Richard W. Bulliet was a professor of history at Columbia University, specializing in Islamic society and institutions, the history of technology, and the role of animals in human society. His works often explore the broader Islamic world and its connections to other civilizations, weaving together historical events with technological innovations and cross-cultural dynamics. Bulliet also delved into the long-term human-animal relationship and its impact on societal development. Beyond his academic contributions, he also ventured into fiction, drawing on his knowledge of international politics and the Middle East, and championed comics as a valid art form.
After fifty years of posing and answering daring historical questions, Richard Bulliet tackles an array of topics as diverse as the origin of civilization, the Big Bang-Big Crunch theory of Islamic history, the Muslim South, counterfactual history, future political events, and future interpretations of the 20th century in his imaginative essays.
Both memoir and critique, Methodists and Muslims follows Richard Bulliet's expansive career, starting with his beginnings in Illinois to his entree into the then-arcane field of Islamic Studies and culminating in the controversial visit to New York City by President Ahmadinejad of Iran.
A visually rich, analytical history of the key cycles in a revolutionary technology.
Offers a perspective on human-animal relations. This book reveals the ways in which various cultures have reinforced, symbolized, and rationalized their relations with animals. It identifies and explores four stages in the history of the human-animal relationship - separation, pre-domesticity, domesticity, and post-domesticity.
"This book offers a fresh perspective on U.S.-Muslim relations and provides the intellectual groundwork upon which to help build a peaceful and democratic future in the Muslim world."--BOOK JACKET.