"It is often claimed that the French invented cinema. Dominating the production and distribution of cinema until World War 1, when they were supplanted by Hollywood, the French cinema industry encompassed all genres, from popular entertainment to avant-garde practice. The French invented the "auteur" and the "cine-club"; they incubated criticism from the 1920s to our own day that is unrivalled; and they boast more film journals, fan magazines, TV...

"Compelling and accessible, this Very Short Introduction challenges common perceptions of borders as merely lines on maps or physical barriers snaking across the landscape. Instead, borders are shown to be powerful forces integral to the economic, social, political, and environmental processes that shape our lives. By highlighting their prominent role in global history and across a gamut of contemporary international events, Alexander Diener and Joshua...

"Lost origins of words revealed. We like to recount that goodbye started out as "god be with you," that whiskey comes from the Gaelic for "water of life," or that avocado originated as the Aztec word for "testicle." But there are many words with origins unknown, disputed, or so buried in old journals that they may as well be lost to the general public. In Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology, eminent etymologist Anatoly Liberman...

"The knobbiest town in the world"--so Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) described Jerusalem in The Innocents Abroad, a travelogue of his visit to the Holy Land in 1867 (Fig. 0.7). He was struck by the Old City's small size; the small white domes protruding like knobs from the flat roofs of the tightly-packed houses; the narrow, crooked, uneven stone-paved streets; the poverty and filth; and the throngs of beggars: "To see the numbers of maimed, malformed...