General and world history Books

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Book SynopsisA thoroughly researched assessment of how China’s economic success continues to be shaped by the communist ideology of Chairman MaoTrade Review“Many western observers believed that China was moving towards free market capitalism and hoped that it would become more democratic as a result. . . . This important book shows that such beliefs and hopes were always naïve.”—Martin Wolf, Financial Times“An important book at a crucial time for China’s economy.”—Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal (on Twitter)“A well-written and welcome contribution to the debate about China’s model of development. . . . The book is a pleasure to read.”—Hongying Wang, International AffairsA Financial Times “Best Book of 2022”Tied for the 2023 Axiom Gold Medal, sponsored by Axiom Business Book AwardsFinalist for the George R. Terry Award, sponsored by the Academy of Management“Mao and Markets is an important blueprint for understanding how to do businesses in China. It is intellectually well grounded and offers important and practical advice for business leaders hoping to succeed in the Chinese market.”—Craig Allen, president, US-China Business Council “Mao and Markets is a richly detailed and timely book. It is well researched and thought-provoking, shedding light on not only Chinese business and entrepreneurship, but also politics, political leadership and how different generations of leaders will affect the future of China.”—Cheng Li, director of John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution “Mao and Markets is the book to read if you want to do business in today’s China. It has great insights on Xi Jinping’s emerging ‘China Model’ that business will need to come to terms within the coming years.”—James McGregor, chairman of APCO Worldwide’s greater China region “Capitalism and communism are entwined in China. Mao and Markets illuminates the connections between the history of the Chinese Communist Party and early leaders to the current Chinese economy and society. It will give insights not only to those who do business in China, but also for those interested in the nature of Chinese nationalism.”—Rana Mitter, professor of the history and politics of modern China, University of Oxford “Contributing to the lively debate over whether today’s China is better understood as ‘capitalist’ or ‘Communist,’ Chris Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao offer an informed and engaging argument for the deep and enduring influence of Maoism on contemporary Chinese politics and economy.”—Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University“A compelling and provocative book. Marquis and Qiao dispel the naïve Western view that China is likely to conform with our system. Mao’s legacy as an uncomfortable alternative deserves serious consideration.”—Stephen Roach, author of Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives “Mao and Markets provides an important account of the long-term impact of Mao Zedong on Chinese business and society. The book unravels the puzzling relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the private sector. It provides essential reading for those trying to understand China’s development strategy today.”—Tony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School “The authors illuminate a little-understood and often neglected aspect of modern China—the pervasive influence of Mao and Maoism in the country’s supposedly capitalist business empires.”—Jamil Anderlini, editor-in-chief, POLITICO Europe “Mao’s thinking about guerrilla warfare and ideology seems to have little to do with China’s emerging digital economy; but as Marquis and Qiao point out in this highly readable new book, Maoism continues to shape the institutions governing the digital economy and inform the thinking of private entrepreneurs and officials in China. This insight, richly informed with case studies and survey data, provides an important and welcomed correction to widely held beliefs of the ‘capitalist’ economy in China.”—Victor Shih, Ho Miu Lam Chair and associate professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego “Mao and Markets will be a valuable resource not just for scholars studying organizations and entrepreneurship but also for those in the general public who are interested in learning the history and trajectory of China’s market development.”—Eric Zhao, author of Optimal Distinctiveness

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Book SynopsisDespite being relatively brief, this very readable history covers environmental, political, social, economic, cultural and artistic elements, and is very open to regional variations and to the extent that the history of the peninsula and of its political groupings was far from inevitable. Its tone is accessible, supported by boxes providing supplemental information, and is perfect for travellers to Spain.Trade ReviewPraise for Jeremy Black's The Holocaust'A demanding but important work.'Praise for Jeremy Black's Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: A Global History'A significant and timely contribution to understanding the new meaning of war.' - Choice

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Book Synopsis"This book explores settler colonial genocides in a global perspective and over the long durée. It does so systematically and compellingly, as it investigates how settler colonial expansion at times created conditions for genocidal violence, and the ways in which genocide was at times perpetrated on settler colonial frontiers. This volume will prove invaluable to teachers and students of imperialism, colonialism, and human rights."—Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne University of Technology, and author of The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism as a Political IdeaTrade Review"A succinct, insightful, and highly readable text discussing an issue that deserves to be integral to any world history course. Using four finely crafted, yet widely dispersed, case studies Adhikari strikingly shows how vulnerability and resistance occur as the waves of global capitalism hit indigenous societies."—Robert Gordon, University of Vermont“Illuminating and compelling. This is a volume about genocide, a recurrent phenomenon in world history that, disturbingly, has created our modernity. Mohamed Adhikari equips the reader with a sound conceptual introduction, then provides four detailed yet clear accounts of genocide in the Canary Islands, Queensland, California, and German Southwest Africa. He has expertly provided the big picture as well as the specifics true to each history. Primary sources from each episode invite the reader’s participation in analysis. A book with which to think and to teach others.”—Lora Wildenthal, Rice University

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Book Synopsis"This new edition of Mason and Rizzo's anthology is a welcome addition to the study of the revolutionary and Napoleonic French Atlantic. It includes a wealth of documents related to life in metropolitan and colonial France from the middle of the eighteenth century through the Napoleonic Consulate as well as concise section overviews that detail experiences on the continent and in Saint-Domingue, France’s wealthiest Caribbean colony, during this tumultuous era. These features, along with images, maps, and a detailed timeline, provide an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike." —Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss, Texas A&M UniversityTrade Review"A wonderful resource for students and teachers of the French Revolution. The selection of the documents is judicious and reflects the most recent scholarship. I especially appreciate two aspects of this updated edition: the weaving of documents from the slave revolt in the Caribbean into the chronological arc of the Revolution, and the attention given to the Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, two significant moments that often receive short shrift in the literature. Mason and Rizzo have done a valuable service to the profession. This collection should become the standard title in courses on the French Revolution." —Ronen Steinberg, Michigan State University"Mason and Rizzo's judicious selection of primary sources from the French Revolution includes new sources on race and slavery and documents that will spark discussion of all the major questions raised by that great upheaval. An excellent resource for courses on one of history’s most fascinating and complicated episodes." —Jeremy D. Popkin, University of Kentucky, author of A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution (Basic Books, 2019)

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Book SynopsisA humane, thoughtful and yet clear-eyed history of people with learning disabilities.

