Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that it never dies peacefully. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

The "Four Horsemen" of leveling-mass-mobilization warf...

The End of the Megamachine provides a uniquely comprehensive picture of the roots of the destructive forces that are threatening the future of humankind today. Spanning 5000 years of history, the book shows how the three tyrannies of militarized states, capital accumulation and ideological power have been steering both ecosystems and societies to the brink of collapse. With the growing instability of the Megamachine in the 21st century, new dangers open up as well as new possibilities for sys...

Here is a new, fourth edition of this authoritative introductory survey of world prehistory, spanning the past 3,000,000 years and written by a team of twenty-four expert authors. This edition has been radically updated to be more thematic and accessible: chapters are connected by new key themes boxes (climate change, domestication, migration, social inequality and urbanism), which link global regions and encourage big-picture thinking. The text has been streamlined and the book's design comp...

An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria's ongoing civil war"One of the best informed and non-partisan accounts of the Syrian tragedy yet published."-Patrick Cockburn, Independent Syria's brutal, long-lasting civil war is widely viewed as a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the fray. But in this book Christopher Phillips shows the crucial roles that were played b...

This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology. The authors provide summaries of 'Enlightenment', 'Romantic' and 'Victorian' anthropology, from the cultural theories of Morgan and Taylor to the often neglected contributions of German scholars. The ambiguous relationship between anthropology and national cultures is also considered.

The book provides an unparalleled account of theoretical developments in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, ...

In this concise, lucid and entertaining book, with more than forty maps and illustrations, acclaimed historian John Hirst explores the qualities that have made Europe a world-changing civilisation.

Beginning with a rapid historical overview from the ancient Greeks to the present day (the ‘shortest history’ itself), Hirst goes on to examine what makes Europe unique: its political evolution; the shaping influence of its linguistic boundaries; the crucial role played by power struggles betwe...

Fully updated and carefully revised, this new 2nd edition of History by Numbers stands alone as the only textbook on quantitative methods suitable for students of history. Even the numerically challenged will find inspiration. Taking a problem-solving approach and using authentic historical data, it describes each method in turn, including its origin, purpose, usefulness and associated pitfalls.

The problems are developed gradually and with narrative skill, allowing readers to experience the ...

'This is a miracle of a book' George Lamming'Compelling. Stuart Hall's story is the story of an age' Owen Jones 'Sometimes I feel I was the last colonial'This is the story, in his own words, of the extraordinary life of Stuart Hall: writer, thinker and one of the leading intellectual lights of his age. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, then still a British colony, Hall found himself caught between two worlds: the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, who, in the...

The Caribbean before Columbus is a new synthesis of the region's insular history. It combines the results of the authors' 55 years of archaeological research on almost every island in the three archipelagoes with that of their numerous colleagues and collaborators. The presentation operates on multiple scales: temporal, spatial, local, regional, environmental, social, and political.

In addition, individual sites are used to highlight specific issues. For the first time, the complete histories...

For almost fifty years, Sources of Japanese Tradition has been the single most valuable collection of English-language readings on Japan. Unrivalled in its wide selection of source materials on history, society, politics, education, philosophy, and religion, the two-volume textbook is a crucial resource for students, scholars, and readers seeking an introduction to Japanese civilization. Originally published in a single hardcover book, Volume 2 is now available as an abridged, two-part paperb...