LITMIR.BIZ

This sourcebook presents a wealth of material relating to every aspect of Roman spectacles, especially gladiatorial combat and chariot racing. Draws on the words of eye-witnesses and participants, as well as depictions of the games in mosaics and other works of art. Offers snapshots of “a day at the games” and “the life of a gladiator”. Includes numerous illustrations. Covers chariot-races, water pageants, naval battles and wild animal fights, as well as gladiatorial combat. Combines political, social, religious and archaeological perspectives. Facilitates an in-depth understanding of this important feature of ancient life.

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Pompey the Great gives readers a look inside the political and military world of ancient Rome and at one of the characters that shaped its destiny.

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This book invites readers to join in a fresh and extensive investigation of one of Ancient Greece’s greatest inventions: democratic government. Provides an accessible, up-to-date survey of vital issues in Greek democracy. Covers democracy’s origins, growth and essential nature. Raises questions of continuing interest. Combines ancient texts in translation and recent scholarly articles. Invites the reader into a process of historical investigation. Contains maps, a glossary and an index.

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The story of cuisine and the social history of eating is a fascinating one, and Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat covers all its aspects in this classic history. New expanded edition of a classic book, originally published to great critical acclaim from Raymond Blanc, The New York Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent and more Tells the story of man’s relationship with food from earliest times to the present day Includes a new foreword by acclaimed food writer Betty Fussell, a preface by the author, updated bibliography, and a new chapter bringing the story up to date New edition in jacketed hardback, with c.70 illustrations and a new glossy color plate section «Indispensable, and an endlessly fascinating book. The view is staggering. Not a book to digest at one or several sittings. Savor it instead, one small slice at a time, accompanied by a very fine wine.» –New York Times «This book is not only impressive for the knowledge it provides, it is unique in its integration of historical anecdotes and factual data. It is a marvellous reference to a great many topics.» –Raymond Blanc «Quirky, encyclopaedic, and hugely entertaining. A delight.» –Sunday Telegraph «It's the best book when you are looking for very clear but interesting stories. Everything is cross-referenced to an extraordinary degree, which is great because the information given is so complex and interweaving.» –The Independent «A History of Food is a monumental work, a prodigious feat of careful scholarship, patient research and attention to detail. Full of astonishing but insufficiently known facts.» –Times Higher Education Supplement

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In this book Peter Burke adopts a socio-cultural approach to examine the changes in the organization of knowledge in Europe from the invention of printing to the publication of the French Encyclopédie. The book opens with an assessment of different sociologies of knowledge from Mannheim to Foucault and beyond, and goes on to discuss intellectuals as a social group and the social institutions (especially universities and academies) which encouraged or discouraged intellectual innovation. Then, in a series of separate chapters, Burke explores the geography, anthropology, politics and economics of knowledge, focusing on the role of cities, academies, states and markets in the process of gathering, classifying, spreading and sometimes concealing information. The final chapters deal with knowledge from the point of view of the individual reader, listener, viewer or consumer, including the problem of the reliability of knowledge discussed so vigorously in the seventeenth century. One of the most original features of this book is its discussion of knowledges in the plural. It centres on printed knowledge, especially academic knowledge, but it treats the history of the knowledge 'explosion' which followed the invention of printing and the discovery of the world beyond Europe as a process of exchange or negotiation between different knowledges, such as male and female, theoretical and practical, high-status and low-status, and European and non-European. Although written primarily as a contribution to social or socio-cultural history, this book will also be of interest to historians of science, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers and others in another age of information explosion.

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This book brings together eight of the most influential recent articles on Oliver Cromwell and the Interregnum. Brings together seminal articles on Oliver Cromwell and the Interregnum. Illuminates the personality of Cromwell and his achievements. Includes treatments of Ireland and Scotland alongside discussion of England. Editorial material introduces students to the historiographical issues.

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This book focuses on the work of the great sixteenth-century traveller and map-maker Andre Thevat and explores the interrelations between representation and power in the age of discovery.

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The Conquest of Mexico is a brilliant account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, written from a new and unfamiliar angle. Gruzinski analyses the process of colonization that took place in native Indian societies over three centuries, focusing on disruptions to the Indian's memory, changes in their perception of reality, the spread of the European idea of the supernatural and the Spanish colonists' introduction of alphabetical script which the Indians had to combine with their own traditional – oral and pictorial – forms of communication. Gruzinski discusses the Indians' often awkward initiation into writing, their assimilation of Spanish culture, and their subsequent reinterpretation of their own past and recovers the changing Indian perceptions of the sacred and their 'absorption' of elements from the Christian tradition. The Conquest of Mexico is a major work of cultural history which reconstructs a crucial episode in the European colonization of the New World. It is also an important contribution to the study of the relationship between memory, orality, images and writing in history.

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This book aims to understand the different readings of Castiglione's Cortegiano or Book of the Courtier from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.

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The Art of Conversation is a major contribution to the social history of language – a relatively new field which has become the focus of lively interdisciplinary debate in recent years. Drawing on the work of sociolinguists and others, Burke uses their concept while reserving the right to qualify their theories where the historical record makes this seem appropriate. Like the sociolinguists, Burke in concerned with the way language varies according to who is communicating to whom, on what occasion, in what medium and on what topic. Unlike many sociolinguists, Burke adds a historical dimension, treating language as an inseparable part of social history. This approach is outlined and justified in the first chapter and then exemplified in the remaining four, which deal with the early modern period. Among the topics discussed are the changing role of Latin, which is shown to be very much alive in the age of its alleged decline; language and identity in Italy, a politically divided region at the time but one where educated elites had a common language; the art of conversation, in other words the advice on speaking in polite company offered in hundreds of treaties of the period; and silence, viewed as an act of communication with a significance which changes over time and varies according to the setting and the persons who are silent. The Art of Conversation will be of great interest to students and scholars in social and cultural history, linguistics, the sociology of language and the ethnography of communication.

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