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Book SynopsisThe untold story about how the internet became social, and why this matters for its futureTrade ReviewWinner of the 2023 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award, sponsored by the Association of Internet ResearchersWinner of the 2023 Computer History Museum prize, sponsored from SIGCIS. “Whether you’re reading this for a nostalgic romp or to understand the dawn of the internet, The Modem World will delight you with tales of BBS culture and shed light on how the decisions of the past shape our current networked world.”—danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens“The Modem World brings back to life a lost world of electronic communications, in the effervescent years before the Internet, World Wide Web, and the duopoly of Facebook and Google. Fascinating reading.”—Paul E. Ceruzzi, curator emeritus, Smithsonian Institution“Everyone loves a good origin story, especially a forgotten one. The Modem World offers an overlooked history of the Internet—it’s full of insights into how we got here, and where we could have gone instead. Deeply empathetic and gently brilliant.”—Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet

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Book SynopsisA new book for Paper 2, World History Topic 12: The Cold War: Superpower Tensions and Rivalries (20th Century)Readable and rigorous coverage that gives you the depth of knowledge and skills development required for the Diploma. Provides:- Reliable, clear and in-depth narrative from topic experts - Analysis of the historiography surrounding key debates - Dedicated exam practice with model answers and practice questions - TOK support activities and Historical Investigation questions to help with all aspects of the Diploma Tailored exactly to the Diploma, it also helps you develop analytical skills through the widest variety of sources at this level. Other titles in the series:- The Move to Global War- Rights and Protest- Authoritarian States

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Book SynopsisRecounts the great traveler Ibn Battuta's remarkable career, interpreting it within the cultural and social context of Islamic society and giving the reader both a biography of an extraordinary personality and a study of the hemispheric dimensions of human interchange in medieval times.Trade Review"In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, Ibn Battuta set off from his native Tangier on the hajj to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco until 1349, by which time he had visited not only Mecca, but also Egypt, Syria, Persia, Iraq, East Africa, the Yemen, Anatolia, the steppelands of southern Russia, Constantinople, India, the Maldives, Sumatra, and China. . . . An excellent synoptic introduction to the Muslim world in the Middle Ages." * Times Literary Supplement *"Dunn has produced an attractive, intelligent, and useful book, and one that is a pleasure to read." * International History Review *"Dunn has succeeded splendidly in his aim of bringing the Moroccan judge alive for a general audience and of presenting an analysis of his travels which is both descriptive and critical." * Journal of Islamic Studies *"Written in an engaging style that should easily appeal to the non-historian, this book is very probably unprecedented in concept and execution––placing it in a class apart and above the majority of books from Western scholars that deal with Islamic subjects." * Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society *"A remarkable achievement: [Dunn's] book is more than he set out to write; it is not simply a retelling of the Ibn Battuta story for a general audience, as he rather modestly puts it, but an introduction to the Islamic world in particular, and the late medieval world in general." * British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin *"Professor Dunn's book is based on Ibn Battuta's own writings. . . . and provides a commentary on the society and places which he visited, making admirable use of the great increase of our knowledge over the last generation. The result is fascinating." * Asian Affairs *Table of ContentsList of Maps Preface to the 2012 Edition Preface to the Revised Edition Preface to the First Edition Acknowledgments The Muslim Calendar A Note on Money List of Abbreviations Used in Notes Introduction 1. Tangier 2. The Maghrib 3. The Mamluks 4. Mecca 5. Persia and Iraq 6. The Arabian Sea 7. Anatolia 8. The Steppe 9. Delhi 10. Malabar and the Maldives 11. China 12. Home 13. Mali 14. The Rihla Glossary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull's cry and the cove's splendor have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the beach has been as fluid as the runnels left behind by the tide's turning. The Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. Robert C. Ritchie traces the contours of the material and social economies of the beach throughout time, covering changes in the social status of beach goers, the technology of transport, and the development of fashion (from nudity to Victorianism and back again), as well as the geographic spread of modern beach-going from EnglanTrade Review"Ritchie's book is both engagingly written and thoroughly scholarly." * Geography Realm *"The Lure of the Beach is a thoroughly researched, interesting social history. . . .a landmark text." * Technology & Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Lure of the Sea 2. The Rise of the Resorts 3. Leisure Comes to America 4. The Industrial Revolution Finds the Beach 5. Can a Proper Victorian be Nude? 6. Entertainment Comes Front and Center 7. The Modern World Intrudes 8. Beach Resorts Become a Cultural Phenomenon 9. Who Owns the Beach? 10. The Relentless Sea Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In License to Travel, Bixby explores the passport’s linguistic journey and much else. . . . An impressive survey." * Wall Street Journal *"A comprehensive, insightful history. . . . Bixby offers up a formidable survey of this everyday artifact and how it defines individuals and affords varying degrees of privilege and freedom, depending on one’s place of birth." * New York Times *"Neatly lays out the mighty power of the passport and the pains of passport inequality. . . . With License to Travel, Bixby also makes the argument that applying and carrying a passport is not just an administrative hoop that travelers must jump through: Having a passport gives us the freedom to travel—and the freedom to thrive." * AFAR Magazine *"Read this book and you’ll never again treat your passport so casually." * Geography Realm *"Bixby offers a new cultural history of the passport, exploring its pre-history, emergence and its current status today. This beautifully written and accessible book will be a great introduction for people wanting to learn more about passports and their politics of inclusion and exclusion." * LSE Review of Books *"This readable narrative history will interest all who travel abroad as well as those denied the opportunity." * CHOICE *"Charmingly written. . . . An appealing, accessible, and enlightening choice of reading on this subject." * International Migration Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: "The Most Precious Book I Possess" Part One: A Prehistory of the Passport as We Know It 1 • Ancient Bodies, Ancient Citizens 2 • Great Sovereigns, Grand Tourists 3 • Modern Bodies, Modern Citizens Part Two: The Advent of the Passport as We Know It 4 • Modernists and Militants Part Three: The Passport as We Know It 5 • Expelled and Stateless 6 • Migrants and Marxists 7 • Alien and Indigenous Epilogue: Good Passports Bad Passports Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest seeking answers to a pressing question: What was the cause of Africans’ black skin? Published here for the first time and translated into English, these early documents of scientific racism lay bare the Enlightenment origins of the phantom of racial hierarchy.Trade ReviewAn invaluable historical example of the creation of a scientific conception of race that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. * Washington Post *Curran and Gates have done admirable work…There is an elegant preface [and] a thorough contextual introduction…As soon as one starts to read the essays collected in this book, one cannot avoid the impression that one has entered an alien intellectual world. It seems more medieval than modern. -- John Samuel Harpham * Chronicle of Higher Education *A book worth reading and contemplating to understand the genesis of our current racial and indeed racist society, with its intersectional forms of minoritization, exclusion, exploitation, and violence…Reading this book does more than reveal ‘the master’s tools.’ Thankfully, it offers us a chance to come together in shared knowledge and, if we so choose, in a shared mission: to break the chains of an abominable history and continue paving the way to a better future. -- Christy Pichichero * Public Books *The sixteen essays submitted for the essay prize remained, untouched, in the Bordeaux archives. They have now been recovered, translated, contextualized and published with a thoughtful and informative introduction by Henry Louis Gates and Andrew Curran, who discuss the city, the academy and ways of reading the range of bizarre explanations offered for black skin and hair…Putting together the Bordeaux texts, Gates and Curran argue, helps us to understand the emergence of the concept of race. -- Catherine Hall * London Review of Books *A fascinating look into the eighteenth-century invention of the concept of race. * Foreword Reviews *The essays, the various editorial materials, and the excellent notes make this collection of great use to any scholar interested in this topic. Clearly presented with both rigor and sensitivity, this collection would also be a welcome addition to undergraduate or graduate classes. -- Mary McAlpin * Early American Literature *Insightful and instructive…The nineteen essays edited by Gates and Curran remind us that eighteenth-century Europeans extracted multiple messages from nature, which has no voice of its own. The legacy of the Enlightenment includes ‘scientific’ arguments about inferiority based on differences in race, sex, and more, as well as unfulfilled aspirations for equality and humanity. -- Jeffrey Merrick * New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *The roots of the false science behind race and the spread of virulent racism run in parallel. The essays collected in Who’s Black and Why? show that race is a hierarchical form of classification…[The book] has enhanced my appreciation for the tragic absurdity of racial hierarchies. -- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington * Santa Fe Reporter *An important collection of documents on scientific racism. * Kirkus Reviews *Eye-opening…A fascinating, if disturbing, window onto the origins of racism. * Publishers Weekly *In 1741 the Royal Academy of Bordeaux (a city of slave-trading wealth) sought the essence of human Blackness: in the climate, in the blood, in the bile, in the semen, in Divine Providence and the curse of Ham, in the size of the pores, or in ‘tubes’ in the skin. Now, after some 300 years of frustrating searches, definitive answers still elude us. Who’s Black and Why? reveals how prestigious natural scientists once sought physical explanations, in vain, for a social identity that continues to carry enormous significance to this day. -- Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White PeopleThe eighteenth-century essays published for the first time in Who’s Black and Why? contain a world of ideas—theories, inventions, and fantasies—about what blackness is, and what it means. To read them is to witness European intellectuals, in the age of the Atlantic slave trade, struggling, one after another, to justify atrocity. -- Jill Lepore, author of These TruthsAn indispensable book for anyone who is interested in the origins of racism. In this essential volume, Gates and Curran reveal how science itself played a major role in the construction of race during the eighteenth century. -- David Diop, author of the Booker Prize–winning At Night All Blood Is BlackThere is nothing inevitable about modern understandings of race. Gates and Curran have given us unprecedented access to forgotten eighteenth-century conversations that established a moral and intellectual basis for enslaving Black people. This extraordinary book reveals how Europeans learned to think about groups of people as profoundly different from each other simply based on their ancestry. It also provides an important lesson for those who study human variation in our own time. To what extent are we vulnerable to the same intellectual traps? -- David Reich, author of Who We Are and How We Got HereThe essays translated—and brilliantly contextualized—in this book provide a window into how European thinkers in the eighteenth century struggled with the legacy of religious ideas about human difference as they began to shape a new scientific understanding of race. They give us a fascinating insight into the early stages of the Enlightenment, reminding us that, whatever we owe to this period, we live now in a radically different intellectual world. -- Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies That BindIn Who’s Black and Why? Henry Louis Gates and Andrew Curran do the work of archival historians, and to a very available end: making us understand—through documents at times appalling, at times appallingly comic—a subject all too often hived off to abstractions, that is, how we construct a racial group, and how we come to treat as truths what we know to be inventions. An invaluable historical study, with all too many applications today. -- Adam Gopnik, author of A Thousand Small SanitiesWho’s Black and Why? is essential reading for all who want to undo and repair the harm caused by the entanglement of notions of racial difference and the injustices such differences have been used to sustain. -- Evelynn Hammonds, author of The Nature of Difference

