Historiography Books

1290 products


  • Transgressive Typologies

    Harvard University, Asia Center Transgressive Typologies

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisRebecca Doran offers a new understanding of major female figures of the Tang eraincluding Wu Zhao, Empress Wei, and Shangguan Wan'erwithin their literary-historical contexts, and delves into critical questions about the relationship between Chinese historiography, reception-history, and the process of image-making and cultural construction.

    1 in stock

    £28.86

  • Clues Myths and the Historical Method

    Johns Hopkins University Press Clues Myths and the Historical Method

    5 in stock

    Book SynopsisWas he influenced by the environment, he asks himself, and if so, how? Ginzburg uses his own experience to examine the elusive and constantly evolving nature of history and historical research.Trade ReviewGinzburg is known internationally for his studies of what might be called the interface between learned and popular culture. This collection of eight essays explores the methodological foundations of his historical analysis. -- David Herlihy Journal of Interdisciplinary HistoryTable of ContentsPreface to the 2013 EditionPreface to the Italian EditionTranslators' NoteBibliographical NoteWitchcraft and Popular Piety: Notes on a Modenese Trial of 1519From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of MethodThe High and the Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth CenturiesTitian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic IllustrationClues: Roots of an Evidential ParadigmGermanic Mythology and Nazism: Thoughts on an Old Book by Georges DumézilFreud, the Wolf-Man, and the WerewolvesThe Inquisitor as AnthropologistNotesIndex of Names

    5 in stock

    £20.70

  • The Night Battles

    Johns Hopkins University Press The Night Battles

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn his new preface, Ginzburg reflects on the interplay of chance and discovery, as well as on the relationship between anomalous cases and historical generalizations.Trade ReviewA work of genuine intellectual distinction. It is an unusually original contribution to the study of witchcraft in early modern Europe, but its importance is far from being exhausted by that description. -- Peter Burke New York Review of Books A tour-de-force of reconstruction, building out of scattered and fragmentary sources a whole world for the reader to inhabit. -- Anthony Pagden London Review of BooksTable of ContentsPreface to the 2013 EditionForeword by Eric J. HobsbawmTranslators' NotePreface to the English EditionPreface to the Italian EditionI. The Night BattlesII. The Processions of the DeadIII. The Benandanti between Inquisitors and WitchesIV. The Benandanti at the SabbatAppendixNotesIndex of Names

    3 in stock

    £20.70

  • Alan Brinkley

    Columbia University Press Alan Brinkley

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis book brings together essays on Alan Brinkley's major works and ideas as well as personal reminiscences from leading historians and thinkers beyond the academy. They chronicle the life and thought of a working historian, the development of historical scholarship in our time, and the role that history plays in our public life.Trade ReviewA marvelous and moving tribute to a historian who changed our understanding of political history and of the twentieth century. The book is testimony to the way he touched so many minds and hearts. -- Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard UniversityA beautiful tribute to one of the great historians of our time. His students and friends offer powerful essays about how Columbia’s Alan Brinkley profoundly influenced the field of American political history and how that field can help us understand the political struggles of the twentieth century. -- Julian E. Zelizer, Princeton UniversityAlan Brinkley: A Life in History is full of personal insight and historical perspective. The essays and reflections don't just bring to life a man of remarkable talent and extraordinary modesty, but reveal how the field of political history has evolved over the past four decades. Scholarly yet accessible, it will be of interest to both historians and general readers. A wonderful book. -- Steven Gillon, University of OklahomaThis superb volume offers readers a deeply revealing portrait of Alan Brinkley, the leading modern American political historian of his generation. In sparkling prose, his students, colleagues, friends, and family explore Brinkley's brilliant perspective on the history of our times, illuminating the man and the nation to which he has devoted his life's work. -- Ellen Fitzpatrick, University of New HampshireIt is a rare pleasure to read this collection of essays on Alan Brinkley and his work. The authors and editors have done a wonderful service to all of us who study American history, with a book that affords its readers the chance not only to marvel at Brinkley’s remarkable mind and incomparably decent character but also to consider what sort of person becomes a great historian. -- Eric Rauchway, University of California, DavisThe contributors to this volume carefully and thoroughly treat the totality of Brinkley's career - and in the process, render a valuable contribution to understanding the historiography of American political history. * Society for U.S. Intellectual History Blog *This celebration of Brinkley allows the layman to appreciate the man and the academic, but it is recommended for serious scholars of US history. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsForeword: A Career in Full, by Eric FonerPart I. A Historian’s Work1. A Personal History, by Elly Brinkley2. The “Dissident Ideology” Revisited: Populism and Prescience in Voices of Protest, by Moshik Temkin3. The End of Reform: A Reconsideration, by Mason B. Williams4. After Reform: The Odyssey of American Liberalism in Liberalism and Its Discontents, by David Greenberg5. Objectivity and Its Discontents: Reflections on The Publisher, by Nicole Hemmer6. The Liberal’s Imagination: “The Problem of American Conservatism” Then and Now, by Jefferson Decker7. Alan Brinkley and the Revival of Political History, by Matthew Dallek8. Houdini, Hip-Hop, and Dystopian Literature: Alan Brinkley’s Patterns of Culture, by Sharon Ann Musher9. The View from the Classroom, by Michael W. Flamm10. A Historian and His Publics, by Nicholas LemannPart II. Reminiscences11. The Lost Masterpiece, by A. Scott Berg12. The Skinny One with Glasses and Receding Hairline, by Nancy Weiss Malkiel13. Lord Root-of-the-Matter, by Jonathan Alter14. Careers in Counterpoint, by Lizabeth Cohen15. History as a Humanizing Art, by Ira Katznelson16. Two Kids from Chevy Chase, by Frank RichAppendix: Transcript of C-SPAN’s Booknotes: An Interview Between Host Brian Lamb and Alan Brinkley, August 31, 1993NotesContributorsIndex

    1 in stock

    £25.50

  • Holocaust Theoretical Readings

    Rutgers University Press Holocaust Theoretical Readings

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisThis anthology addresses the relationship between the events of the Nazi genocide and the intellectual concerns of contemporary literary and cultural theory in one volume. It collects together both classic and new theoretical writings.Table of ContentsTheory and experience -- The Drowned and the Saved / Primo Levi -- 'Resentments' / Jean Améry -- Days and Memory Charlotte Delbo -- 'The Camps' / Ruth Kluger -- Historicizing the Holocaust? -- 'On the Public Use of History' / Jürgen Habermas -- 'The "Final Solution": On the Unease in Historical Interpretation' / Saul Friedlander -- 'Historical Understanding and Counterrationality: The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage' / Dan Diner -- 'The Uniqueness and Normality of the Holocaust' / Zygmunt Bauman -- 'The European Imagination in the Age of Total War' / Omer Bartov -- The Origins of the Nazi Genocide / Henry Friedlander -- Nazi culture, fascism, and antisemitism -- 'The Rhetoric of Hitler's "Battle" / Kenneth Burke -- 'The Psychological Structure of Fascism' / Georges Bataille -- 'Elements of Anti-Semitism' / Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno -- 'The Fiction of the Political' / Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe -- 'Anti-Semitism and National Socialism' / Moishe Postone -- 'Ordinary Men' / Christopher Browning -- Race, gender, and genocide -- 'Floods, Bodies, History' / Klaus Theweleit -- 'Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany' / Gisela Bock -- 'The Unethical and the Unspeakable: Women and the Holocaust' / Joan Ringelheim -- 'Women and the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference' / Pascale Rachel Bos -- Psychoanalysis, trauma, and memory -- 'Trauma and Experience' / Cathy Caruth -- 'Trauma, Absence, Loss' / Dominick LaCapra -- 'Trauma and Transference' / Saul Friedlander -- 'History Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma' / Eric L. Santner -- 'Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening' / Dori Laub -- Questions of religion, ethics, and justice -- 'Thinking the Tremendum' / Arthur A. Cohen -- 'To Mend the World' / Emil L. Fackenheim -- 'Ethics and Spirit' / Emmanuel Levinas -- Eichmann in Jerusalem / Hannah Arendt -- 'What is a Camp?' / Giorgio Agamben -- The Differend / Jean-François Lyotard -- 'New Political Theology: Out of Holocaust and Liberation' / Gillian Rose -- Literature and culture after Auschwitz -- 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' / Walter Benjamin -- 'Cultural Criticism and Society' / Theodor W. Adorno -- 'Meditations on Metaphysics' / Theodor W. Adorno -- 'Writing and the Holocaust' / Irving Howe -- 'Non-Philosophical Amazement: Writing in Amazement: Benjamin's Position in the Aftermath of the Holocaust' / Sigrid Weigel -- The Writing of the Disaster / Maurice Blanchot -- 'Shibboleth' / Jacques Derrida -- 'Language and Culture after the Holocaust' / Geoffrey H. Hartman -- 'Representing Auschwitz' / Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi -- Modes of narration -- 'The Moral Space of Figurative Discourse' / Berel Lang -- 'Writing the Holocaust' / James E. Young -- 'The Modernist Event' / Hayden White -- 'Against Foreshadowing' / Michael André Bernstein -- 'Deep Memory: The Buried Self' / Lawrence L. Langer -- 'The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah' / Shoshana Felman -- Rethiking visual culture -- Reflections of Nazism / Saul Friedlander -- 'Holocaust' / Jean Baudrillard -- 'Anselm Kiefer: the Terror of History, the Temptation of Myth' / Andreas Huyssen -- 'The Aesthetic Transformation of the Image of the Unimaginable: Notes on Claude Lanzmann's Shoah' / Gertrud Koch -- 'In Plain Sight' / Lilliane Weissberg -- Latecomers: negative symbiosis, postmemory, and countermemory -- 'Memory Shot Through with Holes' / Henri Raczymow -- 'Mourning and Postmemory' / Marianne Hirsch -- 'Negative Symbiosis: Germans and Jews after Auschwitz' / Dan Diner -- 'The Countermonument: Memory Against Itself in Germany' / James E. Young -- Uniqueness, comparison, and the politics of memory -- 'Two Kinds of Uniqueness: The Universal Aspects of the Holocaust' / Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg -- 'What Was the Holocaust?' / Yehuda Bauer -- The Black Atlantic / Paul Gilroy -- 'Thinking about Genocide' / Mahmood Mamdani -- 'Dare to Compare: Americanizing the Holocaust' / Lilian Friedberg -- The Holocaust in American Life / Peter Novick.

