"i humbly beg your speedy answer"

A fascinating collection of questions and answers—about courtship, marriage, love, and sex—from a seventeenth-century periodical The Athenian Mercury—a one-page, two-sided periodical published in 1690s London—included the world’s first personal advice column. Acclaimed historian and Pulitzer Priz...

(in)visible acts of resistance in the twilight of the franco regime

This book rethinks the history of late Francoism and the transition to democracy through the lens of oral history and life writing. Aurora Morcillo tells the stories of anonymous individuals from both student and working class backgrounds and provides an interdisciplinary feminist analysis of the...

1930

1930 can be seen as the dawn of a period of darkness, the beginning of what Auden would call “a low, dishonest decade.” Europe questioned itself and its viability. Major writers and artists sought to grapple with issues still central to our lives, including mass culture and its dangers and the ri...

A brief history of money

A companion to the history of crime and criminal justice

The history of crime and punishment is an important, yet under-resourced area of criminology and criminal justice. This valuable book provides concise but robust definitions of key terms and concepts, going well beyond a simple explanation of the word or theme. Offering a succinct approach to the...

A cultural history of the soul

This book uncovers the history of the concept of the soul in twentieth-century Europe and North America. Beginning in fin de siècle Germany, Kocku von Stuckrad examines an astonishingly wide range of figures and movements.

A decade of upheaval

A revealing exploration of political disruption and violence in a rural Chinese county during the Cultural RevolutionA Decade of Upheaval chronicles the surprising and dramatic political conflicts of a rural Chinese county over the course of the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on an unprecedented ra...

A defence of pretence

How the drama of Shakespeare’s time demonstrates the tensions within civilityIs civility merely a matter of reinforcing status and excluding others? Or is it a lubricant in a polarised world, enabling us to overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good? In A Defence of Pretence, Ind...

A history of virility

How has the meaning of manhood changed over time? A History of Virility proposes a series of answers to this question by describing a trajectory that begins with ancient conceptions of male domination and privilege and examining how it persisted, with significant alterations, for centuries. While...

A korean war captive in japan, 1597–1600

A Korean scholar-official taken prisoner in 1597 by an invading Japanese army ruminates on human behavior and the nature of loyalty during a time of war.

A lifetime of labor

"This book is both graceful autobiography and perceptive social history that will be of lasting value." —Library Journal

A local history of global capital

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. Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton. While th...

A narrative of cultural encounter in southern china

Using a local land reclamation project of the later eighth century, this book explores the interaction between a local culture of the southeast coast and the Sinitic culture of the north.

A people's history of india 14

This volume explores the economic and social history of India from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. It describes the agrarian order, urban economy, and trading world during the Delhi Sultanate, the subsequent period of political divisions, and conditions in the Vijayanagara Empire, which ...

A revolutionary for our time

Rodney’s immensely creative and original use of Marxism was both a challenge to radical understandings of development and colonialisation but also faithful to a certain framework of analysis in the period he lived.

A short history of myth

A 'visionary . . . crisp and lucid exploration of myth-making' (DAVID MITCHELL) from the bestselling author of A History of God

A short history of spaghetti with tomato sauce

Intellectually engaging and deliciously readable, a stereotype-defying history of how one of the most recognisable symbols of Italian cuisine and national identity is the product of centuries of encounters, dialogue, and exchange. Is it possible to identify a starting point in history from which ...

A short history of the u.s. working class

Le Blanc presents a colorful, fact-filled history that concentrates on the struggles and achievements of the often neglected laboring majority.

A spectre, haunting

China Miéville's riveting engagement with the Communist Manifesto offers a lyrical introduction and a spirited defense of the modern world's most influential political document. Few written works can so confidently claim to have shaped the course of history as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Man...

A thirst for empire

How the global tea industry influenced the international economy and the rise of mass consumerismTea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. For centuries, profits from its growth and sales funded wars and fueled colonization, and its cultivation brought about massive changes—i...

A time to die

The essential first hand account of the Attica Prison rebellion, back in print for the 40th anniversary of the uprising

A tramp's philosophy

Cynical, crafty, and beholden to no man, Bart Kennedy roamed free of the burdens of society. The work is a distillation of observances acquired during his years of traveling, c. 1881 to 1920.

