joint' and may be again set aright. Rather than initially bestowing upon Shakespeare the dubious honorary title of philosopher, Heller probes the concretely situated reflections of characters who must face a blind and irrational fate either without taking responsibility for the discordance of time, or with a responsibility which may both transform history into politics, and set right the time which is out of joint. In the ruminations and undertakings of these characters, Shakespeare's dramas present a philosophy of history, a political philosophy, and a philosophy of (im)moral personality. Heller weighs each as distinctly modern confrontations with the possibility of truth and virtue within a human historical condition no less multifarious for its momentariness.

Every piece of historical writing has a theoretical basis on which evidence is selected, filtered, and understood. This is as true of scientific empiricism as it is of poststructualism.

The Houses of History provides a comprehensive introduction to the twelve schools of thought which have had the greatest influence on the study of history in the twentieth century. Ranging from Empiricism to Postcolonialism, Marxism to the Ethnohistorians, each chapter begins with an introduction to the particular school, the main protagonists, the critics, and is followed by a useful section of further readings. From the classic, such as G. R. Elton's "England Under the Tudors" and E. P. Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class," to the recent, such as Henrietta Whiteman's "White Buffalo Woman" and Judith Walkowitz's "City of Dreadful Delight," the diverse selections collected here bring together the leading historians and theorists of the century.

Comprehensive and accessible to undergraduates, The Houses of History is ideally suited to classroom use.

"If historical scholarship has often proved irrelevant to the world outside university walls, history itself has burst into the public domain. Over the last decade, we have witnessed intense national debates over how to present historic events to a public that attends museums, monitors education in the schools, and gazes at the History Channel. Under these circumstances, historians face the challenge of developing new ways of understanding the past and the place of the past in the present. The essays in this volume explore how scholars have reformulated the study of American history over the past fifteen years and identify new headings for future work."--from the Preface

In "The Challenge of American History," Louis Masur brings together a sampling recent scholarship to determine the key issues preoccupying historians of American history and to contemplate the discipline's direction for the future. The 15 summary essays comprising this volume allow professional historians, history teachers, and students to grasp in a convenient and accessible form what historians have been writing about. Arranged in a general chronological order, these essays probe such topics as the age of discovery, colonial American history, emancipation, race and labor history, law and political development, and the nature of historical writing since the 1960s. Additional essays discuss race and gender in colonial as well as modern America, the new paradigms of urban history, religious history, visual culture, public history, the new narrative history, and the meanings of national culture.

Understanding and Teaching Native American History is a timely and urgently needed remedy to a long-standing gap in history instruction. While the past three decades have seen burgeoning scholarship in Indigenous studies, comparatively little of that has trickled into classrooms. This volume is designed to help teachers effectively integrate Indigenous history and culture into their lessons, providing richly researched content and resources across the chronological and geographical landscape of what is now known as North America. Despite the availability of new scholarship, many teachers struggle with contextualizing Indigenous history and experience. Native peoples frequently find themselves relegated to historical descriptions, merely a foil to the European settlers who are the protagonists in the dominant North American narrative. This book offers a way forward, an alternative framing of the story that highlights the ongoing integral role of Native peoples via broad coverage in a variety of topics including the historical, political, and cultural. With its scope and clarity of vision, suggestions for navigating sensitive topics, and a multitude of innovative approaches authored by contributors from multidisciplinary backgrounds, Understanding and Teaching Native American History will also find use in methods and other graduate courses. Nearly a decade in the conception and making, this is a groundbreaking source for both beginning and veteran instructors.

This book is devoted to the inhabitants of the Spanish-Portuguese borderlands during the early modern period. It seeks to challenge a predominant historiography focused on the study of borderlands societies, relying exclusively on the antagonistic topics of subversion and the construction of boundaries. It states that by focusing just on one concept or another there is a restrictive understanding tending to condition the agency of local communities by external narratives. Thus, if traditionally border people were reduced by some scholars to actors of a struggle against a supposedly imposed border; in a more modern perspective, their behaviors have been also framed in bottom-up processes of consolidation of spaces of sovereignty in a no less limiting vision. Faced with both approaches, the objective of this work is not to deny them but, first and foremost, to situate the experiences of border populations outside of logics that I understand as originally alien to themselves, and to highlight their own subjectivity. Finally, it also demonstrates that most of the practices developed by border people were fundamentally aimed at defending their local communities. It will be useful for both audiences interested in early modern Iberia or border studies from a bottom-up perspective.

Nation and the Writing of History in China and Britain explores, through a comparative approach, the reception of the nationalist worldview and its effects on the practice of history in China and Britain. This book proposes that nationalism, rather than a political doctrine, is a way of making sense of the world which results from the combination of a set of definite assumptions. The work analyzes how each one of these premises was accepted and negotiated by literati, intellectuals, historians, and other scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The results of this research showcase how the reception of the new nationalist worldview crucially affected images of the past, the present, and the future in both societies and decisively framed cultural, social, and political debate. In addition, they likewise evidence the fundamental role that historical narratives play in the crystallization of national identities. This book is perfect for readers interested in China and Britain during this time period, but also to anyone attracted to new ways of conceiving nationalism and its role in our world.