    Out of stock

    £41.18

  • Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of art documentaries were produced, many of them being highly personal, poetic, reflexive and experimental films that offer a thrilling cinematic experience. With the exception of Alain Resnais’s Van Gogh (1948), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso (1956) and a few others, most of them have received only scant scholarly attention. This book aims to rectify this situation by discussing the most lyrical, experimental and influential post-war art documentaries, connecting them to contemporaneous museological developments and Euro-American cultural and political relationships. With contributors with expertise across art history and film studies, Art in the Cinema draws attention to film projects by André Bazin, Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Haesaerts, Carlo Ragghianti, John Read, Dudley Shaw Aston, Henri Storck and Willard Van Dyke among others.Trade ReviewThis remarkable book charts the development, as well as the public and critical acceptance, of the art film documentary at the mid-point of the 20th century. In a series of elegantly written and deeply perceptive essays by some of the most respected authorities in the field, such classic films as The Mystery of Picasso (1956), Henry Moore (1951), and the experimental feature film Pictura (1951) are brought back to public attention in a volume that is an essential text for both cinema historians and art lovers as well. A dazzling volume in every respect – bravo! -- Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USAIt is not well-known today that in the aftermath of World War II, emerging trends in media and international alliances, ideas about mass communication and the democratization of culture, and representation of national identity converged to produce a "golden age" of films about art and artists in Europe and the U.S. Art in Cinema is an invaluable resource on the mid-century heyday of the art documentary. -- Susan Felleman, Professor, Art History & Film and Media Studies, University of South Carolina, USATable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Introduction: The Mid-Century Celluloid Museum, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 1. The Institutional Breeding Grounds of the Postwar Film on Art, Birgit Cleppe (Ghent University, Belgium) 2. American Art Comes of Age: Documentaries and the Nation at the Dawn of the Cold War, Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 3. Art History with a Camera: Rubens (1948) and Paul Haesaerts’s Concept of Cinéma Critique, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Joséphine-Charlotte Vandekerckhove (Ghent University, Belgium & Verona University, Italy) 4. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti’s Critolfims and Beyond: From Cinema to Information Technology, Emanuele Pellegrini (IMT School for Advanced Studies, Italy) 5. André Bazin’s Art Documentary in Saintonge, Angela Dalle Vacche (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) 6. Projecting Cultural Diplomacy: Cold War Politics, Films on Art, and Willard Van Dyke’s The Photographer, Natasha Ritsma (Loyola University Museum of Art, USA) 7. Henry Moore and A Sculptor’s Landscape: Modernity, the Land and the Bomb in Two Television Films by John Read, John Wyver (University of Westminster, UK) 8. Creative Process, Material Inscription and Dudley Shaw Ashton’s Figures in a Landscape (1953), Lucy Reynolds (University of Westminster, UK) 9. Neoplasticism and Cinema: Ilya Bolotowsky’s Experimental Films on Art, Henning Engelke (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries: A Selected Bibliography About the Authors Index

    10 in stock

    £75.00

  • Pink Triangle Legacies

    Cornell University Press Pink Triangle Legacies

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisPink Triangle Legacies traces the transformation of the pink triangle from a Nazi concentration camp badge and emblem of discrimination into a widespread, recognizable symbol of queer activism, pride, and community. W. Jake Newsome provides an overview of the Nazis'' targeted violence against LGBTQ+ people and details queer survivors'' fraught and ongoing fight for the acknowledgement, compensation, and memorialization of LGBTQ+ victims. Within this context, a new generation of queer activists has used the pink trianglea reminder of Germany''s fascist pastas the visual marker of gay liberation, seeking to end queer people''s status as second-class citizens by asserting their right to express their identity openly. The reclamation of the pink triangle occurred first in West Germany, but soon activists in the United States adopted this chapter from German history as their own. As gay activists on opposite sides of the Atlantic grafted pink triangle memoriesTrade ReviewFor those interested in the "problems" of queer history, this book is an excellent introduction to the issues associated with confronting queer historical memory. * The Gay & Lesbian Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: "Beaten to Death, Silenced to Death" 1. "They are Enemies of the State!": The Fate of LGBTQ+ People in Nazi Germany 2. "For Homosexuals, the Third Reich Hasn't Ended Yet": Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Past in West Germany 3. "The Only Acceptable Gay Liberation Logo": The Reclamation of the Pink Triangle in West Germany 4. "It's a Scar, but In Your Heart": The Pink Triangle in American Gay Activism 5. "Remembrances of Things Once Hidden": Piecing Together the Pink Triangle Past on Stage and on Page 6. "We Died There, Too": Commemoration and the Construction of a Transatlantic Gay Identity Epilogue: "Remembering Must Also Have Consequences"

    1 in stock

    £25.19

  • The Ethics of Narrative

    Cornell University Press The Ethics of Narrative

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisHayden White is widely considered to be the most influential historical theorist of the twentieth century. The Ethics of Narrative brings together nearly all of White''s uncollected essays from the last two decades of his life, revealing a lesser-known side of White: that of the public intellectual. From modern patriotism and European identity to Hannah Arendt''s writings on totalitarianism, from the idea of the historical museum and the theme of melancholy in art history to trenchant readings of Leo Tolstoy and Primo Levi, the first volume of The Ethics of Narrative shows White at his most engaging, topical, and capacious.Expertly introduced by editor Robert Doran, who lucidly explains the major themes, sources, and frames of reference of White''s thought, this volume features five previously unpublished lectures, as well as more complete versions of several published essays, thereby giving the reader unique access to White''s late thought. In addition tTrade ReviewThe Ethics of Narrative is a significant posthumous collection of Hayden White's writings. Those of us who care about White will be grateful to Doran for so conscientiously undertaking this legacy groundwork. * American Literary History *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Hayden White, History, and the Ethics of Narrative 1. The Problem with Modern Patriotism 2. Symbols and Allegories of Temporality 3. The Discourse of Europe and the Search for a European Identity 4. Catastrophe, Communal Memory, and Mythic Discourse: The Uses of Myth in the Reconstruction of Society 5. Figura and Historical Subalternation 6. The Westernization of World History 7. On Transcommunality and Models of Community 8. Anomalies of the Historical Museum or, History as Utopian Space 9. Figural Realism in Witness Literature: On Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo 10. The Elements of Totalitarianism: On Hannah Arendt 11. The Metaphysics of Western Historiography: Cosmos, Chaos, and Sequence in Historiological Representation 12. Historicality as a Trope of Political Discourse: Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics 13. Exile and Abjection 14. The Dark Side of Art History: On Melancholy 15. Against Historical Realism: A Reading of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace

    2 in stock

    £21.59

  • Genesis and Validity

    University of Pennsylvania Press Genesis and Validity

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Impudent Claims and Loathsome Questions: Intellectual History as Judgment of the Past Chapter 2. Historical Explanation and the Event: Reflections on the Limits of Contextualization Chapter 3. Intention and Irony: The Missed Encounter Between Hayden White and Quentin Skinner Chapter 4. Walter Benjamin and Isaiah Berlin: Modes of Jewish Intellectual Life in the Twentieth Century Chapter 5. Against Rigor: Hans Blumenberg on Freud and Arendt Chapter 6. "Hey! What's the Big Idea?": Ruminations on the Question of Scale in Intellectual History Chapter 7. Fidelity to the Event? Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and the Russian Revolution Chapter 8. Can Photographs Lie? Reflections on a Perennial Anxiety Chapter 9. Sublime Historical Experience, Real Presence, and Photography Chapter 10. The Heroism of Modern Life and the Sociology of Modernization: Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel Chapter 11. Historical Truth and the Truthfulness of Historians Chapter 12. Theory and Philosophy: Antonyms in Our Semantic Field? Chapter 13. The Weaponization of Free Speech Notes Index Acknowledgments

    15 in stock

    £27.90

  • History in Financial Times

    Stanford University Press History in Financial Times

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisCritical theorists of economy tend to understand the history of market society as a succession of distinct stages. This vision of history rests on a chronological conception of time whereby each present slips into the past so that a future might take its place. This book argues that the linear mode of thinking misses something crucial about the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Rather than each present leaving a set past behind it, the past continually circulates through and shapes the present, such that historical change emerges through a shifting panorama of historical associations, names, and dates. The result is a strange feedback loop between now and then, real and imaginary. Demonstrating how this idea can give us a better purchase on financial capitalism in the post-crisis era, History in Financial Times traces the diverse modes of history production at work in the spheres of financial journalism, policymaking, and popular culture. Paying particular attention to narrative and to notions of crisis, recurrence, and revelation, Amin Samman gives us a novel take on the relation between historical thinking and critique. Trade Review"In History in Financial Times, Amin Samman brilliantly exposes the intricate workings of the historical imagination in our present financialized times. Effortlessly weaving together political economy, philosophy, historiography, and cultural studies, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding financial life today."—Jacqueline Best, University of Ottawa"Amin Samman has written a strikingly original book that brings the theory of history to issues of finance and economics in ways that I have not seen. His approach pushes both disciplines into new and productive territory. It is exciting, fresh, and strange in the most provocative and productive way."—Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University"Samman argues that the inescapable recursiveness of historical reasoning requires a new politics that eschews metahistorical cul-de-sacs for a more honest and flexible reckoning with the conditions of life. An interesting and provocative application of poststructural theory to a field that is normally the province of materialists, this book is best suited to scholars of historiography and theory. Recommended."—S. P. Harshner, CHOICE"History in Financial Times draws on and synthesizes an impressive array of concepts, theories, and disciplines only gestured at here. The book shows a great deal of range in its method....[The] insistence on history in financial times serves as a necessary corrective to narrow-minded theories of economic or financial subjectivity and the self-serving significations of economic elites."—John Macintosh, Los Angeles Review of Books"[History in Financial Times] offers means to analyse the minutiae of how historical narratives (for instance, analogies between the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Depression) become a shorthand to help explain what is happening in the present....Samman's emphasis on narrative throughout the book is hugely important at a moment of widespread narrative dysfunctionality in which the distinction between fact and fiction comes to be widely contested."—Emily Rosamond, Finance and Society"History in Financial Timesis a deeply original and impressive contribution to critical studies of finance, the history of capitalism, and historical theory."—Joel Isaac, The American Historical Review"In its many luminous moments, Samman's text pushes the reader to rethink history itself (as a field, as a discourse, as an imaginary) as embedded in and impacting the dynamics of late financial capitalism. In particular, he helps us see the intricate interweaving of immaterial financial operations and the factual and fictional representations of those phenomena."—C. N. Biltoft, History & TheoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: "We Live in Financial Times" 1. Crisis Thinking 2. Historical Imagination 3. Return and Recurrence 4. Repetition and Revelation 5. Names of History Afterword: Exits to the Future

