Who are we? Why are we here? Is there a god? The world we currently live in is characterised by its conflicting cultures with their diverse political, social and religious views. Add to this the growing climatic problems and the increasing gap between those who have and those who have not and this world seems a very unstable place. The majority of us not only feel powerless to prevent this, but also find it hard to accept some of the reasons we are given to explain this pain and suffering. Religions, spiritualism, politics and science have all provided competing explanations but have not provided any real proof. Furthermore, the world as we currently know it is a result of those competing explanations. We are all citizens of this world and as such have a vested interest in its future. We all have questions about why we are here and we are all entitled to the answers. There is something in this book for everybody, from those who are not satisfied with the way the world is and think there has to be a better way, to those who just wish to know why we are really here.

Who are we? Why are we here? Is there a god? The world we currently live in is characterised by its conflicting cultures with their diverse political, social and religious views. Add to this the growing climatic problems and the increasing gap between those who have and those who have not and this world seems a very unstable place. The majority of us not only feel powerless to prevent this, but also find it hard to accept some of the reasons we are given to explain this pain and suffering. Religions, spiritualism, politics and science have all provided competing explanations but have not provided any real proof. Furthermore, the world as we currently know it is a result of those competing explanations. We are all citizens of this world and as such have a vested interest in its future. We all have questions about why we are here and we are all entitled to the answers. There is something in this book for everybody, from those who are not satisfied with the way the world is and think there has to be a better way, to those who just wish to know why we are really here.

Greece sits at the center of a geopolitical storm that threatens the stability of the European Union. To comprehend how this small country precipitated such an outsized crisis, it is necessary to understand how Greece developed into a nation in the first place. Enlightenment and Revolution identifies the ideological traditions that shaped a religious community of Greek-speaking people into a modern nation-state--albeit one in which antiliberal forces have exacted a high price. Paschalis Kitromilides takes in the vast sweep of the Greek Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, assessing developments such as the translation of modern authors into Greek; the scientific revolution; the rediscovery of the civilization of classical Greece; and a powerful countermovement. He shows how Greek thinkers such as Voulgaris and Korais converged with currents of the European Enlightenment, and demonstrates how the Enlightenment's confrontation with Church-sanctioned ideologies shaped present-day Greece. When the nation-state emerged from a decade-long revolutionary struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, the dream of a free Greek polity was soon overshadowed by a romanticized nationalist and authoritarian vision. The failure to create a modern liberal state at that decisive moment is at the root of Greece's recent troubles.

A study of French military engineers at a crucial point in the evolution of modern engineering.

A fresh new look at the Enlightenment intellectual who became the most controversial of America's founding fathers Despite his being a founder of both the United States and the French Republic, the creator of the phrase "United States of America," and the author of Common Sense, Thomas Paine is the least well known of America's founding fathers. This edifying biography by Craig Nelson traces Paine's path from his years as a London mechanic, through his emergence as the voice of revolutionary fervor on two continents, to his final days in the throes of dementia. By acquainting us as never before with this complex and combative genius, Nelson rescues a giant from obscurity-and gives us a fascinating work of history.

Historians of ideas have traditionally discussed the significance of the French Revolution through the prism of several major interpretations, including the commentaries of Burke, Tocqueville and Marx. This book argues that the Scottish Enlightenment offered an alternative and equally powerful interpretative framework for the Revolution, which focused on the transformation of the polite, civilised moeurs that had defined the 'modernity' analysed by Hume and Smith in the eighteenth century. The Scots observed what they understood as a military- and democracy-led transformation of European modern morals and concluded that the real historical significance of the Revolution lay in the transformation of warfare, national feelings and relations between states, war and commerce that characterised the post-revolutionary international order. This book recovers the Scottish philosophers' powerful discussion of the nature of post-revolutionary modernity and shows that it is essential to our understanding of nineteenth-century political thought.