With his well-known idiosyncrasies and aphoristic style, Friedrich Nietzsche is always bracing and provocative, and temptingly easy to dip into. Michael Tanner's introduction to the philosopher's life and work examines the numerous ambiguities...
"The last great mystery for science," consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain...
Contemporary fiction is a wide and diverse field, now global in dimension, with an enormous range of novels and writers that continues to grow at a fantastic speed.
In this Very Short Introduction, Robert Eaglestone provides a clear and engaging...
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writers of the Beat Generation revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their...
What is a family? What makes someone a parent? What rights should children have? Family Law: A Very Short Introduction gives the reader insight not only into what the law is, but why it is the way it is. It examines how laws have had to respond to...
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...
In this fascinating Very Short Introduction, popular science writer John Gribben tells the story of our growing understanding of galaxies, from the days before Galileo to our present-day observations of our many hundreds of millions of galactic...
Crusading fervour gripped Europe for over 200 years, creating one of the most extraordinary, vivid episodes in world history. Whether the Crusades are regarded as the most romantic of Christian expeditions, or the last of the barbarian invasions,...