Carl Sagan demonstrates how scientific thinking is necessary to safeguard our democratic institutions and our technical civilization. The book debunks the ideas of alien abduction, mediums and faith healers,and refutes the arguement that science destroys spirituality.

The demon-haunted world. Science as a candle in the dark

This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus's arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America. Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires' processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas.

Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830

In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change

Historicizing the secularization debate : Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700

Introduction: The Project of Historiography Section 1: Beginnings - East and West Introduction 1.1 Asian Historiography: Two Traditions 1.2 Historiography and Greek Self-Definition .3 Re-Reading the Roman Historians 1.4 The Historiography of Rural Labour 1.5 Towards Late-Antiquity Section 2: The Medieval World Introduction 2.1 The Historiography of the Medieval State 2.2 Saladin and the Third Crusade 2.3 Family and Household 2.4 The Medieval Nobility 2.5 Armies and Warfare 2.6 Popular Religion Section 3: Early-Modern Historiography Introduction 3.1 The Idea of Early Modern History 3.2 The Scientific Revolution 3.3 Intellectual History 3.4 The English Reformation 3.5 Popular Culture in the Early-Modern West 3.6 Revisionism in Britain Section 4: Reflecting on the Modern Age Introduction I: Revolution and Ideology 4.1 The French Revolution 4.2 The Soviet Revolution 4.3 National Socialism in Germany 4.4 Fascism and Beyond in Italy 4.5 Orientalism London: II Area Studies 4.6 China 4.7 Japan 4.8 India 4.9 Africa 4.10 North America 4.11 Latin America Section 5: Contexts for the Writing of History I: Hinterlands 5.1 History and Philosophy 5.2 History and Anthropology 5.3 History and Archaeology 5.4 History of Art II: Approaches 5.5 The Historical Narrative 5.6 The Annales School 5.7 Marxist Historiography 5.8 Women in Historiography 5.9 Comparative World History 5.10 Archives and Technology

Companion to Historiography

This bibliography is a continuation of and a complement to those published in the Urban History Yearbook 1974–91 and Urban History 1992–2002. The arrangement and format closely follows that of previous years. There is an index of towns on pp. 504–507. The list of abbreviations identifies only those periodicals from which articles cited this year have been taken.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0963926800011299

Current bibliography of urban history

The description for this book, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, will be forthcoming.

Local religion in sixteenth-century Spain

Person and God in a Spanish valley

The description for this book, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain, will be forthcoming.

Apparitions in late Medieval and Renaissance Spain

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ

In June 1931, on a hillside in the Spanish Basque country, two children reported seeing the Virgin Mary. Within weeks, hundreds of seers were attracting tens of thousands of onlookers, and the nightly spectacle gave rise to others in dozens of towns across Spain. "Visionaries" explores the experience and the larger meaning of this wave of sightings of Mary and the saints, which began shortly after Spain became a republic and anti-clerical mobs burned religious houses in several cities. Immersing himself in the lives of the visionaries, William Christian retraced their steps and recreated their world. He spoke with hundreds of witnesses, who led him to caches of vision messages, diaries, clandestine publications, and eloquent photographs. He describes two kinds of visionaries and their relation to each other: the seers who had a vision for the future, which they hoped Mary and the saints would confirm. Together, these visionaries attempted to convince a skeptical world that heavenly beings were appearing on the Iberian peninsula. By turns intense, poignant, fierce, and funny, this long-hidden history demonstrates the vital role of the extraordinary in giving voice to a society's hope and anguish.

William A. Christian

Papers

Local religion in sixteenth-century Spain

Person and God in a Spanish valley

Apparitions in late Medieval and Renaissance Spain

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