Like a detective novel of the time, the story of two booksellers who uncovered the forgeries of a pompous bastion of the literary scene in 1930s' London.
How, whether made on tally sticks or via electronic portal, systems of debt and credit have been a driving force in the development of states from Pisa in the C12th to the Bolshevik Revoluti... read more
This rich historical analysis argues that the Enlightenment was a failure on its own terms. Terror, revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and Empire prevailed instead of Reason.
The C10th synthesis of Greek thought in Central Asi. Starr's magnificent book is a cultural and intellectual history of the Islamic Enlightenment and its two chief proponents - Ibn Sina and ... read more
Joseph Seligman arrived in the US with $100 sewn into the lining of his clothes; the Lehman brothers followed; then Marcus Goldman and the 'forty-eighters' fleeing European anti-semitism. A ... read more
Contacts and connections as the drivers of cultural change: the West was built on far more than the values of ancient Greece and Rome, as per the Victorian paradigm. Erudite and compelling.
Traces the history of Sefton Delmer, the English propagandist who waged a disinformation war in Nazi Germany, and how that history can help us understand the present.
Walls are famous for their ears - but they can also speak: Pelling gathers these silent shouts into a remarkable history through the scratchings and carvings in prisons, walls, lead roofs, t... read more
An investigation of Jesus' messianic contemporaries and the reasons for Christianity's success. From the author of the highly regarded The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Cla... read more