Conquered City

1919–1920: St. Petersburg, city of the czars, has fallen to the Revolution. Camped out in the splendid palaces of the former regime, the city’s new masters seek to cement their control, even as the counterrevolutionary White Army regroups. Conquered City, Victor Serge’s most unrelenting narrative, is structured like a detective story, one in which the new political regime tracks down and eliminates its enemies—the spies, speculators, and traitors hidden among the mass of common people. Conquered City is about terror: the Red Terror and the White Terror. But mainly about the Red, the Communists who have dared to pick up the weapons of power—police, guns, jails, spies, treachery—in the doomed gamble that by wielding them righteously, they can put an end to the need for terror, perhaps forever. Conquered City is their tragedy and testament.

Scattered here and there in the Quran and the Books of Sunna-books in which the Prophet's authentically-traced-back sayings and speeches are compiled-are numerous future incidents that, according to Muslims beliefs, will inevitably take place in the ordinary course of events before the coming of Doomsday. These Prophetical ahaddieth which bear signs or show plainly presages of the end's time usually begin with the expressions "The Hour will not occur before ...," or "Before the coming of the Hour...," followed by narrations or hints of a number of future events or, in some cases, natural phenomena, the occurrence of which will give-and has already given, indeed-to people obvious warnings that humankind's worldly life is nearing its end.

With this influential study, French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges initiated a new approach to Greek and Roman city organization. Fustel de Coulanges' 1864 masterpiece, La Cité antique, drew upon physical evidence as well as ancient documents rather than the usual post-Classical histories. The result is a fresh, accurate, and detailed portrait of the religious, family, and civic life of Periclean Athens and Rome during the time of Cicero. This fascinating sociological account reveals the significance of kinship and the cult of the family hearth and ancestors to ancient Hellenic and Latin urban culture. It chronicles the rise of family-centered pagan belief systems, tracing their gradual decline to the spread of Christianity. Fustel cites ancient Indian and Hebrew texts as well as Greek and Roman sources. The ingenuity of his interpretations, along with his striking prose style, offer readers a vital and enduring historic survey.

"Machiavelli is usually understood as a thinker who separated morality from politics and championed the view that "the ends justify the means." Raymond Angelo Belliotti argues, instead, that Machiavelli presents us with a much more nuanced view of the potential moral conflicts faced by politicians and military leaders." "Belliotti neither tries to domesticate Machiavelli by picturing him as a liberal humanist nor paint him as a teacher of evil. Rather, this book offers a balanced understanding of the Florentine and an insightful examination of the stunning discoveries and glaring errors that arise from his conclusion that international affairs have always been and will always be a series of zero-sum contests."--BOOK JACKET.

The only book available that covers this subject, Warfare in the Ancient Near East is a groundbreaking and fascinating study of ancient near Eastern military history from the Neolithic era to the middle Bronze Ages. Drawing on an extensive range of textual, artistic and archaeological data, William J. Hamblin synthesizes current knowledge and offers a detailed analysis of the military technology, ideology and practices of Near Eastern warfare. Paying particular attention to the earliest known examples of holy war ideaology in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Hamblin focuses on: * recruitment and training of the infantry * the logistics and weaponry of warfare * the shift from stone to metal weapons * the role played by magic * narratives of combat and artistic representations of battle * the origins and development of the chariot as military transportation * fortifications and siegecraft *developments in naval warfare. Beautifully illustrated, including maps of the region, this book is essential for experts and non-specialists alike.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Long before Calcutta was ‘discovered’ by Job Charnock, it thrived by the Hugli since times immemorial. This book, and its companion Colonial Calcutta, is a biographical account of the when, the how and the what of a global city and its emergence under colonial rule in the 1800s. Ranjit Sen traces the story of how three clustered villages became the hub of the British Empire and a centre of colonial imagination. He examines the historical and geopolitical factors that were significant in securing its prominence, and its subsequent urbanization which was a colonial experience without an antecedent. Further, it sheds light on Calcutta’s early search for identity — how it superseded interior towns and flourished as the seat of power for its hinterland; developed its early institutions, while its municipal administration slowly burgeoned. A sharp analysis of the colonial enterprise, this volume lays bare the underbelly of the British Raj. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, South Asian history, urban studies, British Studies and area studies.

This urban and architectural study of Aleppo reconstructs the city’s evolution over the first two centuries of Ottoman rule and proposes a new model for the understanding of the reception and adaptation of imperial forms, institutions and norms in a provincial setting.