Financial crises happen time and again in post-industrial economies—and they are extraordinarily damaging. Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a
Long before we began to speak of "public intellectuals," the ideas of "the public" and "the intellectual" raised consternation among many European philosophers and political theorists. Thinking in Pub
Liberty's Prisoners examines how changing attitudes about work, freedom, property, and family shaped the creation of the penitentiary system in the United States. The first penitentiary was founded in
Concord, Massachusetts, has long been heralded as the birthplace of American liberty and American letters. It was here that the first military engagement of the Revolutionary War was fought and here t
Focusing on the Connecticut River Valley—New England's longest river and largest watershed— Strother Roberts traces the local, regional, and transatlantic markets in colonial commodities t
In the period just prior to medicine's modernity—before the rise of Renaissance anatomy, the centralized regulation of medical practice, and the valorization of scientific empiricism—Engla
In the fifteenth-century republic of Florence, political power resided in the hands of middle-class merchants, a few wealthy families, and powerful craftsmen's guilds. The intensity of Florentine fact
On the morning of July 16, 1964, a white police officer in New York City shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell, across the street from the high school where he was attending summer classes. T
Cities in the North Atlantic coal and steel belt embodied industrial power in the early twentieth century, but by the 1970s, their economic and political might had been significantly diminished by new
For a significant part of the early modern period, England was the most active site of recipe publication in Europe and the only country in which recipes were explicitly addressed to housewives. Recip
Whether forced by governmental decree, driven by persecution and economic distress, or seeking financial opportunity, the Jews of early modern Europe were extraordinarily mobile, experiencing both dis
Hinduism is the largest religion in India, encompassing roughly 80 percent of the population, while 14 percent of the population practices Islam and the remaining 6 percent adheres to other religions.
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia,
Known for his ultraconservatism and eccentricity, Gu Hongming (1857-1928) remains one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese intellectual history. A former member of the colonial elite fr
When Venice conquered Crete in the early thirteenth century, a significant population of Jews lived in the capital and main port city of Candia. This community grew, diversified, and flourished both c
The notion of corruption as a problem for politics spans many centuries and political, social, and cultural contexts. But it is incredibly difficult to define what we mean when we describe a regime or
Between 1532 and 1602, the works of Geoffrey Chaucer were published in no less than six folio editions. These were, in fact, the largest books of poetry produced in sixteenth-century England, and they
On July 7, 2005, at the end of the morning rush hour, three near-simultaneous explosions tore apart the London Underground. Within an hour, the entire subway network was evacuated, and a fourth explos
From its origins in the 1750s, the white-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. But by th
Jane Jacobs is universally recognized as one of the key figures in American urbanism. The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she uncovered the complex and intertwined physical and
Since the 1970s, understanding of the effects of trauma, including flashbacks and withdrawal, has become widespread in the United States. As a result Americans can now claim that the phrase posttrauma
In the 1840s, Philadelphia was poised to join the ranks of the world's great cities, as its population grew, its manufacturing prospered, and its railroads reached outward to the West. Yet epidemics o
In The Language of Fruit, Liz Bellamy explores how poets, playwrights, and novelists from the Restoration to the Romantic era represented fruit and fruit trees in a period that saw significant changes
In popular, legal, and academic discourses, the term "human rights" is now almost always discussed in relation to its opposite: human rights abuses. Syllabi, textbooks, and articles focus largely on v
The "Latino vote" has become a mantra in political media, as journalists, pundits, and social scientists regularly weigh in on Latinos' loyalty to the Democratic Party and the significance of their el
In the years between the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War, as legal and cultural understandings of citizenship became more racially restrictive, black writers articulated an expansive, pract
Although Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard are both major figures in nineteenth-century Western thought, they are rarely considered in the same conversation. Marx is the great radical economic theorist,
Over the past three decades, China has transformed itself from a stagnant, inward, centrally planned economy into an animated, outward-looking, decentralized market economy. Its rapid growth and trade
Borders traditionally served to insulate nations from other states and to provide bulwarks against intrusion by foreign armies. In the age of terrorism, borders are more frequently perceived as protec
The Spanish-American War marked the emergence of the United States as an imperial power. It was when the United States first landed troops overseas and established governments of occupation in the Phi
Although most Americans attribute shifting practices in the financial industry to the invisible hand of the market, Mark H. Rose reveals the degree to which presidents, legislators, regulators, and ev
In The Psychology of Inequality, Michael Locke McLendon looks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought for insight into the personal and social pathologies that plague commercial and democratic societies. H
Countess Marie of Champagne is primarily known today as the daughter of Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine and as a literary patron of Chrétien de Troyes. However, in this engaging biography
For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, classical dogma and royal censorship worked together to prevent French plays from commenting on, or even worse, reenacting current political and j
"Fake news," wild conspiracy theories, misleading claims, doctored photos, lies peddled as facts, facts dismissed as lies—citizens of democracies increasingly inhabit a public sphere teeming with comp
In The Spatial Reformation, Michael J. Sauter offers a sweeping history of the way Europeans conceived of three-dimensional space, including the relationship between Earth and the heavens, between 135
During the U.S. Civil War, a combination of innovative technologies and catastrophic events stimulated the development of news media into a central cultural force. Reacting to the dramatic increases i
In chronicling the life and career of Albert Gore, Sr., historian Anthony J. Badger seeks not just to explore the successes and failures of an important political figure who spent more than three deca
During the last three decades of the twentieth century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. Minis
In 2002, we learned that President George Washington had eight (and, later, nine) enslaved Africans in his house while he lived in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. The house was only one block from Ind
