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1) A History of France - John Julius Norwich
Grove Atlantic | 2019 | EPUB

John Julius Norwich—called a “true master of narrative history” by Simon Sebag Montefiore—returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France: a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best.

Beginning with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters—Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc and Marie Antionette, to name a few—as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, always fascinating history. From the French Revolution—after which neither France, nor the world, would be the same again—to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book more.”

With his celebrated stylistic panache and expert command of detail, Norwich writes in an inviting, intimate tone, and with a palpable affection for France. One of our greatest contemporary historians has deftly crafted a comprehensive yet concise portrait of the country’s historical sweep.

2) Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy - John Julius Norwich
Random House | 2011 | EPUB

In a chronicle that captures nearly two thousand years of inspiration and intrigue, John Julius Norwich recounts in riveting detail the histories of the most significant popes and what they meant politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and to the world. Norwich presents such popes as Innocent I, who in the fifth century successfully negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil authorities could not defeat; Leo I, who two decades later tamed (and perhaps paid off) Attila the Hun; the infamous “pornocracy”—the five libertines who were descendants or lovers of Marozia, debauched daughter of one of Rome’s most powerful families; Pope Paul III, “the greatest pontiff of the sixteenth century,” who reinterpreted the Church’s teaching and discipline; John XXIII, who in five short years starting in 1958 instituted reforms that led to Vatican II; and Benedict XVI, who is coping with today’s global priest sex scandal. Epic and compelling, Absolute Monarchs is an enthralling history from “an enchanting and satisfying raconteur” (The Washington Post).

3) Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History - John Julius Norwich
Random House | 2015 | EPUB

“Sicily,” said Goethe, “is the key to everything.” It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East. Sicily’s strategic location has tempted Roman emperors, French princes, and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful dynasties.

Yet Sicily has often been little more than a footnote in books about other empires. John Julius Norwich’s engrossing narrative is the first to knit together all of the colorful strands of Sicilian history into a single comprehensive study. Here is a vivid, erudite, page-turning chronicle of an island and the remarkable kings, queens, and tyrants who fought to rule it. From its beginnings as a Greek city-state to its emergence as a multicultural trading hub during the Crusades, from the rebellion against Italian unification to the rise of the Mafia, the story of Sicily is rich with extraordinary moments and dramatic characters. Writing with his customary deftness and humor, Norwich outlines the surprising influence Sicily has had on world history—the Romans’ fascination with Greek civilization dates back to their sack of Sicily—and tells the story of one of the world’s most kaleidoscopic cultures in a galvanizing, contemporary way.

This volume has been a long time coming—Norwich began to explore Sicily’s colorful history during his first visit to the island in the early 1960s. The dean of popular historians leads his readers through the millennia with the steady narrative hand of a master teacher or the world’s most learned tour guide. Like the island itself, Sicily is a book brimming with bold flavors that begs to be revisited again and again.

4) A Short History of Byzantium - John Julius Norwich
Vintage | 1998 | EPUB

In this magisterial adaptation of his epic three-volume history of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich chronicles the world's longest-lived Christian empire. Beginning with Constantine the Great, who in a.d. 330 made Christianity the religion of his realm and then transferred its capital to the city that would bear his name, Norwich follows the course of eleven centuries of Byzantine statecraft and warfare, politics and theology, manners and art.

In the pages of A Short History of Byzantium we encounter mystics and philosophers, eunuchs and barbarians, and rulers of fantastic erudition, piety, and degeneracy. We enter the life of an empire that could create some of the world's most transcendent religious art and then destroy it in the convulsions of fanaticism. Stylishly written and overflowing with drama, pathos, and wit, here is a matchless account of a lost civilization and its magnificent cultural legacy.

5) Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe - John Julius Norwich
Grove Atlantic | 2017 | EPUB

John Julius Norwich―“the very model of a popular historian” (Wall Street Journal)―is acclaimed for his distinctive ability to weave together a fascinating narrative through vivid detail, colorful anecdotes, and captivating characters. Here, he has crafted a bold tapestry of Europe and the Middle East in the early sixteenth century, when four legendary rulers towered over the era.

Francis I of France was the personification of the Renaissance, and a highly influential patron of the arts and education. Henry VIII, who was not expected to inherit the throne but embraced the role with gusto, broke with the Roman Catholic Church and appointed himself head of the Church of England. Charles V was the most powerful industrious man of the time, and was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor. Suleiman the Magnificent―who stood apart as a Muslim―brought the Ottoman Empire to its apogee of political, military, and economic power.

Against the vibrant background of the Renaissance, these four men collectively shaped the culture, religion, and politics of their respective domains. With remarkable erudition, John Julius Norwich delves into this entertaining and layered history, indelibly depicting four dynamic characters and how their incredible achievements―and obsessions with one another―changed European history.

Anglo-Danish Empire: A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great - Richard North, Erin Goeres, Alison Finlay
De Gruyter | 2022 | PDF

Anglo-Danish Empire is an interdisciplinary handbook for the Danish conquest of England in 1016 and the subsequent reign of King Cnut the Great. Bringing together scholars from the fields of history, literature, archaeology, and manuscript studies, the volume offers comprehensive analysis of England’s shift from Anglo-Saxon to Danish rule. It follows the history of this complicated transition, from the closing years of the reign of King Æthelred II and the Anglo-Danish wars, to Cnut’s accession to the throne of England and his consolidation of power at home and abroad. Ruling from 1016 to 1035, Cnut drew England into a Scandinavian empire that stretched from Ireland to the Baltic. His reign rewrote the place of Denmark and England within Europe, altering the political and cultural landscapes of both countries for decades to come.

1) A History of Private Life, Vol. 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium - Philippe Ariès; Paul Veyne; Georges Duby; Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard University Press | 1992 | DJVU

First of the widely celebrated and sumptuously illustrated series, this book reveals in intimate detail what life was really like in the ancient world. Behind the vast panorama of the pagan Roman empire, the reader discovers the intimate daily lives of citizens and slaves―from concepts of manhood and sexuality to marriage and the family, the roles of women, chastity and contraception, techniques of childbirth, homosexuality, religion, the meaning of virtue, and the separation of private and public spaces.

The emergence of Christianity in the West and the triumph of Christian morality with its emphasis on abstinence, celibacy, and austerity is startlingly contrasted with the profane and undisciplined private life of the Byzantine Empire. Using illuminating motifs, the authors weave a rich, colorful fabric ornamented with the results of new research and the broad interpretations that only masters of the subject can provide.

2) A History of Private Life, Vol. 2. Revelations of the Medieval World - Phillippe Aries, Georges Duby, Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard University Press | 1993 | DJVU

The second volume of A History of Private Life is a treasure-trove of rich and colorful detail culled from an astounding variety of sources. This absorbing “secret epic” constructs a vivid picture of peasant and patrician life in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries.

3) A History of Private Life, Vol. 3: Passions of the Renaissance - Phillippe Aries, Georges Duby, Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard University Press | 1989 | DJVU

This third in the popular five-volume series celebrates the emergence of individualism and the manifestations of a brugeoning self-consciousness. It explores the Renaissance era which was characterized by an upsurge in private writings and a new concentration of the self in literature and art.

4) A History of Private Life, Vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War - Phillippe Aries, Georges Duby, Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard University Press | 1990 | DJVU

The 19th century was the golden age of private life, a time when supreme individual and existential values emerged. The fourth book in this popular series, written for the cultivated reader, chronicles this development from the tumult of the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I.

