History Books

Book SynopsisIn the mediaeval period, Central Asia rose to prominence as a centre of Persian-Islamic culture, from the Seljuks to the Mongols. Khodadad Rezakhani tells the back story of this rise to prominence, the story of the famed Kushans and mysterious 'Asian Huns', and their role in shaping both the Sasanian Empire and the rest of the Middle East.

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Book SynopsisIn Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.Trade Review"Intentionally answering the call for interdisciplinary scholarship, this innovative work will be valuable for clinicians as well as scholars of race. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- J. deGuzman * Choice *"One of the most striking aspects of Eng and Han’s book is the relative ease with which it toggles back and forth between psychoanalytic case studies of people in various stages of suffering and characters in novels who were created to embody themes of beauty and triumph, suffering and fracture. . . . There’s a power in being able to recognize our struggles as the result of paradoxes we live within rather than seeing them as purely private failings. It’s a step toward imagining lives that we might be the authors of, with endings that we write ourselves." -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker *"Accessibly written and powerfully argued, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation is an excellent resource for any scholar thinking about race and psychoanalysis and, specifically, who are thinking critically about the use of psychoanalytic paradigms like mourning, loss, melancholia, infantile development, reparation, or transitional objects in relation to questions of the lived experiences of racial oppression." -- Christopher Bennett * Journal of Critical Race Inquiry *"Eng and Han—a literature professor and a psychotherapist, respectively—demonstrate how to understand the entanglements of history, culture, and psychoanalysis for Asian Americans. . . . This is an unusual social justice project, for it imagines a collective politics that is grounded in the intimate—and highly individualized—work of therapeutic repair." -- Amy R. Wong * Public Books *“Eng and Han’s work provides a critical vocabulary for articulating the slippery and insidious ways multicultural violence operates in the contemporary era.... Eng and Han contribute an invaluable perspective on Asian Americans’ racial and psychic processes that will be of interest to scholars across disciplines....” -- Corinne Mitsuye Sugino * Journal of Asian American Studies *Table of ContentsPreface vii Introduction: The History of the (Racial) Subject and the Subject of (Racial) History 1 Part I: Racial Melancholia 1. Racial Melancholia: Model Minorities, Depression, and Suicide 33 2. Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption, Racial Reparation, and Racial Transnational Objects 66 Part II. Racial Dissociation 3. Racial Dissociation: Parachute Children and Psychic Nowhere 101 4. (Gay) Panic Attack: Coming Out in a Colorblind Age 141 Epilogue 174 Notes 181 Bibliography 203 Index 213

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Book SynopsisIn Reckoning with Slavery Jennifer L. Morgan draws on the lived experiences of enslaved African women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to reveal the contours of early modern notions of trade, race, and commodification in the Black Atlantic. From capture to transport to sale to childbirth, these women were demographically counted as commodities during the Middle Passage, vulnerable to rape, separated from their kin at slave markets, and subject to laws that enslaved their children upon birth. In this way, they were central to the binding of reproductive labor with kinship, racial hierarchy, and the economics of slavery. Throughout this groundbreaking study, Morgan demonstrates that the development of Western notions of value and race occurred simultaneously. In so doing, she illustrates how racial capitalism denied the enslaved their kinship and affective ties while simultaneously relying on kinship to reproduce and enforce slavery through enslaved female bodies.Trade Review“Jennifer L. Morgan examines the transition to racialized slavery in the early modern Atlantic world with innovative research methods and original analysis. She brilliantly accounts for the emergence of an unholy alliance between a novel proficiency with numbers and the hierarchical classification of human difference, which helped to make kinship into a commodity. This is essential reading for anyone who wonders how Black humanity ceased to matter to some, and why centuries later we must still proclaim the worth of Black lives.” -- Vincent Brown, author of * Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War *“Jennifer L. Morgan makes an original, innovative, and creative intervention in the study of race and gender that establishes the groundwork necessary for revising our knowledge of the systems of trade and the commodification of peoples in the nineteenth century. Reckoning with Slavery is essential reading for anyone in the social sciences and the humanities who wants to understand the formation of the modern world. A major work.” -- Hazel V. Carby, author of * Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands *"Reckoning with Slavery challenges historians who have reckoned with slavery in the numerical sense without reckoning in the intellectual and moral sense with the subjectivity and intellectual work of enslaved people. . . . The threads of this rich and powerful work will generate new scholarship for years to come." -- Diana Paton * Black Perspectives *"There is much about this book that's deeply impressive. The depth and breadth of the research give a solidity to the argument that belies the difficult and fragmentary sources." -- Tim Lockley * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"One of the most illuminating aspects of Morgan’s work is how it invites us to reconsider the data we have about the slave trade. . . . Many of the stories of enslaved women might never be recovered, but Reckoning with Slavery shows how their stories might still be told by reading their silences creatively. The absence of women from the history of slave revolts, for instance, might not necessarily mean that they failed to participate in these uprisings or that they only participated in tiny, quotidian ways. It might also mean that their deeds were erased because women were so foundational to these uprisings that they inspired unease. Such a creative methodology paves the way for new, provocative historical narratives to be written." -- Li Qi Peh * Critical Inquiry *"As Black women lead worldwide movements to affirm the worth of Black lives in the face of white-supremacist violence today, Reckoning with Slavery illuminates some of the roots of this radical tradition of imagining Black futurity and making the world anew against the seemingly all-powerful forces of the state and the market." -- Eduarda Lira Araujo * E3W Review of Books *"Jennifer L. Morgan’s second book is one that will change the way scholars of slavery and the Black Atlantic think about the archives, enslaved women, and Black women’s theoretical and methodological offerings then and now. . . . It should become essential reading for academic audiences, college students, and any organization interested in reparations." -- Deirdre Cooper Owens * Studies in Romanticism *"[Reckoning with Slavery] sets a new bar for historians of the early modern era and of Western modernity. Morgan helps us see capitalism as racial capitalism, the radicalism of the Enlightenment as Black radicalism, and African women as central to both – and now that we see, there is no unseeing." -- Mariana L. R. Dantas * Journal of Early American History *"Morgan’s book will be welcomed by scholars who study the history of slavery and women’s history. She concentrates on women, their bodies, their experiences, their feelings, and their decisions. The book should be required reading in graduate courses on the history of slavery, economic history, the history of the body, and women’s history. Finally, it should be included in historical methodology classes due to its excellent incorporation of theory and its outstanding analysis of primary sources." -- Karol K. Weaver * H-Slavery, H-Net Reviews *"Reckoning with Slavery is a valuable addition to the studies of enslaved women, slavery, slavery and capitalism, and the violence of the archive. It is a wonderful example of the importance of centering the lives and experiences of enslaved women and their own understanding of the connections between kinship, slavery, and capitalism." -- Allison Madar * H-Early-America, H-Net Reviews *"For slavery’s early history, especially the role that gender, kinship, and capitalism played in the rise and perpetuation of human bondage throughout the Atlantic World, this is a book to be reckoned with, one that is sure to be required reading. I predict that it will remain that way for a long time to come." -- Eliga Gould * The Americas *"Through her whole career, Jennifer Morgan has blazed the trail for scholars seeking to understand the foundational dynamics of reproduction in the Atlantic World. In Reckoning with Slavery, she has crafted yet more theoretical considerations by which to comprehend the intersection of gender and capitalism, and this book will undoubtedly stimulate yet more rounds of discussion and debate. It is a text that will reach and impact many scholarly communities: those studying slavery, gender, family, the economy, and relations of power. It will also serve as a critical guide to face the new reality of reproduction in the United States going forward." -- Daniel Livesay * Journal of Family History *"Reckoning with Slavery is, simply put, a brilliant and important work. I am in awe of Morgan’s achievement." -- Carla Gardina Pestana * New West Indian Guide/Niewe West-Indische Gids *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Refusing Demography 1 1. Producing Numbers: Reckoning with the Sex Ratio in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1500–1700 29 2. "Unfit Subjects of Trade": Demographic Logics and Colonial Encounters 55 3. "To Their Great Commoditie": Numeracy and the Production of African Difference 110 4. Accounting for the "Most Excruciating Torment": Transatlantic Passages 141 5. "The Division of the Captives": Commerce and Kinship in the English Americas 170 6. "Treacherous Rogues": Locating Women in Resistance and Revolt 207 Conclusion. Madness 245 Bibliography 257 Index 283

