History Books

Book SynopsisHmong story cloths provide a visual documentation of the historical and cultural legacy of the Hmong people from the country of Laos. The Hmong first began making the story cloths during their time in refugee camps, and featured here are 48 vibrant story cloths that provide a comprehensive look at their lives and culture. The creation of a story cloth begins with the selection of fabric and images outlined onto the fabric. Long satin stitches of multi-colored threads fill in the image, while details are applied with intricate satin stitches and borders pieced together and hand-stitched. Topics include history, traditional life in Laos, Hmong New Year, folk tales, and neighboring people. The quality and diversity of content of the story cloths build upon one another to provide a holistic understanding of the Hmong culture and history. Augmented with personal stories and artifacts, this book is perfect for history buffs and textile artisans alike.

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Book SynopsisLibrary of History is in three parts: mythical history to the Trojan War; history to Alexander’s death; history to 54 BC. Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive complete, the rest in fragments.

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Book SynopsisThe clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost won his case when a man with a wooden leg swaggered into the French courtroom, denounced du Tilh, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. This book, by the noted historian who served as a consultant for the film, adds new dimensions to this famous legend.Trade ReviewA fascinating reconstruction of a famous incident of impostorship and love in sixteenth-century rural France. Davis delicately deploys historical fact to suggest what is singular about the modern individual. -- Todd Gitlin * The Nation *Natalie Zemon Davis…has scoured the legal and notarial records of south-western France to recreate for the reader not merely a highly entertaining story but a vivid picture of the world which fashioned its principal characters. Her observations on property rights, inheritance, customs, family relationships and the mechanisms of the law are welded together by a rare blend of historical craft and imagination… Professor Davis’s ability to combine lively narrative, wit, historical reflection and psychological analysis will ensure for this book a wide audience. It is truly captivating story with which to pass a rainy weekend; it is also a brilliantly professional reconstruction of the rural world of sixteenth-century France, which will both stimulate and inform for many years to come. -- David Parker * Times Literary Supplement *In her intelligent and subtle analysis, the story gives an inside view of an otherwise little-known world, the private lives of peasants… Natalie Davis has also collaborated on an excellent film of the story (produced in France) as well as writing this book… One can only admire Natalie Davis for the major work of historical reconstruction she has performed without any kind of ideological bias… About Martin Guerre, I would say, without hesitation, the movie was great, but Natalie Davis’s book is even greater. -- Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie * New York Review of Books *Davis combines a veteran researcher’s expertise with a lay reader’s curiosity and an easygoing style. She draws on sophisticated…work in land tenure, legal rights, and demography to reinterpret a ‘prodigious history’ among the French peasantry… Davis’s book combines ingredients essential to good social history—painstaking historical research and a vividly empathetic imagination. The result of this happy combination is that character emerges in context… Davis’s book balances possibility and constraint, character and situation. It puts people back into history but doesn’t take the social and political forces out of it. The universal is there in particular, and it makes you think not only about their choices then, but about ours now. -- Pat Aufderheide * Village Voice *Written in a lively prose style that is accessible without ever being simplistic. The Return of Martin Guerre may be the most vivid, informative and entertaining history writing since Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror…a rich and colorful picture of life, love and justice in 16th-century France. -- Robert C. Cumbow * Seattle Times *The fullest account to date of this extraordinary tale. Davis has constructed a fine piece of social history, a look into the lives of 16th-century peasants who left no records because they could neither read nor write. -- Jean Strouse * Newsweek *A fascinating anecdote, with enough colorful background, psychological complexity, and unsolved mysteries to delight any intelligent audience. * Kirkus Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. From Hendaye to Artigat 2. The Discontented Peasant 3. The Honor of Bertrande de Rols 4. The Masks of Arnaud du Tilh 5. The Invented Marriage 6. Quarrels 7. The Trial at Rieux 8. The Trial at Toulouse 9. The Return of Martin Guerre 10. The Storyteller 11. Histoire prodigieuse, Histoire tragique 12. Of the Lame Epilogue Selected Bibliography of Writings on Martin Guerre Notes Index Illustrations First edition of Coras, Arrest Memorable (1561). Bibliotheque Nationale. First page of the Arrest Memorable (1561). Bibliotheque Mazarine. The routes of Martin Guerre. Whimsical soldiers, ca. 1545. Archives departementales de l'Ariege, 5E6220. Peasants dance. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes. A rural couple. Bibliotheque Nationale. Confrontation between accused and witness. Harvard Law School Library, Treasure Room. First pictorial representation of the case. Bibliotheque Mazarine, Paris. Jean de Coras. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes. A case of remarkable resemblance. University of Pennsylvania, Furness Memorial Library, Special Collections, Van Pelt Library. Punishment arrives on a wooden leg. Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

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Book SynopsisVenantius Fortunatus, a master of the short praise poem and a canonical Christian Latin poet, wrote eleven volumes of hymns, epigrams, elegies, and other religious and epistolary verses addressed to kings, bishops, and abbesses. This volume presents for the first time in English translation all of his poetry, apart from a single long saint’s life.Trade ReviewThis nearly faultless edition and translation of Fortunatus by Roberts will doubtless stand the test of time, bringing on a new wave of interest in the poet. -- Raymond J. Cormier * Mediaevistik *

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Book SynopsisPausanias, one of the Roman world’s great travelers, sketches in Description of Greece the history, geography, landmarks, legends, and religious cults of all the important Greek cities. He shares his enthusiasm for great sites, describing them with care and an accuracy confirmed by comparison with monuments that still stand today.

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Book SynopsisClaudian displays poetic as well as rhetorical skill in his diverse set of works. A panegyric on the brothers Probinus and Olybrius was followed mostly by epics in hexameters, but also by elegiacs, epistles, epigrams, and idylls.

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Book SynopsisAelian's Historical Miscellany (Varia Historia) is a pleasurable example of light reading for Romans of the early third century. Offering engaging anecdotes about historical figures, retellings of legendary events, and enjoyable descriptive pieces, Aelian's collection of nuggets and narratives appealed to a wide reading public.Trade ReviewAelian’s Historical Miscellany (Varia Historia) is mainly a potpourri of historical, literary, and other information concerning the Greek past…which apparently entertained educated readers [of the 3rd century] as well as provided them with exempla. Wilson gives us a smooth and very readable translation, syntactically reflecting Aelian’s ‘studied simplicity.’ -- Robert J. Penella * Religious Studies Review *Classicists no longer have an excuse not to check a citation in Aelian, and a general reader who wants to find out what a bedside book from antiquity might have looked like has the means ready to hand… Aelian’s Greek can be quite tricky and with his translation Wilson puts us further in his debt: besides being clear and accurate it is often sprightly and even eloquent. -- A. J. Podlecki * Scholia *

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Book SynopsisThe major works by Josephus are History of the Jewish War, from 170 BC to his own time, and Jewish Antiquities, from creation to AD 66. Also by him are an autobiographical Life and a treatise Against Apion.

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Book SynopsisOn the City of God unfolds God’s action in the progress of the world’s history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over pagan in adversity.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Mr. Bartov’s anatomy of genocidal destruction is a monument of a different sort. It is an act of filial piety recollecting the blood-soaked homeland of his parents; it is a substantive contribution to the history of ethnic strife and extreme violence; it is a harrowing reminder that brutality and intimacy can combine to destroy individual lives and reshape the destiny of a region and its peoples: history as recollection and as warning." —Wall Street Journal"Fascinating...This resonant and cautionary history demonstrates how the peace was incrementally disrupted, as rage accumulated and neighbors and friends felt pitted against one another." — Los Angeles Times"If you imagined there might be no more to learn, along comes this work of forensic, gripping, original, appalling brilliance." — Philippe Sands, author of East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity""Combines a long historical perspective with an intimate reconstruction of who the perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust had been. A local history opening our understanding of the phenomenon at large. A brilliant book by a master historian." — Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland"This is a gripping, challenging, and masterfully written book...Understanding the destruction of the Jews as part of genocidal perils that have not passed even today, the horrific case of Buczacz thus comes as a powerful warning against bigotry everywhere at any time." — Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Mllion: The Israelis and the Holocaust and Simon Wiesenthal:The Life and Legends"Omer Bartov's masterful study of Buczacz — marked by comprehensive scholarship and a compelling narrative — exemplifies the very best in current Holocaust history writing." — Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland"A long-awaited and essential contribution to the history of the Holocaust. This thoroughly researched and beautifully written study of the deep roots and immediate circumstances of genocide in an East Galician multiethnic town...is an exemplary microhistory of the Holocaust, a model for future research." — Saul Friedlander, author of Nazi Germany and the Jews"The result is breathtaking, painful and astonishing…" — The Spectator"Bartov’s book is a significant contribution to the holocaust literature. However, the book’s contribution is even more significant in understanding the complexity of interethnic conflicts...Anatomy of a Genocide furnishes well-lit imagination, though shaded with sadness, beneficial for the communities trapped into mutual impairment in various parts of the world, including Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, Burundi, and Rwanda." — New York Journal of Books"Fascinating...This resonant and cautionary history demonstrates how the peace was incrementally disrupted, as rage accumulated and neighbors and friends felt pitted against one another." —National Book Review"At once a scholarly and a personal book." —Jerusalem Post"Remarkable." —The New Yorker

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Book SynopsisPresents an account of the most feared and the most mysterious of medieval heretics. A crusade was launched to uproot them in the south of France, the Inquisition was developed to suppress them, and St Dominic founded his friars to preach against them. This book studies the rise and fall of the heresy from the 12th-century to 15th-century.Trade Review"Catharism was the most radical of medieval heresies. Since it touched most areas of Europe in some degree, research on its character and fortunes makes formidable demands on the learning and linguistic ability of any scholar who tackles it, not to mention demands also on his judgement. Malcolm Lambert, well known for his lucid and authoritative writings on medieval heresy, is a match for this challenging task. His new book, The Cathars, is to be welcomed as the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject now available in English." Alexander Murray, University College, London "Lambert's command of the literature and his ability to integrate it into a coherent narrative are unmatched. His book deserves to become the standard account of medieval Catharism." Medieval Review "This is the first comprehensive study in English of the most mysterious and radical of medieval heresies. Malcolm Lambert ... 'combines scholarly investigation with lucid narrative.'" TD Book Survey "Malcolm Lambert, with deep erudition allied to pristine sensitive prose, masterfully narrates [the] distinctive history [of] the cathars ... The Cathars ... is, quite simply, indispensible." Catholic Historical ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations. List of Maps. Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. The Little Foxes. 2. The First Cathars. 3. The Wise Man from the East. 4. The Growth of Catharism. 5. Innocent III, Heresy and Reform. 6. The First Inquisitors. 7. The Cathars of Languedoc. 8. The Battle for Souls in Italy. 9. The Suffocating of Catharism in Languedoc. 10. The Last Missionary. 11. The Decline of Italian Catharism. 12. Inertia and Survival: the Bosnian Church. Epilogue: The Legacy of Catharism. List of Abbreviations. Index.

