front cover of The Hidden Law
The Hidden Law
The Poetry of W. H. Auden
Anthony Hecht
Harvard University Press, 1993


Reviews of this book:
"This is a book about poetry, about a poet who was dedicated to the art like few others of our time, whose poetic technique only another poet as gifted as Hecht could gloss...The richness of reference in this book to history, prosody, theology, poetry, punctuation, makes for a long swim in the heady liquor of poetry--not only Auden's poetry but that of the hundreds of authors whom Auden read...It is a pleasure to read."
--Peter Davison, Atlantic

"I know of no other instance of a poet of comparable mastery of his art and his experience taking up in such loving detail the work of a predecessor (and near contemporary)."

--Richard Howard, Washington Post Book World

"The Hidden Law's dispassionate critical voice unfolds a powerful meditation on the vicissitudes of the poetic life...It is at its most significant level a narrative of Anthony Hecht's emergence as a poet, and for all that the book tells us by implication, it takes its place alongside MacNeice's Yeats and Berryman's Crane."

--Nicholas Jenkins, Times Literary Supplement

"A work of the most keen-sighted love for the most keen-sighted poet of our century."

--Joseph Brodsky
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The Hidden Mechanics of Exercise
Molecules That Move Us
Christopher M. Gillen
Harvard University Press, 2014

As anyone who takes up a new sport quickly discovers, even basic athletic moves require high levels of coordination and control. Whether dribbling a basketball or hitting a backhand, limbs must be synchronized and bodies balanced, all with precise timing. But no matter how diligently we watch the pros or practice ourselves, the body’s inner workings remain invisible.

The Hidden Mechanics of Exercise reveals the microworld of the human body in motion, from the motor proteins that produce force, to the signaling molecules that activate muscles, to the enzymes that extract energy from nutrients. Christopher Gillen describes how biomolecules such as myosin, collagen, hemoglobin, and creatine kinase power our athletic movements. During exercise, these molecules dynamically morph into different shapes, causing muscles, tendons, blood, and other tissues to perform their vital functions. Gillen explores a wide array of topics, from how genetic testing may soon help athletes train more effectively, to how physiological differences between women and men influence nutrition. The Hidden Mechanics of Exercise tackles questions athletes routinely ask. What should we ingest before and during a race? How does a hard workout trigger changes in our muscles? Why does exercise make us feel good?

Athletes need not become biologists to race in a triathlon or carve turns on a snowboard. But Gillen, who has run ten ultramarathons, points out that athletes wishing to improve their performance will profit from a deeper understanding of the body’s molecular mechanisms.

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The Hidden Reader
Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert
Victor Brombert
Harvard University Press, 1988

Victor Brombert is an unrivaled interpreter of French literature; and the writers he considers in this latest book are ones with whom he has a long acqualntance. These essays--eleven of them appearing in English for the first time and some totally new--give us an acute analysis of the major figures of the nineteenth century and a splendid lesson in criticism.

Brombert shows how a text works--its structure and narrative devices, and the symbolic function of characters, episodes, words--and he highlights the distinctive postures and styles of each writer. He gives us a sense of the hidden inner text as well as the techniques writers have devised to lead their readers to the discovery of what is hidden. With wonderful subtlety he unravels the reader's participatory response, whether it be Hugo reading Shakespeare, Sartre reading Hugo, Stendhal reading Rousseau, T. S. Eliot misreading Baudelaire, or Baudelaire, Balzac, and Flaubert reading their own sensibilities. This book is a sterling example of the finest kind of literary criticism--wise, intelligent, responsive, sympathetic--that reveals central aspects of the creative process and returns the reader joyfully to the texts themselves.

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A Hideous Monster of the Mind
American Race Theory in the Early Republic
Bruce Dain
Harvard University Press, 2002

The intellectual history of race, one of the most pernicious and enduring ideas in American history, has remained segregated into studies of black or white traditions. Bruce Dain breaks this separatist pattern with an integrated account of the emergence of modern racial consciousness in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. A Hideous Monster of the Mind reveals that ideas on race crossed racial boundaries in a process that produced not only well-known theories of biological racism but also countertheories that were early expressions of cultural relativism, cultural pluralism, and latter-day Afrocentrism.

From 1800 to 1830 in particular, race took on a new reality as Americans, black and white, reacted to postrevolutionary disillusionment, the events of the Haitian Revolution, the rise of cotton culture, and the entrenchment of slavery. Dain examines not only major white figures like Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Stanhope Smith, but also the first self-consciously "black" African-American writers. These various thinkers transformed late-eighteenth-century European environmentalist "natural history" into race theories that combined culture and biology and set the terms for later controversies over slavery and abolition. In those debates, the ethnology of Samuel George Morton and Josiah Nott intertwined conceptually with important writing by black authors who have been largely forgotten, like Hosea Easton and James McCune Smith. Scientific racism and the idea of races as cultural constructions were thus interrelated aspects of the same effort to explain human differences.

In retrieving neglected African-American thinkers, reestablishing the European intellectual background to American racial theory, and demonstrating the deep confusion "race" caused for thinkers black and white, A Hideous Monster of the Mind offers an engaging and enlightening new perspective on modern American racial thought.

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Hideyoshi
Mary Elizabeth Berry
Harvard University Press, 1982

Here is the first full-length biography in English of the most important political figure in premodern Japan.

Hideyoshi—peasant turned general, military genius, and imperial regent of Japan—is the subject of an immense legendary literature. He is best known for the conquest of Japan’s sixteenth-century warlords and the invasion of Korea. He is known, too, as an extravagant showman who rebuilt cities, erected a colossal statue of the Buddha, and entertained thousands of guests at tea parties. But his lasting contribution is as governor whose policies shaped the course of Japanese politics for almost three hundred years.

In Japan’s first experiment with federal rule, Hideyoshi successfully unified two hundred local domains under a central authority. Mary Elizabeth Berry explores the motives and forms of this new federalism which would survive in Japan until the mid-nineteenth century, as well as the philosophical question it raised: What is the proper role of government? This book reflects upon both the shifting political consciousness of the late sixteenth century and the legitimation rituals that were invoked to place change in a traditional context. It also reflects upon the architect of that change—a troubled parvenu who acted often with moderation and sometimes with explosive brutality.

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Hierarchy in the Forest
The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
Christopher Boehm
Harvard University Press, 2001

Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.

The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected.

Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism.

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High Culture on the Lower Frequencies
African Americans and Opera in the Early Twentieth Century
Lucy Caplan
Harvard University Press

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The High Frontier
Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy
Mark Moffett and Edward O. Wilson
Harvard University Press, 1993

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Highbrow/Lowbrow
The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
Lawrence Levine
Harvard University Press, 1988

In this unusually wide-ranging study, spanning more than a century and covering such diverse forms of expressive culture as Shakespeare, Central Park, symphonies, jazz, art museums, the Marx Brothers, opera, and vaudeville, a leading cultural historian demonstrates how variable and dynamic cultural boundaries have been and how fragile and recent the cultural categories we have learned to accept as natural and eternal are.

For most of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of expressive forms—Shakespearean drama, opera, orchestral music, painting and sculpture, as well as the writings of such authors as Dickens and Longfellow—enjoyed both high cultural status and mass popularity. In the nineteenth century Americans (in addition to whatever specific ethnic, class, and regional cultures they were part of) shared a public culture less hierarchically organized, less fragmented into relatively rigid adjectival groupings than their descendants were to experience. By the twentieth century this cultural eclecticism and openness became increasingly rare. Cultural space was more sharply defined and less flexible than it had been. The theater, once a microcosm of America—housing both the entire spectrum of the population and the complete range of entertainment from tragedy to farce, juggling to ballet, opera to minstrelsy—now fragmented into discrete spaces catering to distinct audiences and separate genres of expressive culture. The same transition occurred in concert halls, opera houses, and museums. A growing chasm between “serious” and “popular,” between “high” and “low” culture came to dominate America’s expressive arts.

“If there is a tragedy in this development,” Lawrence Levine comments, “it is not only that millions of Americans were now separated from exposure to such creators as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Verdi, whom they had enjoyed in various formats for much of the nineteenth century, but also that the rigid cultural categories, once they were in place, made it so difficult for so long for so many to understand the value and importance of the popular art forms that were all around them. Too many of those who considered themselves educated and cultured lost for a significant period—and many have still not regained—their ability to discriminate independently, to sort things out for themselves and understand that simply because a form of expressive culture was widely accessible and highly popular it was not therefore necessarily devoid of any redeeming value or artistic merit.”

In this innovative historical exploration, Levine not only traces the emergence of such familiar categories as highbrow and lowbrow at the turn of the century, but helps us to understand more clearly both the process of cultural change and the nature of culture in American society.

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Higher Education in the United States
A Summary View, Third Edition, Revised
Francis M. Rogers
Harvard University Press

This concise, practical book, first published in 1952, not only offers foreign students and educators answers to their questions about higher education in the United States, but is, in addition, a useful guide to American students planning to teach on this level, and to college and university teachers in the junior ranks. In 1957, the United States Information Agency issued a second edition for use abroad.

The present edition is rigorously revised in response to discussion both here and abroad; recent developments are included and statistics are brought up to date. Fine new illustrations enhance the text.

