Global History

The definitive history of the US labour movement's complicity in Zionist settler colonialism, and a call for today's labour militants to organise in solidarity with Palestinians. US trade unionists are often told to keep quiet and remain neutral on Palestine because "Palestine has nothing to do with unions" and "weighing in" only distracts from struggles for better working conditions. No...

This book explores the life and work of the 18th-century English artist, explorer, naturalist, and author Mark Catesby (1683–1749). During Catesby’s lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. He worked against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature. Catesby spent two prolonged periods in...

In Food in the Ancient World, a respected classicist and a practising world-class chef explore a millennium of eating and drinking. The book focuses on ancient Greece and Rome but also looks at Persian, Egyptian, Celtic, and other cultures. It embraces people from all walks of life, from impoverished citizens subsisting on cereals, chickpeas, and even locusts, to the meat-eating...

ARS MECHANICA traces the comprehensive history of the Herstal Group, renowned worldwide through its brands FN Herstal, Browning, and Winchester. Almost 130 years of technological innovation and unique know-how has allowed the company to develop, manufacture and commercialize leading quality products. Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre (FN) was a pure product of Belgium in the nineteenth century. It could not...

A History of Modern Germany provides a comprehensive account of the social, political, and economic history of Germany from 1800 to the present. Written in an engaging and accessible narrative style, this popular textbook offers an expansive view of the nation’s complex and fragmented past, tracing the development of the German national consciousness through Napoleonic rule, the unification of Germany,...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025 • THE WASHINGTON POST’S 5 BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2025 • THE ATLANTIC’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • TIME MAGAZINE’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 • NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 “[An] astonishing story…Powerful…Harrowing…Absorbing and lucid…You would have to...

A deeply reported analysis of the connections between policing and capitalism, centring global lessons of revolt and resistance. Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did "modern policing" as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin...

Globalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh...

The most intense hopes and fears of our collective lives centre around large-scale events – from competitions, celebrations, and festivals to environmental disasters, pandemics, and terror attacks. The media are a crucial part of this process: they enable the planning, resource allocation, and circulation of the vital information needed to mount major events. They are also where traces of events...

A thoroughly researched assessment of how China’s economic success continues to be shaped by the communist ideology of Chairman Mao It was long assumed that as China embraced open markets and private enterprise, its state-controlled economy would fall by the wayside, that free markets would inevitably lead to a more liberal society. Instead, China’s growth over the past four decades...

How the history of liberal order and democratic politics since the 1930s explains ongoing threats to democracy and international order The liberal democratic order that seemed so stable in North America and Western Europe has become precarious. James E. Cronin argues that liberalism has never been secure and that since the 1930s the international order has had to be crafted,...

Over the past two decades, transnational history has become an established term describing approaches to the writing of world or global history that emphasise movement, dynamism and diversity. Writing Transnational History investigates the emergence of the ‘transnational’ as an approach, its limits, and parameters. It focuses particular attention on the contributions of postcolonial and feminist studies in reformulating transnational historiography...

A bold new biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society's productive men and women. Thorstein Veblen was one of America's most penetrating analysts of modern capitalist society. However, he was not, as is widely assumed, an outsider to the social world he...

The Weaponisation of Everything by Mark Galeotti is an engaging guide to the various ways in which war is now waged—and how to adapt to this new reality. "This brisk everyman's guide—straight-talking and free of jargon—is a useful tasting menu to a fast-moving, constantly evolving set of problems. . . . A lively reminder that war adapts to technology, that...

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 "When the world comes to an end," Viennese writer Karl Kraus lamented in 1908, "all the big city orchestras will still be playing The Merry Widow." Viennese operettas like Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow were preeminent cultural texts during the Austro-Hungarian Empire's final years. Alternately hopeful and nihilistic, operetta staged contemporary debates about gender, nationality,...

We use money every day in the form of banknotes, coins, or credit on our bank account. We pay online on the internet, take out loans, and save money on bank accounts. But what is money really? Where does it come from? Who controls the banks? What are the tasks of the central bank and how does monetary policy work?...

