The purpose of this volume and of the other volumes in the same series is to provide a collection of surveys that allows the reader to learn the important aspects of William Thurston’s heritage. Thurston’s ideas have altered the course of twentieth century mathematics, and they continue to have a significant influence on succeeding generations of mathematicians. The topics covered in the present volume include com-plex hyperbolic Kleinian groups, Möbius structures, hyperbolic ends, cone 3-manifolds, Thurston’s norm, surgeries in representation varieties, triangulations, spaces of polygo-nal decompositions and of singular flat structures on surfaces, combination theorems in the theories of Kleinian groups, hyperbolic groups and holomorphic dynamics, the dynamics and iteration of rational maps, automatic groups, and the combinatorics of right-angled Artin groups.

This book consists of 16 surveys on Thurston's work and its later development. The authors are mathematicians who were strongly influenced by Thurston's publications and ideas. The subjects discussed include, among others, knot theory, the topology of 3-manifolds, circle packings, complex projective structures, hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups, foliations, mapping class groups, Teichmüller theory, anti-de Sitter geometry, and co-Minkowski geometry. The book is addressed to researchers and students who want to learn about Thurston’s wide-ranging mathematical ideas and their impact. At the same time, it is a tribute to Thurston, one of the greatest geometers of all time, whose work extended over many fields in mathematics and who had a unique way of perceiving forms and patterns, and of communicating and writing mathematics.

The last two centuries have witnessed profound changes in the nature of public consciousness. Nowhere has this been more true than in India, especially in relation to changing cultures of public life and religious tradition in South India. Essays in this collection attempt to explore the intricacies of what is perhaps the single most complex socio-religious environment in the world. The essays consider the evolution of the notion of Hinduism as a distinct and singular separate religion; the relationship between this kind of formulation and various European or western influences in India; and differences which the formation of this idea and its acceptance have made upon wider public consciousness. Each essay also considers certain general issues - such as the passing along of religious authority from one generation to the next, and the rise of disputes over matters both ideological (or doctrinal) and institutional, disputes that are fundamental to the traditions concerned and yet have unmistakable cross-cultural references.

World War II left virtually no nation or corner of the world untouched, dramatically transforming human life and society. It prompted the unprecedented mobilization of whole societies and witnessed a scale of state-sanctioned violence that staggers the imagination, with more than 100 million casualties. The war resulted in an almost complete collapse of any norms geared toward avoiding the unnecessary loss of civilian life and shaped the worldview and psyches of generations. The Oxford Handbook of World War II broadens traditional narratives of the war and in the process changes our understanding of this epic conflict. Organized both chronologically and thematically and with particular attention to the pre- and post-war eras, the Handbook revises and extends existing scholarship. With chapters on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, the land war in Western Europe, the Battle of Britain, the impact of war on the major combatants (Great Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and China), the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the decision to use the atomic bomb in 1945, and the cultural responses to the war, the chapters span much of the twentieth century. They suggest areas of scholarly consensus, identify interpretative clashes, and propose agendas for further scholarly investigation, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary inquiry. For example, the end of the Cold War had a profound impact on the way World War II was understood. Many formerly closed records in the former Soviet Union and China were opened to scholars, facilitating a more complex view of the Soviet war effort and suggesting that Stalin's army did not simply triumph by overwhelming German forces with sheer numbers but mastered the demands of a vast and logistically demanding front. In conceptualizing the volume, editors Kurt Piehler and Jonathan Grant also sought out contributions on lesser known aspects of the war, such as the Bengal famine in India, the treatment of prisoners of war, the role of Middle Eastern nations, and the activities of non-governmental organizations in ameliorating suffering. Spanning the rise and fall of the Versailles system to the postwar reintegration of veterans and the eventual commemoration of the conflict and its victims, The Oxford Handbook of World War II marks a landmark contribution to the historical literature of war.

This book integrates history of science and technology with modern social network theory. Using examples from the history of machines, as well as case studies from wireless, radio and chaos theory, the author challenges the genius model of invention. Network analysis concepts are presented to demonstrate the societal nature of invention in areas such as steam power, internal combustion engines, early aviation, air conditioning and more. Using modern measures of network theory, the author demonstrates that the social networks of invention from the 19th and early 20th centuries have similar characteristics to modern 21st C networks such as the World Wide Web. The book provides evidence that exponential growth in technical innovation is linked to the growth of historical innovation networks.