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Book Synopsis* Provides a complete history of the region from 8000 BC to the present day. * Covers all varieties of history from cultural and social to economic and environmental. .Trade Review"A History of Japan is a highly recommended, informative, scholarly, comprehensive, and 'reader friendly' introduction and historical survey that will be much appreciated by students of Japanese history and culture, and has a wealth of material for the non-specialist general reader seeking to understand the Japan of antiquity as well as a contemporary and influential society." The Midwest Book Review "Not until Conrad Totman's A History of Japan has there been such a sophisticated and detailed record of Japan's past, one that combines and critiques the standard perspectives while adding a new vision all its own. In a word, this is the best single-volume examination of Japan's history available .. A History of Japan is a masterpiece." Monumenta Nipponica "A clear and concise overview of the whole of Japanese history." History "Students and the ... general reader ... will profit from engagement with this book." English Historical Review "A History of Japan is one of the most perceptive and illuminating studies of Japan's history to have appeared in English in recent decades, and is likely to be widely used by teachers, students and researchers." Times Higher Education Supplement "Totman's work reflects its author's erudition, expansive vision, and humanism. It will suit the needs of instructors and many general readers perfectly." David Howell, Princeton University, for the Journal of Japanese StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations. Conventions Used. Acknowledgements. Preface. Maps. Introduction. Part I: Beginnings:. 1. Geology, Climate, and Biota. 2. From Origins to Agriculture. Part II: The Age of Dispersed Agriculturalists (400 BCE - 1250 CE):. 3. Political Consolidation to 671 CE. 4. Establishing the Ritsuryô Order (672-750). 5. Ritsuryô Adaptation and Decay (750-1250). 6. Classical Higher Culture (750-1250). Part III: The Age of Intensive Agriculture (1250-1890):. 7. The Centuries of Disorder (1250-1890). 8. Medieval Higher Culture (1250-1550). 9. Establishing the Bakuhan Order (1550-1700). 10. The Age of Growth (1590-1700). 11. Stasis and Decay (1700-1850). 12. Crisis and Redirection (1800-1890). Part IV: The Age of Industrialism: Early Decades (1890-Present):. 13. Early Imperial Triumph (1890-1914). 14. Early Imperial Society and Culture. 15. Later Imperial Politics and Economy (1914-1945). 16. Later Imperial Society and Culture (1914-1945). 17. Drift to Disaster (1914-1945). 18. Entrepreneurial Japan: Politics and Economy (1945-1990). 19. Society and Environment (1945-1990). 20. The Culture of Entrepreneurial Japan (1945-1990). Epilogue: Japan Today and Tomorrow. Endnotes. Appendices. A. Tables I-X. B. Chinese Words: Wade-Giles & Pinyin Orthographies. C. Glossary of Japanese Terms. D. Supplemental. Readings. Index.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first extensive study of how anti-Semitism pervaded and shaped Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, and how it pulled together diverse elements of a delusionary Nazi worldview. In an era when both anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories continue to influence world politics, Herf offers a timely reminder of their dangers.Trade ReviewHere, practically for the first time, we can see how Germans before and during World War II were at all times in their daily lives confronted with a carefully designed view of the world in which a mythical Jewish enemy was portrayed as threatening Germans and hence had to be killed. No prior study has shown as clearly as this one how central this theme was to German wartime propaganda in all its forms. -- Gerhard L. Weinberg, University of North CarolinaJeffrey Herf has written a brilliant book that reorients our understanding of the Holocaust. Arguing that racial antisemitism, however vicious, was an insufficient basis for genocide, Herf demonstrates that a major shift occurred in Nazi propaganda during the war: Jews were now presented as a political threat to the German nation, and as the instigators, through their puppets, America, England, and the Soviet Union, of a deadly world war against Germany. -- Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish JesusA commendable and compelling elucidation of the Nazi propaganda which accompanied the Holocaust, indispensable for both students of the Third Reich and general readers. -- Jay W. Baird, author of The Mythical World of Nazi Propaganda, 1939-1945In this impressive book, Jeffrey Herf shows that the omnipresent image of the 'international Jew' as the source of Germany's victimhood was central to the propaganda and political imagination of the Nazi leadership, which made no secret of its intention to destroy European Jewry. -- Anson Rabinbach, Princeton UniversityWith the market so saturated with books that have "Nazi" in their titles, when a path-breaking new work does appear, one that explains the "why"--not just another documentation of the "how"--there is a chance it will slip under many readers' radar. One can only hope that such a fate will not befall Jeffrey Herf's incredibly important The Jewish Enemy, one of those rare works of Holocaust history that poses the most essential question: "Why did European, especially German, antisemitism, which had never led to an effort to murder all of Europe's Jews before, do so between 1941 and 1945 in the midst of World War II? What changed to make anti-Semitism a rationale for mass murder rather than for a continuation of centuries old patterns of persecution?"...[Herf is] the legitimate intellectual heir to [George] Mosse. -- Noah Strote * Forward *Jeffrey Herf's latest book, The Jewish Enemy--dealing with Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust--sheds new light on what happened then in Europe and is a trenchant refutation of those who try to make us believe that antisemitic hate speech is merely a cynical tool employed by politicians...At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the demented discourse of radical antisemitism has resurfaced in different idioms and cultural contexts. It would be complacent to assume that variants on the narrative explored in Jeffrey Herf's brilliant work will not play a part in the future as well...This is a book that should be read widely. -- Karl Pfeifer * Searchlight *What may be the most important book on the Holocaust in a generation...In The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, [Herf] concedes that hatred and racism were important, but he argues that they don't explain Germany's unique efforts to destroy the Jews...The real answer isn't hate, but fear. Poring through miles of speeches, private comments, journal entries, party memoranda and all 24,000 pages of Goebbel's diaries, Herf concludes that the Nazis really believed that the Jews ran the world and wanted to destroy Germany. They believed that Jews controlled not only the Bolsheviks to the east but the capitalists to the west. -- Jonah Goldberg * Los Angeles Times *Many historians who have tackled Hitler and the Third Reich have found it impossible to take the Führer's rhetoric or Nazi ideology seriously. A. J. P. Taylor was infamous for treating Hitler as an ordinary statesman in the German mould. A succession of historians, including Rainer Zitelmann, Detlev Peukert and Götz Aly, continues to insist that Nazism was a rational modernizing force. It is hard to see how this approach will withstand Jeffrey Herf's patient, incisive and ultimately devasting analysis of the Nazi world-view in The Jewish Enemy. -- David Cesarani * Times Literary Supplement *Which of the major findings of this excellent study is more disturbing: that human beings are capable of inventing and believing the kind of vicious nonsense the Nazis believed about Jews, or that such profoundly irrational beliefs can become the basis of a meticulously devised and implemented program of industrial mass murder? It is indeed the case, to say the least, that 'an examination of modern political culture draws attention to the causal significance of many irrational and illusory ideological perspectives'...The Jewish Enemy is both a revealing, carefully documented historical study and a reminder of the timeless and astonishing human capacity for demented belief, bottomless hatred, and a correspondingly stunning readiness to act upon bizarre convictions and fantasies...This study is also highly informative about the methods and character of Nazi propaganda. The author makes use of sources not widely used before, such as the ubiquitous wall newspapers (also favored in communist states), posters, and archival materials (including directives to the press about the tasks and methods of propaganda), and the diaries of Goebbels, among others. Some striking visual images of 'the Jewish enemy' used in the press and posters are reproduced (remarkably similar to both Soviet anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda and the images purveyed in Arab anti-Israeli propaganda). -- Paul Hollander * New Criterion *Through a chronological structure that moves seamlessly from an introductory section on pre-1939 Nazi propaganda themes and structures to the shifting narratives of the wartime period, Herf shows convincingly that the attacks on the regime's wartime "enemies" (Britain; after 1941 the Soviet Union and the United States) were underpinned by the same Überbegriff of an alleged "international Jewish conspiracy."...Herf's book adds much-needed intellectual ammunition to the argument that propaganda should be taken very seriously. -- Aristotle A. Kallis * H-Net *Undoubtedly, this is a much-needed study that convincingly demonstrates the centrality of radical anti-Semitic language in the Nazi leadership's thinking and the regime's wartime propaganda. Herf has succeeded in showing how in the minds of the regime's leaders and propagandists the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews were directly and inherently connected. -- Thomas Pegelow Kaplan * Canadian Journal of History *Herf is meticulous in his scholarship, and the book's vivid detail can certainly hold up to historians' scrutiny...This is a must-read. -- Dave Roy * Curled Up with a Good Book *Herf has made excellent use of many overlooked sources...Most shockingly, he shows the remarkable extent to which the German people were informed by Hitler and his colleagues that the Third Reich was engaged in annihilating Europe's Jews. The overall effect is one of a regime in thrall to its own paranoid fantasies, with devastating consequences that are all too familiar. -- Dan Stone * Journal of Genocide Research *Jeffrey Herf, one of the most prolific and challenging historians of twentieth-century Germany, has written an important book, the first comprehensive work detailing the structure of the Third Reich’s effort to inculcate antisemitism in the German population. This was a propaganda effort, and much of Herf’s book focuses on Joseph Goebbels; but Herf also carefully delineates changes in the antisemitic content of Hitler’s speeches and gives a great deal of attention to Otto Dietrich, the Reich press chief. The result for readers is a nuanced sense of the volume and flow of antisemitic propaganda—and The Jewish Enemy leaves no doubt that antisemitism, indeed murderous antisemitism, was an ideology propagated up front and in public. For some readers, this may seem an obvious point, but a great deal of older research underscored how the Nazis placed antisemitism in the background, emphasizing instead the material gains that ordinary citizens could expect from Nazi rule. Herf shows that nothing could be further from the truth...it is Herf’s significant achievement to gather the antisemitic propaganda of the Third Reich and demonstrate its patterns. For the first time, we have a nuanced account of how state-produced antisemitism changed during the war and how this antisemitism connected to the Holocaust. -- Helmut Walser Smith * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsPreface 1. The Jews, the War, and the Holocaust 2. Building the Anti-Semitic Consensus 3. "International Jewry" and the Origins of World War II 4. At War against the Alliance of Bolshevism and Plutocracy 5. Propaganda in the Shadow of the Death Camps 6. "The Jews Are Guilty of Everything" 7. "Victory or Extermination" Conclusion Appendix: The Anti-Semitic Campaigns of the Nazi Regime, as Reflected in Lead Front-Page Stories in Der V&omul;lkische Beobachter List of Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Bibliography Bibliographical Essay Index

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Book SynopsisAS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK. The fascinating story of how we have gone out to eat, from the ancient Romans in Pompeii to the luxurious Michelin-starred restaurants of today. Tracing its earliest incarnations in the city of Pompeii, where Sitwell is stunned by the sophistication of the dining scene, this is a romp through history as we meet the characters and discover the events that shape the way we eat today. Sitwell, restaurant critic for the Daily Telegraph and famous for his acerbic criticisms on the hit BBC show MasterChef, tackles this enormous subject with his typical wit and precision. He spies influences from an ancient traveller of the Muslim world, revels in the unintended consequences for nascent fine dining of the French Revolution, reveals in full hideous glory the post-Second World War dining scene in the UK and fathoms the birth of sensitive gastronomy in the US counterculture of the 1960s.Trade Review'Fascinating and often counterintuitive' -- Michael Hodges * Radio Times *'William Sitwell has the palate of a great chef, the honesty of a high court judge and he holds the pen of P.G.Wodehouse' -- Marco Pierre White'A warm-hearted romp through the history of eating out... This wide-ranging literary feast is particularly apposite at a time when many of us are noticing how much money we’re saving by not eating out.' -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * The Times *'As tales of saucepan-throwing, cocaine-snorting chefs attest, restaurants revel in drama and excitement... Always well-informed, never dull.' -- Andrew Lycett * Mail on Sunday *‘An immensely engaging guide ... Sitwell never takes himself too seriously. As Dr Johnson declared, “There is nothing… by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn,” and it is bittersweet to enjoy it here vicariously.' -- Robert Eustace * Daily Telegraph *'Beautifully timed to keep your favourite dishes fresh in your mind and get you planning for how and where you’re going to indulge when the lockdown finally ends... About as close as you can get to the fun of eating out right now. Sitwell is a witty writer who understands the need to entertain... I found this book more entertaining than many a restaurant meal and it’s something to keep us going until everything reopens.' -- Richard Vines * Bloomberg *'The Restaurant: A History of Eating Out is a story of life. A must read for anyone interested in food or history.’ * SLMAG *'Supremely readable' -- Annie Gray * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisOften hailed as one of the best travel books ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history book, but a beautifully written immersion in Venetian life and character, set against the background of the city''s past. Analysing the particular temperament of Venetians, as well as its waterways, its architecture, its bridges, its tourists, its curiosities, its smells, sounds, lights and colours, there is scarcely a corner of Venice that Jan Morris has not investigated and brought vividly to life. Jan Morris first visited the city of Venice as young James Morris, during World War II. As she writes in the introduction, ''it is Venice seen through a particular pair of eyes at a particular moment - young eyes at that, responsive above all to the stimuli of youth.'' Venice is an impassioned work on this magnificent but often maddening city. Jan Morris''s collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Sydne