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Book SynopsisWhen it comes to historical violence and contemporary inequality, none of us are completely innocent. We may not be direct agents of harm, but we may still contribute to, inhabit, or benefit from regimes of domination that we neither set up nor control. Arguing that the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account for our connection to injustices past and present, Michael Rothberg offers a new theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject. The Implicated Subject builds on the comparative, transnational framework of Rothberg's influential work on memory to engage in reflection and analysis of cultural texts, archives, and activist movements from such contested zones as transitional South Africa, contemporary Israel/Palestine, post-Holocaust Europe, and a transatlantic realm marked by the afterlives of slavery. As these diverse sites of inquiry indicate, the processes and histories illuminated by implicated subjectivity are legion in our interconnected world. An array of globally prominent artists, writers, and thinkers—from William Kentridge, Hito Steyerl, and Jamaica Kincaid, to Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Judith Butler, and the Combahee River Collective—speak to this interconnection and show how confronting our own implication in difficult histories can lead to new forms of internationalism and long-distance solidarity.Trade Review"A significant work by a major scholar with a well-deserved international reputation, The Implicated Subject develops a new and necessary conceptual vocabulary for the conflicting histories of our world. While drawing on a global range of histories and texts, the book never loses focus on the contemporary moment." -- Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway * University of London *"A pathbreaking meditation on the politics and ethics of remembrance in our time, The Implicated Subject shifts the discussion in a variety of disciplines from the dated notions of guilt and innocence to the complexities of responsibility and accountability. This is imperative reading for our age of muddled categories and retreat from personal and scholarly engagement." -- Amir Eshel * Stanford University *"My students and I have been waiting for this book. Offering a fresh vocabulary to confront our personal and collective responsibility in the face of massive political violence, past and present, The Implicated Subject is sure to advance the conversation. Its stakes are as high as its thinking is subtle, clear, and persuasive." -- Marianne Hirsch * Columbia University *"This is a bold project....as we confront a climate catastrophe of global proportions, we must all face the future as implicated subjects." -- Zoë Waxman * Times Higher Education *"Rothberg's strength lies in his remarkable ability to explain complicated theoretical issues in a few sentences, weaving together the political and the ethical, the historical and the aesthetic....[This is a] brilliant and courageous discussion of contemporary political identity. I have no doubt that this book will become, much like Rothberg's previous work, Multidirectional Memory, a basic reference for students of our interregnum world." -- Nitzan Lebovic * Critical Inquiry *"This is a notable book that will reconfigure debates over memory and power." -- Miguel Cardina * Memoirs *"[The] term 'implicated subject' is a valuable contribution to the vocabulary of human rights and should be immediately adopted for use across a variety of disciplines, from political science and philosophy to history and economics." -- Guy Lancaster * International Journal on World Peace *"[Rothberg] avoids the charged terms guilt and morality in order to attain a fresh perspective onto why people of various historical and cultural contexts participate in wrongdoing, even in spite of knowing better. Such a fresh perspective is urgently needed in order to move beyond a mere naming, blaming, and singling out of culprits, towards any analysis of the complexity of involvements." -- Juliane Prade-Weiss * Journal of Perpetrator Research *"As is often the case with the best academic work, The Implicated Subject takes something that had hitherto sat in a theoretical blind-spot and, through clear description and incisive discussion of examples, makes that concept seem rather obvious in hindsight....[It] will make an immediate impact on, and a valuable supplement to, academic work addressing issues of perpetration and complicity." -- Ivan Stacy * Textual Practice *"After coining the groundbreaking notion of multidirectional memory, Rothberg's The Implicated Subject is another crucial contribution to the scholarship on memory studies....Undoubtedly, the notions of implicated subject and implication provide scholars with precious tools to complicate the study of the roles of a wide range of transnational social actors and groups who, at different levels, directly or indirectly engaged contexts where human atrocities were committed." -- Ana Lucia Araujo * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroductionFrom Victims and Perpetrators to Implicated Subjects chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the conceptual framework of the book. Starting from a discussion of responses to the killing of Trayvon Martin and other examples of racist violence, the chapter argues that the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander do not adequately account for our connection to injustices past and present and proposes a new theory of political responsibility through the figure of the implicated subject. The chapter distinguishes an approach based on implication and implicated subjects from related approaches to complicity, postmemory, and the beneficiary; it lays out the stakes of the book; and provides an account of the chapters to come. 1The Transmission Belt of Domination: Theorizing the Implicated Subject chapter abstractThis chapter discusses thinking on intersectionality, complicity, and responsibility that contributes to an understanding of the implicated subject. It considers reflections on victimhood, perpetration, responsibility, and memory that have emerged in the field of Holocaust studies, and supplements it with approaches to structural injustice and the Black feminist theory of intersectionality. Drawing on these diverse sources, the chapter formulates a theory of implication and the implicated subject that offers an alternative to the usual accounts of human rights violations and their aftermaths. Above all, this theory leaves behind the detached and disinterested spectators who dominate discussions of distant suffering in favor of entangled, impure subjects of historical and political responsibility. The implicated subject, the chapter argues, is a transmission belt of domination. 2On (Not) Being a Descendant: Implicated Subjects and the Legacies of Slavery chapter abstractThis chapter begins by considering what the concept of the "implicated subject" can lend to the debates about historical redress, restitution, and reparations that have accompanied attempts to confront the long-distance legacies of transatlantic slavery. Next, in order to assess those legacies, it reflects on the very word "legacy" along with its conceptual kin. In a third section, the chapter turns to a literary example, Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place, in order to think further about how the category of the descendant functions in the aftermath of traumatic histories. Kincaid's powerful polemic provides a visceral and affectively charged example of what implication might mean for the beneficiaries of slavery's legacies. Finally, the chapter considers Kincaid's text in dialogue with Catherine Hall and Nicholas Draper's Legacies of British Slave-Ownership project in order to distinguish between two forms of implication: the genealogical and the structural. 3Progress, Progression, Procession: William Kentridge's Implicated Aesthetic chapter abstractThis chapter considers the implicated aesthetic of the Jewish South African artist William Kentridge. Kentridge's work serves as inspiration for thinking about the narrative form embedded in transitional justice—a politico-legal regime that has emerged in response to transformations like the one in South Africa. The chapter provides a brief introduction to the "narratology" of transitional justice. It argues that transitional justice brings with it a fundamental narrative tension involving the negotiation between continuity and discontinuity, on the one hand, and between implicated and disembedded subjects, on the other. This framework helps open up the narrative dimensions of Kentridge's experiments in animated filmmaking, where he first begins to explore the minimally narrative genre of the procession. The two final sections of the chapter illustrate how Kentridge's quasi-autobiographical exploration of "complex implication" opens up a deep, multidirectional history of race that is simultaneously post-slavery and post-Holocaust. 4From Gaza to Warsaw: Multidirectional Memory and the Perpetuator chapter abstractThis chapter reflects on complex implication through the example of Jewish diasporic critique of Israel. It focuses on a controversy that arose when a radical American sociology professor declared that "Gaza is Israel's Warsaw" and forwarded students a photo essay with "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis," several of which depict the Warsaw Ghetto. Through this example, the chapters maps the range of forms that public memory can take in politically charged situations in which complex forms of implication are at play. That mapping includes an extended discussion of artist Alan Schechner. A concluding section turns to two Jewish critics of Israeli policy, Judith Butler and Ariella Azoulay, to argue that thinking through implication—rather than vulnerability or perpetration—represents the most productive avenue for solidarity. The concept of implication, the chapter concludes, offers an opportunity to confront the role of perpetuators of injustice. 5Under the Sign of Suitcases: The Holocaust Internationalism of Marceline Loridan-Ivens chapter abstractThis chapter considers the life of filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens. Loridan-Ivens was a Holocaust survivor who experienced the emancipatory and destructive possibilities of revolutionary struggle when she took up anticolonial causes. The chapter begins by exploring relevant varieties of internationalism: socialist and anti-imperialist internationalism and human rights. It recounts how Loridan-Ivens first entered the public sphere through the testimony she gave in the film Chronicle of a Summer about her deportation to Auschwitz. Later, Loridan-Ivens went on to make films in such political hotspots as Algeria, Vietnam, and China. The chapter focuses especially on the film about the Vietnam War she made with her partner Joris Ivens and argues that it involves a shift on Loridan-Ivens's part from the position of surviving victim to implicated subject offering internationalist solidarity. Yet, the chapter concludes, such solidarity comes with its own pitfalls that also deserve critical exploration. 6"Germany is in Kurdistan": Hito Steyerl's Images of Implication chapter abstractThis chapter addresses project undertaken by the internationally prominent German artist and theorist Hito Steyerl. In the video November, and in subsequent videos, performances, and essays, Steyerl explores the life and death of her childhood friend Andrea Wolf, a radical activist who joined the PKK (Kurdish militants), and was killed in battle by the Turkish state. In Steyerl's hands, Wolf's life becomes an opportunity to reflect on questions of internationalism and political solidarity. While Wolf's comrades have celebrated her as a martyr and internationalist hero and the dominant media have typically labeled Wolf a terrorist, Steyerl comes to a more complex and ambivalent verdict about her friend and her commitments. In refusing binary simplifications and highlighting how the complexities of Wolf's story intersect with her own story, Steyerl's project helps us interrogate the implicated subject as a figure of historical responsibility and internationalist solidarity in a time of globalization. 7Conclusion: Transfiguring Implication chapter abstractThe conclusion considers what it means to call the implicated subject a "figure" and addresses the widespread, but uneven nature of implication along with the possibilities for transfiguring it in the direction of long-distance solidarity. Reflecting back on the preceding chapters, it offers eleven theses that synthesize the argument of the book.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first volume of a ground-breaking new work by Jürgen Habermas on the history of philosophy. In this major new work, Habermas sets out the ideas that inform his systematic account of the history of Western philosophy as a genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking. His account goes far beyond a vindication of the enduring relevance of philosophical reflection founded on communicative reason as a source of orientation in the modern world. He contrasts this conception with prominent diagnoses of the supposed crisis of Enlightenment reason and culture that seeks redemption in the affirmation of traditional religious authority (Schmitt), the timeless validity of Greek metaphysics (Strauss), a numinous conception of nature (Löwith), and an occurrence of being that speaks to us from beyond the mists of pre-Socratic thought (Heidegger). Habermas situates Western philosophy in relation to traditions of thought founded in the major worldviews (Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism) that continue to shape contemporary culture and civilization. At the same time, he lays the groundwork for his analysis in the later volumes of the constitutive role played by the discourse on faith and knowledge in the development of Western philosophy, which is the result of the unique symbiosis that Christianity entered into with Greek thought with the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Far from raising claims to exclusivity, completeness or closure, Habermas’s history of philosophy, published in English in three volumes, opens up new lines of research and reflection that will influence the humanities and social sciences for decades to come.Trade Review‘A wonderful English translation of Jürgen Habermas’s magnum opus tracing 1,300 years of philosophy in the West. This volume is at once a reconstruction of the encounter between faith and reason, so defining of the Western philosophical legacy, and a reflection on philosophy’s role in shaping who we are and how we relate to the world around us. Brilliant, breath-taking in scope, and profound in its assessment of the modern self-understanding, this magnificent work is a vital contribution to contemporary philosophy.’Simone Chambers, University of California, Irvine‘Among all the philosophers and social theorists of our time, Jürgen Habermas has distinguished himself not only for his philosophical acumen, but also for a certain epistemic modesty – a willingness to learn from both his contemporaries and the preceding tradition. In this monumental volume, Habermas shows us how the ideal of philosophy as a learning process can assist in reconstructing our own philosophical history. He guides us through an exhilarating series of past encounters between faith and knowledge that contribute to the rational but fallibilistic model of postmetaphysical thinking today. The result is nothing less than a masterpiece.’Peter E. Gordon, Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Translator’s Note Abbreviations Preface I. On the Question of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking 1. Crisis Scenarios and Narratives of Decline in Major Twentieth-Century Philosophical Theories (1) Carl Schmitt (2) Leo Strauss (3) Karl Löwith (4) Martin Heidegger (5) The reconstruction of learning processes and the independent legitimacy of modernity 2. Religion as a ‘Contemporary’ Formation of Objective Mind? (1) The sociological controversy over the secularization thesis (2) John Rawls: political reason and religion (3) Karl Jaspers: philosophical and religious ‘faith’ 3. The Occidental Path of Development and the Claim to Universality of Postmetaphysical Thinking (1) The analysis of the formative power of world religions in the theory of civilizations (2) Intercultural understanding, secular mode of thought and concerns about the Eurocentric narrowing of perspective 4. Basic Assumptions of the Theory of Society and Programmatic Outlook (1) The problem of social integration and the stages of social evolution (2) Sketch of the line of thought (3) From world views to the lifeworld II. The Sacred Roots of the Axial Age Traditions 1. Cognitive Breakthrough and Preservation of the Sacred Core (1) The concept of the Axial Age (2) The two elements of religion (3) Excursus on the concept of ‘religion’ 2. Myth and Ritual Practices (1) Performance of rituals and enactment of myths (2) The meaning of ritual practices (3) Excursus on the origins of language 3. The Meaning of the Sacred (1) The self-referential character of ritual behaviour (2) From symbolic to linguistic communication (3) Myth as a response to the cognitive challenge of openness to the world (4) The complementary dangers of exclusion and hyper-inclusion (5) Ritual as a source of solidarity (6) The explosive power of dissonant empirical knowledge 4. The Path to the Axial Age Transformation of Religious Consciousness (1) Pantheon and religious practice in early civilizations (2) Cult of the gods (3) The differentiation of forms of knowledge III. A Provisional Comparison of the Axial Age World Views 1. The Moralization of the Sacred and the Break with Mythical Thought (1) The step of abstraction from the gods to the transcendent divine (2) Essence and appearance (3) Second-order thinking: discourse and dogmatics 2. The Repudiation of ‘Paganism’ by Jewish Monotheism (1) From henotheism to the monotheistic creator, lawgiver and judge (2) The universalistic meaning of the covenant with the transcendent God (3) The overcoming of magical thinking and the disenchantment of ritual (4) On the singular status of monotheism 3. The Buddha’s Teaching and Practice (1) Brahmanism, the Upanishads and meditative practice (2) The Buddha’s life and teachings (3) Aims and paths of salvation in Buddhism and Judaism (4) Meditation 4. Confucianism and Taoism (1) Emergence of Confucianism and the era of the ‘Warring States’ (2) Confucius’s life and teachings (3) Confucianism as ethics and learned religion (4) The counter-model of the Taoist doctrine of salvation 5. From the Greek ‘Natural Philosophers’ to Socrates (1) The very different original context (2) The Presocratics (3) Socrates 6. Plato’s Theory of Ideas – in Comparison (1) The structure of the Platonic system (2) The decoupling of doctrine from cult First Intermediate Reflection: The Conceptual Trajectories of the Axial Age (1) Emergence, dynamics and structural transformation of world views (2) Excursus on the concept of lifeworld (3) The structure of world views and the dogmatic form of thought (4) The concept of the Axial Age Bibliography Detailed Table of Contents Notes Index

