Although the lion is not the largest, fastest or most lethal animal, its position as king of beasts has rarely been challenged. Since Palaeolithic times, lions have fascinated people, and due to its gallant mane, knowing eyes, and distinctive roar, the animal continues to beguile us today. In Lion, Deirdre Jackson paints a fresh portrait of this regal beast, drawing on folktales, the latest scientific research, and even lion-tamers’ memoirs, as well as other little-known sources to tell the story of lions famous and anonymous, familiar and surprising.

Majestic, noble, brave—the lion is an animal that has occupied a great place in the human imagination, inspiring countless myths, lore and legends. As well, this creative relationship has abounded in visual culture—painted on wood and canvas, chiseled in stone, hammered in metal, and tucked between the pages of medieval manuscripts, lions have often represented divinity, dignity, and danger.

In Lion Jackson summarizes the latest findings of field biologists and offers in-depth analyses of works of art, literature, oral traditions, plays, and films. She is a peerless guide on a memorable visual and cultural safari.

Reaktion’s new CityScopes series consists of concise, illustrated guides that provide a social and urban history from a city’s beginnings to the present day. Written by authors with unique and intimate knowledge of each city, these books offer fascinating vignettes on the quintessential and the quirky. In the first book of the series, Linda Jaivin explores a city at the heart of one of the world’s oldest civilizations and the capital of its newest superpower—Beijing. In China’s central city, Jaivin finds thousands of years of history dating back to our ancestors, a story that includes dynastic empires, sieges, massacres, rebellions, and political spectacle.
 
Recounting the lively history of the city, Jaivin discovers the Peking Man and the capital’s many legendary incarnations, such as the Cambaluc that Marco Polo wrote about in awe. She reveals it to be full of charismatic personalities and dramatic events, a place that has produced some of China’s most iconic works of literature, theater, and music. She also offers thought-provoking essays on contemporary topics ranging from the elemental problems of air and water to the vibrant art scene and the architectural adventurism of the city’s “hyperbuildings.” Generously illustrated, this guide provides helpful maps and suggested itineraries as well as practical recommendations for hotels, restaurants, museums, and other sites.
 
Taking readers to lakeshores, down into the subway, and around the bustling art districts, Beijing is the ultimate introduction to this extraordinary city for travelers and armchair explorers alike.

In today’s tense geopolitical climate, terrorist groups avow their allegiance to the Islamic faith in their edicts, while the president of the United States undertakes controversial wars in Islamic nations and openly refers to his Christian faith as a key component of his decision-making. With the recent surge in terrorist acts and military confrontations, as well as ever-strengthening fundamentalist ideologies on both sides, the Christian-Muslim divide is perhaps more visible than ever—but it is not new. Alan G. Jamieson explores here the long and bloody history of the Christian-Muslim conflict, revealing in his concise yet comprehensive study how deeply this ancient divide is interwoven with crucial events in world history. 

Faith and Sword opens with the tumultuous first centuries of the conflict, examining the religious precepts that framed clashes between Christians and Muslims and that ultimately fueled the legendary Crusades. Traversing the full breadth of the Arab lands and Christendom, Jamieson chronicles the turbulent saga from the Arab conquests of the seventh century to the rise of the powerful Ottoman Empire and its fall at the end of World War I. Faith and Sword then explores the complex dynamics that emerged later in the twentieth century, as Christendom was transformed into the secular West and Islamic nations overthrew European colonialism to establish governments straddling modernity and religiosity.

From the 1979 Iranian revolution to the Lebanon hostage crisis to the present-day war in Iraq, Faith and Sword reveals the essence of this enduring struggle and its consequences.

With the recent surge in terrorist acts and military confrontations, as well as ever-strengthening fundamentalist ideologies, the Christian–Muslim divide is perhaps more visible than ever—but it is not new. Alan G. Jamieson explores here the long and bloody history of the Christian–Muslim conflict, revealing in his concise yet comprehensive study how deeply this ancient divide is interwoven with crucial events in world history. 
Faith and Sword opens with the tumultuous first centuries of the conflict, examining the religious precepts that framed clashes between Christians and Muslims and that ultimately fueled the legendary Crusades. Traversing the full breadth of the Arab lands and Christendom, Jamieson chronicles the turbulent saga from the Arab conquests of the seventh century to the rise of the powerful Ottoman Empire and its fall at the end of World War I. He then explores the complex dynamics that emerged later in the twentieth century, as Christendom was transformed into the secular West and Islamic nations overthrew European colonialism to establish governments straddling modernity and religiosity. 
From the 1979 Iranian revolution to the Lebanon hostage crisis to—in this new expanded edition—the recent wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Faith and Sword reveals the essence of this enduring struggle and its consequences.
 

