The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

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Peter Salway

"Britain was within the orbit of Graeco-Roman civilization for at least half a millennium, and for over 350 years part of the political union created by the Roman Empire that encompassed most of Europe and all the countries of the Mediterranean." "Peter Salway's Very Short Introduction to Roman Britain weaves together the results of archaeological investigation and historical scholarship in a rounded and highly readable concise account. He charts the history of Britain from the first invasion under Julius Caesar to the final collapse of the Romano-British way of life in the 5th century A.D."--Jacket.

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Yasmin Hussain

"Issues of cultural hybridity, diaspora and identity are central to debates on ethnicity and race and, over the past decade, have framed many theoretical debates in sociology, cultural studies and literary studies. However, these ideas are all too often considered at a purely theoretical level." "In this book Yasmin Hussain uses these ideas to explore cultural production by British South Asian women including Monica Ali, Meera Syal and Gurinder Chadha. Hussain provides a sociological analysis of the contexts and experiences of the British South Asian community, discussing key concerns that emerge within the work of this new generation of women writers and which express more widespread debates within the community. In particular these authors address issues of individual and group identity and the ways in which these are inflected by ethnicity and gender."--Jacket.

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Alan A. Block

Most research on organized crime reveals only a limited sense of its history. Our understanding suffers as a result. Space, Time, and Organized Crime shows how arguments about the sources, consequences, and extent of crime are distorted as a consequence of crude empiricism. Originally published in Europe in 1991 as Perspectives on Organizing Crime, this book is a timely blend of history, criticism, and research. Fully one-fourth of this new edition contains hitherto unpublished materials especially relevant to the American experience. Space, Time, and Organized Crime describes the background of Progressive Era New York. It then broadens its scope by exploring the changes in drug production and distribution in Europe from about 1925 to the mid-1930s. Block addresses such little explored issues as the ethnicity of traders, the structure of drug syndicates, and the impact of legislation that attempted to criminalize increasing aspects of the world's narcotic industry prior to the Second World War. He then goes on to present organized crime's involvement with transnational political movements, intelligence services, and political murders. Space, Time, and Organized Crime concentrates on ambiguities evident in organized crime control, such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's protection of criminal off-shore financial interests, and the contradictions found in America's wars on drugs. . Space, Time, and Organized Crime demonstrates that the essential nature of crime in the twentieth century (regardless of where it takes place) cannot be understood without sound historical studies and a more sophisticated criminological approach. Block's unique blend of stratification in a historical context will be of special interest to historians, sociologists, criminologists, and penologists.

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Robert Cecil and David Wade

Here is a collection of essays on subjects as diverse as the classical literature of what is now Soviet Georgia; the relationship between the Indian guru and his followers; or the influences that have made modern China what it is. It also includes contributions from three eminent authors on questions of ecology, population and energy, on the argument that these are likely to exercise an increasing effect on human societies. --From publisher's description.