I imprint: 1291 books

From Timur's tent in Samarqand to Shah 'Abbas's palace in Isfahan and Humayun's tomb in Delhi, the pavilion has been an integral part of Persianate gardens since its earliest appearance at the Achaemenid garden in Pasargadae in the sixth century BC. Here, Mohammad Gharipour places both the garden...

Art today is an increasingly multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing transgressive works that intervene in war, inequalities, ecological disasters, and revolutionary changes in technology. Carnal Aesthetics is a fascinating new examination of this aspect of contemporary visual culture. Employing recent...

The philosophical traditions of China have arguably influenced more human beings than any other. China has been the home not only of its indigenous philosophical traditions of Confucianism and Daoism, but also of uniquely modified forms of Buddhism. As Ronnie L Littlejohn shows, these traditions have...

Vampires and werewolves; phantoms and phantasms: looming out of the fog leaps the menacing spectre of the lycanthrope, ghoul or blood-crazed zombie. Intrigued by some of the most sinister, yet at the same time most compelling, legends of western civilization, Gregory L. Reece dusts down his stake...

Babylon: for eons its very name has been a byword for luxury and wickedness. 'By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept', wrote the psalmist, 'as we remembered Zion'. One of the greatest cities of the ancient world, Babylon has been eclipsed by its own sinful reputation. For two thousand years...

Whether they focus on Thor's powerful hammer, the wailing Valkyrie, the palatial home of the gods - Asgard - or ravenous wolves and fierce elemental giants, the Norse myths are packed with rowdy incident. But at the centre of their cosmos stands a gnarled old ash tree, Yggdrasil, from which all distances...

Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The so called 'Russian flu' killed about 1 million people across Europe in 1889 – including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people –...

The Lebanese civil war, which spanned the years of 1975 to 1990,caused the migration of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens, many of whom are still writing of their experiences. Jumana Bayeh presents an important and major study of the literature of the Lebanese diaspora. Focusing on novels...

Each year, Israel's young men and women are drafted into compulsory military service and are required to engage directly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is by its nature intensely complex and is played out under the full glare of international security. So, how does Israel's education...

The relationship between Islam and the West has frequently been subject to misunderstanding and mistrust and recent events in the international arena have only deepened this perceived divide, culturally and politically. The West often views the Islamic world - and the Islamic world the West - through...

The vampire and the zombie, the two most popular incarnations of the undead, are brought together for a forensic critical investigation in Screening the Undead. Both have a long history in popular fiction, film, television, comics and games; the vampire also remains central to popular culture today,...

The fertile land of the five rivers (punj+ab in Persian) has persistently stirred the imagination of its peoples. Its story is the story of invasion. In 326 ??e Alexander the Great marched through the Hindu Kush, conquered the verdant plains now divided between India and Pakistan, and stamped Greek...

Zoroaster was one of the greatest and most radical religious reformers in the history of the world. The faith that he founded some 2600 years ago in a remote region of central Asia flourished to become the bedrock of a great empire as well as its official religion. Zoroastrianism is still practised...

The Waltons' drama series about John and Olivia Walton, their ageing parents Zeb and Esther and their seven children in 1930s and '40s America was a successful show for CBS TV throughout the 1970s. In 2008 - perhaps significantly - the first six series of the show have for the first time been released...