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Higher Learning
Derek Bok
Harvard University Press, 1986

What is distinctive, Derek Bok asks, about the American system of higher education, and how well does it perform? In particular, just how good is the education our universities offer? Are they doing all they can to educate their students, or do teaching and learning get lost in the pressure for ever more prestigious research and publication? Bok concludes that the competition characteristic of American higher education—competition for the best students, the most advanced scholarship, the most successful scientific research, the best facilities—has helped to produce venturesome, adaptable, and varied universities. But because the process of learning itself is imperfectly understood, it is difficult to achieve sustained progress in the quality of education or even to determine which educational innovations actually enhance learning.

Despite these problems, the last fifteen years have produced many promising developments, such as experimental curricula, computer-assisted learning, much-expanded offerings for nontraditional students, clinical legal education, schools of public policy to prepare students for public service careers, and many more. Such initiatives need a more secure and central place within the regular curriculum. In addition to the traditional focus on program and curriculum, Bok stresses the need to pay greater attention to improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning. He calls for a number of steps, including a sustained program of research directed toward evaluating educational programs and methods of teaching. Only through careful experimentation and evaluation of its own efforts, through many small improvements and occasional inspired advances, can each university move toward the goal of giving its students the best possible preparation for life in an increasingly complex world.

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The Highest Glass Ceiling
Women’s Quest for the American Presidency
Ellen Fitzpatrick
Harvard University Press, 2016

In The Highest Glass Ceiling, best-selling historian Ellen Fitzpatrick tells the story of three remarkable women who set their sights on the American presidency. Victoria Woodhull (1872), Margaret Chase Smith (1964), and Shirley Chisholm (1972) each challenged persistent barriers confronted by women presidential candidates. Their quest illuminates today’s political landscape, showing that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign belongs to a much longer, arduous, and dramatic journey.

The tale begins during Reconstruction when the radical Woodhull became the first woman to seek the presidency. Although women could not yet vote, Woodhull boldly staked her claim to the White House, believing she might thereby advance women’s equality. Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith came into political office through the “widow’s mandate.” Among the most admired women in public life when she launched her 1964 campaign, she soon confronted prejudice that she was too old (at 66) and too female to be a creditable presidential candidate. She nonetheless became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for President by a major party. Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm ignored what some openly described as the twin disqualifications of race and gender in her spirited 1972 presidential campaign. She ran all the way to the Democratic convention, inspiring diverse followers and angering opponents, including members of the Nixon administration who sought to derail her candidacy.

As The Highest Glass Ceiling reveals, women’s pursuit of the Oval Office, then and now, has involved myriad forms of influence, opposition, and intrigue.

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Highland–Lowland Interaction in Mesoamerica
Interdisciplinary Approaches: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 18th and 19th, 1980
Arthur G. Miller
Harvard University Press, 1983

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High-Level Manpower in Economical Development
The Turkish Case
Richard D. Robinson
Harvard University Press
Turkish leaders appear convinced that education in its widest sense must be a basic consideration in the formulation of any long-range economic development or investment program. Because a number of novel experiments have already been attempted and more are being planned toward this end, the author believes that Turkey deserves the close attention of all educational policy makers concerned with manpower development.
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The Highly Civilized Man
Richard Burton and the Victorian World
Dane Kennedy
Harvard University Press, 2007

Richard Burton was one of Victorian Britain's most protean figures. A soldier, explorer, ethnographer, and polyglot of rare power, as well as a poet, travel writer, and translator of the tales of the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, Burton exercised his abundant talents in a diverse array of endeavors. Though best remembered as an adventurer who entered Mecca in disguise and sought the source of the White Nile, Burton traveled so widely, wrote so prolifically, and contributed so forcefully to his generation's most contentious debates that heprovides us with a singularly panoramic perspective on the world of theVictorians.

One of the great challenges confronting the British in the nineteenth century was to make sense of the multiplicity of peoples and cultures they encountered in their imperial march around the globe. Burton played an important role in this mission. Drawing on his wide-ranging experiences in other lands and intense curiosity about their inhabitants, he conducted an intellectually ambitious, highly provocative inquiry into racial, religious, and sexual differences that exposed his own society's norms to scrutiny.

Dane Kennedy offers a fresh and compelling examination of Burton and his contribution to the widening world of the Victorians. He advances the view that the Victorians' efforts to attach meaning to the differences they observed among other peoples had a profound influence on their own sense of self, destabilizing identities and reshaping consciousness. Engagingly written and vigorously argued, The Highly Civilized Man is an important contribution to our understanding of a remarkable man and a crucial era.

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High-power Electromagnetic Radiators
Nonlethal Weapons and Other Applications
D. V. Giri
Harvard University Press, 2004

Nonlethal weapons are going to play an increasingly important role in combat and in civil conflict in the coming years. They offer a way of controlling dissent and insurgencies without increasing antagonism, particularly in peacekeeping operations. They prevent the unnecessary loss of life among the non-combatant population of adversaries and they decrease the number of casualties due to friendly fire. The need for new nonlethal weapons technologies has been well documented by researchers and policymakers. High-powered electromagnetic radiators are aimed at addressing that need.

Beginning with a brief survey of the history of warfare, D. V. Giri systematically examines various nonlethal weapons technologies, emphasizing those based on electromagnetics. His systematic review of high-power electromagnetic radiators is organized by frequency, coverage, and level of sophistication of underlying technologies. He provides many examples of complete systems, going from wall-socket to radiated waves.

Giri's focus on electromagnetics makes this book essential reading for researchers working with high-power microwave and electromagnetic pulse technologies as well as antenna engineers.

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Hindu Art
T. Richard Blurton
Harvard University Press, 1993
In a survey that stretches back to prehistory, Blurton discusses the religious, cultural, and historical influences that figure in Hindu art. Tracing its evolution, he shows how Hindu art has come to embrace widely varying styles, reflecting differences between regions from Nepal to Afghanistan, from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh.
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Hinduism and Ecology
The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water
Christopher Key Chapple
Harvard University Press, 2000

This fourth volume in the series exploring religions and the environment investigates the role of the multifaceted Hindu tradition in the development of greater ecological awareness in India.

The twenty-two contributors ask how traditional concepts of nature in the classical texts might inspire or impede an eco-friendly attitude among modern Hindus, and they describe some grassroots approaches to environmental protection. They look to Gandhian principles of minimal consumption, self-reliance, simplicity, and sustainability. And they explore forests and sacred groves in text and tradition and review the political and religious controversies surrounding India’s sacred river systems.

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Hinduism Before Reform
Brian A. Hatcher
Harvard University Press, 2020

A bold retelling of the origins of contemporary Hinduism, and an argument against the long-established notion of religious reform.

By the early eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire was in decline, and the East India Company was making inroads into the subcontinent. A century later Christian missionaries, Hindu teachers, Muslim saints, and Sikh rebels formed the colorful religious fabric of colonial India. Focusing on two early nineteenth-century Hindu communities, the Brahmo Samaj and the Swaminarayan Sampraday, and their charismatic figureheads—the “cosmopolitan” Rammohun Roy and the “parochial” Swami Narayan—Brian Hatcher explores how urban and rural people thought about faith, ritual, and gods. Along the way he sketches a radical new view of the origins of contemporary Hinduism and overturns the idea of religious reform.

Hinduism Before Reform challenges the rigid structure of revelation-schism­-reform-sect prevalent in much history of religion. Reform, in particular, plays an important role in how we think about influential Hindu movements and religious history at large. Through the lens of reform, one doctrine is inevitably backward-looking while another represents modernity. From this comparison flows a host of simplistic conclusions. Instead of presuming a clear dichotomy between backward and modern, Hatcher is interested in how religious authority is acquired and projected.

Hinduism Before Reform asks how religious history would look if we eschewed the obfuscating binary of progress and tradition. There is another way to conceptualize the origins and significance of these two Hindu movements, one that does not trap them within the teleology of a predetermined modernity.

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Hippocrates, Volume I
Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 2022

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the first volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s complete edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here, Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of five treatises that showcase the range of Hippocratic theory, philosophy, and practice: Ancient Medicine; Airs, Waters, Places; Epidemics 1 and 3; Precepts; and Nutriment. Also included is the famous Hippocratic Oath.

This Loeb edition replaces the original by W. H. S. Jones.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume II
Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 2023

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the second volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s complete edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. The first two treatises, Prognostic and Regimen in Acute Diseases, are manuals respectively on how to predict the course and outcome of acute diseases and how to apply appropriate dietetic measures. Sacred Disease, The Art, and Breaths are rhetorically polished monographs, each arguing in favor of a specific hypothesis: that sacred disease is a misnomer; that medicine is a legitimate art; and that air plays important roles in life and health. Law sketches a new model of medical education; Decorum summarizes a public address on the components of medical wisdom; and Dentition collects pediatric aphorisms dealing mainly with the nursing of infants and ulcerations of their tonsils, uvula, and throat.

This Loeb edition replaces the original by W. H. S. Jones.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume III
On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume IV
Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humours. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams. Heracleitus: On the Universe
Hippocrates. Heracleitus
Harvard University Press

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume IX
Coan Prenotions. Anatomical and Minor Clinical Writings
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the ninth volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s ongoing edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of eleven treatises, four previously unavailable in English, that illuminate Hippocratic medicine in such areas as anatomy, physiology, prognosis and clinical signs, obstetrics, and ophthalmology.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume V
Affections. Diseases 1–2
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume VI
Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume VII
Epidemics 2 and 4–7
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1994

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

The medical treatises collected under Hippocrates’ name are essential sources of information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. In this seventh volume of the ongoing Loeb edition of the Hippocratic Collection, Wesley Smith presents the first modern English translation of Books 2 and 4–7 of the Epidemics (the other two books are available in the first volume).

