There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as objective history? In this witty, wise, and elegant (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of Bad History and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.

Scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun (Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy), Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed their--and our--views of the world. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves.

There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as objective history? In this witty, wise, and elegant (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of Bad History and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.

Scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun (Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy), Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed their--and our--views of the world. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves.

With a new Preface by the author

Napoleon fenced. So did Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, and President Truman, who as a schoolboy would practice fencing with Bess--his future wife-- when the two of them returned home from school. Lincoln was a canny dueler. Ignatius Loyola challenged a man to a duel for denying Christ's divinity (and won). Less successful, but no less enthusiastic, was Mussolini, who would tell his wife he was off to get spaghetti, their code to avoid alarming the children. By the Sword is an epic history of sword fighting--a science, an art, and, for many, a religion that began at the dawn of civilization in ancient Egypt and has been an obsession for mankind ever since. With wit and insight, Richard Cohen gives us an engrossing history of the world via the sword.

Praise for By the Sword

Touch While scrupulous and informed about its subject, Richard Cohen's book is about more than swordplay. It reads at times like an alternative social history of the West.--Sebastian Faulks

In writing By the Sword, Cohen] has shown that he is as skilled with the pen as he is with the sword.--The New York Times

Irresistible . . . extraordinary . . . vivid and hugely enjoyable.--The Economist

A virtual encyclopedia on the subject of sword fighting.--San Francisco Chronicle

Literate, learned, and, beg pardon, razor-sharp . . . a pleasure for practitioners, and a rewarding entertainment for the armchair swashbuckler.--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Everything you ever wanted to know about homosexuality but were afraid to ask In simple language, Straight Talk About Homosexuality will help you understand:

• The hidden meaning behind same-sex attraction (SSA).
• Clues why five celebrities experience SSA.
• How to love your homosexual family members and friends.
• Unmasking the homosexual myth--born gay and can't change. Discover the real facts--not born with SSA and can change.

Did you know that every day people change from gay to straight? This is a must read for every parent, teacher, counselor, clergy, and all who wish to understand what drives homosexual feelings and how to respond in love.

Why do heterosexuals need to be healed?

• Why is there a 50% divorce rate? Why does research indicate that 33 to 73 percent of men and 26 to 70 percent of women are sexually unfaithful in marriage?
• Why are men and women getting hooked on porn, spending $4,000 a second?
• Why are more and more men being exposed for sexually abusing children, adolescents, and/or adults?
• Why does the USA, with 5% of the world's population, consume 80% of the world's opioids?

Porn, affairs, and addictions are illegitimate attempts to meet legitimate needs for love.

Are you looking for love? Longing to be held? Perhaps settling for sex instead? If you want to experience greater love in your life, Healing Heterosexuality: Time, Touch, and Talk (TTT) will provide you with the keys to fulfill your heart's desire. TTT has solutions that will change your life for good

Each of us needs to belong - family, friends, faith, work, and community. If you did not connect or securely attach with your primary caregivers in childhood, you may need more touch as an adolescent or adult. Perhaps you have used sex to fulfill those primal needs for connection. The problem is that sex never fulfills the basic need because it is that of a child, not an adolescent or adult. In fact, sex obstructs the very thing that you may be looking for - bonding, belonging, and just to be loved for who you are, not what you do, or how you look. All unwanted behaviors are driven by Unhealed Wounds and Unmet Love Needs.

TTT will teach you how to heal your heart and create more loving, intimate relationships.

TIME: Life-changing skills for your personal healing, family healing, and community healing.

TOUCH: Essential exercises for healthy touch to transform your life and the lives of your loved ones.

TALK: Communication skills to foster greater intimacy in your personal and professional relationships.

Why Do We Need Healing?

• Why is there a 50% divorce rate? Why does research indicate that 33-75% of men and 26-70% of women are sexually unfaithful during marriage?
• Why are men and women getting hooked on porn, spending $36 billion a year?
• World Drug Report 2019 states that 35 million people worldwide suffer from drug use disorders.

Porn, affairs, and addictions are illegitimate attempts to meet legitimate needs for love.

Looking for Love?

We all need love. We cannot live without it. If you want to experience greater love in your life, Healing Humanity: Time, Touch, and Talk (TTT) will provide you with the keys to fulfill your heart's desire.

TIME: Life-changing skills for your personal healing, family healing, and community healing.

TOUCH: Essential exercises for healthy touch to transform your life and the lives of your loved ones.

TALK: Communication skills to foster greater intimacy in your personal and professional relationships.

