Social and cultural history

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...

How British authorities and Indian intellectuals developed ideas about deviant female sexuality to control and organize modern society in IndiaDuring the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian...

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...

How deadly germs and pandemics have shaped history - and why they are products of our success as a species.Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from...

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...

A wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking since the seventeenth century on the purpose of the Jewish people in the past, present, and futureWhat is the purpose of Jews in the world? The Bible singles out the Jews as God's "chosen people,"...

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...

A major new look at the work of one of America's foremost self-taught artistsBill Traylor (ca. 1853-1949) came to art-making on his own and found his creative voice without guidance; today he is remembered as a renowned American artist. Traylor was born...

How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writingsEdgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American...

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...

The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators-from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrenciesBitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is...

A fascinating history of marginalized identities in the medieval worldWhile the term "intersectionality" was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating,...

The most pervasive gods in ancient Rome had no traditional mythology attached to them, nor was their worship organized by elites. Throughout the Roman world, neighborhood street corners, farm boundaries, and household hearths featured small shrines to...

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow...

How Jewish responses during the Holocaust shed new light on the dynamics of genocide and political violence Focusing on the choices and actions of Jews during the Holocaust, Ordinary Jews examines the different patterns of behavior of civilians targeted...

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize...

In July 1815, six Iranian students arrived in London under the escort of their chaperone, Captain Joseph D'Arcy. Their mission was to master the modern sciences behind the rapid rise of Europe. Over the next four years, they lived both the low life and...

A new account of the famous site and story of the last stand of a group of Jewish rebels who held out against the Roman EmpireTwo thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children-the last holdouts of the revolt against Rome following the fall of...

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern worldFor all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the...

The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century--the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965-66, leaving some five hundred thousand...

A history of the twentieth-century feminists who fought for the rights of women, workers, and the poor, both in the United States and abroadFor the Many presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the world...

In "The Axe and the Oath", one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people. Writing for general readers, Robert Fossier vividly describes how these...

The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book...

An essential introduction to Josephus's momentous war narrativeThe Jewish War is Josephus's superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin...

A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's Russia.Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured...

'Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!' A favourite of pirates, the molasses-coloured liquid brings to mind clear blue seas and weatherbeaten sailors. But enjoymentof rum spread far beyond the scallywags of the Caribbean Charles Dickens savoured it in punch,...

A real classic among Highland books, A Croft in the Hills captures, in simple, moving descriptions, what it was really like trying to make a living out of a hill croft fifty years ago. A couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, immerse...

In The Medieval Kitchen, Hannele Klemettil presents a richly illustrated history of medieval food and cookery in Western Europe and Scandinavia. The book is also a practical cookbook, with a collection of more than 60 originally sourced recipes that can...

Long-considered dead by mainstream critics, the basic ideas of Karl Marx are brought to life in this overview of his thought. This book argues that instead of irrelevant, Marx's ideas of globalization, oppression, and social change are more important...

IN 1971, the inmates of Attica revolted, took hostages, and forced the authorities into four days of desperate negotiation. The rebels demanded - and were granted - the presence of a group of observers to act as unofficial mediators. Tom Wicker, then the...

Originally published separately,Weber's "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation" stand as the classic formulations of his positions on two related subjects that go to the heart of his thought: the nature and status of science and its claims...

The rise of the Third Reich remains one of the most widely debated and discussed events of the twentieth century. Gluckstein sets out to place Nazism in the context of the economic crisis and the failed workers' revolution, seeking to draw lessons for...

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and...

A classic bestseller for over a century, the Fannie Farmer 1896 Cook Book contains an incredible offering of 1,380 recipes, from boiling an egg to preparing a calf's head. Farmer's instructions also go beyond recipes to include how to set the table for...

The United States is readily distinguishable from other countries, Chief Justice John Marshall opined in 1803, because it is "a nation of laws, not of men." In Perversions of Justice, Ward Churchill takes Marshall at his word, exploring through a series...

The story begins with the aromatic juniper berry originally used by the Dutch to flavour the whisky-like genever. The drink then made its way to Britain, where cheap imitations laced with turpentine and other caustic fillers made it the drink of choice...

A collection of essays spans the tumultuous decade from 1968, the year of the San Francisco State University strike, to 1978 and the twin traumas of the Jonestown massacre and the assassinations of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. This...

London has always been home to outsiders. To people who won't, or can't, abide by the conventions of respectable society. For close to two centuries, these misfit individualists have had a name. They have been called Bohemians.This book is an...

Robert A. Williams Jr. boldly exposes the ongoing legal force of the racist language directed at Indians in American society. Fueled by well-known negative racial stereotypes of Indian savagery and cultural inferiority, this language, Williams contends,...

Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely heralded...

This captivating compilation of photographs taken between 1960 and 1990 provides a fascinating glimpse of a time that is familiar and yet different, when significant changes started to affect the city and its suburbs. As classical old city buildings were...

An enchanting collection of annotated historical images and contemporary photographs, revealing the change and development that Melbourne has experienced over the years. In 1835, as he walked the sacred grounds of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung...

An unlikely hero has a master storyteller to tell his tale. The King and the Christmas Tree is a poignant Christmas treat.' Lucy Worsley, historian, broadcaster and author Every December, a huge Christmas tree arrives in Trafalgar Square. Bedecked in...

A beautifully illustrated, visually lush and intriguing book about the world's most popular and most powerful flower. The daffodil is the beautiful first flower of spring, the inspiration of poets, a treasure-trove to scientists and a symbol of...