    15 in stock

    £21.59

  • Nothing Happened: A History

    Stanford University Press Nothing Happened: A History

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and to remember that "nothing happened"? Why might we feel as if "nothing is the way it was"? This book transforms these utterly ordinary observations and redefines "Nothing" as something we have known and can remember. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is supposedly uninteresting or is just not there. It will take some—possibly considerable—mental adjustment before we can see Nothing as Susan A. Crane does here, with a capital "n." But Nothing has actually been happening all along. As Crane shows in her witty and provocative discussion, Nothing is nothing less than fascinating. When Nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when Nothing has happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being relieved or disappointed when Nothing happens—for instance, when a forecasted end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Susan A. Crane moves effortlessly between different modes of seeing Nothing, drawing on visual analysis and cultural studies to suggest a new way of thinking about history. By remembering how Nothing happened, or how Nothing is the way it was, or how Nothing has changed, we can recover histories that were there all along.Trade Review"A startlingly original book: incisive, layered, punny and funny, politically sensitive and passionate, feisty, and thoroughly unimpressed with authority even when impressed with authority's insights."—Peter Fritzsche, author of Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich"Nothing Happened is a delightful romp through what is really meant when nothing is invoked to describe something. This is a remarkably original book that transforms how we see history. It is clever and funny and serious and illuminating. You won't want to put it down."—Marita Sturken, author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero"Nothing's left? What does it mean to say that—of a page, of a photo, of a street, of a city, of a loved one? Susan A. Crane, in her invigorating and often funny study of Nothing, tells us vividly why saying Nothing reveals so much about its speaker and so little about history."—Peter Toohey, author of Hold On: The Life, Science, and Art of Waiting"Written with both wide-ranging intelligence and intellectual courage, Nothing Happened is a book of striking interest and originality. Susan A. Crane mobilizes a remarkable range of material and knowledge, creating her very idiosyncratic, and serially insightful discussion on a single unfathomable paradox."—Geoff Eley, author of A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society"[Crane] does not crowd her book or overwhelm the reader. Her patience remains consistent throughout, ensuring the reader's arrival in the end regardless of their scholarly starting point. Nothing Happened takes time to digest and can be enjoyed a second time around....Crane teaches the reader a way to view history. What we do with it is up to us."—Vesper North, Los Angeles Review of Books"Crane's book deserves attention because it deliberately changes the common point of view: Historians are usually aware of evolutionary processes, movements, acts of differentiation and thus of change in time. The author invites her readers to challenge such an 'action-based' approach to history by considering time as a continuum and by focusing not on events but on the 'gap' between them, when things seemingly remain the same."—Anna Karla, International Network for the Theory of History"Crane develops her imaginative argument in a conversational prose style that is filled with puns and references to her own life experiences. She is always present in her text, even when the complexity of Nothing becomes most mind-bending and when her stories move most deeply into the lives of others. This challenging book may push most historians beyond their usual epistemological assumptions, but its provocative themes and remarkable 'episodic' examples will also help them think about the possible significance in the sites of Nothingness they encounter in their own research. More generally, Nothing Happened should broaden the historical conversation among all those who believe that the past is never really dead and that everything has a history."—Lloyd Kramer, Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction. Episodes in a History of Nothing 1. Studying How Nothing Happens 2. Nothing Is the Way It Was 3. Nothing Happened Conclusion. There Is Nothing Left to Say

    2 in stock

    £23.39

  • Power and Time

    The University of Chicago Press Power and Time

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisTrade Review“As the editors argue, the temporal landscape of history is always replete with conflict and conflict potential. And, as the essays amply demonstrate, this provides rich pickings for the attentive historian. ‘Chronocenosis’ not only attunes us to the complex temporal frequencies of power conflicts but also enables us to locate new conflicts that may otherwise lie hidden from the historian's eye. . . . There are seemingly few domains of historical research that could not benefit from this approach. The dazzling diversity of these essays is testament to this. . . . A genuinely productive foundation on which to expand the historical study of time in a very practical–and global–sense. . . . The book’s subject matter is expansive, its temporal registers vast. [It] is difficult to imagine a historian who could not benefit in some way from consulting it.” * Contemporary European History *“What a gift this magnificent edited volume will be for those of us who have long sought to identify the implicit and violent ways in which power is garnered in battles over timing and time. With conceptual and empirical acuity, this is a volume that ‘harasses’ disciplinary strictures as it explodes the most revered canons. Moving from ‘multiple temporalities’ to conflictual ones is at the heart of this collective agenda, each author showing why such a conceptual and methodological move disrupts the seamlessness of linear histories and are critical moves we need to make. Here is a volume of depth, creativity, and inspiration for those long obsessed with thinking time and temporalities and for those who have not broached how profoundly such thinking recalibrates our collective futures—both their dark diagnostics and enabling horizons.” * Ann Stoler, The New School *“This exciting and wide-ranging collection explores a crucial nexus of modern life: how social-political visions and conceptions of time shape each other. Its dazzling collection of case studies brings to life political leaders, scientists, economists, activists, and jurists as the authors chart how the interaction between temporality and authority transformed life across the globe. With original research and fresh methodological insights, Power and Time is a vital contribution to our understanding of contemporary history.” * Udi Greenberg, Dartmouth College *“In Power and Time, Edelstein, Geroulanos, and Wheatley have curated a constellation of essays that take up the fascinating and vexed relation between the history of time and the times of history. The essays provide incredible range but maintain a tight thematic focus through the analytical pairing of power and time. In doing so, they offer an original and comprehensive survey of temporal regimes and the reciprocal feedback loop between the nodes of power that create them and the means by which that power is maintained. Power and Time is impressive in scope and depth and an important contribution to the new metaphysics of time.” * Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University *Table of ContentsChronocenosis: An Introduction to Power and TimeDan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha Wheatley PART I Temporal Pluralities in Conflict1 Legal Pluralism as Temporal Pluralism: Historical Rights, Legal Vitalism, and Non-Synchronous SovereigntyNatasha Wheatley2 The Invention of the Muslim Golden Age: Universal History, the Arabs, Science, and IslamMarwa Elshakry3 Rise and Fall of the Sattelzeit: The Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and the Temporality of Totalitarianism and GenocideAnson Rabinbach4 A Technofossil of the Anthropocene: Sliding Up and Down Temporal Scales with PlasticAndrea Westermann PART II Loops, Layers, Assemblages5 Long Divided Must Unite, Long United Must Divide: Dynasty, Histories, and the Orders of Time in ChinaZvi Ben-Dor Benite6 The Temporal Assemblage of the Nazi New Man: The “Empty” Present, the Incipient Ruin, and the Apocalyptic Time of LebensraumStefanos Geroulanos7 Prehistory and Posthistory: Apes, Caves, Bombs, and Time in Georges BatailleMaria Stavrinaki PART III The Splintered Present8 Brain-Time Experiments: Acute Acceleration, Intensified Synchronization, and the Belatedness of the Modern SubjectHenning Schmidgen9 Cryopower and the Temporality of Frozen Indigenous Blood SamplesEmma Kowal and Joanna Radin10 “Now Is the Time for Helter Skelter”: Terror, Temporality, and the Manson FamilyClaudia Verhoeven PART IV Speed(s)11 Legal Panics, Fast and Slow: Slavery and the Constitution of EmpireLauren Benton and Lisa Ford12 Time and the Economics of the Business Cycle in Modern CapitalismJamie Martin13 History and Temporal Sovereignty in the Thought of Jawaharlal NehruSunil Purushotham PART V “Already Here . . . Just Not Evenly Distributed”: Heterochronies of the Future14 Future Perfect: Political and Emotional Economies of Revolutionary TimeDan Edelstein15 The Future in the US Supreme CourtKristen Loveland16 Commemorating the End of History: Timelessness and Power in Contemporary RussiaKevin M. F. PlattAcknowledgments Contributors Index of Temporal Terms

    Out of stock

    £37.05

  • Seven Myths of Military History

    Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Seven Myths of Military History

    4 in stock

    Book Synopsis“This brief, provocative, and accessible book offers snapshots of seven pernicious myths in military history that have been perpetrated on unsuspecting students, readers, moviegoers, game players, and politicians. It promotes awareness of how myths are created by 'the spurious misuse and ignorance of history' and howmisleading ideas about a military problem, as in asymmetric warfare, can lead to misguided solutions. “Both scholarly and engaging, this book is an ideal addition to military history and historical methodology courses. In fact, it could be fruitfully used in any course that teaches critical thinking skills, including courses outside the discipline of history. Military history has a broad appeal to students, and there’s something here for everyone. From the so-called 'Western Way of War' to its sister-myth, technological determinism, to the ‘academic party game’ of once-faddish ‘Military Revolutions,’ the book shows that while myths about history may be fun, myth busting is the most fun of all.”—Reina Pennington, Norwich UniversityTrade Review“Why does military history generate so many myths? Is it because easily digestible myths make the subject easier to teach and study? Or because such myths help to paper over the simple but depressing fact that mankind has, since its very origins, permitted the slaughter of millions, often for the most minor of reasons? While such questions are difficult if not impossible to answer, in bringing together seven of the world’s finest military historians to dispel seven of these myths, John Hosler provides a great service in laying bare the myths’ origins. Anyone interested in the subject should read this book first, before embarking on further study.”—Kelly Devries, Loyola University Maryland

    4 in stock

    £17.99

  • Lies My Teacher Told Me

    The New Press Lies My Teacher Told Me

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisAt last! The long-awaited graphic version of the multi-million copy bestselling corrective to American history myths—adapted by the famed National Book Award–winning artist behind John Lewis’s March trilogySince its first publication in the 1990s, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important and successful—and beloved—history books of our time. As the late Howard Zinn said, “Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book.” Having sold well over 2 million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and numerous other commendations and prizes and was even heralded on the front page of the New York Times long after its first publication.Now, the brilliant and award-winning artist Nate Powell—the first cartoonist ever to win a National Book Award—has adapted Loewen’s classic work into a graphic edition that perfectly captures bot

    4 in stock

    £18.99

  • The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom

    University of Toronto Press The Fall of a Carolingian Kingdom

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisOpening up Carolingian history to a new generation, this book draws on recently translated primary sources to examine the collapse of an early medieval kingdom.Table of ContentsList of Figures Abbreviations Key Individuals Introduction 1. King Lothar II Grants Winebert an Immunity, November 856 2. A Coin of King Lothar II (Undated) 3. The Quierzy Letter, November 858 4. The Remiremont Liber Memorialis “Royal Entry,” December 861 5. The Council of Aachen, 29 April 862 6. The Summit at Savonnières, November 862 7. Bishop Adventius Writes to Archbishop Theutgaud, Early 863 8. King Lothar II Grants a Church to the Convent of St-Pierre in Lyon, 18 May 863 9. Bishop Adventius Reforms the Monastery of Gorze, June 863 10. Eberhard and Gisela Make a Will, c. 863 11. Bishop Adventius Writes to Pope Nicholas, Early 864 12. The Bishops of Lotharingia Write to the West Frankish Bishops, c. 865 13. King Lothar II Grants Queen Theutberga Lands, 17 January 866 14. Pope Nicholas Writes about Waldrada to the Bishops of Gaul, Germany, and Italy, 13 June 866 15. Queen Ermentrude’s Coronation, 25 August 866 16. Pope Nicholas I Writes to King Charles the Bald, 25 January 867 17. Bishop Adventius Organizes Prayers against the Northmen, Summer 867 18. The Metz Oath, c. 868 19. King Lothar II Writes to Archbishop Ado of Vienne, July 869 20. Pope Hadrian II Writes to the Lotharingian Aristocracy, 5 September 869 21. The Sacramentary of Metz, 869 22. Emperor Louis II Writes to Emperor Basil I of Byzantium, Early 871 Conclusion Bibliography Index

