'excellent' LSE Review of BooksChina is the world's most populous country and newest superpower, whose place on the international stage can only be understood through the lens of its modern history. The Oxford History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising power in what promises to be the 'Chinese century'. Covering the period of dramatic shifts and surprising transformations which comprise China's modern history, the book spans from the founding o...

A knowledgeable appreciation of a complex, vital South American giant, destined to be one of the world’s premier economic powers Experts believe that Brazil, the world’s fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has...

An unprecedented analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria's ongoing civil war"One of the best informed and non-partisan accounts of the Syrian tragedy yet published."-Patrick Cockburn, Independent Syria's brutal, long-lasting civil war is widely viewed as a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the fray. But in this book Christopher Phillips shows the crucial roles that were played b...

In Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions, a preeminent historian of Africa argues that scholars of the Americas and the Atlantic world have not given Africa its due consideration as part of either the Atlantic world or the age of revolutions. The book examines the jihad movement in the context of the age of revolutions—commonly associated with the American and French revolutions and the erosion of European imperialist powers—and shows how West Africa, too, experienced a perio...

This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology. The authors provide summaries of 'Enlightenment', 'Romantic' and 'Victorian' anthropology, from the cultural theories of Morgan and Taylor to the often neglected contributions of German scholars. The ambiguous relationship between anthropology and national cultures is also considered.

The book provides an unparalleled account of theoretical developments in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, ...

Emphasising context, connections and long-term trends, A History of Korea illuminates both the distinctiveness and universality of one of the world's oldest cultures. Assuming no prior knowledge, Hwang guides readers from early state formation and the dynastic eras to the modern experience in both North and South Korea. Structured around episodic accounts, each chapter begins by discussing a defining moment in Korean history in context, with an extensive examination of how the events and them...

Fully updated and carefully revised, this new 2nd edition of History by Numbers stands alone as the only textbook on quantitative methods suitable for students of history. Even the numerically challenged will find inspiration. Taking a problem-solving approach and using authentic historical data, it describes each method in turn, including its origin, purpose, usefulness and associated pitfalls.

The problems are developed gradually and with narrative skill, allowing readers to experience the ...

In this concise, lucid and entertaining book, with more than forty maps and illustrations, acclaimed historian John Hirst explores the qualities that have made Europe a world-changing civilisation.

Beginning with a rapid historical overview from the ancient Greeks to the present day (the ‘shortest history’ itself), Hirst goes on to examine what makes Europe unique: its political evolution; the shaping influence of its linguistic boundaries; the crucial role played by power struggles betwe...

'This is a miracle of a book' George Lamming'Compelling. Stuart Hall's story is the story of an age' Owen Jones 'Sometimes I feel I was the last colonial'This is the story, in his own words, of the extraordinary life of Stuart Hall: writer, thinker and one of the leading intellectual lights of his age. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, then still a British colony, Hall found himself caught between two worlds: the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, who, in the...

What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza's Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking About History is organized around big questions: Whose history do we write, and how does that affect what stories get told and how they are told? How did we come to view t...