The distinguished historian of China, author of Vermeer's Hat, argues that it was not so much the Manchu invasion as climate change that brought collapse to the Ming Dynasty.
From the home of the indigenous Formosans to a European trading post, from a Japanese colony to the last bastion of the Republic of China. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understan... read more
An elucidating account of the conditions that led to, and subsequently shaped the Iraq war. This book casts a light on both CIA intrigue in the Middle East and Hussein's own political motiva... read more
A deeply personal social history. From ancient Greece to 70s' New York, from Diogenes to her father, Eberstadt explores how people have used their bodies to challenge the world around them.
A society's way of dealing with death can be very revealing. Here, the distinguished historian of Victorian Britain and the domestic sphere shows how their behaviour around death offers deep... read more
Looks back to a group of brave women in the later C18th and onwards - at a time when women had no property and no rights: Elizabeth Montagu, who took on Voltaire and won; Catherine Macauley,... read more
The brilliant Princeton historian guides us through the relationship between magic and the Renaissance, demystifying the Magus' relationship with science, art, and engineering in early-moder... read more
The post-war eclipse of the rural by the urban. Joyce interweaves his own Irish family history into wider story of European peasantry to create a rich and varied cultural account of what it ... read more
The rise and fall of the Bacris and Busnachs, two Jewish families whose prominence in trade and banking led them to play a small but crucial diplomatic and logistical role in the Napoleonic ... read more