And, in the shadow of the major civilization, before it disappeared in its turn, how many other cultures have perished without a trace? This immense tragedy is being lived now by many cultures, with great intensity. One has to belong to such a culture in course of extinction or dying slowly even before its flourishing, to understand the infinite distress of those who are helplessly watching the inexorable disappearance of their most precious values. With each dying culture, it is a unique flower that is withering never to bloom again, an incomparable fragrance that fades away forever. There is in the smallest idioms, there is in the “Weltanschauung” of the smallest tribe doomed to extinction treasures of wisdom and poetry. Lost…lost for all eternity. In the life of peoples, as in the whole Creation, the most striking thing that actually shocks the mind is the infinite waste of Nature. Those who at present are fortunate enough to belong to the universal cultures, may still live with the illusion of their perpetuity. But for how long? Indead what is left of Ancient Egypt, of Mesopotamia, of Crete, of Mexico and of Peru? And how can we be sure that our conceited race that for centuries extends its domination over peoples and things will not also fall one day in torpor and become apathetic? Neagu Djuvara

A man with a quiff and a hearing aid twirls around with a bunch of gladioli sprouting from his trouser pocket. Two sullen Scotsmen deafen you with descanting feedback. Jackson Pollock paint-splattered mods in flared trousers become the sound of Ecstasy.Five lads from Burnage standing still and playing football style anthems to hundreds of thousands of people. Common People! Bez! Parklife! The -Imperial Phase- is a term defined by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to describe a time in an artists' career when they were at their commercial peak - when they could do nothing wrong. This book describes the imperial phase of British indie music from the end of the Smiths to the death of Britpop. In 45 coruscating essays Ray Dexter analyses the records that told the story. Artists covered include the Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, New Order, My Bloody Valentine, Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, The Verve and many, many more.

This volume is the third in the series Corollaria Crustumina aimed at the publication of conference proceedings, doctoral theses and specialist studies concerning the Latin settlement of Crustumerium (Rome) and its place in central Italian protohistory. It contains the dissertation that Jorn Seubers wrote and defended at the University of Groningen as part of the project "The People and the State. Material culture, social structure and political centralisation in central Italy (800-450 BC)". This detailed study of Crustumerium's urban and rural settlement dynamics, for which the author assembled all data from previous work while adding new landscape archaeological studies and sophisticated territorial and data analyses, elaborates a new scenario on the relation between the urban core and its countryside that is reviewed within the theoretical framework of the debate on early state formation and landscape archeological methodology.

This essay collection presents a global history of the middle class and its rise around the world during the age of empire. It compares middle-class formation in various regions, highlighting differences and similarities, and assesses the extent to which bourgeois growth was tied to the increasing exchange of ideas and goods and was a result of international connections and entanglements. Grouped by theme, the book shows how bourgeois values can shape the liberal world order.

This study addresses the level of interregional trade of ceramic building material (CBM), traditionally seen as a high bulk low value commodity, within the ancient Mediterranean between the third century BC and the seventh century AD.

Comparative Federalism: A Systematic Inquiry, Second Edition is a uniquely comprehensive, analytic, and genuinely comparative introduction to the principles and practices, as well as the institutional compromises, of federalism. Hueglin and Fenna draw from their diverse research on federal systems to focus on four main models--America, Canada, Germany, and the European Union--but also to range widely over other cases. At the heart of the book is careful analysis of the relationship between constitutional design and amendment, fiscal relations, institutional structures, intergovernmental relations, and judicial review. Such analysis serves the dual role of helping the reader understand federalism and providing a comparative framework from which to assess the record of federal systems. The second edition has been extensively revised and updated, taking into account new developments in federal systems and incorporating insights from the growing body of literature in the field. It includes two new chapters, "Fiscal Federalism" and "The Limits of Federalism."

This book presents a range of topics, conveying the broad scope of Richard Tomlinson’s archaeological quests and echoing his own research methodologies; it is is a token of appreciation for a British professor of archaeology, who spread knowledge of the Greek civilization, manifesting the brilliant spirit of the versatile ancient Greek builders.