europe religion

Softcover. Jerusalem, Gefen Publishing House, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. Masha Greenbaum delivered an excellent history of the Jews of Lithuania, from the earliest years, beginning in the 9th Century through WWII. The author discusses the many kings, their courts, the Church, the various social strata and their relationships with the Jews throughout the centuries. Politics, religion, areas of livelihood and social standing are detailed in each time period. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 250 pages. With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost--a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. Name and date on front fly leaf, light pencil marginalia and a few underlinings.

Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 273 pages, b&w illustrations. Despite the fact that its capital city and over one third of its territory was within the continent of Europe, the Ottoman Empire has consistently been regarded as a place apart, inextricably divided from the West by differences of culture and religion. A perception of its militarism, its barbarism, its tyranny, the sexual appetites of its rulers and its pervasive exoticism has led historians to measure the Ottoman world against a western standard and find it lacking. In recent decades, a dynamic and convincing scholarship has emerged that seeks to comprehend and, in the process, to de-exoticize this enduring realm. Dan Goffman provides a thorough introduction to the history and institutions of the Ottoman Empire from this new standpoint, and presents a claim for its inclusion in Europe. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Walker & Company, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. chronicles the Roman Catholic Church's crusade against--and ultimate annihilation of--the Albigenses, or Cathars, a group of heretical Christians who thrived in what is now the Languedoc region of Southern France. The Cathars held revolutionary beliefs that threatened the authority of the church. The world, they maintained, was not created by a benevolent God. Rather, it was the creation of a force of darkness, immanent in all things. They considered worldly authority a fraud, and authority based on some divine sanction, such as claimed by the church, outright hypocrisy. Innocent III, resolved to eradicate the Cathar threat to church authority, recruited the military powers of France, eager to expand their territory to the south. Together, they systematically exterminated the Cathars and their supporters in a series of crusades between 1209 and 1229. The Dominican-led Inquisition that ensued built upon this momentum of intolerance and tormented Europe for centuries to come. 333 pages, endpapers map.

Hardcover. NY, BlueBridge, 1st US, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages. This narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding what has become known as the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes into the broader story of 14th-Century Europe?one of the most turbulent times in the continent's history. It was a time of fear, ferocity, and religious agony, which saw the suppression of the Knights Templar and the Cathars, the first onslaught of the plague, and the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. The century also produced some of the greatest writers and artists in the western tradition, including Giotto, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. Central to this period was the movement of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon in the south of France, where seven successive popes held power from 1309 to 1377. The drama, intrigue, and tumult associated with the papacy in exile forms the perfect lens through which to clearly see a Europe making the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boyds Mills Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Long ago in a part of the world once known as Mesopotamia, a nomadic tribesman led his people through the wilderness in search of a mystical land called Canaan. This journey would change the course of human history. Since that time, entire civilizations have flourished and vanished, along with their religions. Only one people has survived the tumult of the centuries--the Jews. What accounts for their remarkable survival? Neil Waldman tells the story of the Jewish people from their arrival in Canaan to the Exodus from Egypt. His paintings capture emotional scenes of Jewish life in the ancient world and in Europe. He shows how generation upon generation of Jews, in the face of profound crisis, have drawn strength from God's promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. The key to the Jewish people's survival is found in the story of their birth. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two matching hardcover volumes, light gray cloth covers, gilt titles on spine, top edge gilt. 509, 588 pages. These books explore the lives of Puritans in Holland, England, and America during the 17th century. It provides a detailed account of the Puritan migration to America and their impact on American history. The book also discusses the religious and political factors that led to the Puritan migration, their beliefs, and their way of life. The author provides a comprehensive overview of the Puritan community in each of the three countries, highlighting their struggles, successes, and contributions to the development of America. The book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in American history, Puritanism, and the early settlement of America. Name and date on front fly leafs, otherwise clean. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. International customers please ask for a shipping quote before purchasing.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 997 pages, color and b&w illustrations. A deadly continental struggle, the Thirty Years War devastated seventeenth-century Europe, killing nearly a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to towns and countryside alike. Peter Wilson offers the first new history in a generation of a horrifying conflict that transformed the map of the modern world. When defiant Bohemians tossed the Habsburg emperor's envoys from the castle windows in Prague in 1618, the Holy Roman Empire struck back with a vengeance. Bohemia was ravaged by mercenary troops in the first battle of a conflagration that would engulf Europe from Spain to Sweden. The sweeping narrative encompasses dramatic events and unforgettable individuals-the sack of Magdeburg; the Dutch revolt; the Swedish militant king Gustavus Adolphus; the imperial generals, opportunistic Wallenstein and pious Tilly; and crafty diplomat Cardinal Richelieu. In a major reassessment, Wilson argues that religion was not the catalyst, but one element in a lethal stew of political, social, and dynastic forces that fed the conflict. By war's end a recognizably modern Europe had been created, but at what price? The Thirty Years War condemned the Germans to two centuries of internal division and international impotence and became a benchmark of brutality for centuries. As late as the 1960s, Germans placed it ahead of both world wars and the Black Death as their country's greatest disaster. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. London/NY, Routledge, reprint, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 328 pages. This unique collection of essays, published together for the first time, not only elucidates the complexity of ancient Greek thought, but also reveals Karl Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in his reading of Parmenides. As Karl Popper himself states himself in his introduction, he was inspired to write about Presocratic philosophy for two reasons - firstly to illustrate the thesis that all history is the history of problem situations and secondly, to show the greatness of the early Greek philosophers, who gave Europe its philosophy, its science and its humanism. Light pencil marking to 8 pages.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st pbk, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 755 pages. Walter Benjamin is one of the twentieth century's most important intellectuals, and also one of its most elusive. His writings-mosaics incorporating philosophy, literary criticism, Marxist analysis, and a syncretistic theology-defy simple categorization. And his mobile, often improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. His writing career moved from the brilliant esotericism of his early writings through his emergence as a central voice in Weimar culture and on to the exile years, with its pioneering studies of modern media and the rise of urban commodity capitalism in Paris. That career was played out amid some of the most catastrophic decades of modern European history: the horror of the First World War, the turbulence of the Weimar Republic, and the lengthening shadow of fascism. Now, a major new biography from two of the world's foremost Benjamin scholars reaches beyond the mosaic and the mythical to present this intriguing figure in full. Clean copy.

Softcover. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1st pbk, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages. Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosophical poet who lived in various cities of the ancient Greek world during the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC. In this book, James Lesher presents the Greek texts of all the surviving fragments of Xenophanes' teachings, with an original English translation on facing pages, along with detailed notes and commentaries and a series of essays on the philosophical questions generated by Xenophanes' remarks. Also included are English translations of all the ancient testimonia relating to Xenophanes' life and teachings, and a discussion of how many of the testimonia pose the impediments to achieving a consistent interpretation of his philosophy. The Xenophanes who emerges in this account fully warrants classification as a philosophical thinker: moral critic and reflective student of nature, critic of popular religious belief and practice, and perhaps the first to challenge claims to knowledge about divine matters and the basic forces at work in nature. As with earlier works in the Pheonix series, this volume aims to make an important portion of Presocratic writing accessible to all those interested in ancient philosophy and the first phase of European natural science. This paperback edition contains an updated bibliography. Clean copy.