Sheltered between the cradle of civilization and the busiest trade routes of the ancient world, the Arabian Peninsula is home to millennia-old civilizations that have blossomed and thrived in some of the world's harshest conditions. For many Westerners, their vision of the Arab world is skewed by contemporary political news, but Arabia is a land with a rich tradition of enlightenment, a vibrant society and a past and present that is historically entwined with the cultural roots of the West. The February 2010 film Arabia 3D shines a new light on the origins of this culture shrouded in mystery and the films companion book, Arabia: The Golden Ages, introduces readers to the rich tapestry of Arabian life: the hajj, where three million Muslims descend up on the holy city of Mecca to reaffirm their faith in the largest single human gathering on Earth; the depths of the Red Sea explored as part of an underwater search for ancient shipwrecks and clues to the past; and the everyday traditions of the region such a

What came before 'postmodernism' in historical studies? Bythinking through the assumptions, methods and cast of mind ofEnglish historians writing between about 1870 and 1970, MichaelBentley reveals the intellectual world of the modernists and offersthe first full analysis of English historiography in this crucialperiod. Modernist historiography set itself the objective of goingbeyond the colourful narratives of 'whigs' and 'popularizers' inorder to establish history as the queen of the humanities and as arival to the sciences as a vehicle of knowledge. Professor Bentleydoes not follow those who deride modernism as 'positivist' or'empiricist' but instead shows how it set in train brilliant newstyles of investigation that transformed how historians understoodthe English past. But he shows how these strengths were eventuallyoutweighed by inherent confusions and misapprehensions thatthreatened to kill the very subject that the modernists hadintended to sustain.