Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark During the Middle Ages a shared European concept of magic emerged. In the early period, pagan beliefs and practices were absorbed into everyday culture, including the rituals of the Church. The rise of the practice of "white magic" in the twelfth century became so popular that it caused a widespread determination in the Church to condemn any unsanctioned beliefs or practices. The Church and state, both centralized powers in a decentralized Europe, gradually sharpened their attitude toward magic in general, and sorcery and witchcraft in particular, paving the way for the violent outbreaks of witch persecutions in early modern Europe.

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe combines the traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. The series, complete in six volumes, provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each volume of this ambitious six-volume series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region.

T S ASHTON

G.E. Aylmer

S. Anthony Barnett More than the story of how people and rats live together, this book takes a serious and intriguing look at science and scientists, the problems they solve and fail to solve, and the scope and imperfections of our scientific knowledge of the world. It answers questions such as: Are rats still a threat to human health? Do rats think? Is it true that wild rats sometimes die, unwounded, from social stress? Can studies of rat societies tell us anything useful about our own social lives? This compelling historical and social study will capture the interest of all readers-from those fascinated by rats to those who cringe-by explaining the delicate and sometimes volatile impacts humans and rats have had on each other over the centuries and into the modern age.

Olivier Bernier

Geoffrey Best

Fernand Braudel

Bob Brier In 1922, when Tutankhamen's tomb was uncovered, it revealed such a dazzling array of treasure that it was easy to forget that almost nothing was known about the "Boy King" buried there. Following in the footsteps of those archaeologists who made the extraordinary discoveries in the Valley of the Kings, Bob Brier brings to life the dramatic story of Tutankhamen. He seeks to reveal what happened to the young king and uses forensic evidence to show that Tutankhamen was brutally murdered.

Asa Briggs

Christopher Brooke

Colin Bruce The author recreates the original Sherlock Holmes mystery stories to explain the basic laws of physics. He works out the apparent paradoxes of special relativity and quantum theory in visual and logical terms.

Bill Bryson From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers the same material as every science book before it, it reads something like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without a plot). Each longish chapter is devoted to a topic like the age of our planet or how cells work, and these chapters are grouped into larger sections such as "The Size of the Earth" and "Life Itself." Bryson chats with experts like Richard Fortey (author of Life and Trilobite) and these interviews are charming. But it's when Bryson dives into some of science's best and most embarrassing fights—Cope vs. Marsh, Conway Morris vs. Gould—that he finds literary gold. —Therese Littleton

Elizabeth Burton

Penelope Byrde

Alain Cabantous Our world is steeped in attitudes and concepts derived from a sacred worldview, and this book helps us understand why. Alain Cabantous shows that blasphemy is a battlefield where religious dogma and secular rule clash, with their respective agents (the priest and the judge) competing for the proper reaction to a variety of curses. The book takes us on a journey through the Christian West with braggarts, craftsmen, soldiers, sailors, and their coarse, forbidden exchanges. More than simply an exhaustive inventory of the uses of and bans on blasphemy, the book is a lively analysis of the relationship between the blasphemer, the machinery of language, and that of repression. Beginning with a review of acts and crimes of blasphemy in biblical times, including the second commandment´s injunction against taking God´s name in vain, Cabantous reviews the close relationship between religious authority and royal authority in the sixteenth century, when the king ruled by divine right and attacks against God were implicit attacks on the nature of kingship. Punishing blasphemy was a way for the king to rule as God´s representative and an occasion for the church to take control of language. The narrative continues with an exploration of acts of blasphemy, as well as related acts of desecration and profanation, which were regarded as civil and religious offenses up to the French Revolution of 1789 and afterward. The book then explores blasphemy through the mid-nineteenth century, when Catholic opponents of the French Revolution claimed that revolution itself was a blasphemy and a profanation.

Christy Campbell A historical investigation into one of the most serpentine attempts on Queen Victoria's life. There were eight attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria during her long reign; four of them were of Irish origin. The most serious of all was the "Jubilee Plot", a conspiracy apparently hatched in New York by the Fenian Brotherhood to blow up the Queen, her family and most of the British Cabinet with dynamite at the great service of thanksgiving to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her accession, held at Westminster Abbey in June 1887. The plot was "uncovered" by Scotland Yard with just a few days to go. Several of the bombers were caught, tried and sentenced to penal servitude for life. But - warned off in time - the master bomber escaped to America. This text, using declassified Foreign Office secret files (marked "Fenian Brotherhood"), discloses the huge secret at the heart of the British counter-intelligence operation against militant Irish nationalists: the entire conspiracy was masterminded for its own reasons by a clandestine British agency reporting directly to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury.

