Books in the Harvard University Press Reference Library series

Ancient Greek thought is the essential wellspring from which the intellectual, ethical, and political civilization of the West draws and to which, even today, we repeatedly return. In more than sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought.

In 11 comprehensive essays and over 500 encyclopedic entries, an international cast of experts provides the latest scholarship and fresh perspectives on the history and culture of late antiquity, an era marked by the rise of two world religions, unprecedented political upheavals, and the creation of art of enduring glory.

Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean. New gods encountered by travelers abroad were sometimes taken home to be adapted and adopted. This first basic reference work on the topic offers an expansive, comparative perspective.

Covering more than 50 central terms and concepts in entries written by leading experts, this book offers an overview of this new subdiscipline of biology, providing the core insights and ideas that show how embryonic development relates to life-history evolution, adaptation, and responses to and integration with environmental factors.

America is a nation making itself up as it goes along-a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In more than 200 original essays, this history brings together the nation's many voices.

This landmark guide covers research into every aspect of African-American life and work, offering a compendium of information and interpretation about almost 400 years of African-Americans's experiences as an ethnic group and as Americans. A companion CD-ROM makes more than 15,000 bibliography entries available for computer searching.

The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science.

The U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants, shaped by successive waves of new arrivals. This comprehensive guide provides an authoritative account of the most recent surge of immigrants. Based on the latest U.S. Census data and scholarly research, this book is an essential reference for anyone curious about the changing face of America.

Did you know that you are more closely related to a mushroom than to a daisy? That dinosaurs are still among us? That the terms "fish" and "invertebrates" do not indicate scientific groupings? All this is the result of major changes in classification. This book diagrams the tree of life according to the most recent methods of this system.

This exhaustive resource offers information on everything from adolescent acne to menopause in the belief that better-informed women can have better partnerships with their physicians.