In the casebooks and notes that make up the seven books called Epidemics—the title originally meant ‘visits’—we can watch ancient physicians observing patients, noting and pondering symptoms, evaluating treatments, and developing theories about the body. They appear to be physicians’ notebooks from several areas of the Aegean basin. Smith supplements his clear translation with explanatory notes.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume VIII
Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

The medical treatises collected under Hippocrates’ name are essential sources of information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. In this eighth volume of the ongoing Loeb edition of these invaluable texts, Paul Potter presents ten treatises that offer an illuminating overview of Hippocratic medicine.

Three theoretical works—Places in Man, General Nature of Glands, and Fleshes—expound particular theories of anatomy and physiology and then elaborate on how disease and healing occur in the systems depicted. Prorrhetic 1 and 2 and Physician deal with symptoms and prognosis and with other aspects of the physician-patient relationship. And four practical manuals—Use of Liquids, Ulcers, Fistulas, and Haemorrhoids—give specific instruction for treatments. Thus from the writings in this volume we gain insight into the Hippocratic physician’s understanding of the body, his approach to his patient, and his methods for dealing with a variety of disorders.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume X
Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 2012

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the tenth volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s ongoing edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here, Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of five treatises, four concerning human reproduction (Generation, Nature of the Child) and reproductive disorders (Nature of Women, Barrenness), and one (Diseases 4) that expounds a general theory of physiology and pathology.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippocrates, Volume XI
Diseases of Women 1–2
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the eleventh and final volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s complete edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here, Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of Diseases of Women 1 and 2, which represent the most extensive accounts in the Hippocratic collection of female reproductive life, the pathological conditions affecting the female reproductive organs, and their proper terminology and recommended treatments. A lexicon of therapeutic agents is included for reference.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Hippota Nestor
Douglas Frame
Harvard University Press, 2009

This book is about the Homeric figure Nestor. This study is important because it reveals a level of deliberate irony in the Homeric poems that has hitherto not been suspected, and because Nestor’s role in the poems, which is built on this irony, is a key to the circumstances of the poems’ composition.

Nestor’s stories about the past, especially his own youth, often lack purpose on the surface of the poems, but with a slight shift of focus they provide a deep commentary on the present action of both poems. Nestor’s Homeric epithet, hippota, “the horseman,” permits the necessary refocus. The combination of epithet and name, hippota Nestor, has Indo-European roots, as a comparison with Vedic Sanskrit shows. Interpreted in the context of the Indo-European twin myth, Nestor’s role clearly points beyond itself to the key question in Homeric studies: the circumstances of the poems’ composition.

Nestor has a special relation to Ionia, where the Homeric poems were composed, and through Ionia to early Athens. The relationship between the Ionian city of Miletus and early Athens is particularly important. In addition to the role of these cities, the location of Nestor’s city Pylos, an ancient conundrum, is sharply illuminated by this new interpretation of Nestor’s Homeric role.

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Hiraizumi
Buddhist Art and Regional Politics in Twelfth-Century Japan
Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan
Harvard University Press, 1998

In the twelfth century, along the borders of the Japanese state in northern Honshu, three generations of local rulers built a capital city at Hiraizumi that became a major military and commercial center. Known as the Hiraizumi Fujiwara, these rulers created a city filled with art, in an attempt to use the power of art and architecture to claim a religious and political mandate.

In the first book-length study of Hiraizumi in English, the author studies the rise of the Hiraizumi Fujiwara and analyzes their remarkable construction program. She traces the strategies by which the Hiraizumi Fujiwara attempted to legitimate their rule and grounds the splendor of Hiraizumi in the desires, political and personal, of the men and women who sponsored and displayed that art.

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Hiring of Dock Workers and Employment Practices in the Ports of New York, Liverpool, London, Rotterdam, and Marseilles
Vernon H. Jensen
Harvard University Press
This study provides the opportunity to compare the hiring and employment practices, within the context of local conditions, as they exist in five major ports. It tells how efforts at regulation are influenced by the various institutions and by market constraints and describes the impact of the differences emanating from the industrial relations systems of each of the countries in which the port is located. In all these ports, the basic problem, to a large extent, is still that of casual employment and the author describes the repeated attempts to achieve a solution and analyzes in detail the efforts that failed and those that succeeded.
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His Majesty’s Opponent
Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire
Sugata Bose
Harvard University Press, 2010

The man whom Indian nationalists perceived as the “George Washington of India” and who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1938–1939 is a legendary figure. Called Netaji (“leader”) by his countrymen, Subhas Chandra Bose struggled all his life to liberate his people from British rule and, in pursuit of that goal, raised and led the Indian National Army against Allied Forces during World War II. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none, but his actions aroused controversy in India and condemnation in the West.

Now, in a definitive biography of the revered Indian nationalist, Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private life encapsulated the contradictions of world history in the first half of the twentieth century. He brilliantly evokes Netaji’s formation in the intellectual milieu of Calcutta and Cambridge, probes his thoughts and relations during years of exile, and analyzes his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Amidst riveting accounts of imprisonment and travels, we glimpse the profundity of his struggle: to unite Hindu and Muslim, men and women, and diverse linguistic groups within a single independent Indian nation. Finally, an authoritative account of his untimely death in a plane crash will put to rest rumors about the fate of this “deathless hero.”

This epic of a life larger than its legend is both intimate, based on family archives, and global in significance. His Majesty’s Opponent establishes Bose among the giants of Indian and world history.

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His Other Half
Men Looking at Women through Art
Wendy Lesser
Harvard University Press, 1991

Wendy Lesser counters the reigning belief that male artists inevitably misrepresent women. She builds this daring case compellingly through inquiry into many unexpected and delightfully germane subjects—Marilyn Monroe’s walk, for instance, or dwarf manicurist Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield, or the shoulder blades of Degas’s bathers. Placing such particulars within the framework of Plato’s myth of the divided beings and psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism, Lesser sets out before us an art that responds to and even attempts to overcome division.

By following a developmental, rather than historical, sequence, the book uncovers startling correspondences and fresh insights. It begins by considering Dickens, Lawrence, Harold Brodkey, Peter Handke, and John Berger on the subject of mothers; turns to Degas and the Victorian novelist George Gissing to examine the figure of woman alone, and then to Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock for their perspectives on the battle between the sexes; and then looks at the poetry of Randall Jarrell, the fashion photographs of Cecil Beaton, and the range of artworks inspired by Marilyn Monroe to investigate the central idea of woman as the artist's mirror and secret self.

A chapter on Barbara Stanwyck returns us to an essential premise—that art transcends gender boundaries, that the masculine and the feminine coexist within each individual psyche. The refreshingly open-minded approach of His Other Half finds its corollary in Lesser's lucid and accessible style. With great affection for her subject and her audience, Lesser writes in language that is opinionated yet free of cant. Her book avoids—as the best art avoids—prefabricated schemes and ideological presumptions. At once exploratory and definitive, original and erudite, His Other Half is critical inquiry at its finest.

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Hispaniola
A Photographic Journey through Island Biodiversity, Biodiversidad a Través de un Recorrido Fotográfico
Eladio FernándezForeword by Edward O. WilsonIntroduction by Philippe Bayard, Société Audubon Haïti
Harvard University Press, 2007

First, there is a soft rustle in the underbrush, then a low-slung, utterly bizarre-looking insectivore dashes in front of Eladio Fernández. With a reflexive click of digital shutter, he's captured the reclusive (Solenodon paradoxus--a living fossil. A Dominican-based conservationist and photographer, Fernandez is documenting the efforts of a distinguished team of international scientists as they unravel the workings of evolution being played out on the island of Hispaniola.

A short flight from the Florida coast, Hispaniola offers unique opportunities, not just to photographers like Fernández, but to evolutionary biologists as well. At 40 million years, Hispaniola is far older than the Galápagos. Its considerable age, along with a diversity of habitats--from mountains and cloud forests to savannahs and tropical lowlands--makes this island one of the most spectacular, if poorly understood, troves of biota on the planet. The extraordinary richness of species, much of it endangered and yet to be described, is showcased here in nearly 400 spectacular photographs. The photos are accompanied by essays--in both English and Spanish--that make known the Hispaniolan fungi, plants, and animals by the experts who know them best.

Insights gained from Hispaniola's unique flora and fauna, from its rare orchids to its stunningly beautiful bird life, may enrich our understanding of other, more complex, living systems worldwide. What Fernández captures here so vividly is not just the amazing variety of living creatures that have erupted in evolutionary isolation, but the urgency of scientists racing to give that variety a name before it vanishes.

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Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition
The Career and Controversies of Ramah
Bernard Septimus
Harvard University Press, 1982

This study of the sometimes stormy career of a brilliant and colorful talmudist offers a broad picture of medieval Hispano-Jewish culture.

