From ancient Mesopotamia to today, the epic story of how humans have used laws to forge civilizations Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. In The Rule of Laws, Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people—tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers—called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. Although legal principles originating in Western Europe now seem to dominate the globe, the variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.

In this highly readable and engaging work, Linda Walton presents a dynamic survey of China's history from the tenth through the mid-fourteenth centuries from the founding of the Song dynasty through the Mongol conquest when Song China became part of the Mongol Empire and Marco Polo made his famous journey to the court of the Great Khan. Adopting a thematic approach, she highlights the political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural changes and continuities of the period often conceptualized as 'Middle Imperial China'. Particular emphasis is given to themes that inform scholarship on world history: religion, the state, the dynamics of empire, the transmission of knowledge, the formation of political elites, gender, and the family. Consistent coverage of peoples beyond the borders – Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, and Mongol, among others – provides a broader East Asian context and introduces a more nuanced, integrated representation of China's past.

Against the backdrop of the radical change in political conditions since the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, noted philosopher and political theorist Dick Howard asks: what is modern politics? Returning to the historical problems posed by the French and American Revolutions, Howard examines the ways that philosophy has tried to understand the contemporary political dilemma. He then puts his theory to the test by looking at political problems in Eastern Europe, in the European Union, and in the United States. This collection of essays, many available in English for the first time, will be useful to philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Case studies fascinate because they link individual instances to general patterns and knowledge to action without denying the priority of individual situations over the generalizations derived from them. In this volume, an international group of senior scholars comes together to consider the use of cases to produce empirical knowledge in premodern China. They trace the process by which the project of thinking with cases acquired a systematic and public character in the ninth century CE and after. Premodern Chinese experts on medicine and law circulated printed case collections to demonstrate efficacy or claim validity for their judgments. They were joined by authors of religious and philosophical texts. The rhetorical strategies and forms of argument used by all of these writers were allied with historical narratives, exemplary biographies, and case examples composed as aids to imperial statecraft. The innovative and productive explorations gathered here present a coherent set of interlocking arguments that will be of interest to comparativists as well as specialists on premodern East Asia. For China scholars, they examine the interaction of different fields of learning in the late imperial period, the relationship of evidential reasoning and literary forms, and the philosophical frameworks that linked knowledge to experience and action. For comparativists, the essays bring China into a global conversation about the methodologies of the human sciences. Contributors: Chu Honglam, Charlotte Furth, Hsiung Ping-chen, Jiang Yonglin, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Robert Sharf, Pierre-Étienne Will, WuYanhong, Judith T. Zeitlin.

The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge whether many minds can be wiser than one.

China's extraordinary rise as an economic powerhouse in the past two decades poses a challenge to many long-held assumptions about the relationship between political institutions and economic development. Economic prosperity also was vitally important to the longevity of the Chinese Empire throughout the preindustrial era. Before the eighteenth century, China's economy shared some of the features, such as highly productive agriculture and sophisticated markets, found in the most advanced regions of Europe. But in many respects, from the central importance of irrigated rice farming to family structure, property rights, the status of merchants, the monetary system, and the imperial state's fiscal and economic policies, China's preindustrial economy diverged from the Western path of development. In this comprehensive but accessible study, Richard von Glahn examines the institutional foundations, continuities and discontinuities in China's economic development over three millennia, from the Bronze Age to the early twentieth century.

Allie Carmichael has never fit in. People don’t like her. They don’t want to be near her. They don’t want to touch her. It’s one of the many things about her life that just doesn’t add up. But there are some things she knows for certain. 1. Moving across the world in the dead of night is not normal. 2. Her new friends might know more about her than she knows about herself. 3. Aidan McBrien is the most insufferable flirt she’s ever met … but she can’t stay away from him. When Allie awakens to an excruciating pain she doesn’t understand, a latent Immortal power emerges within her, nearly killing her. Now the secrets and lies have fallen away, and she is no longer the awkward, uncertain girl she once was. She is Immortal. One of the two most powerful of her generation. Yet death still stalks her at every turn. With Aidan standing beside her as her equal in power, the task is simple. Learn to fight. Hide in plain sight. Don’t fall in love. There are dangerous powers at play in Allie’s life, but is death truly a threat to an Immortal? Don’t miss the chance to be swept away by this highly original, dark and gritty tale of Immortality and fated romance, sure to take readers on an epic journey they won’t soon forget. This collection includes the first two books of the Immortals of Indriell series Emerge and Judgment, available for a limited time. _______ "I loved the fact that Immortals of Indriell wasn't the usual vampires, shape shifters and werewolves but an entirely new concept." ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emerge is an epic journey with twists and turns readers won't soon forget. Readers of Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments, Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen, and Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Dark Elements will devour The Immortals of Indriell Series. *** KEYWORDS: Book collections, fantasy, slow burn romance, friends to lovers, Immortals, live forever, prophecy, chosen one, supernatural powers, come into powers, Clairvoyance, Psychic, sees the future, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy romance, clean fantasy, contemporary fantasy, fated romance, Royal, Twilight, Kresley Cole, Ednah Walters, Alyson Noel, Caroline Peckham, Susanne Valenti, Chandelle LaVaun, Michelle Madow, K.F. Breene, Leia Stone, Kelly St. Clare, P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast, Jaymin Eve, Shannon Mayer, Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson