Sociolinguistics deals with the social life of language, language in its sociocultural context. It is a branch of linguistics that looks less at the shape or sound of words--morphology or phonology--and more at how our words and sentences are...
Steve Bruce conveys the essence of the field of sociology in this fascinating volume. A well-known populizer of the discipline, Bruce presents here an introduction to a way of thinking that will appeal to anyone interested in deepening their...
In this book, Christopher Taylor explores the relationship between the historical Socrates and the engaging and infuriating figure who appears in Plato's dialogues, and examines the enduring image of Socrates as the ideal exemplar of the philosophic...
Father of the Enlightenment and the last guardian of the medieval world, Spinoza made a brilliant attempt to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch and to present a vision of man as simultaneously bound by necessity...
First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Morrill's Very Short Introduction to Stuart Britain sets the Revolution into its political, religious, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural contexts....
Superconductivity--the flow of electric current without resistance in certain materials as temperatures near absolute zero--is one of the greatest discoveries of 20th century physics, but it can seem impenetrable to those who lack a solid scientific...
Is one person's terrorist another's freedom fighter? Is terrorism crime or war? Can there be a 'War on Terror'?
For many, the terrorist attacks of September 2001 changed the face of the world, pushing terrorism to the top of many political agendas,...
This book explores the lands of the ancient Near East from around 3200 BCE to 539 BCE. The earth-shaking changes that marked this era include such fundamental inventions as the wheel and the plow and intellectual feats such as the inventions of...
John Blair's Very Short Introduction to the Anglo-Saxon Age covers the emergence of the earliest English settlements to the Norman victory in 1066. This book is a brief introduction to the political, social, religious, and cultural history of...
This Very Short Introduction offers a clear, accessible, and concise account of the apocryphal gospels--exploring their origins, their discovery, and discussing how the various texts have been interpreted both within and outside the Church. Looking...