    15 in stock

    £23.39

  • Of Law and the World

    Harvard University Press Of Law and the World

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisDavid Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi, two leading critics of law’s role in global life, join together to explore the origins and destiny of efforts to build law into the fabric of global life. Erudite, open-minded, and at times personal, Of Law and the World is a poignant conversation about humanity’s struggle to live together.Trade ReviewOver the last four decades, David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi have occupied a unique space that was, simultaneously, at the top of the international law world and on its cutting edge. This book offers an enthralling tour of the intellectual and professional world they inhabited and sought to disrupt. A front-row seat to a fireside chat about how to plot critique. -- Vasuki Nesiah, New York UniversityIn their engrossing exchanges about the deepest problems in their field, David Kennedy and Martti Koskenniemi continue to exemplify international legal theory in the least pretentious and most productive sense. Though entitled to review their accomplishments, they realize they are just at the start of making sense of what international law is and what it does—and generously take the reader with them on a journey that matters to everyone. -- Samuel Moyn, Yale UniversityRich and revealing dialogues between two grand figures of North Atlantic international legal scholarship who have been friends and colleagues for almost four decades. Kennedy and Koskenniemi illuminate their separate trajectories, common projects, and intellectual and personal influences. Their lively conversations are also disarming as a chronicle of a critical generation in international law. -- Hilary Charlesworth, Melbourne Law SchoolAn exhilarating gaze across the world—uniquely insightful, challenging, and provocative. -- Philippe Sands, University College LondonThe conversation you’ve always hoped to overhear. Of Law and the World offers the followers and critics of Martti Koskenniemi and David Kennedy, two of the most influential international legal scholars of our time, the rare experience of being a fly on the wall of their virtual living room. -- Doreen Lustig, Tel Aviv UniversityThis is revelatory stuff, chock-full of insight, inspiration, humanity, and rage. -- Susan Marks, London School of Economics and Political Science

    15 in stock

    £35.66

  • Reason and Revolution

    Taylor & Francis Ltd Reason and Revolution

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisFew philosophers have had a more lasting impact on the philosophy of history than Friedrich Hegel. Reason and Revolution is Herbert Marcuse''s brilliant interpretation of Hegel''s philosophy and the influence it has had on political thought, from the French Revolution to the twentieth century.In a masterpiece of dialectical thought, Marcuse superbly illuminates the implications of Hegel''s philosophy, rescuing it from the taint of reactionary thought that distorted or dismissed it for the early part of the twentieth century. After a masterful survey of the main elements of Hegel''s philosophical system, Marcuse argues that it is Hegel the rationalist and progressive who stands in contrast to the irrationalism of Nazism, providing the crucial platform on which Marxist thought would later build and take Hegel''s thought in a radical and explosive new direction. A vital book in the development of critical theory and for understanding the great battle Table of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition Jay Bernstein Part 1: The Foundations of Hegel’s Philosophy Introduction 1. Hegel’s Early Theological Writings (1790–1800) 2. Towards the System of Philosophy (1800–1802) 3. Hegel’s First System (1802–1806) 4. The Phenomenology of Mind (1807) 5. The Science of Logic (1812–16) 6. The Political Philosophy (1816–1821) 7. The Philosophy of History Part 2: The Rise of Social Theory Introduction 8. The Foundations of the Dialectical Theory of Society 9. The Foundations of Positivism and the Rise of Sociology Conclusion: The End of Hegelianism. Index

    1 in stock

    £18.04

  • Chronos

    Columbia University Press Chronos

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn Chronos, a leading French historian ranges from Western antiquity to the Anthropocene, pinpointing the crucial turning points in our relationship to time. François Hartog considers the genealogy of Western temporalities, examining the order of times and the divisions of time into epochs.Trade ReviewWith characteristic elegance, wit, and erudition, Hartog, the master thinker of historical time, offers a panoramic view of the past to show how a temporal order (re)fashioned by Christianity endures to this day and shapes our crisis-ridden sense of the present. This is a longue-durée perspective on the Anthropocene that only someone with Hartog's learning and brilliance could have provided. An indispensable guide to the present. -- Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical DifferenceChronos is a magisterial book, breathtaking in scope and precision. I cannot think of another historian who could have written this book in this way. François Hartog uniquely possesses the intellectual expertise and range to lead the reader through a sweeping history of the concept of time in the “West,” beginning with the Greeks in antiquity and ending with our current periodization of the Anthropocene. It is an important work on one of the most pressing topics of our day. -- Ethan Kleinberg, author of Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the PastThis book, masterfully translated by S. R. Gilbert, will undoubtedly become a classic. A Christian “revolution in time” led from Greek Chronos, to Augustine’s self, to modern change, and to the Anthropocene. Beautifully written, this is a book for everyone who wants to know why our time is what it is. -- Nitzan Lebovic, Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values, Lehigh UniversityIn this brilliant, original, and profound book, François Hartog takes further his critical analyses of the sources and legacies of modern Western assumptions about time. He brings to light their urgent relevance to us today as we face challenges such as climate change, the Anthropocene, and potential global geopolitical catastrophe. -- Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, University of CambridgeMagisterial yet accessible, Chronos can make the rare claim to encompass all of recorded time in a relatively slim [book]. * New York Sun *Hartog's book offers necessary elucidation of how Westerners’ relationships with time brought us to this current moment. * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *For those seeking insight into past conceptions of time or questioning how we arrived at our current presentist temporality, Chronos serves as a clear and concise starting point. * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *Hartog is a superbly gifted writer who wears his learning lightly and without recourse to jargon, and translator S .R. Gilbert has served his author’s conversational style well in rendering it into eloquent English. . . . An enjoyable tour and a welcome synthesis of current thought on the human experience of temporality. * The Philosopher *Table of ContentsTo Readers of the English EditionPreface: The Undeducible PresentIntroduction: From the Greeks to the Christians1. The Christian Regime of Historicity: Chronos Between Kairos and Krisis2. The Christian Order of Time and Its Spread3. Negotiating with Chronos4. Dissonance and Fissures5. In the Thrall of Chronos6. Chronos Destituted, Chronos RestoredConclusion: The Anthropocene and HistoryNotesIndex

    15 in stock

    £19.80

  • A Thorough Exploration in Historiography  Shitong

    University of Washington Press A Thorough Exploration in Historiography Shitong

    4 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    4 in stock

    £105.40

  • Stranded at the Top of the World

    Springer International Publishing AG Stranded at the Top of the World

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis book provides a well-researched, well-structured, interesting, and informative narrative depicting the little-known yet successful efforts of the Captain Arve Staxrud Norwegian Arctic Rescue Expedition of 1913 that searched for and saved members of the Lieutenant Herbert Schroder-Stranz German Arctic Expedition of 1912 in Spitsbergen (Svalbard). The book portrays the cooperative and strategic endeavors of the humans and animals involved in the Staxrud expedition who worked together to save human lives on the icy fjords and glaciers of the far north during an unseasonable time of year for exploratory expeditions. It examines and analyzes the unpreparedness and lack of training that resulted in the failure of the Schroder-Stranz expedition. It compares and contrasts concurrent rescue expeditions that failed, including the Kurt Wegener expedition and the Theodor Lerner expedition. It describes the crucial role of animals in both the Norwegian and German expeditions, as well as German

