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Systems Biology: a Very Short Introduction by Eberhard O. Voit
Category: Science | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Systems biology came about as growing numbers of engineers and scientists from other fields created algorithms which supported the analysis of biological data in incredible quantities. Whereas biologists of the past had been forced to study one item or aspect at a time, due to technical and biological l ...Show more
The American South - A Very Short Introduction by Charles Reagan Wilson
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The American South is a distinctive place with a dramatic history, and has significance beyond its regional context in the twenty first century. The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of the South as a cultural crossroads, a meeting place between western Europe andWest Africa ...Show more
The Aztecs: a Very Short Introduction by David Carrasco
Category: Children's Non Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
This Very Short Introduction employs the disciplines of history, religious studies, and anthropology as it illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regener ...Show more
The Beats by David Sterritt
Category: Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writers of the Beat Generation revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their followers took aim at the hypocrisy and taboos of their time ...Show more
The Dead Sea Scrolls by Timothy H. Lim
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Since their discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have become an icon in popular culture that transcends their status as ancient Jewish manuscripts. Everyone has heard of the Scrolls, but amidst the conspiracies, the politics, and the sensational claims, it can be difficult to separate themyths from t ...Show more
The Ghetto: a Very Short Introduction by Bryan Cheyette
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
For three hundred years the ghetto defined Jewish culture in the late medieval and early modern period in Western Europe. In the nineteenth-century it was a free-floating concept which travelled to Eastern Europe and the United States. Eastern European ghettos, which enabled genocide, werecrudely rehabi ...Show more
The Great Depression and the New Deal by Eric Rauchway
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the "American Way" itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depression, illuminating its successes and failures.Rauchway first describes ...Show more
The Hellenistic Age by Peter Thonemann
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The three centuries which followed the conquests of Alexander are perhaps the most thrilling of all periods of ancient history. This was an age of cultural globalization: in the third century BC, a single language carried you from the Rhone to the Indus. A Celt from the lower Danube couldserve in the me ...Show more
The History of Medicine (A Very Short Introduction) by William Bynum
Category: Medical | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this Very Short Introduction surveys the history of medicine from classical times to the present. Focussing on the key turning points in the history of Western medicine, such as the advent of hospitals and the rise of experimen ...Show more
The Quakers (A Very Short Introduction) by Pink Dandelion
Category: Kindergarten | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
The Quakers are a fascinating religious group both in their origins and in the variety of reinterpretations of the faith since. Emerging from the social unrest of the English civil war, the Quakers have gone on to have an influence way beyond their numbers: be it their continued stance against war or th ...Show more
The Short Story: a Very Short Introduction by Andrew Kahn
Category: Languages and Reference | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
What defines a modern short story is much more than a question of length. Despite the efforts of early pioneers like Edgar Allan Poe, the genre was originally synonymous with the anecdote or tale and seen more as entertainment than art. However it has become far more than that, and this VeryShort Introd ...Show more
The U. S. Civil War: a Very Short Introduction by Louis P. Masur
Category: History | Series: Very Short Introductions Ser.
More than one hundred and fifty years after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War still captures the American imagination, and its reverberations can still be felt throughout America's social and political landscape.Louis P. Masur's The U.S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction offers ...Show more