《英国贵族史》作为英国专门史读物，力图为历史学者和爱好者提供一点参考。书中勾勒了英国贵族的发展脉络，揭示了他们先从军事贵族到封建贵族、继而从封建贵族到资产阶级贵族、再从资产阶级贵族中衍变出工党贵族的基本轨迹，阐明了各个时代贵族涵义的广义和狭义区别。另外，还介绍和论证了贵族等级体制与国家政权的关系，指出了他们在国家政治生活中的重要地位、作用和影响。

本书主要讲述华夏文明的萌生与转型。从距今四千年前夏朝（二里头文化）的出现，到三千年前商朝的灭亡、西周建立，时间跨度一千余年。
从新石器时代以来，华北地区形成了杀人献祭的原始宗教。第一王朝夏朝（二里头）也沿袭了这种人祭文化，并在随后的商朝登峰造极。周族僻处西部，本没有人祭传统，但他们曾投靠商朝，为商朝捕猎用于献祭的羌人。周文王因受到商纣王怀疑，被作为人牲拘禁在殷都，最后，文王的长子伯邑考被纣王献祭。文王学习了商人的易卦占算技术，发展出《易经》的卦、爻辞体系——记录周文王亲历和认知的诸多事件，最终目的是推算“翦商”的战略。
武王灭商后，曾模仿商人的人祭行为；武王死后，由周公辅政，彻底禁绝了人祭宗教，销毁了有关商代人祭的文献记录，并制造出一套没有人祭的理想化历史叙事，以及基于“德”的世俗政治与道德体系。
周公的这些举措，开创了新的华夏文明。五百年后，孔子编辑儒家“六经”，系统整理周公的理论成果。周公和孔子塑造了儒家学派，其影响一直持续到现代。
概而言之，本书借助考古材料和传世文献，梳理了上古人祭风俗产生、繁荣和消亡的全过程，以及人祭与华夏早期文明从伴生到分离的伟大转折，再现了古人（周人）为终结商朝和人祭风俗付出的巨大努力，使我们对华夏文明的起源有了全新的认知。

The Atlantic represented a world of opportunity in the eighteenth century, but it represented division also, separating families across its coasts. Whether due to economic shifts, changing political landscapes, imperial ambitions, or even simply personal tragedy, many families found themselves fractured and disoriented by the growth and later fissure of a larger Atlantic world. Such dislocation posed considerable challenges to all individuals who viewed orderly family relations as both a general and a personal ideal. The more fortunate individuals who thus found themselves divided by the Atlantic were able to use family letters, with attendant emphases on familiarity, sensibility, and credit, in order to remain connected in times and places of considerable disconnection. Portraying the family as a unified, affectionate, and happy entity in such letters provided a means of surmounting concerns about societies fractured by physical distance, global wars, and increasing social stratification. It could also provide social and economic leverage to individual men and women in certain circumstances.Sarah Pearsall explores the lives and letters of these families, revealing the sometimes shocking stories of those divided by sea. Ranging across the Anglophone Atlantic, including mainland American colonies and states, Britain, and the British Caribbean, Pearsall argues that it was this expanding Atlantic world-much more than the American Revolution-that reshaped contemporary ideals about families, as much as families themselves reshaped the transatlantic world.