The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered.

In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.

This volume makes available for the first time in English a variety of primary source materials relating to the life and work of Natalia Shelikov, a pioneering nineteenth-century Russian-American businesswoman. As a principal of the Russian-American Company, Shelikov worked in Alaska, and her business acumen and wide-ranging connections—including the empress of Russia and a swathe of northern leaders—were crucial to the growth of Alaska’s economy, as well as to the welfare of the Native people, in whose life and culture she took a strong interest. The letters, petitions, and personal documents presented here will be indispensable for students of Alaska and nineteenth-century women’s history.

This volume brings together a hitherto scattered and inaccessible body of material crucial to the understanding of the evolution of Nazi political thought. Before the publication of this volume, scholars had virtually ignored the extensive writings and programs published by leading Nazi ideologues before 1933. Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp have collected the political writings of Nazi theorists—Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, Gottfried Feder, Joseph Goebbels, Gregor and Otto Strasser, Heinrich Himmler, and Richard Walther Darré—during the period before the National Socialists came to power. The Strassers are given considerable space because of their great intellectual importance within the party before 1933. In commentary by the editors, the significance of each Nazi theorist is weighed and evaluated at each stage of the history of the party.

Lane and Rupp conclude that Nazi ideology, before 1933 at least, was not a consistent whole but a doctrine in the process of rapid development to which new ideas were continually introduced. By the time the Nazis came to power, however, a group of interrelated assertions and official promises had been made to party followers and to the public. Hitler and the Third Reich had to accommodate this ideology, even when not implementing it. Hitler’s role in the development of Nazi ideology, interpreted here as a very permissive one, is thoroughly assessed. His own writings, however, have been omitted since they are readily available elsewhere.

The twenty-eight documents included in this book illustrate themes and phases in Nazi ideology which are discussed in the introduction and the detailed prefatory notes. Long selections, as often as possible full-length, are provided to allow the reader to follow the arguments. Each selection is accompanied by an introductory note and annotations which clarify its relationship to other works of the author and other writings of the period. Also included are original translations of the “Twenty-Five Points” and a number of little-known official party statements.

New translations of fifty transliterated texts for research and classroom use

This collection of sixth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamian texts provides a close-up, often dramatic, view of ancient courtroom encounters shedding light on Neo-Babylonian legal culture and daily life. In addition to the legal texts, Holtz provides an introduction to Neo-Babylonian social history, archival records, and legal materials. This is an essential resource for scholars interested in the history of law.

Features

• Fifty new English translations
• Transliterations for use in advanced Akkadian courses
• Background essays perfect for courses dealing with ancient Near Eastern history and law
• Explanatory essays preceding each text and its translation

Widely regarded as today’s foremost American Jewish historian, Jonathan D. Sarna had a huge impact on the academy. Sarna’s influence is perhaps nowhere more apparent than among his former doctoral students—a veritable “Sarna diaspora” of over three dozen active scholars around the world. Both a tribute to Sarna and an important collection in its own right, New Perspectives in American Jewish History was compiled by Sarna’s former students and presents previously unpublished, neglected, or rarely seen historical documents and images that illuminate the breadth, diversity, and dynamism of the American Jewish experience. Beginning with the earliest known Jewish divorce in circum-Atlantic history (1774) and concluding with a Black Lives Matter Haggadah supplement (2019), the collection travels across time and space to shed light on intriguing and generative moments that span the varieties of Jewish experience in the American setting from the colonial era to the present. The materials underscore the interrelationship of myriad themes including ritual observance, Jewish-Christian relations, civil rights, Zionism and Israel, and immigration. While not intended as a comprehensive treatment of American Jewish history, the collection offers a chronological road map of American Jewry’s evolving self-understanding and encounter with America over the course of four centuries. A brief prefatory note sets up the analytic context of each document and helps to unpack and explore its significance. The capacious and multifaceted quality of the American Jewish experience is further amplified here by a sampling of artistic texts such as photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and more.