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A fresh narrative history of the rise of Rome''s empire in Italy, that exposes the monumental expansion of the Roman familial, social, political, and militaristic way of living across Italy.Before the Romans could become masters of the Mediterranean, they had to first conquer the people of their own peninsula. This book explores the origins of Roman imperialism and the creation of Rome''s early Italian empire, bringing new light and interpretations to this important but problematic period in Roman history. It explains how and why the Romans were able to expand their influence within Italy, often through the use of armed conflict, laying the foundations for their great imperial project.This book critically reexamines and reframes the traditional literary narrative within an archaeologically informed, archaic Italian context. Jeremy Armstrong presents a new interpretation of the early Roman army, highlighting the fluid and family-driven character which is increasingly visible in the evidence. Drawing on recent developments within the field of early Roman studies, Children of Mars argues that the emergence of Rome''s empire in Italy should not be seen as the spread of a distinct “Roman” people across Italian land, but rather the expansion of a social, political, and military network amongst the Italian people. Armstrong suggests that Rome''s early empire was a fundamentally human and relational one. While this reinterpretation of early Roman imperialism is no less violent than the traditional model, it alters its core dynamic and nature, and thus shifts the entire trajectory of Rome''s Republican history.

An update of a popular work that takes on the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, featuring a new afterword.Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reveals how the Spanish invasions in the Americas have been conceived and presented, misrepresented and misunderstood, in the five centuries since Columbus first crossed the Atlantic. This book is a unique and provocative synthesis of ideas and themes that were for generations debated or perpetuated without question in academic and popular circles. The 2003 edition became the foundation stone of a scholarly turn since called The New Conquest History. Each of the book''s seven chapters describes one "myth," or one aspect of the Conquest that has been distorted or misrepresented, examines its roots, and explodes its fallacies and misconceptions. Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, written in a scholarly but readable style, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest explains why Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round, the conquistadors were not soldiers, the native Americans did not take them for gods, Cortés did not have a unique vision of conquest procedure, and handfuls of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. Conquest realities were more complex--and far more fascinating--than conventional histories have related, and they featured a more diverse cast of protagonists-Spanish, Native American, and African. This updated edition of a key event in the history of the Americas critically examines the book''s arguments, how they have held up, and why they prompted the rise of a New Conquest History.

In 2013, when the state of Oklahoma erected a statue of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a group calling themselves The Satanic Temple applied to erect a statue of Baphomet alongside the Judeo-Christian tablets. Since that time, The Satanic Temple has become a regular voice in national conversations about religious freedom, disestablishment, and government overreach. In addition to petitioning for Baphomet to appear alongside another monument of the Ten Commandments in Arkansas, the group has launched campaigns to include Satanic "nativity scenes" on government property in Florida, Michigan, and Indiana, offer Satanic prayers at a high school football game in Seattle, and create "After School Satan" programs in elementary schools that host Christian extracurricular programs. Since their 2012 founding, The Satanic Temple has established 19 chapters and now claims 100,000 supporters. Is this just a political group perpetuating a series of stunts? Or is it a sincere religious movemen? peak of the Devil is the first book-length study of The Satanic Temple. Joseph Laycock, a scholar of new religious movements, contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom. Though the group gained attention for its strategic deployment of outrage, it claims to have developed beyond politics into a genuine religious movement. Equal parts history and ethnography, Speak of the Devil is Laycock''s attempt to take seriously The Satanic Temple''s work to redefine religion, the nature of pluralism and religious tolerance, and what "religious freedom" means in America.

Phoenicians among Others provides the first history of Phoenician immigrants in the ancient Mediterranean from the fourth to the first centuries BCE. Through an examination of inscriptions, many bilingual in Phoenician and Greek or Egyptian, Phoenicians among Others demonstrates how mobility and migration challenged migrants and states alike. Far from being excluded, and despite facing prejudices, immigrants mobilized adaptive strategies to mediate their experiences and encourage a sense of membership and belonging, constructed new identities, and transformed the societies they joined.By integrating the voices and histories of immigrants with those of the states in which they lived, Denise Demetriou highlights the diverse ways that migrants influenced the development of societies, introduced new institutions, shaped the policies of their home and host states, made notions of citizenship more fluid, and changed the course of local, regional, and Mediterranean histories.

Between the 1860s and the early 1920s, more than two million Jews moved from Eastern Europe to the United States while smaller groups moved to other destinations, such as Western Europe, Palestine, and South Africa. During and after the First World War hundreds of thousands of Jews were permanently displaced across Eastern Europe. Migration restrictions that were imposed after 1914, especially in the United States, prevented most from reaching safe havens, and an unknown but substantial number of Jews perished during the Holocaust-as they had been displaced in Eastern Europe years before they were deported to ghettos and killing sites. Even after the Holocaust, tens of thousands of Jewish survivors were stranded in permanent transit for many years.Between Borders tells and contextualizes the stories of these Jewish migrants and refugees before and after the First World War. It explains how immigration laws in countries such as the United States influenced migration routes around the world. Using memoirs, letters, and accounts by investigative journalists and Jewish aid workers, Tobias Brinkmann sheds light on the experiences of individual migrants, some of whom laid the foundation for migration and refugee studies as a field of scholarship, even coining terms such as "displaced person," and contributing to its legal definition at the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. The stories of these migrants and refugees were used to propose a new future for the United States, reimagining it as a pluralistic society-one comprised of immigrants.

The Founding Fathers who drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 distrusted political parties, popular democracy, centralized government, and a strong executive office. Yet the country''s national politics have historically included all those features. In American Political History: A Very Short Introduction, Donald Critchlow takes on this contradiction between original theory and actual practice. This brief, accessible book explores the nature of the two-party system, key turning points in American political history, representative presidential and congressional elections, struggles to expand the electorate, and critical social protest and third-party movements. The volume emphasizes the continuity of a liberal tradition challenged by partisan divide, war, and periodic economic turmoil.American Political History: A Very Short Introduction explores the emergence of a democratic political culture within a republican form of government, showing the mobilization and extension of the mass electorate over the lifespan of the country. In a nation characterized by great racial, ethnic, and religious diversity, American democracy has proven extraordinarily durable. Individual parties have risen and fallen, but the dominance of the two-party system persists. Fierce debates over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution have created profound divisions within the parties and among voters, but a belief in the importance of constitutional order persists among political leaders and voters. Americans have been deeply divided about the extent of federal power, slavery, the meaning of citizenship, immigration policy, civil rights, and a range of economic, financial, and social policies. New immigrants, racial minorities, and women have joined the electorate and the debates. But American political history, with its deep social divisions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonistic partisanship provides valuable lessons about the meaning and viability of democracy in the early 21st century.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The fifth edition of Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic, Workbook, has been fully revised and updated to offer helpful, scientifically proven strategies and techniques for dealing with both panic disorder and agoraphobia. The program outlined is based on the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and is organized by skill, with each chapter building on the one before it. The Workbook covers the importance of record-keeping and monitoring progress, as well as breathing techniques and thinking skills, with the main focus of the treatment involving the importance of learning how to face agoraphobic situations, and the often-frightening physical symptoms of panic, from an entirely new perspective. Self-assessment quizzes, homework exercises, and interactive forms allow clients to become active participants in their own treatment, and to learn to manage panic attacks, anxiety about panic, and avoidance of panic and agoraphobic situations.

Buddhism is one of the oldest and largest of the world''s religions. But it is also a tradition that has proven to have enormous contemporary relevance. Founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who came to be called the Buddha, the religion has spread from its origins in northeast India, across Asia, and eventually to the West, taking on new forms at each step of the way. Buddhism: What Everyone Needs to Know offers readers a brief, authoritative guide to one of the world''s most diverse religious traditions in a reader-friendly question-and-answer format. Dale Wright covers the origins and early history of Buddhism, the diversity of types of Buddhism throughout history, and the status of contemporary Buddhism. This is a go-to book for anyone seeking a basic understanding of the origins, history, teachings, and practices of Buddhism.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, launching World War Two, its army seemed an unstoppable force. The Luftwaffe bombed towns and cities across the country, and fifty divisions of the Wehrmacht crossed the border. Yet only two decades earlier, at the end of World War One, Germany had been an utterly and abjectly defeated military power. Foreign troops occupied its industrial heartland and the Treaty of Versailles reduced the vaunted German army of World War One to a fraction of its size, banning it from developing new military technologies. When Hitler came to power in 1933, these strictures were still in effect. By 1939, however, he had at his disposal a fighting force of 4.2 million men, armed with the most advanced weapons in the world. How could this nearly miraculous turnaround have happene? he answer lies in Russia. Beginning in the years immediately after World War One and continuing for more than a decade, the German military and the Soviet Union--despite having been mortal enemies--entered into a partnership designed to overturn the order in Europe. Centering on economic and military cooperation, the arrangement led to the establishment of a network of military bases and industrial facilities on Soviet soil. Through their alliance, which continued for over a decade, Germany gained the space to rebuild its army. In return, the Soviet Union received vital military, technological and economic assistance. Both became, once again, military powers capable of a mass destruction that was eventually directed against one another.Drawing from archives in five countries, including new collections of declassified Russian documents, The Faustian Bargain offers the definitive exploration of a shadowy but fateful alliance.