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewLucia Allais has written an extraordinary book, an account of monuments in modernity as they are laboriously assembled and then bombed into smithereens. Targeted and preserved, conceptualized, revered, disdained--Allais shows just how polymorphic these perverse stones can be. Interested in collective memory, recent architecture, international culture or public art? Read this.--Peter Galison, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisIn twelfth century Languedoc a subversive heresy of Eastern origin flourished to an extraordinary degree. The Albingenses believed that the world was created by an evil spirit, and that all worldly things - including the Church - were by nature sinful.Jonathan Sumption''s acclaimed history examines the roots of the heresy, the uniquely rich culture of the region which nurtured it, and the crusade launched against it by the Church which resulted in one of the most savage of all medieval wars.''[Sumption] never fails to keep his narrative lively with the particular and the pertinent. He is excellent on the tactics and spirit of medieval warfare.'' Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed historian and broadcaster Helen Castor tells the story of Joan of Arc as you have never read it before.''Popular history at its best.'' Daily TelegraphHelen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth century France apart.Here is a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint.Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this refreshing new tak

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Book Synopsis1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare''s life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear.1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come

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Book SynopsisToday Kensington Palace is synonymous with young royals; it is the official home of TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their family, and of TRH The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. It is also famous for being the residence of Diana, Princess of Wales, during the last years of her life, and visitors still flock to the palace to learn about her story. But the history of Kensington stretches back much further. It boasts more than three centuries of continuous royal occupation, making it unique among the Historic Royal Palaces. Formerly a private house enlarged by Christopher Wren in the late 17th century to suit the needs of William and Mary, Kensington Palace was the favoured home of five sovereigns until the death of George II in 1760. Even after its conversion into a royal residence, the palace remained a rather unprepossessing building, fashioned out of reddish-grey brick. However, this belied its architectural significance, for it was shaped and decorated by some of the country's leading architects, artists, craftsmen and designers, and is now a major national monument. The palace's social and political significance is arguably even greater. Kensington has played host to some of the most important personalities and events in the long history of the royal family. It was the birthplace and childhood home of Queen Victoria, and it was here that she held her first council meeting as monarch in 1837. During the previous century, Kensington had been divided into apartments for the younger generation of royals - an arrangement that continues today. From the late 19th century onwards, it became a visitor attraction, a museum and home to the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection. Today the palace attracts more than 400,000 visitors a year. In this new illustrated account, Tracy Borman tells the fascinating story of Kensington from private residence to modern-day royal palace, describing not only the development of the building and its magnificent gardens, but also the dramas and intrigues of court life. Its history is set against a backdrop of events that shaped both Britain and its monarchy: from the Jacobite uprisings of the mid-18th century to the rise of industrialisation in the 19th, and the turbulence of world war in the 20th. Here, in the domestic surrounds of the palace, the monarchy evolved and modernised in tandem with the times. The story of Kensington Palace is, in short, the story of the modern monarchy. AUTHOR: Tracy Borman is joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces. She has worked for various national heritage organisations, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Archives and English Heritage. An acclaimed writer and historian 200 illustrations, 1 plan

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Financial Times Summer Books 2015 selection Winner of the 2016 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Books in History 2015, chosen Tony Barber "In recent years scholars of Ottoman history have published a number of path-breaking, award-winning academic studies documenting the annihilation of the Armenians in 1915. Published on the one hundredth anniversary of that horrible event, Ronald Grigor Suny's monograph stands out as another superb work, in this case the best narrative account explaining 'why, when, and how' the Armenian genocide occurred."--Marc David Baer, H-Nationalism "An authoritative examination of unspeakable horrors... [D]eeply researched, fair-minded... Suny creates a compelling narrative of vengeance and terror."--Kirkus, starred review "The centenary [of the Armenian Genocide] has raised the diplomatic temperature and precipitated many books. Ronald Suny's is the best of them: Balanced, scholarly, and harrowing, it should be read by all serious students of modern history."--Dominic Green, Weekly Standard "Suny is admirably dispassionate in explaining the particular circumstances that led the Ottoman government to embark on a policy of mass extermination."--Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times "[W]hat distinguishes Suny's scholarship is a scrupulous attention to context and the genuine imperial anxiety of the Young Turks. They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else (a title taken from another Talat diktat) is a fair-minded account. Unsparing in depicting the viciousness of the killing, forced conversions and kidnapping of children and young women, it is rigorous in its choice of language and nuance, generous in its empathy but implacable in its conclusions."--David Gardner, Financial Times "A tremendously powerful, scrupulously balanced, rigorous and humane account of a tragedy that still casts a shadow over the modern state of Turkey. It is likely to become the definitive reference book on the subject for years to come."--Justin Marozzi, Spectator "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else will very likely be the standard account in English for the 21st Century of the Armenian Genocide and its broader setting. The event itself was the first major genocide in what was to be an entire century of genocides, and Suny is keenly aware of the lessons it can teach about the horrors it initiated. The book is strongly recommended."--Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly "Magisterial."--Brian Bethune, Macleans "[A]n excellent source for readers wishing to learn the history [of the Armenian Genocide]. Suny has provided an exhaustive, dispassionate treatment, situating the Genocide in the centuries-long relationship between Armenian Christians and their Turkish Muslim rulers ... readable and thorough."--Mark Movsesian, First Things "An authoritative, comprehensive study of political, religious, and cultural factors around the terrible events of 1915-16, and an account which avoids the propagandism of both Turkish and Armenian advocates, yet does not flinch from their appalling reality."--Mainstream "[A] fine scholarly study."--Christopher Allmand, The Tablet "Suny weaves this complex story into a nuanced, meticulously researched, and compellingly argued book."--Choice "A remarkable work of history."--Howard Eissenstat, Current History "If you read one book about the 1915 genocide, make this it. Suny is one of the western world's most renowned scholars of the Caucasus region. His account of the fate that befell the Armenians at Ottoman Turkish hands is harrowingly detailed and scrupulously objective."--Tony Barber, Financial Times "A historical masterpiece and a significant benchmark in the study of the Genocide, which will surely become the definitive textbook on the subject... Comprehensive and compelling."--Sossie Kasbarian & Kerem Oktem, Caucasus Survey "The book under review should be of an interest to graduate and postgraduate research students, genocide scholars and historians interested to gaining fresh understandings of the historical dynamics leading to the Armenian genocide, and the connections between imperialism, nationalism and the Armenian genocide during the twentieth century. Additionally, the book provides the groundwork for further debate on how to integrate the Armenian genocide more completely within an understanding of the historical trends of its period."--Eldad Ben-Aharon, H-Soz-Kult "[A] superb work, in this case the best narrative account explaining 'why, when, and how' the Armenian genocide occurred."--Marc David Baer, H-Net Reviews "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else will no doubt become the definitive account of this contested history... This book provides a sophisticated synthesis of recent research without sacrificing depth, nuance or narrative clarity. The fate of the Armenians is situated firmly within wider historiographies of imperial competition and decline, total war and the rise of nation-states... Suny's approach therefore powerfully demonstrates for non-specialists the salience of the fate of the Armenians for understanding much broader historical processes at work at the end of the 'long' nineteenth century."--Jo Laycock, Patterns of Prejudice "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else stands out as a superbly researched, carefully balanced and compelling account... This remarkable book shows how seeking deeper historical truths does not detract from justice: Suny's brilliant, careful and seemingly detached analysis makes the book all the more powerful in this respect."--Gilles Andreani, Survival "A transitional text... Accessible and concise, while still complex enough to do justice to the relationships between Armenians, their rulers and their neighbours over the centuries."--Susan Pattie, Chartist "This stunning book makes a significant contribution to genocide studies but also to Armenian, Russian, European, and international history... Suny's masterful narrative is proof that in great scholarship, empathy and analytical rigor work together."--Doris L. Bergen, Russian ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction xi Sources, Notes, and Transliteration xxiii 1 Empire 1 2 Armenians 31 3 Nation 64 4 Great Powers 91 5 Revolution 141 6 Counterrevolution 174 7 War 208 8 Removal 246 9 Genocide 281 10 Orphaned Nation 328 Conclusion: Thinking about the Unthinkable: Genocide 350 Historians Look at the Armenian Genocide: A Bibliographical Discussion 367 Notes 375 Index 463

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Book SynopsisIn this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds--remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic,Trade ReviewHonorable Mention for the 2013 PROSE Award in European and World History, Association of American Publishers One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014 "A fantastic book."--President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan "Lost Enlightenment is a remarkable and accessible scholarly tour de force."--David Morgan, Times Literary Supplement "Starr argues rightly that the region's brilliant culture rested on a highly cosmopolitan mix of ethnic groups, languages and religions; a long, rich pre-Islamic intellectual tradition (mainly Buddhist); and prosperity... Starr shines in his core chapters, where he presents the great achievements of the Central Asian philosopher-scientists at a time when their homeland was the creative intellectual capital of the world."--Nature "Starr is that rare scholar with the horsepower to write about the medieval culture of this vast region that is bounded by Persia to the west, and China to the east, and India to the southeast... An indispensable title for scholars, this lively study should prove equally compelling to serious lay readers with an interest in Arabic and medieval thought."--Library Journal, starred review "In this graceful, luxuriant history, Starr recovers the stunning contributions of Central Asia scientists, architects, artists, engineers, and historians during the four centuries that began just before the Arab onslaught of the eight century and lasted until the Mongol siege in the thirteenth century... The book offers a lucid exploration of the era's intricate philosophical and theological debates and a succinct depiction of its poetry and art, enhanced by many illustrations."--Foreign Affairs "Lost Enlightenment is a most amazing book, one with--if we are lucky--the potential to shape global public thinking for decades ahead... Lost Enlightenment is an entirely readable, informative and even entertaining book. Although it might surely serve as an inspiration to the modern inhabitants of Central Asia, it should also serve as a warning to any modern nation and civilization that it is tempted to intolerance."--Dimitry Chen, Asian Review of Books "Starr undertakes a daunting task--the intellectual history of Central Asia through the medieval period. Happily, he succeeds... Starr's book is thorough and well researched, and includes ample supplemental material and sources, so that even novice students will find it instructive and useful without being overwhelming."--Choice "This favorable account of Central Asia's intellectual life will enhance any reader's perception of Central Asia and challenge further investigation."--Isenbike Togan, Bogazici Journal "This book does a marvelous job of highlighting the contributions of medieval intellectuals from Central Asia to the history of world civilizations... It is a very informative and readable book."--Richard Foltz, Fezana Journal "In the book Lost Enlightenment, historian S. Frederick Starr chronicles the long tradition of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and literary intellectuals that flourished in the Iranian- and Turkish-speaking regions of Central Asia."--Noah Smith, Bloomberg View "This book is a must-read for those wanting to understand the development of this vast region of the world and the cultural and religious tides that gave rise to the conflicts we face today."--Carl G. Schuster, Explorers JournalTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Dramatis Personae xxi Chronology xxxi Chapter 1 The Center of the World 1 Chapter 2 Worldly Urbanists, Ancient Land 28 Chapter 3 A Cauldron of Skills, Ideas, and Faiths 62 Chapter 4 How Arabs Conquered Central Asia and Central Asia Then Set the Stage to Conquer Baghdad 101 Chapter 5 East Wind over Baghdad 126 Chapter 6 Wandering Scholars 156 Chapter 7 Khurasan: Central Asia's Rising Star 194 Chapter 8 A Flowering of Central Asia: The Samanid Dynasty 225 Chapter 9 A Moment in the Desert: Gurganj under the Mamuns 267 Chapter 10 Turks Take the Stage: Mahmud of Kashgar and Yusuf of Balasagun 303 Chapter 11 Culture under a Turkic Marauder: Mahmud's Ghazni 332 Chapter 12 Tremors under the Dome of Seljuk Rule 381 Chapter 13 The Mongol Century 436 Chapter 14 Tamerlane and His Successors 478 Chapter 15 Retrospective: The Sand and the Oyster 515 Notes 541 Index 611

