Social History

The product of many years' research by Susan Palmer, archivist to Sir John Soane's Museum, At Home with the Soanes paints a detailed picture of the social and domestic life at Nos 12 & 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, in the early 19th century - how...

This is a collection of essays on an important but overlooked aspect of early modern English life: the artistic and intellectual patronage of the Inns of Court and their influence on religion, politics, education, rhetoric, and culture from the late...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves sweets. However keen we might be on fine cheese, vintage wine or acorn-fed Iberian ham, much of the time we'd be happier with a Curly-Wurly. But why do we like sweets so much? Why is there such...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781621064848Author Stephen DuncombeFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Microcosm PublishingPublisher Microcosm Publishing

Trolls are everywhere. They lurk on the internet; they fill the pages of popular fantasy literature; they are hunted in Norwegian film. They are the homeless in California; they are comforting or threatening characters in children's books; they are...

One of the government’s former behavioural scientists reveals how you can do what you want, whilst everybody tries to influence you into doing what they want. Influence makes you think what you think and do as you do. You use it to change the thoughts...

For all the horrifying statistics of the number infected by COVID-19, multiply by a factor of 20 to approximate how many worldwide are suffering stress, depression, relationship breakdown and even suicide, as a direct consequence of Coronavirus. In this...

This book describes how two newly invented communications technologies - the telephone and the electric light - were publicly envisioned, in specialized engineering trade journals as well as in more popular media, at the end of the nineteenth century...

A New York Times bestseller, Red is the first book to explore the history of red hair and red-headedness throughout the world.With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, Jacky Colliss Harvey explores red hair in the ancient...

In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Sharon Block exposes the dynamics of sexual power on which colonial and early republican Anglo-American society was based. Block analyzes the legal,...

Explore the lives of over forty men and women – great and otherwise – whose pioneering journeys beyond the Irish shore played a profound role in world history. The Irish have always been a travelling people. Since 1800 an estimated 10 million people...

From Victoria Glendinning, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and (twice) the Whitbread Prize for Biography. 'It's Succession in tailcoats and spats ... This is a vivid and...

"Some particular books I found useful for A Game of Thrones and its sequels deserve mention...Life in a Medieval Castle and Life in a Medieval City, both by Joseph and Frances Gies." -George R.R. Martin, author of the series A Song of Ice and...

A sweeping history of the full range of human labor Few authors are able to write cogently in both the scientific and the economic spheres. Even fewer possess the intellectual scope needed to address science and economics at a macro as well as a micro...

Winner of the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing 2017 Journeying around the globe, through past and present, Emma Tarlo unravels the intriguing story of human hair and what it tells us about ourselves and society. When it's not attached...

A captivating new book from Wade Davis - winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence - that brings vividly to life the story of the great Rio Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and future.For Wade Davis, Colombia was...

Matchbox toys were ubiquitous items for children across the Western world. Originally labelled Christmas-cracker trash by retailers and shopkeepers, the small-scale 1-75 series soon began to see unprecedented worldwide sales in the 1950s. Smaller and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143036678Author Stephanie CoontzFormat PaperbackPage Count 448Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 425gDimensions(mm) 213mm *...

This is the story of the women, men, boys, and girls who hawked oysters, cherries, cabbages, and pies on London's streets, feeding the capital throughout its transformation from medieval city to global metropolis. Street Food reconstructs the working...

**Longlisted for the ALCS Gold Non-Fiction Dagger** **Longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2022** 'Haunting ... lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned' Sunday Times 'A compelling whodunnit ... Devastating'...

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 PICK IN THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN*From the award-winning author of Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice comes a major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his...

Voices and Books in the English Renaissance offers a new history of reading that focuses on the oral reader and the voice- or performance-aware silent reader, rather than the historical reader, who is invariably male, silent, and alone. It recovers the...

A magnificent and timely examination of an age of fear, subversion, suppression and espionage, Adam Zamoyski explores the attempts of the governments of Europe to police the world in a struggle against obscure forces, seemingly dedicated to the overthrow...

The Imperial War Museum holds a vast archive of interviews with soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians of most nationalities who saw action during WW2. As in the highly-acclaimed Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Max Arthur and his team of researchers...

Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn...

A vivid and human glimpse into Europe's borderlands as they emerged from Soviet rule - back in print after nearly 20 years'In this superb book, in which one senses the spirit of Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz, the dramatic world of the Eastern borderlands...

This 9th edition of Martin Gilbert's Atlas of Jewish History spans over four thousand years of history in 196 maps, starting with the worldwide migration of the Jews from ancient Mesopotamia and coming up into the first decades of the twenty-first...

For children in Portsmouth, the 1950s was an exciting time. With the war over and a renewed enthusiasm in the air, life was good. There was a range of entertainment - as well as day trips and holidays to the beach, families could relax in front of the...

'I read Bessborough in one sitting, veering from fury to devastation within a matter of pages. A vitally important book.' Louise O'Neill'Vivid and powerful' CAELAINN HOGAN'I loved this book for its sheer honesty' CATHERINE CORLESS'A powerfully important...

The old county of Sussex is one of the most beautiful in England, but beneath its rural idyll lies a history that is surprising and often shocking. Local author and historian Christopher Horlock brings us some of the county's strange and mythical...

The British monarchy has been through turbulent times of late. Rocked by scandal and strife, and without it seems a clear plan for the future following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, we have been left wondering: what happens next? Nothing seems...

The Corgi model of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 is the best-selling toy car ever produced and found a place in the hearts of children of all ages around the world. Corgi Toys was founded in Swansea in 1956 and was always highly innovative,...

'An exemplary narrative history, with the archives plundered judiciously ... [Kynaston's] portrait of a globally influential institution is, in characteristic style, rendered on an entertainingly human scale' The Times 'Not an ordinary bank, but a...

Do you remember washing in a tin bath by the fire, using outside lavatories and not having a television? Did you grow up in the 1950s and were you a teenager in the swinging sixties? If the Festival of Britain, food rationing and the Queen's coronation...

Pleasant smells have long been associated not only with health, wealth and good hygiene but also sound moral character; bad smells indicate lack of cleanliness, ill health, poverty - and immorality. Throughout history, people have applied scents to their...

This is the first book-length study of the relationship between early modern drama and sacramental ritual and theology. It examines dramatic forms, such as morality plays. Offering new insights into the religious practices on which early modern...

Shortlisted for the HWA Non-fiction Crown Award 2020'Superb' The Economist'Elegant, entertaining and frequently surprising' New York TimesThe fascinating story of the Regency period in Britain - an immensely colourful and chaotic decade that marked the...

The process of modernization has brought discontinuities in collective memory. The books provide an act of collective remembrance, knitting together many voices and stories. They show the readers a world of the past before modernization began in the...

A practical and uplifting vision of better ways to live together, own property, have families and raise children, from the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism.'Kristen Ghodsee is back with another splendid insight: utopia can and ought to...

One of the Financial Times' Best Economics Books of 2023 Visionary Oxford professor Ian Goldin and The Economist's Tom Lee-Devlin show why the city is where the battles of inequality, social division, pandemics and climate change must be faced. ...