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Book SynopsisBuild, reinforce and assess students' knowledge throughout their course; tailored to the 2016 CCEA specification and brought to you by the leading History publisher, this study and revision guide combines clear content coverage with practice questions and sample answers.- Ensure understanding of the period with concise coverage of all Unit content, broken down into manageable chunks- Develop the analytical and evaluative skills that students need to succeed in A-level History- Consolidate understanding with exam tips and knowledge-check questions- Practise exam-style questions matched to the CCEA assessment requirements for every question type- Improve students' exam technique and show them how to reach the next grade with sample student answers and commentary for each exam-style question- Use flexibly in class or at home, for knowledge acquisition during the course or focused revision and exam preparation

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Book SynopsisThis title is endorsed by Cambridge Assessment International Education to support the Modern Europe 1750-1921 Option from the Cambridge AS History syllabus for first examination from 2021.Develop knowledge and analytical skills with engaging comprehensive coverage of the Modern Europe 1750-1921 Option from the Cambridge AS History syllabus for first examination from 2021. - Trust in the clear and authoritative content written by topic experts- Develop source skills through questions on a wide range of sources- Stay focused on the key issues you need to understand with questions throughout each chapter - Improve study and understanding through detailed chapter summary diagrams- Build confidence with applying your knowledge through exam guidance and exam-style questions

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Book SynopsisA witty and concise look at the beginnings of English history, when the nation consolidated after clashes between the Saxons and invading Vikings--now in paperback! In 871, three of England's four kingdoms were overrun by Vikings, the ruthless, all-conquering Scandinavian raiders who terrorised early medieval Europe. With the Norsemen murdering one king with arrows and torturing another to death by ripping out his lungs, the prospects that faced the kingdom of Wessex were bleak. Worse still, the Saxons were now led by a young man barely out of his teens who was more interested in God than fighting. Yet within a decade Alfred—the only English king known as the Great—had driven the Vikings out of half of England, and his children and grandchildren would unite the country a few years later. This period, popular with fans of television shows such as Vikings and The Last Kingdom, saw the creation of England as a nation-state, with Alfred laying down the first national law code, establishing an education system and building cities.Saxons vs. Vikings also covers the period before Alfred, including ancient Britain, the Roman occupation, and the Dark Ages, explaining important historical episodes such as Boudicca, King Arthur, and Beowulf. Perfect for newcomers to the subject, this is the second title in the new A Very, Very Short History of England series. If you’re trying to understand England and its history in the most informative and entertaining way possible, this is the place to start.

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Book SynopsisAt once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city.   Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city ’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today—one of the world’s leading cultural and financial centers.   In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: “Living in the City,” “City Characters,” “Shocks,” “Crossings,” and “Ceremonies.” What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City’s genius loci, its spirit of place.

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Book Synopsis'I was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia' Jane Fonda ‘Does what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human’ The Times _________________________ From the author of Insomniac City 'who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did' (San Francisco Chronicle): a cultural, scientific, literary, and personal history of exercise Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads to prove it. Exercise - a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics - was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat, Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, and dissecting the dynamics of human movement. Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Susan B. Anthony, Jack LaLanne, and Jane Fonda, among many others, make appearances in Sweat, but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale, a Renaissance-era Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek “art of exercising” through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica. In the pages of Sweat, Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise are vividly brought back to life. asHayes ties his own personal experience to the cultural and scientific history of exercise, from ancient times to the present day, he gives us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the 21st century.Trade ReviewI was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia. Who knew? -- Jane FondaPerhaps because exercise is such a universal - and universally humbling - part of our lives, Sweat does, seemingly effortlessly, what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human * The Times *There’s a skip to Hayes’ step throughout, and the book will certainly ground any January health kick in a grander context * Daily Mail *As a storyteller, Hayes is like Joe Frazier … I would have liked this book to go on longer. Erudite, ludic, eccentric, energetic and historically transporting, it’s like falling through a gym and landing in a joust -- Zoe Williams * Guardian *Bill Hayes’ peripatetic inquiry into the history of exercise is a delight ... You’re in for a treat. Hayes weaves his riveting findings in the archives with a revelatory memoir of physical exertion that begins to answer that most human of questions: what does the body mean? -- Alison Bechdel, author of 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength'Charming and idiosyncratic ... A distinctive, often moving blend of historical and memoirist writing ... Hayes’s exuberant book tells us what awaits if we can only make it so * NEW YORKER *One of a number of titles that promise to take a serious look at exercise * Financial Times, Books of the Year 2022 *Charming and compelling … Among the pleasures of Sweat, Bill Hayes’s idiosyncratic and delightful history of exercise, is learning about the sweat lives of the great and good * The Critic *Hayes fascinatingly traces exercise’s gradual evolution into the multibillion-pound industry it is now – by way of some genuine scientific breakthroughs and several passing crazes * Readers' Digest *A lovely weave of memory and science, great characters and compassionate humor. You will love it for its wisdom and wonderful writing -- Anne LamottLike the most rewarding kind of travel writer, Bill Hayes is both informative and personal as he takes us through the borderlands ... I'm grateful for the way this intimate, reflective, and factual guidebook captures the feeling of that terrain -- Robert PinskyPlayful and powerful ... profoundly moving ... Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling * Boston Globe *Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills ... He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer * New York Times *A beguiling brew of fascinating scientific facts and illuminating, poignant anecdotes ... vital and pulsing with energy. * Entertainment Weekly *Exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous -- Joyce Carol OatesLike Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary - a secret place where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew * San Francisco Chronicle *Hayes's work is resoundingly about life - about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment * Oprah.com *Taking us through the different forms of exercise and their origins, Hayes gives a cultural, scientific and personal history of human movement * Irish Independent, Books of the Year 2022 *All laud and honor to Hayes * Washington Post *He is, in his photos and writings, the great poet of the everyday -- Edmund WhiteA sweeping inquiry into the sometimes converging, sometimes colliding worlds of psychology, medicine, mythology, aging, and mental health -- Maria PopovaMemoir, history, and science come together and apart again in a book that reads very much like a dream, switching genre and subject with a beautiful logic of its own, illuminated now and then with flashes of gorgeous insight ... Read this one and savour it * Out *If there is one person in the modern world who can reinvigorate Mercuriale’s enormous unfinished labor and bridge the physical, the philosophical, and the poetic - bridge Whitman and Warhol, Plato and Peloton, Kafka and Curie, Tennessee Williams and Serena Williams; bridge the “immediate bodily now” of exercise with “the wisdom of the past that had faded from living memory” - it is Bill Hayes. And so he does, in Sweat: A History of Exercise — an expedition, both existential and historical, spanning two thousand years and three continents -- Maria Popova