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Book SynopsisDoes growing economic interdependence among great powers increase or decrease the chance of conflict and war? Liberals argue that the benefits of trade give states an incentive to stay peaceful. Realists contend that trade compels states to struggle for vital raw materials and markets. Moving beyond the stale liberal-realist debate, Economic InterdTrade ReviewWinner of the 2017 ISA Annual Best Book Award, International Studies Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015 "This bold, well-written, and landmark work draws together the fields of international political economy and security studies. It also illuminates modern international history and the future."--Choice "[A] landmark book."--Foreign Affairs "[A] stimulating and penetrating book... A landmark contribution to the ongoing debate on the relationship between interdependence and peace."--Jack Snyder, International Security "Exhaustively researched... Copeland is a rarity among contemporary international relations scholars."--Erik Gartzke, Political Science Quarterly "Economic Interdependence and War is international relations on a gigantic scale. Copeland asks big questions, makes big arguments, engages big alternatives, and tests them all on big powers over a big time span... Books like this one are a healthy reminder that there remains trenchant things to say about the big picture... A work of passion, conviction, and erudition."--Joseph Parent, Perspective on Politics "This book provides a novel, nuanced and highly illuminating examination of the relationship between economic interdependence and war... The book's central arguments and findings will also be of clear interest and importance for current and future policy makers as they seek to grapple with the long-term effects of increasing economic interdependence."--Stephen Ellis, Political Studies Review "This landmark book makes bold arguments and parallel big achievements. On theoretical front, the book succeeds in presenting that as an amalgam of liberal and realist approaches, future trade expectation theory has a significant deductive and explanatory power. On empirical front, the book is one of the best case studies that go in depth based on the diplomatic-historical evidence among the existing large-N quantitative empirical studies."--Hakan Mehmetcik, Journal of Global AnalysisTable of ContentsPreface vii Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Chapter Oone: Theory of Economic Interdependence and War 16 Chapter Two: Quantitative Analysis and Qualitative Case Study Research 51 Chapter Three: The Russo-Japanese War and the German Wars for Hegemony, 1890-1939 97 Chapter Four: The Prelude to Pearl Harbor: Japanese Security and the Northern Question, 1905-40 144 Chapter Five: The Russian Problem and the Onset of the Pacific War, March-December 1941 184 Chapter Six: The Origins, Dynamics, and Termination of the Cold War, 1942-91 247 Chapter Seven: European Great Power Politics, 1790-1854 319 Chapter Eight: Great Power Politics in the Age of Imperial Expansion, 1856-99 375 Chapter Nine: Implications of the Argument 428 Bibliography 447 Index 473

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Book SynopsisBetween 1919 and 1933, German military leaders created the Reichswehr, a new military organisation built on the wreckage of the old Imperial Army. This book traces the crucial transformations in military tactical doctrine, organisation and training that laid the foundations for the Nazi Blitzkrieg.

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Book SynopsisOn the bicentennial of his death, this beautifully illustrated volume pays tribute to the Scot who became the father of American ornithology. Alexander Wilson made unique contributions to ecology and animal behavior. His drawings of birds in realistic poses in their natural habitat inspired Audubon, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and other naturalists.Trade Review[Burtt and Davis] are in no doubt that their man is the one to deserve the title of ‘Father’ [of American ornithology]… And it is a strong case, convincingly made… This will be a very valuable resource for scholars, and the drawings themselves are attractive and persuasive evidence for the authors’ claims about Wilson’s originality and importance. The authors and publishers have done full justice to these illustrations in this handsome volume and they are beautifully laid out and reproduced. -- Jeremy Mynott * Times Literary Supplement *Burtt and Davis argue convincingly for Wilson’s contribution to modern scientific ornithology and celebrate Wilson as the man who inspired John James Audubon… This book…give[s] us Wilson’s wonderful illustrations—and a sense of the spirit of an extraordinary man whose curiosity reached far beyond the man-made world. -- Karin Altenberg * Wall Street Journal *Burtt and Davis include brief essays on the ornithologists whom Wilson read or corresponded with, providing a valuable overview of the burgeoning natural sciences of the early nineteenth century… They establish Wilson’s stature as a bird illustrator, and their handsome volume reproduces them beautifully… Burtt and Davis successfully make clear Wilson’s importance in establishing American ornithology on two firm pillars: international Linnaean binomial nomenclature and close observation of living birds as well as specimens… Wilson’s position as the founder of American ornithology was won with intense struggle from inauspicious beginnings, and it seems secure. -- Robert O. Paxton * New York Review of Books *It is as the author of American Ornithology—a nine-volume work that aimed to list every species in the U.S.—that Wilson will be remembered. Wilson’s books were revolutionary. He wrote his descriptions of birds from observing them in the field, rather than looking at stuffed birds in collections. It was an approach that helped promote the adoption of the scientific method in the U.S. He also penned his narrative so that readers would be able to identify birds themselves, making it the first field guide… Wilson’s life and his struggle to publish American Ornithology are fascinating. -- Peter Ranscombe * The Scotsman *Wilson was first to describe 26 species of North American birds, he has more birds named after him than any other American ornithologist, and John James Audubon, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Thomas Nuttall, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and Elliot Coues all were inspired by him, yet most people, when asked who the father of American ornithology is, say, wrongly, Audubon. This well-illustrated study, the first to reproduce many of Wilson’s drawings and draft plates from American Ornithology, his nine-volume masterwork, sets the record straight. -- Chuck Hagner and Matt Mendenhall * Bird Watching *Wilson has more birds named after him than any other American ornithologist, including Audubon, and now, thanks to Burtt and Davis, he has a superb modern-day biography and critical assessment, one every scholarly birder should buy and read. It’s entirely right that we regularly remember to give Alexander Wilson the credit for inventing the school and ethos of American bird-study. -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly *One of the objectives of this book is to publish all of Wilson’s previously unpublished illustrations… Wilson’s artwork is superb… The case Burtt and Davis make for Wilson being the true father of American ornithology is overwhelming, and in that sense they have succeeded admirably. -- Tim Birkhead * Times Higher Education *Alexander Wilson, the Scotsman who came to the United States in 1794…more than Audubon, deserves credit for having founded American ornithology, as biographers Edward Burtt and William Davis rightly insist. -- Christoph Irmscher * Weekly Standard *The book includes many letters to and from U.S. naturalists and dozens of beautifully reproduced and previously unpublished line drawings and paintings of birds that contributed to Wilson’s greatest tangible achievement, the encyclopedic nine-volume American Ornithology. Unlike most of his contemporaries, such as Audubon, Wilson argued for the need for field observation to truly understand and illustrate the character of wild creatures, and he traveled thousands of miles across a wild continent to accomplish this. This book is full of delightful anecdotes and excellent detailed drawings; it will do much to elevate the reputation of Wilson among those with an interest in birds, illustration, and history. -- D. Flaspohler * Choice *A Scottish emigré, Alexander Wilson (1766–1813) became the preeminent ornithologist of early America. His systematic approach to the study of birds and his nine-volume American Ornithology (1808–14) greatly influenced John James Audubon, in whose shadow Wilson has since remained… Burtt and Davis describe Wilson’s mentoring by such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, William Bartram, and the Philadelphia family of artists, the Peales… The authors show that it is Wilson, rather than Audubon, who deserves the sobriquet of the father of American ornithology… This excellent work is highly recommended for birders and for readers who appreciate American art or natural history. -- Henry T. Armistead * Library Journal *Before Audubon and Birds of America, there was Alexander Wilson and American Ornithology, a nine-volume work published between 1808 and 1814 that singlehandedly transformed the study of birds in the wild and presaged the field guides of today. In addition to being the first to adopt the Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature to classify North American birds, Wilson was also one of the first to base his findings primarily on the ‘observation and description of live birds.’ By 1812, the Scottish poet had documented nearly 80% of bird species in the United States, and developed the discipline of ‘economic ornithology,’ whereby bird types are valued according to a kind of cost–benefit analysis (i.e. one that takes into account whether a bird is prone to destroy certain crops, whether they can be consumed, etc.)… What makes this book of such great value is the third chapter: ‘Illustrating American Ornithology.’ Composing over half of the book, this section features every illustration from Wilson’s landmark publication. Alongside excerpts from Wilson’s own commentary, the authors painstakingly detail how each sketch developed into its final iteration. A must-have for any serious bird-watcher. * Publishers Weekly *A definitive work on the history of bird art, ornithology, and nature writing. Volumes have been written on Audubon as though he were the dean of American ornithology, but Burtt and Davis reveal Alexander Wilson as providing the foundation. -- Bernd Heinrich, author of The Nesting SeasonOur knowledge of New World birds stems deeply from the adventurous spirit of a talented rebel poet, Alexander Wilson. This richly illustrated, very special book brings him back to life as an engaging and influential character whose passion for birds primed ours. I couldn’t put it down. -- Frank Gill, author of Ornithology: Third Edition

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Book SynopsisNineteenth-century Muslim peddlers arrived at Ellis Island, bags heavy with silks from their villages in Bengal. Demand for “Oriental goods” took these migrants on a curious path, from New Jersey’s boardwalks to the segregated South. Bald’s history reveals cross-racial affinities below the surface of early twentieth-century America.Trade Review[Bald] has produced an engaging account of a largely untold wave of immigration: Muslims from British India who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. -- Sam Roberts * New York Times *A revelatory book… Vivek Bald’s new book on Bengali migration tells a history that has been largely unknown. -- Mini Basu * CNN.com *Bald’s meticulously researched Bengali Harlem is about Indian sailors who jumped ship on the eastern seaboard during the early twentieth century. These men became blue-collar workers and married African American and Latina women, and their lives suggest a heterogeneity and hopefulness in the immigrant experience that is sometimes ignored. -- Hirsh Sawhney * Times Literary Supplement *Captur[es] a unique narrative of inter-marriage and inter-ethnic community making in America. -- Yogendra Yadav * Indian Express *Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America is a landmark work at exhuming an unknown past of South Asian emigration… It deals in fascinating detail with the little-known narrative of Muslim men travelling from undivided Bengal from the 1880s onwards to seek a living in the U.S. -- Shamik Bag * Mint *Bald opens readers’ eyes to a rarely depicted part of the U.S. melting pot. -- Richard Pretorius * The National *A revelatory account of how the first Bengali migrants quietly merged into America’s iconic neighbourhoods. -- Mohua Das * The Telegraph (Calcutta) *Bald vividly recreates the history of South Asian migration to the U.S. from the 1880s through the 1960s. Drawing on ships’ logs, census records, marriage documents, local news items, the memoir of an Indian Communist refugee, and interviews with descendants, Bald reconstructs the stories of the Muslim silk peddlers who arrived in 1880s during the fin-de-siècle fascination for Orientalism; the seamen from colonial India who jumped ship at ports along the Eastern seaboard; and the Creole, African-American, and Puerto Rican women they married. Bald persuasively shows how these immigrants provide us with a ‘different picture of assimilation.’ Global labor migrants, they did not necessarily come seeking a better way of life, nor did they follow a path of upward mobility. In the cases of the silk peddlers who maintained ties to the subcontinent to obtain their goods, they forged extensive global networks yet also assimilated into black neighborhoods, building multiethnic families and communities at a time of exclusionary immigration laws against Asians. By the 1940s, those who stayed had followed the jobs, becoming auto or steel workers in the Midwest, storekeepers in the South, and hotdog vendors or restaurant workers in Manhattan, and, thanks to their wives, had quietly blended into neighborhoods such as Harlem, West Baltimore, Treme in New Orleans and Black Bottom in Detroit. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *Vivek Bald’s extraordinary account persuasively places these first Bengali migrants at the heart of our multiracial American experience. A virtuoso act of recovery. -- Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoVivek Bald’s work on this untold story is meticulously researched, movingly told, and absolutely timely. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of An Aesthetic Education in the Era of GlobalizationVivek Bald’s Bengali Harlem is a monumental achievement. It brings to life a slice of the U.S. population unknown to the history books: South Asian migrants who came into the United States between the 1890s and the 1940s, making their lives in between African American and migrant spaces. Elegantly assembled, the stories of these migrants and their families are fascinating and heart-rending. -- Vijay Prashad, author of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America TodayGrounded in extraordinary research, Bengali Harlem reveals how South Asians became an integral part of black and Puerto Rican communities in the early years of the twentieth century. Historians of black life, culture, and commerce will never again be able to ignore the South Asian presence in African American communities and families. -- George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

