Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explores some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behaviour, social inequality, war and political power are shown to lead to more obviously philosophical problems about personal identity, consciousness, freedom and value.  Meer

Language - in its communicative and playful functions, its literary formations and its shifting meanings - is a perennially fascinating topic. C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words explores this fascination by taking a series of words and teasing out their connotations using examples from a vast range of English literature, recovering lost meanings and analysing their functions.  Meer

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems.  Meer

In this book, Waldemar Heckel traces the rise and eventual fall of one of the most successful military commanders in history. In 325 BCE, Alexander and his conquering army prepared to return home, after overcoming everything in their path: armies, terrain, climate, all invariably hostile.  Meer

This volume includes over twenty of C. S. Lewis's most important literary essays, written between 1932 and 1962. The topics discussed range from Chaucer to Kipling, from 'The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version' to 'Psycho-Analysis and Literary Criticism', from Shakespeare and Bunyan to Sir Walter Scott and William Morris.  Meer

The languages of the ancient world and the mysterious scripts, long undeciphered, in which they were encoded have represented one of the most intriguing problems of classical archaeology in modern times.  Meer

Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic On Growth and Form looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take.  Meer

This extended essay by one of the world's leading historians seeks, in its first part, to excavate and to vindicate, the neo-Roman theory of free citizens and free states as it developed in early modern Britain.  Meer

Gerald Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth has become the classic account of the background to the Spanish Civil War. Written during and immediately after the Civil War, this book has all the vividness of the author's experience.  Meer

This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s.  Meer

The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture.  Meer

How was magic practised in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterised this fascinating period? In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval times.  Meer

Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the most distinguished scientists of the twentieth century; his lectures on the history and philosophy of science are legendary.  Meer

This selection from the writings of C. S. Lewis gathers together forty book reviews, never before reprinted, as well as four major essays which have been unavailable for many decades.  Meer

The Allegory of Love is a landmark study of a powerful and influential medieval conception. C. S. Lewis explores the sentiment called 'courtly love' and the allegorical method within which it developed in literature and thought, from its first flowering in eleventh-century Languedoc through to its transformation and gradual demise at the end of the sixteenth century.  Meer

In the later decades of the twentieth century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms.  Meer

State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.  Meer

Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being.  Meer

People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world - North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain; in many cases they were a matter of firearms against spears.  Meer

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch liken science to the Golem, a creature from Jewish mythology, powerful yet potentially dangerous, a gentle, helpful creature that may yet run amok at any moment.  Meer