From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life imageMartin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends...

Two renowned, award-winning authors in the field of virtue and sexual ethics introduce and then apply their ethical method to such topics as relativism, ecology, bioethics, sexual ethics, and liberation theology. The result is a foundational text for...

The story of how Arab editors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized Islamic literatureIslamic book culture dates back to late antiquity, when Muslim scholars began to write down their doctrines on parchment, papyrus, and...

How the rabbis of late antiquity used time to define the boundaries of Jewish identityThe rabbinic corpus begins with a question–“when?”—and is brimming with discussions about time and the relationship between people, God, and the hour. Time and...

Perhaps the clearest and most influential statement of the principles driving the early Protestant reformers, Martin Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian (1520) challenged the teachings and authority of the old Church while simultaneously laying out...

An erudite and accessible survey of Jewish life and culture in the twentieth century, as reflected in seminal texts.Following The People and the Books, which "covers more than 2,500 years of highly variegated Jewish cultural expression" (Robert Alter,...

A vivid portrait of the early years of biblical archaeology from the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization CollapsedIn 1925, James Henry Breasted, famed Egyptologist and director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, sent...

A groundbreaking study of the role of Muslims in eighteenth‑century France“This elegant, braided history of Muslims and French citizenship is urgently needed. It will be a ‘must read’ for students of the French Revolution and anyone interested in modern...

A beautifully illustrated study of the caves at Dunhuang, exploring how this important Buddhist site has been visualized from its creation to todaySituated at the crossroads of the northern and southern routes of the ancient silk routes in western China,...

Marcel Reich-Ranicki is remarkable for both his unlikely life story and his brilliant career as the "pope of German letters." His sublimely written autobiography is at once a fascinating adventure tale, an unusual account of German-Jewish relations, a...

In his monumental book Peter Brown addresses the practice of permanent sexual renunciation--continence, celibacy, and life-long virginity--that developed in Christian circles from the first to the fifth centuries A.D.Brown vividly describes the early...

One of the major ambitions of medieval alchemists was to discover the elixir of life, a sovereign remedy capable not only of healing the body but of transforming it. Given the widespread belief that care for the body came at the cost of care for the...

"In this book intellectual historian Paul Goldin presents a history and interpretation of the eight most important classical Chinese philosophical texts and schools of thought associated with them: the Analects, Mencius, Mozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi and...

How the kibbutz movement thrived despite its inherent economic contradictions and why it eventually declinedThe kibbutz is a social experiment in collective living that challenges traditional economic theory. By sharing all income and resources equally...

An exploration of how ordinary U.S. Christians create global connections through the multibillion-dollar child sponsorship industryChild sponsorship emerged from nineteenth-century Protestant missions to become one of today’s most profitable private...

A photograph, map, or diagram illustrates the text for every site described in this pilgrimage to Palestine, beginning with places connected with John the Baptist and proceeding to Bethlehem and Nazareth, Samaria and Galilee, Jerash, Caesarea, Jericho,...