What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged …
“The most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighbourhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson), The Color of …
On a cold October night in 1942, SS guards at Sachsenhausen violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d’Arguto. Only one of its members …
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the …
Harriet Tubman, forced to labour outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The …
Many people know the tale: In 1814 Francis Scott Key witnessed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry and the heroism of America’s defenders; seeing the American flag still flying …
The twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, without moving, become the …
Checkers, backgammon, chess and Go. Poker, Scrabble and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts …
Starting with hands, abacus and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic …
Sixteenth-century Europe was a time of destabilisation of age-old norms and the waging of religious wars—yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacific culture …
