Tracing the rise and spread of Buddhism from its roots, WD shows the dominance of Indian culture in the ancient and early medieval worlds. The author's customary grace, zest and elegance ren... read more
A deeply personal social history. From ancient Greece to 70s' New York, from Diogenes to her father, Eberstadt explores how people have used their bodies to challenge the world around them.
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.
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
A large-format, lavishly illustrated book on 16 voyages of discovery that took place between 1714 and 1854 by the famous (Lap?rouse, Bougainville et Dumont d'Urville) and the less so (La Ba... read more
Bazaars in Tabriz, laxatives in Venice, sheep growing on trees and other marvels: an intrepid journey into the medieval mind and its furnishings, based on travellers accounts from Iceland to... read more
A surprising story of obsession, necessity, invention and adventure. One could really turn the title around for ice has preserved human history as few other mediums have.
An engaging and idiosyncratic writer uses the machinations of the 1907 Peking-Paris car race as mirror to the geopolitical and technological changes which - not even a decade later - pitched... read more
Compiled from Dervla's books and journalism: fifty years of travelling in Spain, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, the Andes, Africa, Palestine, the Balkans, Jamaica... She never went by car and w... read more
Forty of these remarkable horticultural institutions throughout the world, including Norway, Morocco, Kyoto, Kew, Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Malaysia...
Although never the language of a state or ethnic group, Syriac remains widely used across the globe and is regarded as the third language of Christianity. It even reached China, thanks to th... read more
If Mrs T is what she eats, who is Mrs T? A long journey to understand how food is connected to place and national identity, how tradition and innovation create culture. Warm, knowledgeable a... read more
Encompasses natural events and their consequences on a vast scale, showing how these have shaped human responses, trade, empires... Particularly trenchant as we try to understand climate cha... read more
A fascinating exploration of the use of wood in human history: half a million years of tools, devices, construction, art and architecture, from wedges, planes, screws and pulleys to stave ch... read more
The history of the world through the lens of the family, from a group walking along a beach 950,000 years ago to Caesars, Medicis, Bonapartes, Krupps, Assads, etc.