European history

A presentation of over one hundred documents, selected and coordinated from the urban civilization of Middle Ages Italy. By connecting documents in translation to recent scholarship and debates, this book serves to introduce topics, to illustrate themes...

Taking the 'special relationship' as a central theme, the book explores the public and private diplomacy between Britain and the United states in periods of war and peace. Using recently released archives as well as contemporary sources, the areas both...

The creation of Britain's welfare state in 1948 was an event of major international importance. This study offers an introduction to the evolution of both the structure of the welfare state and attitudes towards it. It concentrates on five core services:...

"Fascist Italy" is a concise introduction to the phenomenon of Italian fascism and its impact. The author balances an up-to-date re-evaluation of political, diplomatic and military developments with a full assessment of the more neglected domestic and...

Author of the only full-length eyewitness account of the 1917 Revolution, Sukhanov was a key figure in the first revolutionary Government. His seven-volume book, first published in 1922, was suppressed under Stalin. This reissue of the abridged version...

Interpreting the monuments of Athens in light of literature, R. E. Wycherley brings before us the city the ancients knew. Philosophers, statesmen, travelers, dramatists, poets, private citizens--the words of all these suggest how the city looked at...

"The Period of Consolidation, 1871-1880, Volume II" opens at a time when Bismarck had become the dominant figure in German and European politics and the new German Reich the most formidable power on the continent. Questions arose. What new goals would...

The German Empire of 1871, although unified politically, remained deeply divided along religious lines. In German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, Helmut Walser Smith offers the first social, cultural, and political history of this division. He argues...

As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence colour, but it is without doubt an important colour in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow - and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated...

The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the...

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today.Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all...

A panoramic history of the antiquarians whose discoveries transformed Renaissance culture and gave rise to new forms of art and knowledgeIn the early fifteenth century, a casket containing the remains of the Roman historian Livy was unearthed at a...

How a nineteenth-century lawsuit over the estate of a wealthy Tunisian Jew shines new light on the history of belongingIn the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing...

On July 10, 1941, in Nazi-occupied Poland, half of the town of Jedwabne brutally murdered the other half: 1,600 men, women, and children-all but seven of the town's Jews. In this shocking and compelling classic of Holocaust history, Jan Gross reveals how...

A comprehensive survey of the work of this most influential Florentine artist and teacherAndrea del Verrocchio (c. 14351488) was one of the most versatile and inventive artists of the Italian Renaissance. He created art across media, from his spectacular...

Sicily and the strategies of empire in the poetic imagination of classical and medieval EuropeIn the first century BC, Cicero praised Sicily as Rome's first overseas province and confirmed it as the mythic location for the abduction of Proserpina, known...

What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today's 'sculpture wars' - Mary Beard tells the story of how...

Waterloo Sunrise is a panoramic and multifaceted account of modern London during the transformative years of the sixties and seventies, when a city still bearing the scars of war emerged as a vibrant yet divided metropolis. John Davis paints lively and...

How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entitiesHistorians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern...

Among nature's most artful creations, shells have long inspired the curiosity and passion of artisans, artists, collectors, and thinkers. Conchophilia delves into the intimate relationship between shells and people, offering an unprecedented account of...

The first comprehensive account of how and why architects learned to communicate through colour.Architectural draw traces the use of colour in European architectural drawings and prints, revealing how this phenomenon reflected the professional anxieties...

In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the...

Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights-glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth-embedded in myth, legends, and...

A compelling exploration of how our pursuit of happiness makes us unhappyWe live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change -...

A comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important athletic, religious, and political sites in the ancient Greek and Roman worldThe memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient...

The first major history of the bravura movement in European paintingThe painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a...

Washington Post, One of E.J. Dionne Jr.'s Recommendations A major new history of how democracy became the dominant political force in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century What happened in the years following World War II to create a...

From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender-masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many...

A cultural and literary history of mountains in classical antiquity.The mountainous character of the Mediterranean was a crucial factor in the history of the ancient Greek and Roman world. The Folds of Olympus is a cultural and literary history that...

*Shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Book Award**Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University*"Winner of the PROSE Award in European History, Association of American Publishers*An innovative history of deep social and...

Coptic emerged as the written form of the Egyptian language in the third century, when Greek was still the official language in Egypt. By the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641, Coptic had almost achieved official status, but only after an...

For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and...

A colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative account of Machiavelli's life and thoughtThis is a colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative introduction to the life and work of the Florentine statesman, writer, and political philosopher Niccolo...

A renowned historian addresses misconceptions about Byzantium, suggests why it is so important to integrate the civilization into wider histories, and lays out why Byzantium should be central to ongoing debates about the relationships between West and...

How the creation of the Nobel Prize in Economics changed the economics profession, Sweden, and the worldOur confidence in markets comes from economics, and our confidence in economics is underpinned by the Nobel Prize in Economics, which was first...

How the latest cutting-edge science offers a fuller picture of life in Rome and antiquityThis groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive look at how the latest advances in the sciences are transforming our understanding of ancient Roman history...

The untold story of Michelangelo's final decades-and his transformation into one of the greatest architects of the Italian RenaissanceAs he entered his seventies, the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo despaired that his productive years were...

An urban history of modern Britain, and how the built environment shaped the nation's politicsFoundations is a history of twentieth-century Britain told through the rise, fall, and reinvention of six different types of urban space: the industrial estate,...

A history of modern European cultural pluralism, its current crisis, and its uncertain futureIn 2010, the leaders of Germany, Britain, and France each declared that multiculturalism had failed in their countries. Over the past decade, a growing consensus...

The first major English-language biography of Francisco Goya y Lucientes, who ushered in the modern era.The life of Francisco Goya (1746-1828) coincided with an age of transformation in Spanish history that brought upheavals in the country's...

The first biography of Kierkegaard's literary muse, from the author of the definitive life of the philosopherKierkegaard's Muse-the first biography of Regine Olsen (1822-1904), the inspiration and one-time fiancee of Danish philosopher Soren...

From acclaimed historian Michael Brenner, a mesmerizing portrait of Munich in the early years of Hitler's quest for powerIn the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 191819, the conservative government of...

Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural and political history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia's artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country's socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of...

The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl...

The legendary Renaissance math duel that ushered in the modern age of algebraThe Secret Formula tells the story of two Renaissance mathematicians whose jealousies, intrigues, and contentious debates led to the discovery of a formula for the solution of...

A vivid and accessible new translation of Cicero's influential writings on the Stoic idea of the divine Most ancient Romans were deeply religious and their world was overflowing with gods - from Jupiter, Minerva, and Mars to countless local...

To what extent was Machiavelli a "Machiavellian"? Was he an amoral adviser of tyranny or a stalwart partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or a devout Italian patriot? A reviver of pagan virtue or initiator of modern nihilism?...

A sweeping cultural and economic history of porcelain, from the eighteenth century to the present Porcelain was invented in medieval China - but its secret recipe was first reproduced in Europe by an alchemist in the employ of the Saxon king...