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In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change?The Chosen Fewpresents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process. The Chosen Fewoffers a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights to the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.

Teachers, Teaching, and Media: Original Essays about Educators in Popular Culture is notable for its scope of previously underexamined genres and for the range of topical perspectives written in an accessible style but anchored in serious scholarship.

Today, only a few people outside of the scientific community are conversant with the tradition of science and its many breakthroughs.The rest are scientifically illiterate.So say Frank R.Spellman and Joni Price-Bayer, authors of In Defense of Science: Why Scientific Literacy Matters.

This book explores the philosophy of science education, its value for curriculum, instruction, and teacher pedagogy. It examines why past reforms have been partially successful and argues that educational theory, history, philosophy, and sociology of science should inform pedagogy.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZNW) is one of the oldest and most highly regarded international scholarly book series in the field of New Testament studies. Since 1923 it has been a forum for seminal works focusing on Early Christianity and related fields. The series is grounded in a historical-critical approach and also explores new methodological approaches that advance our understanding of the New Testament and its world.

In today’s world television is the primary source of ‘common knowledge’, the widely-shared pool of information and perspectives from which people create their understanding of self, world and citizenship. Democracy is based on the idea that every citizen is well informed and thus able to determine how they participate in political, social and cultural processes. How, and how well, does television contribute to a realization of this ideal? Television and Common Knowledge is a collection of new essays examining television as a vehicle for informed citizenship. First, the contributors examine how knowledge is produced and circulated within public spheres and across the social and cultural borderlines of modern society, then they investigate the broader social and cultural functions which television has for its audiences. Later chapters concentrate on specific TV genres such as news, documentary, political discussions and popular science programmes, considering the changing ways in which they attempt to inform and entertain, and how they are perceived by viewers. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches, and covering topics as diverse as popular science programmes, the therapeutic functions of television and the joys of ‘zapping’ in a multi-channel environment, Television and Common Knowledge provides original insights into the social role of television as well as significant contributions to media theory.

WINNER 2009 CHOICE AWARD OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE! Written for the nonscientist, this primer tells the story of what we have found out about nature so far and how we have done it. It delves into basic laws regarding motion, fundamental forces, electromagnetism, and light; introduces major theories pondered by scientists, including relativity, quantum mechanics, and particle physics; describes the key role played by that elemental building block, the atom; and discusses the evolution of the universe. While it requires only minimal math, it does require enough of a sense of curiosity to consider what are the factors that keep our universe so orderly, operational, and beautiful.

Based on the history of knowledge, the contributions to this volume elucidate various aspects of how, in the early modern period, artists' education, knowledge, reading and libraries were related to the ways in which they presented themselves.

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. Jacqueline Bobo is Professor and Chair of the Department of Black Studies and Women's Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Cynthia Hudley is Professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California Santa Barbara. Claudine Michel is Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.