What are our human rights? What are their philosophical justifications and historical origins? Focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction discusses the controversies and complexities behind these vitally relevant issues.

What is humanism? Can there be morality without God? Without religion, are our lives left without meaning? Stephen Law considers all these questions in this Very Short Introduction. Discussing the arguments for and against religious belief, and examining the value and meaning of life, he explores humanism as a positive alternative to religion.

Humour is a universal feature of human life. In this Very Short Introduction Noel Carroll considers the nature and value of humour, from its leading theories and its relation to emotion and cognition, to ethical questions of its morality and its significance in shaping society.

This new translation includes Kafka's two published collections, A Country Doctor and A Hunger Artist with other, uncollected stories, aphorisms, and parables that have become part of the Kafka canon. Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, the stories meditate on art and artists and the human experience. Includes an introduction and notes.

The story of hysteria is a curious one, for it persists as an illness for centuries before disappearing. Andrew Scull gives a fascinating account of this socially constructed disease that came to be strongly associated with women, showing the shifts in social, cultural, and medical perceptions through history.

In this Very Short Introduction Jamie Woodward examines the environmental shifts that took place during the Great Ice Age of the Quaternary Period. Looking at evidence from the continents, the oceans, and the ice core records, he explores the evolution of ideas about our geological past, the great debates, and the human stories behind it all.

Ideology is one of the most controversial terms in the political vocabulary, inciting both revulsion and inspiration. This book explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major form of political thinking, without which we cannot make sense of the political world. It also explores the changing understandings of ideology as a concept.