Owen Chase Moby Dick was written after Herman Melville had read a survivor's account of the wreck of a Nantucket whaling ship in 1820 and the three subsequent months of gruelling sailing in open boats endured by the whalers. As a source of Melville's inspiration, Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex is part of literary history. Melville believed that Owen Chase's narrative was written from first-hand "dictation of the facts". This edition incorporates an interesting introduction detailing the American whaling industry and footnotes clarify the few problem items of vocabulary. Two short "missionary tracts" are included, providing other versions of the story, and facsimiles of Melville's notes on Chase (with transcriptions), complete the volume. Together, these texts provide a fascinating picture of the character, attitudes and beliefs of the whalers and their world. As a convincing account of the limits of human endurance, Chase's tale is also of timeless interest. Initially determined and logical, the men are reduced to "being hardly able to crawl around the boat", so close to starvation that they eventually resort to the "revolting ideas" of cannibalism. Only eight out of 20 men make it to the point of rescue.

Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex is a gripping story never over-sensationalised. The whaler "knows that his laurels are plucked from the brink of danger" and this tale amply communicates the comradeship and the bravery of these men from the past. —Karen Tiley

S. G Checkland

S.G. Checkland, Olive Checkland

Rupert Christiansen

Annie E. Coombes

Leonard. Cottrell

Liudprand Of Cremona Behind the scenes, Liudprand's machinations made Otto Emperor of the West and engineered the deposition of debauched Pope John XII. On his embassy to a grotesque Byzantine Emperor, the clash of cultures doomed his negotiations, a process recollected here. The Antipodosis (887-994) concludes this edition with the comic incidents and rapier gossip of an insider in the Dark Ages of Germany and Southern Europe.

Christina Crosby

Amy Cruse

Robert Darnton

Robert Darnton

Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall

Guy Dicks

The Widow of a Diplomat

Lady of Distinction

Miriam Dixson

Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx Friedrich Engels

Denton Prout and Fred Feely

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto A close examination of the world's societies, from the maritime civilizations of the Polynesians to the Dawada people of the Sahara. Rather than looking to the familiar spots of Rome and Paris, Fernadez-Armesto takes us to unfamiliar territories to redifine our understanding of what it is to be civilized. Filled with anecdotal historical tales, shrewd insights and engaging arguments, this book concludes that societies can be judged on how civilized they are by investigating their interaction with their own environment.

Peter Freyer

Janet Gleeson Since the middle ages, Western Europeans have practiced alchemy, a primitive form of chemistry, in the great hope of transforming base metal into gold. In the early 18th century, a second great secret puzzled Western Europe's early scientists: how to make porcelain. Recently arrived from the Orient, porcelain quickly became a symbol of power, prestige, and good taste. In The Arcanum, Janet Gleeson presents an entertaining and informative account of the invention of European porcelain and the founding of the Meissen Porcelain Manufacture outside Dresden, Germany.

Her narrative focuses on three individuals: Alchemist Johann Frederick Böttger inadvertently discovered the arcanum, or secret formula, for making porcelain; Johan Gregor Herold, an ambitious artist, developed colors and patterns of unparalleled brilliance at the newly established Meissen Porcelain Manufacture; Johann Joachim Kaendler, a virtuoso sculptor, used the Meissen porcelain to invent a new art form. Interwoven with the story of Augustus the Strong, the greedy and ambitious king of the Kingdom of Saxony, who held Böttger captive until he discovered the formula, Gleeson's tale reads easily and maintains a high level of suspense and intrigue throughout. —Bertina Loeffler

Robert Graves

Germaine Greer

Tom ed Griffith

MARION HARLAND

Toni Johnson-Woods

Fredrich Klemm

Charles Knight

PHILIPPA LEVINE

Donald A. Low

Sir John Mandeville

Peter Mathias

Henry Mayhew

Henry Mayhew

Venetia Murray

Caroline Norton

William B. Ober

A.T. Olmstead Out of a lifetime of study of the ancient Near East, Professor Olmstead has gathered previously unknown material into the story of the life, times, and thought of the Persians, told for the first time from the Persian rather than the traditional Greek point of view.

"The fullest and most reliable presentation of the history of the Persian Empire in existence."—M. Rostovtzeff

A Parreaux

J.H. Parry

Robert Payne

Ronald Pearsall

William Penn

Harold Perkin

Liza Picard Like its popular and acclaimed predecessor Restoration London, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors, so often ignored in more conventional history books. Based on every possible contemporary source - diaries, almanacs, newspapers, advice books, memoirs, government papers and reports - Liza Picard examines every aspect of life in London: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and jewellery, cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, hobbies, education and etiquette; religion and popular beliefs; law and crime. This book spans the years 1740 to 1770, starting when the gin craze was gaining ground and ending when the east coast of America was still British.

