Some works of scholarship are so monumental and have been so influential that they are worth reading 70 years after publication. Published just after the Second World War in 1948, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (translated from German) is a sweeping exploration of the remarkable continuity of European literature across time and place. […]
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It is a terrible shame that a creative civilisation like Islam can come to be so backward and identified now in the international media with extremist violence. Islam did, in fact, contribute much to world culture and civilisation. Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in
We step on and off aircraft these days routinely. Yet the action of a mammal flying through the air in a planned and directed manner in a machine is completely astonishing. The human ingenuity behind aviation is a marvel, and Tom D. Crouch (https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/tom-crouch) is your best guide to appreciating it in a single volume
The tercentenary celebrations of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–91 prompted much new research on the subject. In 1988 and 1989 there were conferences, symposia, and exhibitions in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. This is the first large-scale publication to emerge from the commemoration, and the first to attempt to bring together the main
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Modern science is old enough now to have a history of its own histories, and Professors in Universities who specialize in the history of science. (e.g. Simon Schaffer at Cambridge, https://www.people.hps.cam.ac.uk/index/teaching-officers/schaffer). Looking back through the history and development of science is a great pleasure, and there are certain accounts which have stood out as highly
Science and the Secrets of Nature is the first major treatment of Renaissance ‘books of secrets’, and of the printers who produced them. ‘Books of secrets’ were collections of recipes for the manufacture of dyes, pigments, soap, and homemade medicines, which might also contain lore on the occult powers of plants. The most influential model for
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This is a landmark work on the human institution of slavery. Entire conferences and world wide debates have centred round it since first publication in 1980. Moses I. Finley (https://www.britac.ac.uk/impact-moses-finley) works to gain an understanding of what slavery meant to the ancients. He locates the origins of ancient slavery in the need for cheap labour which
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Ronald Hyam (https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/user/hyam) offers a wide-ranging set of essays on the history of The British Empire. In his view British imperialism was marked by diversity and complexity which he seeks to illuminate here. Hyam covers geopolitical and economic dynamics of empire, religion and ethics, imperial bureaucracy, the contribution of political leaders, the significance of sexuality, and
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Eric Foner (http://www.ericfoner.com/) offers a sweep of American history with the idea of freedom as the main subject. He focuses on three major themes: 1) different meanings of freedom, 2) social conditions that made freedom possible, and 3) the boundaries and exclusions of freedom. The main understandings of freedom have been ‘civil liberties’; being free from outside coercion; economic liberty;
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