Meir Abulafia (ca. 1165-1244), commonly called Ramah, was born into the old Jewish aristocracy of Muslim Spain and educated in the best Judeo-Arabic tradition, but lived his whole life under the new political and cultural realities of Christian Spain. Mr. Septimus portrays Ramah's career as a lawyer, exegete, poet, and theologian in an age of rapid cultural change. His book describes the intellectual cross-fertilization and conflict that resulted from new connections with European Jewish communities to the north. It focuses, in particular, on the great controversy over the philosophical rationalism of Maimonides, which Ramah initiated and in which he played a major role. This clash dominated Jewish intellectual history for three centuries and parallels important developments in Latin Christendom.

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Histoires Grecques
Snapshots from Antiquity
Maurice Sartre
Harvard University Press, 2009

In a series of brilliant snapshots, each a distinct bit of a larger story, Maurice Sartre’s Histoires Grecques spans the grand narrative of Greek culture over a thousand years and a vast expanse of land and sea. From Homer to Damascius, from recent discoveries in Kandahar to an account of the murder of Hypatia in 415 CE, each snapshot captures a moment in the history of Greek civilization. Together they offer a fresh perspective on an ancient culture whose wealth and depth of thought, variety and multiplicity of accomplishments, and astonishing continuity through time and space have made it the Western world’s culture of reference.

A textual fragment, a coin, an epigraph: each artifact and image launches Sartre—and his readers—on a journey into the practical mysteries of Greek civilization. Ranging from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean world, these excursions—step by step, moment by moment—finally amount to a panoramic vision of one of the most important civilizations of all time. Histoires Grecques shows the newcomer and the seasoned scholar alike how history itself is written—and imparts the experience, and the pleasure, of discovering history as discrete stories seen through the eyes of one of the most eminent historians of ancient Greece.

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Historia Augusta, Volume I
David Magie
Harvard University Press, 2022

March of the emperors.

The Historia Augusta is a biographical work roughly following the model of the imperial biographer Suetonius (LCL 31, 38) and covering the lives of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (r. 117–138) to Carinus (r. 283–285), with a lacuna between the lives of the Gordians and the Valerians. Although the work comes down to us as a collection of thirty books written by six different authors, it is now generally considered to be the creation of a single individual writing under several pseudonyms no earlier than the late fourth century. It is a thoroughly enigmatic work whose origins, nature, and purpose remain obscure; the very beginning of the life of Hadrian is lost, and with it any general introduction that may have existed.

While the Historia Augusta is our most detailed surviving source for the second and third centuries, often providing details beyond the Greek accounts, it is not a trustworthy source for historical information: too many of the details are anachronistic, unsupported, or preposterous, or contradicted internally or by better sources, and many documents, speeches, acclamations, and inscriptions that it quotes or cites are entirely fictional.

The Historia Augusta nevertheless has its attractions: for the connoisseur of biography the author provides plenty of wordplay, puns, allusions, literary games, and mock-scholarly digressions, and for the casual reader he offers vivid characterizations of emperors both good and bad.

This revision of the original Loeb edition by David Magie offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

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Historia Augusta, Volume I
Hadrian. Aelius. Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius. L. Verus. Avidius Cassius. Commodus. Pertinax. Didius Julianus. Septimius Severus. Pescennius Niger. Clodius Albinus
David Magie
Harvard University Press

The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, or Historia Augusta, is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors, heirs, and claimants from Hadrian to Numerianus (117–284 CE). The work, which is modeled on Suetonius, purports to be written by six different authors and quotes documents and public records extensively. Since we possess no continuous account of the emperors of the second and third centuries, the Historia Augusta has naturally attracted keen attention. In the last century it has also generated the gravest suspicions. Present opinion holds that the whole is the work of a single author (who lived in the time of Theodosius) and contains much that is plagiarism and even downright forgery.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Historia Augusta is in three volumes.

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Historia Augusta, Volume II
David Magie
Harvard University Press, 2022

March of the emperors.

The Historia Augusta is a biographical work roughly following the model of the imperial biographer Suetonius (LCL 31, 38) and covering the lives of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (r. 117–138) to Carinus (r. 283–285), with a lacuna between the lives of the Gordians and the Valerians. Although the work comes down to us as a collection of thirty books written by six different authors, it is now generally considered to be the creation of a single individual writing under several pseudonyms no earlier than the late fourth century. It is a thoroughly enigmatic work whose origins, nature, and purpose remain obscure; the very beginning of the life of Hadrian is lost, and with it any general introduction that may have existed.

While the Historia Augusta is our most detailed surviving source for the second and third centuries, often providing details beyond the Greek accounts, it is not a trustworthy source for historical information: too many of the details are anachronistic, unsupported, or preposterous, or contradicted internally or by better sources, and many documents, speeches, acclamations, and inscriptions that it quotes or cites are entirely fictional.

The Historia Augusta nevertheless has its attractions: for the connoisseur of biography the author provides plenty of wordplay, puns, allusions, literary games, and mock-scholarly digressions, and for the casual reader he offers vivid characterizations of emperors both good and bad.

This revision of the original Loeb edition by David Magie offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

[more]

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Historia Augusta, Volume II
Caracalla. Geta. Opellius Macrinus. Diadumenianus. Elagabalus. Severus Alexander. The Two Maximini. The Three Gordians. Maximus and Balbinus
David Magie
Harvard University Press

The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, or Historia Augusta, is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors, heirs, and claimants from Hadrian to Numerianus (117–284 CE). The work, which is modeled on Suetonius, purports to be written by six different authors and quotes documents and public records extensively. Since we possess no continuous account of the emperors of the second and third centuries, the Historia Augusta has naturally attracted keen attention. In the last century it has also generated the gravest suspicions. Present opinion holds that the whole is the work of a single author (who lived in the time of Theodosius) and contains much that is plagiarism and even downright forgery.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Historia Augusta is in three volumes.

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Historia Augusta, Volume III
David Magie
Harvard University Press, 2022

March of the emperors.

The Historia Augusta is a biographical work roughly following the model of the imperial biographer Suetonius (LCL 31, 38) and covering the lives of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (r. 117–138) to Carinus (r. 283–285), with a lacuna between the lives of the Gordians and the Valerians. Although the work comes down to us as a collection of thirty books written by six different authors, it is now generally considered to be the creation of a single individual writing under several pseudonyms no earlier than the late fourth century. It is a thoroughly enigmatic work whose origins, nature, and purpose remain obscure; the very beginning of the life of Hadrian is lost, and with it any general introduction that may have existed.

While the Historia Augusta is our most detailed surviving source for the second and third centuries, often providing details beyond the Greek accounts, it is not a trustworthy source for historical information: too many of the details are anachronistic, unsupported, or preposterous, or contradicted internally or by better sources, and many documents, speeches, acclamations, and inscriptions that it quotes or cites are entirely fictional.

The Historia Augusta nevertheless has its attractions: for the connoisseur of biography the author provides plenty of wordplay, puns, allusions, literary games, and mock-scholarly digressions, and for the casual reader he offers vivid characterizations of emperors both good and bad.

This revision of the original Loeb edition by David Magie offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

[more]

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Historia Augusta, Volume III
The Two Valerians. The Two Gallieni. The Thirty Pretenders. The Deified Claudius. The Deified Aurelian. Tacitus. Probus. Firmus, Saturninus, Proculus and Bonosus. Carus, Carinus and Numerian
David Magie
Harvard University Press

The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, or Historia Augusta, is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors, heirs, and claimants from Hadrian to Numerianus (117– 284 CE). The work, which is modeled on Suetonius, purports to be written by six different authors and quotes documents and public records extensively. Since we possess no continuous account of the emperors of the second and third centuries, the Historia Augusta has naturally attracted keen attention. In the last century it has also generated the gravest suspicions. Present opinion holds that the whole is the work of a single author (who lived in the time of Theodosius) and contains much that is plagiarism and even downright forgery.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Historia Augusta is in three volumes.

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Historical Anthology of Music
Archibald T. Davison
Harvard University Press
The long-awaited sequel to the famous volume on Oriental, Medieval, and Renaissance Music includes representative examples of the best work of the various schools of music from 1600 to 1800, together with an illuminating commentary and translations of foreign texts.
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Historical Anthology of Music
Archibald T. Davison
Harvard University Press
This great anthology of music literature makes available to all music lovers a wonderful storehouse of hitherto inaccessible treasure. The volume includes the development of Oriental, Medieval, and Renaissance music from the beginning to 1600. Its more than 200 representative examples are individually complete compositions, each of sufficient length to illustrate clearly a form or style. The authors provide an explanatory commentary with bibliography, English translations of foreign texts, and an index. The Library Journal says of it, "in short, Volume 1 of the music historian's classic dreams…No competitors on the market. Highly recommended."
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Historical Atlas of Islam
Malise Ruthven
Harvard University Press, 2004

Among the great civilizations of the world, Islam remains an enigma to Western readers. Now, in a beautifully illustrated historical atlas, noted scholar of religion Malise Ruthven recounts the fascinating and important history of the Islamic world.

From the birth of the prophet Muhammed to the independence of post-Soviet Muslim states in Central Asia, this accessible and informative atlas explains the historical evolution of Islamic societies. Short essays cover a wide variety of themes, including the central roles played by sharia (divine law) and fiqh (jurisprudence); philosophy; arts and architecture; the Muslim city; trade, commerce, and manufacturing; marriage and family life; tribal distributions; kinship and dynastic power; ritual and devotional practices; Sufism; modernist and reformist trends; the European domination of the Islamic world; the rise of the modern national state; oil exports and arms imports; and Muslim populations in non-Muslim countries, including the United States.

