Social History

Birkbeck traces the 200-year history of Birkbeck, University of London from its founding at a time when social elites deplored the notion of educated working people to the present day. Joanna Bourke writes a lively history of the institution, and how it...

This is the untold story of black music - its triumph over racism, segregation, undercapitalised record labels, media discrimination and political anxiety - told through the perspective of the most powerful office in the world: from Louis Armstrong's...

A one-of-a-kind exploration of the relationship between culture, politics, history, and wine. Vintage refers to the year grapes are harvested, and that vintage holds meaning. You can look up the weather in any almanac, but some stories are known only to...

The Peak District is noted for its beautiful and varied scenery, its fascinating history, and its abundance of folktales. The sixty-two pieces in this collection include both wonder tales (fairy tales) and local legends, together with a few genuinely...

The story of the world's first fashion-obsessed society in 18th-century London Caricatured for extravagance, vanity, glamorous celebrity and, all too often, embroiled in scandal and gossip, 18th-century London's fashionable society had a...

The Sandhole was Preston's place of debauchery and shame. But Victorian morality ensured that it never appeared on any town maps, and despite regular reports in the newspapers of the time, it doesn't even survive in folk memory. It is a part of Preston's...

A history of how, in the mid-twentieth century, we came to believe in the concept of creativity. Named a best book of 2023 by the New Yorker and a notable book of 2023 by Behavioral Scientist. Creativity is one of American society's signature values,...

For two centuries, the shadow of the workhouse hung over Britain. The recourse of only the most desperate, dark and terrible tales of malnutrition, misery, mistreatment and murder ran like wildfire through the poorer classes, who lived in terror of being...

London Labour and the London Poor originated in a series of newspaper articles written by the great journalist Henry Mayhew between 1849 and 1850. A dozen years later, it had grown into the fullest picture we have of labouring people in the world's...

What lies behind the human attraction to violence? Why do we glorify war, seeing it as an almost sacred undertaking? Barbara Ehrenreich is known for the originality and clarity of her thinking, and in Blood Rites she proposes a radical new theory about...

Brittany's richly layered landscape has contributed depth and character to the region's traditional oral culture, from stories of the sea and shore to tales of misty moors, sacred hill-tops and secretive forests. Evangelizing Dark Age saints from Britain...

Radio is a medium of seemingly endless contradictions. Now in its third century of existence, the technology still seems startlingly modern; despite frequent predictions of its demise, radio continues to evolve and flourish in the age of the internet and...

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution,the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian...

The Renaissance is one of the most celebrated periods in European history. But when did it begin? When did it end? And what did it include? Traditionally regarded as a revival of classical art and learning, centred upon fifteenth-century Italy, views...

The fascinating history of poetry anthologies and their influence on British society and culture over the last four centuries. For hundreds of years, anthologies have shaped the way we encounter literature. Eighteenth-century children and young women...

Lavishly illustrated with unique images from the official company archive, this book charts more than 100 years of car-making at the Longbridge factory, near Birmingham. Herbert Austin founded the Austin Motor Company here in April 1905 and it was...

When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein...

We are surrounded by stationery: half-chewed Cristal Bics and bent paper clips, rubber bands to fiddle with or ping, blunt pencils, rubbers and Tipp-ex are integral parts of our everyday environment. So much so that we never think about where they come...

A fascinating history of China's relations with the West-told through the lives of two eighteenth-century translatorsThe 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney's fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been...

Bodin's Six livres de la republique is a vast synthesis of comparative public law and politics, the theoretical core of which is formed by the four chapters translated in this volume. These contain his celebrated theory of sovereignty, which informed his...

Imagine a world without sight. Is it dark and gloomy? Is it terrifying and isolating? Or is it simply a state of not seeing, which we have demonised and sentimentalized over the centuries? And why is blindness so frightening? In this fascinating...

'excellent' LSE Review of Books China is the world's most populous country and newest superpower, whose place on the international stage can only be understood through the lens of its modern history. The Oxford History of Modern China is essential...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781592859474Author ANONYMOUSFormat HardbackPage Count 248Imprint Hazelden Information & Educational ServicesPublisher Hazelden Information & Educational...

After the critically acclaimed epic fantasy THE WOLF comes THE SPIDER, book two in Leo Carew's UNDER THE NORTHERN SKY seriesA battle has been won, but the war still wages on . . .Roper, the Black Lord of the northern people, may have vanquished the...

Sweet and Clean? challenges the widely held beliefs on bathing and cleanliness in the past. For over thirty years, the work of the French historian, George Vigarello, has been hugely influential on early modern European social history, describing an...

'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial TimesA revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780957000520Author E. P. ThompsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 278Imprint Breviary Stuff PublicationsPublisher Breviary Stuff PublicationsWeight(grams) 432g

A landmark book that charts humanity's changing relationship with birds - from the ancient Egyptians to the twenty-first century 'A marvellously original slice of social history' Daily Mail'The facts and folklore of birdlife are dissected in admirable...

The book explores the changing ways in which male-male sex and love have been perceived and experienced from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the present. Celebrated figures, such as Richard Lionheart, whose love for Philip Augustus of France was so...

In this road map to restoring feminine sexual power, Betsy Prioleau introduces and analyzes the stories and stratagems of history's greatest seductresses. These are the women who ravished the world-from such classic figures as Cleopatra and Mae West to...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2021 Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2021 Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown 2021 'Fabulous' - The Times 'A milestone in women's history' - Observer 'Groundbreaking ... a fascinating...

First published in 1999, Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks and the coffee crisis of the 21st century. Mark Pendergrast uses coffee production, trade, and consumption as...

A brilliantly researched and gripping history of the BBC, from its origins to the present day.'The book could scarcely be better or better timed. It is elegantly written, closely argued, balanced, pulls no punches.' MELVYN BRAGG, GUARDIANCharlotte...

A brilliantly researched and gripping history of the BBC, from its origins to the present day.'The book could scarcely be better or better timed. It is elegantly written, closely argued, balanced, pulls no punches.' MELVYN BRAGG, GUARDIANCharlotte...

INCLUDES HUNDREDS OF NEW AND EXPANDED ENTRIES From 'Aald Rock' to 'Zeenty-teenty', A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable is an unputdownable gallimaufry of curious items embracing sayings, put-downs, insults, mottos, traditions, legends, folklore,...

This fascinating book explores the history of makeup and beauty from lipstick to leg shaving. Madeleine Marsh chronicles the development of cosmetics from a secret shame in the 19th century, to a handbag essential in the 20th. She tells the stories...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781803710143Author Maria ChamberlainFormat PaperbackPage Count 264Imprint Vallentine Mitchell & Co LtdPublisher Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd

Winter takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter. We learn how literature heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to...

The Royal Institution of South Wales is a very special organisation, one of the few such institutions to survive into the twenty-first century. Founded in 1835, it opened Wales's first museum in 1841, running it until 1990, and it remains today a...

'Brilliant' Financial Times 'Hollis expertly weaves together the human tragedy and high politics behind the explosion of one of the world's greatest cities' Dan Snow The reclaimed history of a woman whose tragic life tells a story of madness,...