San Antonio College Library

The Sacred Chain is the most comprehensive, readable, up-to-date history of the Jews in the English language. The focus is on how a Jewish identity and consciousness were created, perpetuated, and shaped through three millennia of tumultuous and complex development. Norman F. Cantor sees the Jews as a distinctive ethnic group, rising from anthropological and sociological sources in ancient times. Then, molded in part by interaction with other societies,...

The authors examine the rise of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the Islamic principles of faith. They also describe the golden age of the Abbasids, the Mongol invasions, and the great Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires that emerged in their wake.

For many, September 11 inaugurated a new era of fear. But as Robin shows in his unsettling tour of the Western imagination--the first intellectual history of its kind--fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. As our faith in progress recedes, he argues, we turn to fear as the justifying language of public life. We may not know the good, but we do know the bad--so we cling to fear, abandoning the quest for justice, equality,...

The City: A World History tells the story of the rise and development of urban centers from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It begins with the establishment of the first cities in the Near East in the fourth millennium BCE, and goes on to examine urban growth in the Indus River Valley in India, as well as Egypt and areas that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. Athens, Alexandria, and Rome stand out both politically and culturally. With the...

By the end of the twentieth century some nine million people of South Asian descent had left India, Bangladesh or Pakistan and settled in different parts of the world, forming a diverse and significant modern diaspora. In the early nineteenth century, many left reluctantly to seek economic opportunities which were lacking at home. This is the story of their often painful experiences in the diaspora, how they constructed new social communities overseas...

"Challenging the traditional view of arms dealers as agents of their own countries, Jonathan Grant asserts that these firms pursued their own economic interests while convincing their homeland governments that weapons sales delivered national prestige and could influence foreign countries. From the rise of Remington and Winchester during the American Civil War, to the German firm Krupp's negotiations with the Russian government, to an intense military...

"Stephen Pyne takes the reader on a journey through time, exploring the terrain of Europe and the uses and abuses of these lands as well as, through migration and conquest, many parts of the rest of the world." "Vestal Fire takes its title from Vesta, Roman goddess of the hearth and keeper of the sacred fire on Mount Olympus. But the book's title also suggests the strength and limitations of Europe's peculiar conception of fire, and through fire,...

Chronicles the history of three major cities in the Levant region--Smyrna, Alexandria, and Beirut--from its golden age in the sixteenth century when different cultures and religions lived together to the present day.

In this important collection of fifty pieces, Edward Said questions the very foundations of the Oslo accords. Signed in September 1993 on the White House lawn by Israel and the PLO, the accords were immediately hailed as a success and a breakthrough for peace in the Middle East, but Said realized that the imbalance of power between the signees would set up a problematic dynamic, bringing only an illusionary stability. The later interim agreements...

"Muslims and Crusaders supplements and counterbalances the numerous books that tell the story of the crusading period from the European point of view, enabling readers to achieve a broader and more complete perspective on the period. It presents the Crusades from the perspective of those against whom they were waged, the Muslim peoples of the Levant. The book introduces the reader to the most significant issues that affected their responses to the...