Liza Picard Making use of every possible contemporary source - diaries, memoirs, advice books, government papers, almanacs, even the Register of Patents - Liza Picard presents an enthralling picture of how life in London was really lived in the 1600s: the houses and streets, gardens and parks, cooking, clothes and jewellery, cosmetics, hairdressing, housework, laundry and shopping, medicine and dentistry, sex, education, hobbies, etiquette, law and crime, religion and popular beliefs. 'There is almost no aspect of life in Restoration London that is not meticulously described in these 300-odd pages' Jan Morris, Independent

Liza Picard Like her previous books, this book will be the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life - and the conditions in which most people lived - so often left out of history books. This period of mid Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects : Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan. All the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled.

John Harold Plumb

Plutarch

Roy Porter Focusing selectively upon his subjects, Porter here explores the thoughts and feelings of a number of insane people, primarily making use of their own writings. His aim is not to analyze the subconscious motivations of the insane, but to determine the intentions of their conscious minds.

Joanna Richardson

Jean Jacque Rousseau

George Rude

John Russell

Bev Coultman Smith

Anne Somerset

Anne Somerset Far from being servants or decorative accessories in court, ladies-in-waiting competed for real positions of power—and many succeeded in their goals, sometimes betraying their queens in the process. A few even became royal mistresses. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, this lively, full-scale study by a bestselling author combines anecdote with searching analysis to create social history at its most colorful and entertaining.

Suetonius

Cornelius Tacitus

E.P. Thompson

G.R.R. Treasure

G.R.R. Treasure

E.S. Turner

Joyce A. Tyldesley She was the beloved wife of "heretic king" Akhenaton, who defied ancient custom by practicing monotheism and by elevating Nefertiti far above the role of subservient consort previously played by Egyptian queens. Her image has ravished Western viewers ever since a magnificent limestone bust unearthed at the royal retreat of Amarna went on display in Berlin in 1924. But frustratingly few facts are known about this woman who lived more than three millennia ago. As she did in Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, British archeologist Joyce Tyldesley makes a virtue of necessity by writing a book that is as much a cultural history as a biography. As Akhenaton swept away the plethora of old gods, dismaying many of his subjects, he needed a strong female figure to soften the abstract austerity of Aten, the sun deity; his beautiful queen was celebrated in official art and inscriptions that focused on the domestic life of the royal family. Tyldesley meticulously analyzes this iconography to evaluate Nefertiti's position in Egypt and her importance to her husband, who clearly cherished her beyond the demands of propriety or political necessity. The author cannot give readers a strong sense of Nefertiti's personality—the evidence simply isn't there—but she paints a wonderfully evocative picture of life at the civilized heart of the ancient world. —Wendy Smith

Christina Vella

Alison Weir The tempestuous, bloody, and splendid reign of Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) is one of the most fascinating in all history, not least for his marriage to six extraordinary women. In this accessible work of brilliant scholarship, Alison Weir draws on early biographies, letters, memoirs, account books, and diplomatic reports to bring these women to life. Catherine of Aragon emerges as a staunch though misguided woman of principle; Anne Boleyn, an ambitious adventuress with a penchant for vengeance; Jane Seymour, a strong-minded matriarch in the making; Anne of Cleves, a good-natured and innocent woman naively unaware of the court intrigues that determined her fate; Catherine Howard, an empty-headed wanton; and Catherine Parr, a warm-blooded bluestocking who survived King Henry to marry a fourth time.

Alison Weir

Alison Weir On the night of 10 February 1567 an explosion devastated the Edinburgh residence of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. The noise was heard as far away as Holyrood Palace, where Queen Mary was attending a wedding masque. Those arriving at the scene of devastation found, in the garden, the naked corpses of Darnley and his valet. Neither had died in the explosion, but both bodies bore marks of strangulation. It was clear that they had been murdered and the house destroyed in an attempt to obliterate the evidence. Darnley was not a popular king-consort, but he was regarded by many as having a valid claim to the English throne. For this reason Elizabeth I had opposed his family's longstanding wish to marry him to Mary Stuart, who herself claimed to be the rightful queen of England. Alison Weir's investigation of Darnley's murder is set against one of the most dramatic periods in British history. Her conclusions shed a brilliant new sight on the actions and motives of the conspirators and, in particular, the extent of Mary's own involvement.

Norman F. Cantor and Michael S. Werthman

T. H. White

Arnold Whittall

Simon Winchester The making of the "Oxford English Dictionary" was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the "OED's" editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.

Isser Woloch

Horace Wyndham