5) A History of Private Life, Vol. 5: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times - Phillippe Aries, Georges Duby, Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard University Press | 1998 | DJVU

This fifth and final volume in an award-winning series charts the remarkable inner history of our times from the tumult of World War I to the present day, when personal identity was released from its moorings in gender, family, social class, religion, politics, and nationality. Nine brilliant and bold historians present a dynamic picture of cultures in transition and in the process scrutinize a myriad of subjects―the sacrament of confession, volunteer hotlines, Nazi policies toward the family, the baby boom, evolving sexuality, the history of contraception, and ever-changing dress codes. They draw upon many unexpected sources, including divorce hearing transcripts, personal ads, and little-known demographic and consumer data.

Perhaps the most notable pattern to emerge is a polarizing of public and private realms. Productive labor shifts from the home to an impersonal public setting. Salaried or corporate employment replaces many independent, entrepreneurial jobs, and workers of all kinds aggressively pursue their leisure time―coffee and lunch breaks, weekends, vacations. Zoning laws segregate industrial and commercial areas from residential neighborhoods, which are no longer a supportive “theater” of benign surveillance, gossip, and mutual concern, but an assemblage of aloof and anonymous individuals or families. Scattered with personal possessions and appliances, homes grow large by yesterday's standards and are marked by elaborate spatial subdivisions; privacy is now possible even among one's own family. Men and women are obsessed with health, fitness, diet, and appearance as the body becomes the focal point of personal identity. Mirrors, once a rarity, are ubiquitous. In the search for sexual and individualistic fulfillment, romantic love becomes the foundation of marriage. Couples marry at an older age; families are smaller. The divorce rate rises, and with it the number of single-parent households. Women, entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, frequently function as both breadwinner and homemaker. The authors interrelate these dramatic patterns with the changing roles of state and religion in family matters, the socialization of education and elder care, the growth of feminism, the impact of media on private life, and the nature of secrecy.

Comprehensive and astute, Riddles of Identity in Modern Times chronicles a period when the differentiation of life into public and private realms, once a luxury of the wealthy, gradually spread throughout the population. For better or worse, people can now be alone. This fifth volume, differing significantly from the French edition, portrays Italian, German, and American family life in the twentieth century. The authors of these additional chapters―Chiara Saraceno, Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann, and Elaine Tyler May―enlarge and enhance the already broad European and Atlantic canvas that depicts the modern identity.

1) A History of Wales - John Davies
Penguin Books | 2007 | EPUB

Stretching from the Ice Ages to the present day, this masterful account traces the political, social and cultural history of the land that has come to be called Wales. Spanning prehistoric hill forts and Roman ruins to the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the series of strikes by Welsh miners in the late twentieth century, this is the definitive history of an enduring people: a unique and compelling exploration of the origins of the Welsh nation, its development and its role in the modern world. This new edition brings this remarkable history into the new era of the Welsh Assembly.

2) Wales and the Britons, 350-1064 - T. M. Charles-Edwards
Oxford University Press | 2014 | PDF

This, the first volume in the History of Wales, provides a detailed history of Wales in the period in which it was created out of the remnants of Roman Britain. It thus begins in the fourth century, with accelerating attacks from external forces, and ends shortly before the Norman Conquest of
England.

The narrative history is interwoven with chapters on the principal sources, the social history of Wales, the Church, the early history of the Welsh language, and its early literature, both in Welsh and in Latin. In the fourth century contemporaries knew of the Britons but not of Wales in the modern sense. Charles-Edwards, therefore, includes the history of the other Britons when it helps to illuminate the history of what we now know as Wales. Although an early form of the name Wales existed, it was a word in the Germanic languages, including English, and meant inhabitants of the former Roman Empire; it therefore covered the Gallo-Romans of what we know as France as well as the Britons.