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Book Synopsis‘A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington’s fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today.’ New York Times At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing – seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear – to some – that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA. The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies – Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government – and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the US had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, sceptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. Scott Anderson’s The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.Trade ReviewEnthralling . . . Lying and stealing and invading, it should be said, make for captivating reading, especially in the hands of a storyteller as skilled as Anderson . . . the climate of fear and intolerance that it describes in Washington also feels uncomfortably timely. * New York Times Book Review *Anderson’s look at four men who ran covert operations around the globe after World War II is as thrilling as it is tragic, as each man confronts the moral compromises he made in the name of democracy. * Washington Post *In this sweeping, vivid, beautifully observed book, Scott Anderson unearths the devastating secret history of how the United States lost the plot during the Cold War. By focusing on the twisty, colorful lives of four legendary spies, Anderson distills the larger geopolitical saga into an intimate story of flawed but talented men, of the 'disease of empires,' and of the inescapable moral hazard of American idealism and power. It's a hell of a book, with themes about the unintended consequences of espionage and interventionism that still resonate, powerfully, today. -- Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The New York Times bestseller and Orwell Prize-winning Say NothingA probing history of the CIA’s evolving role from the outset of the Cold War into the 1960s, viewed through the exploits of four American spies . . . Anderson delivers a complex, massively scaled narrative, balancing prodigious research with riveting storytelling skills . . . An engrossing history of the early days of the CIA. * Kirkus Reviews *A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington’s fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today. * New York Times *

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Book Synopsis‘Our childhood came to an end when our parents parted and from then on Jennifer was placed in the impossible position of having to be a parent to me, her sister. I shall always be grateful for her protection . . .’Millions have fallen in love with Jennifer Worth and her experiences in the East End as chronicled in Call the Midwife, but little is known about her life outside this period. Now, in this moving and evocative memoir, Jennifer’s sister Christine takes us from their early idyllic years to the cruelty and neglect they suffered after their parents divorced, from Jennifer being forced to leave home at fourteen to their training as nurses.After leaving nursing Jennifer took up a career in music, her first love, and Christine became a sculptor, but through marriages and children, joy and heartbreak, their lives remained intertwined. Absorbing and emotional, The Midwife’s Sister by Christine Lee is testimony to an enduring bond between two extraordinary women.

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Book Synopsis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER George Stephanopoulos, the legendary political news host and former advisor to President Clinton, recounts the history-making crises from the place where twelve presidents made their highest-pressure decisions: the White House Situation Room.  No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room. And yet, none is more shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Created under President Kennedy, the Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades. Time and again, the decisions made within the Sit Room complex affect the lives of every person on this planet. Detailing close calls made and disasters narrowly averted, THE SITUATION ROOM will take readers through dramatic turning points in a dozen presidential administrations, including: Incredible minute-by-minute transcripts from the Sit Room after both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were shot The shocking moment when Henry Kissinger raised the military alert level to DEFCON III while President Nixon was drunk in the White House residence The extraordinary scene when President Carter asked for help from secret government psychics to rescue American hostages in Iran A vivid retelling of the harrowing hours during the 9/11 attack New details from Obama administration officials leading up to the raid on Osama Bin Laden And a first-ever account of January 6th from the staff inside the Sit Room THE SITUATION ROOM is the definitive, past-the-security-clearance look at the room where it happened, and the people—the famous and those you've never heard of—who have made history within its walls.

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Book SynopsisIn Concorde, Jonathan Glancey tells the story of this magnificent and hugely popular aircraft anew, taking the reader from the moment Captain Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947 through to the last commercial flight of the supersonic airliner in 2003. It is a tale of national rivalries, technological leaps, daring prototypes, tightrope politics, and a dream of a Dan Dare future never quite realized. Jonathan Glancey traces the development of Concorde not just through existing material and archives, but through interviews with those who lived with the supersonic project from its inception. The result is a compelling mix of overt technological optimism, a belief that Britain and France were major players in the world of civil as well as military aviation, and faith in an ever faster, ever more sophisticated future. This is a celebration, as well as a thoroughly researched history, of a truly brilliant machine that became a sky god of its era.Trade ReviewA thoughtful hymn to a great symbol of the analogue age... Concorde will be the standard long read on the subject for a good few years * The Times *What Jonathan Glancey likes about Concorde could probably fill several books... His history of the Anglo-French supersonic airliner is nevertheless engaging, tracing the arc of Concorde's rise in the 1970s, an unlikely triumph of engineering and international co-operation, through to its decommissioning in 2003... This is an enthusiast's book, but a good one. * Financial Times *Jonathan Glancey is eminently qualified to write a history of Concorde... He fully appreciates the aesthetics and science of aeronautical engineering, and the lucidity of his prose makes his complex subject clearly comprehensible * Spectator *How welcome it is to see a specialist book from someone who can write... What might appear to be yet another book on this widely exposed aircraft is actually one very much worth reading. * Pilot *Glancey skilfully tells the tale of a plane forged from a great trans-national alliance, and how it eventually fellfrom sky, taking with it - perhaps temporarily - the dream of a world shrunk small by the sheer force of technology. * Wallpaper *Excellent... Glancey has a gift for explaining complex issues... he also sprinkles the text with vivid phrases. -- Leo McKinstry * Literary Review *

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Book Synopsis'Go to your "books to read" list and place Elisabeth's Lists right at the top' Damian Barr The vivacious and moving true story of a lost era and a lost grandmother, pieced together from an inherited book of handwritten lists Many years after the death of her grandmother, Lulah Ellender inherited a curious object - a book of handwritten lists. On the face of it, Elisabeth's lists seemed rather ordinary - shopping lists, items to be packed for a foreign trip, a tally of the eggs laid by her hens. But from these everyday fragments, Lulah began to weave together the extraordinary life of the grandmother she never knew - a life lived in the most rarefied and glamorous of circles, from Elisabeth's early years as an ambassador's daughter in 1930s China, to her marriage to a British diplomat and postings in Madrid under Franco's regime, post-war Beirut, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. But it was also a life of stark contrasts - between the opulent excess of embassy banquets and the deprivations of wartime rationing in England, between the unfailing charm she displayed in public and the dark depressions that blanketed her in private, between her great appetite for life and her sudden, early death. As Lulah learns that she is losing her own mother, she finds herself turning to her grandmother's life, and to her much-travelled book of lists, in search of meaning and solace. Elisabeth's Lists is both a vivid memoir and a moving study of the familial threads that binds us, even beyond death. 'This is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death' GuardianTrade Review[A] tender memoir... A moving, evocative read. Five stars -- Eithne Farry * Sunday Express *Go to your "books to read" list and place Elisabeth's Lists right at the top. It is charming without ever being whimsical and a vital voice as Elisabeth asserts her right to be more than simply a diplomat's daughter or ambassador's wife. A valuable record from a woman we are only now getting to know -- Damian BarrThis is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on life and death -- PD Smith * Guardian *With great compassion and imagination, Elisabeth's grand-daughter Lulah tenderly brings to life the grandmother she never knew -- Elisa Segrave, author of * The Girl from Station X: My Mother's Unknown Life *A lovely read * BBC Radio Scotland *Varied, revealing, sad and funny. It wears its research lightly but still manages to inform and delight. I expect [...] readers will thoroughly enjoy it -- Gill Davies * Shiny New Books blog *Vivid and atmospheric -- Martin Gayford * Chap *Extraordinary... A love letter to the grandmother the writer never knew * People *A perceptive and original first book, it is as much a meditation on the meaning of lists as it is a biography -- Bee Wilson * LRB *An intelligent and moving family narrative -- Selected by Honor Clerk as a book of the year * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisAfter the Second World War, Germany was an international pariah. Today, it has become a beacon of the Western world. But what makes this extraordinary nation tick? On Germany tells the story of a country reborn, from defeat in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the painstaking reunification of 'the two Germanies', and the Republic's return to the world stage as an economic colossus and European leader. Giles MacDonogh restores these momentous events of world history to their German context, from the food and drink that accompanied them to the deep-rooted provincialism behind the national story. Full of vivid and often whimsical vignettes of German life, this is a Germanophile's homage to the culture and people of a country he has known for decades.Trade Review‘Culture and the texture of everyday experience, rather than the grand sweep of politics, are what MacDonogh relishes, and his account shines with his enthusiasm for his subject. This is the book of a well-informed flâneur sniffing the air . . . the attitudes and quirks that make Germany so distinctive are nicely brought to life.’ ‘Funny, erudite and, despite all the competition, original . . . MacDonogh’s vivid tapestry does justice to the most despised and most envied people in Europe . . . as enjoyable as sitting in the lovely old square of a small town in Germany, quaffing a cold glass of hock to the sound of a distant Bach cantata.’‘[On Germany] benefits from a harvest of cross-cultural encounters gathered over many years of travel . . . waitresses, landladies and drinking companions become informants and case studies . . . tantalising.’'Giles MacDonogh has repeatedly shown himself to be in the front rank of British scholars of German history.' * The Spectator *‘The story of a country reborn . . . an all-embracing book.’ 'A fascinating romp through German history--engaging, honest and personal--that unfolds like a fine after-dinner conversation with a particularly erudite friend.' -- Rory MacLean, author of 'Berlin: Imagine a City''Forensic political and historical analysis, telling cultural detail and deep insights, with good jokes and fascinating twists. Want to know what happened to Nazi art after 1945? Or what the East German government thought of Elvis Presley? There are some excellent books on Germany; MacDonogh matches the best.' -- Frederick Taylor, author of 'The Berlin Wall' and 'Exorcising Hitler''Giles MacDonogh's splendid little book draws on his extensive historical insight and personal experience of mainland Europe's most important country. This highly personal and quirky work deftly intertwines human stories, superb anecdotes and historical-political set pieces, garnished with food and drink, to remind us of why Germany continues to intrigue us.' -- Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of European International Relations, Cambridge University, and author of 'Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation'

