Humanities Books

I read this book for a graduate course in Roman history. It is an indispensable primary source for students of Roman history.

On the first page of his Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus wrote that Octavian "seduced the army with bonuses, and his cheap food policy was successful bait for civilians." Tacitus' description of Augustus' transformation of Rome from a republic into an empire is most illuminating as well. "Upper-class survivors found that slavish obedience was the way to succeed, both politically and financially. They had profited from the revolution, and so now they liked the security of the existing arrangement better than the dangerous uncertainties of the old regime."

Sir Ronald Syme relied heavily on the work of Tacitus for his cogent narrative of Octavian's rise to power as Augustus. Syme's in-depth study of Tacitus' life and work was published in 1958. Tacitus' historical accuracy was doubted for centuries and Syme made a project of re-evaluating the accuracy of his historical writings. Syme believed that Tacitus was in a unique position to write about the birth and early political history of the Imperial period in Rome due to his very active political life. Tacitus had served as a senator, consul, and proconsul of Asia. In addition, he was known to be an excellent orator in his day. In his writings, Syme believed that Tacitus provided excellent accounts of Augustus' rise to power and his career as Rome's first Emperor.

Tacitus delved into the machinery of the new government, including Augustus' use of patronage as well as his many thwarted attempts at planning for his own succession. What Syme found was a man that grew very adept politically and whose political maturity rapidly developed at an early age. At eighteen, he was named as heir to Julius Caesar. He grew into the greatest Roman princeps spanning fifty-six years until his death. Augustus knew that to retain power he had to maintain the general consent of the governed. He astutely maintained order not by following the constitution or past precedent, but by using the tremendous resources at his disposal. Augustus kept the plebeians in check making sure they were fed, kept them amused with games, and constantly reminded them that he was protecting them from the oppression of the nobiles.

Augustus became the "leader of a large and well organized political party as the source and fount of patronage and advancement."

Recommended reading for those interested in Roman history, military history.

Dr. Kutzer does an incredible job unearthing the motivations present in British children's literature during the late 1800s. The book is very well researched, and rivals any other author's work on the subject. I highly recommend this book as wonderful reading that exposes the most human side of all literature.

This book is the most valuable study of Alban Berg's music available in English language. Each chapter in this book is written by an eminent scholar/musicologist from Austria, Canada or US. The book is the most in-depth study of this underrated member of the second Viennese School. The four parts of this volume address four aspects relating to the ability of Berg's music to speak without words. The essays in part 1 deal with biographical issues that may have made such expressive choices particularly attractive to the composer. Part 2 explores various ways in which compositions not involving explicit verbal texts create signification, allusion, and reference, both to persons of importance in the composer's life and to literary works. Part 3 is dedicated to Berg's song cycles, and Part 4 examines Berg's operas. Many musical examples accompany the written text, and informative annotations conclude each chapter. The book is useful both to professionals and average listeners who want to better understand the beautiful music of this composer. There are two other similar studies of 20th century composers that can compare to this volume and they are Olivier Messiaen by Samuel and Henri Dutilleux by Caroline Potter.

Cosmology is a difficult term to define. Scientists, philosophers and theologians use the term in different ways, often roughly referring to the same category of object or idea, but using vastly different methods and tools. If one studies Kant's cosmology, for example, one is studying a vastly different field than if one picks up an astrophysics text on cosmology, such as the cosmology text by Narlikar from which I learned large-scale structures of the universe.

Cosmology, like much of science, was once assumed under the heading of philosophy -- in ancient Greece, for example, the great thinkers, those we classify as philosophers, were often ancient Renaissance thinkers, not separating out according to academic guidelines such as exist today components as being more philosophy or science or history. Thus, any attempt to look at cosmology properly, in its entirety, must begin with the ancients, and must take into account the various fields' contributions and digressions from the subject.

Perhaps first was the more philosophical and religious wonderings about the universe, its origins and its nature, and how things worked within. Included in this encyclopedia therefore are investigations of ancient Greek cosmology, tracing from there through the dominant Western strands of Christianity and the Enlightenment period to both the philosophical school and the physical science/astronomical side of cosmology. Even in the Enlightenment, the cross-currents between Copernican and Darwinian cosmologies and philosophical/religious cosmologies continued, and still play out to this day.

