Libros de

Vergil

the poet's life

A biography of Vergil, Rome's greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy 'ancient' into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic, three-dimensional figure. . . . The existence of the Aeneid ...

Golda Meir

Israel's matriarch

Golda Meir (1898-1978) was the first and only woman to serve as prime minister of Israel. She was born in Kiev into a childhood of poverty, hunger, and antisemitism. When she was five, her father left to find work in America, and a year later ...

The life of Louis XVI

A thought-provoking, authoritative biography of one of history's most maligned rulers: France's Louis XVI "The definitive contribution to our understanding of Louis XVI as a man and a monarch."-P. M. Jones, English Historical Review "Monumental. . . . Scholars probing the mysteries of the late ...

Scotland

the global history: 1603 to the present

An engaging and authoritative history of Scotland's influence in the world and the world's on Scotland, from the Thirty Years' War to the present day Scotland is one of the oldest nations in the world, yet by some it is hardly counted as ...

Art of the Grimoire

an illustrated history of magic books and spells

A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks Grimoires, textbooks of magic and occult knowledge, have existed through the ages alongside other magic and religious texts in part because of the need to create a physical record of magical ...

Lenin

responding to catastrophe, forging revolution

'Brings out the practical activism, principled politics, and revolutionary patience crucial to organizing the oppressed on a rapidly over-heating planet' - Jodi Dean 'Crackling with intellectual life' - Lars T. Lih Vladimir Lenin lies in a tomb in Moscow's Red Square. History has not been kind ...

She who struggles

revolutionary women who shaped the world

'Exhilarating and immensely valuable' Priyamvada Gopal, Professor at the University of Cambridge Rosa Luxemburg, Claudia Jones and Leila Khaled may have joined Lenin, Mao and Che in the pantheon of twentieth-century revolutionaries, but the histories in which they figure remain unjustly dominated by men. She ...

A defence of witchcraft belief

a sixteenth-century response to Reginald Scot's discoverie of witchcraft

This is the first published edition of a fascinating manuscript on witchcraft in the collection of the British Library, written by an unknown sixteenth-century scholar. Responding to a pre-publication draft of Reginald Scot's sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the treatise represents the most detailed ...

The politics of feeling in Brexit Britain

stories from the mass observation project

During Brexit, political questions were continually framed in emotional terms. The referendum was presented as a conflict between reason and resentment, fear and hope, heads and hearts. The Leave vote was interpreted as the triumph of passion over rationality, and its aftermath triggered concerns about ...

Rethinking Norman Italy

studies in honour of Graham A. Loud

This volume on Norman Italy (southern Italy and Sicily, c. 1000-1200) honours and reflects the pioneering scholarship of Graham A. Loud. An international group of scholars reassesses and recasts the paradigm by which Norman Italy has been conventionally understood, addressing varied subjects across four key ...

The illusion of the Burgundian State

On 25 January 1474, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, appeared before his subjects in Dijon. Robed in silk, gold and precious jewels and wearing a headpiece that gave the illusion of a crown, he made a speech in which he cryptically expressed his desire ...

Secularism and its ambiguities

four case studies

In the best micro-historical tradition, Carlo Ginzburg, himself one of the founders and icons of this genre of historiography, dissects four moments of European intellectual history. This book relives the experience that participants in the Natalie Zemon Davis Lecture Series at the Budapest campus of ...

Hitler's Library

The first book to present the so-called Hitler Library. It sheds new light on the readings of Hitler and on his techniques how to read a book. Hitler presented himself as an ideal reader of Schopenhauer, nevertheless his remarks destroy that image, particularly if we ...

Ukrainian witchcraft trials

Volhynia, Podolia, and Ruthenia, 17th-18th centuries

Drawing on quantitative data drawn from a range of trials Kateryna Dysa first describes the ideological background of the tribunals based on works written by priests and theologians that reflect attitudes toward the devil and witches. The main focus of her work, however, is the ...

On Niccolò Machiavelli

The Bonds of Politics

Five hundred years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli still draws an astonishing range of contradictory characterizations. Was he a friend of tyrants? An ardent republican loyal to Florence's free institutions? The father of political realism? A revolutionary populist? A calculating rationalist? A Renaissance humanist ...

The paradox of democracy

free speech, open media, and perilous persuasion

A thought-provoking history of communications that challenges ideas about freedom of speech and democracy. At the heart of democracy lies a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies since their advent: Though freedom of speech and media has always been a ...

Maladies of empire

how colonialism, slavery, and war transformed medicine

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale's care of soldiers in the Crimean War revolutionized medical hygiene. Yet focusing ...

In the shadow of Quetzalcoatl

Zelia Nuttall and the search for Mexico's ancient civilizations

The gripping story of a pioneering anthropologist whose exploration of Aztec cosmology, rediscovery of ancient texts, and passion for collecting helped shape our understanding of pre-Columbian Mexico. Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in ...

The Moralized Ovid

(Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; 82)

An influential medieval allegorical interpretation of the Metamorphoses that uncovers the hidden moral truths of Ovid's stories, translated into English for the first time. Written in about 1340 in Avignon by the Benedictine preacher Pierre Bersuire, The Moralized Ovid-commonly referred to by its Latin ...

The purpled world

marketing haute couture in the Aegean Bronze Age

During the Aegean Bronze Age, the spread of woolen textiles triggered an increased demand for color. In The Purpled World, Silver reveals how Minoan and Mycenaean textile producers embedded commercial motivation into traditional rituals, and considers collapse of the Mycenaean Palaces as a manifestation of ...