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The French author Michel de Montaigne is widely regarded as the founder and greatest practitioner of the personal essay. His extraordinary curiosity and discernment, combined with his ability to mix thoughtful judgment with revealing anecdote, make him one of the most readable of all writers. In 1580 and then again in 1588 he published his Essays, a vast collection of meditations on topics ranging from love and sexuality to freedom, learning, doubt,self-scrutiny, and peace of mind. One of the most original books ever to emerge from Europe, Montaigne's masterpiece has been enormously influential among writers and philosophers from its first appearance down to the present day. In Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction, William M. Hamlin introduces readers to thelife, thought, and published work of this unforgettable figure from Renaissance Europe.

From his childhood in a family of leading American intellectuals through his mature life as a major American man of letters, Henry James created a unique body of fiction that represents one of the greatest achievements in the nation's literary history. In this introduction to the work of Henry James, Susan L. Mizruchi places his notoriously difficult and obscure writings in their historical and biographical context. Among the works treated are Washington Square, The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, and The Turn of the Screw. These complex accounts of human experience engage with the vital issues of both James's era and our own - gender relations, sexuality, the nature of modernity, the threat of relativism, the role of art. A consistent subject of both literary theory and popular culture, Henry James has had an impact that cannot be overstated.

Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience, America and American thought grew in turn, enriched by the bounties of the Enlightenment, the philosophies of liberty and individuality, the tenets of religion, and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy. In engaging and accessible prose, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's introduction to American thought considers how notions about freedom and belonging, the market and morality-and even truth-have commanded generations of Americans and been the cause of fierce debate.

The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy, from the Tale of the Heike to the kabuki retellings of the 47 Ronin. This legacy remains with us today in the legendary Akira Kurosawa films, the shoguns of HBO''s Westworld, andcountless renditions of samurai history in anime, manga, and video games. Acknowledging these common depictions, this book gives readers access to the real samurai as they lived, fought, and served.Much as they capture the modern imagination, the samurai commanded influence over the politics, arts, philosophy and religion of their own time, and ultimately controlled Japan from the fourteenth century until their demise in the mid-nineteenth century. On and off the battlefield, whether charging an enemy on horseback or currying favor at the imperial court, their story is one of adventures and intrigues, heroics and misdeeds, unlikely victories and devastating defeats. This book traces thesamurai throughout this history, exploring their roles in watershed events such as Japan''s invasions of Korea at the close of the sixteenth century and the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Coming alive in these accounts are the samurai, both famed and ordinary, who shaped Japanese history.

Evangelicalism has rapidly become one of the most significant religious movements in the modern world. An umbrella term that encompasses many Protestant denominations that share core tenets of Christianity, evangelicalism is foremost defined by its disciples'' consideration of the Bible as the ultimate moral and historical authority, the desire to evangelize or spread the faith, and the value of religious conversion known as being ΓÇ£born again.ΓÇ¥As the Evangelical movement has grown rapidly, so has its influence on the political stage. Evangelicals affect elections up and down the Americas and across Africa, provoke governments throughout Asia, fill up some of the largest church buildings, and possess the largest congregations of any religion in the world. Yet evangelicals are wildly diverse- from Canadian Baptists to Nigerian Anglicans, from South Sea Methodists to Korean Presbyterians, and from house churches in Beijing tomegachurches in Sa├╡ Paulo.This Very Short Introduction tells the evangelical story from the preacher-led revivals of the eighteenth century, through the frontier camp meetings of the nineteenth, to the mass urban rallies of the twentieth, and the global megachurches of the twenty-first. More than just a sketch of where evangelicals have come from, this volume aims to clearly examine the heart of evangelical phenomenon. Is there such a (single) thing as evangelicalism? What is its basic character? Where are theevangelicals going? And what in the world do they want?

Marriage has not always meant just one man and one woman. For much of human history, over much of the globe, the most common alternative was polygamy: marriage involving more than one spouse. Polygamy, or plural marriage, has long been an accepted form of union in human societies, involving people living on every continent. However, polygamy has come to symbolize a problematic, even ΓÇ£barbaric,ΓÇ¥ form of marriage that is often labeled asΓÇ£backwards,ΓÇ¥ less modern and progressive, embodying the oppression of women by men.In Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction, Sarah M. S. Pearsall explores what plural marriages reveal about the inner workings of marriage and describes the controversies surrounding it. The book emphasizes the diversity of historical polygamist societies, from the Shi''ite Muslims and Wendat men who practiced short-term marriages to the Mixteca, Maori, Inca, Algonquin, and Marta indigenous people of North America and the Pacific Islands, as well as medieval Irish kings, rulers of theKingdom of Buganda in east Africa, and residents of the Ottoman Empire. Pearsall also explains the Old Testament origins of polygamy in the book of Genesis, making note of vocal Protestant defenders of the practice such as Martin Luther and John Milton, and the divides within Christianity that led to JosephSmith''s establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) and the Mormons'' fight throughout the 19th-century under his successor Brigham Young''s leadership to freely practice plural marriage.Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction looks at how polygamous domestic and sexual relationships have influenced larger dynamics of power, gender, rank, race, and religion in societies all over the world, while also attempting to untangle the paradox of female constraint and liberty for women who advocated for polygamy, arguing that plural marriage offered security and stability rather than restraint for women. In balancing an explanation of the many complexities and misunderstandings ofplural marriage, the book reveals how polygamy continues to have an influence on society today.