Lucid and inviting full-color maps chronicle the changing internal and external boundaries of the Islamic world, showing the principal trade routes through which goods, ideas, and customs spread. Ruthven traces the impact of various Islamic dynasties in art and architecture and shows the distribution of sects and religious minorities, the structure of Islamic cities, and the distribution of resources. Among the book's valuable contributions is the incorporation of the often neglected geographical and environmental factors, from the Fertile Crescent to the North African desert, that have helped shape Islamic history.

Rich in narrative and visual detail that illuminates the story of Islamic civilization, this timely atlas is an indispensable resource to anyone interested in world history and religion.

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Historical Biogeography
An Introduction
Jorge V. Crisci, Liliana Katinas, and Paula Posadas
Harvard University Press, 2003

Though biogeography may be simply defined--the study of the geographic distributions of organisms--the subject itself is extraordinarily complex, involving a range of scientific disciplines and a bewildering diversity of approaches. For convenience, biogeographers have recognized two research traditions: ecological biogeography and historical biogeography.

This book makes sense of the profound revolution that historical biogeography has undergone in the last two decades, and of the resulting confusion over its foundations, basic concepts, methods, and relationships to other disciplines of comparative biology. Using case studies, the authors explain and illustrate the fundamentals and the most frequently used methods of this discipline. They show the reader how to tell when a historical biogeographic approach is called for, how to decide what kind of data to collect, how to choose the best method for the problem at hand, how to perform the necessary calculations, how to choose and apply a computer program, and how to interpret results.

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Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs
Constitutional Authority in Practice
Curtis A. Bradley
Harvard University Press, 2024

A new interpretation of the constitutional law of foreign affairs, as it has been developed throughout its history by presidents and by Congress.

In the more than 230 years since the Constitution took effect, the constitutional law governing the conduct of foreign affairs has evolved significantly. But that evolution did not come through formal amendments or Supreme Court rulings. Rather, the law has been defined by the practices of Congress and the executive branch, also known as “historical gloss.”

Curtis A. Bradley documents this process in action. He shows that expansions in presidential power over foreign affairs have often been justified by reference to historical gloss, but that Congress has not merely stepped aside. Belying conventional accounts of the “imperial presidency” in foreign affairs, Congress has also benefited from gloss, claiming powers for itself in the international arena not clearly addressed in the constitutional text and disrupting claims of exclusive presidential authority.

Historical Gloss and Foreign Affairs proposes a constitutional theory that can make sense of these legal changes. In contrast, originalist theories of constitutional interpretation often ignore influential post-Founding developments, while nonoriginalist theories tend to focus on judicial decisions rather than the actions and reasoning of Congress and the executive branch. Moreover, the constitutional theories that do focus on practice have typically emphasized changes at particular moments in time. What we see in the constitutional law of foreign affairs, however, is the long-term accumulation of nonjudicial precedents that is characteristic of historical gloss. With gloss confirmed as a prime mover in the development of foreign affairs law, we can begin to recognize its broader status as an important and longstanding form of constitutional reasoning.

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Historical Miscellany
Aelian
Harvard University Press, 1997

A literary cabinet of curiosities.

Aelian’s Historical Miscellany is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century. Offering engaging anecdotes about historical figures, retellings of legendary events, and enjoyable descriptive pieces—in sum: amusement, information, and variety—Aelian’s collection of nuggets and narratives could be enjoyed by a wide reading public. A rather similar book had been published in Latin in the previous century by Aulus Gellius; Aelian is a late, perhaps the last, representative of what had been a very popular genre.

Here then are anecdotes about the famous Greek philosophers, poets, historians, and playwrights; myths instructively retold; moralizing tales about heroes and rulers, athletes and wise men; reports about styles in dress, food and drink, lovers, gift-giving practices, entertainments, religious beliefs and death customs; and comments on Greek painting. Some of the information is not preserved in any other source. Underlying it all are Aelian’s Stoic ideals as well as this Roman’s great admiration for the culture of the Greeks (whose language he borrowed for his writings).

The Historical Miscellany is now added to the Loeb Classical Library, the Greek text facing a skillful and helpfully annotated new translation by Nigel Wilson. In his trenchant Introduction he discusses the literary genre of Aelian’s miscellany, its style and historical setting.

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Historical Ontology
Ian Hacking
Harvard University Press, 2004

With the unusual clarity, distinctive and engaging style, and penetrating insight that have drawn such a wide range of readers to his work, Ian Hacking here offers his reflections on the philosophical uses of history. The focus of this volume, which collects both recent and now-classic essays, is the historical emergence of concepts and objects, through new uses of words and sentences in specific settings, and new patterns or styles of reasoning within those sentences. In its lucid and thoroughgoing look at the historical dimension of concepts, the book is at once a systematic formulation of Hacking’s approach and its relation to other types of intellectual history, and a valuable contribution to philosophical understanding.

Hacking opens the volume with an extended meditation on the philosophical significance of history. The importance of Michel Foucault—for the development of this theme, and for Hacking’s own work in intellectual history—emerges in the following chapters, which place Hacking’s classic essays on Foucault within the wider context of general reflections on historical methodology. Against this background, Hacking then develops ideas about how language, styles of reasoning, and “psychological” phenomena figure in the articulation of concepts—and in the very prospect of doing philosophy as historical ontology.

[more]

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Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia
Merle Goldman
Harvard University Press, 2000

Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asiaaddresses provocative themes concerning the experience of particular nations and of East Asia as a whole. It explores the turbulent process of integrating Asian societies and political systems into a global order dominated by the West over the past two centuries.

The authors show that important changes were already underway before the western advance, which had their own internal logic and staying power. They describe how people in China, Japan, and Korea redefined and defended indigenous "traditions" even as they disagreed over what these traditions were and how to transform them. They make it clear that nationalism was a powerful motivating force in the modern development of these countries, but they stress that a wide variety of nationalisms emerged and collided in the dramatic history of modern Asia.

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The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan
Judith Vitale
Harvard University Press, 2024

The myth that kamikaze, or divine winds, protected Japan against the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281 is linked to a belief in absolute victory in the Pacific War in the twentieth century. But what was the representation of a historical past in Japan, and what role did it play as a repertoire of cultural identity before the rise of hyper-nationalism?

The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan is about the names for Japan and the Mongols, the commemoration of battle sites and ancestors, and the antiquarian exchanges within confined circles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the Tokugawa culture of appearances, historical writing and related genres affirmed status identity. In the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, the exploits of thirteenth-century warriors served as a model for propagating revolutionary change in Japanese cities, whereas in the 1880s and 1890s, conservative associations appropriated the defense against the Mongol invasions as a symbol of patriotism. The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan thus points to the continuities and ruptures that marked the emergence of a national culture after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

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The Histories
Laonikos Chalkokondyles
Harvard University Press, 2014

Among Greek histories of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the work of Laonikos (ca. 1430–ca. 1465) has by far the broadest scope. Born to a leading family of Athens under Florentine rule, he was educated in the classics at Mistra by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plethon.

In the 1450s, Laonikos set out to imitate Herodotos in writing the history of his times, a version in which the armies of Asia would prevail over the Greeks in Europe. The backbone of The Histories, a text written in difficult Thucydidean Greek, is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the early 1300s to 1464, but Laonikos’s digressions give sweeping accounts of world geography and ethnography from Britain to Mongolia, with an emphasis on Spain, Italy, and Arabia. Following the methodology of Herodotos and rejecting theological polemic, Laonikos is the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He followed Plethon in viewing the Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and so stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

This translation makes the entire text of The Histories available in English for the first time.

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The Histories
Laonikos Chalkokondyles
Harvard University Press, 2014

Among Greek histories of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the work of Laonikos (ca. 1430–ca. 1465) has by far the broadest scope. Born to a leading family of Athens under Florentine rule, he was educated in the classics at Mistra by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plethon.

In the 1450s, Laonikos set out to imitate Herodotos in writing the history of his times, a version in which the armies of Asia would prevail over the Greeks in Europe. The backbone of The Histories, a text written in difficult Thucydidean Greek, is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the early 1300s to 1464, but Laonikos’s digressions give sweeping accounts of world geography and ethnography from Britain to Mongolia, with an emphasis on Spain, Italy, and Arabia. Following the methodology of Herodotos and rejecting theological polemic, Laonikos is the first Greek writer to treat Islam as a legitimate cultural and religious system. He followed Plethon in viewing the Byzantines as Greeks rather than Romans, and so stands at the origins of Neo-Hellenic identity.

This translation makes the entire text of The Histories available in English for the first time.

[more]

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Histories
Richer of Saint-Rémi
Harvard University Press, 2011

The Historia of Richer of Saint-Rémi (ca. 950–ca. 1000), an invaluable source for understanding tenth-century West Francia (present-day France), provides a rare contemporary account of the waning Carolingian dynasty, accession of Hugh Capet, and failed rebellion of Charles of Lorraine. Beginning in 888, the Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized upon the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer’s descriptive talents are on display as he tells of synods and coronations, deception and espionage, battles and sieges, disease and death, and even the difficulties of travel.

