Iranian history has long been a source of fascination for European and American observers. The country's ancient past preoccupied nineteenth-century historians and archaeologists as they attempted to construct a unified understanding of the ancient world. Iran's medieval history has likewise preoccupied scholars who have long recognized the Iranian plateau as a cultural crossroad of the world's great civilizations. In more recent times, Iran has continued to demand the attention of observers when, for example, the revolution of 1978-79 dramatically burst onto the world stage, or more recently, when the Iranian democracy movement has come to once again challenge the status quo of the clerical regime. Iran's dominance in the Middle East has brought it into conflict with the United States and so it is the subject of almost daily coverage from reporters. Sympathetic observers of Iran-students, scholars, policy makers, journalists, and the educated public-tend to be perplexed and confused by this tangled web of historical development. Iran, as it appears to most observers, is a foreboding, menacing, and far away land with a history that is simply too difficult to fathom.
The Handbook is a guide to Iran's complex history. The book emphasizes the large-scale continuities of Iranian history while also describing the important patterns of transformation that have characterized Iran's past. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific epoch of Iranian history and surveys the general political, social, cultural, and economic issues of that era. The ancient period begins with chapters considering the anthropological evidence of the prehistoric era, through to the early settled civilizations of the Iranian plateau, and continuing to the rise of the ancient Persian empires. The medieval section first considers the Arab-Muslim conquest of the seventh century, and then moves on to discuss the growing Turkish influence filtering in from Central Asia beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The last third of the book covers Iran in the modern era by considering the rise of the Safavid state and its accompanying policy of centralization and the introduction of Shi'ism, followed by essays on the problems of reform and modernization in the Qajar and Pahlavi periods, and finally with a chapter on the revolution of 1978-79 and its aftermath.
The book is a collaborative exercise among scholars specializing in a variety of sub-fields, and across a number of disciplines, including history, art history, classics, literature, politics, and linguistics. Here, readers can find a reliable and accessible narrative that can serve as an introduction to the field of Iranian studies. While the number of monographs published within specialized subfields of Iranian history continues to proliferate, there have been, to date, no books that attempt to produce a comprehensive single-volume history of Iranian civilization.

Louis Botha was ’n briljante Boeregeneraal wie se taktiese vernuf en intuïtiewe aanslag vir etlike oorwinnings oor die Britse magte in die Anglo-Boereoorlog gesorg het. Maar dit was sy enigmatiese karakter en vaste oortuiging om te hou by wat hy geglo het reg was, wat hom as ’n leier van die Boerevolk bevestig het.

Richard Steyn gee op meesterlike wyse insae in die lewe van hierdie grootse Suid-Afrikaanse krygsman en staatsman. Hy beskryf verhelderend hoe Botha saam met sy hegte vriend, Jan Smuts, die vier Suid-Afrikaanse kolonies na Uniewording in 1910 gelei het waarna Botha as die eerste eerste minister van die Unie aangewys is.

Gedurende die Eerste Wêreldoorlog was Botha aan die voorpunt van die Suid-Afrikaanse magte se suksesvolle inval van Duits-Suidwes-Afrika. Tog is hy deur talle Afrikaners verkwalik vir sy steun aan Brittanje, en die Afrikaner-rebellie van 1914, waartydens hy teen voormalige makkers moes optree, het sy hart gebreek.

Botha se groothartig en vrygewige omgang met mense – van Vereeniging tot Versailles – het hom bo sy tydgenote laat uitstaan.

My recollection of one of the proudest days of my life. At the Meardy Farm, I stood next to my mother and my dad Arthur while she rang France to speak to the Duke of Windsor. The change in my mothers voice from this miserable woman in her sixties, who would moan and groan regardless about life, into a young girl blushing at the sound of his voice. "Hello David, its Rose," she sounded so gentle. I looked at Arthur and he did not look happy with mum, hearing her conversation, watching her acting in this way. I stood waiting nervously, what would I say to this man? A Prince, a King, and now the Duke of Windsor, but always my father. Then mum passed me the telephone, I put it against my ear and stammered. "Hello, it's Roy, Roy Albert." The telephone went silent for a few moments, then a voice on the end of the line replied, "Hello Roy Albert, this is Edward ..."

