No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war. In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong's short history demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much more complex phenomenon than...

"A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas--and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain,...

"One cannot understand Latin America without understanding the history of the Catholic Church in the region. Catholicism has been predominant in Latin America and it has played a definitive role in its development. It helped to spur the conquest of the New World with its emphasis on missions to the indigenous peoples, controlled many aspects of the colonial economy, and played key roles in the struggles for Independence. The History of the Catholic...

This book is not only a fascinating introduction to the number concept and to numbers themselves but also a multifaceted linguistic and historic analysis of how numbers have evolved in many cultures. A noted scholar draws upon evidence from history, literature, philosophy, and ethnology to recount the oral, written, and symbolic development of numbers.

A comprehensive comparative history of the Cold War : from its origins through to its most dangerous moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Packed with new information drawn from previously unavailable international sources; it also reflects the findings of a new generation of historians. It also contains insights into the role of ideology, democracy, economics, alliances, and nuclear weapons, as well as reinterpretations of Stalin, Truman, Khruschev,...

In Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics Janine Larmon Peterson investigates regional saints whose holiness was contested. She scrutinizes the papacy's toleration of unofficial saints' cults and its response when their devotees challenged church authority about a cult's merits or the saint's orthodoxy. As she demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious...

The Canadian constitution includes the complete text of the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982 as well as a glossary of key terms, a short history of the Constitution, and a timeline of important constitutional events. It also explains how the Supreme Court of Canada works and describes the people and issues involved in leading constitutional cases.

"American history has profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, Christianity. This book provides a brisk and lively yet deeply researched survey of these intertwined forces from the colonial period to the present"-- Provided by publisher.

"America is preoccupied with race statistics--perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different "race" line--the nativity line--separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government's...