The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's panegyric to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period.

Italian humanism - Documents written by Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) "How a ruler ought to govern his State"--Coluccio Salutati "Letter to Peregrino Zambeccari" - Leonardo Bruni "Panegyric to the City of Florence" - Francesco Barbaro "On wifely duties" - Poggio Bracciolini "On avarice" - Angelo Poliziano "The Pazzi conspiracy."

Earth Republic: Chatter from the Capital’s Cauldron (and Beyond) is a collection of ten free-wheeling articles written in conversational style, verging on the informally careless. The potpourri of commentaries on theatre, sport, food, agriculture, world politics, Bruce Springsteen, Imran Khan, women’s rights, world peace, people’s belief systems, the right to privacy judgement… all with the flavour of New Delhi, right up to the present-day NCR, with tribal India and outer space forming a billowing backdrop for the grand production that is the Republic of Earth. Earth Republic brings to the recliner, as well as to the office-desk-trying-to-look-busy, thoughts from time and space, and last night’s rally at the mantle-piece. It is an invitation to forge reality and rattle the galaxy, all in one pranayama-yoga clarion call.

"Republic Earth is an educational, social, political, economic and technological ideology that aims at the establishment of a full global democracy that values all aspects of humanity around the world. Republic Earth primarily aims to build a global online democracy using the technology of the digital revolution, as soon everyone on Earth will be connected if they wish to be. Republic Earth also aims to increase the interconnection of peoples around the world in such a way that fosters a meaningful retention of all human cultures and languages throughout the globe." -- Republic Earth website.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A landmark collection of writings spanning the career of a renowned journalist includes his dispatches from Vietnam, his excoriating account of Pentagon politics, his apocalyptic vision of nuclear war, and his coverage of issues of peace, religion, and class. Original.