Zohar, or "brilliant light," is the central text of Kabbalah. In Jewish mystical tradition, it is the meeting of midrash (storytelling that expands on events in the Bible) and myth. This selection offers original translations of eight of the most well...

This book consists of Gregory Vlastos' studies on a variety of themes in Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy. Although many of the essays have appeared in various philosophical and classical journals or symposia, new in the...

A revelatory look at what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a crime novel and the analytical...

An extraordinary selection of the finest and best-known art from the American war in Vietnam, from Tim O'Brien to Marvin Gaye, from mainstream bestsellers to radical poetry.This authoritative and accessible volume includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry,...

This lively and elegant book by the acclaimed historian Jonathan D. Spence reconstructs an extraordinary episode in the early intercourse between Europe and China. It is the story of John Hu, a lowly but devout Chinese Catholic, who in 1722 accompanied a...

A Trip to China is a two-volume textbook for students who have studied one year of Chinese. It is written for the same level as Chou and Chao's Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese, but it differs in its focus. The former is a textbook that deals mainly...

The traditional debate among philosophers of mathematics is whether there is an external mathematical reality, something out there to be discovered, or whether mathematics is the product of the human mind. This provocative book, now available in a...

From Galileo's analysis of motion to the theories of evolution and relativity, Charles Gillispie takes us on a masterly tour of the world of scientific ideas. The history of modern science is portrayed here as the development of objectivity through the...

Robert Buswell, a Buddhist scholar who spent five years as a Zen monk in Korea, draws on personal experience in this insightful account of day-to-day Zen monastic practice. Buswell's depiction of Zen reveals a religious tradition that differs radically...

In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and...

From classical mechanics to general relativity, the key principles in all areas of physics are surveyed in this one handy volume. Here Alan Tribble addresses the needs of students and practicing physicists alike. He starts with a review of mathematical...

Grand political accomplishment and artistic productivity were the hallmarks of Augustus Caesar's reign (31 B.C. to A.D. 14), which has served as a powerful model of achievement for societies throughout Western history. Although much research has been...

By the 1920s, Jews were--by all economic, political, and cultural measures of the day--making it in America. But as these children of immigrants took their places in American society, many deliberately identified with groups that remained excluded...

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary...

There has never been a single way that social life has been organized by sex.The ancient Greeks saw men and women as expressing varying degrees of a single sexual potential; many Native American societies considered sexual identity as something that...

How consumer spending during the holidays generates enormous amounts of economic wasteChristmas is a time of seasonal cheer, family get-togethers, holiday parties, and . . . gift giving. Lots and lots—and lots—of gift giving. It's hard to imagine any...