The late sixteenth century saw a redrawing of the borders of north-west Europe. Wales and Brittany entered into unions with neighboring countries England and France. Nice uses Brittany and Wales' responses to unification to write a comparative history of national identity during the early modern period. The Estates of Brittany and the Council in the Marches of Wales sponsored works of sacred historiography which manipulated history to defend their jurisdictions and legitimize their legal claims over the land. Nice argues that the sacred histories of each country fostered contrasting national identities, one differentialist and the other assimilationist. This distinction, which uses terms characteristic of twentieth-century nationalism, demonstrates that the original function of national identities must be considered in order to appreciate their historical specificity and mutability.

Product Description: Alchemy is the art of transformation. At its simplest, the alchemist turns base metals into gold. However, this is only one dimension of alchemy--at a more sophisticated level the alchemist's "base metal" is symbolic of himself that needs to be worked upon and the "gold" produced is the alchemist himself in his or her quest to perfect his own nature...read more

Product Description: Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in our understanding of planetary systems. Initially, new exoplanets were discovered through the effects they have on their parent stars - whether through radial velocity, transits or microlensing methods - but now the technology and the techniques have been developed to image light from exoplanets directly...read more

Product Description: They say that history is written by the victors. But what if history—or what we have come to know as history—has all along been written by the wrong people? What if everything we've been told is only part of the story? What if it's the wrong part? In this groundbreaking new work, Mark Booth embarks on an enthralling intellectual tour of our world's secret histories...read more

Product Description: The Wonderful World of Joseph McCrumble' is a highly entertaining, but occasionally tragic, insight into the life and times of Dr Joseph McCrumble; an erstwhile yet quietly charismatic scientist-artist who is thrust into the world of celebrity after consulting on a doomed reality-TV programme...read more

W.H. Auden, Albert Einstein, Robert Schuller, Martin Sheen, James Thurber, Rebecca West, and others illuminate their beliefs on the meaning of life

A collection of fourteen stories on classic Christian themes features works by John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, G.K. Chesterton, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson