An examination of France’s Atlantic and Indian Ocean empires through the stories of the little-known people who built it This book is a groundbreaking evaluation of the interwoven trajectories of the people, such as itinerant ship-workers and colonial magistrates, who built France’s first empire between 1680 and 1780 in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
A fascinating analysis of the recent history of the beautiful but troubled Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s.
An imaginative reassessment of Æthelred "the Unready," one of medieval England’s most maligned kings and a major Anglo-Saxon figure The Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred "the Unready" (978–1016) has long been considered to be inscrutable, irrational, and poorly advised.
Willy Münzenberg—an Old Bolshevik who was also a self-promoting tycoon—became one of the most influential Communist operatives in Europe between the World Wars.
This book tells the history of the French Renaissance through the lives of its most prominent queens and mistresses, beginning with Agnès Sorel, the first officially recognized royal mistress in 1444; including Anne of Brittany, Catherine de Medici, Anne Pisseleu, Diane de Poitiers, and Marguerite de Valois, among others; and concluding with Gabrielle d’Estrées, Henry IV’s powerful mistress during the 1590s.
A compelling and definitive account of why we need to radically rethink our approach to dealing with catastrophic events Catastrophic events such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Tohoku "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that hit the eastern seaboard of Japan in 2012 are seen as surprises that have a low probability of occurring but have a debilitating impact when they do.
A vast archive of documents, unread since the sixteenth century, revises the portrait of Spain’s best-known king Philip II is not only the most famous king in Spanish history, but one of the most famous monarchs in English history: the man who married Mary Tudor and later launched the Spanish Armada against her sister Elizabeth I.
The definitive biography and assessment of the wily and formidable prince who unexpectedly became monarch—the most infamous king in British history The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history.
From the first free elections in post-Soviet Russia in 1989 to the end of the Yeltsin period in 1999, Russia’s parliament was the site of great political upheavals.
Essential primary sources reveal the central tensions between American politics and religion throughout the nation’s history Despite the centrality of separation of church and state in American government, religion has played an important role in the nation’s politics from colonial times through the present day.
A surprisingly hopeful assessment of the prospects for human rights in the Middle East, and a blueprint for advancing them The enormous sense of optimism unleashed by the Arab Spring in 2011 soon gave way to widespread suffering and despair.
An award'winning environmental historian explores American history through wrenching, tragic, and sometimes humorous stories of getting lost The human species has a propensity for getting lost.
A dazzling translation by Lydia Davis of the first volume of Michel Leiris’s masterwork, perhaps the most important French autobiographical enterprise of the twentieth century Michel Leiris, a French intellectual whose literary works inspired high praise from the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Claude Lévi-Strauss, began the first volume of his autobiographical project at the age of 40.
More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like.
The newest best-seller by Patrick Modiano is a beautiful tapestry that brings together memory, esoteric encounters, and fragmented sensations Patrick Modiano’s first novel since his 2014 Nobel Prize revisits moments of the author’s past to produce a spare yet moving reflection on the destructive underside of love, the dreams and follies of youth, the vagaries of memory, and the melancholy of loss.
Frank Barlow's magisterial biography, first published in 1970 and now reissued with new material, rescues Edward the Confessor from contemporary myth and subsequent bogus scholarship.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author examines South Pole expeditions, "e;wrapping the science in plenty of dangerous drama to keep readers engaged"e; (Booklist).
The definitive history of Austria’s multinational army and its immense role during three centuries of European military history Among the finest examples of deeply researched and colorfully written military history, Richard Bassett’s For God and Kaiser is a major account of the Habsburg army told for the first time in English.
A major biography of one of the most important figures in modern drama, evoked through a biographical reading of his plays Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen achieved unparalleled success in his lifetime and remains one of the most important figures in modern drama.
An incisive, comparative study of the development of Post–World War II progressive politics in Britain, France, and the United States Toward the end of World War II, the three democracies faced a common choice: return to the civic order of prewar normalcy or embark instead on a path of progressive transformation.
How the last years of Stalin’s rule led to the formation ofan imperial Soviet consciousness In this nuanced historical analysis of late Stalinism organized chronologically around the main events of the period—beginning with Victory in May 1945 and concluding with the death of Stalin in March 1953—Evgeny Dobrenko analyzes key cultural texts to trace the emergence of an imperial Soviet consciousness that, he argues, still defines the political and cultural profile of modern Russia.
A trusted economic commentator provides a penetrating account of the threats to China's continued economic rise Under President Xi Jinping, China has become a large and confident power both at home and abroad, but the country also faces serious challenges.
Drawing on newly available materials from the Soviet archives, Polly Jones offers an innovative, comprehensive account of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev eras.
An authoritative study of food politics in the socialist regimes of China and the Soviet Union During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union.
Historian John Buckley offers a radical reappraisal of Great Britain’s fighting forces during World War Two, challenging the common belief that the British Army was no match for the forces of Hitler’s Germany.
An important revisionist history that casts eighteenth-century British politics and imperial expansion in a new light In this bold debut work, historian James M.
The first comprehensive account of Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward Jews and Judaism in the European Reformation In this rich, wide-ranging, and meticulously researched account, Kenneth Austin examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning.
An investigation of US participation in the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas, from the American Revolution to the Civil War While much of modern scholarship has focused on the American slave trade’s impact within the United States, considerably less has addressed its effects in other parts of the Americas.
Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England was a phenomenal Victorian best-seller which shaped much more than the literary culture of the times: it defined a nation's sense of self, charting the rise of the British Isles to its triumph as a homogenous nation, a safeguard of the freedom of belief and expression, and a central world power.
From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a compelling and lucid account of the life and teachings of a founder of rabbinic Judaism and one of the most beloved heroes of Jewish history Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.
A compelling exploration of Lake Superior’s conservation recovery and what it can teach us in the face of climate change Lake Superior, the largest lake in the world, has had a remarkable history, including resource extraction and industrial exploitation that caused nearly irreversible degradation.
A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from 1501 to 2009 This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation.
Weaving Indian and Euro-American histories together in this groundbreaking book, Sami Lakomaki places the Shawnee people, and Native peoples in general, firmly at the center of American history.
A GRIPPING SURVIVOR STORY OF ONE FAMILY'S FLIGHT FROM BURMA DURING THE JAPANESE INVASION"e;As uplifting a testimonial to human courage as any to emerge from World War II.
A compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globeAt the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army's military tactics were tired and outdated, stultified after three decades of peace.
Celebrated anthropologist Margaret Mead, who studied sex in Samoa and child-rearing in New Guinea in the 1920s and '30s, was determined to show that anthropology could tackle the psychology of the most complex, modern societies in ways useful for waging the Second World War.
A prominent scholar of Mexican and Latin American history challenges the field’s focus on historical memory to examine colonial-era conceptions of the future Going against the grain of most existing scholarship, Matthew D.