    1 in stock

    £26.99

  • How the World Made the West

    Random House Publishing Group How the World Made the West

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £24.88

  • Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical

    Rutgers University Press Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisWinner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.”Trade Review"In a spectacular undertaking, Martin Bernal sets out to... restore the credibility of what he calls the Ancient Model of the beginnings of Greek civilizations... Bernal makes an exotic interloper in Classical studies. He comes to them with two outstanding gifts: a remarkable flair for the sociology - perhaps one should say politics - of knowledge, and a formidable linguistic proficiency... The story told by Bernal, with many fascinating twists and turns and quite a few entertaining digressions, is... a critical inquiry into a large part of the European imagination... a retrospect of ingenious and often sardonic erudition." -- Perry Anderson * The Guardian *"An astonishing work, breathtakingly bold in conception and passionately written... salutary, exciting, and, in its historiographical aspects, convincing." -- G. W. Bowersock * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *"A work which has much to offer the lay reader, and its multi-disciplinary sweep is refreshing: it is an important contribution to historiography and the sociology of knowledge, written with elegance, wit, and self-awareness... a thrilling journey... his account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find." -- Margaret Drabble * The Observer *"Bernal's material is fascinating, his mind is sharp, and his analyses convince." -- Richard Jenkyns * Times Higher Educational Supplement *"A formidable work of intellectual history, one that demonstrates that the politics of knowledge is never far from national politics." * Christian Science Monitor *"His book should be welcome to both classicists and ancient historians, most of whom will, now at least, be inclined to agree with him." -- R. A. McNeal * Franklin and Marshall College *"Bernal's work and the stir it has occasioned have caused ancient historians and archaeologists to undertake a major reexamination of methods and motives." -- Robert L. Pounder * American Historical Review *"Colossal.... Bernal aims to revise current understanding of Ancient Middle Eastern history by taking seriously the ancient Greeks' legends that portrayed much in their civilization as originating in the Middle East, especially Egypt." * New York Times Book Review *"Demands to be taken seriously... Every page that Bernal writes is educating and enthralling. To agree with all his thesis may be a sign of naivety, but not to have spent time in his company is a sign of nothing at all." * Times Literary Supplement *"A serious work that deals in a serious way with many of the principal issues of Aegean history in the second millennium B.C., and one can ask little more of any historical work." -- Stanley M. Burstein, California State University * Classic Philology *"[Bernal's] multifaceted assault on academic complacency is an important contribution to the development of a more open, historical, and culturally oriented post-processual archaeology." * Current Anthropology *"A breathtaking panoply of archaeological artifacts, texts, and myths." * Toronto Star *"Bernal's enterprise - his attack on the Aryan model and his promotion of a new paradigm - will profoundly mark the next century's perception of the origins of Greek civilization and the role of Ancient Egypt." * Transition *"Challenges the racism implicit in the recent 'cultural literacy' movement." * Socialist Review *"A monumental and path-breaking work." -- Edward Said"[Martin Bernal] has forced scholars to reexamine the roots of Western civilization." * Newsweek *"Martin Bernal has managed to make the subject of Ancient Greece both popular and controversial." * Baltimore Sun *"Martin Bernal’s Black Athena is nothing short of a monumental achievement in scholarship that re-oriented and transformed serious study of ancient civilizations. It remains a soaring accomplishment of classical erudition of the Afroasiatic foundation of Greek history." -- Molefi Kete Asante * author of The History of Africa,Professor, Department of Africology, Temple University *"Black Athena is a powerfully written and brilliantly researched book that relentlessly unveils the historical and cultural African origins of Western civilization. Still a must read for all those in search of truth." -- Ama Mazama * Professor of Africology and African American Studies, Temple University *“Bernal has ample justification for calling into question many widely accepted hypotheses…. He shows that Egypt and its culture were misrepresented or simply ignored by European writers.” -- Mary Lefkowitz * The New Republic *"In a spectacular undertaking, Martin Bernal sets out to... restore the credibility of what he calls the Ancient Model of the beginnings of Greek civilizations... Bernal makes an exotic interloper in Classical studies. He comes to them with two outstanding gifts: a remarkable flair for the sociology - perhaps one should say politics - of knowledge, and a formidable linguistic proficiency... The story told by Bernal, with many fascinating twists and turns and quite a few entertaining digressions, is... a critical inquiry into a large part of the European imagination... a retrospect of ingenious and often sardonic erudition." -- Perry Anderson * The Guardian *"An astonishing work, breathtakingly bold in conception and passionately written... salutary, exciting, and, in its historiographical aspects, convincing." -- G. W. Bowersock * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *"A work which has much to offer the lay reader, and its multi-disciplinary sweep is refreshing: it is an important contribution to historiography and the sociology of knowledge, written with elegance, wit, and self-awareness... a thrilling journey... his account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find." -- Margaret Drabble * The Observer *"Bernal's material is fascinating, his mind is sharp, and his analyses convince." -- Richard Jenkyns * Times Higher Educational Supplement *"A formidable work of intellectual history, one that demonstrates that the politics of knowledge is never far from national politics." * Christian Science Monitor *"His book should be welcome to both classicists and ancient historians, most of whom will, now at least, be inclined to agree with him." -- R. A. McNeal * Franklin and Marshall College *"Bernal's work and the stir it has occasioned have caused ancient historians and archaeologists to undertake a major reexamination of methods and motives." -- Robert L. Pounder * American Historical Review *"Colossal.... Bernal aims to revise current understanding of Ancient Middle Eastern history by taking seriously the ancient Greeks' legends that portrayed much in their civilization as originating in the Middle East, especially Egypt." * New York Times Book Review *"Demands to be taken seriously... Every page that Bernal writes is educating and enthralling. To agree with all his thesis may be a sign of naivety, but not to have spent time in his company is a sign of nothing at all." * Times Literary Supplement *"A serious work that deals in a serious way with many of the principal issues of Aegean history in the second millennium B.C., and one can ask little more of any historical work." -- Stanley M. Burstein, California State University * Classic Philology *"[Bernal's] multifaceted assault on academic complacency is an important contribution to the development of a more open, historical, and culturally oriented post-processual archaeology." * Current Anthropology *"A breathtaking panoply of archaeological artifacts, texts, and myths." * Toronto Star *"Bernal's enterprise - his attack on the Aryan model and his promotion of a new paradigm - will profoundly mark the next century's perception of the origins of Greek civilization and the role of Ancient Egypt." * Transition *"Challenges the racism implicit in the recent 'cultural literacy' movement." * Socialist Review *"A monumental and path-breaking work." -- Edward Said"[Martin Bernal] has forced scholars to reexamine the roots of Western civilization." * Newsweek *"Martin Bernal has managed to make the subject of Ancient Greece both popular and controversial." * Baltimore Sun *"Martin Bernal’s Black Athena is nothing short of a monumental achievement in scholarship that re-oriented and transformed serious study of ancient civilizations. It remains a soaring accomplishment of classical erudition of the Afroasiatic foundation of Greek history." -- Molefi Kete Asante * author of The History of Africa,Professor, Department of Africology, Temple University *"Black Athena is a powerfully written and brilliantly researched book that relentlessly unveils the historical and cultural African origins of Western civilization. Still a must read for all those in search of truth." -- Ama Mazama * Professor of Africology and African American Studies, Temple University *“Bernal has ample justification for calling into question many widely accepted hypotheses…. He shows that Egypt and its culture were misrepresented or simply ignored by European writers.” -- Mary Lefkowitz * The New Republic *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Transcription and Phonetics Maps and Charts Chronological Table Introduction Background Proposed historical outline Black Athena, Volume I: a summary of the argument Greece European or Levantine? The Egyptian and West Semitic Components of Greek Civilization / a summary of Volume 2 Solving the Riddle of the Sphinx and Other Studies in Egypto-Greek Mythology / a summary of Volume 1 The Ancient Model in Antiquity Pelasgians Ionians Colonization The colonizations in Greek tragedy Herodotos Thucydides Isokrates and Plato Aristotle Theories of colonization and later borrowing in the Hellenistic world Plutarch’s attack on Herodotos The triumph of Egyptian religion Alexander son of Ammon 2 Egyptian wisdom and Greek transmission From the Dark Ages to the Renaissance The murder of Hypatia The collapse of Egypto-Pagan religion Christianity, stars and fish The relics of Egyptian religion: Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism Hermeticism – Greek, Iranian, Chaldaean or Egyptian? Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism under early Christianity, Judaism and Islam Hermeticism in Byzantium and Christian Western Europe Egypt in the Renaissance Copernicus and Hermeticism Hermeticism and Egypt in the 16th century 3 The triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th centuries Hermeticism in the 17th century Rosicrucianism: Ancient Egypt in Protestant countries Ancient Egypt in the 18th century The 18th century: China and the Physiocrats The 18th century: England, Egypt and the Freemasons France, Egypt and ‘progress’: the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns Mythology as allegory for Egyptian science The Expedition to Egypt 4 Hostilities to Egypt in the 18th century Christian reaction The ‘triangle’: Christianity and Greece against Egypt The alliance between Greece and Christianity ‘Progress’ against Egypt Europe as the ‘progressive’ continent ‘Progress’ Racism Romanticism Ossian and Homer Romantic Hellenism Winckelmann and Neo-Hellenism in Germany Göttingen 5 Romantic linguistics The rise of India and the fall of Egypt, 1740–1880 The birth of Indo-European The love affair with Sanskrit Schlegelian Romantic linguistics The Oriental Renaissance The fall of China Racism in the early 19th century What colour were the Ancient Egyptians? The national renaissance of modern Egypt Dupuis, Jomard and Champollion Egyptian monotheism or Egyptian polytheism Popular perceptions of Ancient Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries Elliot Smith and ‘diffusionism’ Jomard and the Mystery of the Pyramids 6 Hellenomania, 1 The fall of the Ancient Model, 1790–1830 Friedrich August Wolf and Wilhelm von Humboldt Humboldt’s educational reforms The Philhellenes Dirty Greeks and the Dorians Transitional figures, 1: Hegel and Marx Transitional figures, 2: Heeren Transitional figures, 3: Barthold Niebuhr Petit-Radel and the first attack on the Ancient Model Karl Otfried Müller and the overthrow of the Ancient Model 7 Hellenomania, 2 Transmission of the new scholarship to England and the rise of the Aryan Model, 1830–60 The German model and educational reform in England George Grote Aryans and Hellenes 8 The rise and fall of the Phoenicians, 1830–85 Phoenicians and anti-Semitism What race were the Semites? The linguistic and geographical inferiorities of the Semites The Arnolds Phoenicians and English, 1: the English view Phoenicians and English, 2: the French view Salammbô Moloch The Phoenicians in Greece: 1820–80 Gobineau’s image of Greece Schliemann and the discovery of the ‘Mycenaeans’ Babylon 9 The final solution of the Phoenician problem, 1885–1945 The Greek Renaissance Salomon Reinach Julius Beloch Victor Bérard Akhenaton and the Egyptian Renaissance Arthur Evans and the ‘Minoans’ The peak of anti-Semitism, 1920–39 20th-century Aryanism Taming the alphabet: the final assault on the Phoenicians 10 The post-war situation The return to the Broad Aryan Model, 1945–85 The post-war situation Developments in Classics, 1945–65 The model of autochthonous origin East Mediterranean contacts Mythology Language Ugarit Scholarship and the rise of Israel Cyrus Gordon Astour and Hellenosemitica Astour’s successor? – J. C. Billigmeier An attempt at compromise: Ruth Edwards The return of the Iron Age Phoenicians Naveh and the transmission of the alphabet The return of the Egyptians? The Revised Ancient Model Conclusion Appendix Were the Philistines Greek? Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

    15 in stock

    £37.60

  • Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal

    Verso Books Nevertheless: Machiavelli, Pascal

    5 in stock

    Book SynopsisNevertheless comprises essays on Machiavelli and on Pascal. The ambivalent connection between the two parts is embodied by the comma (,) in the subtitle: Machiavelli, Pascal. Is this comma a conjunction or a disjunction? In fact, both. Ginzburg approaches Machiavelli's work from the perspective of casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. For as Machiavelli indicated through his repeated use of the adverb nondimanco ("nevertheless"), there is an exception to every rule. Such a perspective may seem to echo the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, "machiavellian" thinker. But a close analysis of Machiavelli the reader, as well as of the ways in which some of Machiavelli's most perceptive readers read his work, throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy inspires the essays on the Provinciales, Pascal's ferocious attack against Jesuitical casuistry. Casuistry vs anti-casuistry; Machiavelli's secular attitude towards religion vs Pascal's deep religiosity. We are confronted, apparently, with two completely different worlds. But Pascal read Machiavelli, and reflected deeply upon his work. A belated, contemporary echo of this reading can unveil the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal - their divergences as well as their unexpected convergences.Trade ReviewA dazzling example of the pleasure of research * Il Foglio *Ginzburg calls for an intricate reading of Machiavelli. He points out that the link between the author of The Prince and the author of the Provincial Letters is justified by the fact that both pertain to the broad constellation of political theology informed by the exception, the miracle, the unique case imposed on the norm * Il Manifesto *A treasure hunt in historical sources, forgeries and the reception of texts * Avvenire *One of world's premier historians. A born detective. * New York Times *Really quite brilliant -- Jan Machielsen * Times Literary Supplement (for Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf) *

    5 in stock

    £23.75

  • Revolution: An Intellectual History

    Verso Books Revolution: An Intellectual History

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of "dialectical images": Marx's "locomotives of history," Alexandra Kollontai's sexually liberated bodies, Lenin's mummified body, Auguste Blanqui's barricades and red flags, the Paris Commune's demolition of the Vendome Column, among several others. It connects theories with the existential trajectories of the thinkers who elaborated them, by sketching the diverse profiles of revolutionary intellectuals-from Marx and Bakunin to Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks, from Mao and Ho Chi Minh to José Carlos Mariátegui, C.L.R. James, and other rebellious spirits from the South-as outcasts and pariahs. And finally, it analyzes the entanglement between revolution and communism that so deeply shaped the history of the twentieth century. This book thus merges ideas and representations by devoting an equal importance to theoretical and iconographic sources, offering for our troubled present a new intellectual history of the revolutionary past.Trade ReviewOffering one of the most unsentimental yet non-reactionary meditations on revolution ever written, Traverso comes not to bury or praise the earthly drive to "take heaven by storm" but to understand it anew. Enriched by a lifelong study of historiography and politics, immense historical knowledge, theoretical polyamory, and a compelling artistic eye, this book also features splendid humility in exploring its slippery, complex and important subject. For those who long to craft a different order of things, Traverso's account is essential. For those who want to ponder what spirits revolutions or makes shipwrecks of them, this rare work roams the globe and the library, reflecting on Phnom Penh and Havana, not only Paris and Moscow, and thinking with Weber, Arendt, Fanon and Constant, not only Trotsky, Lenin and Mao. -- Wendy Brown, author of In the Ruins of NeoliberalismThis brilliant essay on the images of revolutions is a unique experiment, which has no equivalent in the vast historiographic literature on the subject. Inspired by Marx, Trotsky ,and Walter Benjamin, it is built as a montage of dialectical images, which function as lamps that illuminate the past. Enzo Traverso, probably the most gifted historian of his generation, does not hide his hostility to what he calls the "octopus of universal commodity reification"; without idealizing the past revolutions , he wants to preserve, in this fascinating and heterodox piece of research, the memory of historical experience. Quoting Benjamin: we cannot ignore the claim that the past has on us. * Michael Löwy *A perfect partnering of author and subject! Enzo Traverso is the Marxist scholar most gifted to present us with a masterfully articulated appraisal of the perplexing presence of concepts and images of revolutions in the political imagination. His astonishing scholarly expertise is on display with stunning elegance to reveal a rich tapestry of material from the 19th and 20th centuries, along with a multitude of riveting actors and thinkers. Revolution is a monumental advance in its sophisticated and supple interpretations; it is also a virtuoso performance in the art of refreshingly precise, rigorously compact exposition, complemented by a novelist's flair for narrative power and dramatic verve. -- Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus, University of MichiganBrilliant and beautiful. Now this book exists, it's hard to know how we did without it. -- China MiévilleVividly written, full of sparkling details and sharp theoretical insights... -- Hannah Proctor * Radical Philosophy *Something for every revolutionary. * Socialist Worker *

    1 in stock

    £22.50

  • Dead Certainties: (Unwarranted Speculations)

    Granta Books Dead Certainties: (Unwarranted Speculations)

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisOn 13 September 1759, General James Wolfe, having led the British troops up the St Lawrence to victory in the Battle of Quebec, died on the Heights of Abraham. Schama examines this death, and how Wolfe was made to die again - through the spectacular painting by Benjamin West, and through the writings of the 19th-century historian Francis Parkman. Schama's second death concerns Parkman's uncle, George Parkman of Harvard Medical College, who disappeared in 1849 in mysterious circumstances and who was rumoured to have been murdered by a colleague. Through these incidents, Schama sheds light on the writing of history, the history of history, and the relationship of 'story' to 'history'.