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Book SynopsisA SUNDAY TIMES BEST FILM AND THEATRE BOOK OF 2022 'Anyone in love with the arts will fall in love with this beautifully written and fascinating book' Kathy Burke Astonish Me! is an adrenaline-charged rollercoaster through history's seismic first nights, exploring how individual artists can change and shape the story of culture - and allow us to see ourselves in new ways. It tells of times when 'the air between people seems to alter' as art achieves profound change, across the globe and across history. Dominic Dromgoole has created a radical and fresh canon. He begins in New York in 1963, as Lorraine Hansberry remakes American theatre and a nation's perception of race. And then, as the lights go up, we find ourselves in Renaissance Florence, watching Michelangelo's David being hauled into the Piazza della Signoria. The dust settles and we are transported to the birth of theatre in fifth-century Athens - and then to Paris to meet with Diaghilev and Stravinsky for the Rite of Spring. We witness kabuki's creation, as a radical women's performance, in Kyoto; the Sex Pistols shattering Thatcherite Britain at Manchester's Free Trade Hall; and watch as Hitchcock directs Psycho.Trade ReviewAstonish Me! is both a book of revelations and a witness to change: it has all the tension of a thriller and the see-sawing highs and lows of a romance novel. At its heart, however, is an enduring fascination with what makes art and why we need it -- Maggie O'FarrellFantastic -- Roger AllamWritten with verve and wit ... Astonish Me! encourages us to reflect not only on the communality of art but to appreciate its invaluable social utility * The Times *A keen cultural history primer - and a ringside seat to the electric thrill of witnessing great art -- 'Paperbacks Read This Week' * Daily Telegraph *Full of insight as well as terrific stories ... a book that celebrates the shock of the new, those moments in artistic history when the dial shifted and something radical emerged ... enjoyable * Sunday Times *Fascinating ... dazzling in its enthusiasm ... unexpected * Times Literary Supplement *The result is a richly eclectic set of essays ... Mr Dromgoole shows a capacity to bring a major cultural event to life ... offers an erudite, wide-ranging and heart-warming tribute to artistic innovation -- Michael Billington * Country Life *Exquisite ... greatly stirring ... Imagine what it would be like to be present at the arrival of some of the most momentous works of art in history; to witness the birth of the new. That's what Dominic Dromgoole does in his latest book * Daily Telegraph *[Dromgoole] writes with such generous, broad-brush panache ... on every page he comes across as a red-blooded enthusiast, an erudite polymath and a bit of a preacher with an urgent message too * Mail on Sunday *A celebration of the artistic achievements that overcame the odds to change the story of culture, and whose effects rippled out to change the world * Spectator *Earthy, eclectic and shot through with personal insights * The Week *Anyone in love with the arts will fall in love with this beautifully written and fascinating book -- Kathy BurkeDominic Dromgoole takes moments from our cultural history and shines a new light on them. Astonishingly vibrant, bristling with energy, wit and wisdom -- Hugh BonnevilleFirst-rate, varied and very enjoyable * Mature Times *Absorbing ... accessible and chatty ... you will always be entertained by Dromgoole's slightly waspish sense of wit, his sense of invention and ... a sense of care and understanding -- Louise Penn * Lou Reviews *On Hamlet: Globe to Globe: 'His love of language is contagious ... the storytelling segues into scholarship with extraordinary skill as he ricochets the modern world with a 400-year-old text.' * The Times *Dromgoole's witty account offers insight about the play and its enduring appeal ... Compulsively readable. * The New York Times (100 Notable Books) *Erudite and fascinating ... truly compelling. * Observer *Exhilarating ... he succeeds in making the familiar unfamiliar. -- James ShapiroOn Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life 'A superbly written, infectiously high-spirited narrative ... a hard book to put down.' -- Terry Eagleton * The Irish Times *Friendly, inclusive, I warmed [to it] immediately. A terrific book. -- William Leith * Evening Standard *His book is an absolute delight ... The outstanding quality is his sheer, overwhelming love for Shakespeare. * Sunday Times *This book is clearly a triumph. -- Jonathan Bate * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisHumans are the dominant species on the planet. But how did we get here? Human Origins takes the reader on a fascinating 7-million-year journey from our earliest primordial ape-like roots through to the present day.For almost a hundred years, scientists have been trying to decipher the secrets of humanity’s evolution. At first, they relied on rare pieces of ancient skulls and bone fragments. But every year, they make new discoveries, uncover new fossils and develop new techniques to tease apart the story of our evolution. So far, from skeletons to teeth, humanity has found more than 6,000 hominin individuals. These individuals span several species, all of which tell the tale of human evolution: how our brains changed over time, what we ate, how we lived. Including the latest scientific findings, Human Origins will also look at some of the biggest questions that remain: What makes humans unique? Where did the Neanderthals go? And are humans still evolving?

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Book SynopsisA charming celebration of all things snow. Is it true that no two snowflakes are ever alike? How many Christmases have actually been white? Do the Inuit have dozens of words for snow? Can it ever be too cold to snow? Our memories and imagination are buried in snow. It's the weather of play, joyful abandon and mischievous games – of snowball fights, skiing holidays and rattling down a hillside at full speed. It's the weather of childhood – the world transformed into a temporary playground. Even as adults, the urge to throw a snowball is too hard to resist, those impish, childish instincts overtaking our adult workaday selves. Packed with fascinating insights, outdoor fun, cultural lore and traditional wisdom, The Little Book of Snow delves into the history, science, literary and cultural heritage that surrounds snow, frost and ice – the perfect book for anyone who loves that feeling when you open the curtains in the morning and find the world has turned to white... 'Super-cute... Packed full of snowy snippets' Sunday ExpressTrade ReviewSally Coulthard's super-cute book is packed full of snowy snippets * Sunday Express *

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Book SynopsisGorgeous Collector's Edition which brings to life the culture of one of the great founding civilisations. Companion volume to Egyptian Myths & Legends in the same series, this title brings to life the beginnings of human experience, the irrigation of the Nile, the origins of hieroglyphics in demarcation of land and water resources as the first people of North Africa gathered around the Nile to create one of the greatest and most enduring civilisations, one that fascinated the later titans of Antiquity, the Greeks and Romans. From these lands come the pyramids, the statues and the great Kings such as Khufu (reigning 2589–2566 BC), Hatshepsut (reigning 1478–1458 BC), Amenhotep III (reigning 1388–1351 BC), Akhenaten (reigning 1351–1334 BC), Tutankhamun (reigning 1332–1323 BC) and Ramses II (reigning 1279–1213 BC). Flame Tree Collector's Editions present the foundations of speculative fiction: authors, myths, tales and history without which the imaginative literature of the twentieth century would not exist, bringing the best, most influential and most fascinating works into a striking and collectable library. Each book features a new Introduction and a Glossary of Terms or lists of Ancient Leaders.

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Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA New York Times bestseller, the incredible true story of a couple that escaped slavery in the South and eventually made their way to the UK, Africa and beyond.The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as "his" slave.In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Audiences could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who travelled the country drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionists of the day.But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as the Crafts fled to England to embark upon a new life.With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife recounts both a ground-breaking quest for liberty and justice, and an unforgettable love story.Trade Review'Ellen and William Craft loved each other, but also loved freedom, and knew one was impossible without the other ... we readers gasp in amazement and wonder at the tragedy and triumph' -- Marlon James, winner of The Booker Prize'A feat of ... storytelling, sympathy and insight' * The New York Times *'Woo's history draws from a variety of sources, including the Crafts' own account, to reconstruct a 'journey of mutual self-emancipation', while artfully sketching the background of a nation careering toward civil war' * The New Yorker *'Phenomenal' -- Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois'A suspenseful, sensitively rendered account . . . Woo tells the story [with] a cinematic eye' -- W. Caleb McDaniel * The New York Times Book Review *'Superbly researched and masterfully written' * Library Journal *'A gripping adventure. . . . suspenseful and wonderfully told' * Kirkus Reviews *'A pathbreaking book ... Riveting' -- Stuart Miller * The Los Angeles Times *'A narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true. But it is... The story is so richly dramatic, and Ms. Woo so skilled at spinning it out, that at times it's a genuine nail-biter' -- Priscilla M. Jensen * The Wall Street Journal *'Master Slave Husband Wife tells one of the most important stories of American slavery and freedom. With prose that is suspenseful, brilliantly detailed, historically precise, and simply gorgeous, Woo depicts the Crafts and their historic role in antebellum America stunningly. This is a story that will stay with you for a lifetime' -- Imani Perry * author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation *'Details of the history of 19th-century American slavery and the courage of those who suffered it and the inhuman vileness of those who were responsible for it' -- Patrick Stewart * interviewed in The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisThe captivating story of the West’s love affair with Indian spirituality—from the orientalism of the British Empire to modern counterculture. In 1897, an Indian yogi exhibited himself at London’s Westminster Aquarium, demonstrating yoga positions to a bemused audience. Four years earlier, Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda spoke at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, where Annie Besant extolled the ‘exquisite beauty’ of his spiritual message. The Victorians were fascinated by, yet suspicious of, Indian religious beliefs and practices. But within two generations, legions of young Westerners were following the ‘hippie trail’ to the subcontinent, the Beatles meditating at the feet of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Journalist Mick Brown’s vivid account charts this eccentric history of Western obsessions with Indian faith, through a curious cast of scholars, seekers, charlatans and saints. From bestselling epic poems on the Buddha to murder plots, magic and the occult, The Nirvana Express is an exhilarating, sometimes troubling journey through the West’s search for enlightenment.Trade Review'The Nirvana Express... is a work of compelling, stylish social anthropology. ...Brown has managed to compose a sober and wryly intelligent account of westerners in the east and easterners in the west.' -- The Times'Brown has a light touch, like that of a beguiling baba himself … effortlessly encompassing anecdotal and intellectual history. He is a wicked portraitist, which is to say he is playing to his strengths in this pornographic prosopography of snake-oil spiritualists.' -- TLS‘[An] entertaining history of the West’s fascination with Indian spirituality.’ -- The Telegraph‘Excellent … The Nirvana Express is a drily amusing book on a subject that would make many writers nervous. It describes some startling stupidity as well as some very sharp behaviour without forcing the point, and includes fierce assertions by followers on both sides.’ -- The Spectator‘In a lively narrative, delivered with wit and warmth, Brown shows how Eastern mysticism went from being suspect to venerable, and back again to a subject of scepticism. Along the way, he delivers an outrageous cast of characters — film stars, novelists, heiresses and heretics — and shows how soothing swamis and dodgy charlatans left their mark on Western ways.’ -- The Daily Mail‘[A] fascinating tale of the West’s love affair with spiritualism. Mick Brown [is one of] the very elite tier of modern journalists. He brings all his skills for research, judicious analysis and eloquent writing to a thoroughly engrossing subject. … Brown balances reports of the prejudices and racism of the British view of the Indian holy man (gurus were described as “pantomime” figures) with an account that offers rich insights into the appeal of hunting “a spiritual Eldorado”. ... The Nirvana Express [is] such a masterful, compelling piece of history.’ -- The Independent, ‘September Books of the Month’'An enlightening new book … Fantastic stories—packed with unlikely figures, strange twists of fate and even the occasional act of mind-reading—bring readers of 'The Nirvana Express' on an enjoyable journey.' -- The Economist‘Eminently readable.’ -- The Federal News‘An engrossing account.’ -- The Wire‘Brown… has synthesised a small Himalaya of material into a clear and well-told narrative. His subject is not so much India as the uses and abuses of subcontinental religions in the West in the 20th century.’ -- Literary Review'An absolutely fascinating and absorbing study of an under-explored subject. Written with great verve, insight and clear-eyed authority--a definitive and enduring book.' -- William Boyd'What a wonderful cast of characters: dreamers, poets, charlatans and love-struck British ladies. Why has no one told this story before? Mick Brown does so with just the right mix of cool objectivity and forgiving warmth. An enthralling read.' -- Edward Stourton, BBC Radio 4'Spectacular. Mick Brown's masterful storytelling brilliantly charts the West's encounter with Eastern spiritualism. Drawing on a rich seam of characters ranging from charlatans to spiritual masters and their disparate devotees, he never misses a beat in this globe-spanning magical mystery tour.' -- John Zubrzycki, author of 'Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic' and 'Dethroned: The Downfall of India's Princely States''A well-written, fascinating and entertaining romp through the gurus who brought Indian philosophy to the Western world.' -- Susan Shumsky, author of 'Maharishi & Me' and 'The Inner Light: How India Influenced the Beatles''Mick Brown has produced a deeply researched account of the encounters of Indian spiritualists with the West over the past century and a half. Wonderfully written and hugely informative.' -- Jairam Ramesh, author and Indian MP'Brown takes us along a familiar path--the century-long story of the modern West's fascination with India's holy men, from Arnold's "The Light of Asia" to the sunset of Rajneesh--and renders its sights anew: colourful, compelling and a bit psychedelic.' -- Anya Foxen, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, California Polytechnic State University, and author of 'Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga''With a keen and humorous eye for detail, Mick Brown traces the golden age of gurus through interconnected stories of the individuals whose followers changed the way we think about religion, faith and otherness in their quests to attain enlightenment.' -- Patricia Sauthoff, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University, and author of 'Illness and Immortality: Mantra, Mandala, and Meditation in the Netra Tantra'