Traumagenic events-episodes that have caused or are likely to cause trauma-color the experiences of K-12 students and the social studies curriculum they encounter in U.S. schools. At the same time that the global COVID-19 pandemic has heightened educators' awareness of collective trauma, the racial reckoning of 2020 has drawn important attention to historical and transgenerational trauma. At a time when social studies educators can simply no longer ignore "difficult" knowledge, instruction that acknowledges trauma in social studies classrooms is essential. Through employing relational pedagogies and foregrounding voices that are too often silenced, the lessons in Hollywood or History? An Inquiry-Based Strategy for Using Film to Acknowledge Trauma in Social Studies engage students in examining the role of traumatic or traumagenic events in social studies curriculum. The 20 Hollywood or History? lessons are organized by themes such as political trauma and war and genocide. Each lesson presents film clips, instructional strategies, and primary and secondary sources targeted to the identified K-12 grade levels. As a collection, they provide ready-to-teach resources that are perfect for teachers who are committed to acknowledging trauma in their social studies instruction.

Teaching with film is not a new approach in the social studies classroom. Different publications, such as Hollywood or History, have bridged the gap with challenges attached to using historical film and engage students through inquiry, not entertainment. To continue with the Hollywood or History strategy, this text uses television shows (sitcoms) to brings issue-centered curriculum to middle and high school classrooms. By exploring issues in specific episodes, students can learn the history behind an issue, relate it to their lives, and develop an informed decision associated with the issue. The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) framework is an integral part to the exploration of issue-centered curriculum. In each chapter, the students will work through the four dimensions and develop critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. My hope is that this text can play a small role in walking practicing teachers through the C3 framework while allowing students to learn about issues that affect society and the communities where they live.

In Reencounters,Crystal Mun-hye Baik examines what it means to live with and remember an ongoing war when its manifestations-hypervisible and deeply sensed-become everyday formations delinked from militarization. Contemplating beyond notions of inherited trauma and post memory, Baik offers the concept of reencounters to better track the Korean War's illegible entanglements through an interdisciplinary archive of diasporic memory works that includes oral history projects, performances, and video installations rarely examined by Asian American studies scholars. Baik shows how Korean refugee migrations are repackaged into celebrated immigration narratives, how transnational adoptees are reclaimed by the South Korean state as welcomed "returnees," and how militarized colonial outposts such as Jeju Island are recalibrated into desirable tourist destinations. Baik argues that as the works by Korean and Korean/American artists depict this Cold War historiography, they also offer opportunities to remember otherwise the continuing war. Ultimately, Reencounters wrestles with questions of the nature of war, racial and sexual violence, and neoliberal surveillance in the twenty-first century.

Death and taxes are our inevitable fate. We've been told this since the beginning of civilisation. But what if we stopped to question our antiquated system? Is it fair? And is it capable of serving the needs of our rapidly-changing, modern society? In Daylight Robbery, Dominic Frisby traces the origins of taxation, from its roots in the ancient world, through to today. He explores the role of tax in the formation of our global religions, the part tax played in wars and revolutions throughout the ages, why, at one stage, we paid tax for daylight or for growing a beard. Ranging from the despotic to the absurd, the tax laws of the past reveal so much about how we got to where we are today and what we can do to build a system fit for the future. Featured on Stepping up with Nigel Farage 'An important book for investors in gold and bitcoin' - Daniela Cambone, Stansberry Research 'This entertaining, surprising, contrarian book is a tour de force!' - Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything 'In this spectacular gallop through history, Frisby shows how taxation has warped, stunted and thwarted human progress' - Mark Littlewood, Director General, Institute of Economic Affairs 'Frisby's historical interpretation and utopian ideas will outrage Left and Right' - Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe and Member of the House of Commons Treasury Committee 'Fascinating book which exposes the political and economic basis of tax. A must read for those of us who believe in simpler, lower taxes' - Rt Hon Liz Truss, MP for South West Norfolk, Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade

Civil wars are the biggest danger to world peace today - this book shows us why they happen, and how to avoid them. Most of us don't know it, but we are living in the world's greatest era of civil wars. While violence has declined worldwide, civil wars have increased. This is a new phenomenon. With the exception of a handful of cases - the American and English civil wars, the French Revolution - historically it has been rare for people to organise and fight their governments. This has changed. Since 1946, over 250 armed conflicts have broken out around the world, a number that continues to rise. Major civil wars are now being fought in countries including Iraq, Syria and Libya. Smaller civil wars are being fought in Ukraine, India, and Malaysia. Even countries we thought could never experience another civil war - such as the USA, Sweden and Ireland - are showing signs of unrest. In How Civil Wars Start, acclaimed expert Barbara F. Walter, who has advised on political violence everywhere from the CIA to the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, explains the rise of civil war and the conditions that create it. As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarised, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past. This urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.