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Book SynopsisTravis Zadeh revives the work of the thirteenth-century Persian scholar Qazwīnī, whose Wonders and Rarities was for centuries one of the most influential natural histories in the world. Inviting us to embrace anew Qazwīnī’s rationalized study of nature and magic, Zadeh dramatically revises the place of wonder in the history of Islamic thought.Trade ReviewAs Zadeh concludes, reformers and modernists have closed the rich and varied archive revealed in Wonders and Rarities…In this beautifully written and engaging text, Zadeh takes his readers back to the world of surprise and enchantment that preceded this closure. -- Malise Ruthven * Financial Times *The wonders and curiosities of the Islamic imagination await discovery by a new generation of readers in this superb and very enjoyable book by Travis Zadeh. -- Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureLike al-Qazwīnī himself, Travis Zadeh has written a deliciously baggy tome, full of delights and diversions in its tour of the cosmic horizons. This is a book to get lost in, whether one wants to or not. Zadeh describes the ʿAjaʾib al-Makhlūqāt as containing a ‘world within a book.’ In his own Wonders and Rarities, he has managed something similar himself. -- Nile Green * Los Angeles Review of Books *This book about a book, like the book it describes, is a rare and marvelous thing…In his passionate and erudite mission to restore Qazwini to centre stage, [Zadeh] has given readers a book filled with its own wonder and marvels. Like his hero, he well understands the most important thing: ‘What matters is a good story.’ -- Justin Marozzi * The Spectator *Wonders and Rarities has been studied by art historians in particular, but Travis Zadeh sets it in the context of wider Islamic thought…Indeed, he faces the mammoth task of mastering the same range of disciplines as Qazwini himself, from alchemy to botany, philosophy, theology and zoology. These feats are themselves worthy of wonder. -- Helen Pfeifer * London Review of Books *A study of the wondrous, marvelous, and strange in the Islamicate context…This book contributes to our understanding of an intellectually vibrant world full of wondrous anecdotes, magic, science, and poetry. * Reading Religion *A remarkable account of how a single text captivated readers for centuries, across the boundaries of language, religion, culture, and politics. Travis Zadeh’s engrossing study uncovers, with great erudition, the genesis and many afterlives of an extraordinary book, illuminating its continued power to inspire and amaze readers in our present day. -- Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of KnowledgeA wide-ranging and enchanting study…Zadeh has traced the history of al-Qazwini’s books in the centuries after their author’s death, their abbreviations, expansions, imitations and glorious illustrations. -- Robert Irwin * Literary Review *A magnificent and essential book. Zadeh deftly illuminates centuries of occult and natural history, restoring Qazwīnī's place in this vast world of thought. The result is an astonishing work of Islamic intellectual and cultural history, one that delves deeply into the intricacies and the pleasures of wonder without the prism of orientalism. -- Rana Safvi, author of Shahjahanabad: The Living City of Old DelhiBeautifully written and deeply researched, this book explores the religious and intellectual importance of wonder in Islamic civilization through the study of a classic text. A must-read! -- Jamal J. Elias, author of Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam

