Sports are the most popular spectator events in the history of the world. This volume demonstrates how sports shape societies and individuals. The essays offer critical new insights and historical case studies from historians, theorists, literature scholars, and athletes.

"[The Book of] Revelation has served as a "language arsenal" in a great many of the social, cultural, and political conflicts in Western history. Again and again, Revelation has stirred some dangerous men and women to act out their own private apocalypses. Above all, the moral calculus of Revelation—the demonization of one's enemies, the sanctification of revenge taking, and the notion that history must end in catastrophe—can be detected in some of the worst atrocities and excesses of every age, including our own. For all of these reasons, the rest of us ignore the book of Revelation only at our impoverishment and, more to the point, at our own peril." The mysterious author of the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse, as the last book of the New Testament is also known) never considered that his sermon on the impending end times would last beyond his own life. In fact, he predicted that the destruction of the earth would be witnessed by his contemporaries. Yet Revelation not only outlived its creator; this vivid and violent revenge fantasy has played a significant role in the march of Western civilization. Ever since Revelation was first preached as the revealed word of Jesus Christ, it has haunted and inspired hearers and readers alike. The mark of the beast, the Antichrist, 666, the Whore of Babylon, Armageddon, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are just a few of the images, phrases, and codes that have burned their way into the fabric of our culture. The questions raised go straight to the heart of the human fear of death and obsession with the afterlife. Will we, individually or collectively, ride off to glory, or will we drown in hellfire for all eternity? As those who best manipulate this dark vision learned, which side we fall on is often a matter of life or death. Honed into a weapon in the ongoing culture wars between states, religions, and citizenry, Revelation has significantly altered the course of history. Kirsch, whom the Washington Post calls "a fine storyteller with a flair for rendering ancient tales relevant and appealing to modern audiences," delivers a far-ranging, entertaining, and shocking history of this scandalous book, which was nearly cut from the New Testament. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the Black Death, the Inquisition to the Protestant Reformation, the New World to the rise of the Religious Right, this chronicle of the use and abuse of the Book of Revelation tells the tale of the unfolding of history and the hopes, fears, dreams, and nightmares of all humanity.

An encyclopedia describes all aspects of world culture, broken down into six regional categories, discussing the art, dance, fashion, food, pastimes, periodicals, recreation, and transportation of each region.

Whether it is our love of chance and vicarious thrill, our need to release anxiety and aggression, or our appreciation of the arc traced by a ball at a crucial moment – sports draw us in. The Allure of Sports in Western Culture contributes to contemporary debates about the attraction of sports in the West by providing a historical grounding as well as theoretical perspectives and contextualization. Bringing together the work of literary theorists, historians, and athletes, the volume’s dual emphasis allows us to better understand the historical and ideological reasons for the changing nature of sports’ allure from Ancient Greece and Rome to the modern Olympics. The findings show that allure is shaped by larger forces such as poverty, wealth, and status; changing moral standards; and political and cultural indoctrination. On the other hand, personal and psychological factors play an equally important, if less tangible role: our love for scandal, the seduction of deception and violence, and the physiological intoxication of watching and participating in sports keep us hooked. At the heart of the volume lies the tension between our love of sport and our knowledge of its only barely hidden cruelty, exploitation, and manipulation.

* Understanding Culture sections help students explore cultural causation and other cultural issues in world history. * An increased number of World Profiles (formerly Biographical Portraits) provide additional emphasis on the human component of world history. Website references allow further exploration as well. * A Companion Website provides students and professors with a wealth of resources, including a syllabus manager, student practice tests, web activities, chapter links, and a glossary. * A StudyWizard CD-ROM helps students learn the major facts of concepts of world history through drill and practice exercises and diagnostic feedback. Students receive individual, self-paced review of text material using multiple-choice, short-answer, and true/false questions, and detailed feedback. * Web Links at the end of each chapter encourage students to further explore a particular topic or period. * A comprehensive, full-color Gatefold Timeline, free in every new copy of the text, gives students a chronological context in which to place their knowledge and compare important political and diplomatic, social and economic, and cultural and technological events as they occurred across the

"SLPE" is mainly reserved for congress volumes, which are published in English and which give a general idea of international developments in sport and sport science. Apart from congress papers "SLPE" is open to further scientific reports, discourses and essays about sport and sport science. This volume includes a wide range of articles concerning sport sciences. Four fields are touched throughout the collected papers: I. Leisure and Recreational Sport II. Elite Sport III. Adapted Physical Activity and IV. Physical Education.

Comprises 18 contributions from the US, the UK, and Australia on the motor car as a cultural phenomenon which has come to dominate the 20th century. The contributors come at the subject from a variety of disciplines, including semiotics, social history, literary and film criticism, and musicology. T