Inspired by Darwin and von Humboldt, ARW travelled to the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago. He published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin's Origin of Species... read more
This is a bewitching and sympathetic account of a deliciously odd, brilliantly clever man. He was prone to headstands, toothbrushing and - like Lord Lundy - to tears.
In a particularly elegant diplomatic gesture, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid sent an elephant to Aachen in 802 AD. This fresh perspective draws on many Arabic sources.
The great historian of late antiquity mixes the personal with the scholarly in telling the story of his life and work. Engagement with the non-European world has been intrinsic to his work.
The long shadow of Ottoman rule: Mestyan argues that new local polities were based on recalibrated Ottoman structures rather than on European colonialism (with the exception of Palestine).
'Drawing from such diverse sources as Newton's Principia, military manuals, eighteenth-century games, and cookbooks among others, Lorraine Daston seeks to define the role rules have played i... read more
A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz by his compatriot and fellow exile Eva Hoffman. The predominant themes here ar... read more
Erudition and curiosity impel this vivid, detailed portrait by the world's foremost expert on Linnaeus: this biography won several prizes when it was first published in Sweden in 2019.
The distinguished historian of China, author of Vermeer's Hat, argues that it was not so much the Manchu invasion as climate change that brought collapse to the Ming Dynasty.
The first English translation of this often overlooked French intellectual's last lecture, in which Aron emphasises the importance of liberal democracy during the tumultuous years of the Col... read more