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Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive guide to the golden age of ancient Greece, shown in over 200 colour photographs, diagrams, detailed maps and plans. Featuring detailed accounts of armies, battle campaigns and military strategies from the collapse of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations to the astonishing exploits of Alexander the Great a thousand years later. It highlights include detailed chapters on the Persian Wars, the rise and fall of the Athenian Empire and the rule of Sparta, as well as in-depth examinations of key figures such as Pericles of Athens and Dionysius of Syracuse. Opening with the Minoan and Mycenaean Bronze Age cultures, this encyclopedic history tracks the rebirth of Greece after its intervening Dark Age. Witness the birth of world's 'first' individuals and discover the men and women who helped to build and destroy city-states and armies. You can learn how the dynamic interaction of politics, philosophy, history, love and war resulted in a uniquely captivating story of battles, tyrants, soldiers and slaves. Through over 200 vivid photographs, artworks, maps and plans, ancient Greece and her political and military history are brought to life. This is an essential account of the people, places and events that shaped and transformed ancient Greece, leaving a legacy that underlies much of the modern world.

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Book SynopsisIn the early hours of 15 April 1912, after the majestic liner Titanic had split apart and the 1,500 men, women and children struggled to stay alive in the freezing Atlantic, the sea was alive with the sound of screaming. Then, as the ship sank to the ocean floor and the passengers slowly died from hypothermia, a deathly silence settled over the sea. Yet the echoes of that night reverberated through the lives of each of the 705 survivors. Shadow of the Titanictells the extraordinary stories of some of those who survived. Although we think we know the story of the Titanic - the famously unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to America in April 1912 - little has been written about what happened to the survivors after the tragedy. How did the loss of the ship shape the lives of the people who survived? How did those who were saved feel about those who perished? And how did they remember that terrible night, in effect a disaster that has been likened to the destruction of a small town? Timed to coincide with the 100thanniversary of the sinking, Shadow of the Titanicsheds new light on this enduringly fascinating story, by showing how the disaster continued to shape the lives of a cross-section of passengers who escaped the sinking ship.

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Book SynopsisThe less it is part of everyday life, the more the appeal of handwriting grows. This wonderful selection of treasures from the Bodleian Library introduces remarkable individuals through documents written by their own hands. From the second century BCE to the present, individual lives and relationships are illuminated through the writing that has been left behind. We see Elizabeth I attempting to win over her new stepmother, Alan Bennett working out the character of Mr Toad, Henry Moore advising soap and water for cleaning sculpture and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin balancing childcare with discovering the structure of penicillin. Here you will find letters, first drafts, autograph albums and hastily scribbled notes, fair copies, marked-up proofs and doodles. Divided into themed categories, the entries feature novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler; scientists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein; reformers Emmeline Pankhurst, Florence Nightingale and Mohandas Gandhi; and explorers Walter Ralegh, T.E. Lawrence and Patrick Leigh Fermor among many others. Each of these extraordinary people has passed on a manuscript or document with a fascinating story to tell.Trade ReviewThere's something special about owning an original handwritten manuscript, but if a John Steinbeck fragment or Charlotte Brontë's 'Little Book' are out of reach then Handwritten: Remarkable People on the Page is the next best thing. * Fine Books Magazine *

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Book SynopsisA unique and engaging book about the farms and farming communities of Brinscall near Chorley, Lancashire, that were broken apart in the name of progress. It takes the reader back in time, on a journey into the forgotten lives of Lancashire's lost hill-farming communities.

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Book SynopsisCHRIS HILTON WENT TO HAVANA in the early 2000s to escape the drudgery of everyday life in England—and, boy, did he escape it. Suddenly he found himself mixed up with a variety of gangland chancers, some Cuban, one British, all living on the edge of legality.There was always a risk of their moneymaking schemes getting rumbled by the police but that’s what made it so compelling: the chance, the risk. Office life this wasn’t. And then there was Jamilia—a refugee from rural poverty, who’d come to the big city as a teenager, and been rescued from the streets by an unnerving family of small-time criminals.“A little crazy is good,” Jamilia tells Chris— and a little crazy they become, living hard, loving hard and downing a deal of Cuban rum.But how long can craziness last? And what happens when good fortune turns to bad?

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Book SynopsisMaps that Made History is like a 1000-year-long journey around the world; every one of the carefully selected maps featured here has influenced the course of history in some way. This beautifully illustrated book gathers 100 marvellous old maps, each with a fascinating story to tell, from a 12th century Persian world atlas to a Soviet spy map. These maps were used to resolve conflicts, situate battles, construct a road or a canal, establish important shipping routes, even as propaganda tools. All the maps are reproduced in an oversized format, while accompanying text from an experienced team of historians explains the importance of each one.

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Book Synopsis''[A] gripping and fascinating book'' JAMES HOLLAND, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 5* review''A brilliant book . . . timely . . . gripping'' RACHEL COOKE, OBSERVER''A thrilling read '' PHILIPPE SANDS, author of EAST WEST STREET***On 17 October 2019, in Hamburg''s imposing criminal justice building, a trial laden with extraordinary historical weight begins to unfold. Bruno Dey stands accused of being involved in a crime committed over seven decades ago: the murder of at least 5,230 inmates at Stutthof, the Nazi concentration camp in present-day Poland. Only seventeen at the time, Dey was a member of the SS unit responsible for administering the camp. Though he concedes to his role as a guard, he adamantly denies responsibility for the killings. Dey''s trial comes at a poignant moment. As the last members of the war generation - both victims and perpetrators - disappear, so does their first-hand knowledge of the Holocaust''s horrors. Bey

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Book SynopsisThe classic bestseller on the Battle of Britain, revised and updated.Trade ReviewBrilliant ... This highly informative, moving series should form part of the National Curriculum. * Daily Mail *Beautifully made ... Achingly vivid. * Guardian *Compelling ... Mesmerizing stuff. * Sunday Telegraph *Manages to construct the tale in such a way that it breaks free of the text-book approach to transfix the viewer completely; the archive footage, the witness testimonies ... of such superior quality and so beautifully shot that the whole is fresh and absorbing ... Compiled with a pace that could put a lot of thrillers to shame, the result is television at its very best. * Time Out *From fighter-pilots risking their lives in the skies above England, to squaddies stranded at Dunkirk, to schoolgirls sent abroad to Canada (the book is worth buying just for Bess Walder's account of horror and redemption aboard the City of Benares), this is riveting. * Sunday Express *

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Book SynopsisThe Inside Story of the SAS's most famous battle - nine men against four hundred - told for the first time by the men who were there.Trade Review'An excellent and detailed account'. * RUSI Review *The time is now right for their bravery, at long last, to be properly recognised. * Lord Ashcroft, KCMG, Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisBy 1969, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, over 500,000 US troops were in country' in Vietnam. Before America's longest war had ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, 450,000 Vietnamese had died, along with 36,000 Americans. The Vietnam War was the first rock 'n' roll war, the first helicopter war with its doctrine of airmobility', and the first television war; it made napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange infamous, and gave us the New Journalism of Michael Herr and others. It also saw the establishment of the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. At home, America fractured, with the peace movement protesting against the war; at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. Lewis's compelling selection of the best writing to come out of a war covered by some truly outstanding writers, both journalists and combatants, includes an eyewitness account of the first major battle between the US Army and the People's Army

