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
Contacts and connections as the drivers of cultural change: the West was built on far more than the values of ancient Greece and Rome, as per the Victorian paradigm. Erudite and compelling.
A study of the way in which Vesuvius and the excavations in the Bay of Naples in 1738 and afterwards became a potent political and emotional vehicle for artists, intellectuals, Grand Tourist... read more
Aztec art in Brussels, West African ivories in Antwerp... the great artists (D?rer, Bosch etc) were drawing on more than rediscovered classical texts. JJ considers the Renaissance as "a conv... read more
Despite its often fraught encounters with democracy, science and secular culture, the Catholic Church's story in the modern era is one of remarkable survival.
In less than a month in 1870, the Prussian army invaded France, captured Napoleon III and changed the balance of world power. Its success had far-reaching effects...
A broad survey that considers the roles of individual leaders in C20th European history. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini of coures, but also Tito, Adenauer, Thatcher, Kohl, Gorbachev and others... read more
This book was in our summer catalogue but we include it (exceptionally) in the present one too because it is outstanding. As in her 'Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire' (200... read more
A fascinating look at the way 29 European internal borders were made and have shifted; while some of these reflect the faultlines of old horrors, they also offer new hope. Perceptive and ext... read more
This fascinating account of a forgotten moment in history is part family memoir, part the telling of a Texan offshoot of the early Zionist movement, when 10,000 Jews set sail for Galveston b... 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
Already receiving praise for revolutionising the history of sexuality, this book is bound to be a fascinating analysis of sex and identity in early-modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
Whether in music, architecture, economics, art, mathematics, physics or philosophy - Vienna in the early C20th led the world. This astonishing vibrancy was dispersed by Nazism and WW2 to the... read more
Using West's 1930s masterpiece Black Lamb, Grey Falcon as a vade mecum, Allan has written a wonderful, personal portrait of the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia.
Traces Napoleon's accrual of the spoils of war: the negotiated, carefully targeted removal of Renaissance masterpieces including works by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as the ... read more
How the rise of antiquarian interests between the Fall of the Bastille and the Great Exhibition promoted the rediscovery of national history in Britain, France and Germany. From the author o... read more