Germany has fascinated its own people as well as onlookers in the twentieth century because, unlike the history of other European states, its very being has been posed as a question. Why was there no unified German state until late in the nineteenth century? How did Germany become an industrial power? What responsibility does Germany bear for the two world wars? This accessible but authoritative study attempts to answer these and other fundamental questions by looking at the economic, social, political and cultural forces that have created modern Germany.
The 1848 revolutions ushered in an age of Realism that saw rapid economic development and the creation of the Bismarckian empire. However, by the early twentieth century Germany's economic expansion and position as a world power began to fracture and growing internal, economic, social, and political contradictions led it, with disastrous results, into the First World War and the subsequent Weimar Republic. Hitler and the Nazi movement proposed a "revolution" and the creation of a "German style" and the Second World War/Holocaust is, arguably, the defining event of the twentieth century. The Americanization of the German economy and society, the "economic miracle" and euphoria of reunification have in recent years rapidly given way to disillusionment as the major political parties have failed to master outstanding social and environmental problems. The "German question"—Germany's place within the European Union—continues to be unanswered even within an EU where it is the dominant economic power.
Peter Winn
Americas
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Stunning in its sweep, Americas is the most authoritative history available of contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean. From Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, and from Cuba to Trinidad and Tobago, Americas examines the historical, demographic, political, social, cultural, religious, and economic trends in the region. For this new edition Peter Winn has provided a new preface and made revisions throughout to include the most up-to-date information on changes and developments in Latin America since the last revised edition of 1999.
Derek Hayes
Historical Atlas of the United States
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Using more than five hundred historical maps from collections around the world, this stunning book is the first to tell the story of America's past from a unique geographical perspective. Covering more than half a millennium in U.S. history—from conception to colonization to Hurricane Katrina—this atlas documents the discoveries and explorations, the intrigue and negotiations, the technology and the will that led the United States to become what it is today. Richly detailed, visually breathtaking maps are accompanied by extended captions that elucidate the stories and personalities behind their creation.
Coasts and mountains, rivers and lakes, and peaks and plains are described by explorers encountering them for the first time. These maps can convey explorers' ideas of what lay over the mountains ahead, their notions about what was discovered, and their explanations of the land's potential for sponsors back home. The maps can also show a promoter's attempt to sell his project to settlers or a general's assessment of a coming battle. They chart the wars that created and molded the country: the French and Indian War and the War for Independence; the Mexican and Civil Wars; the numerous Indian wars; as well as more localized battles of conquest and survival. Readers can follow the progression of map creation and design as more knowledge was gained about the American continent.
Distilling an enormous amount of information into one handsome volume, the Historical Atlas of the United States highlights the evolution of geographical knowledge at the same time that it presents a fascinating chronicle of the expansion and development of a nation.
Copub: Douglas & McIntyre
Anne Salmond
BLIGH
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In Bligh, the story of the most notorious of all Pacific explorers is told through a new lens as a key episode in the history of the world, rather than simply of the West. Award-winning anthropologist Anne Salmond recounts with a fresh perspective the triumphs and disasters of William Bligh’s life in a riveting narrative that for the first time portrays the Pacific islanders as players. Beginning in 1777, when Bligh, at twenty-two, first arrived in Tahiti with Captain Cook, Salmond charts Bligh’s three Pacific voyages—and tells how they transformed lives on the islands as well as on board the ships and back in Europe. She sheds new insight into the mutiny aboard the Bounty—and on Bligh’s remarkable 3,000-mile journey across the Pacific in a small boat—through revelations from the raw, unguarded letters between him and his wife Betsy. This beautifully told story reveals Bligh for the first time, as an important ethnographer adding to the paradoxical legacy of this famed seaman, and it captures more definitively than ever the excitement, drama, and terror of these events.
Peter Schrag
Paradise Lost
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For much of the past century California was the envy of the continent, not just for what nature had made but for what civil society had created: speedy freeways, well-supported schools, the world's best public university system, public works that made the desert bloom. Not any more. California's public works and social services are crumbling, and public education has plunged from the top to near-bottom in nationwide measures. How could the American dream go so wrong so fast? Originally published in 1998, Peter Schrag's view of California seems as applicable as ever. In his new preface to the 2004 edition, Schrag updates the California scene and considers the fallout from such political earthquakes as the 2003 recall election.
Joyce Tyldesley
Egypt
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Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in the late eighteenth century sparked a global fascination with ancient Egyptian culture that remains undiminished to this day. This book, written by leading author and archaeologist Joyce Tyldesley, tells the full story of the discoveries of treasures that had lain completely hidden and undisturbed for nearly two thousand years. Tyldesley follows in the footsteps of real-life Indiana Joneses in their quest for the splendid monuments, tombs, and artifacts that have unlocked many of the secrets of this mesmerizing civilization. Crafting a riveting chronicle of historical intrigue and intrepid personalities, the author relates the beginnings of Egyptology, leading the reader from the nail-biting race to crack the code of ancient hieroglyphics to the heart-stopping moment when Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen’s burial chamber.
Egypt introduces the collectors, explorers, and archaeologists who have come to dominate the story of the rediscovery of ancient Egypt. Among these is Giovanni Belzoni, a circus strongman and diehard adventurer who uncovered many of the works of the greatest pharaoh of them all, Rameses II. Tyldesley describes the larger-than-life personalities and spectacular finds of characters such as Jean-François Champollion, Amelia Edwards, and Flinders Petrie. She delves into Howard Carter's dramatic discovery of the golden treasures lying deep in the burial chamber of the boy king Tutankhamen. Illustrated with full-color photographs, Egypt captures the excitement of these gripping adventures stories while highlighting the magnificence of the artifacts that were their object.
Copub: BBC Books
Thomas Carlyle
Past and Present
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Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish essayist, historian, cultural critic, and leading man of English letters during the Victorian era, published Past and Present, one of his most influential works, in 1843. Written as a response to the economic crisis of the 1840s—closure of factories, loss of jobs, the growth of slums in industrial centers, the starving poor—Past and Present aimed to lead readers toward a "conversion experience" in order to stimulate social reform. In this work, Carlyle provides a trenchant articulation of the political, social, religious, and economic climate of the mid-nineteenth century and a prophetic vision of the future.
This volume, the fourth of the eight-volume Strouse Edition, includes an informative historical introduction and illustrations, along with complete notes and scholarly apparatus, and is the definitive modern scholarly edition.
Herwig Wolfram
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples
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The names of early Germanic warrior tribes and leaders resound in songs and legends; the real story of the part they played in reshaping the ancient world is no less gripping. Herwig Wolfram's panoramic history spans the great migrations of the Germanic peoples and the rise and fall of their kingdoms between the third and eighth centuries, as they invaded, settled in, and ultimately transformed the Roman Empire.
As Germanic military kings and their fighting bands created kingdoms, and won political and military recognition from imperial governments through alternating confrontation and accommodation, the "tribes" lost their shared culture and social structure, and became sharply differentiated. They acquired their own regions and their own histories, which blended with the history of the empire. In Wolfram's words, "the Germanic peoples neither destroyed the Roman world nor restored it; instead, they made a home for themselves within it."
This story is far from the "decline and fall" interpretation that held sway until recent decades. Wolfram's narrative, based on his sweeping grasp of documentary and archaeological evidence, brings new clarity to a poorly understood period of Western history.
Anne Salmond
Aphrodites Island
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Aphrodite's Island is a bold new account of the European discovery of Tahiti, the Pacific island of mythic status that has figured so powerfully in European imaginings about sexuality, the exotic, and the nobility or bestiality of “savages.” In this groundbreaking book, Anne Salmond takes readers to the center of the shared history to furnish rich insights into Tahitian perceptions of the visitors while illuminating the full extent of European fascination with Tahiti. As she discerns the impact and meaning of the European effect on the islands, she demonstrates how, during the early contact period, the mythologies of Europe and Tahiti intersected and became entwined. Drawing on Tahitian oral histories, European manuscripts and artworks, collections of Tahitian artifacts, and illustrated with contemporary sketches, paintings, and engravings from the voyages, Aphrodite's Island provides a vivid account of the Europeans' Tahitian adventures. At the same time, the book's compelling insights into Tahitian life significantly change the way we view the history of this small island during a period when it became a crossroads for Europe.
Matthew Frye Jacobson
Special Sorrows
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"A scholarly study of the real roots of what Jacobson calls 'America's largely assimilated but ultimately "unmeltable" ethics.' It's a startling point of view for readers who are accustomed to the self-congratulatory myth of America as a beacon of liberty to which the 'huddled masses' of the world look with longing."—Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times
Jean Bingen
Hellenistic Egypt
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Hellenistic Egypt brings together for the first time the writings of the preeminent historian, papyrologist, and epigraphist Jean Bingen. These essays, first published by Bingen from 1970 to 1999, make a distinctive contribution to the historiography of Hellenistic Egypt, a period in ancient Egypt extending from its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. until its annexation as a province of the Roman Empire by Octavian (later Augustus) in 30 B.C., after his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Ruled by Ptolemaic kings during this period, Hellenistic Egypt was a sophisticated, rich, and fertile country. Its history is intimately bound up with the history of the Mediterranean as a whole, yet parts of that history remain relatively obscure and open to debate. New evidence, particularly from papyri, emerges frequently and shifts our understanding and interpretation of this significant time. For the last six decades Jean Bingen has been a leading editor and interpreter of such evidence. In particular his work on the Ptolemaic monarchy and economy, which illustrates how the Greeks and Egyptians interacted, has transformed the field and influenced all subsequent work. Historian and classicist Roger Bagnall has selected and introduced Bingen’s most important essays on this topic.
