Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin.
Hatfield's Herbal is the story of how people all over Britain have used its wild plants throughout history, for reasons magical, mystical and medicinal.
One of the most important works of the Enlightenmentin the first new, unabridged English translation in more than two centuriesPublished in four volumes between 1784 and 1791, Herder's Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind is one of the most important works of the Enlightenmenta bold, original, and encyclopedic synthesis of, and contribution to, the era's philosophical debates over nature, history, culture, and the very meaning of human experience.
This polished literary history argues forcefully that Latinos are not newcomers in the United States by documenting a vast network of Spanish-language cultural activity in the nineteenth century.
A cultural and literary history of mountains in classical antiquityThe mountainous character of the Mediterranean was a crucial factor in the history of the ancient Greek and Roman world.
An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland todaySince the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all things Jewish.
It's been two decades since the fall of apartheid, a quarter century since the liberation of Eastern European states, five decades since the death of American ';Jim Crow,' and seventy-plus years since the beginning of the emancipation of the African states.
A major new history of capitalism from the perspective of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, who sustained and resisted it for centuriesThe Mexican Heartland provides a new history of capitalism from the perspective of the landed communities surrounding Mexico City.
An extraordinary reproduction of the original working manuscript of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, with an introduction and notes by a panel of celebrated AA historians.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destructionThe House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.
A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global contextPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa?
The gripping stories of ordinary Germans who lived through World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition-but also recovery, reunification, and rehabilitationBroken Lives is a gripping account of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of ordinary Germans who came of age under Hitler and whose lives were scarred and sometimes destroyed by what they saw and did.
A new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk ChopinFryderyk Chopin (1810-49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners.
How interwar Poland and its Jewish youth were instrumental in shaping the ideology of right-wing ZionismBy the late 1930s, as many as fifty thousand Polish Jews belonged to Betar, a youth movement known for its support of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of right-wing Zionism.
The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century-the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965-66, leaving some five hundred thousand people dead and more than a million others in detention.
Before the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the world's grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon.
A multifaceted portrait of the early American republic as seen through the lens of the Burr ConspiracyIn 1805 and 1806, Aaron Burr, former vice president of the newly formed American republic, traveled through the Trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807.
They sought to transform the world, and ended up transforming twentieth-century AmericaBetween the 1890s and the Vietnam era, many thousands of American Protestant missionaries were sent to live throughout the non-European world.
A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights workEvidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work.
A bold new literary history that says women's writing is defined less by domestic concerns than by an engagement with public lifeIn a bold and sweeping reevaluation of the past two centuries of women's writing, At Home in the World argues that this body of work has been defined less by domestic concerns than by an active engagement with the most pressing issues of public life: from class and religious divisions, slavery, warfare, and labor unrest to democracy, tyranny, globalism, and the clash of cultures.
A comprehensive intellectual biography of the Enlightenment philosopherIn George Berkeley: A Philosophical Life, Tom Jones provides a comprehensive account of the life and work of the preeminent Irish philosopher of the Enlightenment.
When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs.
This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people.
How two extraordinary women crossed the Victorian class divide to put Christian teachings into practice in the slums of East LondonNellie Dowell was a match factory girl in Victorian London who spent her early years consigned to orphanages and hospitals.
A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soilSettled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish historybut many precedents among religious communities in the United States.
A groundbreaking history of how elite colleges and universities in America and Britain finally went coedAs the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time.
How the Jewish culture war over Kabbalah beganThe Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition.
Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today.
A fascinating history of China's relations with the West-told through the lives of two eighteenth-century translatorsThe 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney's fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East's lack of interest in the West.
A cultural history of the concept of pharmacy, both the material nature of drugs and the trade in medicine, in early modern China Know Your Remedies presents a panoramic inquiry into China's early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy.
How the history of racism without visible differences between people challenges our understanding of the history of racial thinkingRacial divisions have returned to the forefront of politics in the United States and European societies, making it more important than ever to understand race and racism.
A major new history of how democracy became the dominant political force in Europe in the second half of the twentieth centuryWhat happened in the years following World War II to create a democratic revolution in the western half of Europe?
A wide-ranging look at the history of Western thinking since the seventeenth century on the purpose of the Jewish people in the past, present, and futureWhat is the purpose of Jews in the world?
How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism"e;For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,"e; John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630.
How poor urban youth in Chicago use social media to profit from portrayals of gang violence, and the questions this raises about poverty, opportunities, and public voyeurismAmid increasing hardship and limited employment options, poor urban youth are developing creative online strategies to make ends meet.
A bold new interpretation of Nat Turner and the slave rebellion that stunned the American SouthIn 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children.
How the specter of climate has been used to explain history since antiquityScientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species.
Join authors Dick Cantwell and Peter Bouckaert as they tell the story of the marriage between wood and beer from Roman times through medieval Europe to modern craft brewing.
An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval EuropeBetween the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of.
