In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel Leon-Portilla explores the Maya Indians' remarkable concepts of time. At the book's first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become "a classic in anthropology," a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars.

Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture.

In this absorbing work Leon-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.

Our Own Time retells the history of American labor by focusing on the politics of time and the movements for a shorter working day. It argues that the length of the working day has been the central issue for the American labor movement during its most vigorous periods of activity, uniting workers along lines of craft, gender and ethnicity. The authors hold that the workweek is likely again to take on increased significance as workers face the choice between a society based on free time and one based on alienated work and employment.

Why does time appear to run in only one direction? We remember the past- but why not the future? We can influence the future- but could we, even theoretically, influence the past?

Generations of philosophers and theologians, physicists and mathematicians have puzzles and speculated about these and the many other questions that surround the concept of time. Recent scientific work is said to explain the directionality of time. But time still contains many mysteries- black holes and big bangs, asymmetries and relativities, arrows and loops - that will doubtless continue to occupy us for centuries to come.

In this impressive collection of original articles ten internationally known scholars explore and explains the nature of time, apace and now space-time. Founded on the latest developments in thermodynamics, quantum theory and cosmology, their ideas will fascinate anyone interested in Einstein's theory of relativity.

"A discussion of the historical development of our ideas of time as they relate to nature, human nature and society. . . . The excellence of "The Discovery of Time" is unquestionable."--Martin Lebowitz, "The Kenyon Review"

What is the origin of the universe? What was there before the universe appeared? We are currently witnessing a second Copernican revolution: neither our Earth and Sun, nor our galaxy, nor even our universe, are the end of all things. Beyond our world, in an endless multiverse, are innumerable other universes, coming and going, like ours or different. Fourteen billion years ago, one of the many bubbles constantly appearing and vanishing in the multiverse exploded to form our universe. The energy liberated in the explosion provided the basis for all the matter our universe now contains. But how could this hot, primordial plasma eventually produce the complex structure of our present world? Does not order eventually always lead to disorder, to an increase of entropy? Modern cosmology is beginning to find out how it all came about and where it all might lead. Before Time Began tells that story.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. The Beatles learn to be brilliant in an hour and a half. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A US Senator begins a speech that will last for 25 hours. The horrors of war are frozen at the click of a camera. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister lives out the same four minutes over a lifetime. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks. Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalise it and make it meaningful. It has two simple intentions: to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts.

What is time? Did it have a beginning? What makes it appear to flow? Why is there a directionality or 'arrow' of time, and can it ever be reversed? It time travel possible? And might the universe be older than we thought?

The puzzles and paradoxes of time have dazzled the world's finest thinkers and throughout the ages philosophers have wrestled with the tensions between time and eternity, linear time and cyclicity, being and becoming. When Einstein formulated his theory of relativity early this century, it brought about a revolution in our understanding of time, yet also presented a new set of mysteries. Einstein's time can be warped, leading to bizarre possibilities such as black holes and time travel, while making nonsense of our perception of a 'now' and a division of time into past, present and future. In relation to quantum physics, time takes on even stranger aspects.

In this, his latest book, acclaimed physicist and writer Paul Davies confronts the tough questions about time, including the weird relationship between physical time and our psychological perception of it. He gives straightforward descriptions of topics such as the theory of relativity, time dilation and Hawking's 'imaginary time'. Davies concludes that despite decades of progress in unravelling the mysteries of time, the revolution begun by Einstein remains tantalizingly incomplete.

"Helga Nowotny's exploration of the forms and meaning of time in contemporary life is panoramic without in any way partaking of the blandness of a survey. From the artificial time of the scientific laboratory to the distinctively modern yearning for one's own time, she regards every topic in this wide-ranging book from a fresh angle of vision, one which reveals unsuspected affinities between the bravest, newest worlds of global technology and the most ancient worlds of myth."
--Lorraine Daston, University of Chicago

This book represents a major contribution to the understanding of time, giving particular attention to time in relation to modernity. The development of industrialism, the author points out, was based upon a linear and abstract conception of time. Today we see that form of production, and the social institutions associated with it, supplanted by flexible specialization and just-in-time production systems. New information and communication technologies have made a fundamental impact here. But what does all this mean for temporal regimes? How can we understand the transformation of time and space involved in the bewildering variety of options on offer in a postmodern world?

The author provides an incisive analysis of the temporal implications of modern communication. She considers the implications of worldwide simultaneous experience, made possible by satellite technologies, and considers the reorganization of time involved in the continuous technological innovation that marks our era. In this puzzling universe of action, how does one achieve a 'time of one's own'? The discovery of a specific time perspective centred in the individual, she shows, expresses ayearning for forms of experience that are subversive of established institutional patterns.

This brilliant study, became a classic in Germany, will be of interest to students and professionals working in the areas of social theory, sociology, politics and anthropology.

