eBooks de Historia por países, página 11 de 350

A penetrating account of Cuban history ... [an] extraordinary bookMADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT, US Secretary of State, 1997-2001This is a splendid book, which narrates the tragedy of a Cuban, Oswaldo Payá, who dared to oppose Fidel Castro in communist Cuba, and paid dearly for it. David E. Hoffmans research is magnificent and his biography reads like a great novel MARIO VARGAS LLOSA The riveting biography of a dissident who defied Castros dictatorship, and paid with his life. Oswaldo Paya was seven years old when Fidel Castro seized power, promising to create a free, democratic, and just Cuba. But Castro instead created an authoritarian regime and crushed all dissent. The dream of democracy became Payas life work. Sent to Castros forced labour camps, he could not stay silent, and formed a pro-democracy movement. After receiving multiple death threats, Paya was killed in a suspicious car accident in 2012. Democracy is in retreat all over the world. Oswaldo Paya showed how to fight for it. His battle was waged from the streets of Havana but carried universal truths.Pulitzer Prize-winner David E. Hoffman, author of the acclaimed The Billion Dollar Spy, tells the compelling story of a courageous dissident in action.

In Rome the echoes of the past resound clearly in its palaces and monuments, and in the remains of the ancient imperial city. But another presence has dominated Rome for 2,000 years -the pope, whose actions and influence echo down the ages. In this epic tale, historian Jessica Warnberg tells, for the first time, the story of Rome through the lens of its popes, illuminating how these remarkable (and unremarkable) men have transformed lives and played a crucial role in deciding the fate of the city. Emerging as the anonymous leader of a marginal cult in the humblest quarters of the city, less than 300 years later the pope sat enthroned in a gilt basilica, endorsed by the emperor himself. Eventually, the Roman pontiff would supplant even the emperors, becoming the de facto ruler of Rome and pre-eminent leader of the Christian world. Shifting elegantly between the panoramic and the personal, the spiritual and the profane, this is a fresh and often surprising take on a city, a people and an institution that is at once familiar and elusive.

The second half of the seventh millennium BC saw the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period is marked by significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices, and in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East with a view to placing them in a broader comparative perspective. The second concerns the social and ideological changes that took place at the end of Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic that help to explain the disintegration of constitutive principles binding the large centers, the emergence of a new social system, as well as the consequences of this process for the development of full-fledged farming communities in the region and beyond. The third concerns changes in lifeways: subsistence strategies, exploitation of the environment, and, in particular, modes of procurement, consumption, and distribution of different resources.

The 145 tablets presented in this volume are among a larger group of 302 tablets confiscated by U.S. customs which were being stored in a World Trade Center building when it was destroyed on 9/11. The 145 tablets, which come from an unknown site near Nippur in southern Iraq, are the documents of a high official named Aradmu that detail routine agricultural operations, including receipts and grain loans. The group was repatriated to Iraq in late 2010, after the tablets were conserved and the author had completed his study. The editions offered in this volume complete an incredible journey for the tablets and the stories they hold.

Illuminating Osiris comprises twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues in honor of Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. Smith is especially renowned as a Demoticist and specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. His numerous Demotic text editions and translations of Egyptian funerary and religious compositions have been enormously influential in the field. The contributions in Illuminating Osiris naturally reflect Smiths particular interests in the religion and literature of Graeco-Roman period Egypt, dealing with cult, rituals, astronomy, and divination, among other subjects. The book includes many editions or reeditions of texts written in Demotic, Hieratic, and Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs. It is profusely illustrated and supplied with detailed indices.

This volume presents the findings of three seasons of excavation in the 1980s at Kom el-Hisn, "the mound of the fortress," in the northwest Nile Delta. This provincial community was often in the orbit of Memphis, the capital and administrative center of Egypts Old Kingdom period. Small areas of occupations of the First Intermediate and early Middle Kingdom periods were also excavated. One of the goals of the excavations was to complement and compare the substantial ancient textual record of this era with Kom el-Hisns archaeological record because such evidence is sparse for Lower Egypt between about 2500 and 1800 BC. The findings presented here reveal the complexity of small Old Kingdom settlements in the context of the Memphite state organization and shed light on the changing relationships of this administrative center with its provincial communities. Kom el-Hisns faunal, floral, lithic, and architectural remains are presented and discussed in detail, as are some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to this research. With contributions by Paul E. Buck, Anthony J. Cagle, Michal Kobusiewicz, Karla Kroeper, Richard R. Redding, Sarah Sterling, Robert J. Wenke, Wilma Wetterstrom, Anna Wodzinska, and Alexandra Witsell.