The Historia also sheds light on a controversial figure of the Middle Ages, the legendary cleric and scholar Gerbert of Aurillac. Gerbert, the dedicatee of the Historia, rose from humble beginnings to become archbishop of Rheims, archbishop of Ravenna, and eventually pope (as Sylvester II). The Historia contains a fascinating description of his teaching at the cathedral school of Rheims, where his innovations involved instruments such as the monochord, armillary sphere, and abacus.

Translated into English here for the first time, the Historia holds particular attractions for historians and for anyone interested in the cultural and intellectual developments in the Latin West around the year 1000.

[more]

front cover of Histories
Histories
Richer of Saint-Rémi
Harvard University Press, 2011

The Historia of Richer of Saint-Rémi (ca. 950–ca. 1000), an invaluable source for understanding tenth-century West Francia (present-day France), provides a rare contemporary account of the waning Carolingian dynasty, accession of Hugh Capet, and failed rebellion of Charles of Lorraine. Beginning in 888, the Historia surveys a tumultuous century in which two competing dynasties struggled for supremacy, while great magnates seized upon the opportunity to carve out their own principalities. Richer’s descriptive talents are on display as he tells of synods and coronations, deception and espionage, battles and sieges, disease and death, and even the difficulties of travel.

The Historia also sheds light on a controversial figure of the Middle Ages, the legendary cleric and scholar Gerbert of Aurillac. Gerbert, the dedicatee of the Historia, rose from humble beginnings to become archbishop of Rheims, archbishop of Ravenna, and eventually pope (as Sylvester II). The Historia contains a fascinating description of his teaching at the cathedral school of Rheims, where his innovations involved instruments such as the monochord, armillary sphere, and abacus.

Translated into English here for the first time, the Historia holds particular attractions for historians and for anyone interested in the cultural and intellectual developments in the Latin West around the year 1000.

[more]

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Histories
Books 1–3
Tacitus
Harvard University Press

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.

Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was quaestor in 81 or 82, a senator under the Flavian emperors, and a praetor in 88. After four years’ absence he experienced the terrors of Emperor Domitian’s last years and turned to historical writing. He was a consul in 97. Close friend of the younger Pliny, with him he successfully prosecuted Marius Priscus.

Works: (i) Life and Character of Agricola, written in 97–98, specially interesting because of Agricola’s career in Britain. (ii) Germania (98–99), an equally important description of the geography, anthropology, products, institutions, and social life and the tribes of the Germans as known to the Romans. (iii) Dialogue on Oratory (Dialogus), of unknown date; a lively conversation about the decline of oratory and education. (iv) Histories (probably issued in parts from 105 onwards), a great work originally consisting of at least twelve books covering the period AD 69–96, but only Books 1–4 and part of Book 5 survive, dealing in detail with the dramatic years 69–70. (v) Annals, Tacitus’s other great work, originally covering the period AD 14–68 (Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero) and published between 115 and about 120. Of sixteen books at least, there survive Books 1–4 (covering the years 14–28); a bit of Book 5 and all Book 6 (31–37); part of Book 11 (from 47); Books 12–15 and part of Book 16 (to 66).

Tacitus is renowned for his development of a pregnant concise style, character study, and psychological analysis, and for the often terrible story which he brilliantly tells. As a historian of the early Roman empire he is paramount.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus is in five volumes.

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Histories
Books 4–5. Annals: Books 1–3
Tacitus
Harvard University Press

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.

Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was quaestor in 81 or 82, a senator under the Flavian emperors, and a praetor in 88. After four years’ absence he experienced the terrors of Emperor Domitian’s last years and turned to historical writing. He was a consul in 97. Close friend of the younger Pliny, with him he successfully prosecuted Marius Priscus.

Works: (i) Life and Character of Agricola, written in 97–98, specially interesting because of Agricola’s career in Britain. (ii) Germania (98–99), an equally important description of the geography, anthropology, products, institutions, and social life and the tribes of the Germans as known to the Romans. (iii) Dialogue on Oratory (Dialogus), of unknown date; a lively conversation about the decline of oratory and education. (iv) Histories (probably issued in parts from 105 onwards), a great work originally consisting of at least twelve books covering the period AD 69–96, but only Books 1–4 and part of Book 5 survive, dealing in detail with the dramatic years 69–70. (v) Annals, Tacitus’s other great work, originally covering the period AD 14–68 (Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero) and published between 115 and about 120. Of sixteen books at least, there survive Books 1–4 (covering the years 14–28); a bit of Book 5 and all Book 6 (31–37); part of Book 11 (from 47); Books 12–15 and part of Book 16 (to 66).

Tacitus is renowned for his development of a pregnant concise style, character study, and psychological analysis, and for the often terrible story which he brilliantly tells. As a historian of the early Roman empire he is paramount.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus is in five volumes.

[more]

front cover of Histories of Computing
Histories of Computing
Michael Sean MahoneyEdited and with an introduction by Thomas Haigh
Harvard University Press, 2011

Computer technology is pervasive in the modern world, its role ever more important as it becomes embedded in a myriad of physical systems and disciplinary ways of thinking. The late Michael Sean Mahoney was a pioneer scholar of the history of computing, one of the first established historians of science to take seriously the challenges and opportunities posed by information technology to our understanding of the twentieth century.

Mahoney’s work ranged widely, from logic and the theory of computation to the development of software and applications as craft-work. But it was always informed by a unique perspective derived from his distinguished work on the history of medieval mathematics and experimental practice during the Scientific Revolution. His writings offered a new angle on very recent events and ideas and bridged the gaps between academic historians and computer scientists. Indeed, he came to believe that the field was irreducibly pluralistic and that there could be only histories of computing.

In this collection, Thomas Haigh presents thirteen of Mahoney’s essays and papers organized across three categories: historiography, software engineering, and theoretical computer science. His introduction surveys Mahoney’s work to trace the development of key themes, illuminate connections among different areas of his research, and put his contributions into context. The volume also includes an essay on Mahoney by his former students Jed Z. Buchwald and D. Graham Burnett. The result is a landmark work, of interest to computer professionals as well as historians of technology and science.

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The Histories, Volume I
Books 1–2
Translated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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The Histories, Volume I
Books 1-2
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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The Histories, Volume II
Books 3–4
PolybiusTranslated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

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The Histories, Volume II
Books 3-4
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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front cover of The Histories, Volume III
The Histories, Volume III
Books 5–8
Translated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Histories, Volume III
Books 5-8
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

front cover of The Histories, Volume IV
The Histories, Volume IV
Books 9–15
Translated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Histories, Volume IV
Books 9-15
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

front cover of The Histories, Volume V
The Histories, Volume V
Books 16–27
Translated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Histories, Volume V
Books 16-27
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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The Histories, Volume VI
Books 28-39
Polybius
Harvard University Press

Polybius (born ca. 208 BCE) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea), served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favouring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was hostage in Rome where he became a friend of Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, and especially adopted Scipio Aemilianus whose campaigns he attended later. In late life he was trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans whom he admired; helped in the discussions which preceded the final war with Carthage; and, after 146, was entrusted by the Romans with details of administration in Greece. He died at the age of 82 after a fall from his horse.

The main part of Polybius's history covers the years 264–146 BCE. It describes the rise of Rome to the destruction of Carthage and the domination of Greece by Rome. It is a great work, accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, causes of events and character of people; it is a vital achievement of first rate importance, despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of the forty books have reached us. Polybius's overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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front cover of The Histories, Volume VI
The Histories, Volume VI
Books 28–39. Unattributed Fragments
Translated by W. R. PatonRevised by F. W. Walbank and Christian HabichtFragments edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson
Harvard University Press, 2010

Hellenistic history.

The historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was held hostage in Rome, where he became a friend of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and his two sons, especially Scipio Aemilianus, whose campaigns, including the destruction of Carthage, he later attended. Late in his life he became a trusted mediator between Greece and the Romans; helped in the discussions that preceded the final war with Carthage; and after 146 was entrusted by the Romans with the details of administration in Greece.

Polybius’ overall theme is how and why the Romans spread their power as they did. The main part of his history covers the years 264–146 BC, describing the rise of Rome, her destruction of Carthage, and her eventual domination of the Greek world. It is a great work: accurate, thoughtful, largely impartial, based on research, and full of insight into customs, institutions, geography, the causes of events, and the character of peoples. It is a vital achievement of the first importance despite the incomplete state in which all but the first five of its original forty books have reached us.

For this edition, W. R. Paton’s excellent translation, first published in 1922, has been thoroughly revised, the Büttner-Wobst Greek text corrected, and explanatory notes and a new introduction added, all reflecting the latest scholarship.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Polybius is in six volumes.

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Historiography of the Taiping Rebellion
Ssu-yu Têng
Harvard University Press

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The History
Michael Attaleiates
Harvard University Press, 2012

In 1039 Byzantium was the most powerful empire in Europe and the Near East, controlling the Balkans south of the Danube and all of Asia Minor into Armenia and Syria. By 1079 it had become a politically unstable state half the size, menaced by powerful enemies on all sides. The History of Michael Attaleiates is our main source for this astonishing reversal, and offers a gripping narrative of the foreign and civil wars of those years. Attaleiates was a highly placed legal and military official of the empire with first-hand knowledge of the events he describes. He knew many of the emperors and includes an eyewitness account of the battle of Mantzikert (1071), where the Seljuk Turks crushed the Byzantine armies and opened the door for the permanent Turkish conquest of Asia Minor. He also provides vivid narratives of civil unrest and decries the corruption and economic exploitation of his society, looking to the heroes of the Roman Republic for models of nobility.