    Out of stock

    £15.29

  • The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor

    Edinburgh University Press The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisEdinburgh Studies in Later Latin Literature offers a forum for new scholarship on important and sometimes neglected works.

    1 in stock

    £26.99

  • Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and

    Manchester University Press Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisWhat are the archives of gay and lesbian leather histories, and how have contemporary artists mined these archives to create a queer politics of the present? This book sheds light on an area long ignored by traditional art history and LGBTQ studies, examining the legacies of the visual and material cultures of US leather communities. It discusses the work of contemporary artists such as Patrick Staff, Dean Sameshima, Monica Majoli, AK Burns and AL Steiner, and the artist collective Die Kränken, showing how archival histories and contemporary artistic projects might be applied in a broader analysis of LGBTQ culture and norms. Hanky codes, blurry photographs of Tom of Finland drawings, a pin sash weighted down with divergent histories – these become touchstones for writing leather histories.Trade Review'An elegantly disciplined page turner, Bound Together interweaves the various cultures of leather sex and the archive with solid research, sly humor, and patient interpretation. In this context, Campbell's sections on a selected group of contemporary and modern artists are particularly insightful.'Catherine Lord, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine'Sex is good to think with, but Andy Campbell’s leathersex is even better. This exuberant, challenging, perceptive, cleverly crafted and generously illustrated study explores the role of BDSM in visual and material art, performance and archival practice – while, in the process, becoming its own sexual archive. A new kind of art history, Bound together transforms our comprehensions of sex and apprehensions of the archive.'Professor Barry Reay, author of New York Hustlers and Sex in the Archives -- .Table of ContentsList of platesList of figuresAcknowledgements1 Introduction: bound together2 The work of the master’s hand3 How to talk about Tom4 Yellow, or reading archives diagonally5 Numbers6 ‘Clubs that don’t exist anymore’7 Attached to history8 ‘Deep fist at the Modern’9 Conclusion: surrogates, envelopesSelect bibliographyIndex

    1 in stock

    £23.57

  • The Story of America

    Princeton University Press The Story of America

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisInvestigates American origin stories - from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address - to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.Trade ReviewRunner-up for the 2013 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, PEN American Center "In this collection of essays (most of which previously appeared in The New Yorker), Lepore illuminates the various ways in which the story of our nation has been formulated as a narrative. From John Smith's largely fictionalized account of the founding of Jamestown, in 1607, to Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration address, these pieces comprise an examination of the nature of history and an exploration of how the way we tell our story has shaped the story itself."--NewYorker.com's Page-Turner blog "The Story of America, like A is for American, serves up a delightful smorgasbord of synecdoches and allegories of the evolution of American democracy... [A] deeply satisfying book."--Amanda Foreman, Times Literary Supplement "Anyone who has not yet had the pleasure of reading Jill Lepore might begin with The Story of America: Essays on Origins. Ms. Lepore is a gifted historian and a contributor to the New Yorker, where most of these essays appeared. Her subjects range from John Smith and the founding of Jamestown to the murder of a Connecticut family in 2007 by a pair of drug-addled drifters. She drops in on, among others, Andrew Jackson, Noah Webster, Edgar Allen Poe and Charlie Chan (the real one). Her voice is always fresh, her prose engaging and her insights original."--Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal "Ranging from colonial times to the present, the essays are liberally sprinkled with fascinating facts--etymologies of 'ballot' and 'booze,' or that Davy Crockett was the first presidential candidate to write a campaign autobiography. Even the footnotes contain buried treasures; history buffs and general readers alike will savor this collection."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "She trains the literary equivalent of wide-angle and zoom lenses on seminal American documents, examining their subjects and their creators... [E]legant."--Julia M. Klein, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Lepore, who teaches history at Harvard and writes for The New Yorker, brings to the task a keen eye for the often-competing claims of history, politics, and literature... [T]errifically readable, intellectually engaging, and thoroughly entertaining... Lepore's subjects mostly range from the 17th to the 19th centuries, but the essays feel remarkably relevant, grappling with ideas about race, equality, voting rights, taxes, poverty, the role of America in the world."--Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe "In this collection of her essays from the magazine, she paints portraits of George Washington, Thomas Paine, Longfellow, and many forgotten figures in America's founding, rescuing them from dogmatic myth to show that they are as human and as able to surprise as your best friend is able to inspire and infuriate you... Lepore knocks you out of your comfort zone. You thought you knew America?"--The Daily Beast "Tackling a wide variety of subjects--e.g., the Founding Fathers, Charles Dickens, Clarence Darrow, Charlie Chan, voting regulations, the decline of inaugural speeches--the author proves to be a funny, slightly punky literary critic, reading between the lines of American history... As smart, lively, and assured as modern debunker gets."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "If the definition of a good book is one that makes a reader think, then Lepore has written a good book. If the definition of a very good book is one that makes a reader question prevailing thought, then Lepore has written a very good book indeed... The stories behind stories are more revelatory than the so-called facts they are ostensibly built upon. And while to have read the U.S. Constitution is one thing, to understand what it says is an altogether different matter, since its meaning seems to shift with the times and the reader's intent. This book ought to be intentional reading for every American history wonk."--Booklist "Lepore's elegant account of America's genesis is alert to discrepancies and exaggerations of all kinds. It's characteristic of her genial style that while examining the sticky history of Captain John Smith (he of Pocahontas fame), she observes that while he probably wasn't a liar, his pantaloons did on one notable occasion literally burst into flames."--Olivia Laing, Prospect "[L]ively, funny, argumentative, and plain-spoken... Lepore is trying to hear America through its stories, and there are a lot of voices in that choir."--Chris Barsanti, PopMatters "Lepore's strength as a popular historian is her ability to make her target audience ... take a second look at the political culture we have long taken for granted, and realize that our system was not preordained, not historically inevitable, not even, always, very well planned... [S]urprising and enlightening."--Brooke Allen, WilsonQuarterly.com "Jill Lepore's fascinating, provocative and wide-ranging essays explore the 'origin stories' Americans have told themselves, from the 17th-century English settlers in Jamestown and Plymouth to the Founding Fathers to Barack Obama's origin story today. Lepore offers at once a history of American origin stories and a meditation on storytelling."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune "In an engaging and entertaining style, Lepore questions and exposes the political motives underlying commonly accepted versions of history. Each enlightening essay reveals that what most of us think of as history is often a tangle of prejudice, speculation, and imagination. An enjoyable and thought-provoking read for history buffs at all levels and for anyone seeking to understand how history is written."--Library Journal "Elegant, enlightening, and engaging, [Lepore's] essays give the lie to the proposition that contemporary America lacks public intellectuals... Most important, Lepore's analysis is smart, sharp, and sassy."--Tulsa World "The appropriate audience for these stories will surely be the literate citizen, if not the student of history or American Studies... Lepore's ability to bring characters and subjects to life might well persuade such readers to delve more deeply into the biographies of the famous as well as the less famous Americans she engages."--James Gilbert, H-Net Reviews "[C]opiously researched, deftly written and anecdotally instructive."--John Cussen, Erie Times-News "Simple, short and appealing, Jill has told the story of America well."--R. Balashankar, Organiser "In this thoughtful and provocative book, Lepore offers at once a history of origin stories and a meditation on storytelling itself."--World Book Industry "The Story of America is a must-read for anyone interested in American history and the history of American publishing and writing. A fascinating, engaging, and expertly written book. I cannot recommend it highly enough."--Politics Reader "The author's fecundity is matched by the breadth of her reading and wit...Lepore makes a great deal of sense, here and elsewhere. First rate sense."--Michael Kammen, European LegacyTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 1. Here He Lyes 17 2. A Pilgrim Passed I 31 3. The Way to Wealth 44 4. The Age of Paine 59 5. We the Parchment 72 6. I.O.U. 91 7. A Nue Merrykin Dikshunary 111 8. His Highness 130 9. Man of the People 146 10. Pickwick in America 159 11. The Humbug 178 12. President Tom's Cabin 197 13. Pride of the Prairie 209 14. Longfellow's Ride 220 15. Rock, Paper, Scissors 240 16. Objection 254 17. Chan the Man 268 18. The Uprooted 279 19. Rap Sheet 291 20. To Wit 304 Notes 319 Index 399

    1 in stock

    £19.80

  • Honor Vengeance and Social Trouble

    Cornell University Press Honor Vengeance and Social Trouble

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisAn example of microhistory at its best, this book offers a new perspective on the socal history of medieval and early modern Europe and on historiography more broadly.Trade Review"The merit of Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble: Pardon Letters in the Burgundian Low Countries lies in its attempt, wherever possible, to corroborate the cases it examines by unearthing supplementary archival data from a variety of sources, and to vividly and amusingly illuminate the social world in the towns and villages of the fifteenth-century Burgundian lands." -- Thierry Boucquey * Comitatus 47 *The novelty of this book lies in chapters 3 and 4, where the focus shifts from homicide to a set of pardon letters—statistically, a tiny minority—involving the abduction, real or alleged, of a woman. Here we get an illuminating glimpse of marriage law, interpersonal violence, the interaction between these two, and fifteenth-century life generally. -- Pieter Spierenburg * Renaissance Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction. The Forgiving Prince: Pardons and Their Origins1. Social Discord: Disputes, Vendettas, and Political Clients2. Violence, Honor, and Sexuality3. Marital Conflict4. Actress, Wife, or Lover? Maria van der Hoeven Accused and DefendedConclusion. People and Their StoriesBibliographical Note Index