A ›crisis of whiteness‹ in the ›heart of darkness‹

The British and U.S.-American Congo Reform Movement has been praised for its confrontation of colonial atrocities. Its commitment to white supremacy, however, continues to be overlooked. Through a thorough analysis of contemporary sources, Felix Lösing unmasks the colonial and racist formation of...

Academia and the people

The contributors to this volume examine how academic communities lived through different transitions, such as the collapse of empires, the two World Wars, the Yugoslav and the post-Soviet wars.

Accidents and the state

The beginning of the twentieth century saw a reinterpretation of the concept of the accident. The contributions in this volume explore social, cultural, political, administrative, and medical responses to accidents in modern states. The case studies include British, French, German, Italian, Chine...

African dominion

A groundbreaking book that puts early and medieval West Africa on the map of global historyPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social h...

African struggles today

This groundbreaking analysis examines the gains, contradictions, and frustrations of twenty-first century prodemocracy struggles across Southern Africa

After the history of sexuality

Michel Foucault’s seminal The History of Sexuality (1976–1984) has since its publication provided a context for the emergence of critical historical studies of sexuality. This collection reassesses the state of the historiography on sexuality—a field in which the German case has been traditiona...

Agrarian crossings

In the 1930s and 1940s, rural reformers in the United States and Mexico waged unprecedented campaigns to remake their countrysides in the name of agrarian justice and agricultural productivity. Agrarian Crossings tells the story of how these campaigns were conducted in dialogue with one another a...

Altered states

In the 1960s, Americans combined psychedelics with Buddhist meditation to achieve direct experience through altered states of consciousness. As some practitioners became more committed to Buddhism, they abandoned the use of psychedelics in favor of stricter mental discipline, but others carried o...

Always on strike

A history of the I.W.W.’s golden years as lived by one of its’ guiding lights.

American crucible

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the ...

American insurgents

From Mark Twain, to the movement against the war in Vietnam, this is the story of ordinary Americans challenging empire.

American prophets

A "powerful text" (Tavis Smiley) about how religion drove the fight for social justice in modern AmericaAmerican Prophets sheds critical new light on the lives and thought of seven major prophetic figures in twentieth-century America whose social activism was motivated by a deeply felt compassion...

An all-consuming century

The unqualified victory of consumerism in America was not a foregone conclusion. The United States has traditionally been the home of the most aggressive and often thoughtful criticism of consumption, including Puritanism, Prohibition, the simplicity movement, the '60s hippies, and the consumer r...

An american anarchist

The legendary biography of America's fiery feminist iconoclast. In paperback for the first time.

An infinite history

An innovative history of deep social and economic changes in France, told through the story of a single extended family across five generationsMarie Aymard was an illiterate widow who lived in the provincial town of Angoulême in southwestern France, a place where seemingly nothing ever happened. ...

An unrecognized contribution

Women in nineteenth-century Toronto owned factories and stores, were involved in professions and vocations, and were not housebound uneducated women as historians generally suggest. Elizabeth Gillan Muir shows how wide-ranging women’s activities were — from owning taverns, schools, and market gar...

Anarchism in latin america

An accessible introduction to anarchism's history and influence from Mexico to Argentina. First English translation.

Anatomical theater

The newest wave of Russian poetry, set to transcend linguistic borders.

Ancient africa

A panoramic narrative that places ancient Africa on the stage of world historyThis book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economi...

Animals and society

Human-animal studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds. Margo DeMello provides a broad overview of this rapidly growing field. This second edition is fully updated and expanded throughout, enhancing the book’s relevance ...

Appropriating history

Popular media plays an important role in collective imaginations of history. The volume investigates this phenomenon by examining examples from Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian popular cultures.

Arctic archives

This pioneering volume explores the Arctic as an important and highly endangered archive of knowledge about natural as well as human history of the Anthropocene. Focusing on the Arctic as an archive means not only to investigate it as a place of human history and memory but to take into account i...

Arts and minds

A history of the extraordinary society that has touched all aspects of British lifeFrom its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way imaginable. It has soug...