Long established as the leading textbook on migration and used by students and scholars alike all over the world, this fully revised and updated sixth edition of The Age of Migration continues to offer an authoritative and cutting-edge account of migration flows, why they occur, and their consequences for both origin and destination societies. International migration is one of the...

Published on the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's extraordinary voyages of exploration, this publication reflects on and charts the enduring legacies of his encounters with Pacific peoples. Objects collected and images made on or associated with the voyages are explored alongside artworks created by contemporary artists from the Pacific region. Together, they reveal that understandings of history are rarely...

A revealing exploration of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s genre paintings and the cultural significance of his depictions of ordinary people Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682) is best known for his religious subject matter, yet some of his most iconic works depict secular themes. Celebrating Murillo’s genre paintings and shedding new light on the innovative portrayals of beggars, street urchins, and flower girls,...

For many, the conditions and privileges of citizenship, and the access it provides to equal civil, political and social rights, are taken for granted. Yet citizenship always implies histories of inclusion and exclusion. In settler nations with colonial roots, the history of citizenship is entangled with the legacies of colonisation. Looking beyond its legal definition to the wider historical processes...

“Armchair historians in particular will appreciate McAuliffe’s readable yet detailed history supplemented with illustrations and bibliography.” Booklist, Starred Review Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of...

Welcome to more tongue-in-cheek tales about eccentricity and endeavour from the obscurest parts of history that teach us things we never knew about the present. This time we learn about the Lille perfume bombing, the Auschwitz volunteer, the 'Oops' missile, the longest war (and the shortest), the bird that didn't sing and, of course, kilts, among many others. Alex Deane...

This book presents the stories of six intrepid women of science in eighteenth-century France whose lives and accomplishments—though celebrated in their lifetimes—have been largely written out of the history of their period: mathematician and philosopher Elisabeth Ferrand, astronomer Nicole Reine Lepaute, field naturalist Jeanne Barret, garden botanist and illustrator Madeleine Françoise Basseporte, anatomist and inventor Marie-Marguerite Biheron, and chemist Geneviève...

The first English translation of a Kalmyk epic nearly lost to history. This is the first English translation of Jangar, the heroic epic of the Kalmyk nomads, who are the Western Mongols of Genghis Khan’s medieval empire in Europe. Today, Kalmykia is situated in the territory that was once the Golden Horde, founded by the son of Genghis Khan, Juchi....

Grave New World offers a controversial look at the end of globalisation and what it means for prosperity, peace, and the global economic order. Globalisation, long considered the best route to economic prosperity, is not inevitable. An approach built on the principles of free trade and, since the 1980s, open capital markets, is beginning to fracture. With disappointing growth rates...

Guiding the reader through the many guises of global economic history, this book uncovers its key issues, debates and subjects. With contributions from leading scholars around the world, it delves into the economic histories of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas from the 16th to the 20th centuries. From the environment to The Great Divergence, finance, consumption, trade, industrialisation, commodities...

From the costly velvets and furs worn by kings to the undyed wools and rough linens of the peasantry, the clothing worn by the various classes in the Middle Ages played an integral role in medieval society. In addition to providing clues to status, profession, and/or geographic origin, textiles were a crucial element in the economies of many countries and...

How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency was key to self-government. Using extensive archival research in the United States, France, and...

Drawing from a vast array of creation myths—Babylonian, Greek, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Chinese, Hindu, Navajo, Polynesian, African, Norse, Inuit, and more—this short, illustrated book uncovers both the similarities and differences in our attempts to explain the universe. Creation Stories by Anthony Aveni, an award-winning author and professor of astronomy and anthropology, examines the ways various cultures around the world have...

A 2024 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE Exploring how climate change has configured the international arena since the 1950s, Climate Change and International History reveals the ways that climate change emerged and evolved as an international problem, and how states, scientists, and non-governmental organizations have engaged in diplomatic efforts to address it. Developing amidst the Cold War, decolonization, and a growing...

An in-depth examination of the law and geopolitics of China’s maritime disputes and their implications for the rules of the international law of the sea. China’s Law of the Sea is the first comprehensive study of the law and geopolitics of China’s maritime disputes. It provides a rigorous empirical account of whether and how China is changing “the rules” of...