    2 in stock

    £26.59

  • Historians Fallacie

    HarperCollins Publishers Inc Historians Fallacie

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £21.11

  • A History of Histories Epics Chronicles Romances

    Penguin Books Ltd A History of Histories Epics Chronicles Romances

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis unprecedented book, by one of Britain''s leading intellectual historians, describes the intellectual impact that the study and consideration of the past has had in the western world over the past 2500 years, treating the practise of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the cultural history of Europe and America. It magnificently brings to life the work of historians from the Greeks to the present, explaining their distinctive qualities and allowing the modern reader to appreciate and enjoy them. But is also examines subjects as diverse as the new perspectives brought about by the rise of Rome, the interests of medieval chroniclers, the effects of Romanticism and the emergence towards the end of the nineteenth century of an historical profession. It sets out to be not the history of an academic discipline, but a history of choice: the choice of pasts, and the ways they have been demarcated, investigated, presented and even soTrade Review'if historians have a Valhalla, a hall of heroes, he has earned his place with this book' - Dominic Sandbrook, Evening Standard 'a triumphant success. The result is a highly enjoyable book, based on a vast amount of reading, written with attractive simplicity, brimming with acute observations, and often very witty. Anyone who wants to know what historical writing has contributed to our culture should start here' - Keith Thomas, Guardian 'This book is magnificent: a daunting combination of vast range, profound learning and high literary art. In 500 superbly crafted pages (miraculously succinct for the task in hand), Burrow's chapters treat of almost every imporant historian of the last two-and-a-half thousand years' - John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • Memoirs of My Life

    Penguin Books Ltd Memoirs of My Life

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisEdward Gibbon was one of the world''s greatest historians and a towering figure of his age. When he died in 1794 he left behind the unfinished drafts of his Memoirs, which were posthumously edited by his friend Lord Sheffield, and remain an astonishing portrait of a rich, full life. Recounting Gibbon''s sickly childhood in London, his disappointment with an Oxford ''steeped in port and prejudice'', his successful years in Lausanne, his first and only love affair and the monolithic achievement of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he distils his genius for history into a remarkable gift for autobiography. Candid and detailed, these writings are filled with warmth and intellectual passion.

    Out of stock

    £11.69

  • Times Witness History in the Age of Romanticism

    Penguin Books Ltd Times Witness History in the Age of Romanticism

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisTrade ReviewHill is a magnificent historian and ... Time's Witness is a book to change the way you think about history. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *in this rich and absorbing study ... Hill has succeeded splendidly in her mission to rescue these often strange, eccentric but fascinating figures from "oblivion and the condescension of posterity". -- Paul Lay * The Times *Long meditated and meticulously researched, this book ... [is] presented in prose of unassertive grace and quiet wit ... what it offers is a rich feast, best consumed slowly and savoured, and Hill has assembled each course with magnificent erudition. -- Rupert Christiansen * Sunday Telegraph *immensely engaging... exceptional ... Antiquarianism was about making the past live again, and Hill makes the past of the antiquarians live again ... we can discern an innovative, sly and wry new form of non-fiction ... a beautifully written and very clever book which is psychologically astute -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *Not many writers could control this wide-ranging narrative with such clarity or assurance as here. Nor has Dr Hill succumbed to the temptation to tell in a long book what could be presented in a relatively short one. The result is outstanding: an engaging, incisive and thought-provoking exploration of the history of history in Romantic Britain. -- John Goodall * Country Life *She has accumulated a vast amount of detailed material and organized it impeccably into a witty and intelligent narrative which is both erudite and readable. If only all history was written this well. -- Clare Pettitt * Times Literary Supplement *impressive and stimulating ... At its heart, Time's Witness is a social and intellectual history that pays tribute to the role of antiquaries in recasting the way that British people understood and came to respect their distant national past. Hill seeks to rescue the antiquaries from "the condescension of posterity", and in that she succeeds admirably -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *Time's Witness retraces the antiquarians' journey into the past through the revolutions of the present ... Hill is an elegant stylist and vivid storyteller, and her account brims with anecdotes gathered from the little-known papers of her protagonists ... few could resist this sensitive, learned and amusing plunge into the historical imagination. -- Tom Stammers * Apollo *In this engaging survey ... by marrying scholarship and sensibility ... she achieves her stated aim of restoring history to the antiquaries and the antiquaries to history. -- Andrew Lycett * Spectator *"The history we have," Rosemary Hill writes in her preface to Time's Witness "is the history we want. It is the picture we choose to see in the clouds." Hill's book accordingly recreates, in magnificent detail, the cloud pictures conjured into being by the historians, writers, architects and artists and, above all, antiquaries who, between 1789 and 1851, reimagined the relationship between past and present in both Britain and France. -- Daisy Hay * BBC History Magazine *Time's Witness, which records with such verve the steady extension of subjects deemed fit for scholarly investigation two hundred years ago, is published at a moment when much of the curiosity and many of the pursuits it documents are endangered. -- Nicholas Penny * London Review of Books *Not everything that was false was fake, a theme that runs through Time's Witness, pushing us to think differently about the past, challenging our expectations of how that past should be recorded and interpreted and, above all, placing the Romantic sensibility and its embracing of subjectivity and imaginative reconstruction at the heart of historical enquiry. -- Adrian Tinniswood * History Today *in the best Romantic antiquarian tradition, the book is an engaging and densely detailed scholarly tome that reads a bit like a love letter, or at least an expression of infectious intellectual enthusiasm. Throughout Time's Witness, 'history' becomes visible as a succession of ideas and theories about the past that are continuously overlaid and revised in an ongoing process of exchange and accumulation. -- Sarah Watling * Literary Review *

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • Times Monster

    Penguin Books Ltd Times Monster

    7 in stock

    Book SynopsisCHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NEW STATESMAN AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE''In this searing book, Priya Satia demonstrates, yet again, that she is one of our most brilliant and original historians'' Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly WatersFor generations, the history of the British empire was written by its victors. British historians'' accounts of conquest guided the consolidation of imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. Their narratives of the development of imperial governance licensed the brutal suppression of colonial rebellion. Their reimagining of empire during the two world wars compromised the force of decolonization.In this brilliant work, Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed. History emerged as a mode of ethics in the modern period, endowing historians from John Stuart Mill to Winston Churchill with outsized policymaking power. Braided with this story is an account of alternative visions articulated by anticolonial thinkers such as William Blake, Mahatma Gandhi and E. P. Thompson. By the mid-twentieth century, their approaches had reshaped the discipline of history and the ethics that came with it.Time''s Monster reveals the dramatic consequences of writing history today as much as in the past. Against the backdrop of enduring global inequalities and debates about reparations and the legacy of empire, Satia offers us a hugely important and urgent moral voice.Trade ReviewMuch of the best scholarship today is ­distinguished by a vigorous and sustained challenge to old imperialist verities. Priya Satia's Time's Monster, which comes out of a long, if little-noticed, intellectual ­counter-tradition in Asia and Europe, bracingly describes how our moral and political imagination became so constrained and how it could be liberated -- Pankaj Mishra, * New Statesman, Books of the Year *Vital. . . a coruscating and important reworking of the relationship between history, historians and empire -- Kenan Malik * Observer *Phenomenal . . . in asking how British men felt able to justify running an empire rooted in violence and systemic inequality, Satia's discussion of this ethical conundrum runs into wonderfully imaginative, even astronomical and spiritual spaces -- Priya Atwal * BBC History Magazine *Priya Satia's book dazzles by its brilliance but also points to other enigmas and mysteries that historians have to confront and unravel * The Wire *Turns the lens on history as a subject, asking how we have told the story of empire in the past. Satia offers a scholarly and analytical interpretation of how historians themselves have framed the ways that empire is understood in British history writing - from John Stuart Mill to EP Thompson -- Yasmin Khan * BBC History Magazine, Books of the Year *A meditative, intensive and sweeping critique of the discipline of history . . . an important book * History Today *Fearless . . . A book that puts the historian's craft to brilliant use in examining the philosophical and conceptual foundations of the discipline of History -- Amitav GhoshNot only a sweeping account of the British Empire over the past three centuries, but also an ambitious intellectual history, touching on everything from the Mahabharata to Marx, and from Shakespeare to Said. . . This urgent and compelling book encourages us to listen to different voices, to tell different stories, and ultimately to rethink what it means to be a historian and to engage critically and imaginatively with the past -- Kim Wagner, author of Amritsar 1919In this searing book, Priya Satia demonstrates, yet again, that she is one of our most brilliant and original historians. Time's Monster casts new light on the British Empire by homing in on a fundamental question --how did 'good' men, acutely concerned with their consciences, preside over systematic exploitation and repeated atrocities? Satia shows that only if we grapple with the complicity of historians in assuaging their moral qualms can we confront empire's darkest legacies in our troubled world -- Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly WatersDeeply thought-provoking and incisively argued, Time's Monster is sure to become a classic for anyone interested in European empires and the role of history in shaping human behaviour. In this extraordinary book, Priya Satia weaves wide-ranging evidence into a lively narrative, proving incontrovertibly why she is one of the most important historians of our time. -- Caroline Elkins, author of Imperial ReckoningA pathbreaking study of the historical imagination's founding in colonialism. Moving from historical counternarratives to anti-historical thinking and poetry, Priya Satia guides us through important new ways of understanding the imperial past and its effects on our shared future. -- Faisal Devji, author of The Impossible IndianA deeply insightful account of the way historical thinking informs the exercise of power. If historians are to play a positive role in the struggle to bend the arc of human history away from tyranny and toward justice, the lessons of this book should weigh heavily on our collective conscience. But more than that, this work is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how the way we know the past shapes our future possibilities -- Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s RevoltA magisterial account of the role of history in the making of the British Empire. At a moment of chronic hand-wringing over the decline of the historical profession and the crisis of the humanities, Time's Monster is an especially welcome addition for understanding how history can be used and misused. -- Dinyar Patel, author of NaorojiHistory writing once burnished the monument of imperial progress, and continues to do so for many audiences today. In her brilliant and coruscating account of the uses of history in the making and unmaking of the British empire, Priya Satia offers a striking new way of confronting the problems that continue to plague contemporary societies. This is a bravura performance -- Samuel Moyn, author of Not EnoughAs people around the globe struggle against a world order that owes its existence to rampant resource exploitation and dehumanizing beliefs about racial hierarchies, Priya Satia has given us a timely and powerful reminder about the complicity of history, as a discipline, in the making of that order. -- Jacob Dlamini, author of The Terrorist Album

    7 in stock

    £10.44

  • The InformationLiterate Historian

    Oxford University Press The InformationLiterate Historian

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis

    Out of stock

    £38.69

  • The Norman Conquest

    Oxford University Press The Norman Conquest

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe Norman Conquest in 1066 was the last time England was successfully invaded, and was one of the most profound turning points in English history, cataclysmically transforming a disparate collection of small nations into a European state. But what actually happened? How was the invasion viewed by those who witnessed it? And how has its legacy been seen by generations since? This fascinating Very Short Introduction reveals how dramatically English life was changed, from its language to its law, and focuses on the differing ways the conquest has been viewed by historians and in folklore ever since. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