3) Medieval Wales, c.1050–1332: Centuries of Ambiguity - David Stephenson
University of Wales Press | 2019 | PDF

After outlining conventional accounts of Wales in the High Middle Ages, this book moves to more radical approaches to its subject. Rather than discussing the emergence of the March of Wales from the usual perspective of the `intrusive' marcher lords, for instance, it is considered from a Welsh standpoint explaining the lure of the March to Welsh princes and its contribution to the fall of the native principality of Wales. Analysis of the achievements of the princes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries focuses on the paradoxical process by which increasingly sophisticated political structures and a changing political culture supported an autonomous native principality, but also facilitated eventual assimilation of much of Wales into an English `empire'. The Edwardian conquest is examined and it is argued that, alongside the resultant hardship and oppression suffered by many, the rising class of Welsh administrators and community leaders who were essential to the governance of Wales enjoyed an age of opportunity. This is a book that introduces the reader to the celebrated and the less well-known men and women who shaped medieval Wales.

4) War and Society in Medieval Wales, 633-1283: Welsh Military Institutions - Sean Davies
University of Wales Press | 2015 | PDF

Originally published as Welsh Military Institutions, this book, newly available in paperback, traces the development of the Welsh state in the years after the Roman empire. Sean Davies uses an array of sources to counter the dominant perception of the medieval Welsh―driven by Gerald of Wales’s account―as a race of noble savages; the resulting, more sophisticated view sets Welsh society in the context of larger European developments, while also offering a close look at the military structures and tactics of the period.

5) Early Modern Wales, c.1525–1640 - J. Gwynfor Jones
Palgrave | 1994 | PDF

This work is intended to examine the main trends in Wales during the century following the Tudor settlement of Wales. Emphasis is placed on the social structure, the framework of government and administration, and the Reformation Settlement. The Stuart accession and its repercussions are also considered in relation to political, economic and cultural affairs, as well as the attitudes of the Welsh gentry to a new environment on the eve of the Civil War. The work makes ample use of contemporary sources to examine each aspect of the political, governmental and religious life of Wales.

A World History of War Crimes: From Antiquity to the Present - Michael Bryant
Bloomsbury Publishing | 2020 | EPUB

A World History of War Crimes provides a truly global history of war crimes and the involvement of the legal systems faced with these acts. Documenting the long historical arc traced by human efforts to limit warfare, from codes of war in antiquity designed to maintain a religiously conceived cosmic order to the gradual use in the modern age of the criminal trial as a means of enforcing universal norms, this book provides a comprehensive one-volume account of war and the laws that have governed conflict since the dawn of world civilizations.

Throughout his narrative, Michael Bryant locates the origin and evolution of the law of war in the interplay between different cultures. While showing that no single philosophical idea underlay the law of war in world history, this volume also proves that war in global civilization has rarely been an anarchic free-for-all. Rather, from its beginnings warfare has been subject to certain constraints defined by the unique needs and cosmological understandings of the cultures that produce them. Only in late modernity has law assumed its current international humanitarian form. The criminalization of war crimes in international courts today is only the most recent development of the ancient theme of constraining when and how war may be fought.

1) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics - Eleanor Robson, Jacqueline Stedall
Oxford University Press | 2009 | PDF

This Handbook explores the history of mathematics under a series of themes which raise new questions about what mathematics has been and what it has meant to practice it. It addresses questions of who creates mathematics, who uses it, and how. A broader understanding of mathematical practitioners naturally leads to a new appreciation of what counts as a historical source. Material and oral evidence is drawn upon as well as an unusual array of textual sources. Further, the ways in which people have chosen to express themselves are as historically meaningful as the contents of the mathematics they have produced. Mathematics is not a fixed and unchanging entity. New questions, contexts, and applications all influence what counts as productive ways of thinking. Because the history of mathematics should interact constructively with other ways of studying the past, the contributors to this book come from a diverse range of intellectual backgrounds in anthropology, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and literature, as well as history of mathematics more traditionally understood.

