Forces shaping human history are complex, but the course of history is undeniably changed on many occasions by conscious acts. These may be premeditated or responsive, calmly calculated or performed under great pressure. They may also be considered to be successful or catastrophic, but how are historians to make such judgments and appeal to evidence in support of their conclusions? Further, and crucially, how exactly are we to distinguish probable unrealized alternatives from improbable ones? This book describes some of the modern statistical techniques that can begin to answer this question, as well as some of the difficulties in doing so. Using simple, well-quantified cases drawn from military history, we claim that statistics can now help us to navigate the near-truths, the envelope around the events with which any meaningful historical analysis must deal, and to quantify the basis of such analysis. Quantifying Counterfactual Military History is intended for a general audience who are interested in learning more about statistical methods both in military history and for wider applications. Key Features: Demonstrates how modern statistical techniques can measure the impact of counterfactual decisions. Examines the importance of counterfactual reasoning for both modern scholars and historical actors. Combines historical narrative, mathematical precision and data to create a straightforward presentation of both factual and counterfactual military history. Provides an original contribution to the debate over the validity and rigour of works of counterfactual history Written in a manner accessible to readers who have no formal training in History or Statistics.

Forces shaping human history are complex, but the course of history is undeniably changed on many occasions by conscious acts. These may be premeditated or responsive, calmly calculated or performed under great pressure. They may also be considered to be successful or catastrophic, but how are historians to make such judgments and appeal to evidence in support of their conclusions? Further, and crucially, how exactly are we to distinguish probable unrealized alternatives from improbable ones? This book describes some of the modern statistical techniques that can begin to answer this question, as well as some of the difficulties in doing so. Using simple, well-quantified cases drawn from military history, we claim that statistics can now help us to navigate the near-truths, the envelope around the events with which any meaningful historical analysis must deal, and to quantify the basis of such analysis. Quantifying Counterfactual Military History is intended for a general audience who are interested in learning more about statistical methods both in military history and for wider applications. Key Features: Demonstrates how modern statistical techniques can measure the impact of counterfactual decisions. Examines the importance of counterfactual reasoning for both modern scholars and historical actors. Combines historical narrative, mathematical precision and data to create a straightforward presentation of both factual and counterfactual military history. Provides an original contribution to the debate over the validity and rigour of works of counterfactual history Written in a manner accessible to readers who have no formal training in History or Statistics.

Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds explores the small-scale communities of late antiquity - households, monasteries, and schools - where power was a question of personal relationships. When fathers, husbands, teachers, abbots, and slave-owners asserted their own will, they saw themselves as maintaining the social order, and expected law and government to reinforce their rule. Naturally, the members of these communities had their own ideas, and teaching them to 'obey their betters' was not always a straightforward business. Drawing on a wide variety of sources from across the late Roman Mediterranean, from law codes and inscriptions to monastic rules and hagiography, the book considers the sometimes conflicting identities of women, slaves, and children, and documents how they found opportunities for agency and recognition within a system built on the unremitting assertion of the rights of the powerful.

Isidore of Seville (560-636) was a crucial figure in the preservation and sharing of classical and early Christian knowledge. His compilations of the works of earlier authorities formed an essential part of monastic education for centuries. Due to the vast amount of information he gathered and its wide dissemination in the Middle Ages, Pope John Paul II even named Isidore the patron saint of the Internet in 1997. This volume represents a cross section of the various approaches scholars have taken toward Isidore's writings. The essays explore his sources, how he selected and arranged them for posterity, and how his legacy was reflected in later generations' work across the early medieval West. Rich in archival detail, this collection provides a wealth of interdisciplinary expertise on one of history's greatest intellectuals.

Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds explores the small-scale communities of late antiquity - households, monasteries, and schools - where power was a question of personal relationships. When fathers, husbands, teachers, abbots, and slave-owners asserted their own will, they saw themselves as maintaining the social order, and expected law and government to reinforce their rule. Naturally, the members of these communities had their own ideas, and teaching them to 'obey their betters' was not always a straightforward business. Drawing on a wide variety of sources from across the late Roman Mediterranean, from law codes and inscriptions to monastic rules and hagiography, the book considers the sometimes conflicting identities of women, slaves, and children, and documents how they found opportunities for agency and recognition within a system built on the unremitting assertion of the rights of the powerful.

This volume interrogates the assumption that Visigothic practices and institutions were mere imitations of the Byzantine empire. Contributors rethink these practices not as uncritical and derivative adoptions of Byzantine customs, but as dynamic processes in dialogue with not only the Byzantine empire but also with the contemporary Iberian context, as well as the Roman past. The goal of the volume is to approach Visigothic customs not as an uncritical adoption and imitatio of contemporary Roman models (an "acculturation" model), but as unique interpretations of a common pool of symbols, practices, and institutions that formed the legacy of Rome. The contributors argue that it is necessary to reconsider the idea of imitatio imperii as a process that involved specific actors taking strategic decisions in historically contingent circumstances.

This study examines the work of the principle architects of Anglo-American modernist poetics - T.S. Eliot, H.D., Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Edward Thomas and Wallace Stevens - and their response to the challenge of combatant war poetries. It argues that these civilian poets sought to negotiate directly with the combatant's gnosticism, specifically with the combatant's assertion that only those present at a catastrophe could properly represent its horrors. The modernists rightly identified that gnosticism was a threat to their own representational claims on an increasingly traumatic modernity. How was the imagination to be salvaged in order that it could still feel into the wounded experience of others? In response to this challenge, the modernists drafted their own imagined war poems, developing in the process several different and contradictory poetic systems. Whereas scholarship ordinarily tells the story of intra-war modern poetry as a series of different schools - the trench lyric, the home front elegy and the modernist long poem - each moving in a different direction, this study brings those traditions back together into one history by treating them as idiosyncratic responses to the same aesthetic problem.

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The spiritual tenets of Wicca are steeped in an inherent reverence for nature and stewardship of the environment. In fact, Wiccan practitioners have been living--and cooking--green since ancient times. In the decade since the first edition of the "The Wicca Cookbook" cast its spell over culinary history buffs and adventurous cooks everywhere, many readers have asked "What makes a cookbook Wiccan?" The tenth anniversary edition answers that question and more, bringing fresh dimensions to this heady witches' brew with new rituals and delicious recipes.
More than 100 dishes, many historically authentic, all meticulously researched, emphasize the use of organic ingredients at their seasonal peak and celebrate all the major pagan holidays: enjoy Stuffed Nasturtiums, Goddess Athena Pitas, and Deva Saffron Bread for the Spring Equinox; serve Elder Flower Chicken, Lilith's Lily Fair Soup, and Wild Woman White Sage Jelly during the Summer Solstice; and Cupid's Cold Slaw, Imbolc Moon Cookies, and Snowflake Cakes make delightful Candlemas treats. Nature-honoring dishes, eco-friendly living tips, and an inclusive message of spirituality make "The Wicca Cookbook" a unique contribution to the culinary world and a magickal tribute to the pagan spirit.