Why America Is Not a New Rome - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Why America Is Not a New Rome write by Vaclav Smil. This book was released on 2010-01-29. Why America Is Not a New Rome available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. An investigation of the America-Rome analogy that goes deeper than the facile comparisons made on talk shows and in glossy magazine articles. America's post–Cold War strategic dominance and its pre-recession affluence inspired pundits to make celebratory comparisons to ancient Rome at its most powerful. Now, with America no longer perceived as invulnerable, engaged in protracted fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, comparisons are to the bloated, decadent, ineffectual later Empire. In Why America Is Not a New Rome, Vaclav Smil looks at these comparisons in detail, going deeper than the facile analogy-making of talk shows and glossy magazine articles. He finds profound differences. Smil, a scientist and a lifelong student of Roman history, focuses on several fundamental concerns: the very meaning of empire; the actual extent and nature of Roman and American power; the role of knowledge and innovation; and demographic and economic basics—population dynamics, illness, death, wealth, and misery. America is not a latter-day Rome, Smil finds, and we need to understand this in order to look ahead without the burden of counterproductive analogies. Superficial similarities do not imply long-term political, demographic, or economic outcomes identical to Rome's.
The New Third Rome
The New Third Rome - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The New Third Rome write by Jardar Østbø. This book was released on 2016. The New Third Rome available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Drawing on theories of political myth and concepts of nationalism, Jardar Østbø analyzes the content and ideological function of the myth of Russia as a Third Rome. Through case studies of four prominent nationalist intellectuals, Østbø shows how this messianic myth was used to reinvent Russia and its allegedly rightful place in the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though it exists in many radically different versions, the Third Rome myth in general embodies particularism and rabid anti-Westernism. At best, it portrays Russia as an essentially isolationist country. At worst, it casts the country as superior to all other nations, divinely elected to rule the world.
The Byzantine Republic
The Byzantine Republic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Byzantine Republic write by Anthony Kaldellis. This book was released on 2015-02-02. The Byzantine Republic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.
Byzantium
Byzantium - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Byzantium write by Cyril A. Mango. This book was released on 1980. Byzantium available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
A New Rome
A New Rome - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A New Rome write by Richard De Bary. This book was released on 1911. A New Rome available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