Copub: Edinburgh University Press
Mark M. Smith
Sensing the Past
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Do we rely on different senses now than the ones we relied on in the past? How have our senses affected history? How have the senses themselves changed? What role have the senses played in the ways we discriminate? Exploring illuminating examples from antiquity to the twenty-first century, this lively, concise introduction to the essential, emerging field of sensory history presents a new way of looking at the past that takes the everyday, the average, and the banal as seriously as it takes the history of elites, the intellect, and the exceptional. Considering each of the five senses, Mark M. Smith explores diverse subjects: visual culture in Victorian Britain and South America, sound in nineteenth-century Australia and France, gender politics and touch in early modern Europe and in native America, "race" and olfaction in the United States and scent in ancient Christianity, and the role of taste in shaping national identity in modern China and early America.
W. G. Beasley
The Japanese Experience
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The Japanese Experience is an authoritative history of Japan from the sixth century to the present day. Only a writer of W.G. Beasley's stature could render Japan's complicated past so concisely and elegantly. This is the history of a society and a culture with a distinct sense of itself, one of the few nations never conquered by a foreign power in historic times (until the twentieth century) and the home of the longest-reigning imperial dynasty that still survives. The Japanese have always occupied part or all of the same territory, its borders defined by the sea. They have spoken and written a common language, (once it had taken firm shape in about the tenth century) and their population has been largely homogeneous, little touched by immigration except in very early periods. Yet Japanese society and culture have changed more through time than these statements seem to imply. Developments within Japan have been greatly influenced by ideas and institutions, art and literature, imported from elsewhere. In this work Beasley, a leading authority on Japan and the author of a number of acclaimed works on Japanese history, examines the changing society and culture of Japan and considers what, apart from the land and the people, is specifically Japanese about the history of Japan.
The arrival of Buddhism in the sixth century brought a substantially Chinese-style society to Japan, not only in religion but in political institutions, writing system, and the lifestyle of the ruling class. By the eleventh century the Chinese element was waning and the country was entering a long and essentially "Japanese" feudal period—with two rulers, an emperor and a Shogun—which was to last until the nineteenth century. Under the Togukawa shogunate (1600-1868), Chinese culture enjoyed something of a renaissance, though popular culture owed more to Japanese urban taste and urban wealth.
In 1868 the Meiji Restoration brought to power rulers dedicated to the pursuit of national wealth and strength, and Japan became a world power. Although a bid for empire ended in disaster, the years after 1945 saw an economic miracle that brought spectacular wealth to Japan and the Japanese people, as well as the westernization of much of Japanese life.
David Goodman
Fault Lines
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South Africa has experienced one of the world's most dramatic political transformations. David Goodman, a journalist and activist who has witnessed South Africa's struggles since the darkest days of apartheid, chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans who have experienced apartheid from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, these profiles provide the first in-depth look at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa.
Part social history and part personal drama, Fault Lines is an account of what happens to real people when their country is reinvented around them. The struggle to reconcile past evils is captured in the stories of a former police assassin and his intended victim. The rise and fall of South African racism is portrayed through the lives of the late Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd—the notorious "architect of apartheid"—and his grandson, now a member of the ruling African National Congress. The battle to break out of poverty is detailed in the story of two black women: one an impoverished domestic worker and new city councilor, the other a Mercedes-driving member of South Africa's new black elite. The struggle for the land is told through the eyes of two neighbors: a black farmer who was evicted from his lands in the 1980s and has returned to start over, and a conservative white farmer who participated in the eviction and now does business with the man whose life he nearly destroyed. These powerful stories are accompanied by the photography of award-winning South African documentary photographer Paul Weinberg.
barry bluestone
Growing Prosperity
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In this elegantly argued book, political economists Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison examine America's great surge of economic expansion in its historical context to demonstrate the causes for the vibrancy of our economy.
A Century Foundation Book
Luciano Canfora
Julius Caesar
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In this splendid profile, Luciano Canfora offers a radically new interpretation of one of the most controversial figures in history. Julius Caesar played a leading role in the culture and politics of a world empire, dwarfing his contemporaries in ambition, achievement, and appetite. For that, he has occupied a central place in the political imagination ever since. Yet Caesar, struck down by his own lieutenants because he could not be comprehended nor contained, remains an enigma. The result of a comprehensive study of the ancient sources, Julius Caesar: The Life and Times of the People's Dictator paints an astonishingly detailed portrait of this complex man and the times in which he lived. Based on his many years of research, Canfora focuses on what we actually know about Caesar, the man of politics and war, in a stylish, engaging narrative chronologically structured around the events in Caesar's life. The result is a rich, revelatory, full biographical portrait of the dictator whose mission of Romanization lies at the very heart of modern Europe.
Copub: Edinburgh University Press
John Gregory Dunne
Delano
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In September 1965, Filipino and Mexican American farm workers went on strike against grape growers in and around Delano, California. More than a labor dispute, the strike became a movement for social justice that helped redefine Latino and American politics. The strike also catapulted its leader, Cesar Chavez, into prominence as one of the most celebrated American political figures of the twentieth century. More than forty years after its original publication, Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike, based on compelling first-hand reportage and interviews, retains both its freshness and its urgency in illuminating a moment of unusually significant social ferment.
Antonia Fraser
The Middle Ages
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This volume opens with the Norman conquest, William I's bold incursion in 1066 that propelled a new dynasty to the throne of England, and covers three centuries of drama, intrigue, loyalty, betrayal, courage, cowardice, and crime.
About the series A Royal History of England:
From the beginning of monarchical power in Norman times to the present queen, the British royal family has experienced many scandals, triumphs, and changes in public image, but few of their reigns can be described as uneventful. With contributions by specialist authors and contemporary illustrations of royal heraldry and coats of arms, Antonia Fraser has edited a definitive and entertaining history of one of the most powerful monarchies in the world.
John Conroy
Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People
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Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People is a riveting book that exposes the potential in each of us for acting unspeakably. John Conroy sits down with torturers from several nations and comes to understand their motivations. His compelling narrative has the tension of a novel. He takes us into a Chicago police station, two villages in the West Bank, and a secret British interrogation center in Northern Ireland, and in the process we are exposed to the experience of the victim, the rationalizations of the torturer, and the seeming indifference of the bystander. The torture occurs in democracies that ostensibly value justice, due process, and human rights, and yet the perpetrators and their superiors escape without punishment, revealing much about the dynamics of torture.
Paul Cartledge
Spartan Reflections
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The complex and distinctive Spartan tradition has been a prominent theme in western thinking from antiquity to today. Sparta is also one of a handful of ancient Greek cities with enough existing evidence for historians to create a realistic social portrait. Over the past quarter-century Paul Cartledge has established himself as the leading international authority on ancient Sparta. Spartan Reflections is a superb collection of his essays—two are published here for the first time, and the rest, often difficult to locate, have been revised and updated for publication in book form. Giving us a real sense of what Sparta was like as a culture, these essays constitute a fascinating introduction to and overview of ancient Spartan history and its reception. This collection, unique in breadth and scope, will be an essential source for anyone interested in this idiosyncratic society.
Cartledge brings us up to date on what is known about the most important and intriguing aspects of Sparta: its military development, questions of gender and sexuality, and the difficult problem of artistic and literary aspects of Sparta. We learn about the institutions that distinguished Sparta from other city-states, including its religion, education process, degree of literacy, secret service, unusual system of servitude, and institutionalized pederasty. Throughout, Cartledge also makes important comparisons with Athens, helping us grasp what is really striking about Sparta.
Cartledge's writing is clear and engaging as he draws from myriad sources both ancient and modern, as well as from political and cultural theory. These essays, together with their magisterial bibliography, demonstrate his remarkable scholarly and intellectual range. Spartan Reflections will be an important source on the most significant issues in Sparta scholarship today as well as a fascinating look at this culture for general readers.
A Selection of the History Book Club
Richard Fletcher
Moorish Spain
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Beginning in the year 711 and continuing for nearly a thousand years, the Islamic presence survived in Spain, at times flourishing, and at other times dwindling into warring fiefdoms. But the culture and science thereby brought to Spain, including long-buried knowledge from Greece, largely forgotten during Europe’s Dark Ages, was to have an enduring impact on the country as it emerged into the modern era. In this gracefully written history, Richard Fletcher reveals the Moorish culture in all its fascinating disparity and gives us history at its best: here is vivid storytelling by a renowned scholar.
Leora Auslander
Cultural Revolutions
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In Cultural Revolutions, Leora Auslander takes a highly original approach to the significance of the political changes wrought by the English Civil War (1642-1651), the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), and the French Revolution (1789-1799). This broadly conceived yet succinct essay advances a new argument: that these three revolutions were not bourgeois in character but were revolutions of culture that led to a transformation of the ways societies could be politicized. Auslander argues that these revolutions conferred new importance upon the symbols of state and upon the cultural components of our everyday lives—the clothes that cover our bodies, the food we eat, and the songs and plays to which we turn for distraction and insight.
Copub: Berg Publishers
Laura Shapiro
Perfection Salad
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Toasted marshmallows stuffed with raisins? Green-and-white luncheons? Chemistry in the kitchen? This entertaining and erudite social history, now in its fourth paperback edition, tells the remarkable story of America's transformation from a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes. In Perfection Salad, Laura Shapiro investigates a band of passionate but ladylike reformers at the turn of the twentieth century—including Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School—who were determined to modernize the American diet through a "scientific" approach to cooking. Shapiro's fascinating tale shows why we think the way we do about food today.
