This study of illicit sexuality in medieval England explores links between marriage and sex, law and disorder, and property and power. Some medieval Englishwomen endured rape or were kidnapped for forced marriages, yet most ravished women were married and many 'wife-thefts' were not forced kidnappings but cases of adultery...

Do the movements of animals, including humans, follow patterns that can be described quantitatively by simple laws of motion? If so, then why? These questions have attracted the attention of scientists in many disciplines, and stimulated debates ranging from ecological matters to queries such as 'how can there be free will if one follows...

The first comprehensive book on the subject, The Genetic Basis of Sleep and Sleep Disorders covers detailed reviews of the general principles of genetics and genetic techniques in the study of sleep and sleep disorders. The book contains sections on the genetics of circadian rhythms, of normal sleep and wake states and of sleep homeostasis....

This book is about understanding and managing patients with severe personality disorders. It covers biological, psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral approaches and provides a pragmatic guide to best practice. As well as discussing issues of severity, treatability and the range of appropriate management options, the content explores the...

Between the early seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, major European political thinkers first began to look outside their national borders and envisage a world of competitive, equal sovereign states inhabiting an international sphere that ultimately encompassed the whole globe. In this insightful and wide-ranging work, David Armitage -...

What are the main factors that allow presidents and prime ministers to enact policy through acts of government that carry the force of law? Or, simply put, when does a government actually govern? The theory presented in this book provides a major advance in our understanding of statutory policy making. Using a combination of an original...

This easy-to-read book demonstrates how a simple geometric idea reveals fascinating connections and results in number theory, the mathematics of polyhedra, combinatorial geometry, and group theory. Using a systematic paper-folding procedure it is possible to construct a regular polygon with any number of sides. This remarkable algorithm has...

Unlike most existing textbooks on the economic history of modern Europe, which offer a country-by-country approach, The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe rethinks Europe's economic history since 1700 as unified and pan-European, with the material organised by topic rather than by country. This first volume is centred on the...

Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy integrates the studies of three 'inner circle' members of the Bloomsbury group and three 'satellite' figures into a rich narrative of early twentieth-century culture. Wolfe shows how numerous modernist writers felt torn. On the one hand, they doubted the...

'Metonymy' is a type of figurative language used in everyday conversation, a form of shorthand that allows us to use our shared knowledge to communicate with fewer words than we would otherwise need. 'I'll pencil you in' and 'let me give you a hand' are both examples of metonymic language. Metonymy serves a wide...

The idea of infinity plays a crucial role in our understanding of the universe, with the infinite spacetime continuum perhaps the best-known example - but is spacetime really continuous? Throughout the history of science, many have felt that the continuum model is an unphysical idealization, and that spacetime should be thought of as...

Information propagation through peer-to-peer systems, online social systems, wireless mobile ad hoc networks and other modern structures can be modelled as an epidemic on a network of contacts. Understanding how epidemic processes interact with network topology allows us to predict ultimate course, understand phase transitions and develop...