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart provides a compelling chronological foundation for world history. A global story frames each chapter, making thousands of years of history less daunting for students and instructors. New lead authors and master teachers Jeremy Adelman and Elizabeth Pollard distil cutting-edge scholarship with a focus on introductory students. By supporting students in making comparisons and connections across the...

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart provides a compelling chronological foundation for world history. A global story frames each chapter, making thousands of years of history less daunting for students and instructors. New lead authors and master teachers Jeremy Adelman and Elizabeth Pollard distil cutting-edge scholarship with a focus on introductory students. By supporting students in making comparisons and connections across the...

The War on Music by John Mauceri is a thought-provoking exploration by a prominent conductor that uncovers how aesthetic criteria were often employed to mask the political goals of countries during the three great wars of the past century. This book presents a significant reassessment of classical music in the twentieth century. Mauceri argues that the history of music during...

For the first time, the story of how and why we have plumbed the mysteries of reading, and why it matters today. Reading is perhaps the essential practice of modern civilization. For centuries, it has been seen as key to both personal fulfilment and social progress, and millions today depend on it to participate fully in our society. Yet, at...

The #MeToo movement inspired millions to testify to the widespread experience of sexual violence. More broadly, it shifted the deeply ingrained response to women's accounts of sexual violence from doubting all of them to believing some of them. What changed? Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice...

Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the fall of the World Trade Center towers on 11 September 2009: when architectural totems such as these are destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings are at stake. The Destruction of Memory reveals the extent to which a nation weds itself to its landscape; Robert Bevan argues that...

Few flowers have quite the same allure or as significant a place in history as the rose. A symbol of love, power, royalty, beauty, and joy, the rose has played many roles, both literal and symbolic, in poetry, art, literature, music, fashion, medicine, perfume, decoration, cuisine, and more. In this beautifully illustrated guide, award-winning horticulturist Peter E. Kukielski and his...

Few know that the president's desk in the Oval Office plays a part in one of the world's most extraordinary sagas; in Resolute, noted historian Martin Sandler brings the story to light. After Sir John Franklin and his ships disappeared in the Arctic while seeking the Northwest Passage, 39 rescue missions were launched, including one by the Resolute, the Royal...

The sixth edition of this bestselling book takes students on a journey through the 20th century and provides a clear overview of the key events which have shaped modern world history. Unrivalled in its broad coverage, it: Surveys international relations and war, from 1900 to the present day Examines the rise and fall of fascism and communism around the globe...

The first theory of legitimate opposition in fifty years In political systems defined by legitimate opposition, those who hold power allow their rivals to peacefully challenge and displace them, and those who have lost power do not seek to sabotage the winners. Legitimate opposition came under assault at the American capitol on January 6, 2021, and is menaced by populists...

"A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance."—Publishers Weekly A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected...

A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations,...

Dancing in Time by Robert Hylton includes a foreword by Oti Mabuse. Dance is at the heart of diverse cultures around the globe, from the increasing popularity of salsa clubs, to break dance battles that gather crowds in the street, to the constant stream of dance routines going viral on TikTok. Every Saturday from September to December, 8 million people...

PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities Finalist 2023 Climate Change in Human History provides a concise introduction to the relationship between human beings and climate change throughout history. Starting hundreds of thousands of years ago and going up to the present day, this book illustrates how natural climate variability affected early human societies and how human activity is now leading...

"Full of surprises [and] evocative." The Spectator "Passionately written." Apollo "An extraordinary accomplishment." Edmund de Waal "Monumental." Times Literary Supplement "An epic reshaping of ceramic art." Crafts "An important book." The Arts Society Magazine In his major new history, Paul Greenhalgh tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day....

Baroque Prague is a lavish excursion through Prague’s important baroque period, beginning with the defeat of Czech Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 and ending with the philosophical era of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. In this book, acclaimed art historian Vít Vlnas explores both the material and spiritual transformations the city underwent during this boisterous period,...

