Ever since the attacks of 11th September, western leaders have described a world engaged in 'a fight for civilization'. But what do we mean by civilization? We believe in a western tradition of openness and freedom that has produced a good life for many millions of people and a culture of enormous depth and creative power. But the history of our civilisation is also filled with unspeakable brutality - for every Leonardo there is a Mussolini, for every Beethoven symphony a concentration camp, ...

Here is an intellectual extravaganza, a dazzling history of the key institutions that have shaped and channeled knowledge in the West from the classical period to the present. Fashioned with elegance and wit, this exhilarating survey carries us through the pivotal points of institutional change and cultural transformation. It is full of memorable characters, from the flamboyant founder of the great library at Alexandria and the arrogant medieval logician Peter Abelard to the dashing global ad...

'Wry, readable and often astonishing... A provocative and absorbing history of the United States' New York TimesThe United States denies having dreams of empire. We know America has spread its money, language and culture across the world, but we still think of it as a contained territory, framed by Canada above, Mexico below, and oceans either side.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the story of the United States outside the United States – from nineteenth-century conquests l...

Conversations w ith the most distinguished black thinkers of our times, includingToni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, W ole Soyinka and Michelle Obama, on race,decolonisation, systemic inequalities, and the climate crisis.

In this new edition of A Short History of the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein offers a panoramic view of the medieval world from Iceland to China and from Sweden to West Africa. Yet the book never loses sight of the main contours of the period (c.300 to c.1500) or of the fate of the heirs of the Roman Empire.

Its lively and informative narrative covers the major events, political and religious movements, men and women, saints and sinners, economic and cultural changes, ideals, fears, and fa...

There are many stories we can tell about the past, and we are not, perhaps, as free as we might imagine in our choice of which stories to tell, or where those stories end. John Arnold's Very Short Introduction is a stimulating essay about how we study and understand history. The book begins by inviting us to think about various questions provoked by our investigation of history, and explores the ways these questions have been answered in the past.

Concepts such as causation, interpretation, a...

Herodotus is not only known as the `father of history', as Cicero called him, but also the father of ethnography; as well as charting the historical background to the Persian Wars, his curiosity also prompts frequent digression on the cultures of the peoples he introduces. While much of the information he gives has proved to be astonishingly accurate, he also entertains us with delightful tales of one-eyed men and gold-digging ants. This readable new translation is supplemented with expansive...

Ronald Takaki's beloved revisionist history of America, praised by Howard Zinn as "a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history," now featuring a foreword from Clint Smith, author of the award-winning #1 bestseller How the Word Is Passed.

The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America

Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He...