J. R. R. Tolkien, an orphan in love with words, spent most of his life as an unassuming Professor of Literature at Oxford studying and teaching old languages. During his time there, he created his very own languages and a mythological world, Middle-earth. Middle-earth was inhabited by Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, and ot...

Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (The Witch, 1922) stands as a singular film within the history of cinema. Deftly weaving contemporary scientific analysis and powerfully staged historical scenes of satanic initiation, confession under torture, possession, and persecution, Häxan creatively blends spectacle and argument t...

The Renaissance is one of the most studied and celebrated eras of history. Spanning the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of modernity, it has come to symbolise the transformative rebirth of knowledge, art, culture and political thought in Europe. And for the last two hundred years, historians have struggled t...

Kein Land Asiens erscheint faszinierender als Japan. Das Inselreich hat nicht nur eine einzigartige Kultur und Ästhetik hervorgebracht, es blickt auch auf eine lange Geschichte zurück. Wolfgang Schwentker erzählt auf dem neuesten Forschungsstand die Geschichte Japans von der Ur- und Frühzeit bis in die Gegenwart. Se...

Bad Lieutenants is a riveting account of how the Khmer Rouge remained a force to be reckoned with even after the fall of Democratic Kampucheaーand of the men behind the movement's strange durability. In 1979, the Vietnamese army seized Phnom Penh, toppling Pol Pot's notoriously brutal regime. Yet the Khmer Rouge did...

「女人！生命！自由！」 「在每個死去之人背後，有其他千百顆心搏動。」 從徳黒蘭啟程的縱貫伊朗之旅 見證神權國度人民的恐懼與勇氣 ★ 法國屢獲大獎天才作家　最輕盈卻深刻的旅遊紀實文學 ★ ★ 一出版旋即成為暢銷書　横掃三大指標性文學獎 ★ 二〇二二年九月，伊朗一名女子瑪莎．阿米尼(Mahsa Amini)因「穿著不當」遭道徳警察逮捕，並於羈押期...

⚔️ Master the battlefield of warーand lifeーwith ancient wisdom that never ages. Written over 2,500 years ago, The Art of War by Sun Tzu remains the definitive guide on strategy, competition, and leadership. Whether in war, business, sports, or self-development, Sun Tzu's principles on discipline, timing, deception,...

Drawing on over thirty years of research, this book investigates the intermingling of land and water in the Sahel, analysing landscapes defined by the ebb and flow of rainfall, flooding and population movements, as well as environmental, political and social crises. Exploring both the seasonal flooding of rivers aro...

This book offers an analysis of the wide range of attitudes that communist movements and regimes adopted towards atheism during the 20th century. Despite the well-known violent fight of the Bolsheviks against believers, for example, and religious persecution in communist regimes at different times, being a communist...

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade." In My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass deepens his already powerful life story, moving beyond his escape from slavery to examine the moral, political, and spiritual dimensions of oppression. This second autobiography is not only a record of unimaginable hard...

A lively, inviting account of the history of economics, told through events from ancient to modern times and through the ideas of great thinkers in the field “A whistle-stop introduction to the great works and thinkers of each age, this is a clear and accessible primer.”ーLaura Garmeson, Financial Times What causes ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of America's most influential writers and also one of the most complex. He was the essential New Englander, a believer in hard work and simple living, and his personality and writing were tremendously influenced by his Puritan ancestry and the Salem Witch Trials. He obsessed over sin and r...

Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century is a richly detailed thematic study of the history of the piano in Russian society from its beginnings with the European artisans who settled in St. Petersburg in the early decades of the century through the transition to Russian-owned family firms. The piano played a...

This book offers a critical contribution to feminist peace and disaster research by challenging the successful disaster recovery narrative of the Kachchh 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India. Engaging in a feminist intersectional analysis of complex cascades of violence, the book uses a theoretical and methodological a...

In the late 1800s, British engineers building some of the first railways in the Dominion of India discovered large numbers of bricks buried in the dusty plains of the Punjab. This was odd because historians were not aware of any cities or civilizations which might have constructed buildings in this area. It wasn't u...

The Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union lasted for more than 40 years. In general, this was a war of spies and subterfuge, of covert action and espionage. There was always a danger, however, that an error of judgment on either side could suddenly cause the Cold War to turn red-hot with...