This volume publishes 534 new Demotic graffiti recorded at the temple of Isis on Philae Island, presented with drawings and photographs. New editions of 101 of the graffiti that were published by F. Griffith in his Catalogue of the Demotic Papyri in the Dodecaschoenus (1937) are published here. These reedited texts were mainly chosen because new drawings provided significant new readings from those made by Griffith, or they helped elucidate the scope and meaning of some of the new graffiti by placement. The volume also includes an essay interpreting the role of the graffiti in understanding the political and religious activities at Philae temple during the last centuries of worship of the goddess Isis, mainly by Nubian priests and pilgrims.

This new study offers a comprehensive examination of a unique manuscript, a Late Period hieratic papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum. This document comprises a compilation of seventeen individual prophylactic texts whose anatomical focus is the ear. Many of the texts specifically state that they are intended for the protection of the ears of a king named Psamtik, a historical figure who ruled Egypt in the seventh century BCE. The fact that this papyrus was created to serve a sole purpose and function, the protection of the ear, distinguishes it noticeably from earlier Egyptian medical and magical texts that are largely encyclopedic and were intended to serve a broad range of purposes. The present study contains an introduction and full translation with extensive philological and textual commentary, as the texts of this papyrus are rich in mythological allusions. The commentaries are largely based on comparison with contemporary and older Egyptian texts that, although not direct parallels as there are none, serve nonetheless as a rich resource for comparative analysis that has led to a more informed reading of this important document.

An international group of scholars have contributed to Joyful in Thebes, a Festschrift for the distinguished Egyptologist Betsy M. Bryan. The forty-two articles deal with topics of art history, archaeology, history, and philology representing virtually the entire span of ancient Egyptian civilization. These diverse studies, which often present unpublished material or new interpretations of specific issues in Egyptian history, literature, and art history, well reflect the broad research interests of the honoree. Abundantly illustrated with photographs and line drawings, the volume also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Bryans publications through 2015.

The material remains and the more than 23,500 cuneiform tablets unearthed at the site of Kultepe (ancient Kanesh) shed light on social, political, and economic aspects of the Middle Bronze age (ca. 2000-1700 years BC) in central Anatolia, but also in Upper Mesopotamia. The rich textual record provides ample information on a very sophisticated supraregional market economy, representing one of the best-documented historical cases of long-distance trade in the ancient world. Although the site was first excavated in 1893, followed by intermittent excavations between 1906 and 2005, modern scientific and interdisciplinary excavations have only been undertaken since 2006. The new scientific research at Kultepe-Kanesh has already begun amassing new data and providing us with a unique opportunity to generate new perspectives and to challenge previous models and assumptions about, for example, trade, colonialism, ethnicity, art, religious ideas, identity, and patterns of social, political, and economic organization in the Near East during the Middle Bronze Age. A primary goal of this special volume is to integrate the work of scholars in archaeology, archaeometry, bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and history to develop a new synthetic research paradigm for investigating issues of trade, colonialism, ethnicity, art, identity, and urbanization in the Near East in a unified fashion.

Different ideas of what constitutes an archaeological site have developed over two centuries of scholarship and heritage law in Egypt, with sites often (unconsciously) conceived as lands with museum-quality pieces and striking monumental, mortuary, and/or epigraphic remains. As a result, the material record of the powerful dominates Egyptological discourse, leaving hundreds of unexplored sites in the Delta floodplain and their potential contributions to a narrative of Egyptian culture largely ignored. Attempting to correct this, the author integrates historical maps, remote sensing data, and ancient texts to understand the dynamic landscape of the western Nile Delta. Weaving together new archaeological survey, Corona satellite images, and a targeted program of drill coring, this volume offers a palimpsest of settlement and paleoenvironment from the New Kingdom to Late Roman era. In the face of forces undermining many sites integrity, this study adapts techniques in landscape archaeology to an Egyptian context, anticipating triage and salvage in the decades to come.

