Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we're going. War is obsolete. You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict. Famine is disappearing. You are at more risk of obesity than starvation. Death is just a technical problem. Equality is out - but immortality is in. What does our future hold? Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling phenomenon Sapiens envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the...

Few concepts have become as charged over the past decades as antisemitism. In public debate, the word serves as a warning, an accusation, and at times even as a political weapon. But what do we actually mean by it?

From an abundance of information, misinformation and noise, Hans Wallage and Jaap Tanja bring back antisemitism to its essence: the hatred of Jews within a long history of persecution, exclusion, and stereotyping. They show how antisemitism continually takes on new forms (from medi...

During the sixties a wave of renewals surged through western civilisation, including the Catholic churches and convents. Almost everything changed in the life of religious: their work, their way of life, their appearance and their contacts with each other, and with others. Many left their congregation; others developed a new way of being religious within religious life. This book describes this process of change among the 'Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy', a congregation with s...

Leiden University was founded as an institution that would embody a particular set of academic ethics that sought to improve society through the acquisition of knowledge. In this book, author Willem Otterspeer draws on the idea of Leiden as 'a “bastion of liberty”' and proposes that concepts such as 'equilibrium' and 'scale' are key to understanding the university as an institution, ultimately showing how universities are a form of social capital, one of Western society’s answers to the...

This volume traces how colonial powers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century built, adapted, and expanded systems of slave trading and coerced labour across different regions of the globe. Bringing together diverse geographical perspectives and source materials, the contributors investigate how European practices of enslavement—shaped above all by experiences in the Atlantic world—were transferred to, or reshaped by, societies in the Indian Ocean and Asia. In examining the manageme...

The Kommandostab Reichsfuhrer-SS, the Hohere SS and the Polizeifuhrer in occupied Russia, the infamous Einsatzgruppen in cooperation with Sicherungsdivisionen and rückwärtiges Heeresgebietskommando and its commanders, all of them are discussed in this book. Different services were in command in occupied Russia. With and against each other. Additionally this book discusses the colossal losses at the Eastern front and the German arms, with, for instance, the Czech arms industry's share. Final...

The many preserved collections of student notes from the early modern period – ranging from neatly maintained notebooks to barely legible scribbles crammed between lines of printed text – hold considerable but largely untapped potential as an historical source. At the same time, the analysis of these notes poses significant challenges for scholars. This book aims to be a concise and accessible companion for scholars interested in engaging with this young and burgeoning research field. Wri...

Old war debts never die, they just fade away.......

In 2015, Britain finally paid off a large war loan issued in 1917 to finance the First World War. In 2010, Germany made the last payments on some 80-year-old debts originally used to finance part of its reparations bill imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

These were exceptions. The vast majority of the debts made during the Great War have never been paid back, including billion dollar loans from the US to western allies. These debt...