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Book SynopsisToday John Hancock is known for his signature, but during the revolutionary era, he was famed for his pragmatic statesmanship. Brooke Barbier explores Hancock’s position as a revolutionary who nonetheless understood the value of compromise. By shunning political extremes, Hancock became hugely influential in the infant United States.Trade ReviewA concise and highly readable biography…[Hancock’s] legacy is very much worth our remembering. -- William Anthony Hay * Wall Street Journal *[An] approachable biography…American history buffs will enjoy the immersive portrait of Boston’s Revolutionary era. * Publishers Weekly *King Hancock is a vastly enjoyable work of popular history that wears its impressive scholarship lightly. It deftly explains the wider forces that unraveled the colonists’ close bonds with the mother country… The book also features an almost tactile account of what it was like to live in Boston in the eighteenth century. -- Marc M. Arkin * New Criterion *A terrific book. Barbier’s meticulous research sheds light on how one of the wealthiest men of his time made himself into a man of the people—a politician whose genuine capacity for sensing the popular mood commanded fierce loyalty, even as he clashed with both Loyalists and radical Patriots. John Hancock was an important figure, and this biography helps restore him to his proper place. -- Robert J. Allison, author of The American Revolution: A Very Short IntroductionBarbier has written a fine biography, carefully guiding readers through Hancock’s life, his political career, and the world around him. In our politically polarized times, this founding father’s legacy of political moderation is sure to resonate. -- Benjamin L. Carp, author of The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American RevolutionIn this lively and insightful biography, Barbier illuminates John Hancock’s mastery of popular politics in an age of revolution. Drawing on a rich and profound knowledge of eighteenth-century Boston, she recovers the social world of a leader whose skills extended far beyond his celebrated penmanship. -- Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804An exuberant biography, well told and spirited. As we follow John Hancock through the turmoil that led to the Revolution, we see a man guided more by a desire to charm, entertain, and curry favor with both elites and ordinary people than by a rigid commitment to a specific politics or ideology. In Barbier’s hands Hancock’s life unfolds as dramatic theater. -- Sharon V. Salinger, author of Taverns and Drinking in Early AmericaHancock’s success might seem inevitable given his resources, his canny political sensibility, and just plain good fortune. Yet, as Ms. Barbier suggests, biography and history are contingent. What looks inescapable did not seem so to those who struggled to create a new country. -- Carl Rollyson * New York Sun *

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Book SynopsisTraversing 2,500 years of global history, Ulbe Bosma shows how sugar, once a luxury reserved for Eastern emperors, stoked a mania in the West, transforming diets and ecosystems, destroying and creating cultures, and shaping the history of bondage and freedom. A major source of calories only since 1900, sugar has suddenly revolutionized our world.Trade ReviewA tour de force of global history…Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live. -- Dinyar Patel * Los Angeles Review of Books *The World of Sugar shows the globalized tangle of interests that capitalism creates among consumers, producers, investors, labor, national governments, and transnational organizations…Sugar offers a bitter reminder of the enduring tensions between the complexity of national interests and the interests of capital. -- Bronwen Everill * Foreign Policy *One of the most accomplished longue durée case studies in the history of capitalism that we have, concerned not just with trade and consumption but with production also. At every turn it subverts both critiques and celebrations of capitalism, and our understanding of much else besides. It is an extraordinary achievement. -- David Edgerton * Literary Review *Sugar’s societal dominance is a recent development…Its history is both a story of progress and a bittersweet tale of ‘exploitation, racism, obesity, and environmental destruction’…[An] authoritative, highly readable study—the first to be truly global. -- Andrew Robinson * Nature *Bosma lucidly depicts how a commodity that is challenging to cultivate and devoid of nutritional value was central to the development of European imperialism, transatlantic slavery, the Industrial Revolution, economic protectionism, and the postcolonial politics and environmental degradation of the Global South. Bosma’s wide-ranging accounting is full of eye-opening insights…This is a comprehensive and alarming look at how one commodity changed the world. * Publishers Weekly *Bosma revisits the technical innovations, economic arrangements, and pains of a world submitting to the joy and addictiveness of sugar. His insights into the present are all the more resounding. -- Julien Damon * L'Express *Bosma traces how sugar has fundamentally ‘changed how we feed ourselves’…The ubiquity of sugar, writes Bosma, tells us about progress but also reveals a darker story of human exploitation. -- Sudipta Datta * The Hindu *Takes you on a journey of discovery—the journey of sugar itself, which has gone from relative obscurity to becoming an indispensable part of modern diet, causing untold harm in the process. * BooksFirst *Covers the history of the sweet stuff, first produced in granulated form in the 6th century BC, but not a huge commodity until more than two millennia later. This is…a reckoning with sugar. -- Sophie Roell * Five Books *A comprehensive 2,500-year examination of sugar’s history and its profound impact on society and the environment. Ulbe Bosma traces sugar’s journey from a luxury good in ancient India to a ubiquitous ingredient in our diets today, underscoring its role in fostering health issues and environmental crises. Bosma highlights how sugar has altered cultures and shaped political policies, laying bare the significant risks this commonplace commodity poses. * Food Tank *Ulbe Bosma’s history of sugar is also a case study of global capitalism over the centuries, colonial wars, and the deadly slave trade that made the industry possible…An interesting account of how sugar seeped into the global digestive system. -- Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald *An important new contribution to the literature on the history of sugar. Many of the shadows of sugar are dark, they spread over the entire world, and they are very, very, long. -- Robert Ackrill * H-Diplo *The world history of sugar and the world history of capitalism are tightly linked to one another. Ulbe Bosma, in this first truly global account of a most crucial commodity, takes us to the fields of Indian peasants, the countinghouses of Chinese merchants, the monopolizing efforts of New York industrialists, and the rebellions of enslaved sugar workers in Cuba to chart how something as mundane as sugar came to play a crucial role in the making of the world we inhabit today. Attentive to local specificities as much as to Earth-spanning connections, to culture and capital, power and poverty, this book is global history at its best. -- Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global HistorySugar may play a unique role in the slow-motion tragedy that is the worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes. The World of Sugar is a remarkably researched, comprehensive, and indispensable book for everyone who wishes to understand how sugar and the sugar industry have shaped the world in which we live. -- Gary Taubes, author of The Case Against SugarHow is it that a chemical that has no nutritional value, that is inherently poisonous, that is responsible for morbidity and mortality, and that is breaking the health care budget of every developed and developing country is the seminal thread running through human history for the last 3,000 years? The World of Sugar narrates the critical events that made sugar the dominant force in world politics from antiquity to our own era. In this magisterial history, Bosma offers a much-needed cautionary tale about how addiction leads to societal downfall. As we watch newer addictions destroy the climate and Earth’s inhabitants, we would all do well to learn the hard lessons of sugar. -- Robert Lustig, author of Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern MedicineThe World of Sugar is compelling, deeply researched, and globe-spanning. Bosma puts sugar at the heart of global capitalism; he shows how the quest for sweetness has driven slavery, violence, and massive ecological destruction. This is a timely and impressive book that illuminates some of our most urgent contemporary debates. -- Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s HistorySugar got the modern world moving in a way few other commodities did. Revealing the bitter downside of sweetness, Bosma gives us a spectacular narrative that deftly weaves in all of sugar’s stories: labor and consumption, power and trade, science and technology. -- Jürgen Osterhammel, author of The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century