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Book Synopsis''Timely, necessary and important'' J.K. Rowling''[This book is] guaranteed to remind us what we have still to fight for. I can''t think of a single person who wouldn''t benefit from reading it'' Observer''Bindel is a rock star of second-wave feminism . . . an important, courageous book'' The Times''Bindel delivers a robust call to arms in every chapter . . . this book could not be timelier . . . As a young feminist who has finally seen the light, I consider it essential reading'' The CriticFeminism is a quest for the liberation of women from patriarchy. Feminism strives for a world in which women are not oppressed. Feminism prioritises exposing and ending male violence towards women and girls.This is Julie Bindel''s feminism, a definition born of 40 years at the front line of the feminist movement. Why then, she asks, is feminism the only social justice movement in Trade ReviewBindel is a rock star of second-wave feminism . . . an important, courageous book -- Melanie Reid * The Times *Bindel . . . has written a Ronseal book, one that functions as a kind of primer for all matters pertaining to thecurrent state of feminism . . . bracing to read, and inspiriting . . . Bindel speaks - in a voice that is resolute, undaunted after all these years . . . and if her text doesn't come with easy solutions to our problems, it is nevertheless guaranteed to remind us what we have still to fight for. I can't think of a single person who wouldn't benefit from reading it -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *An impassioned manifesto -- Kathleen Stock * The Spectator *How are young women today meant to know what sort of feminist we need to be to achieve women's liberation? Julie Bindel is here to tell us how to do it properly . . . Bindel delivers a robust call to arms in every chapter . . . this book could not be timelier as the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on women's lives become more stark . . . Feminism for Women should deliver hope to those who feel lost . . . Feminism for Women is a considered deconstruction of some of the myths pervading the modern feminist movement, and how, by going back to the basics, it can be fixed. As a young feminist who has finally seen the light, I consider it essential reading -- Olivia Hartley * The Critic *Promises to breathe life back into the movement . . . a righteous expression of solidarity with women, by women, for women. Bindel writes with compelling fury about issues like intimate partner violence, corrupt police who make it fraught and difficult for women to report rape, the systems set up to privilege abusers over victims -- Kat Rosenfield * Unherd *Bindel makes a call to reset the feminist movement and resist the normalisation of sexual violence * Guardian *Timely, necessary and important * J.K. Rowling *Enlightening, infuriating and hopeful. Julie Bindel hits all the relevant points when it comes to feminism and what it means * Martina Navratilova *Julie Bindel - one of the bravest, smartest journalists and campaigners out there - draws on a fearless lifetime on the front line of feminism and offers a refreshing, sometimes provocative, wake-up call for women of all ages * Samira Ahmed *A sharply argued, deftly written examination of where feminism is at in 2021 - and where feminists should go next * Selina Todd *Whoever gave away feminism, look out, because Julie Bindel wants it back * Cordelia Fine *Bindel's campaigning to end male violence is the rallying call men need to join the fight * David Challen *Feminism for Women needs to come with a very large trigger warning: 'this book may change your mind'. Written for young feminists, it should be read by everyone. Bindel has rescued the story of radical feminism from airless conference halls and impenetrable Gender Studies courses specialising in erasing feminists and our histories * Gita Sahgal *I disagree with Bindel on some issues but God, she's my kind of feminist . . . She is fearless. I love her * Ian Martin *

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Book SynopsisThe first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are.Trade ReviewFormidably ambitious... boldly attempts to paint a thematic portrait of the world's democracies and delivers an argument that leaders grounded these political structures on free-market economics... There is much to admire in Reid-Henry's book * Financial Times *Brilliantly, Reid-Henry calls for the salvation of democracy from the choices of its own leaders - if it is to survive * Samuel Moyn, Yale University *[Empire of Democracy] yields insights that help us understand our present and imagine the possibilities of our future... The frontiers of the future can sometimes be discerned by studying the plains of our past. This book allows the reader to do both. * Sunday Business Post Ireland *A monumental and nuanced history of the past half-century * Irish Times *Simon Reid-Henry has written a superbly informed and riveting historical analysis of our contemporary era, which opened in the 1970s and, as he brilliantly demonstrates, continues to transform the premises of Western democracies * Charles S. Maier, Harvard University *Praise for Fidel and Che * . *As exciting and readable as a Cold War thriller * The Times *Gripping . . . deeply impressive . . . rigorously sourced * Independent *A lucid, pulsating study . . . skilfully drawn * Economist *Absorbing * Sunday Times *Reid-Henry makes the case for seeing our recent past as a distinct period, as well as showing that this era is drawing to a close. He does this convincingly, stylishly and with verve. This is as good a general account as we have of democracy's dysfunctions and discontents over the last 50 years, and a significant improvement on most of the books published recently on our current disorders... in this fine book he has at least provided some starting points for thinking about what we need to do next to overcomes the morbid systems of our age and build something new. * Irish Examiner *

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Book SynopsisThe story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the violent Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by the reduction in Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics harking back to the sixteenth century. Some fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'. Had the Irish Catholics been a 'millstone', as described by an English aristocrat, or were they the prime movers? While the English Catholic aristocracy and the Irish peasants and merchants approached the Catholic Question in very different ways, they manifestly shared the same objective. Antonia Fraser brings colour and humour to the vivid drama with its huge cast of characters: George III, who opposed Emancipation on the basis of the Coronation Oath; his son, the indulgent Prince of Wales, who was enamoured with the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert before the voluptuous Lady Conyngham; Wellington and the 'born Tory' Peel vying for leadership; 'roaring' Lord Winchilsea; the heroic Daniel O'ConnTrade ReviewFraser knows better than anybody how to make political and religious history fun. And as the mob besieges the Palace of Westminster, red-faced politicians rant and rave and George IV tucks in to yet another banquet, her tale flows with such elegance and enthusiasm that you barely stop to notice just how skilfully she does it. -- Dominic Sandbrook * SUNDAY TIMES *Fascinating ... Fraser approaches the subject not as one of arid doctrinal debate, but rather as a story, told by an extraordinary cast of characters. William Pitt, George Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, Percy Bysshe Shelley, [Daniel] O'Connell and two kings named George all played idiosyncratic parts in this drama. Supporting actors included some of Fraser's ancestors, who were active in the opposition to emancipation. The people make this story -- Gerard DeGroot * THE TIMES *Fraser, a convert to Catholicism, as well as a descendant of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Longfords, tells the story with erudition, sprezzatura and a tremendous sense of fun. Every page is shot through with humour and humanity. Columns of bloated, bewhiskered bigots fall to Fraser's skewer, but the many Georgians with rent consciences are handled with great sensitivity. She is excellent on Ireland. She writes beautifully and she includes just the right amount of smut -- Jessie Childs * GUARDIAN *This is a complicated tale with a large cast of characters, making it harder still to maintain the tension that is essential to good, readable history. But Antonia Fraser does it triumphantly. The result is not simply a book that will remind now thoroughly integrated British Catholics of how far we have travelled from being a harassed and despised minority. It also explains, without ever obviously seeming to do so, how implacable prejudices and intractable issues can be tackled and overcome. In other words, it is that rarest of things: a good news story -- Peter Stanford * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *The author, now 85, has not lost her skill in writing history principally through the stories of particular people - and for the success of Catholic emancipation the decisions of a few people were essential: the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel, ideologically and temperamentally anti-Catholic, who changed their minds; George IV, who wavered; and Daniel O'Connell, who resisted the allure of leading violent insurrection in Ireland and instead offered to keep his nation quiet in return for religious tolerance. Fraser's prose is a pleasure to read -- Christopher Howse * DAILY TELEGRAPH *Writing with a historian's skill and a novelist's heart, Fraser shows how O'Connell was able to bring the British government to the point where it felt it had no alternative but to concede emancipation...In many ways this is a book for our Brexit times, a cautionary tale of how a spirit of courage and compromise is necessary when dealing with the political challenge of a generation...Elegant, timely and thought-provoking -- Patrick Geoghegan * IRISH TIMES *Utterly gripping and consistently witty -- Damian Thompson * LITERARY REVIEW *Ripples with colour and is full of contrasting characters, from "roaring" Tory Lord Winchelsea to voluptuous Lady Conyngham and heroic "King Dan" O'Connell. Indeed, it's like an exhilarating literary point to point, with falls at the fences, but the favourite winning by a neck. -- John Martin Robinson * COUNTRY LIFE *Fraser succeeds triumphantly in bringing to life the struggle for Catholic rights. A superb narrative historian, like a modern-day Macaulay, she enlivens her story with vivid character sketches, verve and wit. This is a marvellous book -- Jane Ridley * THE TABLET *This is an absolutely splendid book. With the brio and narrative skill which has been in evidence since her first book - the irreplaceable classic biography of Mary Queen of Scots - Fraser gives us a vivid account of Catholic Emancipation. Some of the most dramatic scenes in our parliamentary history are here brought to life with unmatched verve. -- A. N. Wilson * THE SPECTATOR *Masterly -- Daniel Johnson * STANDPOINT *The widespread violence, excited by a modest Catholic relief Bill, is the start of Fraser's superb account of how British Catholics, over the next 50 years, managed to get their rights back - and how Britain narrowly avoided another civil war * DAILY TELEGRAPH *Meticulously researched and thoroughly engrossing -- Simon Griffith * MAIL ON SUNDAY *Fraser's narrative skilfully interweaves the progress of activism in Ireland - painting a deeply sympathetic picture of the great Daniel O'Connell, "the Liberator" - and pragmatism in England, as emancipation gradually came to appear as the only outcome that offered justice and stability...This book has all the liveliness and clarity of Antonia Fraser's other historical writing. -- Rowan Williams * NEW STATESMAN *Lady Antonia's interest is in the politics of religion, to which she brings all of her remarkable gifts. -- Michael Wheeler * CHURCH TIMES *The fight for Catholic Emancipation in 1829, explored with great skill and elan by a historian who knows how to tell a good story. * SUNDAY TIMES *Expertly written and deftly argued, The King and the Catholics is also a distant mirror of our times, reflecting the political issues arising from religious intolerance. * CATHOLIC TIMES *This is a very fine book indeed. Fraser is an excellent historian. Her research is thorough, her use of it discriminating. The has a dramatic story to tell here, and tells it compellingly, never forgetting that events now in the past were once in the future, and that what now seems inevitable often appeared otherwise at the time...There is no reason why good history should not entertain as well as enlighten. This thoroughly enjoyable book does both. -- Allan Massie * CATHOLIC HERALD *Fraser's book is the first full length history of the emancipation struggle for nearly 20 years and she writes with informed sympathy for both sides, drawing on the experiences of her own Irish Protestant Packenham family history: one ancestor opposed reform and another came to support it. -- Stephen Bates * BBC HISTORY *In The King and the Catholics, Antonia Fraser recounts the saga of the emancipation of British Catholics, who finally achieved equal civil rights in 1829. Hitherto Catholicism had, since the Reformation, been considered 'a form of national treachery', with Catholics blamed for the Great Fire of London -- Simon Heffer * DAILY TELEGRAPH History Books of the Year *[An] intelligent, wide-ranging, elegantly written account -- Peter Stanford * THE TABLET Books of the Year *Proving there's no retirement age for writers, Antonia Fraser brings 50 years of accumulated skill in the writing of gripping history to a book it is impossible to imagine anyone else writing with such liveliness and insight. The King and the Catholics also offers unobtrusive contemporary parallels on issues including xenophobia, terrorism and the long tendency of English politicians to underestimate the complicating issue of Ireland -- Mark Lawson * THE TABLET Books of the Year *