Let us rewrite our history; A history that speaks of Africa as experienced by Africans. Let us rewrite our history that speaks of ubuntu traditions, isintu practices and umuntu/abantu as central pillars of society. Let us rewrite a narrative that speaks isintu sethu - setso sa rona, isintu - setso sa rona as a 'Set of Rules' for all practices in society. Twenty-five years after the delivery of political democracy, the Edenic projects of nonracialism and the Rainbow Nation have failed because there was no fuller appreciation of what is meant by ubuntu. Ubuntu consists of three integral parts: first, amasiko, which consists of traditions, norms and customs; isintu: rituals, performances and practices that help with the embodiment of ubuntu; and umuntu, the performer and practitioner of isintu and bearer of the ubuntu value system as a state of being and identity. The version of ubuntu that was used and applied immediately after 1994 for engendering nationbuilding should have initially been focused on rebuilding the Black social groups before there were attempts at rebuilding all races, through the defunct Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and forging social cohesion through short-term sporting codes such as the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Such an understanding of ubuntu, exemplified above, came across as sanitised and a quick fix that could not undo centuries of dehumanisation, as characterised by apartheid. By definition and practice, that is anathema to ubuntu since it depreciated the value systems and performances of isintu of the majority population and defiled the humanity of both the Black people and their white counterparts. Isintu ought to be regarded as a tool of inculcation of rules, norms and traditions that structure limits and help with the embodiment of ubuntu. This book regards it as well suited for solving the impasse currently witnessed in South Africa. It is only with the inclusion of the analysis and discussion of isintu that ubuntu may be understood and reveal its performative prowess in the production of identities and a variety of capitals meant to sustain the societies of sub-Saharan Africa. Needless to say, some aspects of ubuntu may well be suitable for export as representative of humanism or critical humanism. However, the system of ubuntu needs to be properly rationalised before it can be chopped down and paraded as a universal tool. The tendency of parading ubuntu as a universal tool of humanism has tended to weaken it along with individuals whose bodies and geographies are a locus for cultivation identities and diverse forms of capital that help enact and sustain local value systems. This book presents the true meaning of ubuntu, which has its roots in communitarian societies and their value systems. As part of an international benchmark on the viability of local value systems as a conceptual framework for performances of production aimed at a fulfilled citizenry, the book compares ubuntu to its counterpart value systems of Confucianism in China and Jantelagen in Sweden.

Capturing the Spoor describes and discusses the virtually unknown rock art of the northernmost reaches of South Africa, in the area of the Central Limpopo Basin. The title of the book comes from the belief held by some traditional Bantu-speakers that the San can ‘capture’ animal spoor and bewitch it in order to ensure hunting success. The authors use this as an analogy for understanding the behavior of people in the past through the traces they leave behind.

This book describes the work of four distinct cultural groups: the San; Khoekhoen (Khoikhoin or ‘Hottentots’), Venda and Northern Sotho, and, most recently, people of European descent. Further, it discusses the interaction and connection between the four groups. It is the first substantial body of work from South Africa to focus on an area outside the Drakensberg, which has become synonymous with ‘southern African rock art’. Although the book focuses on a specific region, it introduces anthropological information from the Cape to the greater Kalahari region. The text is interspersed with first-hand accounts of Kalahari and Okavango San beliefs and rites and discussions with traditional Bantu-speaking peoples. A distillation of 14 years of field surveying and research in the Central Limpopo Basin, it targets the general reader who would like to know more about southern Africa’s rock art traditions, but at the same time addresses many academic concerns.

A simple narrative line and copious endnotes, respectively, ensure that both ‘lay’ and academic readers will find the subject interesting. The text is abundantly illustrated with line drawings and expressed through photographs. A list of rock art sites in Limpopo that are open to the public will be included.

This is a rare publication where information that is collected is analyzed with the help of knowledge and experience accumulated by the local indigenous communities, whose have been seldom heard in this context before.