Diaspora is an important concept in history, sociology, religious studies, ethnic studies, political science, and literary criticism, among other disciplines. Meanwhile, journalists, politicians, and cultural authorities use the term with increasing frequency when describing contemporary global migration. But what does diaspora mean? Until recently, the term referred principally to the dispersal and exile of the Jews. However, over the course of the twentieth century, involuntary migrants from Armenia, Africa, and Ireland came to be seen as diasporic. Since the 1980s, diaspora has proliferated to a remarkable extent-to the point where it risks losing its coherence. If diaspora is merely a synonym for "migration" or "ethnic group," why use the word at all? Kevin Kenny''s Very Short Introduction to diaspora examines the origins of diaspora as a concept, its changing meanings over time, its current popularity, and its strengths and limitations as an explanatory device. Mediating between the multiple definitions currently in use, the book proposes a flexible approach to diaspora that can provide insights into the motives for migration; the networks through which migrants travel; the political, economic, and cultural connections they form among themselves, with their homelands, and with fellow diasporans in other locations around the world; the idea of return to a homeland, sometimes literally but more often metaphorically; and recent developments concerning refugees and globalization. The argument ranges broadly across time and space, using examples drawn mainly from Jewish, African, Irish, and Asian history. Diaspora emerges not as a thing that can be measured but as a concept that helps people-migrants, scholars, and social commentators alike-to make sense of the experience of migration. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A highly original reinterpretation of how race and class shaped the entirety of Southern history through the experience of four interconnected family lines. The Southern Fault Line explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of plantation owners and industrialists on the one hand, and the more democratic mindset of the mountain-dwelling small farmers on the other. These two mindsets were in continual tension from the 1800s to the 1960s, when the adherents of the more democratic side of the struggle capitulated to the oligarchical side in response to the Civil Rights movement.Bryan Jones draws from his own family''s centuries-old history in the region to explore the rise and fall of the "two minds" of the South. Through a comparison of the experiences of a slaveholding line in his family with three non-slaveholding lines, Jones provides a rich history of the politics of both class and race in the region from the Founding era to the present. The slaveholding side of his family settled in Black Belt Alabama, while ancestral members of the other side of his family were poorer uplanders. In the 1890s, the latter supported the burgeoning populist movement, which for a short window of time tried to unite poor Blacks and poor whites against the patrician planter class and industrialists. After a series of close elections, the planter class was able to stanch the populist tide. They did this in large part by sowing racial division among populism''s supporters. Indeed, one of Jones'' ancestors helped draft the 1901 Alabama constitution that made Jim Crow the law of the state. Throughout, Jones shows how deep the political differences were between the two regions, with oligarchy characterizing the slaveholding region and a more democratic ethos shaping the non-slaveholding areas. Jones serves as the final observer, a white boy observing not only the demise of the Jim Crow South, but--in the wake of the Civil Rights movement--the demise of the mountain democratic South as well. Today, the vast majority of Southern whites regardless of class support an oligarchical Republican Party.

Long ago, on a spring morning in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate passed judgement on a mysterious preacher. Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to a cross shortly after and died in agony. The effects of this verdict have reverberated throughout the world and have shaped two millennia of history. Even so, the trial remains shrouded in mystery to this day. The New Testament Gospels are unclear about what charges Pontius Pilate judged. They portray Pilate as embracing Jesus'' innocence despite having him killed. We are left with more questions than answers. Why did Pontius Pilate condemn a man he believed innocent? What was Jesus'' crime? How should we understand Pilate''s role in Jesus'' execution? Killing the Messiah addresses these questions and analyzes Pilate''s path to crucifying Jesus. It determines why and how Pilate deemed Jesus guilty of criminal behavior and the roles played by various people in ensuring Jesus'' crucifixion. It also probes how the personal motivations and social obligations of Pilate and other authorities affected how they assessed Jesus'' criminality. To do this, it situates Jesus'' trial within the geo-political context of the Roman Middle East. In the decades before Jesus'' lifetime, and throughout the centuries that followed, Roman courts determined the outcomes of millions of trials throughout the region. Jesus'' trial took place in the same basic legal apparatus as all of these. By approaching the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Jesus from the perspective of Roman and legal history, this book sheds fresh light on the most famous conviction in world history.