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Book SynopsisSarah Hrdy argues that if human babies were to survive in a world of scarce resources, they would need to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friendsand, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, says Hrdy, came the human capacity for understanding others.Trade ReviewIn the study of mothering, Sarah Hrdy has no peer. In Mothers and Others, we are treated to Hrdy's infectious writing, taking the reader on a tour of our evolved history as a cooperatively parenting species. The ideas are big, bold, and brain-bending. -- Marc Hauser, author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and WrongBoldly conceived and beautifully written, Mothers and Others makes a strong case that we humans are (or should be) cooperative breeders. It is an indispensable contribution to the debate about how and why we came to be the most successful primate of them all. -- Melvin Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human SpiritAs was the case for her earlier classic, Mother Nature, Sarah Hrdy's Mothers and Others is a brilliant work on a profoundly important subject. The leading scientific authority on motherhood has come through again. -- E. O. Wilson"What if I were traveling with a planeload of chimpanzees? Any one of us would be lucky to disembark with all ten fingers and toes still attached...Even among the famously peaceful bonobos...veterinarians sometimes have to be called in following altercations to stitch back on a scrotum or penis," Hrdy writes. What she found is that our unique mothering instinct, quite different from gorillas and chimpanzees, meant that the children most likely to survive were those who could relate to and solicit help from others. We evolved to be wired for empathy for, consideration of, and intuition into how others are feeling. -- Jessa Crispin * Smart Set *To explain the rise of cooperative breeding among our forebears, Hrdy synthesizes an array of new research in anthropology, genetics, infant development, comparative biology. -- Natalie Angier * New York Times *For as long as she's been a sociobiologist, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has been playfully dismantling traditional notions of motherhood and gender relations...Hrdy is back with another book, Mothers and Others, and another big idea. She argues that human cooperation is rooted not in war making, as sociobiologists have believed, but in baby making and baby-sitting. Hrdy's conception of early human society is far different from the classic sociobiological view of a primeval nuclear family, with dad off hunting big game and mom tending the cave and the kids. Instead, Hrdy paints a picture of a cooperative breeding culture in which parenting duties were spread out across a network of friends and relatives. The effect on our development was profound. -- Julia Wallace * Salon *Hrdy's lucid and comprehensively researched book takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. -- Camilla Power * Times Higher Education *Hrdy's much-awaited new book, is another mind-expanding, paradigm-shifting, rigorously scientific yet eminently readable treatise...Mothers and Others lays the foundation for a new hypothesis about human evolution...Mothers and Others is overflowing with fascinating information and thinking. It's a book you read, pausing regularly to consider the full import of what you just read...Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has added another enormous building block to our thinking about our origins with this new book. Our species is lucky to have her. -- Claudia Casper * Globe and Mail *Provocative. [Hrdy] argues that unlike other apes, Homo sapiens could never have evolved if human mothers had been required to raise their offspring on their own. Human infants are too helpless and too expensive in their demands for care and resources. So human females have to line up helpers--sometimes extending beyond their own kin--to raise their young. That requires both males and females to invest heavily in social skills for bargaining with other members of their groups. Hrdy suggests that females in ancestral hunting and gathering groups may have thrived because they were free to be flexible in this way. Female flexibility was reduced when humans established settlements requiring male coalitions to defend them, probably leading to greater control of females by males...The most refreshing aspect of [this] book is the challenge [it] offers to what we thought we already knew. -- John Odling-Smee * Nature *If Sarah Blaffer Hrdy were a male scientist, I might be tempted to say that her new book Mothers and Others arrives like an intellectual time bomb, or that it throws a grenade into accepted notions of human evolution. But those are aggressive, competitive metaphors, and one of the essential points of Mothers and Others is that aggression and competition have been given far too central a place in the standard accounts of how our species came into being. From Charles Darwin onward, those accounts are mostly the work of men, and Hrdy points out in meticulous detail how partial and biased was their understanding of the remote past...Mothers and Others offers enormous rewards. It is not only revolutionary; it is also wise and humane. -- Mark Abley * Calgary Herald *More than a million years ago, somewhere in Africa, a group of apes began to rear their young differently. Unlike almost all other primates, they were willing to let others share in the care of infants. The reasons for this innovation are lost in the ancient past, but according to well-known anthropologist Hrdy, it was crucial that these mothers had related--and therefore trusted--females nearby and that the helpers provided food as well as care. Out of this "communal care," she argues, grew the human capacity for understanding one another: mothers and others teach us who will care and who will not. Beginning with her opening conceit of apes on an airplane (you wouldn't want to be on this flight) and continuing through her informed insights into the behavior of other species, Hrdy's reasoning is fascinating to follow. -- Michelle Press * Scientific American *One of the boldest thinkers in her field...Hrdy's scope is huge...To build her arguments, she expertly knits together research from a variety of fields--fossil evidence, endocrinology, psychology, history, child development, genetics, comparative primatology and field research among hunter-gatherer societies. Her book is at once entertaining, full of apt, often colorful anecdotes, sometimes culled from her own experiences, and rich with information and case studies...Hrdy is not only synthesizing her own research on female reproductive strategies (initially on langur monkeys in India), but that of hundreds of other researchers to create what amounts to a sweeping new meta-paradigm. -- Michele Pridmore-Brown * Times Literary Supplement *In this compelling and wide-ranging book, Hrdy sets out to explain the mystery of how humans evolved into cooperative apes. The demands of raising our slow-growing and energetically expensive offspring led to cooperative child-rearing, she argues, which was key to our survival. -- Alison Motluk * New Scientist *Using evidence from diverse research fields (including ethnography, archaeology, developmental psychology, primatology, endocrinology, and genetics), Hrdy builds an engaging and compelling argument for an evolutionary history of cooperative offspring care that requires us to rethink entrenched views about how we came to be human...Mothers and Others provides a fascinating, readable account of how our hominin ancestors might have negotiated the obstacles to raising offspring. Hrdy presents a well-argued case for human evolutionary history being characterized by cooperative offspring care, which opens fresh avenues of research into the history of our species. In addition, she prompts readers to consider far-reaching questions, such as whether the nuclear family is the "best" unit in which to raise children and how learned parenting practices might determine the future of human evolution. Her thought-provoking book will interest students, specialists, and general readers alike and should focus attention on the neglected roles of mothers and others within human evolutionary theory. -- Gillian R. Brown * Science *Hrdy presents her hypothesis systematically and painstakingly, chapter by chapter, so that the result is compellingly plausible. -- William McGrew * American Scientist *Understanding the evolution of the human mind has become the holy grail of modern evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary psychology, and those who pursue it feel themselves closing in on something big. Mothers and Others is a heroic contribution to this quest. It is an anthropological T(A)E: a theory of (almost) everything, a genre for which I must confess a weakness. It stands above most other examples of the genre, however, for both its scholarship and its craft. Hrdy draws on a broad literature extending beyond the traditional domains of primatology and anthropology, with particular emphasis on developmental psychology, but breadth of scholarship and lucid vision have long been the trademarks of her writing...Hrdy is at least as gifted as a writer as [Stephen Jay] Gould and at least as clear a thinker...This is a very important book, and a beautiful one. It is a book that will delight a broad lay readership coming to it from disparate perspectives. It will be a wonderful book to assign to undergraduates in a range of courses. But most importantly, it is a challenging and provocative book for academics and scientists interested in human cognition and human evolution. Once again, Hrdy has woven together strands of material from many sources into an elegant tapestry of insight and logic, emblazoned with her vision of who we are, and why. -- Peter Ellison * Evolutionary Psychology *The book is an impressive and sustained argument for why, unlike other apes, humans are cooperative breeders...Hrdy offers some fascinating speculations about the problems whose solution might have facilitated the emergence of cooperative breeding. -- Pierre Jacob * International Cognition and Culture Institute blog *Mothers and Others is an engaging book. It is full of fascinating information from diverse fields, imaginatively harnessed to produce a coherent account of our genetic predispositions as a species. Above all, it challenges the pervasively sexist tradition within evolutionary psychology, which routinely highlights aggression and maternal care at the expense of sociability and shared care. In doing so, the book provides a rich foundation for engagement with the social sciences, exploring the articulation between our genetic predispositions and contemporary human societies. -- Michael Gilding * Australian Book Review *Convincing about the importance of alloparenting, [Hrdy] makes a rich case that draws on wide erudition about many primate species and current arguments about human cooperation. -- B. Weston * Choice *In Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Sarah Hrdy argues that what makes humans different from other apes is our need to rear children cooperatively. Elegantly written and, to any parent, compellingly argued. -- Morgan Kelly * Irish Times *Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is one of the most original and influential minds in evolutionary anthropology...It is possible to see Hrdy's most recent book, Mothers and Others, as the third in a trilogy that began with The Woman That Never Evolved. It may be the most important...[It's her] most ambitious contribution. In Mothers and Others, she situates this pivotal mother-infant pair not in an empty expanse of savanna, waiting for a man to arrive with his killed game, but where it actually belongs, in the dense social setting of a hunter-gatherer or, before that, an ape or monkey group. Hrdy argues convincingly that social support was crucial to human success, that compared with other primates, humans are uniquely cooperative, and that it was precisely cooperation in child care that gave rise to this general bent...Hrdy's gracefully written, expert account of human behavior focuses on the positive, and its most important contribution is to give cooperation its rightful place in child care. Through a lifetime of pathbreaking work, she has repeatedly undermined our complacent, solipsistic, masculine notions of what women were meant "by nature" to be. Here as elsewhere she urges caution and compassion toward women whose maternal role must be constantly rethought and readjusted to meet the demands of a changing world. Women have done this successfully for millions of years, and their success will not stop now. But neither Hrdy nor I nor anyone else can know whether the strong human tendency to help mothers care for children can produce the species-wide level of cooperation that we now need to survive. -- Melvin Konner * New York Review of Books *Table of Contents* Apes on a Plane * Why Us and Not Them? * Why It Takes a Village * Novel Developments * Will the Real Pleistocene Family Please Step Forward? * Meet the Alloparents * Babies as Sensory Traps * Grandmothers among Others * Childhood and the Descent of Man * Notes * References * Acknowledgments * Index