Lords of the Sea relates the history of these pirates, examining their dramatic impact as the maritime vanguard of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s through their breaking from Ottoman control in the early seventeenth century. Alan Jamieson explores how the corsairs rose to the apogee of their powers during this period, extending their activities from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and venturing as far as England, Ireland, and Iceland. Serving as a vital component of the main Ottoman fleet, the Barbary pirates also conducted independent raids of Christian ships and territory. While their activities declined after 1700, Jamieson reveals that it was only in the early nineteenth century that Europe and the United States finally curtailed the Barbary menace, a fight that culminated in the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. A welcome addition to military history, Lords of the Sea is an engrossing tale of exploration, slavery, and conquest.

Gravenstein. Coe’s Golden Drop. Mendocino Cox. The names sound like something from the imagination of Tolkien or perhaps the ingredients in a dubious magical potion rather than what they are—varieties of apples. But as befits their enchanting names, apples have transfixed and beguiled humans for thousands of years.

 

Apple: A Global History explores the cultural and culinary importance of a fruit born in the mountains of Kazakhstan that has since traversed the globe to become a favorite almost everywhere. From the Garden of Eden and Homer’s Odyssey to Johnny Appleseed, William Tell, and even Apple Computer, Erika Janik shows how apples have become a universal source of sustenance, health, and symbolism from ancient times to the present day.

 

Featuring many mouthwatering illustrations, this exploration of the planet’s most popular fruit includes a guide to selecting the best apples, in addition to apple recipes from around the world, including what is believed to be the first recorded apple recipe from Roman gourmand Marcus Apicius. And Janik doesn’t let us forget that apples are not just good eating; their juice also makes for good drinking—as the history of cider in North America and Europe attests.

 

Janik grew up surrounded by apple iconography in Washington, the “apple state,” so there is no better author to tell this fascinating story. Readers will eat up this surprising and entertaining tale of a fruit intricately linked to human history.

Looking outward for confirmation of who they were and what defined them as "civilized," Europeans encountered the returning gaze of what we now call the East, in particular the attention of the powerful Ottoman Empire. Global Interests explores the historical interactions that arose from these encounters as it considers three less-examined art objects—portrait medals, tapestries, and equestrian art—from a fresh and stimulating perspective. As portable artifacts, these objects are particularly potent tools for exploring the cultural currents flowing between the Orient and Occident.

Global Interests offers a timely reconsideration of the development of European imperialism, focusing on the Habsburg Empire of Charles V. Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton analyze the impact this history continues to have on contemporary perceptions of European culture and ethnic identity. They also investigate the ways in which European culture came to define itself culturally and aesthetically during the century-long span of 1450 to 1550. Ultimately, their study offers a radical and wide-ranging reassessment of Renaissance art.

Look at any recipe for a savory dish and chances are it will start with this step: fry onions in a pan over medium heat. Onions—and their allium family relatives, shallots, garlic, chives, and leeks—are one of the most heavily used ingredients in cuisines all over the world. You’ll rarely find them in the spotlight, though—except for when they are fried into rings or used to repel vampires. In this book, Martha Jay gives alliums their due, offering an illuminating history of these cherished plants that follows the trail of their aromas to every corner of the globe and from ancient times up to today.
           
Going back to the earliest recipes from ancient Mesopotamia, Jay traces the spread of alliums along trade routes through Central Asia and into ancient Greece and Rome. Likewise she follows their spread in East Asia, where they have become indispensable, and of course into Europe and the Americas, where the onion—and its odor—gave rise to the name “Chicago” and the leek became the national symbol of Wales. Celebrated, denigrated, prescribed, and proscribed, onions, garlic, and their relatives can be found—as Jay lavishly demonstrates—in the histories of peasants and kings, in cuisine and art, in tales of colonization and those of resistance, and in medicinal cures and magical potions alike. Her book is a welcome celebration of some of the most important ingredients in the world. 

