Robert Muchembled

Can the orgasm be explained in historical terms? An almost incommunicable individual emotion yet also a cultural reality, the orgasm is part of, but also escapes, collective experience. The history of the orgasm is that of the hidden body, of forbidden desires, of flesh constrained by taboos and morality. Buried deep in archives and libraries, the documents that shed light...

Why is our sense of smell so under-appreciated? We tend to think of smell as a vestigial remnant of our pre-human past, doomed to gradual extinction, and we go to great lengths to eliminate smells from our environment, suppressing body odour, bad breath, and other smells. Living in a relatively odour-free environment has numbed us to the importance that smells...

This highly original and engaging book by French historian Robert Muchembled is a journey through time and space in search of the changing perception and significance of the devil in Western culture. The author takes the story back to the 13th century, when visual images of Satan first started to appear, and forward to the 20th century, dealing with, among...