This authentic account is a tribute to the courage and resolve with which soldiers and their loved ones confront uncertainty, fear, hardship and the loss of their comrades. Subjected to continual changes of affiliation as the Falklands campaign unfolds, 2 Troop has to create its own identity and sense of belonging drawing on its professional belief, strength of leadership, and intrinsic camaraderie. This is the story of how they did it, and the contribution they made, in one of the toughest campaigns since World War 2. A 'must read' for aspiring junior commanders and students of the realities of war. -- General Sir Peter Wall GCB, CBE, DL, FREng

This authentic account is a tribute to the courage and resolve with which soldiers and their loved ones confront uncertainty, fear, hardship and the loss of their comrades. Subjected to continual changes of affiliation as the Falklands campaign unfolds, 2 Troop has to create its own identity and sense of belonging drawing on its professional belief, strength of leadership, and intrinsic camaraderie. This is the story of how they did it, and the contribution they made, in one of the toughest campaigns since World War 2. A 'must read' for aspiring junior commanders and students of the realities of war. -- General Sir Peter Wall GCB, CBE, DL, FREng

The British, who are rightly proud of their sporting traditions, are now having to come to terms with the dark, unacknowledged, past of racism in sport - until now the truth that dare not speak its name. Conscious and unconscious racism have for decades blighted the lives of talented black and Asian sportsmen and women, preventing them from fulfilling their potential. In Formula One, despite Lewis Hamilton's stellar achievements, barely one per cent of the 40,000 people employed in the sport are of ethnic minority heritage. In football, Britain's premier sport, the number of non-white managers in the professional game remains pitifully small. And in cricket, Azeem Rafiq's testimony to the Commons select committee has exposed the scandal of prejudice faced by Asian cricketers in the game. Veteran author and journalist Mihir Bose examines the way racism has affected black and Asian sportsmen and women and how attitudes have evolved over the past fifty years. He looks in depth at the controversies that have beset sport at all levels: from grassroots to international competitions and how the 'Black Lives Matter' movement has had a seismic impact throughout sport, with black sports personalities leading the fight against racism. However, this has also led to a worrying white fatigue. Talking to people from playing field to boardroom and the media world, he illustrates the complexities and striking contrasts in attitudes towards race. We hear the voices of players, coaches and administrators as Mihir Bose explores the question of how the dream of a truly non-racial sports world can become a reality.

Bessie Quinn was an early 20th century New Woman, a mother living her love story in the enchanted world of the Garden City. When she died in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19, her shattered husband abandoned her memory, belongings and life history. Her disappearance reverberated down generations. Starting with only an Arts and Crafts kettle, one photo and a linen smock, Ursula has restored her grandmother to life. After long searches she found Bessie in the Scottish Borders, eighth child of working-class Irish parents who'd fled hunger after the Great Famine of the 1840s. This biography of a poor family unearths hard journeys of love, luck and loss, weaving historical fact with memory and imagination into a compelling story.

Book of Branding is a creative guide for new businesses, start-ups and individuals, which puts visual identity at the heart of brand strategy. The conversational, jargon free, tone of the book helps the reader to understand essential elements of the brand identity process. Offering first hand experience, insights and tips throughout, the book uses real life case studies to show how great collaborative work can be achieved. Book of Branding is an essential addition to the start-up toolkit, designed for entrepreneurs, founders, graphic designers, brand creators and anyone seeking to decode the complicated world of brand identity.

Jonny Garrett, cofounder of the YouTube sensation Craft Beer Channel, travels in search of the deeper cultural impact of brewing—how it has become one of the world’s most important inventions and shaped our lives for millennia.

What’s the oldest and most consumed alcoholic beverage on earth? Beer, of course. And it might just be one of our more important inventions.

Since its creation thirteen thousand years ago, our love of beer has shaped everything from religious ceremonies to advertising, and architecture to bioengineering. The people who built the pyramids were paid in ale; the first fridge was built for beer, not food; bacteria was discovered while investigating sour beer; Germany’s beer halls hosted Hitler’s rise to power; and brewer’s yeast may yet be the answer to climate change.