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Book SynopsisConceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask.Trade ReviewBenjamin's crowning achievement...The Harvard University Press edition of Benjamin now in monumental progress is an admirably generous undertaking. -- George Steiner * Times Literary Supplement *Arcades is an assemblage of quotations, notes and theses that wrestle with themselves to extraordinary effect. In his lifetime, Benjamin saw published only the fragmentary collection One-Way Street, and he initially conceived The Arcades Project as a continuation of that book…It is a privilege, through this collection, to gain access to the workings of such a distinctive mind. -- Guy Mannes Abbott * New Statesman *Some of us don't read fiction. We live on history, biography, criticism, reporting and what used to be called belles-lettres. We will be feasting on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project for years to come. Just published in its first full English edition, The Arcades Project should also win readers with broader tastes. By any standard, the appearance of this long-awaited work is a towering literary event. A sprawling, fragmented meditation on the ethos of 19th-century Paris, The Arcades Project was left incomplete on Benjamin's death in 1940. In recent decades, as portions of the book have appeared in English, the unfinished opus has acquired legendary status. The Arcades Project surpasses its legend. It captures the relationship between a writer and a city in a form as richly developed as those presented in the great cosmopolitan novels of Proust, Joyce, Musil and Isherwood. Those who fall under Benjamin's spell may find themselves less willing to suspend their disbelief in fiction. The city will offer sufficient fantasy to meet most needs. -- Herbert Muschamp * New York Times *At last, we can glimpse Benjamin's avowed masterpiece, The Arcades Project, and pay homage to this strange, vulnerable man, for whom letters and thought and books were everything. It was thirteen years in the making, and scribbled beneath the 'painted sky of summer'--the huge ceiling mural of Paris' Bibliothèque Nationale...Benjamin claimed The Arcades Project was 'the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas.' This struggle, and those ideas, aimed to chronicle the whole history of the nineteenth century, over which Paris, majestically, presided, whose arcades symbolized the city's heart laid bare...Harvard's Belknap [Press] is brave to publish such an esoteric and pricey specimen. Along with its two recent volumes of Benjamin's Selected Writings, and with a concluding collection in its way soon, we are now much better able to assess the man--foibles and all--and his legacy as a creative whole. -- Andy Merrifield * The Nation *The Arcades Project was a legend before it became a book...This large volume reproduces every relevant scrap in the Benjamin archives, reprinting, verbatim, every entry in the more than 30 notebooks that Benjamin had meticulously maintained to organize his observations and pertinent passages from books pertaining to a variety of different topics and themes, from 'Fashion' and 'Boredom' to 'Barricade Fighting' and 'the Seine.' -- James Miller * New York Times Book Review *Benjamin is important because of his insight into the cultural consequences of capitalism, an insight that gives us a style of thinking about the now inescapable culture of consumerism. We can read Benjamin's enormous fragment on the Paris arcades not so much to gather information about nineteenth-century Paris, of which it is an abundant and pleasurable resource, as to inform our own experience of everyday life. With Benjamin as a guide, one can begin to glimpse a way of reflecting on capitalism that promises to stave off the despair threatening to overwhelm those who choose not to celebrate this age of trademarked emotions, patented identities, and ready-made souls in plastic bags. And if today one is fortunate enough to walk the streets of Paris with his massive book in hand, as I recently was, Benjamin's vision of that city's past begins to haunt the contemporary Parisian streetscape, with phantoms of long-dead dandies and flaneurs, prostitutes and decadents, the ghosts of Baudelaire and Mallarmé appearing and disappearing amid the neon signs and garish billboards advertising American hamburgers and Finnish digital telephones. -- Mark Kingwell * Harper's Magazine *[Benjamin's] style of writing has a narcotic effect that soon envelops the reader in Parisian ambiance. Picking up The Arcades Project is like visiting a ghostly city. One becomes familiar with its thematic streets and alleys, its peculiar cultural constructs, its architecture, and its literatures...The Arcades Project is indeed a sort of magic encyclopedia, freeing its subject from traditional historical and literary interpretations and re-inventing it as a living, breathing picture. It is a maze of small revelations, its pages as seductive and confused as the streets, dreams, and arcades of Paris. -- Jason Cons * Boston Book Review *A painstaking act of literary reconstruction has fleshed out Walter Benjamin's lost masterpiece...We may consider here Benjamin's wonderful remark that 'knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. The text is the long roll of thunder that follows.' The Arcades Project is the reverberation of that thunder in a thousand different directions...This posthumous volume suggests that, in its incomplete and fissiparous state, his reflections are themselves an unflawed mirror for the world which he was attempting to explore. He seems to have retrieved everything, and anticipated everything. -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *[Benjamin's] magnum opus, The Arcades Project, has finally been translated into English...If the low price for such a large academic volume is anything to go by, the publishers expect this to be a major event. -- Julian Roberts * The Guardian *Benjamin was a vital member of what cultural and art historian Robert Hughes has called the 'modernist laboratory' of the early part of the 20th century, and, like Virginia Woolf or Paul Cezanne or any other modernist worth her salt, his masterwork presents its own form as worthy of as much interest as its content...Fragment or not, The Arcades Project is a vast creative work that is one part realist novel, one part cultural anthropology, and one part social history and critique. -- Matt Weiland * National and Financial Post *Walter's Benjamin's The Arcades Project, a doorstopper of a book by one of the leading intellectuals of the 20th century, starts with the specifics of the technologically innovative Parisian shopping arcade, then spins off into a vast and complex universe of ideas about art, architecture, politics and consumer culture. Not unlike the novels of Umberto Eco and Thomas Pynchon, The Arcades Project uses the template of the past to demystify the present. -- Joe Uris * Portland Oregonian *Because his ideas never cohered into a doctrine, The Arcades remained a treatise about everything that never amounted to anything. But, like the vanished bohemia it documented in such obsessive detail, this ruin of a book has its own sublime grandeur. -- Daniel Johnson * Daily Telegraph *This is a treasure: a translation of Benjamin's great unfinished--and unfinishable--work, a study of the imagination in nineteenth-century Paris, the capital of the nineteenth century, and hence an archaeology of our own strange and wondrous 'consumer society.' * ChristianityToday.com *The Arcades Project is truly a kaleidoscopic montage of a dream of the meanings of society, a dream deferred by the advance of Nazis into Paris. In 1940, when Benjamin fled, he left behind the sprawling, incomplete masterpiece he had begun in 1927. But by then, it had already become, he wrote, 'the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas.' -- Forrest Gander * Providence Journal-Bulletin *Finally available in English, Walter Benjamin's study of nineteenth-century Paris is brilliant...Benjamin wrote many marvelous essays in the 1930s, but his main energy went into a giant enterprise that he called 'the Arcades project.' The forerunners of modern-day department stores, the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris were arched passageways with shops on each side. Benjamin was confident that the book would be his masterpiece. Not only would it grasp the structure of life and thought and art in Paris circa 1848, it would explain all modern art, politics, and life...Harvard University Press has given [The Arcades Project] to us in English in a sumptuous volume. -- Marshall Berman * Metropolis *If The Arcades Project is still worth reading today, it is not only for the quixotic pleasures of its dead ends, but for the traces of hope it finds within 'the guilty context of the living' (as Benjamin wrote elsewhere). Through an analysis of the 'collective dream' of the 19th century, Benjamin hopes to liberate the 20th. -- Diana George * The Stranger *[Readers can] enjoy the book's open-endedness and follow personal itineraries...As Harvard gradually publishes his collected works, Benjamin's strengths become evident. -- Andrew Mead * Architects Journal *Because of its standing as Benjamin's final, and unfinished, work, this tome will prove a curious blessing for those wearing the right equipment...This kaleidoscopic work is arranged in 36 categories with such loosely descriptive headings as 'Prostitution,' 'Boredom,' 'Catacombs,' 'Dream City,' and 'Theory of Progress.' It makes sense why Benjamin would refer to this work as 'the theater of all of my struggles and ideas.' Everything seems to be in there, making it at once awe-inspiring and inscrutable in its present form. Had the war not kept him from its final flower, this theater might have been one of the greatest intellectual works of the century. As it stands, it is merely brilliant. * Kirkus Reviews *Now, at last, American readers too have access to [Benjamin's] final, great unfinished work in an edition that is both well translated and helpfully annotated by the editor of the German edition, Rolf Tiedemann. In 1927, Benjamin began taking notes for a book that would critique the cultural, politic, artistic and commercial life of Paris, a city Benjamin thought of as the 'capital of the nineteenth century'...This edition is comprised of the fastidious notes he made from this never-completed study...His perspective is largely Marxist, but not in any conventional or dogmatic sense. Benjamin's chief virtue is an uncanny originality of vision and insight that transcends the constraints of ideology. * Publishers Weekly *The Arcades Project, which Benjamin worked on for 13 years before his death, was an attempt to capture the reality that he believed underlay the political, economic, and technological world of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the phenomenon of the Paris arcades, Benjamin saw a turning away from a communal society based on mutual concern to one based on material well-being and economic gain. To fortify his argument, Benjamin used quotations from a variety of published literary, philosophical, and artistic sources and added his own reflections and commentary. Because of Benjamin's untimely and tragic death, this is not a finished work, but, nonetheless, the architectonic of the whole is impressive in its breadth and as an attempt at historical comprehension. Also included is a poignant, beautifully written eyewitness account of Benjamin's last days and hours. -- Leon H. Brody * Library Journal *Presenting some wonderful social history, The Arcades Project is an incomparable work that only Benjamin could have written. It permits readers who would otherwise never have the luxury of comprehension to examine the workings of one of the most remarkable thinkers of 20th-century Europe. -- S. Gittleman * Choice *It is a rare event when a book as long touted or as eagerly awaited actually lives up to these publishing clichés. But this is undeniably true in the case of this translation of Walter Benjamin's Das Passagen-Werk [The Arcades Project], originally issued in 1982...Anglophone readers can finally begin to take true measure of Benjamin's place in 20th-century thought and literature. -- Peter Philbrook * bn.com *Quite simply, the Passagen-Werk is one of the twentieth century's great efforts at historical comprehension--some would say the greatest. -- T. J. ClarkBenjamin's work is the most advanced, most complex, and most comprehensive study of the dominant motifs and unresolved tendencies of the nineteenth century that continue to be of critical importance for us today. No other study has measured up to its methodological inventiveness, or so exemplarily met its demand that history writing be reinvented for every topic and on every occasion. -- Werner HamacherKnowledge of The Arcades Project is essential for a full comprehension of Benjamin's intentions and achievement in the 1930s--especially his highly original and influential attempt to define the idea of the modern. -- Michael W. Jennings[This] edition does a fine job with this wild, often intractable material. Its apparatus is helpful, and properly spare…By and large, the edition is a heroic achievement. -- T.J. Clark * London Review of Books *The force of [Walter Benjamin's] ideas in The Arcades Project is cumulative. You are pulled in and overwhelmed. True, it's a work of cultural history, but it can also be thought of as the greatest epic poem written in the 20th century: fragmented, contradictory, and profoundly suggestive. -- André Alexis * Globe and Mail *Walter Benjamin's effort to unlock the mystery of industrial culture became his central mission, which he pursued by combing the streets of the Paris he loved--or, more exactly, by combing old books about these streets. The materials he culled from these books and his commentary on them constitute The Arcades Project, his masterpiece, which he worked on for 13 years...For students of urban life and industrial culture, The Arcades Project is a gold mine of insights and apercus. * Los Angeles Times Book Review *[The Arcades Project] suggests a new way of writing about a civilization using its rubbish as materials rather than its artworks: history from below rather than above. And [Benjamin's] call elsewhere for a history centered on the sufferings of the vanquished, rather than on the achievements of the victors, is prophetic of the way in which history writing has begun to think of itself in our lifetime..."What does The Arcades Project have to offer? The briefest of lists would include: a treasure hoard of curious information about Paris, a multitude of thought-provoking questions, the harvest of an acute and idiosyncratic mind's trawl through thousands of books, succinct observations, polished to a high aphoristic sheen, on a range of subjects...and glimpses of Benjamin toying with a new way of seeing himself: as a compiler of a 'magic encyclopedia'...[A] magnificent opus. -- J. M. Coetzee * The Guardian *Whether the theme is fashion, collecting, gambling--or any other key to the period--Benjamin lays out a gripping commentary on each. The result is a city-in-miniature. But it is the method underpinning the work that is perhaps the most interesting. In the methodological convolute 'N' Benjamin refers to it as a form of 'literary montage'--Benjamin's shorthand way of saying that each convolute is composed of numerous quotations which are lifted from various sources and then spliced together on the same page. The method enables Benjamin to blast away at received notions of art and cultural history...Besides a useful introduction, this first English edition also contains a number of early drafts and the as yet untranslated second exposé from 1939. Together, these pieces give an insight into Benjamin's anarchic working method, whereby he constantly reshuffles his material. -- Alex Coles * Parachute *In addition to presenting a considerable intellectual challenge simply by virtue of its ambitious contents, Benjamin's project raises serious and varied questions of form…producing an effect that one finds difficult to label definitively analytic or aesthetic; the montage as Benjamin uses it is both at once: it produces knowledge, yet it does so through a mode of presentation that seems intrinsic to the knowledge produced. The Arcades Project is a work that one not only reads or studies, one "experiences" it as well. -- Tim Dayton * Cultural Studies *It is those who parody our world who help to unmask its craziness, and to offer pointers as to how what is might be otherwise…Benjamin indulges in this customary "brushing against the grain of history"…My aim in stressing this side of the book is simply to suggest how kaleidoscopic an object it is, offering the reader challenge of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, not once, but over and over again. -- Michael Hollington * Southern Review *The Arcades Project must be among the most influential works of modern literature. Expansive and visionary, it reinvented pretty much every academic discipline by rejecting the autocratic storytelling of history in favor of elegant notes and vignettes which gather into a picture which seems to be endlessly modifying. -- Peter Burnett * The Scotsman *[This book is] the sort of work that will make a considerable dent in the academic landscape or at the very least lead to a new line of thematic inquiry and stream of responsive academic publications...[This edition] provides us with a wealth of material...It stands to be worked and reworked endlessly by its readers and this is why Eiland and McLaughlin's phenomenal work of labour should be recognized as a major contribution to the field of critical and cultural theory today. -- Martin McQuillan * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *A tragic, fractured masterpiece...It is a truly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work, appealing across the broadest range of arts, humanities and social science disciplines imaginable. Benjamin's collage of sourced texts, informed commentary and ingenious speculation leads us through architecture to artistic movements; technology to economics; fact to fantasy. To read this book is to witness a fragmented phantasmagoria: we experience utterance and aphorism; snippets and snapshots; public declamation and private letters; historical minutiae and spectacular scenes. It is a global work, its explorations ranging far beyond 19th-century Paris to illustrate and unravel the universal essence of urban experience. Benjamin was an authentically democratic thinker, inasmuch as he diligently explored, analysed and understood the widest range of cultural forms, no matter how elitist or populist: in The Arcades Project, the reader will encounter political proclamations or philosophical pronouncements in one place and jokes or pornography in another. Is The Arcades Project we read now the one that Benjamin envisioned? Absolutely not. But this eclectic work, a coruscating palimpsest, is a modernist, perhaps even a proto-postmodernist, masterpiece. It is a form of textual flanerie where the journey of exploration is infinite and adaptable: it is ever-open, ever-fresh and, uncannily, when one dips into it, it seems to be ever-changing. Like other formidable creations by writers taken too soon--Lord Byron's Don Juan, Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk, Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Franz Kafka's The Castle--Benjamin's The Arcades Project lives, breathes and goes on for ever. -- Richard J. Hand * Times Higher Education *Table of ContentsTranslators' Foreword Exposes "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century" (1935) "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century" (1939) Convolutes Overview First Sketches Early Drafts "Arcades" "The Arcades of Paris" "The Ring of Saturn" Addenda Expose of 1935, Early Version Materials for the Expose of 1935 Materials for "Arcades" "Dialectics at a Standstill," by Rolf Tiedemann "The Story of Old Benjamin," by Lisa Fittko Translators' Notes Guide to Names and Terms Index

