bn Sīnā (avicenna): A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose – and, if at all possible, cure – the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations.

While children are a relatively unchanging fact of life, childhood is a constantly shifting concept. Throughout the millennia, the age at which a child becomes a youth and a youth becomes an adult has varied by gender, class, religion, ethnicity, place, and economic need. As author James Marten explores in this Very Short Introduction, so too have the realities of childhood, each life shaped by factors such as education, expectation, and conflict (or lack thereof). Indeed, ancient Roman children lived very differently than those born of today's Generation Z.

In the book of Genesis, God bestows a new name upon Abram–Abraham, a father of many nations. With this name and his Covenant, Abraham would become the patriarch of three of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Connected by their mutual–if differentiated–veneration of the One God proclaimed by Abraham, these traditions share much beyond their origins in the ancient Israel of the Old Testament. This Very Short Introduction explores the intertwined histories of these monotheistic religions, from the emergence of Christianity and Islam to the violence of the Crusades and the cultural exchanges of al-Andalus.

Children's literature takes many forms - works adapted for children in antiquity, picture books and pop-ups - and now includes the latest online games and eBooks. This vast and amorphous subject is both intimately related to other areas of literary and cultural investigation but also has its own set of concerns, issues and challenges.

Autobiography is one of the most popular of written forms. From Casanova to Benjamin Franklin to the Kardashians, individuals throughout history have recorded their own lives and experiences. These personal writings are central to the work of literary critics, philosophers, historians, and psychologists, who have found in autobiographies from across the centuries not only an understanding of the ways in which lives have been lived, but the most fundamental accounts of what it means to be a self in the world.