Textbook in the context of "List of best-selling books"

In Japanese and Chinese historiography, the Four Great Ancient Civilizations (Japanese: 世界四大文明, Hepburn: Sekai yon dai bunmei) (simplified Chinese: 四大文明古国; traditional Chinese: 四大文明古國; pinyin: Sì Dà Wénmíng Gǔ Guó) were Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, which are identified as the cradles of civilization. The concept is popularly used in Japan and China—for example in history textbooks—but not generally known in the western world.

Pandi Geço (1913–1994) was an Albanian geographer. He was best known for his unique regionalization of Albania into four physical-geographic regions, a regionalization proposed for the first time by him and still used today. He was also the author of the first Albanian academic textbooks of geography.

A grimoire (/ɡrɪmˈwɑːr/) (also known as a book of spells, magic book, or a spellbook) is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets; how to perform magical spells, charms, and divination; and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are believed to be imbued with magical powers. The only contents found in a grimoire are information on spells, rituals, the preparation of magical tools, and lists of ingredients and their magical correspondences. In this manner, while all books on magic could be thought of as grimoires, not all magical books should be thought of as grimoires.

While the term grimoire is originally European—and many Europeans throughout history, particularly ceremonial magicians and cunning folk, have used grimoires—the historian Owen Davies has noted that similar books can be found all around the world, ranging from Jamaica to Sumatra. He also noted that in this sense, the world's first grimoires were created in Europe and the ancient Near East.

Jayant Vishnu Narlikar FNA, FASc, FTWAS (19 July 1938 – 20 May 2025) was an Indian astrophysicist who performed research on alternative cosmology. He was also an author who wrote textbooks on cosmology, popular science books, and science fiction novels and short stories.

Narlikar studied at Banaras Hindu University and Cambridge University, where he obtained his PhD in 1963 working with Fred Hoyle. After postdoctoral work in Cambridge, in 1972 he was appointed a professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. In 1988, he became the first director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA).

Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view. In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music (e.g., the history of Nigerian music or the history of rock); in practice, these research topics are often categorized as part of ethnomusicology or cultural studies, whether or not they are ethnographically based. The terms "music history" and "historical musicology" usually refer to the history of the notated music of Western elites, sometimes called "art music" (by analogy to art history, which tends to focus on elite art).

The methods of music history include source studies (esp. manuscript studies), paleography, philology (especially textual criticism), style criticism, historiography (the choice of historical method), musical analysis, and iconography. The application of musical analysis to further these goals is often a part of music history, though pure analysis or the development of new tools of music analysis is more likely to be seen in the field of music theory. Some of the intellectual products of music historians include peer-reviewed articles in journals, university press-published music history books, university textbooks, new editions of musical works, biographies of composers and other musicians, studies of the relationship between words and music, and reflections upon the role of music in society.

Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan (French: [ʒɔʁdɑ̃]; 5 January 1838 – 22 January 1922) was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his textbook Cours d'analyse de l'École polytechnique.

Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.

It was coined by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology. Today, the term is used in many sociology textbooks to explain the nature of sociology and its relevance in daily life.

A lesson or class is a structured period of time where learning is intended to occur. It involves one or more students (also called pupils or learners in some circumstances) being taught by a teacher or instructor. Generally, a lesson is defined as "a piece of instruction; a reading or exercise to be studied by a pupil; or a division of a course of instruction."

A lesson may be either one section of a textbook (which, apart from the printed page, can also include multimedia) or, more frequently, a short period of time during which learners are taught about a particular subject or taught how to perform a particular activity. Lessons are generally taught in a classroom but may instead take place in a situated learning environment.