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Book SynopsisPhilostratus's writings embody the height of the renaissance of Greek literature in the second century CE. Heroicus is a vineyard conversation about the beauty, continuing powers, and worship of the Homeric heroes. Gymnasticus is the sole surviving ancient treatise on sports, which reshapes conventional ideas about the athletic body.

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Book SynopsisThe Histories of Sallust (86–35 BCE), while fragmentary, provide invaluable information about a crucial period of history from 78 to around 67 BCE. In this volume, John T. Ramsey has freshly edited the Histories and the two pseudo-Sallustian Letters to Caesar, completing the Loeb Classical Library edition of his works.

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Book SynopsisThe Medici: Citizens and Masters offers a novel, comparative approach to examining Medici power and influence in Florence. Contributors from diverse perspectives set Medici rule against princely states such as Milan and Ferrara, and they ask how much the Medici changed Florence, contrasting their supremacy with earlier Florentine regimes.Trade ReviewA major collection of essays by twenty-two scholars in the field…The editors, Robert Black in particular, do a superb job of highlighting the volume’s brief. -- Lauro Martines * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisThis book unfolds the recent history of over one hundred million Muslims living in India, details their fears and anxieties, delineates their main currents of thought and examines their responses to the socio-economic processes affecting the country as a whole. Legacy of a Divided Nation begins by describing the specific features of Indian Islam, the reconstruction of a specifically Muslim identity by the British and its legitimisation by the Indian nationalist movement, all of which are crucial in understanding the roots of India's Partition. Issues relating to the identity, integration and 'minority appeasement' of Indian Muslims are analysed within the wider context of Hindu-Muslim relations in the colonial period and in the secular trajectory plotted by lndia since l947. The effect of economic, legal and social change on the Muslim population also features strongly in the work, as do its patterns of political and religious allegiance and responses to the wave of anti-Muslim sentiment unleashed by India's Hindu nationalists, notably the BJP.Table of ContentsColonial and Nationalist Images of Muslims; The Movement for a Separate Nation; The Legacy of Partition; The Secular Experiment; In Search of Adjustment and Accommodation; In Search of Identity and Integration; Religion in Politics: The Ayodhya Tangle; A Minority and its Discontents.

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Book SynopsisCharles Walker examines the largest rebellion in the history of Spain's American empire, led by Latin America's most iconic revolutionary, Tupac Amaru, and his wife. It began in 1780 as a multiclass alliance against European-born usurpers but degenerated into a vicious caste war, leaving a legacy that still influences South American politics today.Trade Review[This is] the first extended survey of the causes and the course of the Tupac Amaru rebellion to appear in English since 1966… [It] is a lucid and accessible survey in which Walker skillfully blends narrative with explanation to construct a harrowing story of violence and atrocities on an enormous scale… [It] will give Anglophone readers a perceptive and reliable account of the terrible events that occurred far away from what they naturally regard as the principal center of action at that time, the British North American colonies, a mere 322,000 square miles in size, as compared with an Andean surface area approaching two million. -- J. H. Elliott * New York Review of Books *The Tupac Amaru rebellion began in the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru in 1780 and turned into the largest popular uprising in Spain’s imperial history. To this day, its impact resonates in modern Latin American politics. The rebellion receives masterly treatment from Walker. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *[This] is a coherent and thorough exploration of the causes, dynamics, and outcome of the insurgency. It sheds new light on many important topics and provides overarching interpretive frames… This book at least comes to attend to a very overdue and tangible need: a thoughtful, well-researched, and analytically sophisticated narrative of the most important indigenous insurrection in Andean history. -- Sergio Serulnikov * Hispanic American Historical Review *A solid new history of the Peruvian Indian revolutionary lays out the roots of his rebellion and its bitter legacy… A readable, not‐too‐scholarly story of a significant moment in South American history. * Kirkus Reviews *Walker argues convincingly that Tupac Amaru’s wife, Micaela Bastidas, was his fierce, full partner and confidante, running the rebel camp, overseeing provisions, keeping discipline, and rooting out spies… It’s an interesting and accessible treatment of Peru’s infamously vicious conflict and of its leader, who became a potent symbol for indigenous rights throughout Latin America. * Publishers Weekly *The history of Spain’s conquest and three-century grip on indigenous South America is rife with drama, but nowhere is that clash of cultures more vivid than in the story of Tupac Amaru II and his fierce, stubborn war for independence. Walker recreates the life of this remarkable eighteenth-century rebel with a bold sense of narrative and a careful eye for detail. Here is a fascinating study of the prevailing tensions of Tupac Amaru’s time—between conqueror and conquered, white and brown, city and mountain, Old World and New World—that still vex South America today. -- Marie Arana, author of Bolívar: American LiberatorA masterly and authoritative history of the rebellion. Walker’s empathetic portraits of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas are nuanced and convincing, and his narrative account of the revolt is both elegantly and engagingly written. His book shows how and why the rebellion and its aftermath continue to reverberate in Andean society today. -- Paulo Drinot, author of The Allure of Labor: Workers, Race, and the Making of the Peruvian StateThe Tupac Amaru Rebellion was a pivotal event in the history of the Americas, yet narrating it clearly and judiciously has evaded generations of Andean historians. Charles Walker seems to have broken the curse, and I have no doubt that this excellent book will instantly become the standard account. -- Kris Lane, author of Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires

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Book SynopsisPlato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.Trade ReviewThis book makes a major contribution…will offer the reader many hours of stimulating thought and a powerful challenge to reexamine some basic assumptions about the early Greek mind. * The Classical Bulletin *The frontiers of several fields of research meet in this rich and germinal study. Professor Havelock is concerned with Greek epic poetry and Plato’s attack on it, with the whole of the Greek paideia as it existed before and after Plato, with the technological problems of communication, and, finally, with the emergence of Plato’s doctrine of ‘forms,’ in its total cultural setting… In brief, Havelock’s point is that Plato’s attack on poetry is integral to his philosophy as such if we see poetry as what it really was in his day… Havelock’s thesis is a sweeping one, and, on the whole, utterly convincing, tying in with the findings of an increasing number of recent psychological, historical, philosophical, and cultural studies. -- Walter J. OngA book bursting with new ideas, all of them exciting. It may well turn out to be a landmark in the study of Greek thought and literature. -- B. M. W. KnoxTable of ContentsPART ONE: The Image-Thinkers 1. Plato On Poetry 2. Mimesis 3. Poetry as Preserved Communication 4. The Homeric Encyclopedia 5. Eric as Recorded as Record Versus Epic as Narrative 6. Hesiod on Poetry 7. The Oral Sources of the Hellenic Intelligence 8. The Homeric State of Mind 9. The Psychology of the Poetic Performance 10. The Content and Quality of the Poetised Statement PART TWO: The Necessity of Platonism 11. Psyche or the Separation of the Knower From The Know 12. The Recognition of the Known as Object 13. Poetry as Opinion 14. The Origin of the Theory of Forms 15. 'The Supreme Music is Philosophy'

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Book SynopsisSpans archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire, and no more than two standard scales (1:500,000 and 1:1,000,000) are used to represent most regions. This title provides information about every place or feature in the Barrington Atlas.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2000 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Multivolume Reference Work in the Humanities, Association of American Publishers "[The Barrington Atlas] is the best geography of the ancient world ever achieved... [I]t reveals the world inhabited or reached by the Greeks and Romans from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 640 in thrilling detail, and a color code lets us track changes through 16 centuries. The collective learning poured into this project is almost intimidating to contemplate, and the fact that it could be completed testifies to extraordinary planning, dedication and courage... [T]he cartography is luminous, the printing superb and the binding strong and supple... [T]his magnificent book is likely to become a powerful engine of learning and discovery for many years."--D.J.R. Bruckner, New York Times Book Review "I doubt that it will ever be superseded... [T]he clarity and sheer beauty of the maps in the Barrington Atlas, for which Princeton University Press and the printers in Palladio's Vicenza deserve the highest credit and praise, make the main volume a joy to handle. The fold-out of the entire ancient Mediterranean world, Map 1 'Mare Internum,' is to die for... [T]his remarkable atlas ... has made a major contribution to re-establishing cartography as one of the basic sub-disciplines within classical studies."--Paul Cartledge, Times Higher Education Supplement "This atlas is an indispensable tool for historians concerned with ancient times. But it is also a source of great pleasure for the amateur, the lover of literature."--Bernard Knox, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Beautifully produced with an exquisite combination of scholarly precision and the highest level of cartographic art, this atlas is one of the greatest achievements in 20th-century Greek and Roman scholarship--and it probably will never be superseded."--Publishers Weekly "[An] essential tool for anyone interested in classical antiquity... It provides, for the first time in recent history, a single bound volume that maps the entire classical world... Superbly edited."--Library Journal ("Best Reference Sources, 2000") "[A] wonderful guide to the wordless lessons of antiquity. Everyone who studies Greece and Rome owes [the makers of the Barrington Atlas] a personal debt."--Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, naming the Barrington Atlas "My Book of the Decade" in the Globe and Mail (2009) "[A] remarkable achievement... This unique resource is the most comprehensive atlas published on ancient Greece and Rome."--Booklist "[A] vast achievement... Richard Talbert can be proud of his editorship: the collective effort, academic and technical, that has gone into the realisation of this gigantic project ... almost defies the imagination. It is even more impressive in that his teams had to work virtually from scratch. Their chief goal was to fill a notorious gap, and they have done so with exemplary skill."--Peter Green, London Review of Books "The Barrington Atlas is a major contribution to scholarship, extensive in scale, reliable and up to date, and so laid out as to be really helpful to the user."--Jasper Griffin, New York Review of Books "[N]o decent academic or public library should be without this marvelous work... [A] magnificent achievement."--Guy Halsall, New Scientist "[A] definitive work."--Peter Jones, BBC History "This atlas will be indispensable to scholars in classical studies. My only caution is that, at eight pounds, a sturdy coffee table is required for its use."--Judith A. Tyner, Geographical Review

