While all mosques stem from a common tradition of reverence, differing sects, regions and practices have led to many innovations and novel architectural forms. Mosques is the latest addition to the “Ultimate collection,” and is a journey though centuries and continents that brings readers to the threshold of 100 of the world’s most historically significant buildings that are home to worshippers of the fastest growing, and second largest, religion in the world.

While all mosques stem from a common tradition of reverence, differing sects, regions and practices have led to many innovations and novel architectural forms. Mosques is the latest addition to the “Ultimate collection,” and is a journey though centuries and continents that brings readers to the threshold of 100 of the world’s most historically significant buildings that are home to worshippers of the fastest growing, and second largest, religion in the world.

Despite growing interest in Islamic architecture, introductions to the subject which go beyond the superficial are scarce. Employing a broad historical narrative, The Story of Islamic Architecture introduces the religious, social, and political influences that have shaped the Islamic architectural form, while revealing an architectural splendor unfamiliar to most Western readers. Painter and educator Richard Yeomans interweaves historical fact with precisely detailed descriptions to trace the genesis and flowering of Islamic architecture in the various Muslim regions of the world including Spain, the Maghreb, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Persia, and Central Asia, ending at the farthest point East in India. The volume includes a brief introduction to Islam and to the theological attitudes which determine the form and function of its art and architecture. The Story of Islamic Architecture is fully illustrated with over 200 striking color photographs, and includes a comprehensive glossary of architectural terms. Yeomans' flowing, clear, and engaging narrative captures not only the shapes and colors of this architecture, but even the sounds of activities that take place in the space defined by it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the premier public resource on scientific and technological developments that impact global security. Founded by Manhattan Project Scientists, the Bulletin's iconic "Doomsday Clock" stimulates solutions for a safer world.

Less than ten years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the new religion of Islam arrived in Egypt with the army of Amr ibn al-As in AD 639. Amr immediately established his capital at al-Fustat, just south of modern Cairo, and there he built Africa's first mosque, one still in regular use today. Since then, governors, caliphs, sultans, amirs, beys, pashas, among others, have built mosques, madrasas, and mausoleums throughout Egypt in a changing sequence of Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and modern styles. In this fully color-illustrated, large-format volume, a leading historian of Islamic art and culture celebrates the great variety of Egypt's mosques and related religious buildings, from the early congregational mosques, through the medieval mausoleum-madrasas, to the neighborhood mosques of the Ottoman and modern periods. With outstanding architectural photography and authoritative analytical texts, this book will be valued as the finest on the subject by scholars and general readers alike. Covers more than 80 of the country's most historic mosques, with more than 500 color photographs, in 400 pages.

What impulse prompted some newspapers to attribute the murder of 77 Norwegians to Islamic extremists, until it became evident that a right-wing Norwegian terrorist was the perpetrator? Why did Switzerland, a country of four minarets, vote to ban those structures? How did a proposed Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan ignite a fevered political debate across the United States? In The New Religious Intolerance, Martha C. Nussbaum surveys such developments and identifies the fear behind these reactions. Drawing inspiration from philosophy, history, and literature, she suggests a route past this limiting response and toward a more equitable, imaginative, and free society. Fear, Nussbaum writes, is "more narcissistic than other emotions." Legitimate anxieties become distorted and displaced, driving laws and policies biased against those different from us. Overcoming intolerance requires consistent application of universal principles of respect for conscience. Just as important, it requires greater understanding. Nussbaum challenges us to embrace freedom of religious observance for all, extending to others what we demand for ourselves. She encourages us to expand our capacity for empathetic imagination by cultivating our curiosity, seeking friendship across religious lines, and establishing a consistent ethic of decency and civility. With this greater understanding and respect, Nussbaum argues, we can rise above the politics of fear and toward a more open and inclusive future.

Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault.