The Chinese Civil War was one of the key conflicts of the twentieth century. The Communist victory determined Chinese history for several generations,... and defined international relations in East Asia during the Cold War and after. Despite its importance and scope—its battles were the largest military engagements since World War II—until now remarkably little has been known about the war, and even less about its effects on the societies that suffered through it. This major new history of the Chinese Civil War attempts to answer two central questions: Why was the war fought? What were the immediate and the lasting results of the Communists’ victory? Though the book highlights military matters, it also shows how campaigns were mounted alongside profound changes in politics, society, and culture—changes that ultimately contributed as much to the character of today’s China as did the major battles. By analyzing the war as an international conflict, the author explains why so much of the present legitimacy of the Beijing government derives from its successes during the late 1940s, and reveals how the antagonism between China and the United States was born.

Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198) emerged from an eminent family in Muslim Spain to become the first and last great Aristotelian of the classical Islamic... world; his meticulous commentaries influenced Christian thinkers and earned him favorable mention (and a relatively pleasant fate) in Dante's Divina Commedia. The Book of the Decisive Treatise was and remains one his most important works and one of history's best defenses of the legitimate role of reason in a community of faith. The text presents itself as a plea before a tribunal in which the divinely revealed Law of Islam is the sole authority; Averroës, critical of the anti-philosophical tone of the Islamic establishment, argues that the Law not only permits but also mandates the study of philosophy and syllogistic or logical reasoning, defending earlier Muslim philosophers and dismissing criticisms of them as more harmful to the Islamic community than the philosophers' own views had been. As he details the three fundamental methods the Law uses to aid people of varied capacities and temperaments, Averroës reveals a carefully formed and remarkably argued conception of the boundaries and uses of faith and reason.

Deck of Deeds is comprised of seventy poetic prose image captions (sans images) whose titles are inspired by the popular Latin American loteria card... game. Written by a poet who logs in an average of ten thousand miles of air travel each month working as a union trainer and coordinator throughout the U.S., the cards reflect a dizzying array of cultural-geographic locations, each one acting as a scene-setter for highly dystopian portraits of people caught in a tangle of industry-specific predicaments.

Originally published in 1529, the Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex argues that women are more than equal to men in all... things that really matter, including the public spheres from which they had long been excluded.Rather than directly refuting prevailing wisdom, Agrippa uses women's superiority as a rhetorical device and overturns the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in Greek medicine, in the Bible, in Roman and canon law, in theology and moral philosophy, and in politics. He raised the question of why women were excluded and provided answers based not on sex but on social conditioning, education, and the prejudices of their more powerful oppressors. His declamation, disseminated through the printing press, illustrated the power of that new medium, soon to be used to generate a larger reformation of religion.

In addition to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, this book features Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg... Address, Second Inaugural, and two Thomas Jefferson letters on the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of IndependenceCarl L. Becker's important study is an analysis of the concepts expressed in the Declaration. Here is a lucid explanation... of what the Declaration really is, what views it sets forth, where those views arose, and how they have been accepted or modified by succeeding generations. A book that every American should read.

A compilation of important American government documents including the Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America, the... Bill of Rights and all amendments to the United States Constitution. An excellent educational reference tool to have on hand.

The prerequisite for the study of this book is a knowledge of matrices and the essentials of functions of a complex variable. It has been developed from... courses given by the authors and probably contains more material than will ordinarily be covered in a one-year course. It is hoped that the book will be a useful text in the application of differential equations as well as for the pure mathematician.

Questions about the original meaning of the Bill of Rights remain a source of active concern and controversy in the twenty-first century. In order to... help students consider the intentions of the first Constitutional amendments and the significance of declaring rights, Jack Rakove traces the tradition and describes the deliberations from which the Bill of Rights emerged.

Subtitled "A Novel of Many Manners, " Evelyn Waugh's notorious first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportsmanship, the cultured... perfection of Oxford, and the inviolable honor codes of the English gentleman.

Two decades ago A Nation at Risk sounded a national alarm on K-12 education. Now, an equally urgent alarm is being sounded for higher education in... America. In Declining by Degrees, leading authors and educators such as Tom Wolfe, Jim Fallows, and Jay Mathews provide us with a valuable understanding of the serious issues facing colleges today, such as budget cuts, grade inflation, questionable recruitment strategies, and a major focus on Big Time Sports. Tied to the PBS documentary of the same name, Declining by Degrees creates a national discussion about the future of higher education and what we can do about it.

A novel theoretical account of globalization, De-Coca-Colonization argues that we must move away from top-down visions of the processes at work and... concentrate on how ordinary people who are locked out of power structures create "globalities" of their own.

Decoded is a book like no other: a collection of lyrics and their meanings that together tell the story of a culture, an art form, a moment in history,... and one of the most provocative and successful artists of our time.“Hip-hop’s renaissance man drops a classic. . . . Heartfelt, passionate and slick.”— Kirkus, starred review