The Maya forged one of the greatest societies in the history of the ancient Americas and in all of human history. Long before contact with Europeans, Maya communities built spectacular cities with large, well-fed large populations. They mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded extraordinary knowledge in calendrics, mathematics, and astronomy. The Maya achieved all this without area-wide centralized control. 

 Religion: A Very Short Introduction offers a concise nonpartisan overview of religion's long history and its complicated role in the world today. 

The American South is a distinctive place with a dramatic history and has significance beyond its regional context in the 21st century. The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of the South as a cultural crossroads, a meeting place between Western Europe and West Africa. The South's beginnings illuminate the expansion of Europe into the New World, creating a colonial slave society that distinguished it from other parts of the United States but fostered commonalities with other colonial societies. 

This volume explores the variety of business enterprise in the United States and analyzes its presence in the country's economy, its evolution over time, and its meaning in society.  

The Sun, as our nearest star, is of enormous importance for life on Earth, providing the warm radiation and light which allowed complex life to evolve. The Sun plays a key role in influencing our climate, while solar storms and high-energy events can threaten our communication infrastructure and satellites.  

In a miracle of concision, Paul S. Boyer provides a wide-ranging and authoritative history of America, capturing in a compact space the full story of our nation. Ranging from the earliest Native American settlers to the presidency of Barack Obama, this Very Short Introduction offers an illuminating account of politics, diplomacy, and war as well as the full spectrum of social, cultural, and scientific developments that shaped our country. Here is a masterful picture of America's achievements and failures, large-scale socio-historical forces, and pivotal events.

This Very Short Introduction audiobook celebrates the centrality of ecology in our lives. Jaboury Ghazoul explores how ecology has evolved rapidly from natural history to become a predictive science that explains how the natural world works and which guides environmental policy and management decisions. 

Christian W. McMillen provides a concise yet comprehensive account of pandemics throughout human history, illustrating how pandemic disease has shaped history and, at the same time, social behavior has influenced pandemic disease. 

In the book of Genesis, God bestows a new name upon Abram - Abraham, a father of many nations. With this name and his covenant, Abraham would become the patriarch of three of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Connected by their mutual - if differentiated - veneration of the one God proclaimed by Abraham, these traditions share much beyond their origins in the ancient Israel of the Old Testament. This Very Short Introduction audiobook explores the intertwined histories of these monotheistic religions.

From the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century to the entry into peace talks in the late 20th century, the Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict - Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. Marc Mulholland explores the pivotal moments in Northern Irish history - the rise of republicanism in the 1800s, Home Rule and the civil rights movement, the growth of Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA, and of the opposition, the DUP, led by Dr. Ian Paisley.