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Book SynopsisRotary International spreads America’s good news. The organization spent the interwar years convincing Main Street and the world at large that America’s promise lay in cooperation and service under capitalism, values that could knit the globe together. In the process, Brendan Goff argues, Rotary became an extension of US power.Trade ReviewThe book is luminous—beautifully written and smartly constructed—showcasing Goff’s thorough research and his skillful analysis of the evolving racial, gender, class, and religious norms that came into play as RI chapters spread throughout, and then out from, the United States. -- Lauren F. Turek * Journal of American History *Goff convincingly shows how Rotary drew on and contributed to imperial networks, even as Rotary’s ethos of apolitical service blinded Rotarians (both in the United States and abroad) to the imperial nature of U.S. power. This book deserves a wide audience. -- Christopher Endy * Diplomatic History *This far-ranging account of transnational networking reveals the Main Street, middle-class making of modern global capitalism. Goff is as attuned to the paradoxes of Rotary internationalism as he is to its place in the American Century. -- Kristin L. Hoganson, author of The Heartland: An American HistoryIn this innovative book, Goff uses the international history of the Rotary Club to chart the origins of the ‘American Century.’ Tracing Rotary’s remarkable, worldwide expansion in the first half of the twentieth century, he offers fresh insights on American global power and transnational civic engagement, cultural diplomacy and corporate capitalism. Filled with fascinating stories of Rotarians and their activities on Main Streets far and wide, this book deserves a broad readership. -- Julia F. Irwin, author of Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian AwakeningImaginatively conceived and highly readable, this book tells the remarkable story of Rotary International’s campaign to expand from Chicago to the world at large. Goff makes an important contribution both to our understanding of Main Street America’s thinking about international trade and foreign policy, and of the business culture and voluntarism that Rotary promoted around the world. -- David C. Hammack, coauthor of A Versatile American Institution: The Changing Ideals and Realities of Philanthropic FoundationsIn Goff’s hands, we see the Rotarian as an advance agent of US power, a missionary for international capitalism, and an advocate of a business culture that shaped the twentieth-century world. Based on rich, diverse sources and told in a clear, compelling narrative, this remarkable book about how Rotarians crafted a ‘civic internationalism’ will be widely read. -- Christopher Capozzola, author of Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific CenturyYou may not think you are interested in the Rotary International. But if you are interested in informal empire, globalism, or the overlap between internationalism and cultural diversity, you need to read this book. It turns out the Rotarians were not the small-minded, parochial Babbitts of Sinclair Lewis’s imagination. They were in fact internationalists whose language of cooperation, nonpartisan business professionalism, and human fellowship helped pave the way for American-style global capitalism…As the world today reembraces nationalism and stokes polarization, and as we face climate catastrophe and a pandemic, the thorny problems discussed in this book are at the heart of any attempt to renew an internationalist ethos of cooperation, service, and nonpartisanship. -- Jennifer Delton * Enterprise & Society *

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the post mortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, "The king is dead. Long live the king." In The King's Two BodieTrade Review"Professor Kantorowicz has written a great book, perhaps the most important work in the history of medieval political thought, surely the most spectacular, of the past several generations. Here, in superbly designed chapters based upon the best scholarship in every field even remotely concerned with the Middle Ages, is the development of the theory and symbolism of the early national states from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries."--P. N. Riesenberg, American Political Science Review "Professor Ernst Kantorowicz has in this volume given us a monumental work of superb scholarship and profound learning, magnificently produced by Princeton University Press. Few, if any, contributions to the study of medieval thought comparable to this depth and width have been made for many years."--B. Chrimes, The Law Quarterly Review "There is one book that says it all. An old book, nearly a classic...This book, published in 1957, is titled The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology."--Bernard-Henri Levy, New RepublicTable of ContentsIntroduction to the Princeton Classics Edition ix Preface (1997) by William Chester Jordan xxv Preface xxxiii Introduction 3 I. The Problem: Plowden's Reports 7 II. The Shakespeare: King Richard II 24 III. Christ-centered Kingship 42 1. The Norman Anonymous 42 2. The Frontispiece of the Aachen Gospels 61 3. The Halo of Perpetuity 78 IV. Law-centered Kingship 87 1. From Litury to Legal Science 87 2. Frederick the Second 97 Pater et Filius Iustitiae 97 Iustitia Meciatrix 107 3. Bracton 143 Rex infra et supra Legem 143 Christus-Fiscus 164 V. Polity-Centered Kingship: Corpus Mysticum 193 1. Corpus Ecclesiae mysticum 194 2. Corpus Reipublicae mysticum 207 3. Pro patria mori 232 Patria religious and legal 232 Patriotic Propaganda 249 Rex et Patria 259 VI. On Continuity and Corporations 273 1. Continuity 273 Aevum 275 Perpetua Necessitas 284 2. Fictio Figura Veritatis 291 Imperium semper est 291 Universitas non moritur 302 VII. The King Never Dies 314 1. Dynastic Continuity 317 2. The Crown as Fiction 336 Corona visibilis et invisibilis 336 The Fiscal Crown 342 Inalienability 347 Crown and Universitas 358 The King and the Crown 364 The Crown a Minor 372 3. Dignitas non moritur 383 Phoenix 385 Corporational Symptoms in England 401 Le Roy est mort ... 409 Effigies 419 Rex Instrumentum Dignitatis 437 VII. Man-centered Kingship: Dante 451 IX. Epilogus 396 List of Illustrations 507 Illustrations following 512 Bibliography and Index 513 Addenda 568