This book provides a new approach to the study of the History of Roman Law. It collects the first results of the European Research Council Project, Scriptores iuris Romani - dedicated to a new collection of the texts of Roman jurisprudence, highlighting important methodological issues, together with innovative reconstructions of the profiles of some ancient jurists and works. Jurists were great protagonists of the history of Rome, both as producers and interpreters of law, since the Republican Age and as collaborators of the principes during the Empire. Nevertheless, their role has been underestimated by modern historians and legal experts for reasons connected to the developments of Modern Law in England and in Continental Europe. This book aims to address this imbalance. It presents an advanced paradigm in considering the most important aspects of Roman law: the Justinian Digesta, and other juridical late antique anthologies. The work offers an historiographic model which overturns current perspectives and makes way for a different path for legal and historical studies. Unlike existing literature, the focus is not on the Justinian Codification, but on the individualities of ancient Roman Jurists. As such, it presents the actual legal thought of its experts and authors: the ancient iuris prudentes. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in Classics, Ancient History, History of Law, and contemporary legal studies.

In his now classic Voices of Collective Remembering, James V. Wertsch (2002) examines the extent to which certain narrative themes are embedded in the way the collective past is understood and national communities are imagined. In this work, Wertsch coined the term schematic narrative templates to refer to basic plots, such as the triumph over alien forces or quest for freedom, that are recurrently used, setting a national theme for the past, present and future. Whereas specific narratives are about particular events, dates, settings and actors, schematic narrative templates refer to more abstract structures, grounded in the same basic plot, from which multiple specific accounts of the past can be generated. As dominant and naturalised narrative structures, schematic narrative templates are typically used without being noticed, and are thus extremely conservative, impervious to evidence and resistant to change. The concept of schematic narrative templates is much needed today, especially considering the rise of nationalism and extreme-right populism, political movements that tend to tap into national narratives naturalised and accepted by large swathes of society. The present volume comprises empirical and theoretical contributions to the concept of schematic narrative templates by scholars of different disciplines (Historiography, Psychology, Education and Political Science) and from the vantage point of different cultural and social practices of remembering (viz., school history teaching, political discourses, rituals, museums, the use of images, maps, etc.) in different countries. The volume's main goal is to provide a transdisciplinary debate around the concept of schematic narrative templates, focusing on how narratives change as well as perpetuate at times when nationalist discourses seem to be on the rise. This book will be relevant to anyone interested in history, history teaching, nationalism, collective memory and the wider social debate on how to critically reflect on the past.

This book is about history and the practical power of language to reveal historical change. Christopher Ehret offers a methodological guide to applying language evidence in historical studies. He demonstrates how these methods allow us not only to recover the histories of time periods and places poorly served by written documentation, but also to enrich our understanding of well-documented regions and eras. A leading historian as well as historical linguist of Africa, Ehret provides in-depth examples from the language phyla of Africa, arguing that his comprehensive treatment can be applied by linguistically trained historians and historical linguists working with any language and in any area of the world.

Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World examines the philology of orientalism. It discusses how European (and in particular German) orientalism has influenced the modern understanding of how language accesses reality and offers a critical reinterpretation of orientalism, ontology and modernity. This book pushes an innovative focus on the global history of knowledge as entangled between European and non-European cultures. Drawing from formal oriental studies, epigraphy, travel literature, and theology, Henning Truper explores how the attempt to appropriate the world by attaching language to the notion of a 'real' reference in the world ultimately produced a crisis of meaning. In the process, Truper convincingly challenges received understandings of the intellectual genealogies of oriental scholarship and its practices. This ground-breaking study is a meaningful contribution to current discourses about philology and significantly adds to our understanding about the relationship between discursive practices, cultural agendas, and political systems. As such, it will be of immense value to scholars researching Europe and the modern world, the history of philology, and those seeking to historicise the prevalent debates in theory.

Time Maps extends beyond all of the old cliches about linear, circular, and spiral patterns of historical process and provides us with models of the actual legends used to map history. It is a brilliant and elegant exercise in model building that provides new insights into some of the old questions about philosophy of history, historical narrative, and what is called straight history.-Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz Who were the first people to inhabit North America? Does the West Bank belong to the Arabs or the Jews? Why are racists so obsessed with origins? Is a seventh cousin still a cousin? Why do some societies name their children after dead ancestors? As Eviatar Zerubavel demonstrates in Time Maps, we cannot answer burning questions such as these without a deeper understanding of how we envision the past. In a pioneering attempt to map the structure of our collective memory, Zerubavel considers the cognitive patterns we use to organize the past in our minds and the mental strategies that help us string together unrelated events into coherent and meaningful narratives, as well as the social grammar of battles over conflicting interpretations of history. Drawing on fascinating examples that range from Hiroshima to the Holocaust, from Columbus to Lucy, and from ancient Egypt to the former Yugoslavia, Zerubavel shows how we construct historical origins; how we tie discontinuous events together into stories; how we link families and entire nations through genealogies; and how we separate distinct historical periods from one another through watersheds, such as the invention of fire or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most people think the Roman Empire ended in 476, even though it lasted another 977 years in Byzantium. Challenging such conventional wisdom, Time Maps will be must reading for anyone interested in how the history of our world takes shape.