There are articles here that deal with particular philosophers and scientists as they developed their cosmological ideas. One will find articles on people as early as Thales and as recent as Hawking. There are articles on key cultural idea of cosmology, including an extensive essay on Religion and Cosmology; this is not just an enterprise for the physical scientists, as the article on Dante's moral cosmology relates. One will find interesting material in articles such as Egyptian Cosmology, Islamic Cosmology, and other societal contexts.

However, this is primarily a book for scientists, and assumes in most of its articles a familiarity with physics, mathematics and astronomy to a fairly sophisticated degree. Articles on the more recent cosmological constructs, such as the Big Bang cosmology, the Inflationary University, the Steady State cosmology, and other topics are well done. Indeed, the Steady State article was contributed by one of its originators. The philosophical side of astrophysical theories becomes evident in articles on the Grand Unified Theory, the Anthropic Principle, the article on Mulitple Universes, and the article on the Origins of Modern Cosmology.

This is an encyclopedia, arranged alphabetically -- many entries are more like longer dictionary definitions, descriptions and applications of equations and formulae, and treatments of scientific principles often used in astronomy and physics. These are useful beyond the field of cosmology. There is perhaps more philosophy and history here than a typical astronomer would want; there is perhaps more mathematical and physical science than a philosopher or historian would want. Nonetheless, it is a grand text, very complete, with good bibliographic information for major articles suggesting further reading.

The first thing that hits you looking through this 3 volume set is how ready, willing and able the human race is, world-wide, to kill, kill, kill. If the human race was a car, it would have been sent back to the factory, the schematics destroyed, and the engineers would have started all over again from scratch! Serious design flaws.
Anyway, this set is a (probably brief) catalog of man's inhumanity to man. There is some mention of genocides and crimes against humanity in pre-modern times, but most of the horror takes place in the 20th century & later, where modern weapons make killing easier and more efficient - where perpetrators take pictures & make films of themselves committing atrocities. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. The set is pretty up-to-date, including Darfur, Gujarat, and Abu Ghraib. A depressing glimpse at Planet Earth and it's inhabitants.
Includes black and white photos.

As with any encyclopedia, some entries are better than others. For example, the Bacon entry is very limited in content (it doesn't even mention his Doctrine of the Idols) when compared to other entries (such as the very precise summary of Derrida and his theories). Suggested primary and secondary text citations are thorough. The index compliation is excellent and a great help for finding terms that are repeated throughout the history of rhetoric and developed or altered by various rhetors. Thank you Theresa Enos!!! Grad students studying for comps, like me, will praise your name forever. This book is first on my list to purchase when I graduate and "find a real job."

this book is so wonderfull! I made some of my best reinassance costumes from this book! I really would recamend this book to my freinds!

I homeschool my children and we're going to be teaching High School English this coming year. I did extensive research on English Curriculums that covered the basics of Grammar. I wanted something that didn't cover too much writing but did offer refresher in essays as well. I was thrilled when I came upon this book actually listed with a university as their Enlgish 096 textbook. I ordered ONLY the Teacher's Edition at first to preview it's content. I found a used copy at Amazon through a seller's listing for only a few bucks! I'm so glad I did becuase it aussred in me that it was a curriculum that offered the coverage I was looking for. If you're looking for a basic grammar course to teach your child in maybe Freshman English this is it. It opens the door to more complex essays, verbal communication as well as creative writing. By combining those into your teaching- along with this book- you've got all four english credits necessary for thier diploma! BUY THIS BOOK!

Behind the rather dull title lurks a treasure. This book is the (to my knoweldge) the ONLY extensive collection of papers about "English in Europe." There are, of course, a few other books on the subject but none offers so many different views, so many different country-studies. Of course the readability of the articles varies but generally they are excellent. The paper about English in East German is because of its dated communist rethoric rather amusing.

Yet I have not received payment back for return of the book.I am waiting for your reply.Thanks.