Michael Attaleiates’ History has never before been translated into English. The present translation, based on the most recent critical edition, makes the text accessible through its notes, maps, and glossary of Byzantine terms.

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History and Presence
Robert A. Orsi
Harvard University Press, 2016

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

Beginning with metaphysical debates in the sixteenth century over the nature of Christ’s presence in the host, the distinguished historian and scholar of religion Robert Orsi imagines an alternative to the future of religion that early moderns proclaimed was inevitable.

“Orsi’s evoking of the full reality of the holy in the world is extremely moving, shot through with wonder and horror.”
—Caroline Walker Bynum, Common Knowledge

“This is a meticulously researched, humane, and deeply challenging book. The men and women studied in this book do not belong to ‘a world we have lost.’ They belong to a world we have lost sight of.”
—Peter Brown, Princeton University

“[A] brilliant, theologically sophisticated exploration of the Catholic experience of God’s presence through the material world… On every level—from its sympathetic, honest, and sometimes moving ethnography to its astute analytical observations—this book is a scholarly masterpiece.”
—A. W. Klink, Choice

“Orsi recaptures God’s breaking into the world … The book does an excellent job of explaining both the difficulties and values inherent in recognizing God in the world.”
Publishers Weekly

“This book is classic Orsi: careful, layered, humane, and subtle…a thought-provoking, expertly arranged tour of precisely those abundant, excessive phenomena which scholars have historically found so difficult to think.”
—Sonja Anderson, Reading Religion

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History
Choice and Commitment
Felix Gilbert
Harvard University Press

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A History in Sum
150 Years of Mathematics at Harvard (1825–1975)
Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau
Harvard University Press, 2013

In the twentieth century, American mathematicians began to make critical advances in a field previously dominated by Europeans. Harvard’s mathematics department was at the center of these developments. A History in Sum is an inviting account of the pioneers who trailblazed a distinctly American tradition of mathematics—in algebraic geometry and topology, complex analysis, number theory, and a host of esoteric subdisciplines that have rarely been written about outside of journal articles or advanced textbooks. The heady mathematical concepts that emerged, and the men and women who shaped them, are described here in lively, accessible prose.

The story begins in 1825, when a precocious sixteen-year-old freshman, Benjamin Peirce, arrived at the College. He would become the first American to produce original mathematics—an ambition frowned upon in an era when professors largely limited themselves to teaching. Peirce’s successors—William Fogg Osgood and Maxime Bôcher—undertook the task of transforming the math department into a world-class research center, attracting to the faculty such luminaries as George David Birkhoff. Birkhoff produced a dazzling body of work, while training a generation of innovators—students like Marston Morse and Hassler Whitney, who forged novel pathways in topology and other areas. Influential figures from around the world soon flocked to Harvard, some overcoming great challenges to pursue their elected calling.

A History in Sum elucidates the contributions of these extraordinary minds and makes clear why the history of the Harvard mathematics department is an essential part of the history of mathematics in America and beyond.

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The eighth and final volume spans the thirty-ninth to fiftieth years of Akbar’s reign, detailing the conquest of Ahmadnagar, Prince Salim’s rebellion, and the emperor’s final days.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The seventh volume details the twenty-ninth to thirty-eighth years of Akbar’s reign, including accounts of the marriage of his son and heir Salim (Jahangir); conquests of Swat, Orissa, Kashmir, Sind, and the Saurashtra Peninsula; the pacification of Bengal; and the emperor’s visits to Kashmir, the Punjab, and Kabul.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The sixth volume details the twenty-third to twenty-eighth years of Akbar’s reign, including accounts of the quelling of rebellions in Bihar, Bengal, and Kabul, and final victory in Gujarat.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

[more]

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The fifth volume details the bellicose seventeenth to twenty-second years of Akbar’s reign, including accounts of the conquest of Gujarat, the capture of Rohtas fort from rebel Afghans, and the invasions of Patna and Bengal.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

[more]

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The fourth volume narrates the second eight years of Akbar’s reign, including an account of his visit to Ajmer, the arrival of an embassy from the Safavid court, and the beginning of the author’s brother Faizi’s career as court poet.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The third volume details the first eight years of Akbar’s reign, when he consolidated his power, quelled the rebellion of his guardian Bayram Khan, conquered Malwa, and married a Rajput princess.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

[more]

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians across the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The second volume details the turbulent reign of his father Humayun, his years in exile, his return to power, and his untimely death that brought Akbar to the throne as a youth.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

[more]

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The History of Akbar
Abu'l-Fazl
Harvard University Press, 2014

The exemplar of Indo-Persian history, at once a biography of Emperor Akbar and a chronicle of sixteenth-century Mughal India.

Akbarnāma, or The History of Akbar, by Abu’l-Fazl (d. 1602), is one of the most important works of Indo-Persian history and a touchstone of prose artistry. Marking a high point in a long, rich tradition of Persian historical writing, it served as a model for historians throughout the Persianate world. The work is at once a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) that includes descriptions of his political and martial feats and cultural achievements, and a chronicle of sixteenth-century India.

The first volume details the birth of Akbar, his illustrious genealogy, and in particular the lives and exploits of his grandfather, Babur, and his father, Humayun, who laid the foundations of the Mughal Empire.

The Persian text, presented in the Naskh script, is based on a careful reassessment of the primary sources.

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History of Alexander, Volume I
Books 1–5
Quintus Curtius
Harvard University Press

Adventurous history.

Quintus Curtius was apparently a rhetorician who lived in the first century of the Roman empire and, early in the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54), wrote a history of Alexander the Great in ten books in clear and picturesque style for Latin readers. The first two books have not survived—our narrative begins with events in 333 BC—and there is material missing from books 5, 6, and 10. One of his main sources is Cleitarchus who, about 300 BC, had made Alexander’s career a matter of marvelous adventure.

Curtius is not a critical historian; and in his desire to entertain and to stress the personality of Alexander, he elaborates effective scenes, omits much that is important for history, and does not worry about chronology. But he does not invent things, except speeches and letters inserted into the narrative by traditional habit. “I copy more than I believe,” he says. Three features of his story are narrative of exciting experiences, development of a hero’s character, and a disposition to moralize. His history is one of the five extant works on which we rely for the career of Alexander the Great.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Quintus Curtius is in two volumes.

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History of Alexander, Volume II
Books 6–10
Quintus Curtius
Harvard University Press

Adventurous history.

Quintus Curtius was apparently a rhetorician who lived in the first century of the Roman empire and, early in the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54), wrote a history of Alexander the Great in ten books in clear and picturesque style for Latin readers. The first two books have not survived—our narrative begins with events in 333 BC—and there is material missing from books 5, 6, and 10. One of his main sources is Cleitarchus who, about 300 BC, had made Alexander’s career a matter of marvelous adventure.

Curtius is not a critical historian; and in his desire to entertain and to stress the personality of Alexander, he elaborates effective scenes, omits much that is important for history, and does not worry about chronology. But he does not invent things, except speeches and letters inserted into the narrative by traditional habit. “I copy more than I believe,” he says. Three features of his story are narrative of exciting experiences, development of a hero’s character, and a disposition to moralize. His history is one of the five extant works on which we rely for the career of Alexander the Great.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Quintus Curtius is in two volumes.

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A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
Harvard University Press

In 1939 Frank Luther Mott received a Pulitzer Prize for Volumes II and III of his History of American Magazines. In 1958 he was awarded the Bancroft Prize for Volume IV. He was at work on Volume V of the projected six-volume history when he died in October 1964. He had, at that time, written the sketches of the twenty-one magazines that appear in this volume. These magazines flourished during the period 1905–1930, but their “biographies” are continued throughout their entire lifespan—in the case of the ten still published, to recent years. Mott’s daughter, Mildred Mott Wedel, has prepared this volume for publication and provided notes on changes since her father’s death. No one has attempted to write the general historical chapters the author provided in the earlier volumes but which were not yet written for this last volume. A delightful autobiographical essay by the author has been included, and there is a detailed cumulative index to the entire set of this monumental work.

The period 1905–1930 witnessed the most flamboyant and fruitful literary activity that had yet occurred in America. In his sketches, Mott traces the editorial partnership of H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, first on The Smart Set and then in the pages of The American Mercury. He treats The New Republic, the liberal magazine founded in 1914 by Herbert Croly and Willard Straight; the conservative Freeman; and Better Homes and Gardens, the first magazine to achieve a circulation of one million “without the aid of fiction or fashions.” Other giants of magazine history are here: we see “serious, shaggy…solid, pragmatic, self-contained” Henry Luce propel a national magazine called Time toward its remarkable prosperity. In addition to those already mentioned, the reader will find accounts of The Midland, The South Atlantic Quarterly, The Little Review, Poetry, The Fugitive, Everybody’s, Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine, Current History, Editor & Publisher, The Golden Book Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Hampton’s Broadway Magazine, House Beautiful, Success, and The Yale Review.

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A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
Harvard University Press

In the fourth volume of his widely acclaimed History of American Magazines (volumes two and three of which received the Pulitzer Prize), Frank Mott carries his story into the first years of our century. By means of analysis and of lively quotation from the magazines themselves, the author shows the changes in the social, political, and economic life of the times in America, the movements in ideas and taste, and the developments of popular interests.

This is the period when the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies Home Journal, Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, and National Geographic came into prominence, and their development—in terms of management, policies, personalities—is treated in full by Mott. More than thirty other magazines are surveyed in separate chapters, and hundreds of others are given shorter treatment. The first few chapters are devoted to a consideration of the outstanding elements in the over-all development of American magazines, such as advertising and illustrations. One of the most important aspects of this two-decade period was the advent of the highly successful ten-cent illustrated monthly in the middle nineties. This interfered with the calm and stately progress of such older thirty-five cent magazines as The Century, Harper’s, and The Atlantic.

Ensuing chapters deal with magazines in the special fields, and in each case the periodicals themselves are integrated with the background movements. Thus, in addition to magazines mentioned above, Mott is concerned with periodicals about literature, the graphic arts, foreign interests, drama, music, education, religion, philosophy, science, medicine, engineering, construction, transportation, agriculture, law, banking, advertising, women’s activities, sports, humor, and hobbies.

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A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
Harvard University Press
The first volume of this work, covering the period from 1741-1850, was issued in 1931 by another publisher, and is reissued now without change, under our imprint. The second volume covers the period from 1850 to 1865; the third volume, the period from 1865 to 1885. For each chronological period, Mr. Mott has provided a running history which notes the occurrence of the chief general magazines and the developments in the field of class periodicals, as well as publishing conditions during that period, the development of circulations, advertising, payments to contributors, reader attitudes, changing formats, styles and processes of illustration, and the like. Then in a supplement to that running history, he offers historical sketches of the chief magazines which flourished in the period. These sketches extend far beyond the chronological limitations of the period. The second and third volumes present, altogether, separate sketches of seventy-six magazines, including The North American Review, The Youth’s Companion, The Liberator, The Independent, Harper’s Monthly, Leslie’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and Puck. The whole is an unusual mirror of American civilization.
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A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
Harvard University Press
The first volume of this work, covering the period from 1741-1850, was issued in 1931 by another publisher, and is reissued now without change, under our imprint. The second volume covers the period from 1850 to 1865; the third volume, the period from 1865 to 1885. For each chronological period, Mr. Mott has provided a running history which notes the occurrence of the chief general magazines and the developments in the field of class periodicals, as well as publishing conditions during that period, the development of circulations, advertising, payments to contributors, reader attitudes, changing formats, styles and processes of illustration, and the like. Then in a supplement to that running history, he offers historical sketches of the chief magazines which flourished in the period. These sketches extend far beyond the chronological limitations of the period. The second and third volumes present, altogether, separate sketches of seventy-six magazines, including The North American Review, The Youth’s Companion, The Liberator, The Independent, Harper’s Monthly, Leslie’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and Puck. The whole is an unusual mirror of American civilization.
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A History of American Magazines
Frank Luther Mott
Harvard University Press
The first volume of this work, covering the period from 1741-1850, was issued in 1931 by another publisher, and is reissued now without change, under our imprint. The second volume covers the period from 1850 to 1865; the third volume, the period from 1865 to 1885. For each chronological period, Mr. Mott has provided a running history which notes the occurrence of the chief general magazines and the developments in the field of class periodicals, as well as publishing conditions during that period, the development of circulations, advertising, payments to contributors, reader attitudes, changing formats, styles and processes of illustration, and the like. Then in a supplement to that running history, he offers historical sketches of the chief magazines which flourished in the period. These sketches extend far beyond the chronological limitations of the period. The second and third volumes present, altogether, separate sketches of seventy-six magazines, including The North American Review, The Youth’s Companion, The Liberator, The Independent, Harper’s Monthly, Leslie’s Weekly, Harper’s Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and Puck. The whole is an unusual mirror of American civilization.
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The History of an Islamic School of Law
The Early Spread of Hanafism
Nurit Tsafrir
Harvard University Press, 2004
The Hanafi school of law is one of the oldest legal schools of Islam, coming into existence in the eighth century in Iraq, and surviving up to the present. So closely is the early development of the Hanafi school interwoven with non-legal spheres, such as the political, social, and theological, that the study of it is essential to a proper understanding of medieval Islamic history. Using rich material drawn mainly from medieval Islamic biographical dictionaries, Nurit Tsafrir offers a thorough examination of the first century and a half of the school's existence, the period during which it took shape. She provides a detailed account of the process by which the school attracted ever more followers and spread over vast geographical areas in the Islamic world empire.
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History of Animals, Volume I
Books 1–3
Aristotle
Harvard University Press

Inductive zoology.

In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.

In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.

Related Volumes:

Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).

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History of Animals, Volume II
Books 4–6
Aristotle
Harvard University Press

Inductive zoology.

In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.

In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.

Related Volumes:

Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).

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History of Animals, Volume III
Books 7–10
Aristotle
Harvard University Press, 1991

Inductive zoology.

In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes “differences”—in parts, activities, modes of life, and character—across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—including human beings.

In Books I–IV, Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice. Books V–VI study reproductive methods, breeding habits, and embryogenesis as well as some secondary sex differences. In Books VII–IX, Aristotle examines differences among animals in feeding; in habitat, hibernation, migration; in enmities and sociability; in disposition (including differences related to gender) and intelligence. Here too he describes the human reproductive system, conception, pregnancy, and obstetrics. Book X establishes the female’s contribution to generation.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of History of Animals is in three volumes. A full index to all ten books is included in Volume Three.

Related Volumes:

Aristotle’s biological corpus includes not only History of Animals, but also Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Generation of Animals, and significant parts of On the Soul and Parva Naturalia. Aristotle’s general methodology—“first we must grasp the differences, then try to discover the causes” (HA 1.6)—is applied to the study of plants by his younger co-worker and heir to his school, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants studies differences across the plant kingdom, while De Causis Plantarum studies their causes. In the later ancient world, both Pliny’s Natural History and Aelian’s On the Characteristics of Animals draw significantly on Aristotle’s biological work. The only work by a classical author at all comparable to Aristotle’s treatises on animals is Xenophon’s On Horses (included in Volume VII of the Loeb edition of Xenophon).

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A History of Canada
Gustave Lanctot
Harvard University Press
Volumes I and II of Gustave Lanctot's definitive study of New France cover the period 1600-1713. Volume III begins with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, a year which marked the cession of a large part of the colony's periphery to her English neighbors to the south. Lanctot studies the effects of this and other contingent changes on both the social and the political life of New France, and devotes special attention to the ways in which the colonists compensated for the losses incurred by the peace of Utrecht. His point of conclusion is 1763, the year the English took power.
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History of Cartography
Revised and Enlarged by R. A. Skelton
Leo Bagrow
Harvard University Press

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A History of Chemistry
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers
Harvard University Press, 1996

From the earliest use of fire to forge iron tools to the medieval alchemists’ search for the philosopher’s stone, the secrets of the elements have been pursued by human civilization. But, as the authors of this concise history remind us, “disciplines like physics and chemistry have not existed since the beginning of time; they have been built up little by little, and that does not happen without difficulties.” Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers present chemistry as a science in search of an identity, or rather as a science whose identity has changed in response to its relation to society and to other disciplines. The authors—respected, prolific scholars in history and philosophy of science—have distilled their knowledge into an accessible work, free of jargon. They have written a book deeply enthusiastic about the conceptual, experimental, and technological complexities and challenges with which chemists have grappled over many centuries.

Beginning with chemistry’s polymorphous beginnings, featuring many independent discoveries all over the globe, the narrative then moves to a discussion of chemistry’s niche in the eighteenth-century notion of Natural Philosophy and on to its nineteenth-century days as an exemplar of science as a means of reaching positive knowledge. The authors also address contentious issues of concern to contemporary scientists: whether chemistry has become a service science; whether its status has “declined” because its value lies in assisting the leading-edge research activities of molecular geneticists and materials scientists; or whether it is redefining its agenda.

A History of Chemistry treats chemistry as a study whose subject matter, the nature and behavior of qualitatively different materials, remains constant, while the methods and disciplinary boundaries of the science constantly shift.

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front cover of A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication
A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication
Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer
Harvard University Press, 2021

A comprehensive history of data visualization—its origins, rise, and effects on the ways we think about and solve problems.

With complex information everywhere, graphics have become indispensable to our daily lives. Navigation apps show real-time, interactive traffic data. A color-coded map of exit polls details election balloting down to the county level. Charts communicate stock market trends, government spending, and the dangers of epidemics. A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication tells the story of how graphics left the exclusive confines of scientific research and became ubiquitous. As data visualization spread, it changed the way we think.

Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer take us back to the beginnings of graphic communication in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Dutch cartographer Michael Florent van Langren created the first chart of statistical data, which showed estimates of the distance from Rome to Toledo. By 1786 William Playfair had invented the line graph and bar chart to explain trade imports and exports. In the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of data display, graphics found new uses in tracking disease outbreaks and understanding social issues. Friendly and Wainer make the case that the explosion in graphical communication both reinforced and was advanced by a cognitive revolution: visual thinking. Across disciplines, people realized that information could be conveyed more effectively by visual displays than by words or tables of numbers.

Through stories and illustrations, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication details the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large.

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