General & world history
Showing 1–16 of 24 results
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A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues
£9.99A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues
Why is it easy to hate and difficult to love? When societies fracture into warring tribes, we demonise those who oppose us. We tear down our statues, forgetting that what begins with the destruction of statues, often leads to the killing of people. Blending history, philosophy and psychology, A History of Love and Hate in 21 Statues is a compelling exploration of identity and power. This remarkable book spans every continent, religion and era, through the creation and destruction of 21 statues from Hatshepsut and the Buddhas of Bamiyan to Mendelssohn, Edward Colston and Frederick Douglass.
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A History of Masculinity
£25.00A History of Masculinity
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this insightful analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the 18th century, Jablonka uncovers the origins of our patriarchal societies. He then offers an updated model of masculinity based on a theory of gender justice which aims for a redistribution of gender, just as social justice demands the redistribution of wealth.
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A Little History of Art
£16.99A Little History of Art
A thrilling journey through 100,000 years of art, from the first artworks ever made to art’s central role in culture today.ÂÂ
“A fresh take on art history as we know it.” (Katy Hessel, The Great Women Artists Podcast)£16.99 -
A Natural History of Beer
£10.99A Natural History of Beer
From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall peruse the historical record and traverse the globe for engaging and often surprising stories about beer. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavors, how beer’s chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer. Drawing from such diverse subject areas as animal behavior, ecology, history, archaeology, chemistry, sociology, law, genetics, physiology, neurobiology, and more, DeSalle and Tattersall entertain and inform with their engaging stories of beer throughout human history and the science behind it all.
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About Time
£16.99About Time
From the city sundials of ancient Rome to the era of the smartwatch, clocks have been used throughout history to wield power, make money, govern citizens and keep control. Sometimes, also with clocks, we have fought back. In this book, time expert David Rooney tells the story of timekeeping, and how it continues to shape our modern world. In twelve chapters, demarcated like the hours of time, we meet the greatest inventions in horological history, from medieval water clocks to monumental sundials, and from coastal time signals to satellites in earth’s orbit.
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Alexandria
£10.99Alexandria
This is a wild journey through 19th-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne’er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.
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Architecture
£20.00Architecture
Reducing energy use is the single biggest challenge facing architecture today. From the humblest prehistoric hut to the imposing monuments of Rome or Egypt to super-connected modern airports, buildings in every era and place have been shaped by the energy available for their construction and running. This survey tells the story of our buildings from our hunter-gatherer origins to the age of fossil-fuel dependence, and shows how architecture has been influenced by designers, builders and societies adapting to changing energy contexts. It is a celebration of human ingenuity and creativity, and a timely reminder of the scale of the task ahead in our search for truly sustainable architecture.
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Brothers in Arms
£9.99Brothers in Arms
From the bestselling author of Normandy ’44 and Sicily ’43 comes the untold story of the Sherwood Rangers. It took a certain type of courage to serve in a tank in World War Two. Encased in steel, surrounded by highly explosive shells, a big and slow-moving target, every crew member was utterly vulnerable to enemy attack from all sides. Living – and dying – in a tank was a brutal way to fight a war. The Sherwood Rangers were one of the great tank regiments. They had learned their trade the hard way, under the burning sun of North Africa, on the battlefields of El Alamein and Alam el Halfa. By the time they landed on Gold Beach on D-Day, they were toughened by experience and ready for combat.
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Cider Country
£18.99Cider Country
‘James Crowden is Britain’s best cider writer ? Cider Country is the book we’ve all been waiting for.’ Oz Clarke
Join James Crowden as he embarks on a journey to distil the ancient origins of cider, uncovering a rich culture and philosophy that has united farmer, maker and drinker for millennia.
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Eating to Extinction
£25.00Eating to Extinction
A captivating and unexpected journey through the history of humankind’s relationship with food, with an urgent message for our times. We live in an age of mass extinction. The earth’s biodiversity is decreasing at a faster rate than ever. Industrial agriculture and the standardization of taste are not only wiping out many edible plants, but also the food cultures, histories and livelihoods that go with them. Inspired by a global project to collect and preserve foods that are at risk of extinction, Dan Saladino sets out to encounter these endangered foods.
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Fake History
£8.99Fake History
Taking the ten biggest lies from history and looking at the people who propagated them, social commentator and expert historian Otto English shows how our past has been bent and broken, used and abused over time to fit the ends of some of the world’s most powerful people.
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Faustian Bargain
£22.99Faustian Bargain
Offers the full story of a fateful alliance between past and future mortal enemies-long preceding the well-known Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact-whose dimensions were kept secret from the outside world and yet which set the stage for World War Two and its outcome.
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Fifth Sun
£14.99Fifth Sun
Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.
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In the Shadow of the Gods
£35.00In the Shadow of the Gods
For millennia much of the world was ruled by emperors: a handful of individuals claimed no limit to the lands they could rule over and no limit to their authority. They operated beyond normal human constraint and indeed often claimed a superhuman or divine authority. As an expert on empires and on Russian history, Lieven is brilliantly qualified to write a book that brings to life a system of rule that dominated most of human history, as well as some of history’s grandest and most dismaying figures.
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Pilgrimage
£10.99Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage, a global ritual embraced by all faiths, is one of the most enduring traits in our human story. In this compelling history, Peter Stanford reflects on the reasons people have walked along the same sacred paths across the ages. How do the experiences of the first pilgrims to Jerusalem, Mecca and Santiago de Compostela compare to the millions of people who embark upon life-changing physical and spiritual journeys today? And why do we still feel compelled to walk, stop and think about our lives? The book explores sacred landscapes across the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, to the monolithic rock-cut churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia and the riverbanks of the Kumbh Mela in India. These journeys are to places of healing and reflection, but also to sites of danger and even violence, at crossroads where different political and religious tensions meet.
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Planting the World
£9.99Planting the World
‘Based on meticulous research in original sources ? Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was ? Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated’
Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books£9.99