Janet McDonald
Project Girl
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Selected by The Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year, Project Girl is the powerful account of a young woman's struggle to realize her dreams while remaining true to who she was before attending Ivy League schools and receiving impressive diplomas. It tells of the spectacular failures and unlikely comebacks of a ghetto kid whose academic talent opens doors onto a world of private schools, rich classmates, and plum jobs but who back home confronts a neighborhood of growing poverty, drug abuse, and crime. Project Girl is McDonald's story of her divided life and terrible battle to reconcile opposing worlds.
J. G. Landels
Engineering in the Ancient World, Revised Edition
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In his classic book, J. G. Landels describes the technological advances of the Greeks and Romans with erudition and enthusiasm. He provides an important introduction to engineering, writing about power and energy sources, water engineering, cranes, and transportation devises. From aqueducts to catapults, he attempts to envision machines as they may have worked in the ancient world. He then traces the path of knowledge taken by early thinkers—including Plato, Pliny, and Archimedes—in developing early theories of engineering and physics.
M. I. Finley
The Ancient Economy
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"Technical progress, economic growth, productivity, even efficiency have not been significant goals since the beginning of time," declares M. I. Finley in his classic work. The states of the ancient Mediterranean world had no recognizable real-property market, never fought a commercially inspired war, witnessed no drive to capital formation, and assigned the management of many substantial enterprises to slaves and ex-slaves. In short, to study the economies of the ancient world, one must begin by discarding many premises that seemed self-evident before Finley showed that they were useless or misleading. Available again, with a new foreword by Ian Morris, these sagacious, fertile, and occasionally combative essays are just as electrifying today as when Finley first wrote them.
John R. MacArthur
Second Front
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Now updated with a new preface that examines the current conflict in Iraq, this brilliant work of investigative reporting reveals the government's assault on the constitutional freedoms of the American media during Operation Desert Storm. John R. MacArthur's engaging and provocative account is as essential and alarming today as when the first paperback edition was published ten years ago.
S. D. Goitein
A Mediterranean Society, Volume IV
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This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume IV, subtitled Daily Life, details city life, domestic architecture, furnishings and housewares, clothing and jewelry, food and drink, and other material culture.
J. E Curtis
Forgotten Empire
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This sumptuous book traces the rise and fall of one of the ancient world's largest and richest empires. Encompassing a rich diversity of different peoples and cultures, Persia's Achaeminid Empire flourished between 550 and 331 B.C. The empire originated with Cyrus the Great (559-530 B.C.) and expanded under his successors, who ruled from the royal capitals of Susa and Persepolis, until at its peak it stretched from the Indus Valley to Greece and from the Caspian Sea to Egypt. The Achaeminids acted as a bridge between the earlier Near Eastern cultures and the later Classical world of the Mediterranean and had a profound influence on Greece in political, military, economic, and cultural fields. Forgotten Empire was created in association with the British Museum, which is mounting the most comprehensive exhibit ever staged on the Achaeminids. This book opens a window onto the wealth and splendor of Persian society—its rich palaces, exquisite craftsmanship, and sophisticated learning. Showcasing an unprecedented loan of unique material from the National Museum of Tehran—most of which has never before been presented outside of Iran—this beautifully illustrated and produced book demonstrates why the sculpture, glazed panels, gold vessels, and jewelry of the Achaeminids rank among the finest ever produced.
Because the palace was central to imperial life, remains from the royal sites of Susa and Persepolis are a major focus. Forgotten Empire is divided into sections such as the expansion of the Persian Empire, arms and warfare, trade and commerce, writing, luxury dinner services, jewelry, religious and burial customs, and the rediscovery of ancient Persia.
Copub: British Museum
Felix Pryor
Elizabeth I
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Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) ruled England for 45 turbulent years, and her reign has come to be seen as a golden age. She exercised supreme authority in a man’s world, while remaining intensely feminine. She was Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, but is also held up as a role model for company executives in the twenty-first century. She is a near-legendary figure from a remote past who remains fascinatingly modern.
This handsome volume has been published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s death in 1603. It illustrates in color and, where possible, in actual size, sixty manuscripts—either by Elizabeth or to her. Each one is accompanied by a running commentary, explaining the document and placing it in its historical context, and selected transcriptions or, where necessary, translations from the originals.
Elizabeth was a girl of extraordinary precocity and a brilliant linguist. Her early letters, written in a beautiful italic, are to her forbidding father, Henry VIII, and to her brother and sister, Edward VI and "Bloody" Mary. The very first letter dates from when she was a child of eleven. The last, written nearly 60 years later, is a barely-legible scrawl addressed to her successor, the future James I. The letters from her in-tray are no less extraordinary. Tsar Ivan the Terrible rounds on her in a blind fury after she refuses to marry him. The Earl of Essex, young enough to be her son, pours out declarations of love: a few pages further on is to be found her signed warrant for his execution. There are letters from ministers and galley slaves, spies and traitors, coded letters, warrants for torture, speeches to parliament, and the original—only recently identified—of the most famous of all her utterances: "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king."
Antonia Fraser
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Revised and Updated
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This essential reference is a concise, accessible guide to the great dynasties of English royalty. A collection of biographical sketches that encompasses the period from the establishment of monarchical power by the early Norman kings through the reign of Elizabeth II, The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England tells the stories of many monarchs and their colorful lives—some merry, some cruel, some heroic, others sinister. Antonia Fraser and a collection of distinguished contributors bring the people and events to life in this lavishly illustrated volume that is both engrossing history and an excellent reference tool.
This updated edition includes a new essay describing the recently tumultuous reign of the Windsors. Included are details of the weddings of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson; the acrimonious collapse of the marriages; the effect the media have had on the royal family's image; and the fire at Windsor Castle. Such recent events as Diana's tragic death, the decommissioning of the Royal Yacht Britannia, and the launching of Queen Elizabeth's own website are also discussed.
Accompanying the text are 175 contemporary illustrations and drawings of the royal coats of arms, with their significance explained by J.P. Brooke-Little, Richmond Herald of Arms. This is a dazzling story of a thousand years of English history, as told through the lives and deeds of the nation's sovereigns.
David P. Jordan
The King's Trial
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On August 10, 1792, Louis XVI of France abandoned his Paris chateau, walked across the Tuileries gardens, and surrendered his crown. In the tumultuous months that followed, he was tried, found guilty, and sent to the guillotine. When originally published, David Jordan's riveting account of that turbulent time identified key issues, focused attention on a matter once considered only an episode of French history, and reframed the academic debate on the meaning of the most significant trial in French history. His new preface considers the scholarship of the past twenty-five years and places The King's Trial in the current context.
Romila Thapar
Early India
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Early India represents a complete rewriting by Romila Thapar of her classic work, A History of India (the first volume in the Penguin History of India series), thirty-five years after it was first published. Thapar has incorporated the vast changes in scholarly understanding and interpretation of Indian history that have occurred during her lifetime to revise the book for a new generation of readers. This new work brings to life thousands of years of history, tracing India's evolution before contact with modern Europe was established: its prehistoric beginnings; the great cities of the Indus civilization; the emergence of mighty dynasties such as the Mauryas, Guptas, and Cholas; the teachings of the Buddha; the creation of heroic epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; and the creation of regional cultures. Thapar introduces figures from the remarkable visionary ruler Ashoka to other less exemplary figures. In exploring subjects as diverse as marriage, class, art, erotica, and astronomy, Thapar provides an incomparably vivid and nuanced picture of India. Above all, she shows the rich mosaic of diverse kingdoms, landscapes, languages, and beliefs.
S. D. Goitein
A Mediterranean Society, Volume II
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This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume II, subtitled The Community, explores the nature of medieval religious democracy, including discussion of the community, social services, local government, worship, education, interfaith relations, relations between religion and the state, and the relations between the communities and the state.
Kasra Naji
Ahmadinejad
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As Iran's nuclear program accelerates, all eyes are on the blacksmith's son who could have his finger on the trigger. Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What drives him? To whom, if anyone, does he answer? Internationally acclaimed Iranian journalist Kasra Naji has spent years interviewing Ahmadinejad's friends, family, and colleagues to tell for the first time the true story of how he came to power. What emerges in this riveting account, featuring never before published color photographs, is a picture of a man who is much more of a force to be reckoned with than the caricatures offered up so far suggest. While Naji documents Ahmadinejad's often strange behavior, he also shows him to be full of complex contradictions: a man gripped by apocalyptic beliefs, yet capable of switching spiritual allegiance in the quest for power. A man tough enough to fight street battles in the name of Ayatollah Khomeini, crude enough to invite the German chancellor to join him in an anti-Jewish alliance, yet sophisticated enough to win the support of the all-powerful Revolutionary Guard. Kasra Naji takes us inside the shadowy council chambers of Tehran, and shows us the plots, passions, and personalities that will influence Ahmadinejad's next move, while the world waits with bated breath.
Mary Helen Spooner
Soldiers in a Narrow Land
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On September 11, 1973, a military coup in Chile overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende, beginning an era of political repression that lasted over sixteen years. Mary Helen Spooner takes us behind the Pinochet regime's wall of censorship, silence, and propaganda and provides an inside look at a brutal dictatorship. She traces the personal histories of key political figures, explains why many Chileans supported the regime, and reveals the fate of many of its victims. The 1998 arrest of Augusto Pinochet and resulting events serve as a reminder of his harrowing legacy. In a new preface (Paper edition) Spooner looks at how Chile has changed in the 1990s and places recent events in a larger historical context.