The thirty-six self-contained, multifaceted chapters, each written by a specialist, are arranged under three main headings: 'Geographies and Cultures', 'Peoples and Practices', and 'Interactions and Interpretations'. Together they deal with the mathematics of 5000 years, but without privileging the past three centuries, and an impressive range of periods and places with many points of cross-reference between chapters. The key mathematical cultures of North America, Europe, the Middle East, India, and China are all represented here as well as areas which are not often treated in mainstream history of mathematics, such as Russia, the Balkans, Vietnam, and South America. This Handbook will be a vital reference for graduates and researchers in mathematics, historians of science, and general historians.

2) Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History - Eleanor Robson
Princeton University Press | 2008 | PDF

This monumental book traces the origins and development of mathematics in the ancient Middle East, from its earliest beginnings in the fourth millennium BCE to the end of indigenous intellectual culture in the second century BCE when cuneiform writing was gradually abandoned. Eleanor Robson offers a history like no other, examining ancient mathematics within its broader social, political, economic, and religious contexts, and showing that mathematics was not just an abstract discipline for elites but a key component in ordering society and understanding the world.

The region of modern-day Iraq is uniquely rich in evidence for ancient mathematics because its prehistoric inhabitants wrote on clay tablets, many hundreds of thousands of which have been archaeologically excavated, deciphered, and translated. Drawing from these and a wealth of other textual and archaeological evidence, Robson gives an extraordinarily detailed picture of how mathematical ideas and practices were conceived, used, and taught during this period. She challenges the prevailing view that they were merely the simplistic precursors of classical Greek mathematics, and explains how the prevailing view came to be. Robson reveals the true sophistication and beauty of ancient Middle Eastern mathematics as it evolved over three thousand years, from the earliest beginnings of recorded accounting to complex mathematical astronomy. Every chapter provides detailed information on sources, and the book includes an appendix on all mathematical cuneiform tablets published before 2007.

3) Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History - Annette Imhausen
Princeton University Press | 2016 | PDF

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt traces the development of Egyptian mathematics, from the end of the fourth millennium BC—and the earliest hints of writing and number notation—to the end of the pharaonic period in Greco-Roman times. Drawing from mathematical texts, architectural drawings, administrative documents, and other sources, Annette Imhausen surveys three thousand years of Egyptian history to present an integrated picture of theoretical mathematics in relation to the daily practices of Egyptian life and social structures.

Imhausen shows that from the earliest beginnings, pharaonic civilization used numerical techniques to efficiently control and use their material resources and labor. Even during the Old Kingdom, a variety of metrological systems had already been devised. By the Middle Kingdom, procedures had been established to teach mathematical techniques to scribes in order to make them proficient administrators for their king. Imhausen looks at counterparts to the notation of zero, suggests an explanation for the evolution of unit fractions, and analyzes concepts of arithmetic techniques. She draws connections and comparisons to Mesopotamian mathematics, examines which individuals in Egyptian society held mathematical knowledge, and considers which scribes were trained in mathematical ideas and why.

Of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians, Egyptologists, and all those curious about Egyptian culture, Mathematics in Ancient Egypt sheds new light on a civilization’s unique mathematical evolution.

4) Mathematics in India - Kim Plofker
Princeton University Press | 2009 | PDF

Based on extensive research in Sanskrit sources, Mathematics in India chronicles the development of mathematical techniques and texts in South Asia from antiquity to the early modern period. Kim Plofker reexamines the few facts about Indian mathematics that have become common knowledge--such as the Indian origin of Arabic numerals--and she sets them in a larger textual and cultural framework. The book details aspects of the subject that have been largely passed over in the past, including the relationships between Indian mathematics and astronomy, and their cross-fertilizations with Islamic scientific traditions. Plofker shows that Indian mathematics appears not as a disconnected set of discoveries, but as a lively, diverse, yet strongly unified discipline, intimately linked to other Indian forms of learning.