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the life courses of children born of war in different twentieth-century conflicts, including the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan Genocide and the LRA conflict. It investigates both governmental and military policies vis-à-vis children born of war and their mothers, as well as family and local community attitudes, building a complex picture of the multi-layered challenges faced by many children born of war within their post-conflict receptor communities. Based on extensive archival research, the book also uses oral history and participatory research methods which allow the author to add the voices of the children born of war to historical analysis.Table of Contents1 Children born of war: an introduction2 Children born of war: who are they? Experiences of children, mothers, families and post-conflict communities 3 Children born of war during and after the Second World War 4 Bui Doi: the children of the Vietnam War5 Bosnia: a new dimension of genocidal rape and its children6 African conflicts7 Unintended consequences…Epilogue: children born of war: lessons learnt?Index

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Book SynopsisA vivid account of the rise of terrorism in the late nineteenth century and the hysterical media response it provoked -- .

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Book SynopsisIn 2019, Solomon Islands made international headlines when the country severed its decades-old alliance with Taiwan in exchange for a partnership with Beijing. The decision prompted international condemnation and terrified security experts. This penetrating investigation into the switch sheds light on China's wider foreign policy. -- .

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Book SynopsisThe Irish Times Top 10 Bestseller!From war to revolution, famine to emigration, The Darkness Echoing travels around Ireland bringing its dark past to lifeIt''s no secret that the Irish are obsessed with misery, suffering and death. And no wonder, for there is darkness everywhere you look: in cemeteries and castles, monuments and museums, stories and songs. In The Darkness Echoing, Gillian O''Brien tours Ireland''s most deliciously dark heritage sites, delving into the stories behind them and asking what they reveal about the Irish.Energetic, illuminating and surprisingly funny, The Darkness Echoing challenges old, accepted narratives about Ireland, and asks intriguing questions about Ireland''s past, present and future.''My history book of the year'' Ryan Tubridy''As thought-provoking as it is informative and entertaining'' Irish Times''Hugely enjoyable, thought-provoking and

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Book SynopsisA Times Best Sports Book of 2023''Fascinating'' Daily Telegraph ''Lively, rich and readable'' The Spectator ''Thoughtful and entertaining'' Guardian ''Completely eye-opening - every page contains a gem'' Marina Hyde The remarkable stories of how sport shaped the British people. The history of Britain is inseparable from our love affair with sport. Many of our most dramatic social shifts have played out in sporting arenas: cricket and class mobility, rugby and regional rivalry, tennis and gender equality, golf and battles for land, boxing and race-relations. The sporting theatre has even accelerated radical change via heroes including independence fighters, suffragettes and Jewish bare-knuckle boxers crashing the established order. From jousting between kingdoms to the rise of the Commonwealth Games at the end of the imperial era, More Than a Game is the fascinating acco

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Book SynopsisBy the time U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's squadron of four ships sailed into Tokyo Bay on July 8, 1853, the Japanese Tokugawa government had already fended off similarly unwelcome intrusions by the French, the Russians, the Dutch, and the British. These Western imperialists had the power and the means to force Japan into the kinds of treaties that would effectively spell the end of Japan’s autonomy, maybe even its existence as an independent country. At the same moment, Japan was also grappling with a serious insurrection, the death of an emperor, and the death of a shogun—as well as with a series of natural disasters and associated famines. The Japanese response to this incredible series of catastrophes would permanently alter the balance of geopolitical power around the world. Drawing on the best recent scholarship, this short introductory volume examines the motivations and maneuvers of the major participants in the conflict and sets the "opening" of Japan in the context of broader global history. Selections from twenty-​nine primary sources provide firsthand accounts of the event from a variety of perspectives. Several illustrations are also included, along with a note on historiographic interpretation.Trade Review"In this concise volume, Clark provides a nice split between detailed yet engaging narrative history—of the sort required to understand Japan in the context of the nineteenth century world—and primary sources that include updated translations, previously unused sources, classic texts, and helpful visual materials. A welcome addition to world, East Asian, and Japanese history courses." —Michael Wert, Marquette University

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Book SynopsisThe title of this book We Were Not the Savages speaks to the truth of what happened when Europeans invaded Mi'kmaw lands in the 17th century. Prior to the European invasion the Mi'kmaq lived healthy lives and for thousands of years lived harmoniously with nature in the land they called Mi'kma'ki. This book sets the record straight. When the Europeans arrived, they were welcomed and sustained by the Mi'kmaq. After they became well established, over the next three centuries, they turned on the Mi'kmaq; their language, culture and their way of life was systematically ravaged by the newcomers to whom they had extended human kindness. The murderous savagery of white supremacist policies that begot residential schools, Indian reserves, scalping proclamations, etc., all but wiped out the Mi'kmaw people. Yet the Mi'kmaq survived and today stand defending the land, the water and nature's bounty from the European way of life, which threatens the natural world we live in and need to survive.Since the first edition was published in 1993, Daniel Paul's ongoing research puts the lie to the mainstream record of Canadian settler colonialism and reveals that the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples throughout the Americas is not confined to the past. In this 4th edition the author shares his research, which catalogues not only the historical tragedy but the ongoing attempts to silence the Mi'kmaq and other Indigenous Peoples. Paul's work continues to give the Mi'kmaw people a voice that must be heard. It is a guiding light in a dark world.

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Alistair Moffat brings vividly to life the story of this great nation, from the dawn of prehistory through to the twenty-first century. Ambitious, richly detailed and highly readable, Scotland: A History From Earliest Times skilfully weaves together a dazzling array of fact and anecdote from a vast range of sources. The result is an imaginative, informative, balanced and varied portrait of Scotland, seen not just through the experience of the kings, saints, warriors, aristocrats and politicians who populate the pages of conventional history books, but also through that of ordinary people who have lived Scotland's history and have played their own important part in shaping its destiny.Trade Review'The great thing about Moffat's account is that, for all its emphasis on uncertainty, it rattles along with complete narrative certainty, to the extent that great events consistently take even a historically literate reader unawares' * Scottish Review of Books *'For Alistair Moffat, history is rooted in the personal. Now ... he has produced what is undoubtedly his most ambitious work. Scotland: A History From Earliest Times encompasses 500 million years, from when the tectonic plates were shifting to form the land mass we recognize today to the referendum and its aftermath' -- Alan Taylor * The Herald *'Moffat plunders the facts and fables to create a richly-detailed and comprehensive analysis of a nation's past and references a huge number of sources' * Scotland Magazine *'[T]his is a very readable, well-researched and fluent account' * Scotland on Sunday *'A very readable, well-researched and fluent account' -- Stuart Kelly * The Scotsman *'With his instinctive flair and accessible style, Moffat gets right under the skin of the country' * Farming Scotland *

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Book Synopsis'Coffin roads' along which bodies were carried for burial are a marked feature of the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and islands – many are now popular walking and cycling routes. This book journeys along eight coffin roads to discover and explore the distinctive traditions, beliefs and practices around dying, death and mourning in the communities which created and used them. The result is a fascinating snapshot into place and culture. After more than a century when death was very much a taboo subject, this book argues that aspects of the distinctive West Highland and Hebridean way of death and approach to dying and mourning may have something helpful and important to offer to us today. Routes covered in this book are: The Kilmartin Valley – the archetypal coffin road in this ritual landscape of the dead. The Street of the Dead on Iona – perhaps the best known coffin road in Scotland. Kilearnadil Graveyard, Jura – a perfect example of a Hebridean graveyard. The coffin road through Morvern to Keil Church, Lochaline - among the best defined and most evocative coffin roads today. The Green Isle, Loch Shiel, Ardnamurchan - the oldest continuously used burial place anywhere in Europe. The coffin road on Eigg – with its distinctive ‘piper’s cairn’ where the coffin of Donald MacQuarrie, the 'Great Piper of Eigg', was rested. The coffin road from Traigh Losgaintir to Loch Stocinis on Harris - popular with walkers and taken as the title for a best-selling thriller by Peter May. The coffin road on Barra – A detailed study of burial practices on Barra in the early 1950s provides a fascinating record of Hebridean attitudes to dying, death and mourning.Trade Review'a thoughtful walk through memories of long-held Highland burial customs' -- David Robinson * Scotland on Sunday *'A fascinating snapshot into place and culture' * Fife Herald *'The Coffin Roads explores the history of these haunting roads that wind their way through the lonely glens towards the seas, and how the old beliefs and customs around death could help us cope with dying and grief more than the modern, more sanitised approach' -- Maggie Ritchie * Sunday Post *'Bradley brings each route to life with not just a first-hand account of accompanying the burial parties, but well-researched insights drawn from historical accounts of journeys' * Life and Work *'An excellent new book... shows the importance of landscape in shaping the life of a nation' -- Vivien Martin, BBC Radio 4'This is a well-written, thought-provoking and interesting book that we would recommend to anyone wishing to broaden their understanding of the culture of the western Highlands and the Hebrides' -- Ken Lussey * Undiscovered Scotland *‘a wide-ranging, meticulous study [with] detailed scholarship and depth of deduction and contemplation’ * St Andrews in Focus *'The extraordinary traditions around the coffin roads can help us to recapture the patterns of dealing with death which we have lost in our times' * Church Times *

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