Frederic
The Great Enterprise, Volume 1
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In classical Chinese, The Great Enterprise means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom.
This first of a two-volume work on The Great Enterprise of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any language relating their conquest of China during the seventeenth century.
(This book was originally published as a boxed two-volume set. It is now available as separate volumes with a plain hardcover. The page numbering continues from the first volume to the second.)
Abdel Bari Atwan
The Secret History of al Qaeda, Updated Edition
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Drawing on unparalleled access to Osama bin Laden and his key associates, journalist Abdel Bari Atwan gives an incisive and timely account, the clearest we have so far, of the rise of the notorious terrorist organization, al Qaeda. In this lively narrative, the author establishes what al Qaeda is or has become, what it wants, what its capabilities are, and how the West can answer its complaints and challenges.
The only Western-based journalist to have spent time with Osama bin Laden, Atwan begins with an engrossing personal record of his 1996 trip to visit al Qaeda's founder and guide at his Tora Bora hideout. He takes an in-depth look at bin-Laden, presenting a nuanced portrait of the man and a description of his development as the prime exponent of jihad today. Atwan reveals how al Qaeda's radical departure from the classical terrorist/guerilla blueprint has enabled less adaptable efforts to neutralize it. The fanaticism of its fighters, and their willingness to kill and be killed, are matched by the leadership's opportunistic recruitment strategies and sophisticated understanding of psychology, media and new technology—including the use of the Internet for training, support and communications. Atwan's outspoken London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, of which he is Editor-in-Chief, has been the vehicle of choice for the release of many al Qaeda electronic communiqués.
The Secret History of al Qaeda reveals events in Iraq and Saudi Arabia as watershed moments in the organization's evolution that are making it more dangerous by the day. Atwan efficiently charts how the concept of jihad is being refined and appropriated, how a new kind of leader has been made possible by al Qaeda's horizontal chain of command, the making of the suicide bomber as a permanent feature of a global holy war, al Qaeda's economic strategy, and how the war in Iraq has transformed that country into a breeding ground for the most ruthless and militant al Qaeda fighters to date.
Copub: Saqi Books
Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke
War Diaries 1939–1945
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For most of the Second World War, General Sir Alan Brooke (1883–1963), later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, was Britain's Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) and Winston Churchill's principal military adviser, and antagonist, in the inner councils of war. He is commonly considered the greatest CIGS in the history of the British Army. His diaries—published here for the first time in complete and unexpurgated form—are one of the most important and the most controversial military diaries of the modern era. The last great chronicle of the Second World War, they provide a riveting blow-by-blow account of how the war was waged and eventually won—including the controversies over the Second Front and the desperate search for a strategy, the Allied bomber offensive, the Italian campaign, the D-day landings, the race for Berlin, the divisions of Yalta, and the postwar settlement.
Beginning in September 1939, the diaries were written up each night in the strictest secrecy and against all regulations. Alanbrooke's mask of command was legendary but these diaries tell us what he really saw and felt: moments of triumph and exhilaration, but also frustration, depression, betrayal, and doubt. They expose the gulf between the military and the politicians of the War Cabinet, and how often military strategy was misguided and nearly derailed by political prejudices. They also reveal the incredible strain on Alanbrooke of the Allied conferences in Washington, Moscow, Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran, as he tried after intense and exhausting argument (not least with Churchill) to match Allied strategy with the reality of British military power and the fragility of the British Empire. These diaries demonstrate the true depth of Alanbrooke's rage and despair at Churchill's failure to grasp overall strategy. This was particularly acute in the winter of 1943–44 when Churchill, fueled by medicine and alcohol, no longer seemed master of himself.
Michael Wood
Conquistadors
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Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, and Francisco and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. He also follows parts of Orellana's extraordinary voyage of discovery down the Amazon and of Cabeza de Vaca's arduous journey across America to the Pacific. Few stories in history match these conquests for sheer drama, endurance, and distances covered, and Wood's gripping narrative brings them fully to life.
Wood reconstructs both sides of the conquest, drawing from sources such as Bernal Diaz's eyewitness account, Cortés's own letters, and the Aztec texts recorded not long after the fall of Mexico. Wood's evocative story of his own journey makes a compelling connection with the sixteenth-century world as he relates the present-day customs, rituals, and oral traditions of the people he meets. He offers powerful descriptions of the rivers, mountains, and ruins he encounters on his trip, comparing what he has seen and experienced with the historical record. A wealth of stunning photographs support the text, drawing the reader closer to the land and its people.
As well as being one of the pivotal events in history, the Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most cruel and devastating. Wood grapples with the moral legacy of the European invasion and with the implications of an episode in history that swept away civilizations, religions, and ways of life. The stories in Conquistadors are not only of conquest, heroism, and greed, but of changes in the way we see the world, history and civilization, justice and human rights.
Frances Wood
The Silk Road
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The Silk Road, a series of ancient trade routes stretching across Central Asia to Europe, evokes exotic images of camel trains laden with bales of fine Chinese silk, spices, and perfume, of desert oases surrounded by snow-capped mountains, of bustling markets thronging with travellers buying and selling grapes, coriander, Baltic amber, and Mediterranean coral. Along this route, silks were sent from China to ancient Rome; princesses were dispatched in marriage alliances across the deserts; bandits and thieves launched attacks throughout history.
Covering more than 5,000 years, this book, lavishly illustrated with photographs, manuscripts, and paintings from the collections of the British Library and other museums worldwide, presents an overall picture of the history and cultures of the Silk Road. It also contains many previously unpublished photographs by the great explorers Stein, Hedin, and Mannerheim.
More than just a trade route, the Silk Road witnessed the movement of cultural influences. Frances Wood traces the story of the civilizations and ideas that flourished and moved along its vast geographical expanse. Indian Buddhism was carried into China on the Silk Road, initiating a long history of pilgrimages along the lonely desert routes; Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam also made their way eastwards along its route.
The nineteenth century saw a new interest in Central Asia and the Silk Road, as Russia and Britain vied for power on the frontiers of Afghanistan. A new breed of explorer, part archaeologist, part cartographer, part spy, was seen on the Silk Road, while some of the ancient cities, long buried in sand-blown dunes, began to give up their secrets. This book brings the history of the Silk Road alive--from its beginnings to the present day, revealing a rich history still in the making.
Albie Sachs
The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter
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On April 7, 1988, Albie Sachs, an activist South African lawyer and a leading member of the ANC, was car-bombed in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, by agents of South Africa's security forces. His right arm was blown off and he lost the sight of one eye. This intimate and moving account of his recovery records the gradual recuperation of his broken body, his complex interaction with health professionals, the importance of touch and sensuality, and his triumphant reentry into the world. It also captures the spirit of a remarkable man: his enormous optimism, his commitment to social justice, and his joyous wonder at the life that surrounds him. In a new epilogue, Sachs gives a gripping insider's view of the major public events of the last decade--the election of Nelson Mandela, the formation of the Constitutional Court and Sachs's appointment as judge, and his own role with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Derek Hayes
Historical Atlas of California
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Using nearly five hundred historical maps and many other illustrations—from rough sketches drawn in the field to commercial maps to beautifully rendered works of art—this lavishly illustrated volume is the first to tell the story of California's past from a unique visual perspective. Covering five hundred years of history, it offers a compelling and informative look at the transformation of the state from before European contact through the Gold Rush and up to the present. The maps are accompanied by a concise, engaging narrative and by extended captions that elucidate the stories and personalities behind their creation. At once a valuable reference and an exhilarating adventure through history, the Historical Atlas of California, featuring many rare and unusual maps, will be a treasured addition to any library. Distilling an enormous amount of information into one volume, it presents a fascinating chronicle of how California came to be what it is today.
Copub: Douglas & McIntyre
Philip Rousseau
Pachomius
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Pachomius, who died in 346, has long been regarded as the "founder of monasticism." Available again, Philip Rousseau's careful reading of the available texts reveals that Pachomius's pioneering enterprise has been consistently misread in light of later monastic practices. Rousseau not only provides a fuller and more accurate portrait of this great teacher and spiritual director but also gives a new perspective on the development of monasticism. In a new preface Rousseau reviews the scholarly developments that have modified his views and emphases since the book was published. The result is to make Pachomius an even less assured pioneer, a man likely to have been more involved in the village and urban society of his time than previously thought.
Loren R. Graham
A Face in the Rock
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Eight miles long and four miles wide, Grand Island lies off the south shore of Lake Superior. It was once home to a sizable community of Chippewa Indians who lived in harmony with the land and with each other. Their tragic demise began early in the nineteenth century when their fellow tribesmen from the mainland goaded them into waging war against rival Sioux. The war party was decimated; only one young brave, Powers of the Air, lived to tell the story that celebrated the heroism of his band and formed the basis of the legend that survives today. Distinguished historian Loren R. Graham has spent more than forty years researching and reconstructing the poignant tale of Powers of the Air and his people. A Face in the Rock is an artful melding of human history and natural history; it is a fascinating narrative of the intimate relation between place and people.