A revolution in clock technology in England during the 1660s allowed people to measure time more accurately, attend to it more minutely, and possess it more privately than previously imaginable. In "Telling Time," Stuart Sherman argues that innovations in prose emerged simultaneously with this technological breakthrough, enabling authors to recount the new kind of time by which England was learning to live and work.
Through brilliant readings of Samuel Pepys's diary, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's daily "Spectator," the travel writings of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, and the novels of Daniel Defoe and Frances Burney, Sherman traces the development of a new way of counting time in prose--the diurnal structure of consecutively dated installments--within the cultural context of the daily institutions which gave it form and motion. "Telling Time" is not only a major accomplishment for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary studies, but it also makes important contributions to current discourse in cultural studies.

Calendars and the celebration of feasts and holidays form an important part of religious and national movements and are sometimes the cause of schism. The Qumran community followed a solar calendar differing from the lunar calendar observed at the Temple in Jerusalem. This volume contains their texts relating to its calendar.

Because they list all the public holidays and pagan festivals of the age, calendars provide unique insights into the culture and everyday life of ancient Rome. "The Codex-Calendar of 354" miraculously survived the Fall of Rome. Although it was subsequently lost, the copies made in the Renaissance remain invaluable documents of Roman society and religion in the years between Constantine's conversion and the fall of the Western Empire. In this richly illustrated book, Michele Renee Salzman establishes that the traditions of Roman art and literature were still very much alive in the mid-fourth century. Going beyond this analysis of precedents and genre, Salzman also studies "The Calendar of 354" as a reflection of the world that produced and used it. Her work reveals the continuing importance of pagan festivals and cults in the Christian era and highlights the rise of a respectable aristocratic Christianity that combined pagan and Christian practices. Salzman stresses the key role of the Christian emperors and imperial institutions in supporting pagan rituals. Such policies of accomodation and assimilation resulted in a gradual and relatively peaceful transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian capital.

An enjoyable and compelling ride through one of life's most fascinating enigmas
"What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know," St. Augustine of Hippo lamented. "But if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not."
Who wouldn't sympathize with Augustine's dilemma? Time is at once intimately familiar and yet deeply mysterious. It is thoroughly intangible: We say it flows like a river -- yet when we try to examine that flow, the river seems reduced to a mirage. No wonder philosophers, poets, and scientists have grappled with the idea of time for centuries.
The enigma of time has also captivated science journalist Dan Falk, who sets off on an intellectual journey In Search of Time. The quest takes him from the ancient observatories of stone-age Ireland and England to the atomic clocks of the U.S. Naval Observatory; from the layers of geological "deep time" in an Arizona canyon to Albert Einstein's apartment in Switzerland. Along the way he talks to scientists and scholars from California to New York, from Toronto to Oxford. He speaks with anthropologists and historians about our deep desire to track time's cycles; he talks to psychologists and neuroscientists about the mysteries of memory; he quizzes astronomers about the beginning and end of time. Not to mention our latest theories about time travel -- and the paradoxes it seems to entail. We meet great minds from Aristotle to Kant, from Newton to Einstein -- and we hear from today's most profound thinkers: Roger Penrose, Paul Davies, Julian Barbour, David Deutsch, Lee Smolin, and many more.
As usual, Dan Falk's style combines exhaustive research with a lively, accessible, and often humorous style, making In Search of Time a delightful tour through a most curious dimension.

"From the Hardcover edition."

The ancient Romans changed more than the map of the world when they conquered so much of it; they altered the way historical time itself is marked and understood. In this brilliant, erudite, and exhilarating book Denis Feeney investigates time and its contours as described by the ancient Romans, first as Rome positioned itself in relation to Greece and then as it exerted its influence as a major world power. Feeney welcomes the reader into a world where time was movable and changeable and where simply ascertaining a date required a complex and often contentious cultural narrative. In a style that is lucid, fluent, and graceful, he investigates the pertinent systems, including the Roman calendar (which is still our calendar) and its near perfect method of capturing the progress of natural time; the annual rhythm of consular government; the plotting of sacred time onto sacred space; the forging of chronological links to the past; and, above all, the experience of empire, by which the Romans meshed the city state's concept of time with those of the foreigners they encountered to establish a new worldwide web of time. Because this web of time was Greek before the Romans transformed it, the book is also a remarkable study in the cross-cultural interaction between the Greek and Roman worlds.
Feeney's skillful deployment of specialist material is engaging and accessible and ranges from details of the time schemes used by Greeks and Romans to accommodate the Romans' unprecedented rise to world dominance to an edifying discussion of the fixed axis of B.C./A.D., or B.C.E./C.E., and the supposedly objective "dates" implied. He closely examines the most important of the ancient world's time divisions, that between myth and history, and concludes by demonstrating the impact of the reformed calendar on the way the Romans conceived of time's recurrence. Feeney's achievement is nothing less than the reconstruction of the Roman conception of time, which has the additional effect of transforming the way the way the reader inhabits and experiences time.

Days, months, and years were given to us by nature, but we invented the week for ourselves. There is nothing inevitable about a seven-day cycle, or about any other kind of week; it represents an arbitrary rhythm imposed on our activities, unrelated to anything in the natural order. But where the week exists--and there have been many cultures where it doesn't--it is so deeply embedded in our experience that we hardly ever question its rightness, or think of it as an artificial convention; for most of us it is a matter of 'second nature.'