Sleepwalking Into A New World

A bold new history of the rise of the medieval Italian commune Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government—the commune—arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. Sleepwalking into a New World takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about, and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world. Chris Wickham provides richly textured portraits of three cities—Milan, Pisa, and Rome—and sets them against a vibrant backcloth of other towns. He argues that, in all but a few cases, the elites of these cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe, unaware that they were creating something altogether new. Wickham makes clear that the Italian city commune was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, but that it was so novel that outsiders did not know what to make of it. He describes how, as the old order unraveled, the communes emerged, governed by consular elites "chosen by the people," and subject to neither emperor nor king. They regularly fought each other, yet they grew organized and confident enough to ally together to defeat Frederick Barbarossa, the German emperor, at the Battle of Legnano in 1176. Sleepwalking into a New World reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance.

One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict. Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent into a war that tore the world apart.

Jason’s sleepwalking father is snoring all around the house! In the bathtub, in the kitchen, even on top of the car in the garage. But when the front door is opened and Jason’s father sleepwalks outside into the frozen night, Jason has to take special action. A newly designed Classic Munsch picture book introduces this charming tale of a noisily napping parent to a new generation of young readers.

The way the world is changing so rapidly inspired the author to sort the wheat from the chaff. In a series of illustrated articles, Hamthesketch takes a wide perspective on global trends and tears away the surface trivia. This intriguing booklet faces up to attitudes and actions which negate advantages that techno-science has achieved. It reveals with plain logic that civilization cannot expand indefinitely within the confined size of our planet. His fascinating analysis cries out for rational thought and plain common sense to replace dependence on perpetual growth, which is trashing the planet. Compatibility with our earth will determine whether lasting prosperity and reaching the stars may be achieved.

"On almost every page of this witty magical realist whodunit, we sense Couto's delight on those places where language slips officialdom's asphyxiating grasp."--The New York Times Book Review on The Last Flight of the Flamingo "The most prominent of the younger generation of writers in Portuguese-speaking Africa, Couto passionately and sensitively describes everyday life in poverty-stricken Mozambique."--Guardian (London) "Quite unlike anything else I have read from Africa."--Doris Lessing As the civil war rages in 1980s Mozambique, an old man and a young boy, refugees from the war, seek shelter in a burnt-out bus. Among the effects of a dead passenger, they come across a set of notebooks that tell of his life. As the boy reads the story to his elderly companion, this story and their own develop in tandem. Written in 1992, Mia Couto's first novel is a powerful indictment of the suffering war brings. Born in 1955 in Mozambique, Mia Couto ran the AIM news agency during the revolutionary struggle. He now lives in Maputo where he works as an environmental biologist and heads the Mozambique side of the Limpopo Transnational Park. In 2007 he was the first African author to win the Latin Union Award for Romance Languages; in 2013 he was awarded the 100,000 Camoes Prize for Literature, in recognition of his life's work. In 2014 he received the $50,000 Neustadt Prize for Literature, and in 2015 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.

Every three years the world awaits the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA, the rankings of school systems overseen by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nations around the world look eagerly and apprehensively to see where their students rank on these tests of competence in, mainly, science, math and reading. This book provides a window into PISA and its power. What exactly is PISA? How are its tests developed? Who takes the test? What countries tend to outperform and which underperform? What do countries learn from PISA? Why is PISA both revered and feared? And, most importantly, does PISA improve education globally? The first PISA, in 2000, included 32 countries. In 2018, nearly eighty nations took part in PISA. That number is expected to double by 2030. This may mean that students in over 80% of the world’s countries will take the PISA exams. This scenario has made PISA more important than ever. This book probes topics and themes related to “the world’s most important exam” and why many view a high PISA ranking—rightly or wrongly—as global education’s seal of approval. Because of this, PISA has been called a disruptor, a test which can trigger major reform in school systems around the world. But is it the PISA rankings that are the real disruptor or the decisions countries make because of their rankings? These decisions often involve systemic changes in teaching and learning which can substantially alter how a country measures and prioritizes its education system.

In Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics Janine Larmon Peterson investigates regional saints whose holiness was contested. She scrutinizes the papacy's toleration of unofficial saints' cults and its response when their devotees challenged church authority about a cult's merits or the saint's orthodoxy. As she demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious authority. Local and unsanctioned saints were spiritual and social fixtures in the towns of northern and central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In some cases, popes allowed these saints' cults; in others, church officials condemned the saint and/or their followers as heretics. Using a wide range of secular and clerical sources—including vitae, inquisitorial and canonization records, chronicles, and civic statutes—Peterson explores who these unofficial saints were, how the phenomenon of disputed sanctity arose, and why communities would be willing to risk punishment by continuing to venerate a local holy man or woman. She argues that the Church increasingly restricted sanctification in the later Middle Ages, which precipitated new debates over who had the authority to recognize sainthood and what evidence should be used to identify holiness and heterodoxy. The case studies she presents detail how the political climate of the Italian peninsula allowed Italian communities to use saints' cults as a tool to negotiate religious and political autonomy in opposition to growing papal bureaucratization.

National bestseller: In this brilliantly readable book, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the Reagan decade, when America fell from dominant world power to struggling debtor nation and when optimism turned to foreboding. In human terms and living case histories, Haynes Johnson captures the drama and tragedy of an era nurtured by greed and a morality that found virtue in not getting caught."It is morning again in America," Reagan's campaign commercials told us, and for too long we embraced that convenient lie. Indeed, the problems that came to plague us in that decade are with us even more today, as Johnson memorably demonstrates in--his afterword, "Notes on an Era," written especially for this new paperback reissue. This book will remain a signature work of political analysis for years to come.