A Very Short Introduction

A vast system of prisons, camps, and exile settlements, the Gulag was one of the defining attributes of the Stalinist Soviet Union and one of the most heinous examples of mass incarceration in the twentieth century, combining the functions of a standard prison system with the goal of isolating and punishing alleged enemies of the Soviet regime. it stretched throughout the Soviet Union, from central Moscow to the farthest reaches of Siberia. From its creation in 1930 to its partial dismantling in the mid-1950s, approximately 25 million people passed through the Gulag.

Marriage has not always meant just one man and one woman. For much of human history, over much of the globe, the most common alternative was polygamy: marriage involving more than one spouse. Polygamy, or plural marriage, has long been an accepted form of union in human societies, involving people living on every continent. However, polygamy has come to symbolize a problematic, even “barbaric,” form of marriage that is often labeled as “backwards,” less modern and progressive, embodying the oppression of women by men.

Sociolinguistics deals with the social life of language, language in its sociocultural context. It is a branch of linguistics that looks less at the shape or sound of words–morphology or phonology–and more at how our words and sentences are influenced by the society around us–for instance, how the accent or the dialect we use has been shaped by where we come from or which social class we belong to.

This Very Short Introduction provides both the believer and non-believer with a balanced survey of the central questions of theology.