Social History

The inspiration behind the powerful new film starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson, this is the story of Dido Belle, whose adoption by an aristocratic family challenged the conventions of 18th century England. In one of the...

First Published in 1991. In this book the author looks at the history of sexuality, discussing topics of love from the 15th century onwards, sexual morality and marriage, ancient and modern adages conernong procreation as a part of society and the sex...

The mystique of the pre-Columbian Maya has prompted much speculation about the nature of this sophisticated people. With the breaking of their elaborate hieroglyphic code, Schele and Freidel, Mayan scholars of note, provide a new look at the Maya...

Bandstands have been a feature of the British way of life for well over a century - but, after the Second World War, an increasing number fell into disuse and were neglected. Sadly, many were demolished when public parks and seaside resorts went into a...

This book tells two stories about the full-length mirror. One story, through time and space, crisscrosses the globe to introduce a broad range of historical actors: kings and slaves, artists and writers, merchants and craftsmen, courtesans and commoners...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781400079230Author Eli ZaretskyFormat PaperbackPage Count 448Imprint Three Rivers PressPublisher Three Rivers PressWeight(grams) 389g

Queering Desire explores, with unprecedented interdisciplinary scope, contemporary configurations of lesbian, bi, queer women’s, and non-binary people’s experiences of identity and desire. Taking an intersectional feminist and trans-inclusive approach,...

Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment , and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he...

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The acclaimed author of Hitler's Art Thief takes readers into the shadowy world of the aristocrats and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who secretly aided Hitler and Nazi Germany. Hitler said, 'I am convinced that propaganda is an...

Knoydart - the northern edge of the 'Rough Bounds' is one of the most evocative names in Scotland. This text offers a history of Knoydart from the earliest times to the present day. A remote and desolate peninsula, its name derives from Viking settlers...

The history of democracy, in addition to being a tale of social movements and political and economic developments, is also a story of ideas. In Toward Democracy, James T. Kloppenberg explores this story of ideas, focusing on the evolution of democracy in...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781593765439Author W. Scott PooleFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Soft Skull PressPublisher Soft Skull Press

Unlike many other small villages in the UK, Lesmahagow has many claims to fame because of its location and geological heritage and due to many of its sometime residents having taken up influential roles in the history of the nation. Andrew C. Scott's...

'You could not ask for a more eloquent guide than this book. Essential' Sathnam SangheraAn eye-opening book about how societies are designed to support those in power, at the expense of those without it. COLONIAL POWERIn the 1950s, over 10,000 Kenyans...

Covering political, military, economic and social history, Norway in the Second World War is the most authoritative book on the subject in the English language. This innovative study describes how the Germans conquered Norway in 1940 and the type of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780195183658Author Michael McGerrFormat PaperbackPage Count 416Imprint OUP IndiaPublisher OUP IndiaWeight(grams) 590gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 27mm

Private life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) is often seen as having been virtually non-existent, simply another East German commodity forever in short supply. In part this had to do with the common perception that private life and state...

'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, Sunday Times'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, The TimesInspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing The Book of Snobs (1848), D. J...

The bachelor has long held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and even at times unfriendly position in society. This book carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics...

The definitive history of the ever-enduring icon In the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy - sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalized in John McCrae's moving poem - became a...

Engines of War tells the dramatic story of how the railways revolutionized the nature of warfare, ushering in an age of industrialized conflict in which wars were fought on a previously unimaginable scale. From the moment of its first appearance, the...

Who makes your clothes? This used to be an easy question to answer it was the seamstress next door, or the tailor on the high street-or you made them yourself. Today, we rarely know the origins of the clothes hanging in our closets. The local shoemaker,...

Debra Jane Seltzer's beautiful collection of images features some of the most stunning signs that remain on public display in the United States. The focus is on neon signs from the 1940s and 1950s. There are also examples of increasingly rare opal glass...

This is an anthology of life stories collected from 20th-century Estonians describing the travails of ordinary people under numerous regimes from an authentic perspective where time is placed in the context of life-spans, and subjects grounded in...

Using a rich array of oral histories and archival sources, Tomboys and bachelor girls provides the first detailed academic study of lesbian identity and culture in post-war Britain. Described by psychiatrists as immature and neurotic, and widely ignored...

Over the past thirty years, visionary anthropologist Michael Taussig has crafted a highly distinctive body of work. Playful, enthralling, and whip-smart, his writing makes ingenious connections between ideas, thinkers, and things. An extended meditation...

Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were one of the top bands in Liverpool between 1959 and 1962, bigger even than The Beatles. They shared the bill with the Fab Four on many occasions in their home city and in Hamburg, and their first drummer was none other...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781621389989Author Johan HuizingaFormat HardbackPage Count 232Imprint Angelico PressPublisher Angelico PressWeight(grams) 431gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm *...

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain. It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists, and...

How did a time-keeping device affect the growth of crafts guilds and the scientific research that led to the Industrial Revolution? Clocks and Culture is a brief history of the changes wrought by and on Europe over four hundred years due to technological...

There is a persistent myth about the British: that we are a nation of stoics, with stiff upper lips, repressed emotions, and inactive lachrymal glands. Weeping Britannia - the first history of crying in Britain - comprehensively debunks this myth. ...

Scottish Arctic Whaling brings to light a previously little-known but important Scottish industry. The author's extensive use of original sources such as log-books and diaries shows that hundreds of whaling vessels, sailing variously from sixteen...

An enjoyable, accessible exploration of the legacy of ancient Greece today, across our daily lives and all forms of popular culture Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like "pandemic," a Freudian state of mind like the "Oedipus...

When is seduction about more than just sex? In this brilliantly original history, Clement Knox explores these questions as well as the philosophy, legality, politics, art and literature of a force that underwrites our world. ...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780143127147Author William RosenFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 284g

This is the first comprehensive critical study of the Organisation Todt (OT), a key institution which oversaw the Third Reich's vast slave labour programme together with the SS, Wehrmacht and industry. The book breaks new ground by revealing the full...

Back-to-backs were once the commonest form of housing in England, home to the majority of working people in Victorian cities, but they have now almost entirely vanished from our urban townscape. The survival of Court 15 in Birmingham is the starting...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781585095865Author George G M JamesFormat HardbackPage Count 204Imprint Book TreePublisher Book TreeWeight(grams) 408gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 16mm

Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done. You'll encounter Kit Cavanagh, the swaggering Irish dragoon who was the first woman to be buried in London with...