TTT changed my life for good. This is a once-in-a-lifetime book. I learned how to restore relationship issues and experience a new-found peace. Sarah Jennings

This book, first published in 1990, evaluates what future policy adjustments the US will have to make in order to successfully navigate through a national security environment radically altered from that of the past and one determined more than at any point in the post-war period by the economic performance of both superpowers. The structure of the book centres around two issues that will determine the future national security environment facing the US. Discussed are stakes of the threat, the response of the Soviet Union to the challenge of economic and related social/political decline and its implications for the Soviet national defence effort. Also studied are the resources available to the US to meet the threat, the status of the US economic performance and the magnitude of resource stress it is likely to face in the future and its probable impact on the US national defence effort.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SPECTATOR - Richard Cohen's book acted as a tonic to me. It didn't make me more Russian, but it fired up my imagination. I have never annotated a book so fiercely.--Hilary Mantel

There are three rules for writing a novel, Somerset Maugham is said to have said. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. How then to bring characters to life, find a voice, kill your darlings, or run that most challenging of literary gauntlets, writing a sex scene? What made Nabokov choose the name Lolita? Why did Fitzgerald use firstperson narration in The Great Gatsby ? How did Kerouac, who raged against revision, finally come to revise On the Road ?

Veteran editor and author Richard Cohen takes us on an engrossing journey into the lives and minds of the world's greatest writers, from Honoré de Balzac and George Eliot to Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smith--with a few mischievous detours to visit Tolstoy along the way. In a scintillating tour d'horizon, Cohen lays bare the tricks, motivations, and techniques of the literary greats, revealing their obsessions and flaws and how we can learn from them along the way.

In the grand tradition of the scholar-adventurer, acclaimed author Richard Cohen takes us around the world to illuminate our relationship with the star that gives us life. Drawing on more than seven years of research, he reports from locations in eighteen different countries. As he soon discovers, the Sun is present everywhere--in mythology, language, religion, politics, sciences, art, literature, and medicine, even in the ocean's depths. For some ancient worshippers, our star was a man abandoned by his spouse because his brightness made her weary. The early Christians appropriated the Sun's imagery, with the cross becoming an emblem of the star and its rays, and the halo a variation of that. Einstein helped replicate the Sun's power to create the atomic bomb, while Richard Wagner had Tristan inveigh against daylight as the enemy of romantic love. In this splendidly illustrated volume packed with captivating facts, extraordinary myths, and surprising anecdotes, Cohen not only explains the star that so inspires us, but shows how multifacted our relationship with it has been--and continues to be.

This book, first published in 1990, evaluates what future policy adjustments the US will have to make in order to successfully navigate through a national security environment radically altered from that of the past and one determined more than at any point in the post-war period by the economic performance of both superpowers. The structure of the book centres around two issues that will determine the future national security environment facing the US. Discussed are stakes of the threat, the response of the Soviet Union to the challenge of economic and related social/political decline and its implications for the Soviet national defence effort. Also studied are the resources available to the US to meet the threat, the status of the US economic performance and the magnitude of resource stress it is likely to face in the future and its probable impact on the US national defence effort.

Rich's Home is the story about a young boy who experiences hurt in his family and at school. With the help of a counselor, Rich learns how to resolve the relationships with his family and friends. By setting love in order, Rich finds real hope and healing, ultimately marrying the right woman and creating a beautiful family. This book will give hope to many.

Richard Cohen's book presents to any responsible teacher, parent, and leader the opportunity to give our children a new look at their sexuality in the midst of controversy. Rich's Home is most definitely a vitally needed book for our children and for our school systems throughout America.

- Dr. Thomas L. Brown

Former Indianapolis School Commissioner

Rich's Home is a beautiful and brilliant children's book that will bring hope to many children confused about their sexuality. A must read!

- Elizabeth Goldberg

Elementary School Teacher

Schwul... geboren, geworden oder beides?

• Werden Menschen homosexuell geboren? Ist es eine angeborene Veranlagung, eine erworbene Eigenschaft oder beides?
• Wissenschaftler untersuchen immer noch, warum manche Menschen homosexuell und andere heterosexuell sind.
• Die Kontroverse geht weiter.

• Vielfalt
• Toleranz→ Cohen betont die Gleichberechtigung aller Sichtweisen zur Sexualität.
• Akzeptanz

In diesem Buch diskutiert Richard Cohen die wissenschaftlichen Aspekte der Sexualität und warum manche Menschen homosexuelle Gefühle entwickeln und andere nicht. Cohen bekräftigt das Recht des Einzelnen auf Selbstbestimmung - sei es, die Homosexualität anzunehmen und ein schwules Leben zu führen, oder einen alternativen Weg der Veränderung zu wählen. Es ist eine Menschenrechtsfrage, frei zu lieben wen wir wollen und geliebt zu werden von wem wir wollen.

• Erfahre mehr über mögliche Ursachen homosexueller Gefühle: So geboren? So geworden?
• Lerne einen Vier-Phasen-Plan kennen, um Probleme aus der Vergangenheit zu bewältigen und unerfüllte Liebesbedürfnisse zu stillen.
• Entdecke einfache und effektive Hilfsmittel, die dir helfen, deine Träume zu verwirklichen.

Dieses Buch hat mein Leben verändert. Ich kann nicht in Worte fassen, was das für mich bedeutet hat. Dein Verständnis für meine homosexuellen Gefühle hat mir Hoffnung und einen klaren Plan für mein Leben gegeben. -Levi Jacobson

Jahrelang kämpfte und litt ich still. Niemand konnte mir helfen. Aber du hast es geschafft. Worte können meine ewige Dankbarkeit nicht ausdrücken. -Ahmet Abadi

In diesem Buch hat Richard Cohen einen Weg für diejenigen geebnet, die mutig genug sind, hinter den Vorhang ihrer sexuellen Anziehung zu blicken. Dieses Buch wird ein wertvolles Hilfsmittel für Generationen sein. -Rebecca Sand, Ph.D.

