Short Introduction

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.

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

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.

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.