First published in 1973, The Birth of the English Common Law has come to enjoy classic status. In a new preface, Professor van Caenegem discusses some recent developments in the study of English law under the Norman and earliest Angevin kings. The book provides a challenging interpretation of the emergence of the Common Law in Anglo-Norman England, against the background of the general development of legal institutions in Europe.

Marked by C. Warren Hollister's clear historical vision and engaging teaching style, this classic text has been judiciously revised by Judith Bennett; the tenth edition includes greater coverage of Byzantium and Islam, a revised map program, a new essay program on medieval myths, and more. In his preface to the eighth edition, Professor Hollister wrote of his realization, while in college, that our world today "is a product of the medieval past." "Medieval Europe" introduces today's students to the medieval roots of our own society.

到外地旅行——多麼令人興奮的念頭啊！通常，人們會找個氣候怡人的地方，見識有趣的風土民情，欣賞能喚起靈感的景物。然而，為什麼成行之後，卻往往覺得猶有遺憾？
在本書裡，狄波頓帶領我們踏上旅途，從巴貝多、阿姆斯特丹、普羅旺斯、馬德里到西奈沙漠等地，經歷旅行中種種讓人嚮往與失望之處。
狄波頓還安排了許多位嚮導。他們是大名鼎鼎的作家、藝術家或思想家，也是深諳旅行滋味的行家，如梵谷、華滋華斯、福樓拜、波特萊爾、羅斯金，在書中與我們分享旅行的洞見。
透過這些旅程，狄波頓揭露了旅行中隱藏的慾望和錯綜複雜的面相，挑起無法抵擋的神祕幻想，並且指點我們如何提升旅行的快樂指數，遠離煩悶的日常生活，進入一個奇異世界。

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind?
Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world’s great military powers.
By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

State, Economy and the Great Divergence provides a new analysis of what has become the central debate in global economic history: the 'great divergence' between European and Asian growth. Focusing on early modern China and Western Europe, in particular Great Britain, this book offers a new level of detail on comparative state formation that has wide-reaching implications for European, Eurasian and global history.
Beginning with an overview of the historiography, Peer Vries goes on to extend and develop the debate, critically engaging with the huge volume of literature published on the topic to date. Incorporating recent insights, he offers a compelling alternative to the claims to East-West equivalence, or Asian superiority, which have come to dominate discourse surrounding this issue.
This is a vital update to a key issue in global economic history and, as such, is essential reading for students and scholars interested in keeping up to speed with the on-going debates.

In this, the fourth volume in the Norton Introduction to Music History series, Philip Downs traces the rise and decline of the "Classical" style from the birth of Haydn (1732) to the death of Beethoven (1827). He demonstrates the enormous diversity and constant change that characterised every aspect of music during this period. By dividing his text into twenty-year spans, Downs is able to trace the development of musical style. Within each span he looks at the social conditions and daily life of the musician, and the aesthetics and audience preferences in structures, performing combinations and styles. The lesser composers, or Kleinmeister, are observed, since they are the most accurate mirrors of their times. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven receive full biographical scrutiny at each stage of their development. Copious music examples and abundant illustrations are also provided.

"This is cultural history of the first order, and it is liberal and humane history at its very best."—David Cannadine An essential work for anyone who wishes to understand the social history of the nineteenth century, Schnitzler's Century is the culmination of Peter Gay's thirty-five years of scholarship on bourgeois culture and society. Using Arthur Schnitzler, the sexually emboldened Viennese playwright, as his master of ceremonies, Gay offers a brilliant reexamination of the hundred-year period that began with the defeat of Napoleon and concluded with the conflagration of 1914. This is a defining work by one of America's greatest historians. 12 b/w illustrations.

This is the classic, comprehensive, colour survey of textile art and production worldwide, from prehistory to the present day. It is both an authoritative work of reference and a visual delight. The book opens with an expert guide to nine fundamental textile techniques, from rug weaving and tapestry to felt and bark cloth. Each is clearly explained, using line drawings and close-up colour details from actual textiles, to show how people from many different traditions have made and decorated cloth through the centuries. The breathtaking wealth of illustrations drawn from major collections all over the world, many never published before includes costumes, period interiors, archive photographs and a huge variety of fabrics.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
New York Times • Christian Science Monitor • NPR • Seattle Times • St. Louis Dispatch
National Book Critics Circle Finalist -- American Library Association Notable Book
A thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential periods in 20th century history – the Arab Revolt and the secret “great game” to control the Middle East
The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War One was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, “a sideshow of a sideshow.” Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theater. As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power.
Curt Prüfer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment Islamic jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Syria. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was the most romantic figure of World War One, battling both the enemy and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people.
The intertwined paths of these four men – the schemes they put in place, the battles they fought, the betrayals they endured and committed – mirror the grandeur, intrigue and tragedy of the war in the desert. Prüfer became Germany’s grand spymaster in the Middle East. Aaronsohn constructed an elaborate Jewish spy-ring in Palestine, only to have the anti-Semitic and bureaucratically-inept British first ignore and then misuse his organization, at tragic personal cost. Yale would become the only American intelligence agent in the entire Middle East – while still secretly on the payroll of Standard Oil. And the enigmatic Lawrence rode into legend at the head of an Arab army, even as he waged secret war against his own nation’s imperial ambitions.
Based on years of intensive primary document research, LAWRENCE IN ARABIA definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.