In The Meaning of Beer, award-winning beer writer Jonny Garrett tells the stories of these incredible human moments and inventions, taking readers to some of the best-known beer destinations in the world—Munich and Oktoberfest, Carlsberg Brewery’s historic laboratory, St. Louis and the home of Budweiser—as well as those lesser known, from a five-thousand-year-old brewery in the Egyptian desert to Arctic Svalbard, home to the world’s most northerly pub.

Ultimately, this is not a book about how we made beer, but how beer made us.

In this celebrated, landmark history of the Balkans, Misha Glenny investigates the roots of the bloodshed, invasions and nationalist fervour that have come to define our understanding of the south-eastern edge of Europe. In doing so, he reveals that groups we think of as implacable enemies have, over the centuries, formed unlikely alliances, thereby disputing the idea that conflict in the Balkans is the ineluctable product of ancient grudges. And he exposes the often-catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, raising profound questions about recent Western intervention. Updated to cover the last decade's brutal conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, the surge of organised crime in the region, the rise of Turkey and the rocky road to EU membership, The Balkans remains the essential and peerless study of Europe's most complex and least understood region.

Dit is 1713. VOC-admiraal Johannes van Steelant bring sy ryklik belaaide retoervloot via die Kaapse diensstasie terug na Nederland uit Batavia. Saam op die vlagskip, sy vyf jong kinders. Op die oop see raak hulle een-een siek. Hete koors, maagpyn, swere – die gevreesde pokke.

Op 12 Februarie gaan die gesin, nou almal gesond, aan land in Tafelbaai. Hul skeepsklere word gewas in die VOC se slawelosie. Enkele maande later is byna die helfte van die Kaapse bevolking dood aan pokke.

In Retoervloot bring VOC-kenner Dan Sleigh dié gegewe, en die verbysterende werkinge van die VOC-retoervlootstelsel, lewend voor die oog. Aan die hand van Van Steelant se nuut-ontdekte skeepsjoernaal, met die agtergrondinkleding wat ’n meesterlike geskiedkundige soos Sleigh kan bied, staan die leser op die dek van vlagskip Sandenburg – ’n magtige skip van ’n roemryke organisasie, dog uitgelewer aan die woedende oseaan. Verder is Retoervloot ’n gedenksteen vir Kaapstad se grootste ramp tot op hede

Cradock is a vivid history of a South African town in the years when segregation gradually emerged, preceding the rapid and rigorous implementation of apartheid. Through the details of one emblematic community, Jeffrey Butler offers an ambitious treatment of the racial themes that dominate recent South African history. Although Butler was born and raised in Cradock, he eschews sentimentality in favour of scholarly precision. Augmenting the obvious political narratives, Cradock examines the poor infrastructural conditions, ranging from public health to public housing, that typify a grossly unequal system of racial segregation but are otherwise neglected in the region's historiography. Butler shows, with the richness that only a local study could provide, how the lives of blacks, whites and coloureds were affected by the bitter transition from segregation before 1948 to apartheid thereafter.

In the mountains of northern New Mexico above Taos Pueblo lies a deep, turquoise lake which was taken away from the Taos Indians, for whom it is a sacred life source and the final resting place of their souls. The story of their struggle to regain the lake is at the same time a story about the effort to retain the spiritual life of this ancient community. Marcia Keegan's text and historic photographs document the celebration in 1971, when the sacred lake was returned to Taos Pueblo after a sixty year struggle with the Federal government.

This revised and expanded edition celebrates the 40th anniversary of this historic event, and includes forwards from the 1971 edition by Frank Waters, and from the 1991 20th anniversary edition by Stewart L. Udall. Also contained here is new material: statements from past and current tribal leaders, reflections from Pueblo members, historic tribal statements made at the 1970 Congressional hearings and a 1971 photograph o

This study examines the hundreds of secular and religious buildings, urban residential and commercial foundations, and public monuments commissioned in Lucknow and Oudh between 1722 and 1856 by the fabulously rich Nawabs of Oudh and their Court, the English East India Company, and others.