The Soconusco region, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, is the location of some of the earliest pottery-using villages of ancient Mesoamerica. Mobile early inhabitants of the area harvested marsh clams in the estuaries, leaving behind vast mounds of shell. With the introduction of pottery and the establishment of permanent villages (from 1900 B.C.), use of the resource-rich estuary changed. The archaeological manifestation of that new estuary adaptation is a dramatic pattern of inter-site variability in pottery vessel forms. Vessels at sites within the estuary were about seventy percent neckless jars -- "tecomates" -- while vessels at contemporaneous sites a few kilometers inland were seventy percent open dishes. The pattern is well-known, but the the settlement arrangements or subsistence practices that produced it have remained unclear. Archaeological investigations at El Varal, a special-purpose estuary site of the later Early Formative (1250-1000 B.C.) expand possibilities for an anthropological understanding of the archaeological patterns. The goal of this volume is to describe excavations and finds at the site and to propose, based on a variety of analyses, a new understanding of Early Formative assemblage variability.

Over the last decades, considerable effort has been directed towards the study of early complex societies of northern Peru, and in recent years archaeologists have expressed a strong interest in the art and archaeology of the Moche, Lambayeque and Chimu societies. Yet, comparatively little attention has been paid to the earlier cultural foundations of north coast civilization: the Gallinazo. In the recent years, however, the work of a number of north coast specialists brought about a large quantity of data on the Gallinazo occupation of the coast, but a coherent framework for studying this culture had yet to be defined. The present volume is the result of a round table, which gathered some thirty scholars from Europe and North and South America to discuss the Gallinazo phenomenon. In fourteen chapters, authors with different perspectives and backgrounds reconsider the nature of the Gallinazo culture and its position within north coast cultural history, while addressing wider issues about the development of complex societies in this area and within the Andean region in general. The contributions reveal a diversity of perspectives on north coast archaeology, something that is likely to stimulate methodological and theoretical debates among Andeanists, pre-Columbian specialists and New World archaeologists in general.

This volume brings together exciting new field data by more than two dozen Andean scholars who came together to honor their friend, colleague, and mentor. These new studies cover the enormous temporal span of Moseleys own work from the Preceramic era to the Tiwanaku and Moche states to the Inka empire. And, like Moseleys own studies -- from Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization to Chan Chan: The Desert City to Cerro Bauls brewery -- these new studies involve settlements from all over the Andes -- from the far northern highlands to the far southern coast. An invaluable addition to any Andeanists library, the papers in this book demonstrate the enormous breadth and influence of Moseleys work and the vibrant range of exciting new work by his former students and collaborators in fieldwork.

This volume highlights the latest research on the foundations of sociopolitical complexity in coastal California. The populous maritime societies of southern California, particularly the groups known collectively as the Chumash, have gone largely unrecognized as prototypical complex hunter-gatherers, only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of their more celebrated counterparts on the Northwest Coast of North America. While Northwest cultures are renowned for such complex institutions as ceremonial potlatches, slavery, cedar plank-house villages, and rich artistic traditions, the Chumash are increasingly recognized as complex hunter-gatherers with a different set of organizational characteristics: ascribed chiefly leadership, a strong maritime economy based on oceangoing canoes, an integrative ceremonial system, and intensive and highly specialized craft production activities. Chumash sites provide some of the most robust data on these subjects available in the Americas. Contributors present stimulating new analyses of household and village organization, ceremonial specialists, craft specializations and settlement data, cultural transmission processes, bead manufacturing practices, watercraft, and the acquisition of prized marine species.

Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology: Old World and New World Perspectives brings together leading scholars from the Old World and the Americas to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing archaeology today. These topics include archaeology and text, the future of large-scale archaeological fieldwork at individual sites, interpretation and preservation of archaeological sites and landscapes, past trajectories and new approaches to regional survey, and debates surrounding landscape and settlement archaeology. Essays by Old World archaeologists provide an overview of these themes, as well as a history of research over the last hundred years. These scholars review the major successes and shortcomings of that work, identifying critical issues that determine and define the field. These essays serve as a springboard for discussion and response by archaeologists working in the Americas and in other parts of the world. The combination of an Old World focus with responses from New World archaeologists provides a uniquely broad assessment of contemporary archaeological theory, methods, and practice throughout the world.