Powers of the Air lived to witness the desecration of Grand Island by the fur and logging industries, the Christianization of the tribe, and the near total loss of the Chippewa language, history, and culture. Graham charts the plight of the Chippewa as white culture steadily encroaches, forcing the native people off the island and dispersing their community on the mainland. The story ends with happier events of the past two decades, including the protection of Grand Island within the National Forest system, and the resurgence of Chippewa culture.
Susan Whitfield
Life along the Silk Road
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In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Linking Europe, India, and the Far East, the route passed through many countries and many settlements, from the splendid city of Samarkand to tiny desert hamlets. Susan Whitfield creates a rich and varied portrait of life along the greatest trade route in history in a vivid, lively, and learned account that spans the eighth through the tenth centuries. Recounting the lives of ten individuals who lived at different times during this period, Whitfield draws on contemporary sources and uses firsthand accounts whenever possible to reconstruct the history of the route through the personal experiences of these characters.
Life along the Silk Road brings alive the now ruined and sand-covered desert towns and their inhabitants. Readers encounter an Ulghur nomad from the Gobi Desert accompanying a herd of steppe ponies for sale to the Chinese state; Ah-long, widow of a prosperous merchant, now reduced to poverty and forced to resort to law and charity to survive; and the Chinese princess sent as part of a diplomatic deal to marry a Turkish kaghan. In the process we learn about women's lives, modes of communication, weapons, types of cosmetics, methods of treating altitude sickness in the Tibetan army, and ways that merchants cheated their customers. Throughout the narrative, Whitfield conveys a strong sense of what life was like for ordinary men and women on the Silk Road--everyone from itinerant Buddhist monks, to Zoroastrians and Nestorian Christians seeking converts among the desert settlers, to storytellers, musicians, courtesans, diviners, peddlers, and miracle-workers who offered their wares in the marketplaces and at temple fairs. A work of great scholarship, Life along the Silk Road is at the same time extremely accessible and entertaining.
Julie A. Mertus
Kosovo
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Julie Mertus provides one of the first comprehensive looks at the explosive situation in Kosovo, where years of simmering tensions between Serbs and Albanians erupted in armed conflict in 1998. In a profound and detailed study of national identity and ethnic conflict, Mertus demonstrates how myths and truths can start a war. She shows how our identity as individuals and as members of groups is defined through the telling and remembering of stories. Real or imagined, these stories shape our understanding of ourselves as heroes, martyrs, conquerors, or victims. Once we see ourselves as victims, Mertus claims, we feel morally justified to become perpetrators.
Based on a series of interviews conducted in Kosovo, Serbia proper, and Macedonia, this book is one of the first extended treatments of the years leading to war in Kosovo. Mertus examines the formation of Serbian national identity, and closely scrutinizes the hostilities of the region. She shows how myth and experience inform the political ideologies of Kosovo, and explores how these competing beliefs are created and perpetuated. This sobering overview of the region provides a window into a complex struggle whose repercussions reach far into the international community.
Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Boy King
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Diarmaid MacCulloch illuminates the significance of Edward's turbulent and neglected reign. He takes a fresh look at the life and beliefs of the young king and of the ruthless politicians who jostled for power around him. He analyzes the single-minded strategy of the Protestant Revolution and assesses the support it had among the people of England.
Jethro K. Lieberman
A Practical Companion to the Constitution
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This is the most comprehensive and readable one-volume reference book in print, accessible to lay readers and specialists alike, on the meaning of the American Constitution as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. It is an indispensable tool for students and lay persons who want to understand today's constitutional controversies and their background in our history. It is equally useful to lawyers and other specialists who seek quick reviews of constitutional issues with immediate reference to cases for further research.
Unlike conventional treatises that discuss the Constitution clause by clause or under a few broad concepts, this book uniquely treats every aspect of the Constitution and every constitutional topic in alphabetical order, in more than 1,000 short essays. It is extensively cross-referenced and exhaustively indexed, so that even a reader with only a minimal notion of the Constitution or constitutional law can quickly find clear answers to questions about pressing issues of the day.
Among the other unique features: a set of introductory essays on the background of the Constitution and the many difficulties of interpreting it; a concordance to each word and phrase in the Constitution; a year-by-year chronology of justices who have served on the Supreme Court; and a table of the more than 2,650 Supreme Court cases from 1792 to the present referred to in the book, listing the vote, the author of the majority opinion, the concurring and dissenting justices, and the length of the opinions.
Antonia Fraser
The Wars of the Roses
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From Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, to Richard III, The Wars of the Roses follows the history of the kings of the houses of Lancaster and York who shaped this tumultuous period of English history. Anthony Cheetham provides insight into the politics, society, and economy of this time, and above all, he conveys the personal histories and characters of its rulers.
About the series A Royal History of England:
From the beginning of monarchical power in Norman times to the present queen, the British royal family has experienced many scandals, triumphs, and changes in public image, but few of their reigns can be described as uneventful. With contributions by specialist authors and contemporary illustrations of royal heraldry and coats of arms, Antonia Fraser has edited a definitive and entertaining history of one of the most powerful monarchies in the world.
John A. Crow
Spain, Third Edition
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This is the late John A. Crow's classic study of the cultural history of Spain and its people, which he last updated in 1985 but which seems as fresh and pertinent as when he first wrote it. Crow devoted a lifetime to Hispanic studies and here provides a historical interpretation of Spanish civilization from its earliest beginnings to the present. The scope of this study is remarkable and includes chapters on Roman Spain, the Jews in Spain, the Moors, life in medieval towns, and the Golden Age of Spain, plus a view of Franco's legacy.
Kevin Starr
Rooted in Barbarous Soil
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Perhaps never in the time-honored American tradition of frontiering did "civilization" appear to sink so low as in gold rush California. A mercurial economy swung from boom to bust, and back again, rendering everyone's fortunes ephemeral. Competition, jealousy, and racism fueled individual and mass violence. Yet, in the very midst of this turbulence, social and cultural forms emerged, gained strength, spread, and took hold. Rooted in Barbarous Soil,Volume 3 in the four-volume California History Sesquicentennial Series, is the only book of its kind to examine gold rush society and culture, to present modern interpretations, and to gather up-to-date bibliographies of its topics.
Chapters by leading scholars in their respective fields explore a range of topics including migration and settlement; ethnic diversity, assimilation, cooperation, and conflict; the dispossession of Indians and the Californios; the founding of schools and universities; urban life; women in early California; the sexual frontier; and the development of religion, art, literature, and popular culture. Many rarely seen illustrations supplement the text.
John Richardson
The Annals of London
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One of the world's greatest cities, the vast metropolis of twentieth-century London began in ad 43 when Aulius Plautius led the second invasion from Richborough to defeat the local army on the banks of the Thames. The victors then created a Roman settlement and established themselves on the river. They developed the city with a southern defense work (Southwark), and the settlement prospered as the preeminent trading base linking Britain to Europe and the Near East. The city's expansion through the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings serves as a background for the first of the almanac entries, 1065, which sees the consecration of Edward the Confessor's Abbey at Westminster, shortly before the king's own burial in his new church.
The first appearance and gradual evolution of roads, buildings, and landmarks is set in the context of the ebb and flow of history through the capital's streets and rivers: from the local (the 1665 outbreak of plague, where the healthy were incarcerated with the sick to avoid further infection, and the spread of the great fire that decimated much of the city the following year) to the politically significant (the execution of the king in 1649 outside Inigo Jones's banqueting house, whose building in 1619 is also described).
The sweep of this book is vast and its detail magnificent. Disasters, innovations, and everyday events relating to politics, society, pageantry, the arts, religion, and industry are revealed to display the wide spectrum of London life. Year by year, from 1065 to the present day, events that have shaped the London we know are brought vividly to life by John Richardson's informative text, which is supported by an extraordinary and eclectic collection of historical illustrations.
Gene Brucker
Florence
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Over the centuries many thousands of visitors have journeyed to Florence to admire the city's great beauty and to marvel at its unique history. In this century Gene Brucker has been one of the city's most knowledgeable admirers. With the historian's ability to uncover the past, he skillfully relates the story of Florence's Golden Age and the conjoined forces that transformed the city on the Arno into one of the most glorious civilizations the world has known. Brucker's story of the premier city of the Italian Renaissance tells of great families and common people, wars and economic dislocations, natural catastrophes and religious turmoil, and extraordinary artistic and literary achievement.
The creative growth of the city of Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Michelangelo was made possible through Florence's role as an economic center, the zeal of its small manufacturing industries, and the enterprise of the merchants who spread Florentine influence well beyond the city's walls and territories. The pages of Florence are enlivened with the voices of historical protagonists, and their words richly convey the tenor of the times. Brucker's accessible writing is complimented by a wealth of paintings and drawings, 200 of them in full color. Also included are a chronology of important historical events, a listing of noted Florentine families, and a genealogy of the famed Medici family. Historians and students will find much of value here; so too will anyone who is in love with—or who plans to fall in love with—the shining city of Florence.
Elizabeth Hallam
The British Inheritance
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Britain's 1000-year prominence on the international stage endures. Posterity owes the English language (spoken now by more than half the world's population) a tradition of democratic freedom, governmental and legal systems which have been adapted in many countries, and world figures in science, literature, and the arts. The "British Inheritance" is shared not just by the peoples of the UK but also by those of many lands--the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and India--which were once its colonies and are now its allies and partners.