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive overview of the innovative new discipline of global historyUntil very recently, historians have looked at the past with the tools of the nineteenth century. But globalization has fundamentally altered our ways of knowing, and it is no longer possible to study nations in isolation or to understand world history as emanating from the West. This book reveals why the discipline of global history has emerged as the most dynamic and innovative field in historyone that takes the connectedness of the world as its point of departure, and that poses a fundamental challenge to the premises and methods of history as we know it.What Is Global History? provides a comprehensive overview of this exciting new approach to history. The book addresses some of the biggest questions the discipline will face in the twenty-first century: How does global history differ from other interpretations of world history? How do we write a global history that is Trade Review"Conrad makes a case for global history as a self-consciously political and ethical enterprise through an enjoyable synthesis of what has to date been a diffuse, even incoherent field. A must read for anyone attempting to write or read global history."--ChoiceTable of Contents1 Introduction 1 2 A short history of thinking globally 17 3 Competing approaches 37 4 Global history as a distinct approach 62 5 Global history and forms of integration 90 6 Space in global history 115 7 Time in global history 141 8 Positionality and centered approaches 162 9 World-making and the concepts of global history 185 10 Global history for whom? The politics of global history 205 Acknowledgments 237 Notes 239 Index 283

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for Best First Book, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations""Honorable Mention for the Michael H. Hunt Prize in International History, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations""Winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, American Historical Association""Link gives a fresh analysis of an overlooked dimension of interwar history, tracing the singular influence of Ford’s innovations and ideas upon the final, cataclysmic stages of twentieth-century industrialization. Forging Global Fordism allows us to better explore the relationship between industrialism, political ideology, and global competition, while also shedding important light on our tumultuous present moment."---Justin H. Vassallo, Boston Review"[A] rich and nuanced industrial and ideological history, path-breaking in the way it both interrogates the meaning of Fordism as it emerged in the US and then was adopted and adapted in Germany and the Soviet Union between the 1920s and the end of the Second World War."---Nelson Lichenstein, H-Diplo Roundtable"An ambitious and original study. . . . Forging Global Fordism challenges received wisdom about the history of globalization and the nature of the Nazi and Soviet economies."---Mary Nolan, Journal of Modern History"An engaging and provocative global history of Fordism, focusing in particular on the Nazi and Soviet auto industries. . . . This is a rich book on an important topic. It is both deeply researched, drawing extensively on Russian, German, and American archives (as well as British and Italian ones) and engagingly written, giving due attention to particulars while consistently keeping an eye on the larger picture."---Mark A. Soderstrom, World History Connected

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards""Shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society""Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History""One of Whoopi Goldberg's Favorite Things, ABC The View""New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice""Chicago Tribune writer John Warner's Book That Will Help You Better Understand the Messed-Up Nature of the World""One of The Undefeated's 25 Can't Miss Books of 2019""One of The Progressive's Favorite Books of 2019""One of LitHub's 50 Favorite Books of the Year""One of Inside Higher Ed's Books to Give the Educator in Your Life for the Holidays"

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisFacts and figures have been thoroughly updated and the work includes a comprehensive Guide to Resources, incorporating the major published literature along with a vetted list of websites and Internet resources for students and lay readers.Trade ReviewThe book provides an excellent overview of world science and technology for readers at any level...highly recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionPart I.1. Humankind Emerges2. The Reign of the Farmer3. Pharaohs and Engineers4. Greeks Bearing Gifts5. Alexandria and AfterPart II.6. The Enduring East7. The Middle Kingdom8. Indus, Ganges, and Beyond9. The New WorldPart III.10. Plows, Stirrups, Guns, and Plagues11. Copernicus Incites a Revolution12. The Crime and Punishment of Galileo Galilei13. "God said, 'Let Newton be!'"Part IV.14. Textiles, Timber, Coal, and Steam15. Legacies of Revolution: From Newton toEinstein16. Life Itself17. Toolmakers Take Command18. The New Aristotelians19. The Bomb, the Internet, and the Genome20. Under Today's PharaohsAfterwordGuide to ResourcesIllustration CreditsIndex

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Book SynopsisTo inhabitants of the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana, food is much more than nourishment. The acts of gathering, preparing, and sharing food are ways to raise children, bond with friends, and build community. This book examines how coastal residents deploy self-reliance and care for each other through harvesting and sharing food.

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Book SynopsisThe Iraqi city of Fallujah has become an epicenter of geopolitical conflict, where foreign powers and non-state actors have repeatedly waged war in residential neighborhoods with staggering humanitarian consequences. The Sacking of Fallujah is the first comprehensive study of the three recent sieges of this city, including those by the United States in 2004 and the Iraqi-led operation to defeat ISIS in 2016.Unlike dominant military accounts that focus on American soldiers and U.S. leaders and perpetuate the myth that the United States ""liberated"" the city, this book argues that Fallujah was destroyed by coalition forces, leaving public health crises, political destabilization, and mass civilian casualties in their wake. This meticulously researched account cuts through the propaganda to uncover the lived experiences of Fallujans under siege and occupation, and contextualizes these events within a broader history of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Relying on testimony from Iraqi civilians, the work of independent journalists, and documentation from human rights organizations, Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn place the experiences of Fallujah's residents at the center of this city's recent history.

