Social History

For Rian Malan, the blessing of living in South Africa is that every day presents him with material whose richness astounds those who live in saner places. Twenty years after the publication of his bestseller My Traitor's Heart, he is still strongly...

Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells, taking in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, cutpurses and con-men, through to the Gordon...

'I loved every page, and ended up admiring David Kynaston, our greatest social historian, even more than I already did' Nick Hornby Brimming with wisdom and humour, David Kynaston's diaries written over one football season offer up his most personal...

'An uplifting record of progress and strength... You'll lay the book down feeling not only informed, but galvanised to take action yourself.' Independent'An incredible book . . . with the potential to change women's lives.' Sandi ToksvigWhy is it taking...

'An uplifting record of progress and strength... You'll lay the book down feeling not only informed, but galvanised to take action yourself.' Independent'An incredible book . . . with the potential to change women's lives.' Sandi ToksvigWhy is it taking...

A revelatory revisionist biography of Alexander Graham Bell - renowned inventor of the telephone and powerful enemy of the deaf community. When Alexander Graham Bell first unveiled his telephone to the world, it was considered miraculous. But few...

A Sunday Times Book of the YearQueen Of Our Times is the definitive biography of Queen Elizabeth II by one of Britain's leading royal authorities, Robert Hardman. This commemorative edition includes an epilogue reflecting upon Her Majesty's Platinum...

'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics...

'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics...

A crime scene. A murder. A mystery.The most important person on the scene? The forensic scientist. And yet the intricate details of their work remains a mystery to most of us. Silent Witnesses looks at the history of forensic science over the last two...

An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinkerThe Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780735218161Author Tony PerrottetFormat HardbackPage Count 400Imprint Prentice Hall PressPublisher Prentice Hall Press

One of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the history of Western thought, St Thomas Aquinas established the foundations for much of modern philosophy of religion, and is infamous for his arguments for the existence of God. In this...

A celebration of reading, of libraries, and of the mysterious human desire to give order to the universe Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on...

In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Toibin walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a report on...

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from King's Cross to King's Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system...

The diaries of Ruth Ozanne give us a remarkable eyewitness account of daily life during the German occupation of Guernsey from 1940 to 1945. At the beginning of the occupation, there is an atmosphere of good-humoured defiance on the Island. The...

From the popular historian and author of Among the Bohemians and How Was It For You? comes a new offering, unbuttoning the multi-layered, hundred-year-history of women's lives through fashion and beauty from 1860 to 1960At the heart of this history is...

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION A spectacular, definitive portrait of ordinary life within one of the world's most repressive states - North Korea. 'A most perceptive and eye-opening account of everyday life in North Korea'...

'An illuminating work of massive insight' Alan Moore'A sensational book. Heartily recommended' Rufus HoundIt is the century about which we know too much, yet understand too little. With disorientating ideas such as relativity, cubism, the id,...

One woman's investigation into the nature of memory, the past, and above all, love. All families have their myths and Juliet Nicolson's was no different: her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her...

A major study of the Holland Park Circle, this is both a narrative of the lives, works and influence of the artists, architects and their patrons and a perceptive analysis of the subtle relationships between high Victorian taste and mercantile values...

'We're all now self-makers, whether we like it or not - and this witty, sceptical book is the thought-provoking story of how we got here'GUARDIAN'A fast-moving train of a book'NEW YORK TIMES'Gripping'TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'Funny, startling . . . a...

Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the...

In 1897 the promising young sociologist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was given a temporary post as Assistant in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in order to conduct a systematic investigation of social conditions in the seventh...

'Outstanding, illuminating, compelling ... a riveting read' Peter Frankopan, Sunday Times Islamic civilization was once the envy of the world. From a succession of glittering, cosmopolitan capitals, Islamic empires lorded it over the Middle East, North...

*FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH* 'I really can't recommend this enough - especially if you are going on holiday' Tom Holland 'Delightful ... Lucy Lethbridge has written a glorious romp of a book' Kathryn Hughes, The Mail on Sunday 'It is the...

When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not have known that there were sixty-seven other women also resident in Parliament that night: housekeepers,...

In Pop Goes the Weasel, Albert Jack explores the strange and fascinating histories behind the nursery rhymes we thought we knew, showing that their real meanings are far from innocent.Who were Mary Quite Contrary and Georgie Porgie? How could Hey Diddle...

From the Velvet Revolution to the disturbing world of Franz Kafka, from the devestation of the Thirty Years War to the musical elegance of Mozart and Dvorak, Prague is steeped in a wealth of history and culture. PRAGUE IN BLACK AND GOLD is a first class...

An enthralling account of day-to-day life in a medieval French village. Using records gathered by the Catholic Church in its pursuit of heretics, the book recreates the lives of a rich cast of village characters.About the AuthorEmmanuel Le Roy Ladurie...

An exploration of links between opinion and governance in Early Modern England, studying moral panics about crime, sex and belief. Hypothesizing that media-driven panics proliferated in the 1700s, with the development of newspapers and government...

Britain's canals were largely built during the Industrial Revolution to move goods around the country. In time, this network linked the major cities, taking the narrowboats and their cargoes into the heart of urban areas. Today, the canals have been...

This book offers an exciting interpretation of early modern European history (1490-1648). Cunningham and Grell's point of departure, and a prism through which events of the period are interpreted, is Durer's famous woodcut of The Four Horsemen of the...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2012Almost six hundred years ago, a short, genial man took a very old manuscript off a library shelf. With excitement, he saw what he had discovered and ordered it copied. The book was a miraculously surviving...

How did you clean your teeth in the 1660s? What make-up did you wear? What pets did you keep?Making use of every possible contemporary source, Liza Picard presents an engrossing picture of how life in London was really lived in an age of Samuel Pepys,...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023 A WATERSTONES BOOK OF YEAR FOR POLITICS 2023 'I learned something new on every page of this totally essential book'...

The Tang Dynasty (618-907), traditionally regarded as the goldenage of China, was a time of patricians and intellectuals, Buddhist monks and Taoist priests, poetry and music, song and dance. In China's Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty,...

'Remarkable and compelling. I loved this book' EDMUND DE WAAL'An exemplary sleuth, both astute and open-minded . . . Manera Sambuy writes with impassioned style and insight' TELEGRAPHA lost princess and a vanished world: a remarkable true story that...

The ancient Greeks gave us our alphabet and much of our scientific, medical and cultural language; they invented democracy, atomic theory, and the rules of logic and geometry; laid the foundations of philosophy, history, tragedy and comedy; and debated...