Far more than in other areas of the history of mathematics, the literature on Indian mathematics reveals huge discrepancies between what researchers generally agree on and what general readers pick up from popular ideas. This book explains with candor the chief controversies causing these discrepancies--both the flaws in many popular claims, and the uncertainties underlying many scholarly conclusions. Supplementing the main narrative are biographical resources for dozens of Indian mathematicians; a guide to key features of Sanskrit for the non-Indologist; and illustrations of manuscripts, inscriptions, and artifacts. Mathematics in India provides a rich and complex understanding of the Indian mathematical tradition.

5) A History of Chinese Mathematics - Jean-Claude Martzloff
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg | 2006 | PDF

For the English language edition, this completely unique book of J.C. Martzloff has been fully revised and updated. It includes many new recent insights and illustrations, a new appendix on Chinese primary sources and a guide to the to the bibliography. From the reviews: "This book ranks with the most erudite Asian publications, and is the most informative and most broadly informed on its topic in any language." N. Sivin, China Quarterly "... crammed with insights, cautionary tales and a great deal of information about current research ... will surely become a standard reference for students, teachers, and researchers alike", J. N. Crossley, Annals of Science "... a truly scholarly and balanced exposition ... a book that the reviewer believes belongs in the library of every university or college, as well as in that of every individual seriously interested in the history of Chinese mathematics", B. L. McAllister, ZBfM "Martzloff History demonstrates clearly that while the Chinese were adept in applying their mathematics to a host of practical problems, including astronomy and engineering as well as commercial transactions, they also paid attention to algorithmic techniques, methods of calculation, geometric constructions, and even certain purely logical problems. But above all, what sets this book apart from the usual histories of mathemathics (in any language, Chinese or Western, of any period or country) is its emphasis first on context, then on content, in describing the long history of Chinese mathematics .... It is primarily the question of context that Martzloff approaches directly. Perhaps the greatest contribution his book makes is the chance it offers to consider issues of cultural context as significant, determining factors in the history of mathematics. Thus, Martzloff tries to get inside the Chinese mind, to explain how and why mathematics developed as it did in China, and often in ways strikingly different from its Western counterparts. Although he does not always account for these differences, he succeeds admirably in describing them, which results in a refreshingly rich sense of its evolution as well." Joseph W. Dauben, Historica Mathematica 20, 1993

1) Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World - Juliette Harrisson
Routledge | 2018 | PDF, EPUB

Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more.

While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available.

Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world

2) Imagining the Medieval Afterlife - Richard Matthew Pollard
Cambridge University Press | 2020 | EPUB

Where do we go after we die? This book traces how the European Middle Ages offered distinctive answers to this universal question, evolving from Antiquity through to the sixteenth century, to reflect a variety of problems and developments. Focussing on texts describing visions of the afterlife, alongside art and theology, this volume explores heaven, hell, and purgatory as they were imagined across Europe, as well as by noted authors including Gregory the Great and Dante. A cross-disciplinary team of contributors including historians, literary scholars, classicists, art historians and theologians offer not only a fascinating sketch of both medieval perceptions and the wide scholarship on this question: they also provide a much-needed new perspective. Where the twelfth century was once the 'high point' of the medieval afterlife, the essays here show that the afterlives of the early and later Middle Ages were far more important and imaginative than we once thought.

1) A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome - Eric M. Orlin
Wiley-Blackwell | 2021 | EPUB

Provides students with a balanced understanding of the key aspects of the culture and society of the Roman Republic

A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome is the first undergraduate textbook of its kind to concentrate on the ways Roman societal structures, family dynamics, visual arts, law, religion, and other cultural and intellectual developments contributed to Roman identity between 509 BCE and 14 CE. Drawing from a diverse range of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary sources, author Eric M. Orlin provides insight into the socio-cultural and intellectual issues that shaped both the Roman Republic and the wider Mediterranean world.

