Cold War Crucible


Book Description

After World War II, the major powers faced social upheaval at home and anticolonial wars around the globe. Alarmed by conflict in Korea that could change U.S.–Soviet relations from chilly to nuclear, ordinary people and policymakers created a fantasy of a bipolar Cold War world in which global and domestic order was paramount, Masuda Hajimu shows.




The Urban Crucible


Book Description

The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.




Crucible of Conflict


Book Description

DIVExamines the caste, marriage patterns, ethnicity and religious institutions in the Tamil-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities situated along the eastern coastline of Sri Lanka, exploring the sources of their ethnic and political hostilities in the modern/div




The Crucible of Islam


Book Description

Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century, yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. A renowned classicist, G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this obscure and dynamic period in the history of Islam—exploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammad’s prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. The Crucible of Islam offers a compelling explanation of how one of the world’s great religions took shape. “A remarkable work of scholarship.” —Wall Street Journal “A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... The joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones... A masterpiece of the historian’s craft.” —Peter Brown, New York Review of Books




The Basilian Aphorisms


Book Description

Translated into English for the very first time, THE BASILIAN APHORISMS present eighteen alchemical canons designed for deep meditation upon the thrice-great Hermetic mystery: Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt.




Crucible for Survival


Book Description

In this collection, Timothy Doyle and Melissa Risely bring together an international group of environmentalists, political scientists, and international relations scholars to address key issues vital to determining the human and environmental security of the Indian Ocean Region. Addressing topics that include agrifood production systems, the geopolitics of water resources along the Mekong River basin, oil production, transportation, waste disposal, and climate change, the contributors highlight the importance of regional collaboration and offer policy and management strategies for cooperative, multinational problem solving.




Essouk - Tadmekka


Book Description

Essouk-Tadmekka presents the first archaeological exploration of one of the most important market towns on the trans-Saharan camel-caravan routes in the early Islamic period, supplying West African gold, slaves, and ivory to the Mediterranean world. Excavation of Essouk-Tadmekka’s ruins – in Saharan West Africa – has enabled Sam Nixon and a team of scholars to better understand this town described by early Arabic geographers, therein providing insights into such wider questions as the origins of trans-Saharan trade, the commerce in gold, and the arrival of Islamic culture in West Africa. This window into the earliest period of trans-Saharan exchange includes illustration of some of the best-preserved ruins along the camel-caravan routes, the earliest-known Arabic writing in West Africa, and rare gold-working remains. Contributors are: Stephanie Black, Sophie Desrosiers, Laure Dussubieux, Thomas Fenn, Dorian Fuller, James Lankton, Kevin MacDonald, Paulo de Moraes Farias, Mary-Anne Murray, Sam Nixon, Thilo Rehren, Peter Robertshaw, Jane Sidell, and Benoit Suzanne.




Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy)


Book Description

Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." —San Francisco Chronicle On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.




Crucible of Faith


Book Description

One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation and the Fall, and the nature of God and Satan.




Leadership in the Crucible


Book Description

Annotation At the pivotal battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni in February 1951, U.N. forces met and contained large-scale attacks by Chinese forces. Col. Paul Freeman and the larger-than-life Col. Ralph Monclar led the American 23rd Infantry Regiment and the French Bataillon de Coree, respectively. In this careful consideration of combat leadership at all levels, Kenneth E. Hamburger details the actions of these units, offering stories of men sustaining themselves and one another to the limits of human endurance. He analyzes the roles that training, cohesion, morale, logistics, and leadership play in success or failure on the front lines, providing a well-organized discussion that is sure to become a classic in the field of leadership studies. Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, Eighth Army commander, and Lt. Col. Ralph Monclar, the French Battalion commander, March 1951.