The southern California coast has been a favored place to live for nearly 12,000 years. Dotted with marshes, estuaries, cliffs, and open beaches, with islands and mountains lying nearby, the area is rich in resources. How humans have fit into this ecological diverse and ever-changing landscape is a constant theme in the prehistory of the region. Using comparative studies of island and coastal cultures from the Pacific, the authors show how the study of southern California's past can enlighten us about coastal adaptations worldwide. Drawing on sources from anthropology, ethnohistory, geoscience, and archaeology, their findings are presented in a readable fashion that will make Islanders and Mainlanders of interest not only to a wide range of scholars but to the general public as well. Jeffrey H. Altschul is President and Donn R. Grenda is Director of the California Office of Statistical Research, Inc., a cultural resource management consulting firm. Both have been extremely active in southern California archaeology, working on sites on the mainland and the Channel Islands.

Discover the islands of the Dream Archipelago—where reality is both illusory and magical—in this “masterful . . . endlessly compelling” literary sci-fi novel for fans of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell (Locus). The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to. Their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. Styled as an untrustworthy but enticing travel guide to the archipelago, The Islanders is a tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game, just as its unreliable narrator does the same . . . “ . . . easily one of the richest and most rewarding novels that Priest has written to date.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Christy Constantakopoulou examines the history of the Aegean islands and changing concepts of insularity, with particular emphasis on the fifth century BC. Islands are a prominent feature of the Aegean landscape, and this inevitably created a variety of different (and sometimes contradictory) perceptions of insularity in classical Greek thought. Geographic analysis of insularity emphasizes the interplay between island isolation and island interaction, but the predominance of islands in the Aegean sea made island isolation almost impossible. Rather, island connectivity was an important feature of the history of the Aegean and was expressed on many levels. Constantakopoulou investigates island interaction in two prominent areas, religion and imperial politics, examining both the religious networks located on islands in the ancient Greek world and the impact of imperial politics on the Aegean islands during the fifth century.

Focusing on the depiction of the natural world in Herodotus' Histories, this volume explores the fluid and complex network of spatial relationships that emerges from his narrative, examining its significance for the analysis of focalization in the work and for understanding the role of geography in the shaping of successive empires.

This is the first ever volume to compile sociolinguistic and historical information on lesser-known, and relatively ignored, native varieties of English around the world. Exploring areas as diverse as the Pacific, South America, the South Atlantic and West Africa, it shows how these varieties are as much part of the big picture as major varieties and that their analysis is essential for addressing some truly important issues in linguistic theory, such as dialect obsolescence and death, language birth, dialect typology and genetic classification, patterns of diffusion and transplantation and contact-induced language change. It also shows how close interwoven fields such as social history, contact linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics are in accounting for their formation and maintenance, providing a thorough description of the lesser-known varieties of English and their relevance for language spread and change.

This important multivolume work sheds light on current—and future—research on cultural universals and differences in personality in their evolutionary, ecological, and cultural contexts. How does culture impact personality traits? To answer that question, the three volumes in this set address current theory and research on culture and personality in an effort to determine how people differ—and how they are alike. Detailed chapters by scholars from around the world unveil a fascinating picture of the relationship between culture and important aspects of personality. They also address the accuracy or meaningfulness of trait comparisons across cultures and the methods and limitations of research on the subject. As most psychological research is conducted on participants from Western industrialized countries, a work that includes a wide range of cultures not only fosters a more complete understanding of human personality, but also broadens perspectives on value systems and ways to live. Each of the three volumes concentrates on distinct areas of research, exposing the reader to the diverse theoretical and empirical approaches and topics in the field. Volume 1 focuses on the cross-cultural study of personality dispositions or traits. Volume 2 examines the relationship between culture and other important aspects of personality, including the self, emotions, motives, values, beliefs, and life narratives, as well as aspects of personality and adjustment associated with biculturalism and intercultural competence. Volume 3 looks at evolutionary, genetic, and neuroscience perspectives on personality across cultures along with ecological and cultural influences. In addition to providing readers with a thorough analysis of current and future directions for research, this unrivaled work brings together multiple perspectives on personality across cultures, thereby promoting a more integrative understanding of this important topic.

The author contends that the most important advances of analytic philosophy have been to show that philosophical speculation must be grounded on pre-philosophical thought, & to understand & separate the notions of logical consequence, logical truth, necessary truth & apriori truth.