Traditionally used in Aboriginal funeral ceremonies, memorial poles have been transformed into compelling contemporary artworks. The memorial pole is made from the trunk of the Eucalyptus tetradonta, hollowed naturally by termites. When the bones of...

In this long-awaited sequel to "The Invention of Culture", Roy Wagner tackles the logic and motives that underlie cultural invention. Could there be a single, logical factor that makes the invention of the distinction between self and other possible,...

Written by one of the world's leading scholars of Bedouin culture, this groundbreaking book sheds new light on significant points of convergence between Bedouin and early Israelite cultures, as manifested in the Hebrew Bible. Bailey compares Bedouin...

In this brilliant work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dor...

There are many holy cities in India, but Mumbai is not usually named as one of them. More popular images of the city capture the world's collective imagination – as a Bollywood fantasia or a slumland dystopia. Yet for many, if not most people who liv...

About a millennium ago, in Cairo, someone completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, our unknown author guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, f...

For sale in CIS only! The first comprehensive history of the Sami people of the Nordic countries and northwestern Russia. There is no single volume which encompasses an integrated social and cultural history of the Sami people from the Nordic countr...

For sale in CIS only! Australian deserts remain dotted with the ruins of old mosques. Beginning with a Bengali poetry collection discovered in a nineteenth-century mosque in the town of Broken Hill, Samia Khatun weaves together the stories of variou...

Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies t...

We have all found ourselves involuntarily addressing inanimate objects as though they were human. For a fleeting instant, we act as though our cars and computers can hear us. In situations like ritual or play, objects acquire a range of human charact...