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women's rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath. In Against the World,...

A penetrating history of the year World War II became a global conflict and humankind confronted both destruction and deliverance on a planetary scale. By the end of the Second World War, more than seventy million people across the globe had been killed, most of them civilians. Cities from Warsaw to Tokyo lay in ruins, and fully half of the...

A leading genocide scholar explores the history of Zionism, Israel's lurch towards extreme oppression and violence, and why it stands accused of crimes against humanity. Professor Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv and served in the Israel Defence Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become an expert on the German...

Rodney Stark's fresh, blunt, and highly persuasive account of how the West was won—for Jesus (Newsweek)—a provocative report that challenges conventional wisdom and finds that Christianity's astounding dominance of the Western world arose from its offer of a better, more secure way of life. Compelling reading (Library Journal) that is sure to generate spirited argument (Publishers Weekly), this account of...

In scarcely a century, Salafism has transformed Sunni Islam. Claiming to be a revival of the purest form of Islam, this movement promotes ultraconservative social and religious norms and rejects all non-Sunni religious groups. In Egypt, its influence has grown to the point of reshaping mainstream conceptions of the faith. How did such a deep religious transformation sweep through Egypt...

The maverick cultural entrepreneur Li Yu survived the tumultuous Ming-Qing dynastic transition of the mid-seventeenth century through a commercially successful practice founded on intermedial experimentation. He engaged an astonishingly broad variety of cultural forms: from theatrical performance and literary production to fashion and wellness; from garden and interior design to the composition of letters and administrative documents. Drawing on his...

The #MeToo movement inspired millions to testify to the widespread experience of sexual violence. More broadly, it shifted the deeply ingrained response to women's accounts of sexual violence from doubting all of them to believing some of them. What changed? Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while...

The Muqaddimah, often translated as Introduction or Prolegomenon, is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction “with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller” (The New York Times) that unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century—the story of the legendary British explorer who ventured into the Amazon jungle...

Redrawing the map and resetting the clock of the Age of Revolutions In 2015, Bryan Banks and Cindy Ermus launched AgeofRevolutions.com, a site offering critical reconsideration of the foundational concept of revolution and centered on three key questions: What was the Age of Revolutions? Where was the Age of Revolutions? And are we still living in an Age of Revolutions?...

In 1822, Black Charlestonians attempted to overthrow slavery. They were exposed before they could strike, and many were tried and executed in what has come to be known as the Denmark Vesey Affair. Take Freedom reinterprets these events on the basis of new evidence and methods. James O'Neil Spady narrates the roles of a variety of Black men and women,...

After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality. Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia - in theory if not in practice - offered alternative...

Pleasure, Play, and Politics is the first book to examine the roles humor played in U.S. feminism during the late twentieth century. Based on extensive archival research, it brings to light the stunning, moving, and frankly hilarious ways feminists have used satire, irony, and spectacle as they worked to build a better world. The story it tells includes activism and...

New York Times bestseller Eleanor Herman, author of Sex with Kings and Sex with Presidents, returns with another work of popular feminist history, exploring the history of misogyny against women with power, from Cleopatra to Kamala Harris. Imagine Donald Trump as a woman, called Donna. Would Donna Trump have been viewed as blunt, honest, and refreshing? Would she have won...

From the award-winning author of American Sirens and A Thousand Naked Strangers comes a real-life thriller about the most daring rescue in air-medical history. JULY 2014. Two American medical volunteers who joined the fight against the deadliest Ebola outbreak in world history have gotten infected. The virus kills in just over a week and they're trapped in a hot zone...

Justus D. Doenecke's monumental study covers diplomatic, military, and ideological aspects of U.S. involvement as a full-scale participant in World War I. The entry of America into the "war to end all wars" in April 1917 marks one of the major turning points in the nation's history. In the span of just nineteen months, the United States sent nearly two...

From the seventeenth century to the First World War, both free and unfree labour were essential for building an empire. This ambitious study examines the relationship between capitalism and coercion across the British, French, and Russian empires throughout centuries of economic transformation. Overturning conventional explanations of serfdom, slavery, indentured migration, and wage labour, Alessandro Stanziani demonstrates the dominance of aristocratic...