Thematically organized chapters address the practice of politics in the Roman Republic, explain the concept of patronage and the distinctions between patricians and plebeians, examine the impact of the army and militarism on Roman society, discuss the ties between Roman religion and the Roman state, and more. Chapters include maps, charts, images, and links to further readings in ancient sources and modern scholarship. Throughout the text, discussion of several recurring themes connects individual chapters while helping students critically engage the material. A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome:

• Focuses on themes other than politics and the military, such as the position and role of women in the Roman family, the foundation of the Roman legal system, and the topography and growth of the city of Rome
• Introduces the basic materials available for the study of the Roman Republic, including written, architectural, and numismatic sources
• Features a brief narrative history of the Roman Republic and an overview of the text's methodological framework
• Establishes key points of discussion for students, using comparisons between Roman society and our modern-day world
• Encourages students to critically examine the problems and issues raised by the material

Covering topics in Roman history that are frequently neglected in undergraduate classrooms, A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome is an excellent primary or supplementary textbook for courses on the Roman Republic as well as broader Roman history classes that incorporate socio-cultural issues.

2) A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity - Douglas Boin
Wiley-Blackwell | 2018 | EPUB

A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity examines the social and cultural landscape of the Late Antique Mediterranean. The text offers a picture of everyday life as it was lived in the spaces around and between two of the most memorable and towering figures of the time—Constantine and Muhammad. The author captures the period using a wide-lens, including Persian material from the mid third century through Umayyad material of the mid eighth century C.E. The book offers a rich picture of Late Antique life that is not just focused on Rome, Constantinople, or Christianity.

This important resource uses nuanced terms to talk about complex issues and fills a gap in the literature by surveying major themes such as power, gender, community, cities, politics, law, art and architecture, and literary culture. The book is richly illustrated and filled with maps, lists of rulers and key events. A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity is an essential guide that:

• Paints a rich picture of daily life in Late Antique that is not simply centered on Rome, Constantinople, or Christianity
• Balances a thematic approach with rigorous attention to chronology
• Stresses the need for appreciating both sources and methods in the study of Late Antique history
• Offers a sophisticated model for investigating daily life and the complexities of individual and group identity in the rapidly changing Mediterranean world
• Includes useful maps, city plans, timelines, and suggestions for further reading

A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity offers an examination of everyday life in the era when adherents of three of the major religions of today—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—faced each other for the first time in the same environment.

1) The Clean Body: A Modern History - Peter Ward
McGill-Queen University Press | 2019 | PDF

How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean? The Clean Body explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matter of wearing clean underclothes. By the late twentieth century frequent — often daily — bathing had become the norm and wearing freshly laundered clothing the general practice. Cleanliness, once simply a requirement for good health, became an essential element of beauty. Beneath this transformation lay a sea change in understandings, motives, ideologies, technologies, and practices, all of which shaped popular habits over time. Peter Ward explains that what began as an urban bourgeois phenomenon in the later eighteenth century became a universal condition by the end of the twentieth, touching young and old, rich and poor, city dwellers and country residents alike. Based on a wealth of sources in English, French, German, and Italian, The Clean Body surveys the great hygienic transformation that took place across Europe and North America over the course of four centuries.

2) Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity - Virginia Smith
Oxford University Press | 2009 | PDF

In this pioneering book, Virginia Smith combines archeology, psychology, biology, and sociology to reveal how and why standards of cleanliness have come to exist today. Using hundreds of first-hand accounts and sources, Smith bring us from the Neolithic age to the present, peppering her engaging prose with enlightening and often surprising details.

Subconscious cleanliness has been with us since the first cell ejected a foreign invader. Even at the earliest stages of human development, our bodies produced pleasure-giving chemical opiates when things smelled or felt clean, inducing us to do things like bathing and removing dirty clothes. The need to be clean led directly to socialization, as we turned to our fellows for help with those hard to reach spots. In Eurasia during the Bronze Age, an emerging hierarchy of wealthy elites turned their love of grooming into an explosion of the cosmetic and luxury goods industry, greatly effecting the culture and economy of a vast area and leading to advances in chemistry and medicine.

