Social History

There are many ways to try to improve our lives - we can turn to the wisdom of philosophers, the teachings of religions or the latest experiments of psychologists. But we rarely to look to history for inspiration - and when we do it can be surprisingly...

Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of the sixteen essays in Animals Strike Curious Poses investigates a different famous animal named and immortalised by humans. Here are the...

Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the rise and fall and rise again of some of the most elaborate parks in the world. It's a...

Just days into the miners' strike of 1984-1985, a few women in coalfield communities around Britain began to meet to consider how they could support the strike, a clash with the Thatcher government over the future of the coal industry. Women ultimately...

How Freud's concept of the super-ego can help us to understand the harsh cultural climate of the digital age Cancellation, scapegoating, raving on Twitter. How did the Internet, which began as a place for open thought and exchange, become a forum for...

This collection of research explores the relationship between the Conservative party and British society since 1880 by focusing on the key themes of ideology, national identity, gender and policy. The focus of the text is not so much on the Conservative...

The remnants of slate mining and quarrying form as much a part of the Lakeland historic landscape as the stone walls, heathered moorlands and Lakeland farms do. A significant number of local families currently living in Lake District villages has had...

Beneath the Big Top is a social history of the circus, from its ancient roots to the rise of the 'modern' tented travelling shows. A performer and founder of a circus group, Steve Ward draws on eye-witness accounts and contemporary interviews to explore...

'I thought I had a pretty good sense of how colonialism shapes modern society, but Dr Davy has shown me that understanding these things is a lifetime's work. In the absence of time to read everything, you could not ask for a more eloquent guide than this...

Berlin Calling is a gripping account of the 1989 'peaceful revolution' in East Germany that upended communism and the tumultuous years of artistic ferment, political improvisation, and pirate utopias that followed. It's the story of a newly undivided...

In this classic work, Wayne A. Meeks analyzes the earliest extant documents of Christianity-the letters of Paul-to describe the tensions and the texture of life of the first urban Christians. In a new introduction, he describes the evolution of the field...

Fred Beiser, renowned as one of the world's leading historians of German philosophy, presents a brilliant new study of Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), rehabilitating him as a philosopher worthy of serious attention. Beiser shows, in particular, that...

The Victorians risked more than just delays when boarding a steam train . . .Victorian inventors certainly didn't lack steam, but while they squabbled over who deserved the title of 'The Father of the Locomotive' and enjoyed their fame and fortune,...

In his rich and nuanced portrait of the remarkable, elusive Rothschild family, Oxford scholar and bestselling author Niall Ferguson uncovers the secrets behind the family's phenomenal economic success. He reveals for the first time the details of the...

This book examines the politics of the French Revolutionary tradition during the Bourbon Restoration and early July Monarchy. Robert Alexander argues that political change was achieved by legal grassroots organization and persuasion - rather than by the...

We left Robert a long way from home, a sixteen-year-old recruit in the RAF. Now, we follow his escape from the Forces (until National Service a few years later!), his return to Glasgow and life down the pit. Once more, Robert's fantastic memory for...

Since the rise of Napster and other file-sharing services in its wake, most of us have assumed that intellectual piracy is a product of the digital age and that it threatens creative expression as never before. The Motion Picture Association of America,...

From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch...

Winner of 2019 British Book Design & Production Award for Scholarly, Academic & Reference Books This beautiful book charts the development of the circus as an art form around the world, from antiquity to the present day. Using over 200 circus...

This book is a modern investigation of an ancient virtue, inspired by a group for stage-frightened musicians in 1940s Manhattan. Coinciding with the terrifying height of World War Two, it was called The Society of Timid Souls. Seventy years later, as...

This book constitutes the first comprehensive history of the network of women who worked at the heart of the English Arts and Crafts movement from the 1870s to the 1930s. Challenging the long-standing assumption that the Arts and Crafts simply revolved...

From the time of the Picts to the present day, Scotland has played an important role in the development of British brewing, providing a host of inventions and other contributions vital to its success. Covering such topics as Scotch Ale, Porter, Shilling...

Charting the stories of Olympic athletes and lesbian memoirists, via Sappho, Lesbian Love Story is a genre-defying respository of sapphic romance like no other.On her quest to discovering lesbian role models overlooked by history, Amelia Possanza...

On May 6, 1950, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard from the small village of Tollund were cutting mud to find peat for their stove in the Bjaeldskovdal peat bog, 12km west of Silkeborg, Denmark. As they worked, one of their wives noticed in the peat layer a corpse...

Book of the Year in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and New Statesman'A powerful illumination of a lost world that is nevertheless part of living memory.' Simon Heffer, 'Books of the Year' , Daily Telegraph'A joyous new book on post-war Britain.' Daily...

A "brilliant and sobering" (Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal) look at the history and human costs of pandemic outbreaksAs seen on "60 Minutes" The World Economic Forum #1 book to read for context on the coronavirus outbreak This sweeping exploration...

A riveting study of Africa's demographics - its youth and growth - and what they mean for the continent, today and into the future. 'Essential reading' Guardian 'Intensely researched - and very important!' The Week 'The research in Youthquake...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780993560729Author John Wilson FosterFormat PaperbackPage Count 424Imprint Belcouver PressPublisher Belcouver PressWeight(grams) 551g

The story of Swindon-born film star Diana Dors is one of fame, glamour and intrigue. From the moment she came into the world, her life was full of drama. Her acting career began in the shadow of the Second World War, entering the film world as a...

This study offers a distinctive new account of British economic life since the Second World War, focussing upon the ways in which successive governments, in seeking to manage the economy, have sought simultaneously to 'manage the people': to try and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780954396787Author Michael FairleyFormat PaperbackPage Count 156Imprint MifairPublisher MifairWeight(grams) 227g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781440349065Author Nancy HendricksonFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Family Tree BooksPublisher F&W Publications Inc

Ambitious and groundbreaking, Electric Shock tells the story of popular music, from the birth of recording in the 1890s to the digital age, from the first pop superstars of the twentieth century to the omnipresence of music in our lives, in hit singles,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780857101327Author Bruce BoultonFormat HardbackPage Count 144Imprint PiXZ BooksPublisher PiXZ Books

A groundbreaking book that puts early and medieval West Africa on the map of global historyPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different...

Contrary to what is often believed, good food was valued highly in the Middle Ages - the fragrance of exotic spices filled the air, meat turned on the spit and fish was consumed in abundance for religious reasons. The wealthy made a show of their...

Mireille Gansel grew up in the traumatic aftermath of her family losing everything-including their native languages-to Nazi Germany. In the 1960s and 70s, she translated poets from East Berlin and Vietnam to help broadcast their defiance to the rest of...

Explore the remnants of vanished villages across Ontario’s cottage country.Crumbling foundations lost in the forest, weathered buildings leaning wearily with age, cracked tombstones jutting from the ground — all serve as haunting reminders of once...

The Gypsy family of Abram Wood first arrived in Wales in the eighteenth century, a tawny-skinned people speaking a language close to Hindi and Sanskrit. Welsh society found their customs strange and sometimes unacceptable. The family included such...

On 15 June 1215, rebel barons forced King John to meet them at Runnymede. They did not trust the King, so he was not allowed to leave until his seal was attached to the charter in front of him.This was Magna Carta. It was a revolutionary document. Never...