There is an increase in specialisation within general surgery and now even within its sub specialties. Colorectal surgery is probably the largest of the subspecialties of general surgery, and one of the areas where trainees and consultant general /colorectal surgeons are least confident is in their understanding of the anatomy, physiological pathology and management of the anal canal and pelvis.

Currently available there are books on the market centred around the general management of colorectal disease, but the time is now right for a definitive text on the anal canal and pelvis specifically.

The vast majority of books on Buddhism describe the Buddha using the word enlightened, rather than awakened. This bias has resulted in Buddhism becoming generally perceived as the eponymous religion of enlightenment.

Beyond Enlightenment is a sophisticated study of some of the underlying assumptions involved in the study of Buddhism (especially, but not exclusively, in the West). It investigates the tendency of most scholars to ground their study of Buddhism in these particular assumptions about the Buddha's enlightenment and a particular understanding of religion, which is traced back through Western orientalists to the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation.

Placing a distinct emphasis on Indian Buddhism, Richard Cohen adeptly creates a work that will appeal to those with an interest in Buddhism and India and also scholars of religion and history.

The vast majority of books on Buddhism describe the Buddha using the word enlightened, rather than awakened. This bias has resulted in Buddhism becoming generally perceived as the eponymous religion of enlightenment.

Beyond Enlightenment is a sophisticated study of some of the underlying assumptions involved in the study of Buddhism (especially, but not exclusively, in the West). It investigates the tendency of most scholars to ground their study of Buddhism in these particular assumptions about the Buddha's enlightenment and a particular understanding of religion, which is traced back through Western orientalists to the Enlightenment and the Protestant Reformation.

Placing a distinct emphasis on Indian Buddhism, Richard Cohen adeptly creates a work that will appeal to those with an interest in Buddhism and India and also scholars of religion and history.

This landmark study of economic history since World War II systematically explores why postwar trade and payments have evolved as they have, the prospects for their future evolution, and the range of policy adjustments likely to be required. Through a rigorous examination and analysis of historical records, the author makes two significant and unique contributions to the scholarship on the subject. First, he reveals the existence of distinct cycles in world trade and payments, beginning in 1959. While scholars have recognized postwar business cycles, none have identified--until now--trade and payments cycles which seem to run parallel. Second, Cohen utilizes newly researched data to explore the much-heralded J-curve and its relevance in relating exchange rates to trade balances, and he identifies several important factors which have slowed the maturation of the J-curve effect on U.S. balances.

The study is divided into four parts and begins by looking at the forces that have shaped the postwar trade and payments order. Cohen then turns to an investigation of the period of advance in the trade and payments order from 1945-1967, describing three distinct stages that reflect the emergence, the establishment, and the peak of this period. Section three begins with an analysis of the structure and causes of the four postwar trade and payments cycles and includes an examination of the differences among them. Subsequent chapters address the different cycles themselves, reviewing the history of each and evaluating the growing challenges to the postwar trade and payments order. In the concluding section, Cohen explores why the J-curve in the U.S. has been so weak during the current cycle and assesses the likely consequences of the failure of existing policies to reduce external imbalances. Finally, the author offers a set of recommendations to reduce such imbalances through a new Cycle of Adjustment. Students of economic history, policy makers, and investors will find in Cohen's work significant new insights into economic processes and the probable future economic terrain.

Featuring the first-ever English translation of the Splendid Vision Sutra, a sixth-century Indian Mahayana Buddhist scripture known for its rich ritual magic and worship of bodhisattva-goddesses, this volume explicates the text's cultural significance as a source of extraordinary value, cosmic truth, and existential meaning.

The ancient author of the Splendid Vision Sutra promises every imaginable reward to those who heed its words and rites, whether one's desire is to become king, enjoy heavenly pleasures for thousands of millennia, or attain the spiritual summit of advanced bodhisattvahood. Richard S. Cohen carefully analyzes this religious rhetoric, developing a heuristic model of scripture that extends beyond Buddhist literature. In his framework, a text becomes sacred scripture when a community accepts it as a receptacle of extraordinary value, an authoritative source of cosmic truth, and a guide for meaningful action. While clarifying these points, Cohen untangles the discursive skein through which the Splendid Vision Sutra expresses its authority, inspires readers to accept that authority, and promises superior power and accomplishments to those who implement its teachings. Exploring ways of living and reading a text, Cohen draws on Marcel Duchamp's theory of found art, Jerzy Grotowski's idealization of the holy actor, and other formulations, identifying contingencies, uncertainties, and incompleteness in the lived present and its determination of our reception of the past. More than a mere introduction to an important work, The Splendid Vision opens a window into religious experience and practice in contemporary environments as well as in the world of the sutra.