    2 in stock

    £9.49

  • African History

    Oxford University Press African History

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisEssential reading for anyone interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this Very Short Introduction looks at Africa''s past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. Key themes in current thinking about Africa''s history are illustrated with a range of fascinating historical examples, drawn from over 5 millennia across this vast continent.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewA very well informed and sharply stated historiography... should be in every historiography student's kitbag. A tour de force... it made me think a great deal. * Terence Ranger, The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies *You will finish this book better informed, with a better understanding of Africa and a clearer idea of the questions. * Robert Giddings, Tribune *This small book is a smart and stimulating essay exploring issues of history, sources and methods, Africa in the world, colonialism and postcolonialism, and the past in the present as a means of introducing students and others to academic thinking about African history. * Tom Spear, Journal of African History *Table of Contents1. The idea of Africa ; 2. Africans: diversity and unity ; 3. Africa's past: historical sources ; 4. Africa in the world ; 5. Colonialism in Africa ; 6. Imagining the future, rebuilding the past ; 7. Memory and forgetting, past and present

    Out of stock

    £9.49

  • Oxford University Press History and Morality

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisShould historians make value judgements about the past? Many historians think not, but Donald Bloxham contends that it is legitimate, often unavoidable, and frequently important. History and Morality illuminates how far tacit moral judgements infuse works of history, and how strange those histories would look if the judgements were removed.Trade ReviewBloxham's book is a call for nuance and self-awareness, arguing that moral judgement is not only important, but is actually inescapable. What matters is how we deploy it - and that we are conscious of doing so. * Jonathan Waterlow, H/Sz/Kult *It is all too rare that a scholarly book - the product of decades of research and careful thought - emerges at precisely the moment when it is most needed ... Masterfully spanning multiple academic disciplines, Bloxham takes us back to the very foundations of Western thinking, charting the development of our conceptions of core values like 'truth', 'justice', 'responsibility', and 'guilt' ... History and Morality will be immensely useful not only for a generation of historians wary of making value judgements about the past, but also for a new generation who, in their drive to bring morality back into the picture, are sometimes too hasty to appreciate the importance of context and the pitfalls of anachronism. * Jonathan Waterlow, H-Soz-Kult *Bloxham['s] digressions and byways are often as rich as the main thread of the argument...History and Morality ought to achieve wide readership. * Professor Daniel Woolf, Queen's University, Reviews in History *

    Out of stock

    £23.99

  • Shrinking History On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory

    Oxford University Press Shrinking History On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisStudies the burgeoning field of psychohistory - from Freud, its primogenitor, to its present-day academic practitioners - and argues that little, if any, psychohistory is good histor. The author systematically points out the pitfalls, sheer irrationality, and ultimately ahistorical nature of this mode of historical inquiry.

    15 in stock

    £13.99

  • Race and the Writing of History

    Oxford University Press, USA Race and the Writing of History

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis study examines the role of race in the construction of history and the validation of knowledge. Using Martin Bernal''s Black Athena and its critiques as an entrée into the historical inquiries of African American intellectuals and many of their African counterparts, Keita engages the contested legacy of writing history in America. Ranging from 1700 BCE to the late twentieth century, he offers a new perspective on the challenge of building new historiographies and epistemologies.Trade ReviewThis useful book, which is a significant contribution to Oxford University Press's Race and American Culture series, is a sophisticated defense of Afrocentrism...Indeed, Keita's analysis of Snowden's paradoxes and ironies is a substantial contribution to our existing knowledge...This excellent work complements but does not supercede older works by Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Stephen Howe-neither of whom, surprisingly, is cited in Keita's book. Nevertheless, Race and the Writing of History should be must reading for professional historians. * History: Review of New Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Race and Historiography ; 2. Blackness in Ancient History: Criticism and Critique ; 3. Historiography and Black Historians ; 4. Carter G. Woodson ; 5. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ; 6. William Leo Hansberry ; 7. Frank M. Snowden, Jr. ; 8. Through a Glass Darkly: Afrocentrism ; 9. The Thesis and Its Refinement ; 10. Reprise: Conclusion by Way of Continuity

    15 in stock

    £114.75

  • The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History

    OUP USA The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis Oxford Handbook surveys the large and growing field of Latin American history by bringing together the principal themes and approaches over the past three decades. Essays address indigenous peoples of the region, colonial history, independence movements, rural history, slavery and race, European and Asian immigration, labor movements, gender and sexuality, popular religion, family and childhood, economic history, politics, and disease and medicine. The contributors include top scholars in the field.Trade ReviewIt is impossible to do justice to all the contributions and the wealth of ideas and debates they present. Considering that this must have been a long-prepared and tightly organised project, it is striking how different the contributions are. * Michiel Baud, Journal of Latin American Studies *I cannot recommend this volume highly enough. It offers an exhilarating panorama of the wonderful historical research on Latin America carried out in the past quarter century. * Rebecca Earle, English Historical Review *Table of ContentsPREFACE; INTRODUCTION-JOSE C. MOYA; BIBLIOGRAPHY

    15 in stock

    £49.40

  • History Scripture and Authority in the

    Oxford University Press History Scripture and Authority in the

    Book SynopsisHistory, Scripture and Authority in the Carolingian Empire offers a detailed analysis of the work of the ninth-century historian Frechulf of Lisieux. It uses the creation of Frechulf''s monumental Histories to explore how the past was read and interpreted in the Carolingian world.In c. 830, Frechulf, bishop of the northwestern Frankish see of Lisieux, completed his Histories, a vast account of the world from its creation through to the seventh century. Despite the richness of the source, it has long been overlooked by modern scholars. Two factors account for this neglect: Frechulf''s narrative stops over two centuries short of his time of writing, and was largely a compilation of earlier, late antique histories and chronicles. In examining Frechulf''s historiographical compendium, this book challenges a dominant paradigm within medieval studies of understanding history-writing primarily as an extension of politics and power. By focusing instead on the transmission and reception of patrTrade ReviewWhat makes History, Scripture, and Authority in the Carolingian Empire truly essential for anyone interested in early medieval historiography or the genre of 'universal history' is Ward's close and enormously insightful reading of a woefully under-read text. * Dr. Josh Timmermann, Early Medieval Europe *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Frechulf and the Carolingian Culture of Compilation 2: The Truth of History 3: Re-Framing Eusebius-Jerome's Chronicle 4: Incarnation and Empire: Orosius and the Exegesis of History 5: Christiana Tempora? the Conclusion of the Histories and the Creation of a Patristic Past 6: Past and Present in the Histories Conclusion Index

    £83.49

  • Servants Abroad

    Oxford University Press Servants Abroad

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisServants Abroad presents manuscript journals by four British domestic servants who travelled to continental Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, a period that tends to be seen as the golden age of a quintessentially aristocratic form of travel, the ''Grand Tour''. Yet if each wealthy traveller brought at least one employee, as seems a safe estimate, then more people knew this kind of travel as a period of work than as a gentlemanly rite of passage or an early form of tourism. For the first time, this volume makes first-hand accounts by members of this majority available for research and teaching. With a full introduction and extensive annotations, these texts upend the standard view of eighteenth-century travel from Britain to continental Europe, casting the ''Grand Tour'' as an important episode in transnational labour history, and taking the study of working-class life writing in an exciting new direction.

    15 in stock

    £135.85

  • Sparks

    OUP India Sparks

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £24.21

  • Sparks

    OUP India Sparks

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    2 in stock

    £20.96

  • A Commentary on Herodotus in Two Volumes With Introduction and Appendixes Volume 2 Books VIX

    Clarendon Press A Commentary on Herodotus in Two Volumes With Introduction and Appendixes Volume 2 Books VIX

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisHerodotus has been called by Cicero and other ancient critics `the father of history''. He was in fact the first to make the events of the past the subject of research and verification (historie) and then relate their consequences to the present. The main subject of his Histories is the struggle between Persia and Greece from the time of Croesus to that of Xerxes; added to this are frequent digressions, varying in length, giving a wealth of information on customs and cultures of people foreign to the Greeks.The new paperback edition of How and Wells''s standard commentary on the Histories (in print continuously since 1912) deals with the last five books (out of nine) covering Sparta under King Cleomenes, the Battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, and the final rout of the Persians at Plataea in 479 BC. The detailed commentary, though of interest to the scholar, is aimed primarily at the student: short summaries introduce the subject-matter of sections of the text, and there are eight appendixes addressing problems raised in the commentary. This volume also contains an index to the complete commentary.Table of ContentsCommentary on books V - IX; Appendices 16-22; Herodotus on Tyranny; Sparta under King Cleomenes (520-490 BC); Marathon; Numbers of the armies and fleets (480-479 BC); The campaign of 480 BC; Salamis; The campaigns of 479 BC; Arms, tactics, and strategy in the Persian War; Additional notes; Index (to both volumes)

    15 in stock

    £26.09

  • Oxford University Press Imagining Irelands Pasts Early Modern Ireland

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe book describes how various authors addressed the history of early modern Ireland over four centuries, and explains why they could not settle on an agreed narrative.Trade ReviewThis study is a distinctive landmakr, seemingly far removed from the 'snappy' book that Canny originally intended. * John Gibney, Royal Irish Academy, History Ireland *Written in an authoritative and engaging style, this remarkable historical study is eloquent testimony to Canny's inspirational passion for and commitment to early modern Irish history. A landmark contribution to Irish historiography, it is essential reading for anybody interested in how Irish history has been remembered and used to serve present purposes down through the centuries. * Marian Lyons, The Irish Times *Table of Contents1: The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Writing of Ireland's History in the Sixteenth Century 2: Composing counter-narratives in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 3: New Histories for a New Ireland 4: The 1641 Rebellion and Ireland's Contested Pasts 5: Eighteenth-Century Aristocratic Histories of Ireland During the Sixteenth and Seventeeth Centuries 6: Enlightenment Historians of Ireland and Their Critics 7: The Vernacular Alternative: Catholic and Protestant Popular Reconsiderations of Ireland's Early Modern History During the Age of Revolutions 8: Re-imagining Ireland's Early Modern Past: The Young Ireland Agenda, Dissident Views, and the Catholic Alternative 9: Re-imagining Ireland's Early Modern Past During the Later Nineteenth Century 10: Fresh Unionist Reappraisals of Ireland's History During the Early Modern Centuries 11: The Birth and Early Demise of a Liberal View of Ireland's Early Modern Past 12: The Failure of the Imagination Concerning Ireland's Past

    1 in stock

    £111.62

  • The History of Emotions

    Oxford University Press The History of Emotions

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Emotions are complex mental states that resist reduction. They are visceral reactions but also beliefs about the world. They are spontaneous outbursts but also culturally learned performances. They are intimate and private and yet gain their substance and significance only from interpersonal and social frameworks. And just as our emotions in any given moment display this complex structure, so their history is plural rather than singular. The history of emotions is where the history of ideas meets the history of the body, and where the history of subjectivity meets social and cultural history.In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Dixon traces the historical ancestries of feelings ranging from sorrow, melancholy, rage, and terror to cheerfulness, enthusiasm, sympathy, and love. The picture that emerges is a complex one, showing how the states we group together today as the emotions are the product of long and varied historTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgements List of illustrations 1: The pulse of the past 2: A map of woe 3: From passions to emojis 4: Terror and the pursuit of happiness 5: All the rages 6: Looking for love References and further reading Index

    4 in stock

    £9.49

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