Tag archieven: Princeton University Press

Michael Cook – A History of the Muslim World

Michael Cook A History of the Muslim World review, recensie en informatie boek over de geschiedenis van de Islam. Op 28 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van de Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Michael Cook A History of the Muslim World review en recensie

  • “Michael Cook has written a masterpiece that will inform and inspire generations of readers. Seldom has the history of the Muslim world been told so well.” (Roy P. Mottahedeh, Harvard University)
  • “Glorious … Necessarily a dense work, it is also delightful in its sheer scope and variety. This is especially true in a writer as witty as Cook, who sustains a breezy, Socratic style throughout … The payoff for writing a book this ambitious and successful is that, for anyone interested in the history of Islam, Cook is now a must-read.” (Andrew Bernard, Washington Examiner)
  • “A fascinating work. It is written in a lucid and witty style that always tempts you to carry on reading to the bottom of the page, and then to turn over to the next one.” (John McHugo, interLib)

Michael Cook A History of the Muslim World

A History of the Muslim World

From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity

  • Auteur: Michael Cook (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de moslimwereld
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 28 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 960 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 27.95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van het boek over de geschiedenis van de moslimwereld

This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day. Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity.

After setting the scene in the Middle East of late antiquity, the book depicts the rise of Islam as one of the great black swan events of history. It continues with the spectacular rise of the Caliphate, an empire that by the time it broke up had nurtured the formation of a new civilization. It then goes on to cover the diverse histories of all the major regions of the Muslim world, providing a wide-ranging account of the key military, political, and cultural developments that accompanied the eastward and westward spread of Islam from the Middle East to the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

At the same time, A History of the Muslim World contains numerous primary-source quotations that expose the reader to a variety of acutely insightful voices from the Muslim past.

Michael Cook is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton), A Brief History of the Human Race, and The Koran: A Very Short Introduction.

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Philippa Gander – Life in Sync

Philippa Gander Life in Sync review, recensie en informatie boek over de wetenschap van de biologische klokken en hoe we ze verstoren. Op 21 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Philippa Gander, de slaaponderzoeker uit Nieuw-Zeeland over hoe we verkeerd omgaan met onze biologische klok. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Philippa Gander Life in Sync review en recensie

  • “Recent breakthroughs in chronobiology reveal powerful strategies to recover lost rhythms—and improve sleep. Drawing on decades of her own research, Gander leads an in-depth tour of the science and leaves no doubt that respecting circadian clocks is crucial not just for individual well-being but also for the future of our planet.” Lynne Peeples, author of The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms)
  • “The importance of sleep/wake cycles to our life on Earth is as inestimable as it is intriguing. Philippa Gander succeeds in communicating this complex science in her highly informative and engaging book.” (Colin A. Espie, University of Oxford)

Philippa Gander Life in Sync

Life in Sync

The Science of Internal Clocks and How We’re Disrupting Them

  • Auteur: Philippa Gander (Nieuw-Zeeland)
  • Soort boek: slaapproblemen en de biologisch klok
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 21 oktober 2026
  • Omvang: 168 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 22,95
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst boek van Philippa Gander over de verstoring van onze biologische klok

All of life is profoundly shaped by the daily, monthly, and yearly cycles of our planet, and all creatures have internal timekeeping systems that rely on cues from the surrounding environment. With modern technology, we are changing our environments—and by proxy, the ecosystems around us—to override these innate rhythms of life. But at what cost? Life in Sync reveals how Earth’s rotations shape our biology, what human sleep cycles looked like before the advent of artificial light, and why technology can’t free us from the constraints of our circadian clocks.

Philippa Gander explores the science behind the biological rhythms that animate us and our world, blending captivating storytelling with illuminating examples ranging from migratory birds and hibernating squirrels to jet-lagged pilots and astronauts in space. She shows how genetic circadian clocks are an ancient evolutionary adaptation that we share with all life on the planet, and how our rapidly expanding use of artificial light at night disrupts the time cues for entire ecosystems. Gander explains why cutting back on sleep adversely affects our well-being, safety, and longevity, and how breakthroughs in sleep science offer solutions to bring our lives more in harmony with nature’s rhythms.

An astonishing journey of scientific discovery, Life in Sync unlocks the mysteries of biological time—and offers new perspectives for anyone who has ever given up a good night’s sleep for the sake of their hectic waking hours.