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive history of parliament in the British Isles from the earliest times, covering all aspects of parliament as an institution. A Short History of Parliament is a comprehensive institutional history, not a political history of parliament, though politics is included where, as frequently occurred, institutional changes resulted from particular political events. It covers the English parliament from its origins, the pre-1707 Scottish parliament and the pre-1800 Irish parliament, the parliament of Great Britain from 1707 and the parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801, together with sections on the post-devolution parliaments and assemblies set up in the 1990s and on parliaments in the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and the Irish Republic. It considers all aspects of parliament as an institution:membership of both the Lords and the Commons; constituencies, elections and franchises; where the Lords and the Commons met; how business was arranged and managed, including Speakers, the use of committees, the development of parties, lobbying and voting procedures; legal cases in the House of Lords; official recording of and reporting of business and debates; the conflict and balance of power between the two Houses; and the position of the monarch in parliament. Each section contains a chronology listing key events, suggestions for further reading and "inserts" - short anecdotes or accounts of particular figures or episodes which provide lively illustrations of parliament at work in different periods. Clyve Jones is an honorary fellow of the Institute of Historical Research. He has been editor of the journal Parliamentary History since 1986. Previously he was reader in modern historyin the University of London and collection development librarian in the Institute of Historical Research. He has published extensively on the history of the House of Lords and of the peerage in the early eighteenth century.Trade ReviewAchieves the very difficult task of digesting in a single volume current understanding of all the British parliaments from the beginning. [...] It is very well-structured, easy to navigate, accessible and readable. * THE RICARDIAN *[Gives] readers a good survey of parliamentary development and to its credit pays proper attention to the invaluable work of the Lords. * CONTEMPORARY REVIEW *For those requiring a handy bluffer's guide to Parliament that provides historical context while exploding a number of myths, A Short History of Parliament is a must. * TOTAL POLITICS *The essays assembled here are a rich source of anecdote and oddity. They also set out, clearly and concisely, the institutional framework and the general ground rules under which the Westminster Parliament as well as various other British parliaments have operated. [...] Most of the contributors rise to heights of excellence, supplying the very best summaries of their field. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *A scholarly and very informative history, A Short History of Parliament is a top and must have [addition] to any college history collection. * BOOKWATCH *

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Book SynopsisDynamic and meticulously researched, A History of Korea continues to be one of the leading introductory textbooks on Korean history. Assuming no prior knowledge, Hwang guides readers from early state formation and the dynastic eras to the modern experience in both North and South Korea. Structured around episodic accounts, each chapter begins by discussing a defining moment in Korean history in context, with an extensive examination of how the events and themes under consideration have been viewed up to the present day. By engaging with recurring themes such as collective identity, external influence, social hierarchy, family and gender, the author introduces the major historical events, patterns and debates that have shaped both North and South Korea over the past 1500 years.This textbook is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Korean or Asian history. The first half of the book covers pre-20th century history, and the second half the modern era, makTrade ReviewUnique in its discussion of women and marginalized groups, it gives readers a much fuller understanding of Korean society throughout history. It offers historical depth and accuracy for university use while engaging readers with its episodic narrative. I recommend it for anyone who wants to learn more about Korea, past and present. * Jennifer Jung-Kim, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *Full of eye-catching episodes and illustrations, this is probably the most readable guide for anyone interested in learning Korean history from ancient to contemporary times. * Deokhyo Choi, The University of Sheffield, UK *Kyung Moon Hwang’s A History of Korea is the most reader-friendly guide for anyone who is interested in the historical changes of the Korean Peninsula. Hwang’s masterful selections of historical themes and episodes on Korean history from antiquity to the present are well organized in this book. An indispensable work for helping students and general readers understand one of the most dynamic countries in the world. * Seok-Won Lee, Rhodes College, USA *Table of ContentsList of Chronologies and Maps Brief Chronology Maps Acknowledgements Introduction Note on Romanization 1. Goguryeo and Ancient Korea 2. Queen Seondeok and Silla's Unification of Korea 3. The Unified Silla Kingdom 4. Founding of the Goryeo Dynasty 5. Religion and Regionalism in the Goryeo Order 6. The Mongol Overlord Period 7. Goryeo-Joseon Transition 8. Confucianism and the Family in the Early Joseon Era 9. The Great Invasions, 1592-1636 10. Ideology, Family, and Nationhood in the Mid-Joseon Era 11. Intellectual Opening in the Late Eighteenth Century 12. Popular Culture in the Late Joseon Era 13. Nineteenth-Century Unrest 14. 1894, A Fateful Year 15. The Great Korean Empire 16. The Japanese Takeover, 1904-1918 17. The Long 1920s 18. Nation, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Late Colonial Period 19. Wartime Mobilization, 1938-45 20. The Liberation Period, 1945-50 21. The Korean War^rth Korea 23. 1960s South Korea 24. Culture and Politics in 1970s South Korea 25. Monumental Life in North Korea 26. South Korean Democratization 27. South Korea in the 21st Century 28. Epilogue: Historical Reckoning in the Two Koreas, 2010-2020.- Further Readings Index.

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Book SynopsisA Splendid Exchange tells the epic story of global commerce, from its prehistoric origins to the myriad crises confronting it today. It travels from the sugar rush that brought the British to Jamaica in the seventeenth century to our current debates over globalization, from the silk route between China and Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth. Throughout, William Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency on trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellectual and industrial progress and made us both prosperous and vulnerable.Trade Review"'A highly entertaining read. Bernstein's enthusiasm for his subject and impressive organisation of a wealth of material enable him to plot with pace and verve... man's trading history.' Hugh Carnegy, Financial Times 'Timely and readable... The strength of Mr Bernstein's book is the analytical rigour that overlays the rollicking history.' Economist 'Superb... The chronological range of Bernstein's book is staggering... Graceful and insightful history with a delicate display of scholarship that conceals a vast erudition.' Paul Kennedy, Foreign Affairs"

