Social & Cultural History

From the author of Women from the Ankle Down comes a lively cultural biography of diamonds, which explores our society's obsession with the world's...

A New York Times bestseller, now updated with an afterword and exclusive new material From the #1 bestselling author behind acclaimed oral histori...

Barack Obama is arguably the most dynamic political figure to grace the American stage since John F. Kennedy. His meteoric rise from promise to pow...

The quest for the exotic became an obsession for Renaissance princes and collectors, as markets in Lisbon and Seville were flooded by the mid 16th ...

*A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK*'Utterly enthralling - a beautifully-written voyage of discovery that takes us deep into the heart of music-making' Deb...

We've all been there. One minute you're fast asleep, and in the next you're tumbling from dreams of deserts and demons, into semi-consciousness, mo...

Winter Passages is Robert Brustein's nineteenth book of criticism. It includes his considerations of culture and politics over the past four years ...

The Backward Glance: A Miscellany of Irish History, Politics & Culture is a rare bird. It deals with topics of Irish political and cultural his...

A curious history of the strange, wonderful and sometimes terrifying worlds created by our minds. An utterly engrossing book.' ZOE WILLIAMS For c...

A triumph of family story-telling Hugo Hamilton, author of The Pages. A tale of three journeys, the final one a successful pursuit of shadows Myle...

Women were leading actors in twentieth-century developments in Georgia, yet most histories minimise their contributions. The essays in the second v...

From middle-class cottages to Gilded Age mansions, House Proud presents a view of Atlanta, reflected through the citys most highly prized homes. Ri...

The journey west, from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast, was made by some quarter of a million Americans during the 1840s and 1850s, and ...

The American Midwest is an orphan among regions. In comparison to the South, the far West, and New England, its history has been sadly neglected. T...

The urban origins of American Judaism began with daily experiences of Jews, their responses to opportunities for social and physical mobility as we...

On April 2, 1917, the United States officially entered a war that had been raging for nearly three years in Europe. Even though Americas involvemen...

Unlike the more forthrightly mythic origins of other urban centersthink Rome via Romulus and Remus or Mexico City via the god HuitzilopochtliLos An...

In 1739, Major George Lucas moved from Antigua to Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and two daughters. Soon after their arrival, England...

Why are there so many Italian hairdressers and Chinese restaurants in Glasgow? Who's more Glaswegian: an Irishman, a Highlander or a Pole? Who's ci...

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson made a deal with one of his slaves, 19-year-old James Hemings. The Founding Father was traveling to Paris to serve as amb...

Here is a fascinating compact history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the b...

By examining the pictorial episodes in the Spanish baroque novella, this book elucidates how writers create pictorial texts, how audiences visualis...

One of the most enigmatic figures in world history, King Arthur has been the subject of many fantastical tales over the past 1500 years, leading ma...

A New York Times bestseller and a passionate, urgent (The New Yorker) examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowl...

Explore Martha Vineyard's beloved cobbled streets, lighthouses, harbors, and beaches. Enjoy the idyllic island of Marthas Vineyard for years t...

It is the Georgian heritage that most strongly defines Ireland's capital city. However, Diarmuid O Grada now shows us a Dublin quite unlike that de...