Philippa Gander is a sleep researcher from New Zealand. She is an emeritus professor at Massey University in New Zealand.

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John Blair – Killing the Dead

John Blair Killing the Dead review, recensie en informatie boek over vampierepidemieën van Mesopotamië tot de Nieuwe Wereld. Op 11 november 2025 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het nieuwe boek van John Blair, de Britse historicus en mediëvist. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

John Blair Killing the Dead review en recensie

  • “We all think we know about vampires, but John Blair brings his expertise as archaeologist and historian to reveal the disconcertingly wide range of stories and evidence about the undead across an astonishing variety of human cultures, from the ancient world to the present day. With Blair’s sure guidance, we may understand better how other cultures have sought to make sense of the terrors of the world around them.” (Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity)
  • “This is the first historical survey of beliefs in dangerous dead humans to take in all time and the whole of the world. It is therefore also the first to identify the way in which such beliefs wax and wane, and travel. As a result, it moves knowledge of the subject up into a whole new register.” (Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present)

John Blair Killing the Dead

Killing the Dead

Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World

  • Auteur: John Blair (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de vampier
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 11 november 2025
  • Omvang: 536 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 35,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van het boek van John Blair over de geschiedenis van vampiers

Killing the Dead provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria—the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, John Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties.

In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history—in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India.

Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals.

John Blair is an Emeritus Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His many books include Building Anglo-Saxon EnglandThe Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, and The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction.

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Christopher I. Beckwith – The Scythian Empire

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire review, recensie en informatie boek over Centraal-Eurazië en de geboorte van de klassieke periode van Perzië tot China. Op 4 juni 2024 verschijnt bij Princeton University Press het boek van Christopher I. Beckwith, de hoogleraar Centraal-Euraziatische Studies aan de Universiteit van Indiana over de Scythen en de Scytische beschaving. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire review en recensie

  • The Scythian Empire is simply, dazzlingly original. . . . [Beckwith’s] curiosity, imagination and learning–from the Yellow River to the Danube, from archaeology to linguistics–do what every history ought to do but few achieve: compel the reader to think.” (Maxwell Carter, Wall Street Journal)
  • “Often regarded by historians as a collection of savage tribes, the Scythians emerge as a pivotal force of the ancient world in this monumental history.” (The New Yorker)
  • “Prodigiously learned … Full of hitherto unthought-of connections across the northern steppes. Not everyone will agree with Beckwith, but all will be challenged by his book which turns the classical world as we know it inside out.” (History Today)

Christopher I. Beckwith The Scythian Empire

The Scythian Empire

Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China

  • Auteur: Christopher I. Beckwith (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: geschiedenis van de Scythen
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Princeton University Press
  • Verschijnt: 4 juni 2024
  • Uitgave: paperback / ebook
  • Prijs: £ 20,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst boek van Christopher I. Beckwith over het Scythische Rijk

In the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE, Scythian warriors conquered and unified most of the vast Eurasian continent, creating an innovative empire that would give birth to the age of philosophy and the Classical age across the ancient world—in the West, the Near East, India, and China. Mobile horse herders who lived with their cats in wheeled felt tents, the Scythians made stunning contributions to world civilization—from capital cities and strikingly elegant dress to political organization and the world-changing ideas of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Laotzu—Scythians all. In The Scythian Empire, Christopher I. Beckwith presents a major new history of a fascinating but often forgotten empire that changed the course of history.

At its height, the Scythian Empire stretched west from Mongolia and ancient northeast China to northwest Iran and the Danube River, and in Central Asia reached as far south as the Arabian Sea. The Scythians also ruled Media and Chao, crucial frontier states of ancient Iran and China. By ruling over and marrying the local peoples, the Scythians created new cultures that were creole Scythian in their speech, dress, weaponry, and feudal socio-political structure. As they spread their language, ideas, and culture across the ancient world, the Scythians laid the foundations for the very first Persian, Indian, and Chinese empires.

Filled with fresh discoveries, The Scythian Empire presents a remarkable new vision of a little-known but incredibly important empire and its peoples.

Christopher I. Beckwith is born on 23 October 1945 He is American philologist and distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. His many books include Empires of the Silk RoadThe Tibetan Empire in Central AsiaGreek Buddha, and Warriors of the Cloisters.

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