Everyone wants to live a meaningful life. Long before our own day of self-help books offering twelve-step programs and other guides to attain happiness, the philosophers of ancient Greece explored the riddle of what makes a life worth living, producing a wide variety of ideas and examples to follow. This rich tradition was recast by Diogenes Laertius into an anthology, a miscellany of maxims and anecdotes, that generations of Western readers have consulted for edification as well as entertainment ever since the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, first compiled in the third century AD, came to prominence in Renaissance Italy. To this day, it remains a crucial source for much of what we know about the origins and practice of philosophy in ancient Greece, covering a longer period of time and a larger number of figures-from Pythagoras and Socrates to Aristotle and Epicurus-than any other ancient source.

The American founding fathers were dedicated to the project of creating a government both functional and incapable of devolving into tyranny. To do this, they intentionally decentralized decision making among the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches. They believed this separation of powers would force compromise and achieve their goal of "separating to unify." In the second edition of this Very Short Introduction, Charles O. Jones delves into the constitutional roots of the American presidency to show how presidents faced the challenges of governing within a system of separation of powers.This updated edition of The American Presidency reviews crucial themes, including democratization of presidential elections, transitioning into and organizing a presidency, challenges in leading the permanent government, making law and policy, and reforming and changing the institution. It also introduces new case studies from the Obama administration, providing compelling insights into contemporary critical issues such as military power, the role of the First Lady, and the new trends in electoral campaigning-including the stunning advances in mass media and campaign technology.Jones lucidly shows that American presidents are not, and simply cannot be, as powerful as most Americans believe them to be. Accordingly, he stresses the necessity to acknowledge the president''s political status and style within the constitutional structure: the president is not the presidency, and the presidency is not the government.

Governments now routinely use AI-based software to gather information about citizens and determine the level of privacy a person can enjoy, how far they can travel, what public benefits they may receive, and what they can and cannot say publicly. What input do citizens have in how these machines thin? n Political Automation, Eduardo Albrecht explores this question in various domains, including policing, national security, and international peacekeeping. Drawing upon interviews with rights activists, Albrecht examines popular attempts to interact with this novel form of algorithmic governance so far. He then proposes the idea of a Third House, a virtual chamber that legislates exclusively on AI in government decision-making and is based on principles of direct democracy, unlike existing upper and lower houses that are representative. Digital citizens, AI powered replicas of ourselves, would act as our personal emissaries to this Third House. An in-depth look at how political automation impacts the lives of citizens, this book addresses the challenges at the heart of automation in public policy decision-making and offers a way forward.

Inequality has been soaring across the globe in the past decades. And the reproduction of inequality begins early in the life cycle: in homes and schools.In Unequal Learning, Xin Xiang analyzes the different kinds of learning that goes on in four drastically different Chinese schools: a rural school in a mountainous area; a public school in an impoverished region of an emerging city; a low-cost private school serving rural migrants; and a prestigious metropolitan public school that attracts the children of elite professionals and government officials. As she shows, the different learning opportunities available in these four communities contribute to the widening gulf between the rising metropolitan middle class and China''s working classes. Within classrooms, children in urban elite schools experience pedagogies drastically different from those in less privileged communities, despite the common preoccupation with preparing for exams. Outside classrooms, urban elite children learn to lead, collaborate, and compete through a variety of organized activities while rural children acquire competency in farm and household work.Though these particular schools are located in China, Xiang demonstrates how these four Chinese schools and communities reflect global trends as much as local peculiarities. Ultimately, addressing these pervasive and deep-rooted educational inequalities requires moving beyond the paradigms of closing ''achievement gaps'' and reducing ''learning poverty''. Xiang calls for a thorough rethinking of "whose knowledge and contribution counts" and "what good schools look like," in China and beyond. Powerfully argued and deeply researched, this will be essential reading not just for scholars of China, but anyone interested in how education systems both reproduce and exacerbate inequality.