Product Description: Book by

Product Description: The overarching theme of the book is the historical meaning of the Axial Age, commonly defined as a period of several centuries around the middle of the last millennium BCE, and its cultural innovations. The civilizational patterns that grew out of this exceptionally creative phase are a particularly rewarding theme for comparative analysis...read more

Product Description: This volume which also appeared as a special issue of Medieval Encounters deals with transformations of the major Eurasian civilizations in the early second millennium CE, and with the question of contrasts, parallels and connections between the different trajectories that took shape during this period...read more

Product Description: The growing interest in civilizations, both on the level of political controversy ("the clash of civilizations") and in the context of scholarly debates, calls for more theoretical reflection on the problems and perspectives central to this field of social inquiry...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The main theme of the book is the complex relationship between the patterns of Japanese modernity and the civilizational legacy on which they continue to grow. The author discusses the East Asian regional context of Japanese civilization, deals with the dynamics of state formation and the attendant cultural transformations in pre-modern Japan, and suggests ways of comparing the Japanese experience to the West...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This outstanding book deals with the Soviet model as a distinctive pattern of modernity. Its historical background and its institutional structure are thoroughly examined as are its implications for understanding Modernity. The book challenges many of the simple assumptions and judgements made about the Soviet road...read more