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Book SynopsisOur success as a species is built on sociability, so shyness in humans should be an anomaly. But it's actually remarkably common - we all know what it's like to cringe in embarrassment, stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group, or flush with humiliation if we suddenly become the unwelcome centre of attention. In Shrinking Violets, Joe Moran explores the hidden world of shyness, providing insights on everything from timidity in lemon sharks to the role of texting in Finnish love affairs. As he seeks answers to the questions that shyness poses - Why are we shy? Can we overcome it? Does it define us? - he uncovers the fascinating stories of the men and women who were 'of the violet persuasion', from Charles Darwin to Agatha Christie, and from Tove Jansson to Nick Drake. In their stories - often both heart-breaking and inspiring - and through the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and cure shyness, Moran finds a hopeful conclusion. To be shy, he decides, is not simply a burden - it is also a gift, a different way of seeing the world that can be both enriching and inspiring.Trade ReviewAn intriguing, poignant and passionate story about shyness in humans and animals. I was captivated from start to finish. * Joanna Bourke *A probing, surprising and continually alert book ... Moran is the razor-edge analyst of reticence, a virtuoso reader of those who hope to evade the eye. * Francis O'Gorman, author of WORRYING *Whether you're boldly outgoing or reticent and self-effacing, you'll find something to inspire, inform or surprise in this thoughtful, beautifully written and vividly detailed cultural history. * Susan Cain, author of QUIET *This remarkable compendium of shyness, vivid and insightful, provides both a history of diffidence and a compelling account of its cultural and psychological complexity. Whether discussing embarrassment, stammering, stage fright, or reticence, Moran considers the impact of shyness on creativity and its myriad contributions to fiction, art, and music. Beautifully written, appealingly candid, and thoroughly engaging, Shrinking Violets deserves a very wide readership. * Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness *This is a probing, surprising, and continually alert book about a feeling that is well-known - even when it doesn't want to be - yet almost never discussed. Moran, with beautifully shaped prose, ruminates on cultural attitudes to, and representations of, shyness. He is generous about his own shyness, and forensically alert to what being shy more generally means and what it doesn't. Shyness is just there, he concludes: loaded with potential interpretations but not defined by them. Examining a huge amount of cultural material-from sociological reports to popular music, from Virginia Woolf to Desert Island Discs - Moran is the razor-edge analyst of reticence, a virtuoso reader of those who hope to evade the eye. -- Francis O'Gorman, author of WORRYING: A Literary and Cultural HistoryJoe Moran's excellent Shrinking Violets is an invitation to enter the strange and wonderful world of shyness, an emotion experienced by everyone from Charles Darwin to Japanese teenagers. Whether you're boldly outgoing or reticent and self-effacing, you'll find something to inspire, inform or surprise in this thoughtful, beautifully written and vividly detailed cultural history. -- Susan Cain, bestselling author of QUIET and co-founder of Quiet RevolutionPraise for Joe Moran: 'Moran has fast become Britain's foremost explorer and explainer of the disregarded -- Juliet Gardiner, author of 'Wartime: Britain 1939-1945'Joe Moran is the most perceptive and original observer of British life that we have -- Matthew EngelAt last! The view from the sofa. A history of television that reflects the lives of those who watch it - and that means pretty well all of us. Informative, evocative, funny, moving, sometimes even startling, Joe Moran, Britain's premier historian of the everyday, has pulled it off again. -- Juliet GardinerAll that time we were watching television Joe Moran was thinking about it. This wonderful book is packed with stories and characters, shot through with Moran's customary affection for the ordinary and the overlooked. A beautiful study of that flickering box that keeps us enthralled. -- Sam WestJoe Moran is a wonderfully gifted social historian, with a ravenous capacity for research ... He is particularly good at overturning the bogus collective memories to which television so often gives rise ... His sources from diaries and memoirs are rich and varied ... Armchair Nation offers rich pickings for those, like me, who struggle to remember (everything we've watched). -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *One of the most entertaining things about the book - and there are many - is finding out how many of the things we think we know about television are either myths, or simply hogwash ... As well as being consistently perceptive in his observations, Moran has done something I would confidently have thought impossible - he's made the history of British TV as dramatic as it is fun. -- John Preston * Sunday Telegraph *A formidable historical analysis of the gogglebox ... Moran's achievement is remarkable given the breadth of subject matter ... Extensive research is lightly worn -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *Moran is scholarly but welcoming ... But in its insights, clarity and honest wit, it's hard to imagine a more engaging book on a subject everyone already thinks they know about. As in the best TV itself, you find yourself learning something new with almost no effort. -- Phil Hogan * Observer *Quite wonderful, beautifully written ... it reveals a seated nation, something which has never happened before. There is nothing like it. -- Dr Ronald BlytheArmchair Nation is as compulsive as any soap, as informative as any documentary and as funny as any sitcom. Moran knows and loves his subject, exploring well-covered territory as well as the less familiar with wit and perception. -- Harry Venning * The Stage *Joe Moran is a superb elegist of the mundane ... Armchair Nation is a captivating look at a universal but unsung subject: the British television viewer ... packed with glorious details -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Country Life *Joe Moran, like many of us, is shy ... Thankfully Shrinking Violets, his "field guide" to shyness, exhibits all the sparkle and fluency on the page he might lack when chatting to strangers -- Paul Laity * Guardian *Moran is a past master at producing fine, accessible non-fiction. His trick is to take what might be considered a perfectly ordinary behaviour ... and uncover fact after fascinating fact ... Moran is entertaining and excellent at curating this vast knowledge. -- Helen Davies * Sunday Times *His fourth and best book ... Moran is a wonderful, witty writer, and here he surpasses himself ... To a shy person, this book is incredibly cheering. It shows us we are not alone in our desire for solitude. -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *A delightful book on shyness ... Shrinking Violets is a nimble, entertaining exploration of shyness in all its manifestations, not all of them virtuous. ... full of fascinating and amusing anecdotes about a wide range of shy types, ranging from Morrissey to General de Gaulle ... Moran proves a wonderful guide to these various eccentrics. He is gifted as an anecdotalist and as an acute observer of art and life. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *Joe Moran shines a light here on the phenomenon of shyness ... The author's lightness of touch belies some profound insights into human nature, from the strange science of blushing, to the inherent fragility of our social roles ... Moran writes deftly about a condition that leaves many of us at times feeling "marooned from the world". -- Laura Garmeson * FT *Beautiful descriptions of the anguish of the shy ... It's not a polemic; but, given Moran's belief that there is no remedy for shyness other than Zen acceptance, it's not really a self-help book either. Except in one respect. Shy people often fear that we are boring others, and that fear becomes self-fulfilling, as we fight the consciousness of our own shyness. If nothing else, this book shows that shyness can be positively interesting. -- Andrew Watts * Spectator *It's a fascinating read, not just for its roll-call of the legions of the shy, but also for its illuminating stories gathered from across the world ... Some of Moran's case-histories are truly affecting ... Moran sums the matter up so well, and puts into words the thoughts that I have never quite been able to articulate. We are shy, he says, because we know we are different from other living things. And because humans also carry a rare cargo of self-consciousness, we are uniquely aware that, for all our need for intimacy, we face the world alone. A little shyness around each other is surely forgiveable. -- Russell Leadbetter * Sunday Herald *A beautifully written book -- Laurie Taylor * BBC R4 Thinking Allowed *Shrewdly observed, invariably compassionate, unexpectedly poignant ... a remarkable history of shyness -- Brendan Daly * Sunday Post *This fascinating and enthralling mix of anthropology, biography, biology, sociology, popular culture and much more. -- Brian Maye * Irish Times *An entertaining and fun look at a hidden world. * The Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThe slave ship was the instrument of history''s greatest forced migration and a key to the origins and growth of global capitalism, yet much of its history remains unknown. Marcus Rediker uncovers the extraordinary human drama that played out on this world-changing vessel. Drawing on thirty years of maritime research, he demonstrates the truth of W.E.B DuBois''s observation: the slave trade was the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history. The Slave Ship focuses on the so-called golden age of the slave trade, the period of 1700-1808, when more than six million people were transported out of Africa, most of them on British and American ships, across the Atlantic, to slave on New World plantations. Marcus Rediker tells poignant tales of life, death and terror as he captures the shipboard drama of brutal discipline and fierce resistance. He reconstructs the lives of individuals, such as John Newton, James Field Stanfield and Olaudah Equiano, and the collective experience of captains, sailors and slaves. Mindful of the haunting legacies of race, class and slavery, Marcus Rediker offers a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the ghost ship of our modern consciousness.Trade Review'A shockingly vivid work . . . from a gifted chronicler of history's lower decks, at home in the unruly Atlantic world of pirates, slavers, sailors, runaways and rebels' * Boyd Tonkin, Independent *'Enlightening and moving . . . Rediker comes closer than anyone so far to recreating the horrifying social reality of the Atlantic slave ship . . . If anyone doubts the reality of that human story, they only need to read Rediker's book' * James Walvin, BBC History Magazine *'Meticulously researched . . . a terrible tale told here with great skill, clarity and compassion' Siobhan Murphy, Metro * Siobhan Murphy, Metro *'The slave ship is a powerful focus for a profound drama' * Iain Finlayson, The Times *'A brilliantly organised and compelling study of the Atlantic slave trade . . . A truly magnificent book' * Sunday Telegraph *'The Slave Ship provides eloquent testimony to the high human drama of Atlantic 'trafficking'; the greed of the few and the manifold misery of the many that was endured in the trivial cause of sweetness' * Ian Thomson, Spectator *'Rediker has made magnificent use of archival data; his probing, compassionate eye turns up numerous finds that other people who've written on the subject, myself included, have missed' * Adam Hochschild, International Herald Tribune *'Rediker has produced a gripping study of one aspect of a great evil' * Sunday Herald *'Gripping drama of human suffering' * Lucy Sholes, Observer *'Brilliant study' * Socialist Review *'The Slave Ship is dramatic, moving and kaleidoscopic' * London Review of Books *'In this compelling books Marcus Rediker extends his widely known and highly respected mastery of the social history of the Anglo-American North Atlantic to the slave ship ... the book is intricately conceptualized and written beautifully' * International Journal of Maritime History *

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Book SynopsisThis is the first history of the Hippie Trail. It records the joys and pains of budget travel to Kathmandu, India, Afghanistan and other ‘points east’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Written in a clear, simple style, it provides detailed analysis of the motivations and the experiences of hundreds of thousands of hippies who travelled eastwards. The book is structured around four key debates: were the travellers simply motivated by a search for drugs? Did they encounter love or sexual freedom on the road? Were they basically just tourists? Did they resemble pilgrims? It also considers how the travellers have been represented in films, novels and autobiographical accounts, and will appeal to those interested in the Trail or the 1960s counterculture, as well as students taking courses relating to the 1960s.Trade Review‘[A] well-written, comprehensive volume, one that can equally serve classrooms, research, and the general reader interested in a fascinating chapter in this important era’Tom Fels, The Sixties, A Journal of History, Politics and Culture -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction: beginning the trail1 Drugs and the trail2 Sex and love on the road3 The hippie as tourist4 The hippie as pilgrim5 Representing the trail: Hideous Kinky and beyondEpilogue: ending the journeyIndex

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Book SynopsisIncludes many acquisitions and discoveries, such as Picasso's Vollard Suite and the intriguing Vale of York Viking hoard, and showcases a selection of more than 250 of the most beautiful and important objects drawn from across the Museum.

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Book SynopsisLivy (Titus Livius, 64 or 59 BC AD 12 or 17), the Roman historian, presents a vivid narrative of Rome's rise from the traditional foundation of the city in 753 or 751 BC to 9 BC and illustrates the collective and individual virtues necessary to maintain such greatness. The fourth decad (31 40) focuses on Rome's growing hegemony in the East.Trade ReviewThese new Loebs are superior to the old ones in almost every way…The true superiority of Yardley’s work lies, first of all, in the translation: he is an outstanding translator of Livy. -- Joseph B. Solodow * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

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