In 1974, É. Masson divided Cypro-Minoan inscriptions into four different scripts based on how their signs were drawn. Her divisions still persist, but have become increasingly controversial: are they really different scripts, or are they just variants of one script? In Chapter 10, the corpora of Masson’s three main divisions of Cypro-Minoan are analyzed against each other in an effort to determine whether they all encode the same language. As a control, three analogous corpora of Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions are analyzed against each other in the same way, with the results demonstrating an overwhelming probability that they all encode the same language (which we know they do, as Cypriot Syllabic is deciphered: it encodes Greek). The analysis of Masson’s three main divisions of Cypro-Minoan demonstrates a similarly overwhelming probability that they all encode the same language, and thus are simply variants of the same written language, not different scripts. The Cypro-Minoan and Cypriot Syllabic corpora are also analyzed against each other, demonstrating an overwhelming probability that the two scripts encode different languages—that is, that Cypro-Minoan does NOT encode Greek.

Chapter 2 reviews John Merryman’s ‘two ways of thinking’ about cultural property, rooted in an eighteenth-century dispute about the respective merits of particularism and cosmopolitanism, which continues to the present. A new section has been added on material looted from Benin.

This conclusion identifies the major contributions crime fiction has made to our understanding of the Second World War in French cultural memory. It reasserts the power of popular culture to help shape the landscape of memory

Chapter 6 begins Part II, “Syllabotactic Analyses of the Aegean Scripts,” which contains Chapters 6 to 11. This chapter introduces the concept of “syllabotactic analysis,” a new linguistics-based method of determining whether any two undeciphered Aegean scripts encode the same language. All languages have rules dictating how syllables can combine to form words, and these rules differ from language to language. Since all the undeciphered Aegean scripts are syllabic scripts, with separate signs for each syllable in the language(s) they encode, the rules that dictate how syllables can combine to form words in the language behind the script will also dictate how signs can combine to form words in the script itself. As all the Aegean scripts are related, they share a large number of signs in common. Thus if the signs in common to two undeciphered scripts combine to form words in very similar ways in both scripts, the two scripts are highly likely to encode the same language; otherwise, they are highly likely to encode different languages. The chapter ends with brief descriptions of the analyses of this type contained in the next five chapters.

Chapter 7 unpacks the forces sustaining societal inertia and explores pathways for transformative change. It introduces the metaphor of the “invisible strangling hand” to describe how systemic structures—emerging from policies, market dynamics, and social norms—trap societies in unsustainable behaviors. The chapter challenges the myth of free will and individual consumer responsibility, arguing that behaviors are deeply shaped by incentives, narratives, and institutional feedbacks. Central to this trap is the role of powerful vested interest parties (VIPs) in shaping perceptions through media, marketing, and policy influence, often masking harmful practices with greenwashing and moral licensing. Counterforces, such as scientists, activists, and journalists (SAWs), seek to challenge these narratives and highlight systemic dysfunctions. The chapter stresses the importance of collective worldview shifts, noting that transformative tipping points often begin at the network’s fringes. Historical examples and cognitive psychology reveal how moral dissonance, groupthink, and self-justification mechanisms sustain harmful norms.

This chapter examines the emergence of immigration as the subject of public debate in France from the 1980s onwards. It discusses the concept of nation, nationalism, nationality, the State and citizenship. The chapter presents an overview of the different ways in which these concepts have been defined historically and their relevance within the post-revolutionary French context. In order to understand why the question of immigration became increasingly politicised, it is first of all necessary to return to the mid-1970s. The chapter focuses on the debates of the last thirty years, starting with the 1980s and 1990s and the context of the emerging far Right. It also presents the debates on nationality and integration; the recurring linkages made between immigration and law and order; the 'headscarf affairs'; the notion of selective immigration policy; and issues around discrimination and inequality.

Mexico City was America’s largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In this deeply researched book, Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city’s silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis.

This chapter considers Ian McEwan's novel Saturday to demonstrate how the influence of the market economy is so pervasive, so culturally embedded, that the themes already identified and their effect on the public sector individual, are captured, reflected and normalised in mainstream artistic production. The institutional attempt to bend employees to its way of thinking and being is part of a well-rehearsed debate of industrial history. Contemporary business methods and processes threaten Henry Perowne's professional identity and undermine both his status and security as he loses control over aspects of his life. With the relentless accumulation of the administrative load, work in the new economy, aided by information technology, replicates the psychic problems of industrial conveyor-belt automation, work needing attention arriving at a rate over which the worker has no control.

Beccaria of Milan was a member of a group of high-powered intellectuals, the self-styled ‘Academy of Fisticuffs’, headed by his patron and mentor Pietro Verri. Unlike the milieu of Pelli, his group was committed to the principles of the European Enlightenment. He admired and was strongly influenced by leading French philosophers, in particular, Montesquieu (the Persian Letters) and Helvétius. Of earlier authorities he was particularly drawn to Francis Bacon and Heineccius, and was influenced by preceding natural jurists including Hobbes. His attack on the death penalty begins with an individual interpretation of the social contract. His argumentation is multi-faceted. It involves, among other things, an in-depth analysis (after Helvétius) of human nature, and a forthright argument in favour of perpetual hard labour as the ultimate penalty, based on the claim that this (long-drawn-out) punishment would be a more effective deterrent than (quick) execution.

Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes was a model courtier, suave, elegant, and full of bonhomie with a sleek, sophisticated façade that hid a darker, more complicated reality. Luynes had a near monopoly on the distribution of royal patronage, but he found that using it to secure the cooperation of the court nobility was a double-edged sword making him as many enemies as friends. Luynes gave Louis XIII the chance to rule alone by removing the Queen Mother's favorite Concini and ending her political dominance, and by thwarting her attempt to reestablish herself in power two years later. Historians have insufficiently appreciated Luynes's contributions to the early years of Louis XIII's government. Both marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil and François de Bassompierre believed that by the time of his death, Luynes was out of favor because the king showed no grief in public.