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Book SynopsisThe beginning of the twentieth century saw human civilization at its most enlightened, well-educated, globalized and wealthy. What turned it into a bloodbath?Niall Ferguson re-tells the story of history''s most savage century as a continual war that raged for 100 years. From the plains of Poland to the killing fields of Cambodia, he reveals how economic boom-and-bust, decaying empires and, above all, poisonous ideas of race led men to treat each other as aliens. It was an age of hatred that ended with the twilight, not the triumph, of the West. And, he shows, it could happen all over again.''A heartbreaking, serious and thoughtful survey of human evil that is utterly fascinating and dramatic'' Simon Sebag Montefiore, The New York Times''Unputdownable, controversial, compelling'' Independent on Sunday''The grenade lobbed into the cosy tea party of received wisdom'' Max Hastings''A big, bold and brilliantly belligerentTrade ReviewA heartbreaking, serious and thoughtful survey of human evil that is utterly fascinating and dramatic -- Simon Sebag Montefiore * The New York Times *Unputdownable, controversial, compelling * Independent on Sunday *The grenade lobbed into the cosy tea party of received wisdom -- Max HastingsA big, bold and brilliantly belligerent book * Sunday Telegraph *History at its most controversial ... no one can afford to overlook it -- Allan MallinsonHums with energy, quotable insights and pithy summaries * Observer *Gripping -- Tristram Hunt

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Book Synopsis''The art of command isto be the complete master, and yet the complete friend of every man on board; the temporal lord and yet the spiritual brother of every rating; to be detached and yet not dissociated.''A Seaman''s Pocket-Book, 1943 has found huge appeal with the British public. Presented in the same format, The Royal Navy Officer''s Pocket-Book gathers together useful advice and instruction for those naval officers fighting the Second World War on all aspects of their job, expressed in the benevolent language of the day, when authority was respected.The book has been compiled and edited by Brian Lavery, who provides commentary and an introduction. Sections include: the Officer''s Aid Memoire containing notes of the training course at one of the officer training schools; Notes for medical officers and treatment of battle casualties afloat; Notes for captains on taking command of their first ship; Notes for commanding officers; Notes on the handling and sTrade Review..this is an important document, significant for its sense of time and place. * Good Book Guide *Pure undiluted nostalgia! * Ships Monthly Magazine *...an authentic presentation of life in the wartime Navy and issues of leadership, discipline and initiative. * Best of British Magazine *...this book has enough illustrations, layouts, definitions and first hand information to keep any naval enthusiast fascinated for hours. * Family History Monthly *...exceptional value in every respect. * Navy News *...very highly recommended - another 'little gem' to go alongside the Seaman's Pocket Book on your yacht bookshelf. * Royal Naval Sailing Association Journal *

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Book Synopsis"Power to them meant everything. It was founded on courage, which begot honor. And by this courage and for this honor they fought to the death."The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps tells the thrilling story of the Shinsengumi—the legendary corps of Samurai warriors tasked with keeping order in Kyoto during the final chaotic years of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1868).This book recounts the fascinating tales of political intrigue, murder and mayhem surrounding the fearsome Shinsengumi, including: The infamous slaughter at Ikidaya Inn where, after learning of a plan to torch the city, a group of Shinsengumi viciously attacked and killed a group of anti-Tokugawa plotters The bloody assassination of Serizawa Kamo, the Shinsengumi leader, under highly suspicious circumstances The final tumultuous battles of the civil war in which the Shinsengumi fought and died in a series of doomed last stands Author and Samurai history expert Romulus Hillsborough uses letters, memoirs, interviews and eyewitness accounts to paint a vivid picture of the Shinsengumi, their origins, violent methods and the colorful characters that led the group.Trade Review"So, what do the Hell's Angels and the Shinsengumi have in common? They both had a propensity for violence, a strict internal code of conduct, and an alarmingly excessive reaction to insult, real or perceived. Also, they probably would have slaughtered each other on sight." --Goodreads

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: JIM CRACE, GUARDIAN – ‘A whole wide world of significance’ SARAH SANDS, NEW STATESMAN – ‘Sheer delight’ MICHAEL PRODGER, EVENING STANDARD – ‘Picaresque history’ DAN JONES, DAILY TELEGRAPH – ‘Tremendously inventive’ LEV GROSSMAN, TIME MAGAZINE – ‘Thrilling history’ CHLOE SCHAMA, NEW REPUBLIC – ‘Unadulterated delight’ KIRKUS – ‘Gripping’ MAIL ON SUNDAY – ‘Tragic’ ‘A book as delightful as it is unexpected … [an] extraordinary cabinet of drifting aerial wonderment, a book that will linger and last, as it floats ever upward in the mind’ Simon Winchester, Wall Street Journal ‘Holmes presents a full-blown, lyrical history of the same subject, investigating the strangeness, detachment and powerful romance of ‘falling upwards’ into a seemingly alien and uninhabitable element. He lovingly charts … a history full of awe and inefficiency … A truly masterly storyteller’ Evening Standard ‘Endlessly exhilarating … packed full of swashbuckling stories, as well as fascinating historical accounts of the use of balloons. It is also a singularly beautiful book, wonderfully designed and illustrated and quite clearly a product of love’ Mail on Sunday ‘What Holmes teases out … is that ballooning gave us, quite literally, a different point of view … This exhilarating book, wonderfully written, generously illustrated and beautifully published, captures all that and more’ Spectator ‘Holmes conjures an extraordinarily vivid, violent, thrilling history, full of bizarre personalities, narrow escapes and fatal plunges. A peerless prose artist, infectiously curious’ Time Magazine

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Book SynopsisA global account of military strategy throughout history, from imperial strategies to those of anti-imperial insurgentsTrade Review“This book offers valuable insights into strategy.”—Beatrice Heuser, Financial Times“Black’s greatest strength is his deep knowledge of international history, which is fully on display.”—Lawrence Freedman, History Today“Once again, Jeremy Black has shown that he can meld incisive historical insight with important modern-day lessons. Anyone connected with strategic decision-making, even far beyond the military sphere, will profit from reading this hugely readable and scholarly work, as will anyone interested in seeing how the great decision-makers of the past got things so right occasionally, but so wrong all too often.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny“Jeremy Black is one of Britain’s foremost historians and a world leader in the subject of military strategy. He has expanded his purview to the global story of strategy in a bold and imaginative study.”—John Bew, author of Citizen Clem: A Life of Attlee“This book succeeds in communicating the dynamics of strategy across a huge canvas in an intelligent, engaging but also an extremely erudite fashion. . . . It not only informs the reader of many aspects of the global history of strategy, it encourages readers to think about the subject matter and the historical challenges as they read.”—Alaric Searle, author of Armoured Warfare: A Military, Political and Global History

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