Britain's rich historical heritage is evident in the great archive and manuscript collections found in such institutions as the Public Record Office, British Library, National Library of Scotland, Scottish Record Office, and National Library of Wales. From King Arthur, Alfred the Great, and William the Conqueror to the end of the Empire, swinging England of the 1960s, and the multicultural Britain of the '90s, this volume displays, in chronological order, key documents which illuminate defining moments in British history. The documents are accompanied by lively commentaries by experts and curators, placing the material in context and explaining its significance. Alongside such major treasures as the Domesday Book and Magna Carta are many less-well-known but nonetheless fascinating items such as Oscar Wilde's calling card and the last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Superbly illustrated in color throughout, with a brief introduction, this authoritative and accessible book will appeal to anyone with an interest in history, politics, and culture.
David Rudenstine
The Day the Presses Stopped
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This bold account provides an original perspective on one of the most significant legal struggles in American history: the Nixon administration's efforts to prohibit the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the 7,000-page, top-secret Pentagon Papers, which traced U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In his gripping account of this highly charged case, Rudenstine examines new evidence, raises difficult questions, and challenges conventional views of a historic moment.
William H. Brewer
Up and Down California in 1860–1864
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In 1860 William Brewer, a young Yale-educated teacher of the natural sciences and a recent widower, eagerly accepted an offer from Josiah Whitney to assist in the first geological survey of the state of California. Brewer was not a geologist, but his training in agriculture and botany made him an invaluable member of the team. He traveled more than fourteen thousand miles in the four years he spent in California and spent much of his leisure time writing lively, detailed letters to his brother back East.
These warmly affectionate letters, presented here in their entirety, describe the new state in all its spectacular beauty and paint a vivid picture of California in the mid-nineteenth century. This fourth edition includes a new foreword by William Bright (1500 California Place Names) and a set of maps tracing Brewer's route.
Susan Eckstein
Power and Popular Protest
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Eclectic and insightful, these essays—by historians, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists—represent a range of subjects on the cause and consequence of protest movements in Latin America, from an examination of the varying faces but common origins of rural guerilla movements, to a discussion of multiclass protests, to an essay on las madres de plaza de mayo. This volume is an indispensable text for anyone concerned with reducing inequities and injustices around the world, so that oppressed people need not be defiant before their concerns are addressed. A new preface and epilogue discuss recent social movements.
Bud Schultz
The Price of Dissent
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Bud and Ruth Schultz's vivid oral history presents the extraordinary testimony of people who experienced government repression and persecution firsthand. Drawn from three of the most significant social movements of our time--the labor, Black freedom, and antiwar movements--these engrossing interviews bring to life the experiences of Americans who acted upon their beliefs despite the price they paid for their dissent. In doing so, they--and the movements they were part of--helped shape the political and social landscape of the United States from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century.
The majority of the voices in this book belong to everyday people--workers, priests, teachers, students--but more well-known figures such as Congressman John Lewis, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Abbie Hoffman, and Daniel Ellsberg are also included. There are firsthand accounts by leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, active early in the century; Southern Tenant Farmers Union of the 1930s; Women's Strike for Peace, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Berkeley's Free Speech Movement of the 1950s and 1960s; and the Hormel meatpackers' Local P-9 in the 1980s. Lively introductions by the authors contextualize these personal statements.
Those who tell their stories in The Price of Dissent, and others like them, faced surveillance and disruption from police agencies, such as the FBI; brutalization by local police; local ordinances and court injunctions limiting protest; inquisitions into beliefs and associations by congressional committees; prosecution under laws that curbed dissent; denaturalization and deportation; and purges under government loyalty programs. Agree with them or not, by dissenting when it was unpopular or dangerous to do so, they insisted on exercising the precious American right of free expression and preserved it for a new century's dissenters.
S. D. Goitein
A Mediterranean Society, Volume V
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This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume V, subtitled The Individual, draws a portrait of the individual—a social person who mingled within the community; addressed the challenges of poverty, illness, aging, and death; possessed friends, enemies, and lovers; prayed and responded within a religious community; learned, created, thought and taught.
Otto Friedrich
City of Nets
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This dazzling story of Hollywood during the decade of its greatest success is a social and cultural history of the movie capital's golden age. Its cast includes actors, writers, musicians and composers, producers and directors, racketeers and labor leaders, journalists and politicians in the turbulent decade from World War II to Korea.
S. D. Goitein
A Mediterranean Society, Volume III
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$32.95
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This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume III, subtitled The Family, reveals the Mediterranean family—the extended family, marriage (rituals, economics, social and cultural safeguards), the Mediterranean household, widowhood, divorce, remarriage, and the world of women.
Gregor Benton
New Fourth Army
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In his prizewinning Mountain Fires: The Red Army's Three-Year War in South China, 1934-1938, Gregor Benton traced the fate of the Communist rear guard that stayed behind when the Red Army set off on the Long March. After three bloody years, the survivors regrouped as the New Fourth Army, which later helped to drive the Nationalists from the mainland. In this sequel to Mountain Fires, Benton describes the first three years of this army, and its triangular war with the Nationalists and the Japanese.
Like the Three-Year War from which it stemmed, the New Fourth Army was for many years neglected by historians, mainly because of the absence from it of Mao Zedong, around whom the story of the Chinese Revolution was largely written until his death in 1976. With the downgrading of the Mao cult and the return of some power to the regions (where New Fourth Army veterans held power) in the 1980s, new sources on the New Fourth Army became available. This study, which combines a thematic and a narrative approach, makes exhaustive use of these and other sources to explain the original features of this youthful army, which was no outgrowth or faithful copy of Mao's senior and better-known Eighth Route Army but a body with its own origins and history, and which fought its war in a quite different political, military, and social setting.
Roger Daniels
The Politics of Prejudice
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This classic study offers a history of anti-Japanese prejudice in California, extending from the late nineteenth century to 1924, when an immigration act excluded Japanese from entering the United States. The Politics of Prejudice details the political climate that helped to set the stage for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and reveals the racism present among middle-class American progressives, labor leaders, and other presumably liberal groups.
Richard H. Rovere
Senator Joe McCarthy
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The story of Senator Joseph McCarthy's rise to unprecedented power and the decline of his influence is a dramatic one. Richard Rovere documents the process by which a clever, power hungry individual came to mislead and manipulate members of Congress and the American public and to damage countless lives. A new foreword for this edition by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. places the book in historical context and relates it to current issues in American public life.
Erich S. Gruen
Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy
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This book is an examination of the impact of Greek learning, literature, and religion on central aspects of Roman life in the middle Republic. Acclaimed historian Erich S. Gruen discusses the introduction of and resistance to new cults, the relationship between Roman political figures and literary artists schooled in Greek, and the reaction to Hellenic philosophy and rhetoric by the Roman elite. This book contributes new and important information on the place of Greek culture in Roman public life.
John Jacobs
A Rage for Justice
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This political biography of Phillip Burton (1926-1983) is the riveting story of one of the most brilliant, driven, and productive legislators of his—or indeed any—era of American politics. A ruthless and unabashed progressive, Burton terrified his opponents, ran over his friends, forged improbable coalitions, and from 1964 to 1983 became one of the most influential Representatives in the House. He also acquired more raw power than almost any left-liberal politician ever had.
Moving from grassroots campaigns to epic battles in the California state capital, and finally to the very pinnacle of power on Capitol Hill, John Jacobs's inside account of Burton's life shows how politics really works. He demonstrates the exercise of power in the hands of a superb strategist and shows an unheralded master going about his life's work during the glory years of postwar American liberalism.
Burton was an unforgettable, uncontrollable figure whose relentless day-and-night politicking distilled the raw essence of American politics. Jacobs brings to life Burton's seething, perpetual sense of outrage, gargantuan appetites, and dedication to the disenfranchized. Animated by a sometimes frightening drive for power—his only modern counterpart is Lyndon Johnson—Burton played a pivotal role in California and U.S. politics, championing welfare and civil rights, landmark labor legislation, environmentalism and congressional reform. His achievements included the groundbreaking black lung bill for miners and their families; Supplemental Social Security for the aged, blind, and disabled; and helping to secure America's extensive national park system.
Burton's failures were equally dramatic: in 1976, at the height of his power, he lost, by one vote, the chance to become House Majority Leader. Had he won this critical political fight, he no doubt would have become Speaker of the House.
Jacobs's account is based on Burton's personal papers and hundreds of interviews with people at every stage of his life, including four Democratic Speakers of the House. The result is a book that brilliantly demonstrates how one person can make a difference in public life.
Avedis K. Sanjian
Medieval Armenian Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles
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This catalog contains detailed descriptions of ninety-one items in the Armenian Manuscript Collection in the Department of Special Collections at the University Research Library of the University of California, Los Angeles. Acquired by the library in 1968 from Dr. Garo Owen Minasian, the collection includes manuscripts of ecclesiastical character as well as theological and philosophical works, medical treatises, and anthologies of poetry.
George Mitchell
Making Peace
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UPDATED WITH A NEW PREFACE
Fifteen minutes before five o'clock on Good Friday, 1998, Senator George Mitchell was informed that his long and difficult quest for an Irish peace effort had succeeded--the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, and the governments of the Republic of Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, would sign the agreement. Now Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the peace talks for the length of the process, tells us the inside story of the grueling road to this momentous accord and the subsequent developments that may threaten, or strengthen, the chance for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
Carlos Fuentes
A New Time for Mexico
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Fuentes's bold and timely study discusses the origins and nature of the tumultuous events that have recently transformed Mexican politics and society. The rebellion in Chiapas, a rash of assassinations, the break between Presidents Salinas and Zedillo, the continual struggle for democratic self-rule: These and other developments are addressed by one of Mexico's wisest, most influential commentators.
