Welcome back to Ian Stewart's magical world of mathematics! This is a strange world of never-ending chess games, empires on the moon, furious fireflies, and, of course, disputes over how best to cut a cake. Each quirky tale presents a fascinating mathematical puzzle - challenging, fun, and also intr[...]

From the mathematics of mazes, to cones with a twist, and the amazing sphericon - and how to make one - Ian Stewart is back with more mathematical stories and puzzles that are as quirky as they are fascinating, and each from the cutting edge of the world of mathematics. We find out about the mathema[...]

Statues are among the most familiar remnants of classical art. Yet their prominence in ancient society is often ignored. In the Roman world statues were ubiquitous. Whether they were displayed as public honours or memorials, collected as works of art, dedicated to deities, venerated as gods, or viol[...]

In the 1800s mathematicians introduced a formal theory of symmetry: group theory. Now a branch of abstract algebra, this subject first arose in the theory of equations. Symmetry is an immensely important concept in mathematics and throughout the sciences, and its applications range across the entire[...]

Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this is the first biography of the important Irish playwright Stewart Parker. It illuminates the genesis and meaning of such classic plays as Spokesong and Pentecost - works that continue to shed light on Northern Ireland's past, present, and future - [...]

For as long as there have been civilizations, there has been the urge to venture outside of them, either in search of other civilizations or in search of novelty. Exploration: A Very Short Introduction surveys this quintessential human impulse, tracing it from pre-history to the present, from east t[...]

Thematically introduces students to the major philosophic thinkers. Fundamentals of Philosophy offers a broad scope of classic and contemporary selections from the worlda??s major thinkers via a narrative format that presents difficult issues and readings in a simplified manner for students.  Its [...]

The recent uproar over NSA surveillance can obscure the fact that surveillance has been an indelible part of contemporary life for decades. And cinema has long been aware of its power - and potential for abuse. In Closed Circuits, Garrett Stewart explores a panoply of films, from M and Rear Window t[...]

This text analyzes the elusive notion of "honour". Drawing on information about Western ideas of honour from sources as diverse as medieval Arthurian romances, Spanish dramas of the 16th and 17th centuries and the writings of German jurists of the 19th and 20th centuries, and comparing the European [...]

Soon after the disparate states of the Italian peninsula unified in the 1860s to create a single nation, the nationalist Massimo D'Azeglio is said to have remarked, "We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians." "The Pinocchio Effect" draws on a remarkably broad array of sources to trace this m[...]

In the early twentieth century a philosophical debate took place between F. H. Bradley and Bertrand Russell concerning a range of connected issues of apparently technical significance: the nature and unity of the proposition, the proper account of truth, and the status of relations. The historical o[...]