A local rock star once said, “San Francisco is forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality.” No American city has such a broad sweep of staggering views—of the ocean, of a huge bay, of surrounding hills—or such a high opinion of its own worth. San Francisco has always been rich, too; the city’s great wealth has long underwritten the broadmindedness so vital to its charm. But there is much more to the City by the Bay than money and rarefied air, and, in San Francisco, Michael Johns intimately portrays the history and surprisingly complex sensibilities that give this small city its outsized personality.

Johns explores how, despite its sophistication, San Francisco retains a frontier quality that has always attracted seekers—of fortune, power, pleasure, refuge, rebellion. Yet the city is more than irreverent, independent, and a bit outside the law: it’s also historically progressive, technologically innovative, and open to all kinds of people and ideas. As Johns shows us, San Francisco is an easy place to be different—a home to the Beats and the hippies, a vibrant LGBT community and left-wing politics, the rise of Burning Man, and the creation of technologies that make today’s San Francisco the City of Apps. From Haight-Ashbury to the Tenderloin, Chinatown to the Mission, Johns’s urban journey blends historical narrative, personal reflections on the city today, and a treasure trove of images for a true San Francisco treat.

South Asia has been the setting for some of the century's most violent invasions, the Western world's bloodiest defeats, and a volatile geopolitical brew of religions, ethnicities, and nationalism that sends unsettling ripples through the global balance of power even today. Rob Johnson writes here the engrossing history of the individual conflicts that have engulfed the states of South Asia during the last half century.

A Region in Turmoil offers a new perspective on the area, drawing together the conflicts of South Asia and examining them in local and global contexts, from the end of the Western colonial empires through today's global efforts to combat terrorism. Johnson's incisive analysis breaks down the historical and political roots of the conflicts and departs from traditional Western-centric paradigms to reveal heretofore overlooked South Asian viewpoints on the conflicts and connections among the wars. He probes the causes, contexts, and conclusions of the conflicts, ranging from the enduring insurgency in Myanmar to the struggle of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the unrest in the Punjab and Assam states, the Bangladeshi war of independence, and the intractable struggles in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

The twenty-first century opened with South Asia front and center on a turbulent political stage: the region is not only the designated frontline for the "war on terror" but also home to the newest nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. A Region in Turmoil addresses this critical contemporary crisis with an invaluable analysis of the region and its complex history, making it essential reading for historians, policymakers, and anyone who reads the front page of the daily newspaper.

Originating in Mesoamerica 9,000 years ago, maize—or, as we know it, corn—now grows in 160 countries. In the New World, indigenous peoples referred to corn as “Our Mother,” “Our Life,” and “She Who Sustains Us.” Today, the United States is the world’s leading producer of corn, and you can find more than 3,500 items in grocery stores that contain corn in one way or another—from puddings to soups, margarine to mayonnaise. In Corn: A Global History, Michael Owen Jones explores the origins of this humble but irreplaceable crop.

The book traces corn back to its Mesoamerican roots, following along as it was transported to the Old World by Christopher Columbus, and then subsequently distributed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. Jones takes readers into the deliciously disparate culinary uses of corn, including the Chilean savory pie pastel de choclo, Japanese corn soup, Mexican tamales, a Filipino shaved ice snack, and the South African cracked hominy dish umngqusho, favored by Nelson Mandela. Covering corn’s controversies, celebrations, and iconic cultural status, Jones interweaves food, folklore, history, and popular culture to reveal the vibrant story of a world staple.

Drawing on scientific fact, historical evidence, and literary evocation, Mosquito provides a colorful portrait of this tiny insect and the notorious diseases it carries. Richard Jones explores the mosquito’s sinister reputation, tracing its transformation from trivial gnat into a serious disease-carrying menace. While Jones recounts the history of mosquitoes’ relationship with humans, he also offers a persuasive warning against the contemporary complacency surrounding malaria and other diseases in Western society. Mosquito is a compelling look at tropical medicine, diseases, and their connection to one of our smallest adversaries.

Our fear and fascination with wasps set them apart from other insects. Despite their iconic form and distinctive colors, they are surrounded by myth and misunderstanding. Often portrayed in cartoon-like stereotypes bordering on sad parody, wasps have an unwelcome and undeserved reputation for aggressiveness bordering on vindictive spite. This mistrust is deep-seated in a human history that has awarded commercial and spiritual value to other insects, such as bees, but has failed to recognize any worth in wasps.

