Theological concepts continue to maintain political concepts well after those theological concepts are no longer supported by belief. Cities on the Plains examines some of these concepts in the light of five different times and places. It is both a response to theological concerns in contemporary political theory and broadly accessible examination of familiar political issues touched by the divine - such as gay marriage, 911, or the French tradition of laicité. Concerns of difference and the divine are pursued through broadly familiar texts (the Bible, and Gore Vidal), significant texts of political theory (Plato and Augustine), and less common texts (Averroes). Gods, or the intellectual territory they used to occupy, are treated as important features of the political; contesting with these gods can help us visit, defend, and desire, (to paraphrase Deleuze and Guatarri) new cities and new peoples.

In this final volume of The Border Trilogy, two men marked by the boyhood adventures of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now stand together, in the still point between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing or already changed beyond recognition. In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham--nine years apart in age, yet with a kinship greater than perhaps they know--are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north, at Alamogordo, by the military. To the south, always on the horizon are the mountains of Mexico, looming over El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and all the cities of the plain. Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try. And what draws one of them across the border again and again, what would bind "those disparate but fragile worlds," is a girl seized by ill fortune, and a love as dangerous as it is inevitable. This story of friendship and passion is enfolded in a narrative replete with character and place and event--a blind musician, a marauding pack of dogs, curio shops and ancient petroglyphs, a precocious shoe-shine boy, trail drives from the century before, midnight on the highway--and with landforms and wildlife and horses and men, most of all men and the women they love and mourn, men and their persistence and memories and dreams. With the terrible beauty of Cities of the Plain--with its magisterial prose, humor both wry and out-right, fierce conviction and unwavering humanity--Cormac McCarthy has completed a landmark of our literature and times, an epic that reaches from tales of the old west, the world past, into the new millennium, the world to come. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

This book explores urbanism in Antiquity from an archaeological perspective, focusing on the area of western Thessaly in central Greece. Presenting all the available evidence for ancient urban sites in the region, the study outlines and discusses the origins, development, and decline of urbanism in the area. The archaeological evidence shows that urban sites in western Thessaly developed from the mid-4th century BCE, with at least 25 identified contemporaneous cities spread over the area. These cities appear to have been planned and organised from the onset, with regular street-grids, fortification systems and water supply works, but were generally short-lived, typically existing for only five–six generations. Most of the sites were completely or nearly completely abandoned as settlements in the early 2nd century BCE, often with evidence of violent destruction, and only a handful survived as smaller regional centres under the Roman administration. Restorations of the former urban sites and especially their fortifications occur towards the end of Antiquity, especially the first half of the 6th century CE, but re-occupation appears again to have been short lived, as only three cities survived into the Middle Ages. From a regional perspective, the study shows that the rise and fall of urbanism itself did not necessarily cause complete socio-political disruption, but rather reflect changes in regional and supra-regional political organisation. On a global scale, the study exemplifies the political nature of the pre-Industrial city, its synthetic rather than organic role in agrarian societies, and the cyclic nature of urbanity in history. The book contains an extensive catalogue, presenting each site with photographs, topographical sketches, and complete bibliography.

Charles Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities” is considered one of the greatest novels ever wrote. It also can be difficult to understand--it is loaded with themes, imagery, and symbols. If you need a little help understanding it, let BookCaps help with this study guide. Along with chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis, this book features the full text of Dicken's classic novel is also included. BookCap Study Guides are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.