The illustrated biography of a Scottish country house, set beside the River Clyde, and of the people who made it their home over the past 850 years Written by four brothers, their sister and the eldest member of the next generation, Finlaystone offers an insidersa view of the house, its beautiful gardens and the surrounding estate. They tell about the lives of its former owners, many of whom played prominent roles in Scottish military, political, religious and cultural affairs. As Scotland moved forward from centuries of feuds between large feudal landowners to the reformation, the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution, the building evolved from a fortress to a modest but attractive family home in 1746. Its present form as an imposing late Victorian mansion dates from when it was modernised and extended in 1900 by George Jardine Kidston, the great-grandfather of the older authors, who had grown wealthy from running one of the worlda s earliest steamship companies. In its hey-day, Finlaystone was managed for the comfort and leisure of its owners by a bevy of household servants living in a wing of the house, and by an army of workers, including gardeners, foresters, game-keepers, joiners and a laundry-maid. The prosperity that had made such a lavish life possible, however, soon started to decline, with George Kidstona s death in 1909, followed just 5 years later by war, the economic depression in the 1930s, and then World War II. Unlike many other large country houses, Finlaystone remains a family home, kept afloat largely by the hard work and adaptability of the members of the family who reflect in this book on the joys and travails that this implied.

In every year since the formation of The Royal Corps of Signals in 1920, its officers and soldiers have been formally recognised for their gallantry and distinguished services on operations across the globe and their vital contribution to the wider tasks undertaken by the British Army. Published by the Royal Signals Institution in celebration of the 2020 centennial this volume records all honours, decorations, and medals awarded since 1920. It includes a wealth of long-forgotten and rarely-seen material and it also records many hundreds of awards that acknowledge the complexity of Royal Signals in its early years-its inextricable link to the Indian Signal Corps; the interweaving of units and personnel from across the Commonwealth during the Second World War and in Korea, Malaya, and Borneo; the role played by Queen's Gurkha Signals and by locally recruited personnel from Palestine, Malaya, Hong Kong, and Malta; and the crucial contribution made by women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War and the Women's Royal Army Corps in the post-Second World War period. The volume comprises three parts. To put the operational awards in context, Section One takes a chronological tour through the history of Royal Signals in three eras-the campaigns of the inter-war years, the Second World War, and global conflict and insurgency since 1945. Other chapters deal with non-combatant gallantry and exploration. With many awards no longer available and unfamiliar to many readers in the present-day, Section Two describes the various honours, decorations, and medals in three sub-sections-awards for bravery, awards for distinguished service, and the Mention in Despatches and the various King's and Queen's commendations for bravery and valuable service. The origin and use of each award are explained briefly, and detail is given about the number conferred; many of these chapters contain biographical details of the recipients. Section Three comprises the Register of Awards. It includes 682 honours, decorations, and medals for gallantry (the recommendations or citations for which are replicated in full), and 2,582 appointments to the various orders of chivalry and awards of the British Empire Medal, the Queen's Volunteer Reserves Medal, and the Polar Medal. It also records the recipients of a little under 6,200 mentions in despatches, 36 King's and Queen's Commendations for Bravery or Brave Conduct, 109 Queen's Commendations for Valuable Service, and a multitude of foreign awards. The Register is supported by ten appendices. Six record recipients from the various Empire and Commonwealth signal units linked to Royal Signals in time of conflict or war. The others document awards to personnel of the various women's services; to Queen's Gurkha Signals and to locally enlisted personnel from Malaya, Hong Kong and Malta; to military and civilian personnel attached to Royal Signals; and those recognised by the Royal Signals Institution.

Human Action - a treatise on laissez-faire capitalism by Ludwig von Mises is a historically important and classic publication on economics, and yet it can be an intimidating work due to its length and formal style. Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action, however, skillfully relays the main insights from Human Action in a style that will resonate with modern readers. The book assumes no prior knowledge in economics or other fields, and, when necessary, it provides the historical and scholarly context necessary to explain the contribution Mises makes on a particular issue. To faithfully reproduce the material in Human Action, this work mirrors its basic structure, providing readers with an enjoyable and educational introduction to the lifes work of one of history's most important economists.