Libros de

The monastic world

a 1200-year history

A major new history of medieval monasticism, from the fourth to the sixteenth century From the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. But who were monasteries for? What kind of people founded and maintained them? And how did ...

No more Napoleons

how Britain managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One

How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte-manipulating European powers while building a global maritime empire At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, a fragile peace emerged in Europe. The continent's borders were redrawn, and the French ...

To dare mighty things

U.S. defense strategy since the revolution

The definitive history of U.S. defense strategy Much of the history of U.S. defense over the course of 250 years has been a story of success. Insulated by two oceans and mostly friendly neighbors, but constantly ambitious abroad, America has dared mighty things ...

The accused

how women faced justice for Nazi-era crimes

A compelling examination of Nazi women's perpetration of war crimes, and how-or whether-courts held them accountable To date, our understanding of women's participation in Nazi war crimes has been shaped by political decisions made by men, which reflect entrenched gender norms that diminish ...

Walter Benjamin

the pearl diver

An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time "A short, serene volume. . . . Gordon avoids treating his subject in allegorical terms, in part because Benjamin always resisted conscription into ...

Cross purposes

Christianity's broken bargain with democracy

What happens to American democracy if Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends? In this provocative book, the award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch-a lifelong atheist-reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the ...

Mao

power and contradiction

Mao Zedong lived one of the most epic and influential lives of the twentieth century. His impact on the People's Republic of China was vast. Half a century after his passing, he remains a divisive and controversial figure. This book provides an accessible narrative ...

Enver Hoxha

twentieth-century tyrant

Featured in New Statesman's Culture Preview 2026: The best non-fiction to read this year Enver Hoxha, one of the most fanatical communist leaders of the twentieth century, ruled Albania for forty years. He was a Stalinist modernizer who sought to pull his country out ...

Qaddafi

beyond the myth

This book explores the life of Muammar al-Qaddafi, the enigmatic Libyan leader, from his birth to his assassination in a drainage ditch outside the city of Sirte in October 2011. The first authoritative biography of Qaddafi, it aims to make sense of his remarkable life ...

Antisemitism

a history of Jew hating

Why do Jews continue to serve as targets of hatred - and how coherent is the idea of antisemitism itself? In Antisemitisms, Sander L. Gilman argues that such hatreds are less stable and more opportunistic than is often assumed. Tracing fantasies of Jewish difference - from appearance ...

Plato

a civic life

Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Plato lived in turbulent times, born during a war that led to Athens's defeat and decline. A restored democracy ...

Francisco de Zurbarán and the fabric of the world

Francisco de Zurbarán, master of Spain's Golden Age, painted with unmatched stillness and intensity. Famed for his monks, saints and martyrs, he also created mesmerizing still lifes, making fabrics shimmer and fruit glow with quiet presence. This book explores how Zurbarán's art captures ...

Stories of the stones

imagining prehistory in Britain, Ireland and Brittany

Stories of the Stones explores how ancient monuments - standing stones, megaliths and earthworks - have been reimagined across the centuries in folklore, literature, art and popular culture. From medieval myths to Romantic fascination and from folk-horror cinema to Julian Cope, the powerful stories inspired by these ...

The craft of Indo-Arabic numerals

how practical arithmetic shaped commerce and mathematics in Western Europe, 1200-1600

An illuminating, fine-grained account of how Indo-Arabic numerals facilitated the spread of practical knowledge in Western Europe-reshaping both commerce and mathematics in the process. In the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, commerce transformed as merchants shifted from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals-an alternative that better facilitated complex calculations. It ...

The first social democracy

the democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-1921

The enthralling, forgotten story of how the world's first social democracy took shape in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by ...

Commentary on Plotinus. Volume I: Ennead I

(The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 102)

A preeminent Renaissance philosopher on the founder of NeoplatonismMarsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was the leading Platonic philosopher of the Renaissance and is generally recognized as the greatest authority on ancient Platonism before modern times. Among his greatest accomplishments as a scholar was his 1492 Latin translation ...

Being reasonable

the case for a misunderstood virtue

A leading philosopher explores what it means to be reasonable-and why it matters for the well-being of our society. Reasonableness plays many roles in our lives. In Anglo-American law, it is the yardstick for a wide range of behavior-the "reasonable-person standard" governs everything from contract ...

What God kept for himself

atheism, sodomy, and radical dissent in Renaissance Italy

A revelatory account of sexual nonconformity and radical religious dissent in Renaissance Italy, drawing on never-before-studied Inquisition trials. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a series of highly controversial Inquisition trials took place throughout the Italian peninsula. The defendants were all accused of the same ...

The sentinel state

surveillance and the survival of dictatorship in China

Countering recent hype around technology, a leading expert argues that the endurance of dictatorship in China owes less to facial recognition AI and GPS tracking than to the human resources of the Leninist surveillance state. China watchers long argued that economic liberalization and prosperity would ...

Hubris

Pericles, the Parthenon, and the invention of Athens

A new perspective on ancient Athens at the height of its powers, reinterpreting the city's supposed "Golden Age" as a period of ruinous culture wars. The age of Pericles, in the fifth century BC, is often described as the Golden Age of Athens. The ...