In the late 1980s and 1990s, street gang members from the impoverished Segundo Barrio in El Paso, Texas, united in the Texas prison system to create the Barrio Aztecas gang. They quickly rose to power in the Texas prison system and ultimately became a powerful transnational criminal organization. Kolb describes the prison dynamic of predator and prey and the need...

The remarkable (and occasionally ridiculous) stories of 48 nations that fell off the map. Countries are just daft stories we tell each other. They're all equally implausible once you get up close. Countries die. Sometimes it's murder, sometimes it's by accident, and sometimes it's because they were so ludicrous they didn't deserve to exist in the first place. An Atlas...

Examines how four intellectuals with ties to the French social sciences articulated a new primitivist sensibility between 1945 and 1975. We tend to associate primitivism with the nostalgic idealisation of origins, often aimed at parts of the world that are viewed as closer to that idealised past than modern post-industrial society. Primitivist impulses still exist in popular culture, whether in...

Worlds Together, Worlds Apart provides a compelling chronological foundation for world history. A global story frames each chapter, making thousands of years of history less daunting for students and instructors. New lead authors and master teachers Jeremy Adelman and Elizabeth Pollard distil cutting-edge scholarship with a focus on introductory students. By supporting students in making comparisons and connections across the...

An unflinching look at the most urgent humanitarian crises around the globe, from one of the world’s most daring philosopher-reporters “Call[s] on people not just to see the world, but to be moved and interested by what they find there, and to do something about it.”—Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic “Fierce and elegant, Lévy’s musings will be of profound interest to...

A compelling theory on the rationale for the changing fortunes of nations

The world's most famous speeches, together in one volume. From Moses to Nelson Mandela, speeches have helped both change the way we see the world and the way the world is shaped. A great orator, however, has to have the right words and the right message to inspire his or her followers. The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches gathers together...

The Globalization Myth by Shannon K O'Neil makes a compelling case for why regionalization, rather than globalization, has been the most significant economic trend of the past forty years. The conventional wisdom about globalization is wrong. Over the past forty years, as companies, money, ideas, and people ventured abroad, they favoured regional rather than global connections. O’Neil provides an in-depth...

From calls to arms to demands for peace, and from cries of freedom to words of inspiration, this stirring anthology captures the voices of prophets and politicians, rebels and tyrants, soldiers and statesman, placing them in historical context. With over a million copies already sold, this completely revised and updated pocket edition includes speeches by those that have truly shaped...

Golden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement, and economic growth. Ancient Greece gave us democracy and the rule of law; out of Abbasid Baghdad came algebra and modern medicine, and the Dutch Republic furnished us with Europe's greatest artistic movements. As such, each has unique lessons to teach us about the world we...

The radical changes that occurred in the three years between January 1962 and December 1964 had a profound effect on creative life in the city and around the world, altering not only the fine arts but everything from performance to music to design. Together with these creative innovations, the period from 1962 through 1964 saw a shift in the centre...

An engrossing guide to fraudulent elections around the world—fully updated to mark the biggest election year in history in 2024, as over four billion people cast their votes. Contrary to popular belief, authoritarian leaders who hold elections are generally able to remain in power for longer. How to Rig an Election by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas shows us how...

An A to Z exploration of the Enlightenment’s quest for understanding and change, as revealed in the era’s prints and drawings Are volcanoes punishment from God? What do a fly and a mulberry have in common? What utopias await in unexplored corners of the earth and beyond? During the Enlightenment, questions like these were brought to life through an astonishing...

A fascinating exploration of why Hitler's death was only confirmed in 2018 The Long Death of Adolf Hitler by Caroline Sharples delves into the perplexing delay in confirming Adolf Hitler's death, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and...

From the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America, an exploration of food’s cultural importance and its crucial role throughout human history “A rich and fascinating narrative that reaches deep into the historical and cultural larder of societal experience, powerfully illustrating the myriad ways that food matters as an essential condiment for humanity.”—Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group...