The best way to achieve an understanding of the art, architecture, history, and literature of a great civilization such as Mesopotamia's, D. T. Potts believes, is through an analysis of its material infrastructure. Concentrating on Southern Mesopotamia and relying preponderantly on evidence from the third millennium B.C., Potts describes a civilization from the ground up. He creates an ethnography of ancient Mesopotamia which combines knowledge of its material culture and its mental culture. The creation and development of Mesopotamia was made possible by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. "None of the achievements of Mesopotamian production in the realm of agriculture, animal husbandry, or related industries (textiles, leather working, boat building)," Potts says, "can be understood except in reference to the very specific river regimes and soil conditions of the alluvium." Potts examines the climate, the landforms, and other conditions that enabled the area to become populated. What natural resources did the earliest Mesopotamians have at their disposal? How did Mesopotamian religious ideals reflect the basic conditions of life in the alluvial plain of Southern Mesopotamia? What contributions to Mesopotamian civilization came from the East and what from the West? In addressing such questions as these, Potts offers a new foundation for understanding an ancient civilization of great complexity.

This text revives the study of conventional implicatures in natural language semantics. The author uses the original concept defined by H. Paul Grice as a key into two areas of natural language - supplements (appositives, parentheticals) and expressives (honorifics, epithets).

Innovation is among the most important topics in understanding economic sustained economic growth. Jason Potts argues that the initial stages of innovation require cooperation under uncertainty and draws from insights on the solving of commons problems to shed light on policies and conditions conducive to the creation of new firms and industries. The problems of innovation commons are overcome, Potts shows, when there are governance institutions that incentivize cooperation, thereby facilitating the pooling of distributed information, knowledge, and other inputs. The entrepreneurial discovery of an economic opportunity is thus an emergent institution resulting from the formation of a cooperative group, under conditions of extreme uncertainty, working toward the mutual purpose of opportunity discovery about a nascent technology or new idea. Among the problems commons address are those of the identity; cooperation; consent; monitoring; punishment; and independence. A commons is efficient compared to the creation of alternative economic institutions that involve extensive contracting and networks, private property rights and price signals, or public goods (i.e. firms, markets, and governments). In other words, the origin of innovation is not entrepreneurial action per se, but the creation of a common pool resource from which entrepreneurs can discover opportunities. Potts' framework draws on the evolutionary theory of cooperation and institutional theory of the commons. It also has important implications for understanding the origin of firms and industries, and for the design of innovation policy. Beginning with a discussion of problems of knowledge and coordination as well as their implications for common pool environments, the book then explores instances of innovation commons and the lifecycle of innovation, including increased institutionalization and rigidness. Potts also discusses the possible implications of the commons framework for policies to sustain innovation dynamics.

This book traces the history of the word 'charisma', and the various meanings assigned to it, from its first century origins in Christian theology to its manifestations in twenty-first century politics and culture, while considering how much of the word's original religious meaning persists in the contemporary secular understanding.

Greek vases and Peruvian bottles, Chinese bronzes and African masks, Tel Brak idols and Egyptian tomb paintings -- artifacts ancient and modern reveal man's universal fascination with the eye and his awe before its mysterious powers. In this wide-ranging and richly illustrated essay Albert M. Potts considers the special properties the human mind has ascribed to the eye over the millenia and seeks out its peculiar significance as symbol. Amulets against the Evil Eye persist today in nearly every part of the world. Almost as pervasive is the conception of the Good Eye, itself used as a protective.

This book examines the formation and transformation of Elam's many identities through both archaeological and written evidence. It brings to life one of the most important regions of ancient Western Asia, re-evaluates its significance, and places it in the context of the most recent archaeological and historical scholarship.

With innovative style and thorough scholarship, Warlords tells the story of World War II through the eyes and minds of its four great leaders-Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. While their nations battled in the field, these warlords of the twentieth century waged a private war of the mind. From Whitehall and Washington to the Wolf's Lair and the Kremlin, Warlords documents their psychological battles and the attempts to outthink and outfight one another. Like a cinematic thriller, rapidly cutting from one man to the next, the narrative reveals each leader as they face history's greatest conflict-and each other.