The history that follows, from Greece and Rome, where citizens focused much of their leisure time on perfecting, bathing, or just writing about the model athletic body, through Europe in the middle ages and the following centuries, is full of intriguing customs, convoluted treatises, and many reversals. Baths were good for you, baths were bad for you, baths were good again--but only if they were quite cold. Even the enlightened medical knowledge of modern times could not stop an onslaught of health remedies, treatments, spas, and New Age nature cures that were to follow. While today we are immeasurably closer--perhaps too close--to knowing just what "clean" means to our bodies, we are still just as far as we ever were on agreeing what it means to our souls.

This engrossing and highly original work will introduce you to the customs and ideas of a myriad of cultures from centuries of human history. Not only will you gain a new perspective on the wonderful diversity of the world, but you'll never look at your toothbrush the same way again.

3) Sweet and Clean?: Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England - Susan North
Oxford University Press | 2020 | PDF

Sweet and Clean? challenges the widely held beliefs on bathing and cleanliness in the past. For over thirty years, the work of the French historian, George Vigarello, has been hugely influential on early modern European social history, describing an aversion to water and bathing, and the use of linen underwear as the sole cleaning agent for the body. However, these concepts do not apply to early modern England. Sweet and Clean? analyses etiquette and medical literature, revealing repeated recommendations to wash or bathe in order to clean the skin. Clean linen was essential for propriety but advice from medical experts was contradictory. Many doctors were convinced that it prevented the spread of contagious diseases, but others recommended flannel for undergarments, and a few thought changing a fever patient's linens was dangerous. The methodology of material culture helps determine if and how this advice was practiced. Evidence from inventories, household accounts and manuals, and surviving linen garments tracks underwear through its life-cycle of production, making, wearing, laundering, and final recycling. Although the material culture of washing bodies is much sparser, other sources, such as the Old Bailey records, paint a more accurate picture of cleanliness in early modern England than has been previously described. The contrasting analyses of linen and bodies reveal what histories material culture best serves. Finally, what of the diseases-plague, smallpox, and typhus-that cleanliness of body and clothes were thought to prevent? Did following early modern medical advice protect people from these illnesses?

4) The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History - Katherine Ashenburg
North Point Press | 2008 | EPUB

A spirited chronicle of the West's ambivalent relationship with dirt

The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher―a man who washes in warm or hot water―invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.

What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Dirt on Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history's doctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.

5) The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance - Cynthia Kosso, Anne Scott
Brill | 2009 | PDF

These essays offer scholars, teachers, and students a new basis for discussing attitudes toward, and technological expertise concerning, water in antiquity through the early Modern period, and they examine historical water use and ideology both diachronically and cross regionally. Topics include gender roles and water usage; attitudes, practices, and innovations in baths and bathing; water and the formation of identity and policy; ancient and medieval water sources and resources; and religious and literary water imagery. The authors describe how ideas about the nature and function of water created and shaped social relationships, and how religion, politics, and science transformed, and were themselves transformed by, the manipulation of, uses of, and disputes over water in daily life, ceremonies, and literature.

The Horse in Premodern European Culture - Anastasija Ropa, Timothy Dawson
De Gruyter | 2020 | PDF

This volume provides a unique introduction to the most topical issues, advances, and challenges in medieval horse history. Medievalists who have a long-standing interest in horse history, as well as those seeking to widen their understanding of horses in medieval society will find here informed and comprehensive treatment of chapters from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, legal, economic and military history, urban and rural history, art and literature. The themes range from case studies of saddles and bridles, to hippiatric treatises, to the medieval origins of dressage literary studies. It shows the ubiquitous – and often ambiguous – role of the horse in medieval culture, where it was simultaneously a treasured animal and a means of transport, a military machine and a loyal companion. The contributors, many of whom have practical knowledge of horses, are drawn from established and budding scholars working in their areas of expertise.