In Search Of History

The primary concern of the book is to understand the origins and nature of history-writing in ancient Israel. The investigation is undertaken against the background of history-writing in the Near Eastern and classical worlds. Professor Van Seters begins with a broad survey of all the historiographic material relevant for the study of Israel's own writing of history. He then turns his attention to the question of Israel's historiography by focusing particularly on the Deuteronomistic Historian, the first Israelite historian.

Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire. Frank Exit is dead—or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures—interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, Asian American identity in the arts, and lost parents—as an unlikely cast of accomplices and enemies pursues the mysterious canine. In elliptical, propulsive prose, Search History plumbs the depths of personal and collective consciousness, questioning what we consume, how we grieve, and the stories we tell ourselves.

A newly revised edition of the classic account of Vlad the Impaler--just in time for Halloween--now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen. 70 b&w illustrations.

For forty years, Barnaby Rogerson has travelled across North Africa, making sense of the region’s complex and fascinating history as both a writer and a guide. Throughout that time there have always been a handful of stories he could not pin into neat, tidy narratives; stories that were not distinctly good or bad, tragic or pathetic, selfish or heroic, malicious or noble. This book, neither a work of history nor travel writing, is a journey into the ruins of a landscape in an attempt to make sense of those stories through the lives of six historical figures, five men and one woman: A sacrificial refugee (Queen Dido); a prisoner of war who became a compliant tool of the Roman Empire (King Juba II); an unpromising provincial who, as Emperor, brought the Roman Empire to its dazzling apogee (Septimius Severus); an intellectual careerist who became a bishop and a saint (St Augustine); the greatest general the world has ever known (Hannibal); and the Berber Cavalry General who eventually defeated him (Masinissa). All six of these lives are surrounded with as much myth as fact, but the destinies of these North African figures remain highly relevant today. Their descendants are faced with many of the same choices: Should you stay pure to your own culture and fight against the power of the West, or should you study and assimilate to this other culture, and utilize its skills? Will it greet you as an ally only to own you as a slave? In between these life stories, Rogerson explores the ruins of ancient sites, which tell their own tales, and reveals the multiple interconnections that bind the culture of this region with the wider world, particularly the spiritual traditions of the ancient Near East.

Offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present.

A major new history of the century-long debate over what a Jewish state should be Many Zionists who advocated for the creation of a Jewish state envisioned a nation like any other. Yet for Israel's founders, the nation that emerged against all odds in 1948 was anything but ordinary. Born from the ashes of genocide and a long history of suffering, Israel was conceived to be unique, a model society and the heart of a prosperous new Middle East. It is this paradox, says historian Michael Brenner—the Jewish people's wish for a homeland both normal and exceptional—that shapes Israel's ongoing struggle to define itself and secure a place among nations. In Search of Israel is a major new history of this struggle from the late nineteenth century to our time.