La Restauración francesa (1814-1830) fue el momento histórico en el que maduraron las grandes ideas políticas que han estado vigentes estos últimos doscientos años. El constitucionalismo, la libertad de prensa, la division de poderes, los partidos politicos, la separacion del trono y del altar, se fueron imponiendo como respuesta politica a las circunstancias historicas posteriores a la Revolucion de 1789 . ?Salvar la revolucion y no a los hombres de la revolucion? fue el lema del genio politico François-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848). Su inteligencia historica le permitio moverse en el dificil ambito de lo posible, proponiendo una monarquia adaptada a los nuevos tiempos y combatiendo los radicalismos de diferente cuño.En la obra politica de Chateaubriand se puede observar el esqueleto del Estado-Nacion en su ultima fase y ayuda a comprender, doscientos años despues, su crisis. No obstante, de Chateaubriand tambien se aprende que los momentos de crisis son momentos de oportunidad. Abandonar lo inutil, conservar lo valioso y saber detectar las mejoras posibles forman parte del genio politico. Las urgencias historicas, como pudo ser la presentada durante la Restauracion francesa, o como podria ser la actual, provocan algenio politico y despiertan las grandes ideas.

Analiza la emergencia del pensamiento biopolítico colonial en una serie de proyectos de Bartolomé de las Casas desarrollados entre 1515 y 1521 a propósito de la despoblación de La Española y demás Antillas Mayores (1503-1516), de los intentos legales de morigerar la explotacion laboral (1511-1514), de la reforma cisneriana de gobierno de las Indias, su fracaso y su debate (1516-1518) y del proyecto carolino para la colonizacion de la costa norte de Tierra Firme (1518-1521). Lo que ha sido visto tradicionalmente como un momento utopico y humanitarista del pensamiento de Las Casas, corresponde, segun los autores, a la emergencia de una moderna preocupacion por la vida de la poblacion como problema de la economia politica, objeto de calculos y de intervenciones de gobierno.

La edición que se ofrece corresponde a una Descripción de la ciudad de Zacatecas escrita en 1732, por el coronel de infantería española José de Rivera Bernárdez, en la que incluye símbolos fundacionales de la ciudad que siguen aun vigentes. "Cuantos sus argentadas ondas buscan" encontraran en la Descripcion breve de la muy noble y leal ciudad de Zacatecas un retrato de su fama, a modo de vedute, que a vuelo de pajaro ofrece imagenes metaforicas y reales de la fecundidad minera, resaltando los monumentos representativos del poder religioso y economico. Como ecfrasis, es un laus urbis o enigma compuesto de esculturas que evocan la Antiguedad y compara las maravillas del mundo con las de Zacatecas.Cada uno de los puntos de la Descripcion breve tiene un matiz distinto: en unos, el tono es mas poetico; en otros, parece un inventario de bienes o listado de linajes, y testimonios de milagros. No obstante, el punto de vista y el sentido general de la obra buscan legitimar, a traves de la imagen sagrada, el orden de la ciudad.

Origen de la santísima cruz de milagros de la ciudad de Querétaro es un documento no suficientemente conocido, a pesar de sus ecos en la historiografía panegírica de esta rica región del virreinato: por un lado, los cronistas franciscanos del siglo XVIII lo aprovecharon para crear una historia piadosa sobre el origen de esta ciudad, del Colegio Apostolico de Propaganda Fide y de la cruz de piedra que se venera en el interior de su iglesia; por otro, ha sido fuente de inspiracion para los otomies del Bajio, en el centronorte de Mexico, para quienes las tradiciones sobre la conquista de los cazadores chichimecas, llevada a cabo por sus antepasados en el siglo XVI, son un factor basico en la conformacion de la identidad etnica.La presente edicion ha exigido no poco trabajo a su editor, pues la modernizacion textual del documento ha buscado el equilibrio entre el respeto a la rustica variante del castellano que hablaba y escribia su autor, y la inteligibilidad para los lectores actuales; un equilibrio que obligo a una inteligente aplicacion de los criterios de modernizacion con que esta coleccion ha pretendido manejarse. En cualquier caso, en aras de reducir la violencia que esta modernizacion supuso, se incluye tambien una transcripcion paleografica, util a los interesados y a los especialistas en linguistica historica. En suma, un perfecto ejemplar de mestizaje textual y filologico.