Judith Stacey
Brave New Families
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Judith Stacey has added a new preface to her classic study of how the traditional nuclear family has been supplanted by a variety of new relationships that are not defined by blood ties and traditional gender roles.
George Grosz
George Grosz
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This acclaimed autobiography by one of the twentieth century's greatest satirical artists is as much a graphic portrait of Germany in chaos after the Treaty of Versailles as it is a memoir of a remarkable artist's development. Grosz's account of a world gone mad is as acute and provocative as the art that depicts it, and this translation of a work long out of print restores the spontaneity, humor, and energy of the author's German text. It also includes a chapter on Grosz's experience in the Soviet Union—omitted from the original English-language edition—as well as more writings about his twenty-year self-imposed exile in America, and a fable written in English.
Victor Davis Hanson
The Other Greeks
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For generations, scholars have focused on the rise of the Greek city-state and its brilliant cosmopolitan culture as the ultimate source of the Western tradition in literature, philosophy, and politics. This passionate book leads us outside the city walls to the countryside, where the vast majority of the Greek citizenry lived, to find the true source of the cultural wealth of Greek civilization. Victor Hanson shows that the real "Greek revolution" was not merely the rise of a free and democratic urban culture, but rather the historic innovation of the independent family farm.
The farmers, vinegrowers, and herdsmen of ancient Greece are "the other Greeks," who formed the backbone of Hellenic civilization. It was these tough-minded, practical, and fiercely independent agrarians, Hanson contends, who gave Greek culture its distinctive emphasis on private property, constitutional government, contractual agreements, infantry warfare, and individual rights. Hanson's reconstruction of ancient Greek farm life, informed by hands-on knowledge of the subject (he is a fifth-generation California vine- and fruit-grower) is fresh, comprehensive, and absorbing. His detailed chronicle of the rise and tragic fall of the Greek city-state also helps us to grasp the implications of what may be the single most significant trend in American life today—the imminent extinction of the family farm.
Romuald Misiunas
The Baltic States
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In this updated edition of their renowned The Baltic States, Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera bring the story of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia up to the 1990s. The authors describe and analyze how the Baltic nations survived fifty years of social disruption, language discrimination, and Russian colonialism. The nations' histories are fully integrated and compared, and some notable differences between them are pointed out.
With two new chapters, a revised preface, and an appendix on the end of Soviet domination, this expanded study covers a tumultuous period of political, economic, cultural, and ecological reform.
Fernand Braudel
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. II
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The subject of The Wheels of Commerce is the development of mechanisms of exchange—shops, markets, trade networks, and banking—in the pre-industrial stages of capitalism.
S. D. Goitein
A Mediterranean Society, Volume I
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$32.95
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This six-volume "portrait of a Mediterranean personality" is a composite portrait of the individuals who wrote the personal letters, contracts, and all other manuscript fragments that found their way into the Cairo Geniza. Most of the fragments from the Geniza, a storeroom for discarded writings that could not be thrown away because they might contain the name of God, had been removed to Cambridge University Library and other libraries around the world. Professor Goitein devoted the last thirty years of his long and productive life to their study, deciphering the language of the documents and organizing what he called a "marvelous treasure trove of manuscripts" into a coherent, fascinating picture of the society that created them.
It is a rich, panoramic view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. The first and second volumes describe the economic foundations of the society and the institutions and social and political structures that characterized the community. The remaining material, intended for a single volume describing the particulars of the way people lived, blossomed into three volumes, devoted respectively to the family, daily life, and the individual. The divisions are arbitrary but helpful because of the wealth of information. The author refers throughout to other passages in his monumental work that amplify what is discussed in any particular section. The result is an incomparably clear and immediate impression of how it was in the Mediterranean world of the tenth through the thirteenth century.
Volume I, subtitled Economic Foundations, gives an overview of the Mediterranean (history, peoples, culture) during the high middle ages; discusses the working class; the business world, and government's role in commerce; and provides a complete description of travel and seafaring.
Julie Mertus
The Suitcase
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The whirlwind of Europe's longest war in half a century has produced this powerful collection of personal narratives—essays, letters, and poems—from refugees fleeing Bosnia and Croatia. Taking us behind the barrage of media coverage, these stories tell of perseverance, brutality, forced departure, exile, and courage. With startling immediacy and in moving detail, speakers tell of stuffing a few belongings—a handful of photographs, a rock from the garden, a change of clothes—into a suitcase and fleeing their homeland.
Contributors from all ethnic groups and every region of Bosnia and Croatia describe their sense of lost community, memories of those left behind, recollections of town squares that no longer exist, and homes now occupied by neighbors. The editors of The Suitcase, themselves representing the diverse peoples of the region, traveled to camps and temporary homes across the globe to collect these stories. An antidote to apathy, this work moves beyond and outside the vicissitudes of daily politics to portray the human tragedy at the center of present-day Bosnia and Croatia. Probing the intimate losses of countless individuals, it delivers a powerful indictment of injustice, militarism, prejudice, and warfare.
Angus MacKenzie
Secrets
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This eye-opening exposé, the result of fifteen years of investigative work, uncovers the CIA's systematic efforts to suppress and censor information over several decades. An award-winning journalist, Angus Mackenzie waged and won a lawsuit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act and became a leading expert on questions concerning government censorship and domestic spying. In Secrets, he reveals how federal agencies--including the Department of Defense, the executive branch, and the CIA--have monitored and controlled public access to information. Mackenzie lays bare the behind-the-scenes evolution of a policy of suppression, repression, spying, and harassment.
Secrecy operations originated during the Cold War as the CIA instituted programs of domestic surveillance and agent provocateur activities. As antiwar newspapers flourished, the CIA set up an "underground newspaper" desk devoted, as Mackenzie reports, to various counterintelligence activities--from infiltrating organizations to setting up CIA-front student groups. Mackenzie also tracks the policy of requiring secrecy contracts for all federal employees who have contact with sensitive information, insuring governmental review of all their writings after leaving government employ.
Drawing from government documents and scores of interviews, many of which required intense persistence and investigative guesswork to obtain, and amassing story after story of CIA malfeasance, Mackenzie gives us the best account we have of the government's present security apparatus. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the inside secrets of government spying, censorship, and the abrogation of First Amendment rights.
Heribert Adam
The Opening of the Apartheid Mind
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Refusing to be governed by what is fashionable or inoffensive, Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley frankly address the passions and rationalities that drive politics in post-apartheid South Africa. They argue that the country's quest for democracy is widely misunderstood and that public opinion abroad relies on stereotypes of violent tribalism and false colonial analogies.
Adam and Moodley criticize the personality cult surrounding Nelson Mandela and the accolades accorded F. W. de Klerk. They reject the black-versus-white conflict and substitute sober analysis and strategic pragmatism for the moral outrage that typifies so much writing about South Africa. Believing that the best expression of solidarity emanates from sympathetic but candid criticism, they pose challenging questions for the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela. They give in-depth coverage to political violence, the ANC-South African Communist Party alliance, Inkatha, and other controversial topics as well.
The authors do not propose a solution that will guarantee a genuinely democratic South Africa. What they offer is an understanding of the country's social conditions and political constraints, and they sketch options for both a new South Africa and a new post-Cold War foreign policy for the whole of southern Africa. The importance of this book is as immediate as today's headlines.
Mark Whittow
The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025
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Mark Whittow presents a clear, up-to-date reassessment of the Byzantine empire during a crucial phase in the history of the Near East. Against a geopolitical background (superbly illustrated with fourteen maps), his book covers the last decade of the Roman empire as a superpower, the catastrophic crisis of the seventh century, and the means whereby the embattled Byzantine empire hung on in Constantinople and Asia Minor until the Abbasid Caliphate's decline opened up new perspectives for Christian power in the Near East.
A special feature is Whittow's coverage of Byzantium's neighbors, allies, and enemies in Europe and Asia. He stresses the geographical context of events, often overlooked in other accounts of this period. The origins of Russia, relations with the nomad powers of the steppe world, the competition between Bulgars, Romans, and Slavs in the Balkans, and the frequently ignored region of the Transcaucasus are all given extended treatment. No such wide-ranging work has appeared in English for nearly 30 years, and Whittow's book will be invaluable for all scholars, students, and enthusiasts of medieval history.
Victor Perera
Unfinished Conquest
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Spanning the years of civil war in Guatemala, Unfinished Conquest portrays an embattled country facing the third cycle of a conquest that began when the conquistadors arrived in the sixteenth century. As personal narrative weaves with reportage and oral testimony, we meet the victims, champions, and villains of a society torn apart by violence and injustice.
Patrick J. Maney
The Roosevelt Presence
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only twentieth-century president consistently ranked by historians with the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln. His leadership in the dark hours of the Depression and the Second World War has endowed him in the eyes of many with an aura of greatness, and his presidency has been the explicit or implicit model for all of his successors, from Truman to Clinton. In this concise biography, Patrick J. Maney provides an original and insightful reexamination of Roosevelt's life and legacy, carefully sifting fact from myth and showing how the Roosevelt legend—for good and for ill—has shaped the modern presidency.
Carroll Pursell
White Heat
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"A Coca-Cola bottle, a Samurai sword, a Rolls-Royce, and a prehistoric stone tool are linked not only because they are projects of technology, but also because each is a symbol invested with meaning," writes historian Carroll Pursell. His adventurous and timely book takes the reader on a tour through history and around the lives, showing what machines can tell us about the world we want to have.
White Heat explores a range of themes: technology's effect on our perceptions of time and space; its role in mass production theories that turn workers into interchangeable parts; its sanitizing of warfare with "smart" weapons that kill more people more quickly; and the psychological and social implications of the "information age."
Pursell demonstrates these themes with absorbing anecdotes and provocative questions. How was the nineteenth-century boom in soap manufacturing related to standards of social morality? How does voice-mail encode certain cultural assumptions about gender and class? In revealing the ways that technological developments embody myth, ritual, and fantasies, Pursell shows that technology is as culturally specific, and as culturally illuminating, as art, literature, or any other work of the human imagination.
Accessible and lively, with tales of quirks and mishaps, White Heat is for anyone caught up in our beeping, roaring, technologized world.
White Heat was written to accompany a major eight-part television series, shown in the fall of 1994.
Richard F. Burton
Goa, and the Blue Mountains; Or, Six Months of Sick Leave
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Published in 1851, this is the first book written by the famed Victorian explorer Richard F. Burton. It is an account of his journey through portions of southwest India while he was on sick leave from the British Indian army. Traveling through Bombay to the Portuguese colony of Goa, he went through Calicut and other cities on the Malabar coast, ending up in the Nilgiri mountains at the hill station of Ootacamund. The observant traveler, not the intrepid adventurer, is the narrator of the account, and its intended audience was the voracious Victorian consumer of travel literature.
Coupled with a critical introduction by Dane Kennedy, this facsimile edition provides a revealing look at the people who inhabited a part of India that was generally off the beaten track in the nineteenth century. The Portuguese and Mestizo inhabitants of Goa, the Todas of Ootacamund, as well as the fellow Britons Burton meets on his journey are all subject to his penetrating scrutiny. Burton's clever, ascerbic, and unorthodox personality together with his irreverence for convention and his bemused disdain for humanity come through clearly in these pages, as does his extraordinary command of the languages and literatures of various peoples.
"What a glad moment it is, to be sure, when the sick and seedy, the tired and testy invalid from pestiferous Scinde or pestilential Guzerat, 'leaves all behind him' and scrambles over the sides of his Pattimar."
"His what?"
"Ah! we forget. The gondola and barque are household words in your English ears, the budgerow is beginning to own an old familiar sound, but you are right—the 'Pattimar' requires a definition."
Leroy Vail
The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa
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Despite a quarter century of "nation building," most African states are still driven by ethnic particularism—commonly known as "tribalism." The stubborn persistence of tribal ideologies despite the profound changes associated with modernization has puzzled scholars and African leaders alike. The bloody hostilities between the tribally-oriented Zulu Inkhata movement and supporters of the African National Congress are but the most recent example of tribalism's tenacity. The studies in this volume offer a new historical model for the growth and endurance of such ideologies in southern Africa.
Rose-Carol Washton Long
German Expressionism
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German Expressionism, one of the most significant movements of early European modernism, was an enormously powerful element in Germany's cultural life from the end of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Third Reich. While the movement embraced such diverse artists as E. L. Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Käthe Kollwitz, and George Grosz, all the participants shared an almost messianic belief in the power of art to change society. Rose-Carol Washton Long has drawn together over eighty documents crucial to the understanding of German Expressionism, many of them translated for the first time into English.
Fernand Braudel
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
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The focus of Fernand Braudel's great work is the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Braudel ranges back in history to the world of Odysseus and forward to our time, moving out from the Mediterranean area to the New World and other destinations of Mediterranean traders. Braudel's scope embraces the natural world and material life, economics, demography, politics, and diplomacy.
H. D. Harootunian
Toward Restoration
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H.D. Harootunian has provided a new preface for the paperback edition of his classic study Toward Restoration, the first intellectual history of the Meiji Restoration in English.
Peter Irons
Justice at War
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Justice at War irrevocably alters the reader's perception of one of the most disturbing events in U.S. history—the internment during World War II of American citizens of Japanese descent. Peter Irons' exhaustive research has uncovered a government campaign of suppression, alteration, and destruction of crucial evidence that could have persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the internment order. Irons documents the debates that took place before the internment order and the legal response during and after the internment.
Jesse L. Byock
Feud in the Icelandic Saga
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Feud stands at the core of the Old Icelandic sagas. Jesse Byock shows how the dominant concern of medieval Icelandic society—the channeling of violence into accepted patterns of feud and the regulation of conflict—is reflected in the narrative of the family sagas and the Sturlunga saga compilation. This comprehensive study of narrative structure demonstrates that the sagas are complex expressions of medieval social thought.
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch
Africa
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This masterful synthesis explains how Africa has come to be a land torn by incessant conflict among its impoverished peoples and countries, a continent living through the gravest social revolution of its history, experiencing the world's fastest demographic growth. Weaving together four major themes—population, political power, the peasantry, and the new growth of the cities—Coquery-Vidrovitch demonstrates the need to recognize the extremely complex heritage of African societies if one is to understand the present or act upon the future of the continent.
J. H. Parry
The Spanish Seaborne Empire
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The Spanish empire in America was the first of the great seaborne empires of western Europe; it was for long the richest and the most formidable, the focus of envy, fear, and hatred. Its haphazard beginning dates from 1492; it was to last more than three hundred years before breaking up in the early nineteenth century in civil wars between rival generals and "liberators."
Available now for the first time in paperback is J. H. Parry's classic assessment of the impact of Spain on the Americas. Parry presents a broad picture of the conquests of Cortès and Pizarro and of the economic and social consequences in Spain of the effort to maintain control of vast holdings. He probes the complex administration of the empire, its economy, social structure, the influence of the Church, the destruction of the Indian cultures and the effect of their decline on Spanish policy. As we approach the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Parry provides the historical basis for a new consideration of the former Spanish colonies of Latin America and the transformation of pre-Columbian cultures to colonial states.
Frank Barlow
Thomas Becket
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On 29 December 1170, Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury was brutally murdered in his cathedral by four knights from the household of his former friend and patron, King Henry II. The horror that the killing inspired and the miraculous cures performed at Thomas's tomb transfigured him into one of the most popular saints in Western Christendom, and Canterbury became one of the greatest pilgrim shrines in the West.
Yet these were unexpected results. Thomas's extraordinary career had been, and remains, controversial. The transformation of a handsome, attractive, and worldly courtier into a zealous prelate, a bitter exile and finally a martyr was for many hard to understand. In this brilliant new biography, based on the original sources and informed by the most recent scholarship, Frank Barlow reconstructs Thomas's physical environment and entourage at various stages of his career, exploring the nuances and irregularities in the story that have been ignored in other studies.
Henrik Birnbaum
California Slavic Studies, Volume XIV
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This volume completes a program of publishing distinguished essays on a wide range of Slavic topics.
Madhav Gadgil
This Fissured Land
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Ecologist Madhav Gadgil and historian Ramachandra Guha offer fresh perspectives both on the ecological history of India and on theoretical issues of interest to environmental historians regardless of geographical specialization.
Juxtaposing data from India with the ecological literature on lifestyles as diverse as those of modern Americans and Amazonian Indians, the authors analyze the social conflicts that have emerged over environmental exploitation and explore the impact of changing patterns of resource use on human societies. They present a socio-ecological analysis of the modes of resource use introduced to India by the British, and explore popular resistance to state environmental policies in both the colonial and post-colonial periods.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Disenchanted Night
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Fernand Braudel
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. III
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Volume III investigates what Braudel terms "world-economies"—the economic dominance of a particular city at different periods of history, from Venice to Amsterdam, London, New York.
Barbara Hinkson Craig
Chadha
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In 1973 Jagdish Chadha found himself a man without a country, the victim of the decolonization of Kenya where, as a Kenyan of Indian descent, he was not allowed to return after having spent six years in the U.S. as a student. Barbara Hinkson Craig describes Chadha's effort to achieve legal residency in the U.S. and shows how it led to the Supreme Court decision to overrule the legislative veto, adjusting the balance of powers in the United States government.
Marie Alexandrine Martin
Cambodia
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The history of modern Cambodia has been one of invasion, occupation, political chaos, and genocidal terror. Marie Martin traces the evolution of post-World War II Cambodian politics and society, examining the disintegration of a once-peaceful nation. Interviews with peasants, refugees, politicians, and intellectuals, as well as exhaustive archival research, make this both a stirring ethnographic portrait and an exacting political analysis.
Twenty-five years of research and travel in Cambodia, much of it spent living in peasant villages, give Martin a unique perspective on the country's tragedies. She explores the influence of colonialism, Sihanouk's fragile position, popular socialism, and the Vietnam War, and also charts the politicization of Khmer youth, the right's rise to power, and peasant revolts. The horrors that occurred under the Khmer Rouge are documented, as are the grim atrocities of the Vietnamese occupation. Martin also examines the tenuous political configurations of present-day Cambodia and considers the country's future.
No book in English deals so completely with the political culture of Cambodia, and no writer has been more unrelenting and impassioned in testifying to the agony of the Cambodian people than Marie Martin. Her book will be acclaimed for its wealth of new information and for bearing eloquent witness to Cambodia's tragic story.
Fernand Braudel
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
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The focus of Fernand Braudel's great work is the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Braudel ranges back in history to the world of Odysseus and forward to our time, moving out from the Mediterranean area to the New World and other destinations of Mediterranean traders. Braudel's scope embraces the natural world and material life, economics, demography, politics, and diplomacy.