Leading entomologist Richard Jones redresses the balance in this enlightening and entertaining guide to the natural and cultural history of these powerful arthropod carnivores. Jones delves into their complex nesting and colony behavior, their fascinating caste system, and their major role at the center of many food webs. Drawing on up-to-date scientific concepts and featuring many striking color illustrations, Jones pushes past the sting, showing exactly why wasps are worthy of greater understanding and appreciation.

Many schools of thought assert that Western culture has never been more politically apathetic. Tim Jordan's Activism! refutes this claim. In his powerful polemic, Jordan shows how acts of civil disobedience have come to dominate the political landscape. Because we inhabit such a quickly changing, high-tech and fragmented culture, the single-issue political movements and stable, conservative authorities of the past are continually being questioned. Traditional political battles have been replaced by the popular, collective practices of a new political activism. From Europe to the USA, from Australia to South America, from the Left to the Right, Jordan introduces us to the citizens who make up d-i-y culture: eco-activists, animal liberators, neo-fascists, ravers, anti-abortionists, squatters, hunt saboteurs and hacktivists. In his view, activism comprises a new ethics of living for the 21st century.

Portraiture as a genre is receiving increased attention at the same time that public curiosity about science is reaching unprecedented levels. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 14 April – 17 September 2000, and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, from 27 September – 10 December 2000, Defining Features brings portraiture and science together.

Ludmilla Jordanova's lucid text reflects on the nature of the relationship between art, science, medicine and technology by focusing on a selection of portraits that spans more than three centuries. Illustrated with likenesses of such notable personalities as Edward Jenner, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Dorothy Hodgkin, and encompassing a variety of media from paintings and medals to bookmarks and key rings, Defining Features charts changing attitudes towards medical practice and scientific investigation, as well as exploring how notions of gender, heroism, popularization and celebrity have affected the public's understanding of how researchers do their work.

The Joseon Dynasty in Korea lasted over five centuries and saw the height of classical Korean culture, leaving a lasting imprint on the attitudes and traditions of Korea today. In Pathways to Korean Culture, Burglind Jungmann provides a survey of the important developments in Korean art and visual culture during the Joseon Dynasty and introduces Joseon painting to the wider world.
           
In addition to discussing the more well-known ink paintings of the literati elite, Jungmann investigates the role of women as artists and patrons, the use of the ideals of Chinese antiquity for political purposes, and the role of painting in foreign exchange and as a means of escapism. She also explores the support of Buddhist products in a society governed by Confucian ideology and court projects done to document important events and decorate palaces. Jungmann unwraps the layers of personal, intellectual, aesthetic, religious, socio-political, and economic contexts within which these paintings are embedded, casting new light on the conditions of this period. Tying in with exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in June, 2014 and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in November, 2015, Pathways to Korean Culture fills an immense gap in the literature on this period of Korean art.

Multimedia experiments are everywhere in contemporary art, but the collaboration and conflict associated with multimedia is not a new phenomenon. From opera to the symphonic poem to paintings inspired by music, many attempts have been made to pair sounds with pictures and to combine the arts of time and space. Counterpoints explores this artistic evolution from ancient times to the present day.

The book’s main focus is music and its relationship with painting, sculpture, and architecture. Philippe Junod draws on theoretical and practical examples to show how different art movements throughout history have embraced or rejected creative combinations. He explains how the Renaissance, neoclassicism, and certain brands of modernism tried to claim the purity of each mode of expression, while other movements such as romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism called for a fusion of the arts. Counterpoints is a unique cultural history, one that provides a critical understanding of a popular but previously unheralded art form.

Fierce, menacing, and mysterious, badgers have fascinated humans as living animals, abstract symbols, or commercial resources for thousands of years—often to their detriment. With their reputation for determined self-defense, they have been brutalized by hunters and sportsmen, while their association with the mythic underworld has made them idealized symbols of earth-based wisdom and their burrowing habits have resulted in their widespread persecution as pests. In this highly illustrated book, Daniel Heath Justice provides the first global cultural history of the badger in over thirty years.
           
From the iconic European badger and its North American kin to the African honey badger and Southeast Asian hog badger, Justice considers the badger’s evolution and widespread distribution alongside its current, often-imperiled status throughout the world. He travels from natural history and life in the wild to the folklore, legends, and spiritual beliefs that badgers continue to inspire, while also exploring their representation and exploitation in industry, religion, and the arts. Tracing the complex and contradictory ways in which this fascinating animal endures, Badger will appeal to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of these much-maligned creatures.